Future of Subway Project Questioned by MTA Officials

By RICHARD SIMON and JON D. MARKMAN

Dec. 10, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members, who have been called to Washington to discuss the future of the subway, are increasingly questioning whether to continue tunneling through Los Angeles at a cost of $300 million a mile.

Instead, signaling what would be a fundamental shift in the county’s transit plans, some key board members say they want to study taking the rail project aboveground to save money and extend rapid transit to more neighborhoods sooner.

“What good is it to build a Rolls-Royce when we can only afford a Volkswagen?” said MTA Board Chairman Larry Zarian, who is among those seeking to reexamine subway construction. Asked who on the board still publicly champions completing the subway, Zarian replied: “It’s just like trying to find someone who voted for Richard Nixon.”

The MTA is being forced to reassess its vision to relieve gridlock in the 21st century because of an about $1-billion hole in its long-range plan, continuing political turmoil and construction missteps.

Some board members want to study whether the MTA should proceed with plans to extend the subway to the Eastside, Mid-City and across the San Fernando Valley or instead build aboveground rail lines. “We should finish what we started and then rethink everything else,” County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky said.

Others still stand by promises to build a subway at least through the Eastside and Mid-City, fearing the loss of millions of dollars in federal funds earmarked for the Metro Rail project. “I will stick my neck out. There are segments of the city where a subway is a necessity,” said businessman and MTA board member Nikolas Patsaouras, citing the high cost of land for tracks and neighborhood impacts such as noise and unsightliness.

The reevaluation being sought by at least five board members comes at a time when the Metro Rail project is headed into one of its most difficult periods--financially, geologically and politically. The latest blow came last Wednesday when Chief Executive Officer Joseph R. Drew unexpectedly announced his resignation because of political infighting and “public hypercriticism.”

“The board is going to have to make some tough decisions,” said U.S. Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles), who has spearheaded the move to secure funds for the subway. “The problem is that they’ve had so many other fires to put out.”

County residents have a big stake in what the MTA decides.

MTA board members say the decisions will determine how soon rapid transit is delivered to different parts of the county. In addition, one cent of every dollar spent on taxable goods in Los Angeles goes to the MTA--about $800 million a year to fund all transit projects. That is equivalent to a family with a $50,000 annual income writing a $180 check every year to the MTA.

As a fractious, 13-member MTA board debates how to proceed, the transit agency continues to run up multimillion-dollar bills on land purchases and engineering studies for subway extensions to the Eastside, Mid-City and west San Fernando Valley.

Federal officials have expressed concerns about the increasing political indecision. Zarian said Federal Transit Administrator Gordon Linton has summoned local officials to Washington next week to discuss the West’s biggest public works project. Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena is expected to attend.

The federal government has agreed to pay for about half of the $5.9-billion subway, but is providing millions less than promised.

Transit officials agree that they face hard choices that are fraying a decade-old consensus, now pitting board members and their communities against one another in a scramble for the diminishing funds to ensure that their areas get some form of rapid transit.

“Instead of coming together in this time of crisis, we’re disintegrating even more,” one MTA board member said, contending that his colleagues continue to look out for their parochial interests and pet projects rather than the region. “Unfortunately, it’s still dog-eat-dog out there.”

It seems clear that the agency will not be able to deliver for years on all the promises made 16 years ago when county voters approved a tax increase to build a vast mass-transit network stretching from Lancaster to Torrance. The subway is now 5.3 miles long and runs from Union Station to Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. Construction is underway for an extension from Wilshire and Vermont Avenue through Hollywood to the east San Fernando Valley.

The MTA plans to begin tunneling next year to extend the subway from Union Station to 1st and Lorena streets on the Eastside and is completing environmental studies to extend the subway in Mid-City from Wilshire and Western to Pico and San Vicente boulevards. Although no construction funds have been allocated, plans call for extending the subway to the San Diego Freeway on the Westside, to Atlantic and Whittier boulevards on the Eastside, and from North Hollywood to Warner Center in the San Fernando Valley.

Local officials throughout the county are closely watching the MTA because its actions affect projects in their areas.

In Pasadena, officials are already upset about the prospect that a proposed downtown Los Angeles-to-Pasadena trolley line may be delayed despite promises made to residents there who have contributed tax dollars to help build the system elsewhere in the county.

