Hi Don - I can appreciate you being 'devil's advocate' BUT - we're talking a 15 mile tunnel (that's a pretty long tunnel) through 2 major fault lines - one is the San Andreas Fault but I think they will be bringing the tunnel out just before they hit the major trace of that fault but they will probably bore through the Soledad Canyon fault - even so its way too close for my comfort - that's the northeastern side of the mountain - and on the south side of the mountains is the San Gabriel fault zone.

I was at a GPS talk just a couple of months ago and there is considerable evidence that you might not want to be crossing that San Gabriel fault zone.

I would much rather be above ground in a quake than under a 15 mile tunnel with possible ground shift.

Take a look at the linked fault map - take a look from the nice big blue fault where it intersects the white one to the big red one - most likely they will come out at the yellow fault line where it meets hwy 14 though. And even if the next quake is something like the Northridge quake - there were massive landslides in those mountains at the time of the northridge shaker so even a local thrust quake will have a major impact.

Canie

• LA Fault map