State Panel Grills MTA Officials Over Subway, Bus Woes

After suffering from construction mishaps, cost overruns, management troubles and political infighting, the MTA faces an uphill fight in Sacramento and Washington for the money needed to keep Los Angeles subway and rail projects moving forward.

Members of the California Transportation Commission--who have committed more than $1.1 billion to Los Angeles County rail projects--pressed Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials on Tuesday to explain how the agency can expand its bus operations and still continue to meet its commitments to build subway and light rail lines.

The skepticism was expressed more pointedly by Constance Rice, attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, during a three-hour workshop on Los Angeles transportation issues held at the MTA’s high-rise headquarters.

Rice said the county transit agency cannot keep the promises made in federal court to improve bus service while also completing the Red Line subway and extending the Metro Blue Line to Pasadena.

“MTA can’t afford to do what it wants to do on the schedule that it wants to do it,” Rice said. “The emperor has no clothes.”

Thomas Rubin, former treasurer of the Southern California Rapid Transit District--one of two predecessors of the MTA--accused the agency of presenting differing priorities, depending on the audience.

Rubin noted that the MTA has promised Washington that the subway is its highest priority, promised Sacramento that the Pasadena line is its highest priority, and promised a federal judge overseeing a landmark settlement of a bus riders’ lawsuit that improving bus service is its highest priority.

“You can’t have three highest priorities,” he said.

MTA officials, led by acting chief executive officer Linda Bohlinger, defended the agency’s plans to improve mass transit in Los Angeles.

“We want to bring credibility back to the MTA,” Bohlinger said at the start of the workshop.

Echoing MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian and board member and Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, Bohlinger said the transit agency wants to build its financial partnership with the state commission.

Indeed, some MTA board members are pushing the commission behind the scenes to provide more upfront funding to keep the Pasadena light rail line from falling even further behind schedule.

The MTA has announced a three-year delay until 2004 in finishing the Pasadena line, a two-year delay until 2002 in extending the subway to the Eastside, and a seven-year delay until 2009 in extending the subway to the Mid-City area.

To underscore the importance of keeping federal funds flowing, Mayor Richard Riordan will travel to Washington to press the case Thursday for Los Angeles-area transit and highway projects.

The MTA is seeking to secure long-range commitments for its rail program in an atmosphere of skepticism about the city’s problem-plagued, $5.9-billion Red Line subway project and in a climate of intense competition among cities for limited rail funds.

Riordan will appear before a key House transportation subcommittee to plead the case for Washington to provide the MTA with $723 million for bus, rail and highway projects over a five-year period, from 1998 to 2003.

The wish list includes $271 million for highway projects, including extension of the El Monte busway, $250 million for clean-fuel buses and $202 million for rail projects, including the extension of the subway to the Mid-City area, east to west across the San Fernando Valley and farther into East Los Angeles.

The rail funding request has created a rift in the Los Angeles congressional delegation over priorities for future subway extensions. While supporting the full $202 million, three Eastside members of Congress want the sequence of projects changed to move their project ahead of a cross-Valley line.

On both the Washington and Sacramento fronts, the MTA faces scrutiny about its past failures, its present difficulties and its ability to meet its future promises.

Edward G. Jordan, chairman of the transportation commission, told MTA officials that there is apprehension about the agency’s ability to deliver.

Jordan said the agency’s actual performance at improving transportation in Los Angeles must be measured.

In a critical report, the commission’s staff laid out a litany of cost overruns and problems on Los Angeles rail projects.

The report noted that the state has supported MTA and its forerunners since the 1980s despite “geological, engineering, financial, and or other challenges and obstacles in constructing its urban rail system.”

Commission Executive Director Robert Remen wrote that the state panel is concerned about the MTA’s ability to complete on time and within budget the rail lines, for which Sacramento has pledged $1.16 billion.

The MTA “must consider delaying current and future rail and highway projects by lengthening funding schedules, down-scoping projects, undergoing cost efficiencies . . . reducing service, and/or deleting projects to make up [a] projected $1-billion shortfall,” Remen said.

Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), the new chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, questioned why MTA rail lines have failed to reach the city’s black community. He urged Bohlinger to ensure that the MTA complies with the federal court settlement that promised more buses, less overcrowding and lower fares.