Maybe you kids will learn something about wasted tax loot.
"LA subway plan slows at high school; Beverly Hills calls for tunnel to run north of campus" November 20, 2011|By Michael R. Blood, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - It’s as hard to travel under the ground in Southern California as it is on top of it.
Here in the city the car built, the latest attempt to bore a subway line beneath some of the most congested roads in America is recalling civic brawls of a generation ago, when fear over where tunnels could be constructed safely left the region with a subway system so stunted it gets as much ridicule as ridership.
In an area prone to earthquakes?
This time, transit planners hoping to run a 9-mile subterranean line into the city’s densely packed Westside have hit resistance within a cluster of stately, red-roofed buildings surrounded by manicured hedges and lush, rolling lawn - Beverly Hills High School. Tentative plans call for drilling a tunnel 70 feet beneath the campus, where Angelina Jolie and Nicholas Cage once roamed the hallways.
Local officials say ambitious plans for new classrooms and parking would be threatened, and they worry the French Normandy-style buildings could be damaged by construction or train vibration.
They want the line to run on an alternate route a few blocks north, along busy Santa Monica Boulevard, though regional transit consultants say that would take the train into the path of unstable earthquake faults.
Like a couple of blocks makes a difference?
And if so, why did they build a road there?
The consultants are confident tunneling would not endanger the 2,200-student school, but some envision the worst: a tunnel collapse directly below campus, with students inside the buildings.
“It’s terrible, I dislike it intensely,’’ Theresa Pinassi said with a grimace, as she waited outside the school for her 16-year-old grandson. “It would be dangerous to have it under the school - God forbid, if we had an earthquake.’’
It’s all deja vu to Mark Fabiani, who served as deputy mayor and chief of staff to a former mayor, Tom Bradley, who in his era envisioned a subway that would link downtown Los Angeles with the Pacific coast, a line befitting one of the world’s great metropolitan areas.
It never happened.
A local congressman pushed through a tunneling ban in 1986 because of fears that construction could cause an explosion of naturally occurring methane gas, a move some viewed as a maneuver to safeguard tony Westside neighborhoods from outsiders.
The city ended up with a subway that’s invisible to many of its 4 million residents - it’s about 20 miles overall in a city covering 468 square miles, petering out just west of downtown’s skyscrapers.
To Fabiani, Bradley’s dream would have helped avert Los Angeles’ traffic nightmare....
I'd rather wait in traffic than ride a subway in L.A.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, chaired by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, isn’t expected to endorse a route until early next year, and it’s not clear how much of the $5.4 billion line will be built, or when. The most optimistic schedule calls for construction to begin next year, with trains rolling in 2022.
Long wait for that train, 'eh?
Local voters boosted sales taxes to bankroll transit projects, but money is scarce in gridlocked Washington....
And the money -- like the subway -- disappeared.
The MTA’s experts recently concluded that the route under the school would be safer than along Santa Monica Boulevard, where faults could pose a threat.
Once again the people find out that government -- no matter what level -- doesn't care about your kids. So what well-connected friend is getting the construction contract?
But district officials suspect that developers with ties to City Hall are influencing the decision-making.
You're kidding?!!
The disputed route would take the line under the school and to a station in the nearby Century City neighborhood that’s virtually at the doorstep of a planned 37-story tower proposed by JMB Realty Corp., a major landlord. JMB executives have invested heavily in Villaraigosa’s political ventures, government records show.
“We do believe politics has driven this alignment, not transit rules or standards,’’ said Lisa Korbatov, who heads the local school board. She calls the MTA’s data “very heavy in assumption.’’
A statement from Villaraigosa’s office said only that he is confident in the MTA’s experts and the conclusions of its technical studies.
--more--"
Now I am fighting mad!
