MTA Drops Its Plan for Major Exhaust Shaft in Hills

Putting to rest a concern held by Hollywood Hills residents for seven years, a top Metropolitan Transportation Authority official said Tuesday that the agency has abandoned its plan to sink an 800-foot shaft into the Santa Monica Mountains to ventilate exhaust from a Red Line subway tunnel.

Speaking directly to a crowd of hillside homeowners for the first time since taking office, interim MTA chief executive Joseph Drew apologized for the way the transportation agency had dealt with the vent shaft plan and other environmental issues, and promised to double his public affairs staff.

“We didn’t come out there and keep you informed about something important to your life,” he said. “But that’s changing.”

Drew told the group that the shaft was too costly and difficult to build. He said the MTA has come up with an alternative plan that he hopes will not provoke community outrage. For months, the raucous homeowners have trooped down to MTA headquarters to protest over environmental issues related to the tunneling plan.

In 1989, the MTA listed the ventilation shaft as an essential element in its plan to bore twin subway tunnels 2.3 miles through the Hollywood Hills between Studio City and Hollywood Boulevard. It said the shaft was needed to prevent air pressure from slowing trains that sped in opposite directions along the longest nonstop stretch of rail in the Metro Rail system.

Local homeowners, however, strongly objected to the plan--contending that construction workers would have to blast out earth for more than two years to build the 22-foot-wide shaft and send 20 to 40 truckloads of dirt a day down narrow, winding Mulholland Drive.

Residents of the Hollywood Hills also objected on aesthetic grounds because plans called for the shaft to rise in a two-story concrete bunker just a few yards from the northwestern boundary of popular Runyon Canyon Park, near Mulholland Drive.

Ecologists at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy contended that construction of the shaft could drain millions of gallons of ground water from the park, killing trees and plants, potentially leaving it barren.

The alternate plan calls for the MTA to expel the trains’ exhaust with a few “very small” vent shafts at different places along the tunnel route, or with high-powered blowers, Drew said.

Leslie T. Rogers, acting regional administrator for the Federal Transit Administration, received an ovation from the homeowners when he made a surprise appearance before them. He said his agency would not insist on placement of the vent shafts at any specific locations, but just wanted to “review the paperwork.”

As the first federal official to address them, Rogers got an earful from the homeowners.

“It doesn’t make sense for you to tunnel one inch farther,” said Patricia Marlatt. “The community doesn’t want it. Save your money.”

A few feet away, Fedrica Cooper said: “You are underwriting the most horrendous subversion of public funds in the history of transportation.”

Rogers, a slender and dapper man who appeared surprised by his reception, promised to help homeowners air their views to top federal officials by setting up a meeting with them. He also said he would order his staff to review environmental concerns.