MTA Suspends Rail Projects

Re “MTA to Suspend Work on Three Key Rail Lines.’ Jan. 15:

What a mess! The MTA debacle over our imperiled subway lines is a case lesson in mismanagement and political aggrandizement--and every breathing taxpayer in Los Angeles County has been paying dearly for this folly since the early 1980s. Imagine how the lives of our public-transportation-taking citizens could have been improved had even a fraction of those funds been put instead toward improving bus service. It surely wouldn’t have cost anything like the $300 million per mile that the subway lunacy requires.

And what do we have to show for the hundreds of millions already wasted? Now attorneys from downtown can take a subway to eat lunch at Langer’s deli. Thanks MTAmembers. We won’t forget you at election time.

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It would be interesting to know how many miles of subway could have been built with the money spent on building the 26-story Taj Mahal headquarters.

JOHN ALLEN

Pacific Palisades

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After reading The Times Jan. 15 and noting the stories about the MTA and the MWD, I conclude that Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” continues to correctly assess the behavior of many senior managers.

While it was described rigorously as far back as 1977 in Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann’s book, “Decision Making” (Free Press), in which they used the name “groupthink” to describe a behavior that internally reinforced group views while ignoring outside information, Dilbert’s oft-used adjective, “clueless,” is emotionally much more satisfying.

SAM BRUNSTEIN

Glendale