‘It's Time to Move L.A.!'-Broad Coalition Organizes to Acquire Funding for Regional Transit Needs

Zev Yaroslavsky: Let me focus on funding and political will issues. We have no choice in this region but to be incremental in the way we build our transportation system because, under the best circumstances, we will only have enough funds to do things incrementally. There is nothing wrong with building a transit system incrementally. In fact, in the last six or seven years, we have built or are building four guideway lines. The Pasadena Gold Line was built six or seven years ago. The Orange Line was built a couple years ago. The Eastside Gold Line is now under construction and nearing completion, and the Exposition Light Rail, while it is extremely troubled at the moment, is under construction..."Incrementally" doesn't mean "snail's pace"; it means a project opens today; a project opens 18-24 months from now; another project opens eight months from now. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as we're keeping the momentum going.

One of the things that has frustrated me over the last couple of years, is that there has been no initiative. I don't know, as I sit here today, what the next step is. To promise everything to everybody is a colossal mistake. It's what we did in the late '80s and '90s, when I first became a member of the MTA board, in the days of largess. We promised everything to everybody: subways for everybody, light rail for everybody, goods movement for everybody...

The people movement challenge is, first and foremost, in the central and western part of Los Angeles County. There is no question about that. Drivers in this region know that it takes longer to go from point A to point B between the 405 and the Pacific Ocean than in any other part of the county. It can take you an hour to go three miles.

We've got to address that. The Expo light rail is one way to do that. Extending the subway is the other. Just in the last month, Congress has passed and the president signed a bill that included the lifting of the prohibition of tunneling under the methane gas areas under the Miracle Mile/Wilshire Boulevard area. For the first time in almost 20 years, we now have the legal right to plan and build an underground subway through that area with federal funds and with local funds.

A couple of years ago, voters passed a series of bonds, one of which was a $21 billion transit measure that included $1.4 billion for public transportation here in Los Angeles county. It was sold to voters in Los Angeles County as a subway extension jumpstart. It would have been a perfect opportunity, and it still is a perfect opportunity, for us to leverage those funds with federal funds and whatever other remnant of local funds other than sales taxes are available to begin the extension of the subway incrementally. The first phase to Fairfax and La Cienega would be $1-1.5 billion to get there. The promise that was made by promoters of that measure has failed to materialize, for budgetary reasons and political reasons. Some of the bond funds have been allocated, but the public transportation funds have not quite made it and are not likely to make it for awhile because of the state budget situation. But that money is sitting there and it ought to be used.

We have a number of funding opportunities...I'm skeptical about the ability to get the two-thirds percent necessary to get the half-cent sales tax in the midst of a recession. We're certainly going to be deeper into it later in the year. Nevertheless, it is a tool in a toolbox that has to be considered and has to be on the table. If Mike Feuer's legislation gets on the ballot and people vote to lower the threshold from two-thirds down to 55 percent, clearly we have a shot at providing some transportation [see Pending Legislation, page 5].

However, I would hasten to add that if and when we go to the people for a vote, it ought to mirror the legislation passed by the Senate in 2003, which earmarked specific amounts of money to specific projects. So we had x amount of dollars for the Gold Line extension and x amount of dollars for the subway extension and x for the Interstate-5/134 interchange; whatever it is, you and everybody knows...

The last thing I want to talk about is the political will piece of this. We are under construction now on the Exposition light rail line to Santa Monica. The first phase is to Culver City. There is a controversy that has erupted on one intersection of that line, which threatens to tube the whole line, and there may be people around this region or around that area that want to tube this line. But because there is no political will, at some level, to just finally make a decision and get the yes, when everyone's afraid to get the yes, we are on the verge of losing that line. It involves an issue around Dorsey High School. We've got to get beyond parochialism. At some point, we've got to get the yes...

At the end of the day, the goal is a product where your critics will come back to you at the end and say, "You were right, we were wrong, it's great." That's what happened with the Orange line. That's what will happen with the Expo line. That's what will happen with the Gold line to East Los Angeles. If you stop at every stop a project at every criticism, then you will never get anything done.

...In the final analysis, no one neighborhood, even my own neighborhood, should have the power to stop something that will serve the interests of a large number of people who will depend on that service. It doesn't mean you don't do it right; it doesn't mean you don't listen to the critics and evaluate and integrate their solutions and criticisms. But at the end of the day, the issue of not doing the project cannot be on the table. It has to be understood by everyone that the project is a go; it's just a matter of how we do it, that we do it right, but it's not going to not happen. That's the challenge that we all have. All the money in the world does not buy a timid politician that doesn't want to stand up and do what needs to be done, and that's where you all come in.

