Fast Lane, Slow Lane

The Century Freeway, a mammoth $2.5-billion project, is half-finished. Construction of the traffic lanes is on schedule, as Times staff writers William Trombley and Ray Hebert report. The ambitious replacement housing program and the admirable affirmative-action goals are not. Therein lie some lessons.

When completed, the well-designed and expensive freeway will stretch east and west between Norwalk and a point near Los Angeles International Airport. Six of the lanes will carry regular traffic; two will be for buses and car-poolers. A light-rail system will carry thousands of commuters, and thousands more if it is extended all the way to the airport. The combination will relieve traffic congestion and rush-hour gridlock, the bugbear of Southern California commuters.

The project was designed also to provide housing for families displaced by the freeway, and business opportunities for minorities and women--groups historically excluded from the construction trades. Coping with social inequity, however, is proving a lot harder than laying pavement.

So far only the roadbed is on schedule, but that is what you would expect with the Federal Highway Administration and the California Department of Transportation in command and people who know how to build highways running the project. That level of expertise and experience is urgently needed in the troubled housing and affirmative-action programs.

The Center for Law in the Public Interest insisted on the housing program, and a federal court ordered it done. Homes were to be built for families uprooted by the freeway and for poor and working-class families. The goal, ambitious and responsible, was on a scale without precedent.

The housing program is well over budget and well behind schedule. Hundreds of completed units stand empty because of unpopular locations in a region where moderate-priced condominiums and apartments are at a premium. But the program is not beyond salvaging.

The constantly changing and isolated leadership at the state Department of Housing and Community Development can and should be replaced by people who know housing the way engineers know highways. A government agency, a nonprofit organization or a public-private partnership with experience in construction, rehabilitation and relocation probably could have cut through the red tape and won over community opposition and done the job on time without budget overruns.

The affirmative-action goals--generous, ambitious and appropriate--guaranteed opportunities for firms owned and operated by minorities and women, usually barred from the financial rewards of major projects. Like the housing goals, they had scant federal or state precedent.

The subsequent problems are not surprising. Affirmative-action efforts, no matter how well-meaning, work only with strong and unyielding enforcement, even stronger and continued government commitment regardless of shifting political climates, and at least some cooperation from major contractors. On all scores the Century Freeway got less than it needed.

Some contractors assign blame solely to minority and female subcontractors who lack experience because they have been shut out of major projects in the past. That is like punishing a man who has never been allowed to play baseball for failing to hit a home run his first time at bat. Experience on the Century will pave the way for future successes.

The affirmative-action goals, the housing program and the careful design of the Century Freeway provide many lessons. Because the project is only half-finished, there is still time to apply the lessons that will provide hundreds of affordable new homes and dozens of new economic opportunities. There is still time to combine concrete with social responsibility on the Century.