Will Valley Subway Clear Freeways?

THE tunnel through the mountains has been dug, the track laid, and now the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is putting the finishing touches on the subway leg that will finally link the San Fernando Valley to downtown.

As the MTA prepares for a summer grand opening, one question looms: Will the $4.5 billion Red Line ease traffic congestion, especially over the jam-packed Hollywood (101) Freeway through the Cahuenga Pass?

MTA officials say yes.

Initially, they expect as many as 15,000 riders a day for the Valley-to-Hollywood subway leg, but the numbers could grow as people are forced out of their cars by worsening congestion.

"The county is expected to grow by 3.5 million people (over the next several decades). That's equivalent to putting a city the size of Chicago here," said Jim de la Loza, the MTA's executive officer for regional planning. "As time goes by, this is going to be a better and better option."

But others aren't as optimistic.

"Let's face it. Southern California wasn't built around a rail system. It was built around automobiles," said David Fleming, a Valley attorney and former vice chairman of the California Transportation Commission. "People are going to be very hesitant to give up their cars."

Commuter nightmare

The Hollywood Freeway over the Cahuenga Pass is the third-busiest in L.A., with traffic congestion lasting an average of eight hours a day and speeds averaging below 25 miles per hour during peak morning hours. The 12-mile stretch between North Hollywood and downtown takes 45 minutes, on average. The subway ride is expected to take 25 minutes.

The final $1.3 billion, 6.3-mile leg - with three new stations, Hollywood/Highland, Universal City and North Hollywood - is on schedule to open in late May or early June, said De la Loza. (The agency's board is expected to set a specific date for the grand opening at a meeting this month.)

The rail cars already are in place, and the MTA is conducting operational tests.

The subway extension will provide the equivalent of 14 freeway lanes of added capacity over the Cahuenga Pass. "This really will be the first time we have what can be considered a full (subway) line," De la Loza said. "This is going to connect a number of destination points together, from North Hollywood to Universal City to Hollywood and downtown."

But a nagging question persists: Will enough people ride it to noticeably reduce congestion?

Jonathan Richmond, a transportation planner and fellow at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says no.

L.A.'s sprawl just isn't conducive to making efficient use of a fixed-rail transit system, he said. Richmond described Los Angeles' subway system as "disastrously expensive," and predicted that the Red Line would do nothing to ease traffic congestion on the Hollywood Freeway in the long run.

"If even a fraction of the money was used to modernize the bus system, they could have done a lot more," he said.

Express buses

MTA officials disagree. If ridership projections hold true, the Red Line could remove 7,000 to 8,000 vehicles from the freeway each day, said Keith Killough, an MTA planner. "As congestion increases, subways and buses will become more attractive," he said.

When the subway opens, the MTA and Los Angeles Department of Transportation plan a demonstration project aimed at speeding bus transportation along Ventura Boulevard. Under the project, the MTA would run a fleet of express buses along the boulevard. The buses are equipped with transponders that can trigger traffic signals to stay green long enough for them to get through the intersections.

By shaving 15 minutes off the typical hour-long trip between Woodland Hills and Universal City, traffic planners hope to encourage more people to ride express buses to the sub-way station in Universal City. Bugs are currently being worked out of the express-bus system, and service is scheduled to start concurrent with the opening of the Red Line segment.

"With the opening of the Red Line (into the Valley), there's great potential to reduce congestion through the Cahuenga Pass," said John Fisher, assistant general manager of the DOT. "We're also hoping people choose the rapid-bus system to travel across the Valley."

Brian Taylor, associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA, said the smart-bus system has the potential to improve the efficiency of buses along Ventura Boulevard, but he doesn't expect it to do much to relieve congestion.

Nor will the subway help, he said. Experience in other cities has shown that when major mass transit projects come on line, the number of people who actually give up their cars is relatively small.

If there is an initial reduction in traffic over the Cahuenga Pass, Taylor expects it would quickly evaporate.

Short-lived relief

When the Bay Area Rapid Transit opened its subway linking San Francisco to the East Bay, there was a noticeable reduction in traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. But soon the reductions disappeared. Why? When traffic conditions improved, motorists who previously would have postponed a trip over the bridge during rush hour started crowding back on.

"When there's a significant reduction in cars on the freeway, and traffic congestion is relieved and cars start flowing at higher speeds, people notice that and start making trips," Taylor said.

Bob Scott, a Valley attorney and member of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, expects the subway to be a boon for Universal City and North Hollywood, but he doubts the new system will do much to alter driving habits.

People tend not to take mass transit unless it's close to their homes and shaves time off their total travel to work, said Scott. "L.A. is 550 square miles of flat city. It's hard to put a high-capacity system in one corridor and think it would be successful."

Fleming agreed, noting that because L.A. is so spread out and the potential travel destinations so numerous, a fixed-rail system that originates out of downtown just isn't flexible enough to meet the needs of most people.

"(Development of the subway) assumes facts not in evidence. It assumes that everyone needs to go downtown," said Fleming, adding that only about 5 percent of the people who live in the Valley work downtown.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who is on the MTA board, said the subway must be part of a broader mass transit system. As such, Yaroslavsky advocates development of a system of high-speed buses to more efficiently move people from east to west, and north to south throughout the Valley floor. It's a system that could be used to speed passengers toward the rail line.

Developing a special bus corridor with dedicated lanes would cost about $15 million a mile vs. $300 million a mile for a subway, he said.

Yaroslavsky defends construction of the Red Line, not only as a way to take some of the strain off the local freeways but as a symbolic link between the Valley and the Civic Center. "Will it result in a perceptible decrease in traffic? I don't know," he said. "But every year, we have a new crop of 16-year-olds getting their licenses, and there are no new roads being built."

                        Valley Traffic Composition
        Number of daily work trips originating in the San Fernando
                      Valley to various destinations.
                           Daily Work Percent of
Destination                  Trips    Total Trips
Elsewhere in Valley         476,900       49%
Downtown                     43,500        5
Other areas of L.A. County  387,200       40
Outside L.A. County          60,900        6
All destinations            968,500      100%
Source: Metropolitan Transportation Authority