Hollywood Subway Tunnel Project OKd

Despite impassioned pleas against the plan by immigrant parents and angry school teachers, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission board on Wednesday authorized a Hollywood subway tunneling project--its biggest ever--without a full environmental impact report.

On an 8-3 vote, the board found that the negative effects of extracting more than 1 million cubic yards of soil from four miles of tunnels at a single surface site will be mitigated by a set of special work rules demanded by school administrators and city traffic engineers.

The project will require hundreds of tractor-trailer trucks to roll in and out of the excavation site nightly at the Barnsdall Park parking lot.

To appease critics, the commission agreed to limit truck trips during the day and banned them at rush hours and whenever children enter or leave nearby Los Feliz Elementary School. This would concentrate most of the 400 daily truck trips overnight, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Critics complained to the commission board that the project will still disrupt school activities and endanger children. They asked the board to stay with its original, environmentally cleared plan to haul tunnel soils from three shafts, none of them at Barnsdall Park.

“I’ve seen front-end loaders run over cars they did not see. I don’t know how they can see every child,” said Nelson McIntyre, who was a safety representative on the Metro Blue Line construction project.

Others said precautions planned by the commission’s Rail Construction Corp. will work.

“When I heard the testimony of the (RCC) experts, my fear for the safety of these children was allayed,” said Marilyn Bush, schools liaison for the Los Feliz Improvement Assn.

RCC President Ed McSpedon said that combining all excavation work at one site will let work proceed quicker and easier, saving about $7 million on the $200-million project.

The assurances failed to ease the doubts of commission board members Judy Hathaway-Francis of La Habra Heights, Nick Patsaouras of Tarzana and James Tolbert of Van Nuys, who opposed the plan.

“I’m not comfortable with (lack of a full environmental impact report) for a project this size,” she said. “I would have much preferred a full EIR.”