MTA Staff Offers Plan Stressing Buses Over Rail

Responding to federal demands that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority get its house in order, the agency’s staff proposed a plan Tuesday that would ensure implementation of court-ordered bus improvements but delay a long-promised rail line across the San Fernando Valley far into the future.

The plan, which will go to the MTA board for consideration today, calls for pushing back the start of construction on the east-west Valley line from the original 2004 date until at least 2007--and, perhaps, until 2011.

The “recovery plan” is designed to win back Washington’s confidence in the MTA’s management of the Los Angeles subway, the West’s biggest public works project. But it also represents a tacit acknowledgment that the transit agency has promised far more than it can deliver and must scale back its ambitious rail plans again.

And it is also clear that MTA staff is responding to the basic message federal transit officials have been sending for months: finish the rail projects you’ve promised before asking Washington to pay for any more.

The latest proposal, the product of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations, is built on fragile financial and political assumptions that, if upset, could further scale back the county’s transportation vision for the 21st century.

For example, officials said, if Mayor Richard Riordan rounds up enough votes to carry out his pledge to speed up the purchase of 200 buses it would further delay construction of rail lines, aggravating what one official called the classic bus vs. rail conflict.

The MTA staff wants more time to find money to buy the buses, but bus riders who won the court order mandating bus improvements have accused the agency of moving too slowly to replace its aging fleet--one of the nation’s oldest. An aide to the mayor said Riordan is concerned that the MTA staff has yet to specify how it proposes to improve service on the nation’s most crowded bus system.

The plan also relies on Congress’ willingness to provide $100 million a year for subway construction--far more than has been allocated in the last few years.

On the eve of today’s special meeting, there was no sign of a consensus on the 13-member board to support the plan. Whatever the outcome, some unity on the board is considered essential to MTA’s chances of receiving the critically needed federal funding.

In a harbinger of the debate to come, MTA board member and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the delay in the east-west Valley line while other projects move forward will “fuel the sense of betrayal sweeping the San Fernando Valley.”

Riordan’s office issued a statement saying, “We are going to find a solution for the Valley, with or without this plan.” The mayor’s office did not explain how the Valley line could be built sooner other than to say Riordan wants to see a “new approach to providing mass transit,” one that might involve greater participation by the private sector.

As planned, the Valley line would run from the North Hollywood subway terminus to Woodland Hills, generally along Burbank and Chandler boulevards. At Riordan’s urging, the MTA is studying whether an above-ground rail line could be built more rapidly and cheaply than the mostly underground project now envisioned.

Some MTA board members also were miffed that the staff is proposing to press ahead with a downtown Los Angeles-to-Pasadena line while other projects are delayed.

“My bottom line is I’m not going to agree to accelerate Pasadena and delay everything else,” said Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, MTA board member and Los Angeles County supervisor.

The plan would affect commuters in every region of the county by reducing funding for a wide range of future projects, including bikeways, local shuttle services, traffic signal synchronization and street widenings. Earlier this year, the board delayed 30 miles of carpool lane construction.

The latest proposal is the second one drafted by the MTA to satisfy the federal government, which is paying for about half of the $6.1-billion subway. The Clinton administration has warned that unless the MTA improves its operations, Los Angeles risks losing millions of dollars in federal aid.

The MTA earlier this year approved a revised construction schedule for the subway, which calls for completing the extension to North Hollywood by 2000, but delaying the completion of an extension to the Eastside until 2004 and an extension to the Mid-City until 2009. (In the new plan unveiled Tuesday, MTA officials are hoping to complete the Mid-City extension a year earlier, but only if Congress provides an additional $100 million for the project.)

But federal officials in April said the actions taken in January were not enough. They demanded that the MTA set up a reserve fund to ensure that the agency makes court-ordered bus improvements--now estimated to cost $922 million between now and the year 2013--and to pay for cost overruns and funding shortages on the subway.

The revised plan also assumes MTA will spend $1.6 billion through 2013 to relieve overcrowding and replace its aging bus fleet. The plan also relies on $871 million in savings from “efficiencies” in bus and rail operations over more than the decade.

Additionally, federal officials regarded the MTA’s estimates of local sales tax revenues as too optimistic and told the agency to reduce its projections by $2.1 billion between 1999 and 2013.

That, officials said Tuesday, has necessitated another delay in the start of construction of the east-west Valley line, which originally was supposed to get under construction in 2004 and open in 2013.

MTA officials stress that the construction on the east-west Valley line could still get underway in 2007 if tax revenues come in closer to their projections.

The plan calls for putting construction of the downtown Los Angeles-to-Pasadena rail line back on track for completion in 2001.

But the plan assumes the state legislators will approve a $54-million loan. MTA officials dropped any discussion of cutting out grade crossings from the Pasadena line after strong opposition from local officials, who protested that operating trains at street level would disrupt traffic.

An extension of the subway to 1st and Lorena streets on the Eastside is still projected to open in 2004. But a planned second extension--to Atlantic and Whittier--and a proposed extension of the subway to the San Diego Freeway on the Westside would be put off beyond 2011, an MTA official said Tuesday.

Linda Bohlinger, MTA’s acting executive officer, acknowledged that the agency will have to look at other transportation options to relieve congestion and improve bus service in the valley.

Bohlinger said the agency has to act soon to adopt a plan because its federal funding for the coming fiscal year is at stake, plus MTA’s share of a long-range transportation funding bill being crafted on Capitol Hill.