September 13, 1947
West Los Angeles
All Betty Rockwell MacDonald, the pretty, poised and wealthy 24-year-old wife of Robert MacDonald, wanted was for her husband to stop threatening her. And for him to get a job. He hadn't worked since 1945.
Robert, 27, a former Lt. who received three Purple Hearts, a Silver and a Bronze Star in the European theater, has been receiving psychiatric care at the VA. This may have helped when Betty filed for divorce five months ago, agreed to reconcile, and recently began making divorce sounds again. Unfortunately, Robert's shrink didn't insist he remove his collection of war weaponry from the family home at 822 Warner Ave.
Last night, Betty phoned her attorney and insisted on revising her will. Now. She was not, she claimed, being threatened, but nonetheless she could not wait. And so her $100,000 fortune was to be shared by the MacDonald children, John, 6, and Eilen Gay, 11 months, with Betty's mother as executrix.
Robert slept in the den last night, and was surly when Betty woke him to move his car so she could take little John to the dentist. The couple ended up in their upstairs bedroom, where they scuffled and argued. Nurse Constance Baker ran upstairs and saw John come hurtling out of the room as if tossed. Then gunshots: chest and head for Betty, mouth-shot for John. Both DOA, a sad finish to the story that began with the pair's elopement in 1940.
Suggested reading: Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Women Who Broke Free
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The Light-Rail That Failed
Someday an inquisitive person studying the history of transportation and urban planning will tell the world exactly what became of Los Angeles’ 1947 blueprint for dealing with transit problems. In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for the knowledge that at least they made a valiant effort. They certainly knew what was coming—without much argument, you could call them futurists.
A committee sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce spent 19 months studying transportation issues and warned that someday Los Angeles would have a population of 5 million (the 2000 population of Los Angeles County was 9,519,338, with 3,694,820 for the city of L.A.).
“High-speed rail transit arteries plus a system of downtown subways alone can save Los Angeles from disintegration into a hodge-podge of unconnected municipalities,” The Times said in quoting the project’s advocates.
“Crux of this preliminary proposal lies in the immediate revamping of express highway projects (today we call them freeways) to include ‘center strip’ tracks capable of whisking trains at 35 to 50 mph.
“These cars, pouring millions of commuters daily into metropolitan Los Angeles, would unload at special downtown stations whence passengers would be shuttled to local destinations by subways tentatively scheduled under Broadway and Spring Street.
“The master plan envisions center strip tracks on the Hollywood, Santa Monica, Olympic, Inglewood, Harbor and East Bypass Freeways.”
The Times notes: “Eventually the master plan would integrate all forms of mass transportation, including operation of rubber-tired vehicles on certain expressways not immediately requiring trains.”
A quick search through Proquest isn’t helpful in determining the project’s fate. William Jeffers, the former Union Pacific railroad president who was to be a consultant on the project, is quoted in 1948 calling for approval of a rapid transit district.
Of course there was a competing proposal. The 1948 Babcock plan, named for consulting engineer Henry A. Babcock, who envisioned a 650-mile subway system at a cost of $1,100,000,000 ($10,410,604,566.50 USD 2005). While there were arguments between the two factions, in the end, neither plan was adopted, as any Los Angeles driver knows.
The original story reveals some obvious clues as to why: The Inglewood, Olympic and East Bypass Freeways aren’t familiar names these days. One could paper the dining room with Times maps of various freeway routes that were never built. (In simple terms, the Santa Monica Freeway was originally envisioned much farther north. To the south, the Olympic Freeway was to go from the Harbor Freeway to Venice and the Inglewood Freeway was to go from the Harbor Freeway to Sepulveda).
And there are other stories in the same issue that offer more hints: A huge petition drive led by Ted Meltzer, publisher of the South Side Journal, against building the Harbor Freeway between Broadway and Figueroa. “Homeowners in an area bounded by 23rd Street and Imperial Boulevard claim that several thousand homes in the built-up area would be destroyed and ask that the project be either abandoned or postponed,” The Times said. And an adjoining story reports on a seven-month investigation of graft and conspiracy in acquiring property for the Hollywood Freeway.
But it is gratifying when wondering what became of the 1947 plan to remember that the new Gold Line tracks run between lanes of the Foothill Freeway. Some things just take time.
Bonus factoid: The Harbor Freeway was realigned to spare the Auto Club headquarters on South Figueroa and USC’s Fraternity Row.
www.lmharnisch.com
Rail transit within freeway medians SOUNDS like a good idea, but we've learned that in practice (Green Line, Gold Line), it is not so great. Why? Because largely, people don't live near freeways, or at least, don't want to, and avoid doing so if they can afford to. Better having the rail in the freeway median than not having rail at all, but subways are preferable, because they can run in the most densely populated areas. Of course, subways are the most expensive, so we have to make due sometimes with light rail lines that run where needed underground or elevated.
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