Neighbors Oppose CSUN Bus Center Plan

Cal State Northridge neighbors, at a meeting earlier this week, blasted a planned campus transit center that would serve five city bus lines.

The $1.3-million center, one of six proposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to streamline the San Fernando Valley’s bus system, would be a place where multiple buses converge to allow easier transfers between lines.

Last month, the Cal State University trustees unanimously endorsed the project, a move that angered many people in attendance at a campus meeting Thursday who felt that CSUN failed to adequately inform community members of its plans.

As proposed, the center would occupy 1.5 acres of Parking Lot C along Zelzah Avenue north of Prairie Street, including a transit building between 1,500 and 3,000 square feet, an access road off Zelzah, bus bays, a bus shelter and related landscaping.

“The bottom line is, the community . . . has expressed very strongly that they don’t want it there,” Allen Sheldon said Friday.

Sheldon, a Northridge homeowner since 1990, argued that the center would mean a dramatic increase in noise pollution for nearby residents, particularly homeowners on Zelzah Avenue.

“The hub makes sense,” he said, “but you’ve got to put it someplace where you’re not going to upset a residential neighborhood.”

University spokesman Bruce Erickson said CSUN recognizes residents’ unhappiness with the proposed center and “will consider other sites and other alternatives.”

Renee Berlin, MTA director for the Valley and northern Los Angeles County, said that while the agency would like to work something out at CSUN, it will consider an alternate site if necessary.

“We’re willing to look at other locations if CSUN wants to look at other locations,” she said. “We want to be a good neighbor.”

If CSUN applies for MTA funds to build the center as currently envisioned, construction would not begin before early 1998. The application deadline is in February, Berlin said.