Dedicating Line 720 to Henry Waxman
L.A. Sniper: The standing-room-only Wilshire bus is the subway foe's legacy
It's impossible to ride Line 720, the most crowded bus in Los Angeles, without thinking about Henry Waxman. And they are not all joyous thoughts. Most of the time they come unexpectedly. Standing in the aisle with some 30 other passengers without a place to sit on the hyper-long so-called Rapid bus, we fantasize about calling Henry's driver on his cell phone for a Beltway traffic report and to tell him that his boss should really take public transportation if he's so worried about public health issues. Henry, of course, does not have a driver, though his handlers didn't call back Wednesday to say how the congressman gets to work or how often he takes the subway.
He should be on this bus as it hurtles more than 100 passengers down the packed boulevard during rush hour at speeds that can sometimes seem teeth-gnashing fast. Some peculiar law of physics must apply to these giant metal-and-glass boxes joined in the middle by accordion-style material that allows them to whip from lane to lane. In reality, this bus can't go 30 mph for more than a second in thick traffic.
If only Henry could get behind a plan to push the subway beyond Western Avenue. What if it went a couple more miles to La Brea? Or a bit further to Fairfax? Or just toss in a few billions more and go all the way to Santa Monica, the destination of 80 or so mostly immigrant families who boarded the bus on Labor Day at MacArthur Park.
"He's an idiot," declares 51-year-old Virginia Miller, an ecology teacher at El Camino College. "We need an expanded subway system if Los Angeles is going to be a world-class city."
Thirty-eight-year-old William Hernandez boards the bus in Koreatown on his way to his job as a food preparer at a West Side restaurant. "There should be a subway down Wilshire. It would be better because there are so many people."
So here's a proposal to consider until we get the leaders who will stay focused on the fight for a subway running the full length of Wilshire. Let's rename Line 720 the Henry Waxman Limited Vision Line.
H-Man, the next time you're in Los Angeles, we can do the formal dedication ceremony. We'll invite the mayor and fellow MTA board members. Maybe County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky could put his name in early for a line of his choice. But, Henry, at least Zev is talking about transportation ideas, though not too many people like his idea of making Olympic and Pico one-way thoroughfares to ease Westside congestion.
Renaming the bus line for Subway Enemy No. 1 would be a win-win for the congressman. The dude needs to emerge from all of his committee hearings and get some name recognition; months have gone since Valerie Plame dropped by and you got front-page play around the nation. Only two or three of the dozens of riders contacted over the past three days ever heard of you. I ended up informing them, including a few of your constituents in the 30th District, about your role in derailing the subway program after the 1985 methane explosion at a Fairfax-area Ross Dress for Less store. Seizing on the methane eruption, you got your colleagues in Congress to ban the use of federal dollars paying for any tunneling west of Fairfax; a ban tinged with your constituents' racism that, to your credit, you finally lifted this year. But aside from Virginia Miller, who, by the way, also called you a moron, few people showed much animosity toward you.
We could even make you the mascot and plaster posters of your face on the side of buses. Consider all of the positive publicity that will come your way every time the giant red bus lumbers down the boulevard? It will give new meaning to the phrase now used by your foes in Congress when they say, "Stop Henry" or "Catch Henry."
It may seem unfair to single you out, particularly since you play such a valuable role in Washington, D.C. exposing the bozos in the current administration. In fact, you were only one of the demons who did in the subway program more than two decades ago. The sloppy subway contractor, Tutor-Saliba-Perini, which made at least 2,000 feet of subway tunnel wall too thin, among other faults, turned off the public to the idea of expanding the system. This era of disillusionment
produced Yaroslavsky's voter-approved 1998 ban on using county money for
underground rail.
But there's a reason to draw attention to your role, Henry. You still could do so much more for L.A.'s transit programs. You could make it your legacy to take a leadership role and help our subway mayor come up with the billions needed to dig toward Santa Monica. Be persuasive and get the public to pitch in.
It's unclear whether Subway Enemy No. 1 wants his name to adorn the fleet of Line 720 buses that carry 50,000 passengers a day. We let his office staff know what we had in mind to boost the congressman's profile on transit issues, but we didn't hear back. We hope he's on the Metro and out of cell phone reach.
Mayor Eats His Influence
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ego scored one partial victory and one loss last week - and he didn't even have to leave the office.
First, he couldn't get all of his four chosen members of L.A. Unified's school board to back a union plan to pay for health insurance for part-time cafeteria workers at a three-year cost of $105 million.
One of the mayor's candidates - Tamar Galatzan - joined Marlene Canter and voted no. Before the vote, the mayor called his allies on the board, urging them to support the measure, according to the Daily News's Naush Boghossian. Sounds like a case of the mayor cozying up to his union buddie at the expense of teachers in the classroom. The plan, of course, is a reckless precedent for the money-strapped district, which now must cut jobs, including those of teachers, to come up with the money. Said Galatzan: "I thought it was fiscally irresponsible, and it did nothing to help kids."
The loss came on Friday, when the state Senate's Appropriations Committee blew off the mayor's request to amend State Sen. Alan Lowenthal's port-cleaning bill to set aside up to $1.5 billion to replace two bridges. The committee favored using the money to actually reduce pollution - not increase it.
Given the governor's habit of stealing money reserved for transportation projects, who can blame Antonio for getting a little creative.
It Ain't Your Job
Every year around this time we find our state Legislature rushing out the door with a slew of unfinished business. This time, the life-threatening issue of health care, and finding a way to provide health insurance for 6.7 million Californians who can't afford it, is pushing the deadline bell.
So, why are these geniuses wasting their time on a stating-the-obvious
measure on the Iraq war? For two hours, the Assembly debated whether or not to ask voters on the February ballot whether President Bush should "end the United States occupation of Iraq and achieve the immediate, complete, safe, and orderly withdrawal of United States forces."
The measure, by state Senate leader Dan Perata, passed the Assembly on a 43-32 party-line vote. The bill is now on Gov. Schwarzenegger's desk, where we're counting on him to do the right thing and burn it.
If our state legislators can't do their jobs, maybe they should consider running for Congress.
Published: 09/06/2007
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