Going Underground

It couldn’t have been a better day to show off the advantages of the Metro Red Line.

While rain thrummed overhead Tuesday, slowing traffic on the Hollywood Freeway to even more of a crawl than usual, a bevy of Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials took reporters on a speedy--and dry--subway ride from the North Hollywood station, under the Cahuenga Pass and on to Hollywood.

The ride was only a test run, a media tour of the North Hollywood leg of the Red Line, which is scheduled to open to a skeptical public in June.

The North Hollywood leg took $1.3 billion and nearly eight years to build, and even before it was finished, the public lost patience with the Red Line’s cost overruns and construction problems. Two years ago voters approved a ballot measure that effectively ended new subway projects.

The North Hollywood station is, literally, the last stop for Los Angeles subways, at least in the foreseeable future.

That’s no reason to not make the best of the San Fernando Valley segment of the Red Line when it opens come summer.

With politicians of every persuasion looking for ways to ease the gridlock on the Ventura and Hollywood freeways, the subway offers an alternative--if we can find ways to take full advantage of it.

The MTA expects 18,000 riders to board the train at North Hollywood each day. Even more could ride if transportation planners come up with an effective way to link the east and west Valley, perhaps through high-speed busways or light rail along the Burbank-Chandler railroad corridor, to which the MTA already owns the right of way.

Solving the Valley’s--and the rest of the city’s--traffic congestion calls for tactics as comprehensive as a networked subway, train and bus system and as individual as a Van Nuys company’s efforts to make high-quality, affordable electric bikes.

Currie Technologies Inc., which was profiled in Tuesday’s Valley Business section, hopes to market its bikes to environmentally conscious but, let’s face it, middle-aged baby boomers who might appreciate a zero-emission motor to boost the bike over hills. One of the company’s engineers commutes by Metrolink train and uses his electric bike for the 15-minute ride from train station to work.

Alternatives such as subways and electric bikes won’t by themselves end congestion on roads and freeways, but they would and should be part of a broader plan, one that includes new roads, additional traffic and turn lanes, better traffic signals, “smart� fare cards, and a balance of jobs, housing and transportation.

Only by combining efforts, large and small, public and private, will the Valley’s transportation problems be eased.