Separate Agency for Valley Transit Discussed

Much was said but little of it by bus riders Thursday at a hearing on a proposal to create a semi-independent San Fernando Valley transportation agency.

The Los Angeles city Transportation Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) are both studying proposals to divest some of the MTA’s vast administrative responsibilities for bus service to a smaller entity in the San Fernando Valley.

The idea has won tentative support from an array of agencies, including the MTA. “The more service we can transfer out [to smaller agencies], the better this operation will work,” said Ed Clifford of the MTA’s operations planning unit.

But Roger Christensen, who regularly takes the bus from Sherman Oaks to his job managing a movie theater in Hollywood, was cautious.

“I don’t know whether I will support this or not,” he said. “Will people be penalized because they live in a different zone?”

Christensen was one of the few bus riders in the crowd of about three dozen people, many of whom were representatives from various government agencies and politicians.

The special meeting of the City Council’s Transportation Committee in Sherman Oaks lasted more than two hours. Councilman Richard Alarcon, the chairman, was the only member of the committee to attend, due in part because of the meeting’s short notice.

The proceedings dragged on too long for Lia Hamilton, a telephone marketer from Van Nuys who left early to catch a bus.

Hamilton, who didn’t speak at the hearing, was skeptical of the plan.

“It would be nice if it would improve service,” she said. “But most of these things are decided by people who have never ridden the bus. . . . There is a lack of identifying the needs. I took off from work to do this, but most people impacted can’t attend.”

Hamilton offered a litany of complaints about Valley bus service. She often walks long distances to get to bus stops. And there are too few buses late at night, a hardship for those working swing shifts, she said.

“You can’t go to school at night here if you work, because you can’t get home,” Hamilton said.

Even Thursday’s hearing was not held along her regular bus lines, she added pointedly, as she set off to walk from Kester Avenue and the Ventura Freeway to her bus stop at Magnolia and Sepulveda boulevards. Alarcon supports the zone because he says it could lead to cheaper and more efficient bus service in the Valley.

His proposal would allow a separate Valley transportation agency to continue getting money from the MTA while making decisions affecting day-to-day operations of Valley buses.

City transportation officials laid out several alternatives for its structure at the hearing. These include electing a board of directors, or appointing representatives from the Valley and neighboring cities to a joint-powers authority governing Valley transit.

Christensen, the theater manager, said his chief concern with the proposals is whether bus riders would be hit with high transfer fees for crossing into L.A. from the Valley.

Alarcon responded that the city hoped to make the system “seamless” so that bus riders crossing jurisdictions would not be affected.

Alarcon plans future hearings.

He also asked city transportation officials to convene an advisory committee representing senior citizens, workers, schools and others, to participate in efforts to draw up plans for the zone.