[M II A II R II K]

L.A. Tries Bringing Subway to Land of Maseratis


05/03/2012

By Josh Stephens

Read More: http://americancity.org/daily/entry/...d-of-maseratis

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For the past two years, Tom Cruise’s hometown has claimed that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit 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. In short, the city that inspired a million Tudor-style McMansions is blocking the transit authority’s plans with a demand that it reroute the subway extension to avoid running below the high school that inspired everyone’s favorite bit of 1990s high school television greatness. The city has requested a special hearing in front of the Metro board before the alignment is approved. The meeting is as-yet unscheduled.

- For the past two years, debate about the subway has been the loudest conversation in Beverly Hills since the trial of Lindsay Lohan. Though Metro has held innumerable public meetings on the proposed subway dating back to at least 2006, it wasn’t until late 2010 that civic leaders raised concerns that some of the 17 alignments that Metro had published in its Alternatives Analysis might pose a problem. Originally, the most clear and present danger — articulated by then-School Board President Lisa Korbotov — was that terrorists would use the subway to blow up the school. This premise relied on the assumption that terrorists would not only still be agitated decades from now, but also that they would be able to smuggle onto the train a small explosive device powerful enough to rip through several feet of concrete tunnel and travel upward through 50 feet of earth.

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