MTA Faces Dilemma on Project Funding

Los Angeles County’s transit authority will need to put off such projects as construction of freeway carpool lanes if it wants to complete the Metro Rail subway and downtown-to-Pasadena trolley on schedule, according to an MTA report issued Wednesday.

The report presents Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members with a series of tough political choices for plugging an estimated $1-billion hole in the county’s long-range transportation plan.

If funding for popular projects such as neighborhood traffic improvements and municipal bus service is not cut, the report says, subway construction will have to slow down.

“Funds are available to complete the rail construction program according to the current construction schedule only if . . . the board makes tough choices on reallocation of current resources,” said the report, the first installment of the agency’s effort to create a new long-range plan.

The report is likely to set off a contentious debate on an already bitterly divided MTA board--pitting representatives of suburban cities against lawmakers from the city of Los Angeles--over diminishing federal and local transit dollars.

The report was drawn up in response to the rapidly changing financial fortunes of the agency, which received less than half of the money requested from Congress this year for the subway. And the MTA faces an additional shortfall of $40 million a year through 2010 in local sales tax revenues, according to a new UCLA economic forecast.

It also comes one year after the MTA underwent a retrenchment that included dropping from its 20-year plan rail lines that had been eagerly awaited in communities from Azusa to Torrance. The report does not address the effect of cash shortfalls on key future projects that are being extensively studied but are not yet funded, such as a rail line across the San Fernando Valley.

The MTA staff has yet to make a recommendation but offered two main options for dealing with the funding shortage:

* Postpone construction of rail lines to the Eastside, Mid-City and Pasadena by up to 5 1/2 years, an action that officials said would substantially add to the cost of already delayed and over-budget projects.

* Minimize rail construction delays by dipping into funds now allocated for neighborhood transportation programs, such as municipal bus service and a program providing free bus and taxi rides for the poor.

Jim Cragin, a Gardena city councilman who serves on the MTA board, vowed to fight any effort to take money from cities to fund rail construction.

Quoting Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy, Cragin said of the MTA: “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”

“If we have to cut back, let’s cut back on the rail,” Cragin added. “I’m not saying stop it, but slow it down.”

MTA board Chairman Larry Zarian, a Glendale city councilman and longtime subway backer, expressed disappointment that the plan assumed a continuation of expensive underground rail construction and lacked specific solutions.

“It’s essential that we look at all the options, and we haven’t,” he said. “We need to look more at above-ground rail. If we haven’t got money, we’ve got to work within our means.”

Transit officials said the agency needs to close a $492-million gap over the next 12 years even if no funds are diverted to rail projects.

Some transit board members said they could not respond to the report until they knew what projects are at risk. MTA Chief Executive Officer Joseph E. Drew postponed a workshop scheduled for Friday to give his staff time to compile a list of projects that could be put off if money was diverted to rail construction.

The transit board is not expected to make a decision until early next year.

Next year alone, the MTA faces a $53-million shortfall in its $450-million subway construction budget, $18 million in increased bus operating costs because of the recent settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by bus riders, and $33 million less in anticipated sales tax revenues because of a revised economic forecast.

In addition, the report offered the MTA’s first acknowledgment that the federal government may not fulfill its contract by 2002 to fully fund subway extensions to North Hollywood, the Eastside and the Mid-City. Because of a $184-million shortfall in congressional funding during the past two years, the report said the MTA would need grants of $180 million in each of the next five years to make up the difference.

“We now recognize that is out of the question,” Drew said in an interview.

The MTA staff proposed, as an option for closing next year’s shortfall in subway construction, tapping funds set aside for building freeway carpool lanes. MTA officials say that the carpool projects are already behind schedule. A Caltrans spokesman said the agency could not immediately comment.

James E. Moore, a USC professor of civil engineering and urban planning whom the MTA recruited for advice, said that a grab for carpool lane funds could put the traffic-easing program further behind.

“The cost-effectiveness of measures in that category greatly exceed the cost-effectiveness of rail projects,” he said. “They move far more people for much less money.”

Drew said the MTA would look for ways to cut costs before deferring any transit projects. The agency is under a court order to increase service on the busiest lines.

One possible source of funds that could be diverted to rail construction, according to the report, are some sales tax revenues provided to municipal bus operators.

Long Beach Transit receives $1.5 million for such local bus service as the Downtown Runabout. “That is a very important source of funding,” said Guy Heston, assistant general manager of Long Beach Transit. “We would be quite concerned if there is an effort to reduce it.”