Dyer Predicts Transit Change Will Be Costly

RTD General Manager John Dyer issued an analysis Thursday predicting bus fare hikes and hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs if legislation to reorganize Los Angeles transit and abolish his embattled agency is approved.

One of the sponsors of the state legislation called the appraisal “fiction.”

Dyer’s report represents the most visible political attempt yet by Southern California Rapid Transit District officials to kill the bill, which was prompted by reports of RTD mismanagement and duplication of responsibilities among transit agencies.

The reorganization bill would abolish the RTD and create a super-agency to oversee bus operations and commuter rail projects, merging the RTD and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission into a Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Dyer’s 28-page report, being widely distributed to state lawmakers and city and county officials, suggests that the basic 85-cent RTD bus fare would have to be increased to $1 next year to offset just the initial costs of the reorganization measure.

It is estimated that the five-year cost of the legislation could be as much as $508 million for added staff, delays in Metro Rail construction, new computers, merger studies and continuation of restrictions on hiring lower-cost private firms to provide bus service.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), co-author of the bill, angrily responded that Dyer’s report is “fiction with no basis in reality” and accused Dyer, who may lose his job in the reorganization, of trying to “save his own skin.”