LA City Councilman & MTA Director Tom LaBonge Offers a Bullish Agenda for Rail

Councilmember, you have been a member of the MTA Board of Directors for almost a year. Please share with our readers the regional agenda that you would like to see advanced at the MTA.

I appreciate my appointment because it makes me able to affect one of the most important concerns of all Angelenos and Southern Californians: traffic mobility. After doing some analysis of the region, and while trying to think beyond my time on the Board, I think it would be appropriate to look at heavy rail as a future solution to some of our mobility challenges. Rail could be considered not just in the Wilshire Center area, but also in the San Fernando Valley and to LAX.

Given the scarcity of resources and the fact that Congress has not yet reauthorized the transportation funding bill, should heavy rail be our first priority or just one of many?

There are many things that need to be done in our region, including the improvements to Highway 14 out to the Antelope Valley; improvements on Interstate 5 to the Orange County line through the East Los Angeles intersection; the completion of the Expo Line, which is so important; and the present construction on the East Side rail line; not to mention the Orange Line. All of that is very important, but I have been in public service for thirty years, and there absolutely always has been a challenge to finance anything. As a region, we must be prepared to look in the future to the option of heavy rail, both under and aboveground, much like BART in the Bay Area. Speed is so important, and heavy rail provides that opportunity. Speed is key.

There are a number of people who suggest that there is really little that can be done to deal with congestion. Are they wrong or misguided, or is there some element of truth in their pessimism?

I think they are wrong. There are some challenges. I think that the Governor's intention to suspend Proposition 42 does hurt our region because it puts off opportunities to invest in our infrastructure: in the roads, freeways, and transit. We must get the full amount of money for that purpose. The goals set out in Mobility 21 are also extremely important to achieve. I'm a little bit of a history buff, and if you look at old historic maps of the region, the trails of Los Pobladores and the El Camino Real form a path through our region that is similar to the path of the tracks of the Pacific Railroad, which is similar to what is now the freeways of Southern California, which are beginning to be similar to the path of the ever-growing Metro Rail and Metrolink systems.

We just have to do more. In 1958, the state passed a comprehensive plan for freeways throughout the region, including the San Bernardino Freeway, the Long Beach Freeway, the Harbor Freeway, and the Hollywood Freeway. Then in the 1960s, they extended the Ventura Freeway, the Santa Monica Freeway, and the Pomona Freeway. In the 1970s and early in the 1980s, the Foothill Freeway, the Ronald Reagan Freeway, the Simi Valley Freeway and other projects came in.

However, there were some transit ways that were never built, like the Beverly Hills Freeway, and the traffic through the core of West Los Angeles is a direct result of not having a road system that fits the needs of the people. The only way out of that would be a heavy rail system that would flow through West Los Angeles, going all the way from Santa Monica to UCLA, where 68,000 people are involved at the university each day, if you include faculty, students, support staff, and the medical center. They represent a tremendous potential ridership for a new rail line.

We talk about Downtown Los Angeles, but there is a downtown Century City, a downtown Westwood, and a downtown West L.A. that also need their transit needs addressed. And on the other side of the mountains, we have just spent $4.2 billion for a Red Line system in the Hollywood/North Hollywood area that ends at Lankershim and Chandler. I would like to see it go north to the San Fernando Valley, to the Valley Plaza complex, and then go in the center of the 170 freeway to the north of the Valley.

Councilmember, the MTA repeatedly expresses itself in support of a multimodal transportation system; you have stressed in this interview the need for rail. How does the whole come together as in integrated system that allows for greater mobility in the Los Angeles basin?

Well, I think that bus lines should be spokes from the station stops of the light and heavy rail. That is very important to have. I think that our bus lines should be shorter. Right now, the Western Avenue bus runs all of the way down to Imperial Highway on Western. Maybe it should run half as far and connect with another bus coming the other way. We could look at increasing the frequency of bus service through that method. We could still provide the service, but without these super-long bus lines that take an awful lot of time to get across town. Also, small systems like DASH are really important.

I was talking to someone in my neighborhood, and he said, "What can you do about improving subway accessibility?" I would like to see what I call a "red car cab," which would circulate through the region around each subway station. Adjacent to each station would be a cab stand where you and others can share a red car cab, like a jitney.

The state is beginning to stress the need for better linkage of land use and transportation planning and policy. For example, the Senate recently combined into one its Transportation and Housing Committees. What is MTA doing to link the two functions, and, given your experiences in Hollywood, how has it worked when transit planners have done so?

Number one, I think it is very important that Con Howe, who I believe has served the city well for over a decade, has announced his retirement. That gives us in the City of Los Angeles an opportunity to have a discussion while the Mayor conducts a nationwide search for a new planning director. So, we can talk about that issue, especially in making sure that high-density development is complementary to transit facilities, such as subway station stops. I am certainly going to look at that.

Last question. You are one member of the MTA Board, a 13-member regional commission. What has been the reaction of your colleagues and MTA staff to the ideas, such as more heavy rail, that you have been advancing in this interview?

Some people question this idea because they think that we will never get out of our financial hole and find the money to pay for everything. But I know that unless you start talking early and form a vision, nothing happens. At the dedication of the Red Line downtown, then-City Council President John Ferraro complimented the late Tom Bradley for his work on the subway. He said, "Tom, you were right, but you were off just a little. You said you would have subway construction underway 18 months from your election in 1973. Well Tom, you were right about one thing – it took 18 years." People say that it will take 18 years to get us moving down Wilshire or out in the Valley to Chandler. So, I say that I want to try and begin to reduce that 18 years, and to start the discussion.

I know that members of the Board of Supervisors are very concerned. Some of them feel that the City of Los Angeles takes too much money. I think that improvements here serve all of us throughout the region, whether we work, recreate, or live in Los Angeles. We are all in it together. I think, very clearly, we need to complete all of the projects that are on the board right now. The Eastside line, the Expo Line, and the extension of the Gold Line to Montclair would be done before I would ask for a dollar to construct a subway system. All I want is some focus on developing plans and ideas for the future. We need to be prepared, because we don't want to wait for another energy crisis.

I have really focused on this. I know my colleagues on the MTA board have a variety of opinions, and I hope to convince them, with the help of the citizens who I have talked to and organized in this discussion over the last year. I am very pleased to have the support of Mayor Hahn in this effort. Antonio Villaraigosa also spoke in support of heavy rail when he was on the MTA Board.