Galanter Opposes Bid to Halt Future Subways

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, one of the region’s most vocal transportation advocates, said Wednesday that she opposes a November ballot measure to halt future subway construction, while bus rider activists announced that they now support the proposal.

Proposition A, sponsored by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, would prohibit the use of the county’s transit sales tax for construction of any more subways beyond the North Hollywood extension of the Red Line.

Galanter said the measure is too rigid. “Zev called to ask me to sign on to Prop. A, and I refused to do it,” she said. “It’s the height of folly to say that we will never build more subways.”

No sooner had Galanter announced her opposition than the measure picked up the endorsement of the Bus Riders Union, which had opposed the initiative.

“It is important to take the question of new subway construction off the table,” said Rita Burgos, an organizer with the group. She said removing the subway option should narrow the competition for transit funds and focus the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s attention on improving the bus system.

For her part, Galanter warned that the proposition’s passage could complicate the extension of the Green Line to Los Angeles International Airport.

Though that route is a light rail line operating above ground, some advocates of extending it to the airport believe the best course would be to take the train underground. Galanter said that method might be essential because the federal government imposes strict height limits on structures near runways.

Yaroslavsky said that nothing in his measure would prohibit the airport from using its own funds to tunnel under the runways if that becomes necessary. The light rail line, which runs down the middle of the Century Freeway to El Segundo, could be extended to LAX at or above ground or in a shallow trench using transit sales tax money.

The supervisor welcomed the Bus Riders Union endorsement. “The people who have suffered the most because of the $300-million-a-mile subway boondoggle are the transit-dependent” who ride on overcrowded buses, he said.

Yaroslavsky said the measure’s backers now span the political spectrum from state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and the Bus Riders Union to Supervisor Mike Antonovich and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Galanter’s remarks came during an address to the Urban Land Institute in which she also stepped up her attack on plans to expand LAX, predicting that any effort to increase the airport’s size will draw lawsuits from neighboring cities.

“We know there will be a lawsuit,” she said. “There are lawyers gearing up all over.”

With litigation a virtual certainty, Galanter said, she believes the city needs a strong backup plan. She favors development of the city-owned airport in Palmdale, but that idea has been greeted skeptically by airline executives and airport officials who say Palmdale is too far from Los Angeles to ever emerge as an alternative to LAX.

Airport Director Jack Driscoll, who is used to debating Galanter over LAX, listened politely as she assailed the expansion effort. He retorted by emphasizing the need for regional air traffic expansion and the importance that air traffic plays in the Southern California economy.

In response to a question, Driscoll indicated that the environmental impact report for the LAX expansion, once scheduled for completion this fall, now is not expected until spring. That means that airport expansion, one of Mayor Richard Riordan’s top priorities, could not win approval any earlier than late next year, giving Galanter more time to continue drumming up opposition.