Proposition 1A's bullet train would speed L.A.'s growth
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Downtown's makeover has been painfully slow. A high-speed train would bring foot traffic that would spur development.
This is the second of two articles on the intersection of public transit, urbanism and architecture on Tuesday's ballot.
Union Station, filled on a typical afternoon with a mixture of Amtrak passengers, Metro commuters and curious tourists, often feels more like a stage set -- a place playing at sophistication and an old-fashioned, genteel kind of urbanity -- than a transportation hub. Maybe that has something to do with how many movies and television shows have used the building, which was designed in streamlined Mission Revival style by John and Donald Parkinson and opened in 1939, as a backdrop. Maybe it's just that the station, though sometimes moderately busy, is rarely packed or fully animated by a thronging crowd the way the most memorable urban spaces are.
All that may change, however, if the state of California, after years of toying with the idea, manages to put a high-speed rail system into operation. Proposition 1A is a statewide initiative seeking to raise $10 billion as a down payment for a bullet-train route that could ultimately stretch from Sacramento to San Diego. Total costs to the state would be roughly $45 billion, with complementary funding coming from the federal government and private investors.
Union Station would serve as the terminus of the train's San Francisco to Los Angeles leg, which promises to be, from its first day, one of the busiest rail routes in the country. Advocates of the bullet train estimate that total state ridership could be as high 117 million passengers annually. Even if the actual numbers were somewhat lower, the effect on the area immediately surrounding Union Station, and on downtown as a whole, promises to be huge.
Once the bullet train started dropping passengers at the city's doorstep, the neighborhood around the station would instantly see new shops and restaurants as well as commercial and retail development. L.A. residents who might otherwise never ride the Metro would use it to reach Union Station in order to catch the train. Just as important, the city would essentially be forced to address the abysmal pedestrian connections that exist between Union Station and the rest of downtown. The station, separated by the 101 Freeway from the downtown core, now feels marooned. Walking from there to the Civic Center, a trip I've made frequently from the end of the Gold Line to the Times building, is a dramatic way to approach the downtown skyline. It is also a less-than-romantic trek across overpasses and along crumbling, forsaken sidewalks.
