Building Subways in Los Angeles

Re “MTA Votes to Buy 2,095 Buses Over Six Years,” Oct. 23:

The people responsible for a Los Angeles transportation system have discovered that subways are hard to build. The enthusiasm, translated into an expensive high-rise headquarters, has dampened. Shoddy work, long delays and shocking overrides have made them wring their hands and scheme to skimp and cheapen--or reexamine the bus solution.

Nuts! There never was a big building project that ran smoothly. I say squeeze money out of the rich, squeeze money out of the poor, put the bite on the feds, fire incompetent contractors and push the subway to completion according to plan. We can have the longest, most complex, most expensive--and best--transportation system in the world, or we can cherish foul air and stalled traffic.

CARLETON H. RALSTON

Los Angeles

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Zev Yaroslavsky (letter, Oct. 25) is wrong. It would be plain stupid to prohibit future subway building simply because we have chosen the wrong contractor for the current project. While light rail is generally more appropriate for L.A. (buses, which compete with cars for road space, aren’t), there are areas of the city in which subways would be the least disruptive form of mass transit.

And the price issue is irrelevant: How come The Times never prints letters complaining about the high cost per mile of new freeway construction, equal to or higher than that of subways? Freeways destroy neighborhoods wholesale, reduce the tax base available to the city (something the subway enhances) and don’t charge a nickel in fares to their users--a dead-loss subsidy.

RICHARD RISEMBERG

Los Angeles