Only the Vision Thing Can Save the MTA From Itself

If you don’t ride the bus, the crisis at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority probably won’t affect you. Unless you drive a car. Or have a job. Or breathe.

Last week, the MTA’s interim CEO, Julian Burke, called for halting all rail projects, even including the partly built light-rail extension to Pasadena. He would only complete the subway to North Hollywood, at least for the time being. If restoring fiscal sanity to the MTA is his goal, why go forward with the agency’s entire billion-dollar highway program?

The MTA controls not just transit, but all transportation policy, projects and funding in L.A. County. It doesn’t need piecemeal retrenchment; it needs a comprehensive vision.

Some business leaders are beginning to understand this. At last month’s Economic Action Summit, held at the California Science Center, they called for the MTA “to reassess” its old plans in order “to establish a new baseline.” These leaders pushed for “a comprehensive review of transportation, energy, telecommunications and other infrastructure” that, importantly, would include broad public participation.

Since news radio now carries traffic reports every six minutes, it should be obvious that neither freeways nor subways are the answers to the region’s transportation woes. With Southern Californians driving more and enjoying it less, building the $1.4-billion Long Beach Freeway is as brain-dead as building the $400-million Mid City subway. Yet, without informed and active public support, pork politics will continue to dominate the MTA.

Aside from perfunctory public “hearings” (where no one listens), the public is routinely bypassed when bureaucrats formulate their transportation “plans.” At this moment, a draft regional-transportation report, known as “CommunityLink 21,” is being circulated by the Southern California Assn. of Governments. It purportedly sets forth “a series of innovative policies, goals, strategies and actions that are designed to meet and enhance the transportation needs of the six-county (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial) Southern California region through the year 2020.”

Ever hear of it? Probably not. It’s supposed to guide a trillion dollars of public and private spending on transportation for 16 million people in the six-county area. Yet, the number of people with input into the plan wouldn’t fill a modest junior high auditorium.

Contrast this with how the “Portland 2040” transportation plan was shaped. Portland’s transit agency, Tri-Met, mailed an overview of its plan to every household in the region. More than 17,000 responses were returned. Workshops drew thousands more and attracted intense media attention. The result? A remarkable public consensus that’s bucked special interests and prevailed in key tests at the ballot box. Even the Oregon Legislature retreated in the face of Portland public opinion.

Portland’s transit agency won popular support by approaching transportation as a means to improve the economy and the environment, not as an end in itself. Tri-Met calls its plan “part of a conscious strategy to shape regional growth by coordinating transportation investments with land-use policy, deferring highway incentives, cleaning the air and enhancing the quality of life.”

Cynics, of course, dismiss Portland as a suitable model for our sprawling megalopolis. But if our region is 10 times Portland’s size, what excuse can there be for giving even fewer people a say over a trillion dollars’ worth of transportation spending?

Portland is not the only example of the benefits of greater public involvement in shaping transportation policy. In New York, the Regional Planning Assn. consulted hundreds of community groups in compiling its “Region at Risk” recommendations. Salt Lake City capitalized on the upcoming Winter Olympics to focus public attention on its transportation challenge. In California, both the Bay Area and San Diego pursue balanced and integrated transportation planning without the political gang warfare that cripples the MTA.

Is there anyone on the MTA board who will seize the moment and heed the plea from the Economic Action Summit for a comprehensive transportation plan, one based on serving people and communities, not special interests?

Genuine planning entails balance, integration, participation and, above all, a coherent vision to guide both policy and projects.

Balance is vital to overcoming the monomaniacal obsession that transportation “experts” have for (pick one) cars, buses, subways, light rail, monorails, bikes or jitneys. Los Angeles is too big and diverse to put all our money on any single mode of getting around. We need a network of options that ties our dysfunctional fragments together.

Integration means developing a coordinated approach to overall public policy and sticking with it. No more rail routes that bypass the airport nor mega-developments inaccessible to transit. Transportation, land use, air quality and economics are interdependent. They demand a comprehensive approach, not the piecemeal projects and “plans” churned out by bureaucratic fiefdoms.

Finally, participation means stepping outside back-room politics to “gain public ownership of the ‘problem’ and agree on new solutions,” to quote from the report issued at the Economic Action Summit. Expounding on the intricacies of transportation finance won’t capture the imagination of ordinary people. But everyone is concerned about our quality of life and standard of living. With the cost of transportation now second only to housing, we can’t afford not to be.

The most promising source for a new vision is the growing movement for “livable communities.” Strategies to create walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods have revitalized older areas as diverse as Pasadena, Monrovia, Huntington Park, Glendale, Leimert Park and Santa Monica. Newer suburbs, from Valencia to Brea, are adapting these lessons. Building “livable communities” would allow us to fetch a one-pound loaf of bread without having to fire up a two-ton suburban assault vehicle.

We’ve come to the end of the road of limitless mobility. Living within our means is the only sensible approach to transportation, whether it’s living within our family budgets or our regional environmental resources. Fifty years ago, Carey McWilliams wrote, “Los Angeles has not grown, it has been conjured into existence. If ever a region planned for the future, that region is Southern California.”

It’s time to rekindle that legacy. Since we all have a stake in the future, every one of us needs to be part of how we get there.*