THUMBS XLIV: Blast from the Past with L.A. Light Rail Proposal; Finally, Fair Treatment for Maligned Aaron Burr
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
Hinton, WV (HNN) –This is the forty-fourth installment of a column expressing approval or disapproval of recent news events, commentaries, etc.
Thumbs Up for approval; Thumbs Down for disapproval. This is your column as much as mine; I welcome contributions, which will be credited in the item. The contributions can come from within the HNN family or from our readers – I welcome them all. Contact me at davidkinchen@hotmail.com or send the contributions/suggestions to stories@huntingtonnews.net.
THUMBS UP – To Los Angeles area transit planners who are proposing a
light-rail transit line from downtown L.A. to Culver City. A story by L.A.
Times reporter Martha Groves in the Oct. 8, 2005 edition of my old
(1976-1990) paper describes the latest idea from the Metropolitan Transit
Authority: A transit line that starts in a southwesterly direction from
downtown, then heads west to Culver City, rather than the familiar Wilshire
Boulevard corridor due west.
To those familiar with L.A., the traffic on the West Side is a nightmare, with gridlock at many major intersections. It won’t get better, so a transit line serving the area – which Los Angeles had years ago before everything was torn up and smelly diesel buses replaced the electric trolley cars that linked communities throughout the Southland – makes sense to this former L.A. frequent driver.
Groves: “The 9.6-mile Expo Line would begin at the existing 7th Street Metro Rail station and follow a former freight route through southwestern Los Angeles before heading west to Culver City. It is intended eventually to run to Santa Monica.”
She adds that “The Metropolitan Transportation Authority … [has] identified $590 million in federal and state funding, $50 million shy of the total needed for the downtown-to-Culver City run. The MTA expects to begin the first phase of construction early next year.”
The line would likely take some traffic off the usually jammed Santa Monica (10) Freeway, I’d guess. The plan calls for 10 stations along the route, with two possible routings through downtown and five variations offered for the hotly debated Culver City ‘interim terminus’ that would complete the first phase in 2010.”
Currently, there is a subway, which I used with pleasure, from 7th Street in the heart of downtown, under Wilshire Boulevard to Western Avenue where it ends. It would cost $1 billion to build three miles past Western, while the Expo Line could be built less expensively because it would be above ground and on an old Southern Pacific right of way that the MTA owns, Groves says The Gold Line, connecting Pasadena and Los Angeles, has been a major success; it’s also an above-ground, light rail line. The light rail line from downtown L.A. south to Long Beach has also attracted wide ridership. These lines prove that you can get Angelenos out of their cars without using a jaws of life!
It makes much more sense to build above ground than underneath it in earthquake prone L.A., I believe. Also, there are pockets of methane gas in the Wilshire Corridor, dating from the days long ago when it was a swamp. Light rail is making a comeback throughout the nation, in Portland, Ore., Sacramento, Calif., Baltimore and Houston, among many other cities. It should be introduced in Huntington – or should I say, re-introduced. Like many cities, Huntington was well served by rail a century ago – and it could be so served in this era of $3 and more per gallon gasoline. As a long-time rail ran, I applaud the MTA. For more on the Expo Line plan, check out the MTA’s web site at http://www.mta.net. There’s another good site on light rail across the nation: http://www.lightrailnow.org/news.
THUMBS UP – To Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Ip for writing a fair and
balanced story about one of my favorite founding fathers, our third vice
president, Aaron Burr. Yeah, the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton in a New
Jersey duel in July 1804. The dude who was arrested on the orders of
President Thomas Jefferson and placed on trial for treason in Richmond, Va.
in 1807. Fortunately for Burr, Chief Justice John Marshall was the trial
judge and he managed to gain a not guilty verdict. The charges were really
trumped up and relied on corrupt officials in the pay of Jefferson and media
coverage – also paid for by Jefferson and his friends – that was truly
scurrilous, even by the low standards of the period. It wasn’t so much that
John Marshall liked Burr; rather, he hated his distant relative and fellow
Virginian even more!
Ip’s fascinating story on page one of the Oct. 5, 2005 Wall Street Journal concerns an African-American women in Philadelphia, Louella Burr Mitchell Allen, 86, a retired nurse who says she is a descent of Burr’s out-of-wedlock mixed race son, John Pierre Burr. Stuart Fisk Johnson, president of the Aaron Burr Association, says his group accepts her claim and planned to share her documents and oral history at a meeting last week of the association in a Philadelphia suburb. Ms. Allen has a strong resemblance to Burr – she has a long, narrow nose – much like Burr’s -- that is a distinct feature of many Burr descendants.
Her warm welcome by the ABA is in sharp contrast, Ip points out, to the
chilly reception given by descendants of Thomas Jefferson to descendants of
Sally Hemings, (1773-1835) Jefferson’s alleged slave mistress. DNA testing
has verified the claims of some of the Hemings descendants, but not others.
About a decade ago, I had dinner in an Alexandria, VA restaurant with F. Burr Anderson, then president of the Aaron Burr Association. I had reviewed a number of books about Burr which had taken a more sympathetic stand toward him. Hamilton could have avoided the duel if he had only apologized to Burr for his libelous attacks on the then vice president, who wanted to run for governor of New York in 1804.
F. Burr Anderson, a resident of Fairfax County, VA. , was delighted to find a member of the news media who had an open mind about Burr. I had more than an open mind: I was a supporter of Burr, who was the author of New York state’s statute banning slavery (yes, there was slavery in the North); as well as a major supporter of women’s rights long before it was fashionable.
Burr was intent on grabbing Texas and other territories from Spain, but what about Jefferson’s controversial Louisiana Purchase, which was condemned by the northeastern states? Burr was proven right years after his death in 1835 when the territories he coveted eventually became part of the U.S.
Anyway, the Wall Street Journal article is worth looking up and reading. Col. Aaron Burr served honorably under Washington in the Revolutionary Army, as did Hamilton. Jefferson never served in the new nation’s armed forces. For more about the Burr Conspiracy, which includes information about Blennerhassett Island near Parkersburg, WV, and the 1807 treason trial, here is a good web site:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/burr/burraccount.html