CREDITS:
New York City Dept. of Emergency Mgmt.
Sepulveda and Victory; Lincoln Blvd in Venice : hereinvannuys
3 Brentwood Photos: David Liu a.k.a.”Dave of Cali”
Blizzard of 1888
“With 21 inches of snow falling over a two-day period — the third largest accumulation on record — the blizzard of 1888 hit New York City by surprise at the end of a warm March day. As two storms, one approaching from the south and one from the north, met over the City, heavy precipitation and winds gusting up to almost 75 mph resulted in snowdrifts up to 30 feet high. Roads and highways were blocked, steam train service was suspended, horse-drawn streetcars and taxis halted operations, and ships docked in New York’s harbor.
A New York Central locomotive derailed while attempting to push past snow drifts in the 4th Avenue tunnel, and many commuters were stranded on elevated tracks in unheated cars. It took 14 days for the City to completely recover. The mayor responded in early 1889 by ordering all overhead wires placed underground.”
-NYC Department of Emergency Management
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117 years later, the Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power has yet to bury most of its ugly, overhead wooden utility poles that mar so much of our city. Reader Deborah Wilson informs me that in 1991, Anaheim Public Utilities, whose customers enjoy some of the lowest rates in Orange County, began a a 60-year program to underground 12 and 69 kV powerlines communications and cable TV lines along major streets. Cities such as Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena are also working to bury their electrical systems.
San Diego started a program in 2002 according to the San Diego Metropolitan:
“Mayor Dick Murphy and Councilwoman Toni Atkins report
the final approval of a plan that will dramatically
speed up the undergrounding of overhead utility lines
within the city limits.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved
the proposal yesterday. It calls for an increased
surcharge on gross electrical receipts to pay for an
accelerated program.
“This plan will help create neighborhoods we can be
proud of, [or] goal No. 3 of my 10 goals to make San
Diego a city worthy of our affection in the year
2020,” Murphy says. “Removing these ugly overhead
lines beautifies our communities and creates more room
to plant street trees. It also makes our neighborhoods
safer by eliminating threats such as downed power
lines, tree fires and accidents involving poles.”
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Los Angeles always seems to come in last when it involves civic improvements. Why?
Here in Van Nuys 
Tokyo is worse. Anyway, why not have a designated under ground tunnel for all types of cables, where crew can enter comfortably for maintenance. I saw this in Paris and in London. London uses an age old tunnel to lay internet cables.
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I hesitate to point it out in this forum, but I find the second photo rather captivating. I’ve seen several photos of old city streets covered in a web of overhead electrical and telephone lines and gaped at them in wonder. How’d they ever maintain that? And how does such a jumble come out looking so beautiful when covered in snow, or when the sunlight hits it at an angle?
You have a valid point, and for practicality’s sake I think that power and commo lines should be buried, too, but those old photos of streets sewn up in dozens of layers of wires are arrestingly pretty, in my eyes.
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One big problem with underground wires is that they would be very hard to get to if repair crews needed to fix them.
You’d either have to tear up the street — and add to traffic jams that we don’t need any more of — or build an expensive network of underground subways so that crews can get to them easily.
Besides tearing up the roads, outages may take longer since the wires would be harder to access.
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The one place that’s always struck me as having a particularly ugly, huge concentration of power lines was Third Street between Fairfax and Robertson.
There are heavy power users along here, including Cedars-Sinai, and huge poles with many dozens of cables. This seemed like a place where a project like this would be the most cost-effective. And wouldn’t Cedar’s have enough money to pay for the underground connections?
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Dear LACN:
I knew you would know the answer. Thank you for the suggestion. They’ve already repaved Columbus Avenue, put “do not cross” paint on Victory at Columbus, and added two stop signs at Gilmore and Columbus and Hamlin and Columbus. How can I expect them to now bury those power lines? Isn’t that a little too greedy of me?
Thanks, Andrew
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Actually, the City does have a program to underground power lines – about 15 projects per year. DWP has the funds to do this and the engineers to make it happen. One challenge, though, is that the adjacent property owners are required to pay for the new, underground connections to their properties. Additionally, the other utilities who use the power poles (cable & phone) complicate the process of elimination because they have to pay to bury their wires, as well.
If there was a section of Van Nuys you wanted to see addressed, an email to Councilman Tony Cardenas’s office could get the ball rolling… if he wanted to make a positive change. It might take two years, but it’s possible.
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