U.S. Won’t Budge on Metro Rail Cuts, Transit Chief Says

The Reagan Administration will not change its mind about its decision to eliminate funds for the Los Angeles Metro Rail subway system from its fiscal 1986 budget, the head of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration declared Friday.

“I think that Los Angeles, like other cities, has got to recognize that there is not unlimited federal funding for both highway and mass transit projects,” agency Administrator Ralph L. Stanley said at a briefing for reporters.

Stanley, in his strongest statement yet about the proposed $3.3-billion subway, blamed Congress for forcing the Administration to cut Metro Rail and other transit projects. And he suggested that Los Angeles would have to “reassess its priorities” and focus on more cost-effective projects in the future.

But local subway backers, refusing to abandon their support for Metro Rail, seized on Stanley’s remarks Friday as a sign that the Administration is uneasy about how the transit cuts would fare on Capitol Hill. And they clung to the hope that they could persuade Congress to reject the Reagan proposals.

“The issue will be settled in Congress, and we are going to redouble our efforts there,” said Nikolas Patsaouras, president of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, which is to build and operate the 18.6-mile, downtown-to-San Fernando Valley Metro Rail.

“This is just part of the Administration’s drumbeat for the budget debate,” agreed Los Angeles City Council President Pat Russell.

Stanley accused Congress of creating an unprecedented deficit for his agency by requiring it to fund 12 projects last year when the federal mass transit trust fund lacked adequate money. Agency officials had deemed only two of the projects--those in Los Angeles and Houston--worthy of receiving federal funds.

“How can you simultaneously direct UMTA to fund 12 projects, knowing that the trust fund will have a $4-billion to $6-billion deficit?” he asked. Cutting the funds for Metro Rail “is a direct result of our inability to control what is supposed to be discretionary spending,” he charged.

Presently, $400 million in annual revenue--from transit’s one-cent share of the five-cent federal gasoline tax--is available for new rail projects such as Metro Rail. Subway supporters contend that if Congress reauthorizes the trust fund when it expires in 1986, there would be enough money to build Metro Rail and other projects.

But Stanley said that with the Reagan Administration’s desire to reduce the overall federal deficit, the 12 mass transit projects “simply couldn’t be defended” during budget debates at the Office of Management and Budget.

“I’m in 100% agreement with what OMB did,” he told reporters.

‘Biggest Supporter’

Stanley said he thought the chances were good that the Reagan budget proposal--including the Metro Rail cuts--would be approved. But Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, who is Mayor Tom Bradley’s key aide on Metro Rail, disagreed.

“He had been the biggest supporter of the project,” Houston said of Stanley. “The only reason he would call a news conference now is that the Administration is very worried about the response from Capitol Hill.”

Some local supporters, however, remain concerned.

“I think Metro Rail is clearly in critical condition,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. “I guess to analogize it in medical terminology--the question of whether to pull the plug on the patient is now being raised.”

The federal government had been expected to pay $2.1 billion of the $3.3 billion in subway costs, and Stanley said despite the merits of the project “we can’t afford that level of funding.”

RTD officials said they have spent $126.5 million--including $98 million in federal funds--so far on the project.