Bid to Block Money for Metro Rail Is Rejected

A key House subcommittee Monday rebuffed an attempt by the Reagan Administration to block financing of new rail projects in five cities, including Los Angeles’ Metro Rail subway and the east county extension of San Diego’s trolley.

Ralph L. Stanley, chief of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, asked Congress for permission to shift $223.6 million already earmarked by Congress for the five cities to renovation projects in 13 other cities.

“In view of the deficit, the Administration does not believe it should start projects it so clearly cannot afford to finish, or leave holes in the ground,” Stanley wrote Congress.

Request Rejected

Hours later, however, the House appropriations subcommittee on transportation acted to reject the request. On the strength of a telephone poll of subcommittee members, Chairman William Lehman (D-Fla.) was authorized to write Stanley that the panel “disapproves your reprogramming request.”

The Administration had to receive the approval of both the Senate and the House to shift the funds.

At stake are financing installments for Los Angeles’ subway project.

“This is really good news for Los Angeles,” said Cliff Madison, lobbyist for the Southern California Rapid Transit District. “Stanley has no choice” but to give Los Angeles the $129 million appropriated by Congress for this fiscal year and last.

But Joseph Slye, a spokesman for Stanley, said: “I don’t know what happens now.”

Fiedler Comment

And Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge), who vehemently opposes the proposed Los Angeles subway as too expensive, declared that Stanley’s action is “another nail in the coffin” for the project. She predicted that the Administration would continue withholding money despite Congress’ disapproval and that the impasse would force the city to give up on building the subway.

In addition to the Los Angeles money, the Transportation Department tried to cut off $11.3 million that has been appropriated for San Diego, $71.5 million for Miami, $1.8 million for Jacksonville, Fla., and $10 million for St. Louis. The department estimates that it would cost the government $4 billion to complete the five subways.

Stanley recommended that the $223.6 million in current funds go instead to revamp existing rail and bus systems in other cities. He proposed giving $145.2 million to subway renovation in New York, Philadelphia, Kearney, N.J., Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. An additional $55.8 million would have gone for bus systems in Dallas, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Springfield, Va., Miami, Salem, Ore., and Fitchburg-Leonminster, Mass.

The Administration last February proposed no further money for so-called “new-start” rail projects such as that in Los Angeles, where the transit district is trying to begin construction on the first four-mile segment of an 18-mile subway.

The Senate, in its version of the fiscal 1986 budget, approved a 25% cut in the $1.3-billion grant program and the House voted no reduction at all. A House-Senate conference committee must resolve the difference.