Angels Flight is a rarity. It’s a charming antique. It’s a bit of a tourist draw. And it’s nicely functional for downtown workers, transforming a five-minute trudge up Bunker Hill into a one-minute ride on “the world’s shortest railway.”

At least, it used to be all those things. It’s now pretty much an eyesore – unmoving, untended and a graffiti target. It was closed by regulators nearly two years ago and no one appears to be in charge today.

So I’m probably not the only one who was heartened to read last week that some fed-up local folks started a petition drive to get Angels Flight rolling again. The petition calls on Mayor Eric Garcetti to do something, anything, to help “cut the red tape in Sacramento and San Francisco” and break up a bureaucratic logjam that has kept Angels Flight grounded.

The problem started when one of two cars on the 298-foot-long steeply inclined rail line came off the tracks in September 2013. No one was injured, but the incident drew the attention of the National Transportation Safety Board, which issued a searing report a month later disclosing that the railway’s operators for months had used a tree branch to wedge a start button into the on position to keep the 1900-vintage rail cars going.

The regulators seemed all huffy about that tree branch thing, but when you’re trying to keep a 113-year-old rail car going and charging only 50 cents a ride, you’re going to have to improvise to save money. Heck, I did crazier things than that to keep my Ford Mustang going when I was in college. And it wasn’t nearly that old.

But that report wasn’t the big problem for the little rail line. The California Public Utilities Commission weighed in. It pointed out that when the car came off the tracks in midride, there was no way for passengers to safely escape. The commission required a walkway to be installed next to the tracks before it would allow Angels Flight to take off again.

Instead of installing a walkway, the nonprofit operator apparently decided to walk away. It reportedly had relied on donations and movie shoots to keep afloat and to maintain low fares; building an expensive walkway was something it was not inclined to do and, yes, the pun is intended.

Look, we all know that safety is important. But we also know that a life worth living entails some risk. When you board a 1900 rail car, you must know, intuitively or otherwise, that you are assuming a bit more peril than if you were boarding a new one. Most of us are perfectly willing to take on that risk for the pleasure of riding a real vintage rail car – perhaps the same one your great-grandparents boarded. And if that seems dangerous to you, hey, that’s OK. There’s a five-minute walk you can take instead.

Regulators may think they’re just doing their job, protecting the public and all, but look at what they’ve really done: They’ve given us a choice. A terrible choice. Either somebody has to come up with a way to pay to build a modern walkway that will look out of character once it is grafted onto a 1900 rail line, or we can let the rail line continue to sit, untended, slowly becoming a bigger eyesore and quite possibly attracting skateboarders, vagrants, etc. In the name of safety, regulators may have made the situation less safe, not more.

So, yeah, I hope Garcetti or someone takes that petition to heart and does something, anything, to cut that proverbial red tape to get Angels Flight rolling again.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].