John Fasana: The state situation will deteriorate for another year or so. But there is economic might here; there are opportunities to pool local funding so you can bring in state funding and federal funding. We need to look at congestion pricing, tollways, and what happens if you create a product called "50 Miles An Hour," which I think is long-gone from most of our highways. What are people willing to pay to experience that? Then, how do we take those revenues and help build out that corridor to expand capacity and put bus rail service in? How do you do it without congesting the mixed-flow lanes?

The car and the freeway are here to stay. I think people are very satisfied with the choices they have in terms of what they drive, what routes they take, what they listen to when they're in the car, and even if they're willing to ride with someone and be social. I also think, though, that there is an incredible productivity that can be gained if you can encourage people to move into vanpooling-one of our lowest cost options-to put in more express bus service, and to increase the productivity of those lanes. I think we have already seen that that works-it worked for the El Monte busway. The El Monte busways have been carrying the equivalent of three or four lanes of traffic for almost 30 years, and it's something that we've actually seen get degraded over time as carpools continue to encroach into the operating hours. So we've had a lot of discussions, certainly in the San Gabriel Valley, countywide-should it be two people in the carpool lanes? Should it be three people?

...The Republican side of me says that if somebody wants to pay more to drive in a 50 mph lane, let them pay and give them something in return. I think we might get more money that way than solely asking for a tax increase that goes into the common pot. I also think there is room to look at a sales tax increase, to look at other revenue sources, other forms of taxes.

Another thing that we have to look at is the fact that the gas tax is going to be an eroding source of revenue...So, looking at how we can evolve into a vehicle miles traveled system is something we should start now. We may be three or four years away from General Motors putting out their next plug-in hybrid, and we have a lot to do.

Congestion today literally lives on the Westside. You've also got higher growth rates on the eastside of the Inland Empire, which are significantly accelerating the rate of deterioration in some of the areas that I represent. They, too, need to be at the table. Again, I think some of the concern of some of the people I work with is that a subway, for example, might eat up all the sales tax capacity in this county. How do you fund part of that, then go into assessments and other elements to help fund it? Whenever there are opportunities of that type, and certainly the Wilshire Corridor needs it and justifies a subway by itself, you have to ask yourself, if you built that three blocks south, what other types of opportunities would that create? But it's important enough to serve Wilshire specifically, because there are people there that are suffering with traffic today. Are they willing to pay to keep that on Wilshire and to put it underground?

Richard Katz:...We should not be allowing a handful of people, whether it's on the Westside or South Pasadena, to delay projects-in South Pasadena's case, since before everyone in this room was born-that have a regional benefit. We've got to understand; the day the 710 connector opens, you take 20 percent of the traffic out of Downtown L.A. What that does in terms of air quality in the San Fernando Valley, on the Westside, in Central City, is huge. The capacity you free up, without building all over the place, is huge. If you want to connect the 101 and the 405, the 10 and the 405, or the 110 and the 10, do the 710 connector. That backup starts a ripple through this whole system, and whether it's the north runway, whether it's the east/west, whether it's the Expo line and all our friends in the Cheviot Hills Homeowners Association or South Pasadena or what have you-their concerns need to be addressed, but they cannot be allowed to impose their will on the rest of the region.

The challenge is that we all have to give up one of our sacred cows to get the greater good done. We may need more freeway lanes in some areas. We may need toll roads to do the 710 connector that charge tolls to single occupancy vehicles and trucks.

And by the way, I don't know how the rumor got out there that the MTA was really excited about charging carpoolers in HOT lanes; we're discussing charging single occupancy vehicles in hot lanes, but I've never heard anyone on the MTA board suggest that we ought to be charging carpoolers to drive in carpool lanes.

To make all this happen now, it's important that we put together a comprehensive plan. We have to do small things and big things simultaneously, but they have to make sense in the plan. I think those are things we need to looking at. We're going to need your support to do it, and frankly, we're going to need your support when narrow interests come forward and say, "I know you addressed the 25 things I put on the list, but I'm still not happy, and I'm never going to be happy." We have to acknowledge that some people are just never going to be happy, no matter what we do. We have to go at them with a vision to move this county forward while we have this window of opportunity.