Scaled-Back MTA Plan

The lead sentence in your editorial “Transit Dream Derailed, Reality Prevails” (Feb. 15) is, unfortunately, the absolute truth. In the 48 years in which I personally have been associated with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its predecessor agencies, I cannot think of a time when it was an unhappier place to work.

While we have a natural adversarial role vis-a-vis MTA management, we know and respect so many of the people we deal with and it saddens us to see the conditions under which they are obliged to work.

We have criticized CEO Franklin White on many occasions, but it is certainly to his credit that at a time when his own future could be in doubt he still forced the MTA board to accept and admit publicly what many board members were already very much aware of--that the so-called 30-year plan had absolutely no basis in reality.

Unfortunately, we believe that even White’s drastically scaled-down 20-year, $65-billion plan may also be overly ambitious. There is just no way to accurately project what the MTA may realize in funding from any source, fare box, propositions A and C, state and federal.

The people who rely on public transportation need help now. We would prefer to see a five-year plan, based on worst-possible scenarios of funding, to serve the needs of the transit-dependent.

EARL CLARK, General Chairman

United Transportation Union, Irwindale

* The budget battles of the Los Angeles MTA are creating a phony war of bus versus rail. The problem isn’t rail, but costs of rail projects at the LAMTA. The cost per passenger of light rail in Sacramento is half that of by bus. The cost for the new 43-mile Oceanside to San Diego commuter train was $150 million. This is almost as much as has been spent already for the 13.6-mile Pasadena light rail line, just for design work.

Since 1980, San Diego has built or has under construction 46 miles of light rail, costing $763 million. The Pasadena project is budgeted for a billion dollars. The most expensive construction in San Diego is now underway for just over nine miles of light rail at $343 million.

What makes the recent proposed cutbacks of rail projects by the LAMTA most curious is the most expensive projects were kept and the less expensive projects were cut. Los Angeles County owns miles of right-of-way that could be quickly and cheaply put to use. Los Angeles isn’t building too much rail, it is spending too much for too little.

NOEL T. BRAYMER

Corporate Secretary

RailPAC, San Diego

* Your editorial could have gone a step further and urged the MTA to abandon all plans to build new car pool lanes. Car pool lanes in Los Angeles County are like those in Orange County. They aren’t working--period. They aren’t relieving congestion. And during rush hour, entering or exiting car pool lanes can be dangerous because of the difference in speed between nearly-empty car pool lanes and crowded regular lanes next to it. But transportation bureaucracies, determined to force car pool lanes on reluctant motorists, have instead begun to build elevated “fly-over” ramps to carry car pools over regular traffic. These viaducts are expensive and greatly increase construction time. And, in view of Japan’s tragic experience with the Hanshin Expressway, we have to wonder how car pool fly-over ramps will hold up in the next big quake.

THOMAS A. SCHENACH

Huntington Beach