Maybe the Toughest Job in Town

Fashioning a sensible, long-term mass transit rail plan for Los Angeles and its environs has been difficult. That goes beyond the difficulties involved in dealing with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, those 13 cooks in their crowded but opulent kitchen.

There were disputes in Washington, for example, in the planning of a rail system that would link the District of Columbia with suburban Maryland and northern Virginia. But no one there had to worry about the president deciding to either dissolve one-third of the local federal work force or move it to Kansas. Something similar to that, and nearly as momentous, happened here, over time, when the Cold War and tens of thousands of defense-related jobs dried up and the Green Line that was supposed to ferry those workers was still being built.

When the Bay Area Rapid Transit was being built, no one fretted over the fact that San Franciscans hadn’t decided whether they wanted it to run under the bay or over it. But there was plenty of fretting here over a Red Line that was supposed to run the length of the San Fernando Valley. The fight over the Valley route took so long, and economic circumstances changed so much, that the decisions finally reached have been all but dropped in favor of planning it anew.

Geographically huge Los Angeles will probably never be like New York City or Boston or even Washington, cities where rail really is or is becoming the backbone of transportation for working people and the poor. Here in Los Angeles, that role has been filled by bus service. That fact is likely to remain.

The salad days of MTA dream-planning are over. Money is tight, and competition for federal dollars is keen. Those are the circumstances that interim MTA chief executive officer Joseph Drew will formally confront today if, as anticipated, the MTA board decides to remove “interim” from his job title.

In Drew, the MTA board is banking on the familiar face, rather than a lengthy national search that offers no guarantees of netting some highly regarded miracle worker. Also, Drew claims that the MTA can afford the Pasadena Blue Line, more of the Red Line, a greatly strengthened bus system and whatever legal costs accrue from current or future court fights or settlements in building the system.

But the key questions are these. What happens if the MTA finds, in fact, that it can’t afford all that? Will Drew step forward and admit it? Will the board back him if he does? Will Drew’s talk of redundant MTA spending result in real cuts and savings? Will the board back him then? The answers to those questions should be yes, and the public should accept nothing less.