Local News in Brief : Transit Panel Urged to End RTD Battle

Saying continued feuding could jeopardize federal funding for Metro Rail, two officials advised the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to back away from its efforts to take over future construction of the mass transit project from the troubled RTD.

In a press conference Tuesday at the Metro Rail construction area at Union Station, state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) and Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden said the commission made a bad situation worse by voting to form a new commission-controlled rail corporation that would take future Metro Rail work away from the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

But Jackie Bacharach, a member of the commission, dismissed arguments that the turf battle has created a funding crisis.

“Everybody’s saying the sky is falling and the sky isn’t falling,” said Bacharach, a key advocate of rail projects.

Robbins, long a critic of the RTD’s bus operations, credited the agency for having kept Metro Rail construction thus far $80 million under budget. His defense is “not in any way an endorsement of the RTD,” Robbins said, “but what the LACTC has done is take the one thing RTD has done right, and say we’re going to take it away from them.”