Beverly Hills blocking Los Angeles' 'Subway to the Sea'

[marmar]

from the Next American City blog:



L.A. Tries Bringing Subway to Land of Maseratis

Los Angeles | 05/03/2012 7:00am |
Josh Stephens | Next American City


At long last, the first phase of Los Angeles’ “Subway to the Sea” received final approval last week, ending years of contentious debate over a track extension that would connect the city’s center, including working-class sections of east and south L.A., to more affluent communities west of downtown, such as Century City.

Yet while environmental and engineering documents for the Purple Line extension have been certified for its entire 9.6-mile length, the approved segment stops short of that long-sought western reach. Standing in its way: A beleaguered, marginalized and forlorn polity known as Beverly Hills.

For the past two years, Tom Cruise’s hometown has claimed that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) is imposing itself on a powerless little berg. Civic leaders have described it as David vs. Goliath, with Metro as the Goliath. Residents confined to 10,000-square-foot mansions, and condemned to navigate Los Angeles traffic in such mean conveyances as Maseratis and Aston-Martins, have launched all manner of epithet against the transportation authority.

The concern? That the subway’s planned passage through a tunnel under Beverly Hills High School will make the swank public school a destination for terrorists, or potentially, a tinderbox prone to deadly explosion. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://americancity.org/daily/entry/l.a.-tries-bringing-subway-to-land-of-maseratis

[tinrobot]

1. If Beverly Hills could become a gated community, they'd do it.

This is simply one more move in a history of exclusionism from that city.

[nxylas]

2. You know how the movie Beverley Hills Cop was born, right?

The story about Jerry Bruckheimer being stopped by an actual Beverley Hills cop and told that he looked like he didn't belong there because he was wearing jeans?