Busway Route

* As a former resident of Van Nuys, near Oxnard Street and Ethel Avenue, I am shocked and concerned that special interests want to invest millions of dollars of public money to build a busway in a sparsely populated area in the corridor from Woodman Avenue and Oxnard to Chandler Boulevard and Whitsett Avenue.

With the new 2000 census numbers out, I think it is time to use some good business sense and route the busway along Oxnard from Woodman east to Lankershim Boulevard. The population density is multi-thousands with the densely populated apartments along Oxnard, while in multi-hundreds in the Chandler sector.

Why are the rich demanding buses where no significant amount of bus riders live along Chandler west of Whitsett and east of Woodman? Lots of my former neighbors on Oxnard have jobs in Warner Center or downtown Los Angeles. The once-an-hour bus Line 154 offers a direct trip to the North Hollywood Red Line. Chandler already offers 4- to 7-minute bus service.

Convenient bus service running every 10 to 15 minutes along the Oxnard Street corridor offers working-class apartment residents a level playing field to get to jobs quickly.

Additionally, staff and students at Grant High School and Valley College, and employees at Robinsons-May headquarters would benefit from rapid access from the West Valley and the Red Line.

Good planning means putting bus service where patrons live and want to go.

It is time a working-class community gets its fair share of transit improvements, rather than the wealthy along Chandler in the estate homes.

DAVID ELGENSON

Sylmar