James Stanley, 93; Pushed Freeway System

James A. Stanley, an automotive and aerospace engineer who had a major impact on the development of the freeway system and mass transportation in Southern California, has died. He was 93.

Stanley, a former president and for 19 years a member of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission, died Friday in Los Angeles. He had lived in Woodland Hills and later Chatsworth for more than half a century.

In 1983, he received the Fernando award, given annually to a civic leader who has made significant contributions to development in the San Fernando Valley. From 1948 until 1980, Stanley headed the Valleywide Committee on Streets, Highways and Transportation.

Although the engineer actively opposed curtailment of freeway construction in the 1970s through his Southern California Transportation Action Committee, he was ahead of his time in realizing that freeways could not provide the total answer to Los Angeles’ burgeoning traffic problems. He helped create the bus lanes on the San Bernardino Freeway, supported creation of the Metro Rail subway line in the congested area from downtown to North Hollywood and led efforts for several decades to widen and improve surface streets.

Stanley radically proposed as long ago as 1971 that freeway use be restricted to cars containing at least three people. Later changing his mind about car-pooling, he led opponents of state-mandated freeway “diamond lanes,” restricted to cars with at least two occupants.

Stanley steadfastly opposed using any other city’s transportation matrix for his adopted Los Angeles.

“We want urban sprawl. We like it. We like the way we live,” he told The Times in 1983, explaining his love of freeways. “Most people came here from places like Chicago and New York and Philadelphia. They wanted to get away from subways and ghettos and people stacked up real close together.

“They wanted to get out in the country, and that’s why we have urban sprawl. Obviously we can’t have the same transportation system as Philadelphia or Washington. This is an earthquake area and not real good for subways . . . and people don’t want the elevated trains like they have in Chicago either.”

One freeway he sought, the proposed Whitnall freeway between Panorama City and Malibu, was never built.

Born in Albany, Ind., Stanley earned his engineering degree at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He served as engineering supervisor for General Motors in Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio, from 1926 until 1948, when he moved west to work in aerospace.

Stanley worked for Marquardt Aircraft and then General Motors’ Rocketdyne Division of what became North American Rockwell. He retired in 1969.

Survivors include his wife, Gerda; two sons, James C. Stanley and David Annet, and a granddaughter.

Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at the First Presbyterian Church, 4963 Balboa Blvd., Encino.