Becerra Calls for Halt to All Subway Work

The latest plan to stabilize the troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority careened onto a siding Wednesday when an influential Eastside congressman called for a halt to all subway construction, including work on the nearly completed North Hollywood line.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) stunned the MTA board by declaring that the county transit agency should stop the subway and refocus all its resources on building light rail lines and improving bus service.

Becerra served notice that the battle over the future of the Metro Rail subway--to the San Fernando Valley, the Eastside and Mid-City--has become inextricably enmeshed in Washington’s hardball congressional politics.

Becerra is a legislative force to reckon with not only in the increasingly powerful Latino Caucus, but also in the California delegation. His reservations also may strike a responsive chord with one of the MTA’s most important congressional backers, Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), a powerful member of the House’s Black Caucus, whose constituents have long waited for the Mid-City line.

And Becerra’s alliance with county Supervisor Gloria Molina portends a full-scale political clash over the future of mass transit in Los Angeles. The tug of war over the massive public works project has been made all the more complicated by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s recently launched campaign to pass a ballot initiative banning local funding of subway construction beyond North Hollywood.

“If we’re so in the hole,” Becerra said, “we ought to try to do the darndest to meet the needs of the most transit dependent, the poorest and the least-served areas of the county.”

In an ironic twist, Becerra used Yaroslavsky’s own arguments for his anti-subway initiative against the North Hollywood line, which is being built in the supervisor’s district. In other words, if the Eastside doesn’t get a subway, neither does the Valley.

The Latino congressman said the cost of building the subway is four to five times greater per mile than constructing a light rail line. “If it’s really true,” he said, “then let’s abandon heavy rail.”

Mayor Richard Riordan, chairman of the MTA’s board, flatly rejected the idea of halting the $1.2-billion North Hollywood subway, which is 60% complete.

“We have been the laughingstock of this country by not completing things that we start,” Riordan said. “‘We would be highly, highly irresponsible to stop construction on the North Hollywood line.”

But the congressman’s demand that all subway projects be put on hold instead of just future extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City had the immediate effect of stalling for several weeks the MTA’s board’s third effort at adopting a “recovery plan” acceptable to federal officials, who provide much of the agency’s critical funding.

Unless the plan passes muster in Washington, said Julian Burke, the MTA’s acting chief executive officer, the agency cannot receive this year’s federal funding for the North Hollywood subway and next year’s funding is also in jeopardy.

Yet the agency’s directors never even heard Burke formally present his thick plan to confront the agency’s financial and construction difficulties. The document calls for completing the Red Line subway to North Hollywood and attempting to meet a federal court order to reduce overcrowding and improve service on its heavily used bus system.

But instead of acting on the plan, the special MTA board meeting dissolved in disarray, without a quorum needed to vote.

Riordan later expressed confidence that the recovery plan would be approved by the end of the month, when more members of the board are present.

Echoing Becerra’s sentiments, Molina said the MTA board must retake control of the decision-making process from Burke, a corporate turnaround specialist brought to the MTA last summer by Riordan.

“This disorder must stop,” Molina said. “I cannot be a ‘yes’ person for management and a turncoat for bus riders and the taxpayers.”

And civil rights attorneys who won the court order requiring bus improvements contended that Burke’s plan doesn’t go far enough to ensure compliance with the consent decree.

“This is a great document for us,” said Constance L. Rice, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It confirms noncompliance with the decree.”

In another sign of the the MTA’s inability to move in any direction, the agency reversed course and agreed with the Bus Riders Union to reestablish in a limited form late-night bus service that had been terminated in an economy move.

Burke’s plan is the latest drafted by the agency to satisfy federal concerns about the MTA’s spending practices.

Nearly a year and a half has passed since federal officials first directed the MTA to prepare a plan assuring that it can complete subway construction to North Hollywood and the court order mandating bus improvements. Two previous plans were rejected as inadequate and financially unsound.

The latest plan cites the MTA’s suspension of three rail projects--subway extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City and a light-rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena--as evidence that the agency’s “financial house is being put in order.”

Eastside politicians, however, were upset that Burke provided no timetable for restarting the mothballed projects.

The plan also makes clear that serious financial and political problems remain. The agency is still short of money--an $85-million budget deficit is projected for the coming fiscal year--to maintain its existing bus and train operations, raising the possibility of a fare increase this fall.

“Since management and the board are now committed to restoring the MTA’s long-term financial soundness and credibility, any remaining shortfalls will have to be resolved by adjusting fares and service levels to available resources,” the plan says.

In addition, the plan relies on Congress to provide $100 million for the subway extension to North Hollywood--far more than has been allocated in the past few years.

Riordan said the MTA has previously committed to completing subway construction to North Hollywood. “That’s what Washington is looking at: Can we finish what we started?”

With the MTA completing the twin tunnels between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley last year, the North Hollywood subway extension is much further along than the subway extensions to the Eastside and Mid-City, where ground has yet to be broken.

Riordan said the board is still committed to completing the other rail lines, “but the funding isn’t going to be there for six or seven years.”

“For us to say we’ll stop North Hollywood and hope to get a few crumbs to take care of other problems is something you’ve got to think twice about,” Riordan said.

“Any thought of abandoning the completion of North Hollywood is ridiculous,” San Fernando Valley Councilman Hal Bernson, an MTA board member, said.

John Fasana, a Duarte city councilman and MTA board member, asked for the two-week delay to give the agency time to examine the impact of halting subway construction to North Hollywood. “My hunch is that we are so far along that it doesn’t make sense to stop it,” Fasana said.

MTA officials have previously said that if they fail to finish the subway to North Hollywood, they risk having to repay the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds already spent on the project.

“This plan does show that we have funding available to complete North Hollywood,” said Allan Lipsky, deputy MTA chief executive officer. “It also objectively presents the agency’s financial picture without trying to gloss over what our problems are.”