Life in the land down under: today, it's an empty hole in the ground; tomorrow, it's L.A.'s new subculture.

Life in the land down under

Today, it's an empty hole in the ground; tomorrow, it's L.A.'s new subculture

Atlantis under the asphalt is almost one-third built, though the deafening silence of this concrete ghost town belies the point.

For on the westerly end of the cavernous hole, 60 feet under a dusty Mid-Wilshire parking lot, is a huge metallic wall that could pass for the black monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- if it weren't for the paint splotches or the discarded Marlboro box at its base.

The wall, which is actually a bulkhead, is just one sliver in the $60-million-plus Westlake/MacArthur Park subway station near the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Alvarado Street. The bulkhead, like mass transit's version of the demilitarized zone, separates miles of untouched earth from the nearly complete $1.4 billion Metro Rail phase one, which will snake underground from an area east of downtown to Mid-Wilshire in a little more than two years.

Creating a 17-mile, $4 billion subway grid under a metropolis already erected isn't cheap. Each day of construction costs the taxpayers -- from Joe Sixpack to Beverly Hills Blaine -- $3 million a day, $250,000 an hour, $4,167 a minute.

It's also hard to fathom.

Just the words "L.A. subway" seem oxymoronic for a city where the smogbelching automobile is the utlimate expression of freedom and the words traffic and improve never seem to go together.

Metro Rail project manager John Adams, a gruff-talking, 58-year-old, ex-New Yorkers, doesn't think Angelenos understand what all this subway stuff is about.

"I've been in this business for 38 years, but this system is unique," Adams observes, sitting in his climate-controlled cubicle at the headquarters of the Los Angeles County Tranportation Commission. "People don't believe what is happening. They ask, 'How you get the trains in the tunnel? You can't carry them down the stairs, can you?"

(Actually, the trains will enter the system at ground level from the mother of all Metro Rail depots, historic Union Station.)

Descending two flights of steps onto a thick concrete platform that 28,000 lawyers, secretaries, financiers, bureaucrats and the like will use in September 1993 is to enter a subterranean world, where shopworn machines and rats larger than the family feline outnumber the humans it is intended to serve. Luckily, no rats were around during this two-hour subway sojourn. Neither were there any bathrooms.

Though all the tunneling for 4.4 miles of the first segment is complete, and the "heavy construction" work for five depots are done, two-thirds of the "finishing" work at the stations remains incomplete: the circulation and electrical systems aren't installed; the escalators are without stairs; a $4-million-a-pop ventilation fan, the size of a 747 jet engine, sits unconnected in a small concrete cell.

Around the eight massive platform columns, well-used paint compressors and massive cable spools with the girth of a refrigerator keep the spartan concrete benches company. With the lighting only partially completed and not a single tile up, everything appears a monotonous, government-issue gray.

Long gone are the excavating and boring machines of construction consortium Tutor-Saliba/Perini, which built the station shell and is $47.5 million richer for its efforts. More than 160,000 cubic yards of L.A.'s silty soil had to be carved for the terminal, keeping dump truck operators and dirt merchants doing a brisk business.

Much of the finishing work falls upon subcontractors few would know -- General Railway Signal Co. Emprotech, Fischback & Moore, Simmons Machine Tool Corp.

Thankfully, most of the concrete work is done. And not just your garden-variety concrete, but platform, skylight, retaining wall, precast, lean, slab, column and walkway concrete, to mention a few.

But something clearly is happening in the station -- which spans 880 feet in length, 60 feet in width -- as noted by Metro Rail construction manager Henry Fuks, a quiet man of Polish decent, who displays his technical subway acumen in measured, if not full, sentences. Ask him how the pretzel-shaped clips hold the track in place, and he'll explain the process in excruciating detail. Query him on the magnitude of this gargantuan construction job and he answers, after a pause, "It's challenging."

Next to the 20-ton escalator is an exotic-looking yellow machine whose four metal legs rest on the recently laid rails. Called a gantry crane in industrial jargon, it can pour at one shot almost 5 cubic yards of concrete into the rail slabs, using a thick tube to feed the gray mush into the track-ways.

