Study Contends That MTA Based 20-Year Transit Plan on Faulty Data

In a new report that excoriates the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for favoring rail projects over buses, a think tank contends that the agency’s 20-year plan for moving commuters is based on flawed assumptions, faulty data and inconsistent scenarios that underestimate the long-term cost of building and running trains.

The report, co-authored by a USC professor and a former Rapid Transit District financial executive, asserts that the MTA uses questionable accounting methods to make heavy- and light-rail systems appear less costly and more effective than they actually are, and finds the transit agency’s forecasts for subway and light-rail use “optimistic” at best.

The report was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, which is variously described as libertarian or free market in orientation.

Whether the MTA should continue to concentrate its funding on a rail system rather than buses has been hotly debated for years. A Los Angeles bus-riders union has filed a lawsuit seeking to force the agency to spend less on rail and more on buses, contending that more people use buses. The authors of the study said they have volunteered to serve as expert witnesses for the union in the suit, set to go to trial Oct. 8.

The authors claim that fewer commuters will utilize the Red Line subway system than ride some current bus corridors. The Red Line, being built at a cost of about $5.8 billion, will run by mid-July from downtown Los Angeles to Western Avenue. In the next century, it also will link East Los Angeles, the Wilshire Corridor and the San Fernando Valley.

The authors also claim that contrary to MTA forecasts, an expanded bus system would create more jobs and result in less air pollution than a rail system.

“If the MTA’s long-term plan is followed, the MTA will find itself committed to construction of rail lines it can neither afford to build or operate,” said Thomas Rubin, one of the authors and a transit consultant who left his job as controller-treasurer at the Rapid Transit District in 1993 when it was reorganized into the MTA.

MTA spokeswoman Mary Ann Maskery said agency executives would not comment on the report because they had not reviewed it. Over the next year, she said, the MTA will begin a public review of its 20-year plan and present the findings at a board meeting next March.

MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian, however, said he has “tremendous respect” for Reason Foundation Director Robert W. Poole but believes the report underestimates the need for rail.

“Several decades ago, people had the same questions about spending billions for freeways,” said Zarian, a Glendale city councilman. “Our investment in rail today is going to likewise prove to be one of the most important transportation accomplishments of our time.”

Poole, who was recently appointed to a state transportation commission by Gov. Pete Wilson, responded in an interview that he believes the county’s obsession with rail is “bizarre” by normal yardsticks of public finance.

“What you’ve got is a fascination by elected officials with trains,” he said. “The whole system is driven by the political need to do something splashy for each major geographical segment of L.A., regardless of whether it makes sense.”

The report was co-written by James E. Moore II, a USC professor of urban planning and civil engineering. He began with a critique of the research conducted by the MTA to support its 20-year plan, which was released in March 1995.

The Reason report claims that one set of population and travel-speed forecasts was used in the MTA plan’s finance model and another set of figures in the transportation model, yielding “suspect” demand and supply figures.

In another example, the report terms “unbelievable” what the authors contend is an implication in the MTA plan that there will be fewer riders on public transit systems in 2015 than in 1985, despite a predicted 33.4% increase in Los Angeles’ population.

The report also questions the MTA’s policy to spend more on rail than buses. Even though some MTA bus lines now serve more riders than the number of patrons who use the Metrolink suburban train system, the report notes that the transit agency plans to reduce bus funding over the next 20 years by $454 million.

The report claims that if the $417 million the MTA proposes to spend over the next 20 years on transit planning alone were spent on providing bus service instead, the agency could serve 469 million passengers--almost as many passengers as the MTA plan indicates would be carried by rail over the next 20 years if all its planned train lines are built.

The authors suggest that the MTA use its funding instead to expand and improve the county’s bus system, reduce bus fares, expand the area’s system of carpool lanes and bus-only freeway lanes, experiment with privatized shuttle services and try to raise money by charging a toll for solo car drivers to use carpool lanes.

To buttress its findings, the authors claim that since the MTA began spending significant amounts of money on rail in 1986, total use of public transit in the county has dropped 20% even as the population has increased by 13%.