L.A.-to-Pasadena Light Rail Line Is OKd by State Panel

Rejecting pleas from the Bus Riders Union, the California Transportation Commission gave its unanimous blessing Tuesday to construction of a light rail line between Union Station and Pasadena.

The state commission’s vote marks a milestone in efforts to get the stalled 13.7-mile rail project moving again. Paul Little, chairman of the Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority, which was created to finish the rail line, was thrilled. “This is a clear signal that the state of California supports the project,” he said. “We can now get down to the business of laying track.”

But a group of bus riders protested by shouting: “Civil rights, yes. Blue Line, no” and “Money for buses, not for rail” as they walked out of the commission meeting in Los Angeles.

The tension between backers of the rail line and the bus riders group was evident from the beginning, as former Rep. Esteban Torres, now a commission member, made the motion to approve a three-way agreement allowing construction of the rail line to proceed. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board approved the agreement Monday.

Torres said the rail line from Union Station through Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, Highland Park, South Pasadena and Pasadena includes one of the most transit-dependent areas in the region.

Bus Riders Union organizer Martin Hernandez accused Torres of taking away the civil rights of riders who want improvements to the MTA’s troubled bus system to come before the state invests $280 million in the Pasadena project.

In a civil rights lawsuit that led to the signing of an October 1996 consent decree to improve MTA’s bus service, bus rider advocates alleged that pouring billions of dollars into the region’s subway and rail system resulted in the deterioration of the bus system.

Torres said he sympathizes with the bus riders, but said San Gabriel Valley residents have a right to other forms of mass transit too.

Anti-rail activist John Walsh accused Torres of fronting for rail contractors, including The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU), by pressing for the Pasadena line, which he called “the little red caboose on the back of the money train” at MTA.

Torres said later that he was proud of his role decades ago in the founding of TELACU, which is engaged in a broad array of business ventures. But he said he was not benefiting from support of the rail project. “I just think it’s a question of misinformation,” he said.

Thomas Rubin, former treasurer of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and a consultant to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the commission the $683-million financial plan crafted by the new Pasadena rail authority is “a fatally flawed document.”

Rubin predicted that cost overruns on the project will result in a very large deficit with no sources of revenue to make it up.

Rubin also warned that attorneys for the bus riders will “use every legal weapon” to prevent the MTA from “giving away money to Pasadena until all of the consent decree obligations are met.”

But Allan Lipsky, the MTA’s chief operating officer, said the agency was committed to building the Pasadena project before the consent decree was signed.