After 20 minutes in a synthetic hole, voices and the sound of metal on metal form a cacophony that echoes in the southerly tunnel -- the only sign that people are down here.

Some 30 yards from the platform -- across x-shaped "frog" track where the trains will change direction on four-inch-thick pads that muffle the train's ear-numbing rumble -- a gaggle of white-helmuted workmen are at their craft.

Their boss is Gary McMickens, a lanky, 17-year rail construction worker, now a foreman for California Engineering Contractors, with a walkie-talkie dangling off his coveralls. One of his workers is operating a tractor-sized machine called a Pettibone Speed Swing, that also rides the rails like its industrial cousin.

The Pettibone's arm wields a thick metal pincher that resembles an oversize salad tong. It's not picking up mutant lettuce, but 780-foot long strings of track that weigh 15 tons each. With a steady hum, the strings are being pulled forward under the Pettibone in laborious fashion. Workers scramble to negotiate the track into the grooves with long black rods.

Turning to speak to a bothersome reporter, McMickens said confidently, "Everything is state-of-the-art down here. We can lay one-half mile of track a day. But you can get hurt quickly. Be careful!"

Although McMickens barks orders occasionally, little else is being said. The inner-workings of Metro Rail are a different sort down here, where the Earth's own air conditioning keeps the temperature at a dry 60 degrees.

Nobody talks about splashy subway blazes, cost overruns, schedule delays or nasty bureaucratic warfare. That a single 1985 vote by then-Sen. Pete Wilson helped override President Reagan's veto of $667 million in federal funds for Metro Rail is just trivial pursuit to Fuks, Adams or McMickens.

That's not to say there isn't pressure when you have tunnel vision.

Contractors posture occasionally to get more money, claiming that management lapses or technical delays have made their costs spiral. Adams has seen it happen before in Miami and New York.

And then there is the paperwork, mountains of it when you're building the largest public works project in the United States. State safety officials stage surprise inspections, and the LACTC's own audit teams come into the resident engineer's office to pore through files, schematics, phone logs, work diaries.

LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson, the peripatetic transit boss Adams answers to, does his own walk-throughs, Adams said. "He wants the trains running yesterday. He wants to know what kind of finish we are using, or why we aren't working 300 hours a day."

On the northerly side of the station, where the track is all laid, the well-lit tunnel curves gently into the distance. Running along the inside of the foot-thick outside wall is a firmly attached, cream-colored contact rail, which will carry the 750-volt electrical current. Soon enough, the trains will thunder down the underground alley, 70 mph, on the straightaways, 45 mph on the curves. Testing of the actual subway cars is less than two years away.

Nestled inside the concrete walkway on the inner side of the tunnel is a six-inch-diameter, orange-colored pipe. Should fire break out, the pipe can spew water at the rate of 8.3 gallons a second.

One flight of stairs up from the platform -- where the mezzanine level with its ticket-dispensing machines will be -- is a labyrinth of rooms where the brains of the depot will live. In the signal-relay room, computers that will interpret the subway's operations are now only collecting dust. A freeway of aluminum ductwork dots the roof. "Metro Rail 277" is scrawled in grease marker on the sides.

Two people, apparently subcontractors, appear like ghosts out of an alcove, pointing, taking notes, speaking in a technical tongue.

On top of the fence-lined parking lot. directly over the station, there are few signs a transportation revolution is in the making

Nearby though, MacArthur Park lake has been drained, so phase two tunneling can be done without the fear of water and paddle boats giving the workers a bath.

"This is the best-kept secret in Los Angeles," said Peterson. "In 100 years, our grandkids will have a system that they will take for granted. Right now there is a disbelief we will get done. But we will."

PHOTO : Metro Rail Red Line: Sparks rain down as tunnel nears completion

PHOTO : Tunnel vision: Forging an underground city

PHOTO : City transportation reaches its crossroads: A revolution in the making