Tinseltown's best kept secret comes off the rails

Tinseltown's best kept secret comes off the rails

Sydney Morning Herlad

March 4, 2006

Trains may soon join plastic surgeons in the LA pantheon, writes Phillip McCarthy in Los Angeles.

IN THE film Collateral Tom Cruise races through a gleaming underground concourse and jumps on to a late-night train. In another thriller, Harrison Ford, a cop chasing a deadbeat down subway stairs, vainly pushes by commuters as the doors of a brightly lit train close. In the remake of The Italian Job Mark Wahlberg drives a Mini Cooper down the same stairs, right on to the train tracks.

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Who knew Los Angeles, a city famed for sprawl, strip-malls and gridlock, had trains? It probably was a first for Cruise, Ford and Wahlberg to be on one; perhaps the last, barring another scripted set up. Trains are not up there with palm trees or plastic surgeons as potent symbols of Los Angeles. In New York, knowing the difference between the F train and the V train and when it is smart to switch proves you are street smart. In Los Angeles, knowing where the Blue Line meets the Red Line merely suggests you cannot afford a car, and that makes you a loser.

Wahlberg says: "I didn't know you could take a train in LA, that there was a subway here. You can drive around LA and never notice. You never come across anyone who uses it." Chances are Wahlberg's maid or gardener uses public transport to get to and from work. A Los Angeles transit system seems like an oxymoron or an urban myth. This is the city of stretch limos, intricate on/off cloverleafs and road rage. Transport solutions here always had an automotive focus: tougher emissions controls and more car pool lanes. But over the past decade the city has rediscovered rail.

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With the Green Line, which swoops by Los Angeles International Airport, and the new Gold Line, from downtown to inland Pasadena, they make up a 117 kilometre network that has cost $US10 billion ($13 billion). In a metropolis of 17 million, the system carries a modest 217,000 passengers a day. But that translates into many cars not on the roads.

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You can already get to the Oscars. Tomorrow night late arriving members of the Australian contingent could get from their inbound sleeper beds to their seats at the Kodak Theatre entirely by train (plus five minutes on an airport shuttle bus). They could strut the red carpet after riding the escalators up from the Hollywood and Highland Red Line train that pulls in directly below the theatre. Think of the greenie points accruing to an Oscar-winning train traveller compared to last year's eco-conscious entry vehicle: a petrol-electric hybrid compact. The phrase Metro Rail is unlikely to supercede last year's Toyota Prius, but Sydney jetsetters would at least find pluses over train travel at home.

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http://smh.com.au/news/world/tinseltowns-best-kept-secret-comes-off-the-rails/2006/03/03/1141191849884.html#

Much of it was still under construction in 1993, as it's still being built today. The Hollywood line (don't know the color) got too close to the surface and Hollywood Blvd. sinkhole collapsed onto the tunnel, which is where Keanu's "Whoa!" train flew up onto the street at the end of the film.

along with energy prices, even though sprawling, low-denisty suburbs don't make the best configuration for successful mass transit systems.

Now that the topic of Peak Oil and it's effect on energy costs is being broached in the NY Times as a serious and valid concern, maybe more cities will join LA in implementing a commuter rail infrastructure.

planners who stopped one of the lines just short of LAX. All over the world one can take a train from an airport to the city. Even NYC and Chicago have connections.

But yesterday he announced the establishment of FlyAway service - with bays for luggage - from Union Station to LAX, and the first two weeks are free.

The Gold Line runs close to our house.

:smoke: