After Spiking Rival Traffic Plan, Mayor Unveils His

A day after vetoing City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s traffic congestion plan, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on Wednesday unveiled a counterproposal that envisions van pools and monthly bus subsidies to lure thousands of commuters from their cars.

Bradley’s plan, announced at a morning news conference, would require large private employers now subsidizing employee parking to offer all workers $15 monthly to be applied to bus fares. Employees would not be required to participate.

In addition, the mayor proposed a one-time expenditure of $5 million in public funds to help companies lease or buy as many as 1,000 commuter vans. Each company could receive up to $5,000 from the city’s Proposition A account, which consists of sales tax revenues approved by county voters in 1980.

Attacked Proposal

At a separate news conference, Yaroslavsky attacked Bradley’s proposal as inadequate. Still angered at Bradley’s veto of his $17.8-million traffic congestion proposal late Tuesday afternoon, Yaroslavsky accused the mayor of, in effect, stealing his basic transit ideas for political reasons.

“There is nothing that (Bradley) has proposed today that was not envisioned in the action that the council took . . . and that he vetoed,” said Yaroslavsky, who is expected to challenge Bradley for mayor next year. “The only reason he has been able to come up with whatever he came up with . . . was because the City Council put on his desk a proposal that he felt very uncomfortable about vetoing.”

Yaroslavsky said he still needed time to study Bradley’s proposal. He also would not declare whether he will actually oppose the plan when it reaches the council floor or use it as a basis for a more ambitious traffic scheme.

The Westside councilman took some credit for the prompting the mayor’s latest traffic plan.

“I’m sorry that it took me to do it to him, but we have goosed him along,” Yaroslavsky said. “At least we’ve got him thinking about something more than ribbon cutting, and I’m very pleased at that.”

For his part, Bradley repeated Wednesday that he vetoed Yaroslavsky’s proposal--co-sponsored by Councilman Nate Holden--because it was “ill thought out . . . and poorly conceived.” He said that his own plan would use only a fraction of the public money that Yaroslavsky and Holden had sought and be just as effective.

Outgrowth of Early Plan

The mayor also contended that his proposal is merely an outgrowth of traffic congestion plans that he has pushed over the last two years, including a nine-point plan announced last summer.

Deputy Mayor Michael Gage said Bradley’s plan had been in the works for several months and denied that it was designed as a response to Yaroslavsky’s proposals. Instead, Gage said, the proposal was a “mirror reflection” of a $250,000 ride-sharing plan for city employees announced by Bradley on April 14.

Bradley’s latest plan in brief:

- The $15 bus subsidy plan would apply to businesses with at least 500 employees. In line with a ride-sharing policy adopted last December by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the ordinance would eventually extend to businesses with 100 employees.

- All businesses would be eligible for the $5,000 van pool subsidy, which Bradley said could eliminate as many as 9,000 vehicles from city streets each day. The estimate is based on a rough equation using 1,000 vans and an average of 12 commuters per van, according to the mayor’s office.

Use Vans for 4 Years

A company receiving the one-time $5,000 subsidy would have to agree to use the commuting vans for at least four years.

The mayor’s staff estimated that about 80% of the businesses downtown now offer some sort of subsidized parking to their employees and would thus fall under the mandatory $15 monthly bus subsidy requirement.

A top Bradley aide said there is nothing in the mayor’s plan to force companies wishing to avoid the $15-a-month bus pay-out to keep offering parking subsidies. But the same official, who asked not to be named, predicted that most businesses would continue their current policies in order to avoid employee dissension.