Transit Needs Overhaul, Not Mere Tuneup

Almost 30 years ago the original Metropolitan Transit Authority was formed to consolidate dozens of private transit companies in Los Angeles County. The Legislature replaced the MTA with the Southern California Rapid Transit District in 1964, and 10 years ago added the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

A bill currently before the Legislature, the Katz-Robbins Los Angeles Transportation Reform Act of 1987, would combine the Rapid Transit District and the county Transportation Commission and rename the new organization--once again--the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

The impetus for the new reorganization stemmed from extensive media revelations about problems at the RTD, including excessive absenteeism, driver drug use and accidents, driver-license deficiencies, insurance fraud and out-of-control costs of operations.

Previous reorganizations, while reshuffling the deck of statutes and ostensibly improving local transportation, have always in fact preserved the status quo. It is no different with the current bill. RTD’s problems are not a recent manifestation. Such problems are intrinsic to public transit and cannot be conveniently sloughed off on a few inept managers--though they must bear some blame. Moreover, such problems will not be solved by merely reorganizing the RTD.

The proper thrust should be to restructure, not reorganize, the RTD. Namely, the bill must create options and provide greater flexibility for local decision-makers to better manage the public transit system. The Katz-Robbins legislation offers no such opportunities. In maintaining--and in many instances tightening--the state’s handcuffs on local policy-makers, the bill guarantees that no measurable improvement in public transit will occur. In its present form it has six major flaws.

It specifically would compel the new Metropolitan Transit Authority to assume all liabilities of the RTD. The new agency should be spared the problems associated with carrying RTD’s excess baggage.

It offers no opportunities for the MTA to contract or broker transit services when it can be shown that such activities are more efficient and cost-effective.

A seat on the new MTA board has been assigned to a member of the Legislature’s Joint Rules Committee--presumably, Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys). This seriously diminishes Los Angeles’ current policy-making authority. It also sets an unhealthy and undesirable precedent of state intervention. The Katz-Robbins bill dictates that no existing employee of the RTD or the county Transportation Commission be appointed general manager of the new MTA--again an unnecessary state intervention predicated on the troubling presumption that simply replacing present management will result in an improvement.

Katz-Robbins guarantees the existing 13 municipal transit operators their current share of funding indefinitely, regardless of their effectiveness or efficiency. This is great for the 13 cities with municipal bus lines, but what about the other 71 cities? Additionally, the bill severely limits the entry of new transit operators who could be more efficient.

Its requirement that 5% of contracts be let to firms owned by women and 18% to minority-owned firms is an unnecessary and artificially low mandate, since the county Transportation Commission has recently let 15% of its contracts to women-owned firms and 35% to minority-owned firms.

What, then, will the bill accomplish? The question might be better answered by addressing what it will not accomplish. It will not reduce a single hour of absenteeism. It will not add a single bus route. It will not prevent a single accident. It will not prevent a transit strike. It will not reduce fares by a single penny. And it will not result in the construction of one new inch of mass transit. In fact, the county Transportation Commission predicts that cost increases as a result of delays in letting contracts on the Long Beach light rail project during the transition period could reach $3.5 million and that delays on Metro Rail during the same period could reach $15 million.

Most important, the proposed legislation will not reduce the out-of-control operating costs that have historically plagued public transit in Los Angeles County, because it does not provide a structure whereby local officials can begin to institute efficiencies that will result in long-term cost reductions.

Since 1976, operating costs at the RTD have increased 46% above inflation, according to an analysis by the American Bus Assn. The county Transportation Commission estimates that the RTD’s cost increases above inflation will reach 2.6% for the next fiscal year. This translates into a $13-million waste of taxpayers’ money.

The County of Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and the RTD all oppose the bill because local input--different transit restructuring plans and amendments--has fallen on deaf ears in Sacramento. If public transit is ever going to succeed in this region, the Legislature must cut away the protections, scrap the limitations, repeal the prohibitions and give local officials greater flexibility, or the only thing that Katz-Robbins will provide is an excuse for state legislators to get together in 10 more years and reorganize public transit once again.