Pasadena Transit Directors OK Rail Budget

Over the objections of organized bus riders, directors of the region’s newest transit agency Friday unanimously approved a precariously balanced $683.7-million budget for completion of a light-rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena.

Adoption of the financial plan by the Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority is a crucial step in unlocking state and local funds needed for the rail project.

To complete the project by June 2003, the financial plan counts on $280 million in state transportation funds and $89 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The financial plan slashes the MTA’s last budget for the project by avoiding the MTA’s costly overhead and making major contractors responsible for completing design and construction work at a fixed price--a concept known as “design-build.”

The new budget achieves a fragile balance by assuming income from leasing the rights to lay fiber-optic cable along the route, by charging for parking, and by developing real estate at several stations along the line.

Even so, the 13.7-mile rail line from Union Station to the eastern edge of Pasadena would be the most expensive light-rail project on a per-mile basis ever built in the United States.

Authority Chairman Paul Little expressed confidence that the unanimous vote on the financial plan sends a strong signal to Sacramento that the rail line enjoys broad support.

Overcoming his initial concerns, Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez joined the four other authority members in endorsing the project’s financial and management plans.

Backers of the latter-day trolley see it as essential in providing a transit alternative to the curving and congested Pasadena Freeway, the oldest in the state.

Although the rail line would serve both the transit-dependent poor and upscale commuters, leaders of the Bus Riders Union see the project as a threat.

At a crowded meeting in South Pasadena, they argued that a federal court order issued Monday requires the MTA to make improvements to the bus system its highest priority ahead of any new rail projects.

In his decision this week, court-appointed special master Donald Bliss ordered the MTA to buy 532 natural gas-powered buses to relieve overcrowding and improve service. Bliss also found that the MTA had failed to comply with a consent decree signed in October 1996 that established a schedule for reducing chronic bus overcrowding.

The bus rider advocates vowed to block the transfer of $369 million in state and local transportation funds needed to build the Pasadena line.

Martin Hernandez, an organizer for the union, told the authority members that they had better come up with a “contingency plan to fill the gap . . . if they don’t get money from the state or MTA.”

Friday’s meeting demonstrated that the Pasadena rail authority cannot escape the bus versus rail battle that has defined the struggle over mass transit in Los Angeles for years.

Adoption of the financial plan was required when state lawmakers created the transit agency out of frustration with the MTA’s poor track record of building rail projects in Los Angeles.

Larry Miller, a veteran engineering company executive, told the board that using the design-build approach will dramatically reduce the MTA’s budget for the Pasadena line and shave 12 to 15 months from the completion schedule.

Miller said the goal of the authority is “completion of construction at the earliest possible date and at the least possible cost.”

Paul Little said using the design-build strategy shifts “the responsibility to be on time and on budget” to the contractor.

At $683.7 million, the revised budget does not include the cost of purchasing the railroad right of way, other property and light-rail cars ordered by the MTA, which will still operate the trains.

When those costs are added, the Pasadena rail line is--on a per-mile basis--America’s most expensive light-rail line.

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John Dyer, former head of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and now one of the Pasadena authority’s acting chief executives, attributed the higher costs to the price of labor and to the necessity of building bridges on the line, including between Union Station and Chinatown.

The California Transportation Commission will meet March 29 in Sacramento to review the adequacy of the financial plan and accompanying project management documents.

MTA chief executive Julian Burke said in an interview that his transit agency will have to issue more bonds to raise the money for the Pasadena project.

The budget assumes that $42.7 million can be raised from issuing bonds backed by future revenues from fiber-optic cable, parking fees and real estate development at stations.

And the plan has the thinnest of reserves--just $17.2 million--and $15 million of that would come from a “livable cities” grant the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments hopes to obtain from Washington.