Money for Metro Rail

Metro Rail, which one day will link downtown Los Angeles with North Hollywood, moves closer to a construction date the way its trains will move when the work is done: one stop at a time.

The project covered a lot of ground this week with Senate approval of an appropriations bill that included another $84 million for Los Angeles and instructions to release $129 million that the Administration has been sitting on for two years.

It will be days, and perhaps weeks, before Senate and House conferees reconcile their two versions of a budget for all federal transportation programs. The arguments will focus less on Metro Rail than on broad national issues: Can the Federal Aviation Administration keep the nation’s airways safe on a budget that in the present bills is $500 million below its requests? Can the Coast Guard carry out its mission on the reduced budget called for by the bill?

Contrasted with those issues, the differences on Metro Rail are minor. The House would provide $117 million for the first year of construction. The Senate trimmed that to $84 million.

There is no disagreement at all on a most important aspect of the bill. Once the dollars are reconciled, the bill will constitute a commitment by the federal government to add more than $600 million, counting what has already been spent on engineering, to a similar amount that will be collected from Sacramento and local sources. That would be almost as good as money in the bank and enough to pay for the first 4.4 miles of the 18.6-mile Metro Rail system. And that is worth pressing for, even if it happens one stop at a time.