The Mighty L.A. Transportation Commission That Shouldn’t : Green Line: Brouhaha over awarding a contract to a foreign firm when the local economy is sick shows danger of a too-powerful agency.

Ten years ago, settlement of the Century Freeway lawsuit resulted in something of a transportation miracle. Not only would there be the usual concrete for cars. There would also be a 17-mile, light-rail system for people down the median of the freeway. And the two systems would be constructed concurrently. The estimated cost for what is now known as the Green Line would be $750 million, quite a bargain for the taxpayer when compared with the price tag for the 17-mile underground Red Line--at least $4 billion.

But since the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission took over responsibility for development of the Century Freeway, the promise of the Green Line marriage of private and public transit is far from consummation. Today, the rail line is at the center of an especially contentious debate over the commission’s decision to ship employment dollars overseas at a time when California’s economy is hurting. Sadly, this is only the latest example of the LACTC’s continuing failure to develop a comprehensive people-oriented transportation policy for the region.

The award to the Sumitomo Corp. to build the Green Line’s automated cars illustrates the danger of allowing an agency to operate out of public view. Indeed, the LACTC executive director signed the $128-million contract with Sumitomo without informing local officials.

The LACTC’s history is one long story of inexplicable waste. For example, it has chosen a different technology for each of the rail lines currently being planned. As a result, any possible savings from economies of scale in buying cars, equipment and parts, or in training and maintenance, have been sacrificed.

Worse, these squandered resources have gone toward building a system that won’t work. These LACTC lines will intersect--not connect. When the system, as planned, is fully operational, a passenger, with baggage, traveling from a downtown hotel to the airport will have to find the closest entrance to the Red Line, ride the line a mile or so to the Blue Line, change to it and travel approximately five miles south, where he or she will take an elevator up to the Green Line and travel several more miles to Sepulveda Boulevard. There, the passenger will have to transfer to either a bus or a fourth rail system currently under consideration to reach the airport terminal. Will the people of Los Angeles use such an inconvenient system? Research shows they will not.

Still, this crazy quilt of a transportation system should come as no surprise, since it was designed by a coterie of political appointees who lack the planning expertise needed to make an intelligent decision. The commission operates outside the normal structure of public accountability and under the steady influence of lobbyists who are paid undisclosed sums by unidentified interests. In turn, the commissioners often impose their politically motivated wills to influence or override the judgment of their professional staff. They have misdirected their time and resources to wage a 10-year turf war with the Rapid Transit District.

At the heart of the LACTC’s flawed decision-making is an approach to transportation that separates planning from implementation, that puts novel technologies above systemwide utility and that prefers technologies virtually guaranteed to produce cost overruns outdistancing any possible savings for the first 30 years of operation.

We are stuck with the lamentable consequences of many of the LACTC’s wrongheaded decisions. But we have an opportunity to move in a new direction. Local transportation officials will soon decide how to spend $150 billion--a staggering sum by any measure. Over the next 30 years, this money, derived from sales- and gasoline-tax increases approved by voters, will be spent on a transportation system in the Los Angeles Basin. Whichever design prevails will lock the region into a system that we will have to live with well into the next century, so we had better do our best to make sure that the right decisions are made.

In the short term, the Sumitomo contract should be scrapped and the bidding on the Green Line vehicle contract briefly reopened. In awarding the new contract, emphasis should be placed on creation of regionally based jobs.

In the long run, the Sumitomo blunder is our chance to develop and establish a comprehensive, integrated, regional transportation scheme. The people have voted the money. What must come now is a governing structure with the capacity and vision to deliver what the voters expect of a transportation system.

Any attempt to establish such a regional transportation agency will be vigorously opposed by city, county and other municipal entities that will have to give up power, something no bureaucrat ever wants to do. But only with strong political leadership and an engaged citizenry will these important changes be accomplished. Otherwise, we risk squandering ever more tax dollars on a transportation system that doesn’t work.