Transit Agency Peace Pact Is OKd

Final approval was given Friday to an agreement that prevents a reduction of bus service and takes a major step toward a long-range settlement of disputes between Los Angeles County’s two public transit agencies.

The action came when the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission agreed to the proposal, pushed through by Mayor Tom Bradley and County Supervisor Pete Schabarum. The board of the other agency, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, had approved the agreement Thursday.

Schabarum said the plan will permit the boards of the two agencies to work “creatively and cooperatively in the years to come.”

Under the plan, the commission, which is in charge of allocating money to public transit in the county, will immediately give the RTD about $40 million to help finance extensive bus operations, followed by more payments each month. The commission had withheld the money because it said the RTD’s contracts with labor unions were too generous.

The contracts will stand. But to get the money, the RTD had to authorize a project that was strongly backed by Schabarum: a San Gabriel Valley transportation zone. The zone, controlled by Los Angeles County and 20 San Gabriel Valley cities, has signed a contract with a private firm to operate 110 buses.

The RTD, which will lose a third of its San Gabriel Valley bus lines to the new operation, had opposed the zone, as had the unions representing RTD drivers and mechanics.

With approval of the agreement, zone buses, which had been purchased earlier in the year, began running Thursday night on lines 495 (Los Angeles-Rowland Heights-Glendora Park-N-Ride Express) and 498 (Los Angeles-Eastland-Glendora Park-N-Ride Express). More lines will open next July, a Schabarum aide said.

County Supervisor Ed Edelman, the only commission member to oppose the agreement, said that approval of the new zone clears the way for creation of similar local transit operations and spells the end of the RTD’s regional system. “It begins the breakup of regional transit as we know it in Los Angeles County,” Edelman said.

The agreement also has long-range provisions that settle several lingering disputes between the two agencies.

It spells out how much power the RTD will have in construction of the Metro Rail subway, and in operating the subway and future surface trolley lines. The agencies had been feuding on those points.

The RTD was given authority to build the second phase of the subway, which is planned to run from the Westlake district, west of downtown Los Angeles, into the San Fernando Valley. The district already is in charge of construction of the first phrase, which is being dug from Union Station to Alvarado Street in the Westlake area, but the question of which agency would run the second phase was unsettled before the agreement.

The RTD was officially designated the operator of both the Metro Rail and a surface trolley line between Long Beach and Los Angeles, now being built by the county Transportation Commission. Left unsettled is which agency will operate future rail lines, such as a route planned along the new Century Freeway.

Under the pact, the two present lines will be called The Metro, with the subway having red stripes on its cars and the trolley blue stripes.

In addition, the RTD was given full command of revising its massive bus system to fit into the new rail operations.