MTA Chief Calls for New Bus Network

In a sharp break with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s long absorption in rail transit, the agency’s chief executive, Julian Burke, called Thursday for a radically new course, including a “gold standard” of faster bus service.

But as Burke offered his vision for the future of mass transit in Los Angeles, a coalition of mostly Latino and black officials mounted a last-minute effort to derail a measure on Tuesday’s county ballot that would cut off local sales tax funding for new subway construction.

Surrounded by Eastside residents wearing T-shirts reading “Broken Promises,” city, state and federal officeholders decried Proposition A as misguided and shortsighted. Supervisor Gloria Molina complained that the measure would eliminate the possibility of future subways “not for one year, not for 10 years, but forever.”

The region’s strongest subway advocate in Congress, Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles), said: “With our growth and our economy, we should never say never.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the measure’s sponsor, later defended his initiative as essential if the county is going to have an effective mass transit system. “This agency cannot sustain the kind of investment required by a subway,” he said.

Although opponents of Yaroslavsky’s measure gathered on the steps of the MTA’s extravagant headquarters, the transit agency’s chief executive and a consultant were laying out an ambitious plan for creating a vast network of rapid bus lines. The rapid buses would use exclusive bus lanes during peak periods, make limited stops and rely on state-of-the-art “signal priority” systems that can change traffic lights to green at intersections. Buses might even be painted gold to promote their “gold standard” of service.

It is a dramatic proposal for an agency that has invested billions of dollars in building the subway and two light-rail lines while neglecting the decaying bus system used by more than 91% of MTA riders.

“I certainly am developing a clear understanding that this agency and its predecessors allowed this bus system to crash and there is no further patience for that,” Burke said in an interview.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, chairman of the MTA board, echoed that sentiment by declaring that now is the time to focus on quick improvements to the troubled bus system.

“Too much of the conversation in the past years has been talking about solutions that won’t take place for 10 or 20 years, if at all,” Riordan said.

The first phase of the rapid bus system could be in place in a year if the transit agency’s board votes to support Burke’s recommendation next month. It was clear, however, that some board members believe that putting more buses on congested streets is not the only answer.

“We’ve resolved in our minds that buses are important,” said MTA board member Larry Zarian, a Glendale councilman. But, he cautioned, “all of our transportation problems are not going to be resolved by buses.”

The agency must submit a plan to the state by early December to improve public transit, particularly in the Eastside and Mid-City areas, where rail projects have been halted, or risk losing state funds. The MTA has been stripped of responsibility for designing and building a light rail project from Union Station to Pasadena.

All told, the transit authority expects to have about $1 billion available over the next six years for transit projects. But MTA officials say that there is not enough money in the next few years to undertake a new rail project because the agency faces other costs, such as building freeway sound walls, repairing El Nino-damaged roads and funding completion of the subway to North Hollywood. In addition, cities will be pressing the MTA to fund local street improvement projects.

Burke is recommending that the board commit at least $399 million for the rapid bus system. The plan envisions 400 buses operating on a 340-mile network of 16 routes crisscrossing much of the county.

The agency is looking at establishing the rapid bus system on existing routes and possibly in the future on abandoned railroad rights of way along Exposition Boulevard from USC to the Westside and Chandler Boulevard across the San Fernando Valley. Also being studied are light-rail lines on those routes and to the Eastside.

At the outdoor news conference, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) said the anti-subway proposition would deny a subway to people who have paid taxes and waited for years for a rail connection to downtown and beyond. “It may be the only option, the best option for transportation in their area,” he said.

But Martin Hernandez, an organizer for the Bus Riders Union, said passage of Yaroslavsky’s initiative is necessary if the MTA is ever to abide by a federal court order to improve bus service. “This whole subway was built on broken promises to bus riders,” he said.

In another matter Thursday, the board began considering a proposal to delegate major decisions to a “Directors’ Committee” composed of as few as three of its 13 members.