American Notes Los Angeles

Metropolitan Los Angeles has been characterized as the world's largest parking lot, with 4.7 million vehicles making 25 million trips daily among 84 cities. Officials of the region took a promising step last week, however, toward giving all that chrome some competition. Mayor Tom Bradley officiated at a groundbreaking for a 21-mile, $595 million light-rail project to link Long Beach and Los Angeles, currently the country's largest megalopolis without rail transit.

In the early years of the century, Los Angeles had more than 1,000 miles of urban rail lines, more than any other U.S. city. By 1961, the trains were defeated by freeways and the conscious effort of auto, tire and oil companies to cripple rail transit, for which they were convicted in court. The new rail project, financed by adding .5% to the area's existing 6% sales tax, will share much of the right-of-way of the old system. The first passengers will board in 1989, and by the year 2000, says the Los Angeles County transportation commission, 54,000 people will be riding the rails daily. Although a minute percentage of total traffic, they may help unclog Los Angeles' congested arteries.