Antonovich Urges U.S. to Kill Subway : Transit: MTA officials scramble to retain support in face of chairman’s criticism.

County transit officials worked feverishly on the eve of a critical congressional vote Wednesday to hold together the fragile political support for the Los Angeles subway, even as the MTA board chairman urged federal officials to “pull the plug” on the project.

Franklin E. White, chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, cautioned MTA board members to act responsibly in responding publicly to the latest subway construction problems, including the giant sinkhole that shut down Hollywood Boulevard last week.

Although he did not mention him by name, some of White’s comments appeared to be aimed at County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who sent letters to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other key members of Congress urging them to abandon the subway project.

Antonovich signed the letter “Chairman, Metropolitan Transportation Authority,” angering some colleagues at the agency who believed he had crossed a line in publicly disavowing the subway project with new zeal.

White urged critics to tone down their rhetoric instead of pushing to kill the project. “We cannot and should not be idiots,” he said. “This is crazy. . . . We deserve all the condemnation in the world if we do this to ourselves.”

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote Friday on a $125-million appropriation for the subway, about one-fifth of the nation’s rail construction money for next year.

Mayor Richard Riordan, an MTA board member, dispatched aides during the meeting to draft a letter to be signed by him and two board colleagues, telling members of Congress that the subway project is critical to the region’s economic vitality. “There’s too much at stake to simply react without all the facts in hand,” the letter says.

Antonovich has long been a critic of the subway, but his letter is important because he is a prominent conservative Republican with close ties to the new political leadership. In his letter, Antonovich included a Times article disclosing that some tunnel walls were built thinner than designed and he pointed to last week’s sinkhole on Hollywood Boulevard as “one more illustration that underground construction is inherently hazardous, disruptive . . . and consumes enormous amounts of scarce transit capital.”

White warned that if officials do not temper their comments about the subway, Los Angeles could risk losing federal funds to other cities.

The comments came during a lively MTA board meeting at which bus passenger advocates unfurled a white bedsheet with a hole in it and began singing “There’s a hole in the budget” to the tune “Hole in the Bucket.” The activists have accused the MTA of neglecting the overcrowded bus system in order to fund costly rail projects like the subway.

The board meeting was the first since the sinkhole forced closure of Hollywood Boulevard last week.

Board members asked the MTA inspector general to investigate the cause of the sinkhole and what is being done about it. They also complained bitterly that they are not informed promptly of subway construction problems. Antonovich demanded that board members receive copies of all “nonconformance reports.”

“Whenever it’s bad news, we have to read about it in the newspaper,” said board member Richard Alatorre, a Los Angeles councilman.

John Walsh, a community activist who is the board’s most vocal critic, countered that transit gadflies have brought troublesome issues to the board’s attention regularly over the years, but that board members “don’t want to hear the bad news.”

Several board members said they were bothered by a report last weekend in The Times disclosing that a stretch of tunnel along Vermont Avenue had been built with thinner walls than the design called for and that an inspector had warned that transit officials were in danger of repeating past mistakes on the project.

White pointed to a study last year concluding that thin walls did not necessarily create a safety problem in the tunnels. But Los Angeles Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, an MTA board alternate who this week called for a halt to all subway construction in her area, demanded more answers. The MTA board did not act on the City Council request to halt subway construction work above and below ground on Vermont Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Although tunneling is nearly complete in Hollywood, six stations still must be built.

The most recently discovered stretch of thin wall is just south of the Hollywood Boulevard site that collapsed into a giant sinkhole last week. A stretch of the street remained closed Wednesday and one of the pair of tunnels was blocked by muck and closed off to subway workers.