Happy birthday, Red Line

If I were to pick a birthday celebration that I am most fond of, I would have to say it is July 13, 1996. The best birthday present I ever got was a subway.

It was 10 years ago today that the Red Line extension to Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue opened. Yes, a whole decade has passed by since the subway was extended out of downtown L.A.

I remember that Saturday morning well. I would finally get to see whether nearly a half decade of construction nightmares, rutty roads and a Wilshire Boulevard that looked as lifeless and haunting as the nightmare realms in the video game and movie “Silent Hill” was worth all the damage it caused.

For I, like the rest of Koreatown, hated the subway. It was forced down our throats by a distant downtown bureaucracy and the construction managed to smother with a pillow a frail Wilshire corridor that was bound never to see better days.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had set a date for the subway opening, and was even going to have celebrations at the new stations. The gall!

July 13 rolled around, and the Wilshire/Western station, site of a former Thrifty Drug store and a strip mall, was abuzz with music and booths. There were stands product giveaways, Metro memorabilia and civic organizations. But the real show was beneath the surface.

 

It was still pretty early in the morning, so I was able to get on the first train that had arrived. Over 100,000 people took free rides that weekend, and even with full-length 6-car trains, the waiting time was at least 30 minutes by the afternoon.

One ride turned a cynical, bitter population into believers. Especially this rider, who’s as cynical and bitter as they come. The ride into downtown was so fast it was unbelievable. It was only about 7 minutes to 7^th Street Metro Center, 10 minutes to Pershing Square and Civic Center and under 15 minutes to Union Station, the northeast edge of downtown.

When you are used to plying the pothole-pocked roads in a 40-foot wheeled battleship with a suspension that makes riding a mechanical bull seem like gliding on air, a subway ride below Wilshire feels like traveling at the speed of light.

But the Red Line was still only eight stations long. Sure, if you worked downtown or had some business there, it was super, but what about if I had to go elsewhere? After some schedule reading, I realized that downtown L.A. was the destination of many express bus lines run by MTA and municipal carriers, and with downtown only being an easy 5-10 minute subway ride away, I can get around anywhere faster by connecting to buses downtown. If I went to Santa Monica, for instance, I actually made better time by backtracking east and taking Line 10 than if I had caught a bus on Wilshire and headed straight west.

I could even make good use of Metrolink, on the condition that there was a train available for people traveling the wrong way. I could now cross counties with only one transfer. If I were to include Amtrak, I could theoretically go as far as Florida and only have to leave a vehicle once. Of course, the train would take over three days, and I’d have to pencil in being a day and a half late. And the destination is Florida, after all.

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, Red Line extension to Western.

The community had warmed up to the subway. Even drivers like the Red Line because at least Wilshire got to be resurfaced. And K-Town began to be rediscovered. Downtown workers could take advantage of low rents and breeze to work. Even the office complexes on Wilshire started seeing new commercial tenants. Pedestrians were walking, talking and schmoozing again, and merchants began occupying the barren storefronts hoping to rope in said pedestrians.

Three years later, the next and most important extension opened. It was Hollywood’s turn to say to the Red Line, “Show me the voodoo that you do so well.” OK, so it wasn’t Hollywood so much as Hedy Lamarr.

 

Oh, it’s Hedley. I stand corrected.

The Hollywood extension more than doubled the system and ran under extremely busy Vermont Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, and almost tripled ridership. That made the Wilshire/Western segment almost insignificant. In 2000, the Red Line was completed (no thanks to slash-and-burn construction and Zev Yaroslavsky’s crusaderism) and the trains had now crossed the penultimate frontier: the Cahuenga Pass.

Ridership was now counted in six digits. This meant more cars off the road, and even more passengers confused and asking whether they are on the right train. A subway now connected the southwest Valley with downtown L.A. by way of Hollywood, all in about half an hour. The Koreatown spur has been reduced to the line riders curse at because they didn’t read the tiny sign and have to add about ten minutes to their commute on account of boarding the wrong train.

Don’t worry, Wilshire Center extension. You’re still doing fine. A mighty open-air sunken courtyard that was once the Wilshire/Vermont station is now the foundation for a mighty new development. Wilshire/Western may be next. And now that Antonio Villaraigosa made it cool to love trains again, even I could forget the relevance of July 13, 1996.

Just kidding.

Happy 10^th, Red Line.