Angels Flight supporters circulate petition calling for reopening historic downtown L.A. railway
Local historians and tour-company operators Richard Schave and Kim Cooper started the petition, which has garnered more than 400 signatures since backers began circulating it Monday. Their petition calls for Mayor Eric Garcetti to step in to “help cut the red tape in Sacramento and San Francisco” so that something could be done to allow the railway, known as a funicular, to begin operating again.
The funicular, at 351 S. Hill St. between Third and Fourth streets, has sat dormant for nearly two years, despite “licensed professional engineers” and the Los Angeles Fire Department saying the “safety issues have been addressed,” contends the petitioners.
The California Public Utilities Commission is requiring that a walkway be installed next to the funicular tracks before it would allow Angels Flight to begin carrying passengers again, petitioners said. Commission officials did not immediately respond to questions about the current status of the funicular.
The funicular has been closed since one of the two railcars came off the tracks in September 2013. Six people were riding in the cars and none were injured. The National Transportation Safety Board released a report a month later saying that operators of the Angels Flight railway in downtown Los Angeles had been using a tree branch for months to bypass a safety feature when one of the cable cars derailed.
In the report, federal investigators said the railcars were halting frequently as they made their one-minute trips up and down the tracks on Bunker Hill. Operators could only keep the cars running by using a tree branch -- broken off from a nearby tree -- to press down on a “start” button on the control panel, thereby “negating” a safety feature in the car.
Schave told City News Service today the funicular has been vandalized since its closure and it will continue to fall into disrepair if nothing is done. “It is the last vestige of Victorian Los Angeles,” he said. “It is just an incredibly important structure and much beloved.” Gordon Pattison, who lived in Bunker Hill from the 1940s to the 1960s, said it is one of the last structures left from when the area was residential.
“It’s a unique part of our heritage, it is functional,” Pattison said. “It’s one of the city’s great assets and it should be running again.” Pattison said if Angels Flight were to re-open it could take workers between the office buildings in the California Plaza, at the top of the hill, and the numerous eateries in Grand Central Market. The trek on the steep hill would normally take about five minutes of walking, Pattison said.
John Welborne, president of Angels Flight Railway in 2013, said at the time that the nonprofit organization had been struggling for years to keep fares low, relying heavily on donations and income from movie shoots. A recent Muppets movie included a cameo for the railway, which brought in close to $2,000.
Those interviewed by City News Service today said Welborne is no longer president of the organization, which has traditionally operated the funicular, and there does not appear to be a replacement. Hal Bastian, a real estate agent and downtown booster, is considered to be one of the main people working to re-open Angels Flight Railway, according to Schave. Col. J.W. Eddy first opened a funicular rail up Bunker Hill on Dec. 31, 1901, when rides cost a penny.
It was dismantled and put into storage in 1969 because of the Bunker Hill urban renewal project, then rebuilt and reopened in 1996, a half-block south of the original site. In 2001, an accident that killed one person and seriously injured seven others prompted another closure that lasted nine years.
It reopened in 2010, in time for the railway celebrated its 110th anniversary on New Year’s Eve 2010. The California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees Angels Flight, shut it down for almost a month in June 2012 when inspectors found that a wheel part that holds the cars on the track, the flange, had been worn down to a thickness that was unsafe on three of eight wheels.
The funicular, which takes riders on one-minute trips up and down Bunker Hill, re-opened July 5, 2012, after the operator installed all new wheels made of harder steel. The railway still uses its original cars from 1901, named Olivet and Sinai.
source: dailynews