The same is true in other neighborhoods, like transit-dependent East Los Angeles.

MTA officials say they are rethinking the subway’s future for a number of reasons:

* More federal funding cuts could be on the horizon, and officials say new taxes appear out of the question.

* The project has been plagued with expensive construction snafus that have embarrassed the agency and sparked more than 1,000 lawsuits by owners of businesses and homes along the route. While some suits alleging property damage have been resolved with relatively modest settlements by the agency’s insurance companies, many more cases are scheduled for trial next year.

* MTA board members representing smaller cities are increasingly worried about the subway siphoning off funds that could delay construction of rail lines and other transit projects to their communities.

* Key MTA board member and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is less enthusiastic about a subway than his predecessor, Mayor Tom Bradley.

Asked how the MTA board should proceed on the subway, Riordan said last week, “It would be unfair for me to get out in the open. . . . The only thing I would tell you is that . . . buses are the backbone of the transportation system, and they’re going to be for many decades to come.”

John Fasana, a Duarte city councilman who serves on the MTA board, said: “I’m not saying you never build a subway in any circumstance, but I am saying that in our current circumstance we should go aboveground.”

Another board member, Gardena Councilman James Cragin, said he and a few of his colleagues have talked about aboveground rail in lieu of a subway. “We were prophets speaking to the wind. Now everyone has to face reality. We’ve got to do something different.’

And newly elected county supervisor and MTA board member Don Knabe said, “The purpose of mass transit is to get it to the farthest point possible as fast as possible at the best price.”

A major MTA study of the cost of new rail in the San Fernando Valley released in May puts price tags on a wide variety of transit alternatives that had been discussed for years without a clear understanding of their costs.

The research shows that a four-mile subway from North Hollywood to the San Diego Freeway along the Southern Pacific rail right of way between Chandler and Burbank boulevards could cost as much as $826 million to build. In contrast, a monorail-like system along the same East Valley route would cost $513.4 million to build, and a light-rail system on the route would cost $371.3 million.

Some independent experts at university think tanks say the MTA should at least consider slowing down rail construction and putting more money into expanding its bus system.

Brian Taylor, a UCLA planning professor who specializes in transportation issues, said the agency should “choose the alternative for which you get the most bang for the buck.” In his view, that means politically unsexy things like more buses.

“We shouldn’t make an investment because we think at some point in the future it might be worthwhile when we’re able to use that money now for things that we know will be of benefit,” Taylor said.

Fueling the dissension is a longtime critic of the county’s rail construction plans, the Reason Foundation, which has issued a new report disputing the benefits of the subway or aboveground light rail. “Doing nothing is often better than building a rail system,” the report concluded. Researchers at the Westside think tank believe that the agency should put its millions into improving the bus system.

All this is welcome news for county supervisor and MTA board member Mike Antonovich, who has long opposed the subway.

“We should use what has been built and continue from now on with a cost-effective, aboveground transit system,” Antonovich said. “You can build aboveground in a few years, while underground takes decades.”

But the subway still has boosters.

U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Democrat who represents part of East Los Angeles, said: “I have the most transit-dependent district if not in the country, certainly in the state. My focus is that the Eastside extension is not jeopardized, that the commuters on the Eastside don’t get cheated.”

However, she said she would consider taking the line aboveground if the same is done in the Mid-City and San Fernando Valley.

MTA board member and Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who has strongly advocated a subway route on the Eastside, said that substituting aboveground rail there has already been studied. “But the community did not want it,” he said.

County supervisor and MTA board member Gloria Molina, another subway backer, declined to comment on the debate.

Some MTA officials are fearful that any change of course now--at least involving subway extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City--could cost the agency millions of dollars committed by the federal government to subway construction. “There are all the sharks in the other states that say, ‘If you’re not going to spend that money, we’re going to spend it,’ ” one MTA board member said.

And these officials contend that the MTA is already too far along on the Eastside subway extension to change course. Nearly $30 million has been spent on the project.

“If any area justified a subway, it’s the Eastside. That’s where the ridership will be,” Patsaouras said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Deep Trouble

Here is a look at Los Angeles County’s current subway plan.

Under Contruction

* Wilshire/Vermont to Hollywood

Cost: $1.6 billion

* Hollywood to North Hollywood

Cost: $1.3 billion

****

Planned

Union Station to Lorena