Just a thought: There was talk during Tuesday’s Burbank City Council Meeting on the BRT [Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit Corridor Project] about a replacement bridge over the railroad and the 5 Freeway, festooned with a Metro station on top in the middle.
Uh … would that not be an overwhelming urban blight, visually obscuring the approach to our downtown from Buena Vista Street?
What the whole L.A. County BRT fake-out entails is a further disruption of Burbank’s integrity. Since the 1950s it has been dissected — well, maybe the word ought to be “vivisectioned” — by interurban rapid transit routes (freeways, then enlarged railways) that are, successively, reducing Burbank’s physical footprint so that it favors skyscrapers and such, which your developer funders really love.
A transportation “hub” is not a city anymore, it is a bus-station! And what are the usual environs of bus stations and railway stations always? Slummy.
Richard Cathcart
Burbank
First published in the March 30 print issue of the Burbank Leader.
