A Word from Richard Risemberg for March, 2001

Dig It!

The monorail idea is, in fact, silly--but not for the reasons that opponents typically put forth. Aside from the inescapable fact that no real-life monorail system has ever worked successfully--they tend to be slow--monorails simply do not have the capacity sufficient to serve one of the busiest urban travel corridors in the world. Nor, despite our local Bus Riders Union and its shortsighted anti-rail rantings, can adding buses help. There are already five local bus lines that run along Wilshire, as well as the magnificent but always jampacked Rapids; buses compete for road space with the rest of traffic, and cannot move any faster than that traffic. Alternatively, we could build a freeway down Wilshire Blvd. to supplement the already-inadequate Santa Monica Freeway a mile or two south--but a freeway would require destroying Wilshire Blvd. itself and its adjacent neighborhoods, and Los Angeles has shown itself reluctant to do that to largely white areas with heavy corporate investment in them. Besides, freeways are proven to generate more traffic than existed in a given area before its freeways were built, both in their own lanes and on the streets that support them. So a freeway over Wilshire would simply increase traffic congestion at the expense of a now-vibrant community. With the bus system at its maximum capacity, given current traffic loads on the boulevard, and a monorail cute but inadequate, what are we to do?

The answer is simple: commit ourselves to building the rest of the Wilshire Red Line subway right down the length of Wilshire Blvd. to the Third St. Promenade in Santa Monica. All the arguments against it are fallacious or simply not fully thought out. Methane is not a problem (this is in the vicinity of the famous La Brea Tar Pits), as thousands of building basements along Wilshire attest; there has been ONE explosion, and that in an area where development was rather thoughtless (a quick-and-dirty strip mall): we now know of the problem, and simple venting as is used in thousands of road tunnels that must constantly remain clear of motorists' own toxic fumes will suffice. Earthquakes are not a problem: a reinforced concrete cylinder is one of the strongest structural shapes engineers have ever devised; remember that after San Francisco's massive '89 quake, only BART, of all motorized transport modes, was running effectively--even though it passes under the bay and crosses numerous fault lines. And cost is not a problem: one mile of Red Line, even as built by a conniving contractor, costs about the same as a mile of eight-lane freeway--yet a heavy rail system such as the Red Line has a potential passenger throughput equal to thirty-five lanes of freeway. And, unlike the freeway, a subway does not divide neighborhoods with hundred-yard-wide concrete wastelands spewing toxic fumes and endless nerve-wracking noise; it does not require the razing of thousands of businesses, homes, and trees; and it delivers pedestrians, not automobiles, to its destination facilities, leading to quieter, friendlier neighborhoods and to strolling shoppers who are far more likely than drivers to stop in at stores and offices along the street. Thus it does not require valuable land to be wasted on parking lots when it could be providing homes and workplaces for individuals and badly needed tax revenues for the city as a whole.

Those homes and workplaces bring us to the issue of higher density development. One local paper worried that the new plans would result in an "Orwellian nightmare." I don't quite see it. Most New Urbanist proponents of higher density defer to Christopher Alexander's five-story maximum height limit, with the ground floors along major streets dedicated to small businesses (the job generating dynamos of the country, according to most analysts). If you're talking about five-story height limits, high-density mixed retail/residential developments clustered around parks and pedestrian squares and served by subway transit, it sounds to me that you're describing Paris or Amsterdam far more than East Berlin. Every year tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents pay large sums of money to fly to these cities on vacation, simply because it feels so good to be there. Well, we can have the same vacation every day, right here at home, and spend our money at our neighbors' businesses, while they spend theirs at ours. All it takes is a little honest courage, and some common sense.

Richard Risemberg

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