Metro Rail Funds Near OK Despite Federal Cutbacks

Los Angeles’ Metro Rail project is close to receiving its largest one-year allocation of federal funds, despite the stated resolve in Washington to cut spending and calm economic jitters over the budget deficit.

The Senate and House already have approved separate transportation funding bills for fiscal year 1988 that would provide either $144 million or $150 million in funds for Metro Rail--figures more than 20% greater than the largest previous appropriation for the $3.8-billion subway project.

The Metro Rail package, scheduled to be completed by a committee of Senate-House negotiators next month, would include a final installment for the downtown subway now under construction. More importantly, it is expected to provide the first chunk of federal funds--$30 million to $50 million--for the second segment, a Hollywood-bound extension that could be built within 10 years.

Could Be Trimmed

The final 1988 allocation could be trimmed closer to the $130 million mark, congressional and Reagan Administration sources said, but even that would be a record for a project that has been receiving about $110 million per year.

And a variety of Washington developments over the last year--including reduced competition among big cities for new transit system funds and the Administration’s grudging concession of defeat in its battle to kill the project--have combined to improve chances that higher levels of Metro Rail funding can be maintained over the next few years, congressional sources said.

All of this marks a significant turnaround for the project. Just a few years ago, Metro Rail was battered in Washington by concerns over whether it could be built safely and the personal criticism of President Reagan, who called it “a ton of fat” in the federal budget.

“I’ve been here seven years (and) certainly things never looked better for the L.A. project from our level,” said Gregory Dahlberg, a key aide on the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee.

The upswing in Metro Rail’s fortunes began earlier this year when Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto of a massive, multiyear transportation bill that included an unprecedented pledge of $870 million for Metro Rail. The language promising those funds is the strongest ever written for a federally funded mass transit project, Administration officials said.

“We lost that battle,” said Alfred DelliBovi, the Reagan Administration’s acting chief of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration. “It was a watershed, I guess. (The Administration) went from (arguing for) the ‘no build’ option to . . . funding something that was going to be built.”

The Administration’s war on “pork-barrel” transit projects also has sputtered as key political generals in the Department of Transportation, including then-Secretary Elizabeth Dole, began bailing out in anticipation of the end of Reagan’s second term.

A crucial change for Metro Rail was the departure several months ago of former UMTA chief Ralph Stanley for a Wall Street investment firm.

Adept at Delaying Funds

A bright, ambitious young conservative, Stanley infuriated and frustrated Metro Rail supporters by his long and loud criticism of the project. Even when he lost budget battles, the Princeton-educated attorney proved adept at employing a range of administrative delaying tactics to hold up funds.

The new UMTA chief, DelliBovi, a former New York state legislator schooled in public administration, is proving much more accommodating, congressional sources said.

Stanley’s departure was “a big event” for Metro Rail, said Pat McCann, a staff member of the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee.

RTD General Manager John Dyer agreed. “What I think we see is less effort (by DelliBovi) to undermine the project in various ways,” he said.

This year’s relatively placid Metro Rail-financing debate on Capitol Hill also indicates that the project now may be beyond the seemingly annual ritual of up-and-down, life-and-death congressional funding battles.

Fiedler Left Scene

Many of those were engineered by former Republican Rep. Bobbi Fiedler of Chatsworth, the project’s chief congressional opponent. But Fiedler left Congress when she lost a bid for U.S. Senate last year.

And Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), another Metro Rail critic concerned about the cost and safety of building the subway through areas of methane-laden soil, has not pressed his opposition since winning a congressional ban on tunneling through the Fairfax section of his district.

At the same time, competition with other cities for federal funding may also be on the wane. Miami, Seattle and several other cities now are completing mass transit projects, reducing for at least a few years the demands placed on the approximately $400 million a year available from federal gasoline taxes for new commuter rail lines.

“There doesn’t seem to be any city coming on with a (major competing) project,” Dahlberg said.

Biggest Challenges

Many observers in Washington and Los Angeles say the biggest challenges for Metro Rail now will be local ones.

“The funding issue is in place,” said Chris Stewart, president of the Central City Assn., an organization of major downtown business interests. “The question is whether or not Los Angeles can get its act together to assure routes are agreed upon. . , construction is continuous (and) people’s attention is focused on managing that project carefully.”