Key Legislator Favors Busways Over Subway for Los Angeles

Adding to the MTA’s litany of woes, the chairman of a key House spending committee suggested Tuesday that Los Angeles emphasize busways rather than the problem-plagued subway as a better solution to the city’s clogged freeways.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the transportation appropriations subcommittee, told Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials: “Your project is controversial out there and back here . . . and I wonder if maybe you should put more money toward busways.”

MTA officials had flown to Washington to ask for $100 million for ongoing subway projects.

Wolf, who has battled Mayor Richard Riordan’s attempts to transfer revenue from Los Angeles International Airport to other city uses, made it clear that his preference for busways was his personal opinion--not policy written in stone.

“I don’t know the area well out there,” he said. “It seems to me that busways would be a more productive [use of federal money], considering the [subway’s] cost overruns and delays. That’s not for me to say, because I don’t live there and I don’t run the place. But I think you have a serious transportation problem. [Busways] . . . carry more people and would have great impact for all economic levels.”

Linda Bohlinger, interim chief executive officer of the MTA, assured Wolf that the agency “was looking beyond the subway” for other answers to Los Angeles’ pressing transportation needs.

The city has about 23 miles of busways--freeway lanes exclusively for buses and car-poolers--and hopes to develop more miles, an MTA spokesman said.

“Clearly we need more busways,” said spokesman Marc Littman, “but the subway [ultimately will] give us the capacity of a 14-lane freeway. The busways alone will not give us that capacity.”

A recent Times poll found that 51% of the adults surveyed in Los Angeles favored shifting money from completing the $5.9-billion subway system to putting more buses on the street. Forty-three percent of the 1,143 adults questioned disagreed. The survey, taken Jan. 29 to Feb. 2, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

But, MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian said in an interview: “We can’t rely solely on buses for the future of Los Angeles. We need a more visionary concept.”

In addition to requesting $100 million for next fiscal year’s allotment of federal subway funds, Bohlinger noted that the MTA also is seeking $10 million to continue development of the so-called “stealth” bus, the MTA’s Advanced Technology Transit Bus. That vehicle uses lightweight composite materials developed for the B-2 Stealth bomber.

Wolf’s preference for busways comes amid ongoing controversy--in Washington and Los Angeles--over the city’s subway project. Wolf and other Congress members are displeased at the lack of consensus among Los Angeles officials on where to build the system. Cost overruns and management missteps have also led to a chilly reception on Capitol Hill as local officials struggle to extract federal money to complete the project.

Last week, local MTA politics flared up again. The MTA board sided with three Eastside Democratic members of Congress by deciding to seek $44 million in future federal funds to extend the subway into their territory.

That move upset San Fernando Valley members, who feared that the request would imperil federal money already requested to build subway extensions in the Valley.

Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Pico Rivera), a member of Wolf’s subcommittee, was one of those House members who wants a higher priority on extending the subway deeper into the Eastside. Some Capitol Hill sources speculated before the Tuesday hearing that Torres would confront Bohlinger during her appearance before the subcommittee.

But Torres chose to reiterate a threat he made last week to oppose the MTA appropriations request unless building a subway line on the Eastside received higher priority.

Fellow Appropriations Committee member Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles), who sat beside Bohlinger at the hearing, reminded Torres that $38 million of the $100 million the MTA is seeking would help build the first segment of the Eastside line.

“I hope you would not oppose funds for building the first part, for without it we could never get to the second segment,” Dixon said. “I pledge to work together to bring some sanity to this dispute.”

Torres, despite “serious concerns about the direction the MTA is taking with the rail program,” did not pursue the matter with Bohlinger. But he did ask to be allowed to submit written questions to her on the MTA’s priorities for future subway spending.

Those decisions will be worked out in a series of hearings by the Transportation Committee. That panel, separate from Wolf’s spending subcommittee, will try to pass a compromise bill on transportation projects for all 50 states and deliver it to President Clinton in the fall.