Maybe the MTA Gets It Now

Look for the pattern here. Last December, then-Transportation Secretary Federico Pena declared wholly unrealistic the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s long-term plans for rail and bus systems for the Los Angeles Basin. He demanded a pared-down approach with a reasonable chance for success. The MTA didn’t get the message. It fell back on bloated, long-term proposals and big ideas that amounted to whimsical slapdash. Sure enough, the federal government rejected the plan last April, declaring it was riddled with “serious deficiencies and questionable assumptions.”

Federal officials demanded that the MTA return again to the drawing board and scale back its plans. But a funny thing happened on the way to the chopping block. The City Council decided to demand funds for a San Fernando Valley line that has no realistic hope of being completed in the next decade. State legislators demanded funds for another project. The media and others warned them to butt out. They didn’t get the message.

Predictably, this month, federal officials rejected the MTA’s long-range rail and bus plans for the third time, making specific reference to the ill-considered side deal with the city of Los Angeles over expanded projects. These words were used to describe the MTA’s submission: questionable, unrealistic, subject to considerable risk.

MTA officials may now have finally come clean about what they can accomplish and when. They have outlined a program contemplating further delays on completing the Mid-City, Eastside and Pasadena rail lines, adding that work on the Valley and Crenshaw lines probably must stop. There’s no probably about it.

The authority could start a turnaround by reversing a recent series of objectionable merit raises for top officials. And there is so much more to do.

The question: Do the MTA board, the City Council and state legislators finally get it, in a collective sense? Or will there be more parochial bickering and pie-in-the-sky planning over who gets what and when? Missteps like these have already hardened the hearts of those who fund the authority. It’s time for the MTA to get aboard on good planning.