L.A. River Path lights coming back?

ENLARGE

Gutted and sawn

When I first spotted this today on the L.A. River Bike Path near Griffith Park, I thought:

“Great, the junkies are at it again, digging for those tasty sellable morsels of copper wire. Only now they have a frickin’ concrete saw.”

Then I skated a little farther and saw a different vault situation (after the jump) …
Wonder of wonders, it looks like the city is methodically replacing all the electrical vaults, pouring slabs of concrete around them.

Over the past couple years, the copper thieves basically ripped open the wiring vaults with prybars or simply smashed the sides with something nice and heavy (little more than a short-handled 4-pound sledge would do it) and plunged the path into total darkness for anyone riding pre-dawn or post-dusk.

Now they’ll have to smash through what looks like a nice thick slab of cement – or just use a good prybar again. Unfortunately, the new lids look just like the old ones – cast iron.

I wonder how effective this will be.

Related posts:

  1. Who turned on the San Gabriel River?
  2. Lights! Camera! Electropop!
  3. Saber’s World Famous LA River piece buffed
  4. Spiff New L.A. River Wildlife Guide Available
  5. “Autumn Lights” Illuminates Pershing Square Saturday


1 Comment so far

  1. WILL CAMPBELL (willcampbell) on November 3rd, 2008 @ 1:21 pm

    Good grief. If those new lids aren’t somehow made decidedly more impervious to wire thieves than their predecessors were, why did they even bother!?



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