Hey, MTA, the Cupboard’s Bare

When it comes to subways, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board is like an addict who can’t help thinking about his next fix, even though he doesn’t have a dime in his pocket to pay for it.

Case in point: MTA board members Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Gloria Molina and John Fasano are expected to press for a vote by the board today in favor of a November ballot measure. It would among other things preserve the agency’s right, under certain conditions, to return to subway construction after a six-year moratorium.

Board member Zev Yaroslavsky has already qualified an initiative for the November ballot that would forbid any use, ever, of local sales tax money for subway tunneling beyond the one line that the MTA is attempting to complete, the Red Line extension to North Hollywood.

The Burke measure, which the MTA board is expected to approve, is a dueling alternative to Yaroslavsky’s. The cost of putting these measures on the ballot and conducting the election is $2 million, say county officials.

It’s hard to fathom why board members are clashing over subways at all when there is no funding for any future underground extension. The MTA simply doesn’t have the money, and it took a dogfight on Capitol Hill to get Congress to approve limited new funding.

The MTA and its board have gotten a breather and should focus on the most pressing concern--improvement of the agency’s bus system. The subway quarrel is time ill-spent.

Federal officials have approved the agency’s long-term recovery plan. And a united California congressional delegation is also pressing for more funding for buses and a study on badly needed mass transit improvements on the Eastside.

The MTA has one last shot at meeting terms of the landmark federal court consent decree to expand and improve bus service. The buses remain bruisingly overcrowded on the most heavily traveled lines, and the agency has huge problems just keeping its buses out of repair garages.

The board simply has to focus on the fact that, if bus service fails to improve, a special master and the federal court may begin to assume authority over the agency’s purse strings. That means the court’s order would take budgetary precedence and funding for every other MTA project would come from what was left.

Ballot measures are wastes of time and the taxpayers’ money. If the board would just demonstrate some leadership there would be no need for ballot measures, period.