BY CARL OLSON
Just how much business-busting, job-killing, and consumer-crushing actions by local governments can Los Angeles take?
An impending threat is the Orange Line busway extension in the West San Fernando Valley by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It is truly a “busway to nowhere,” costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars with nearly no public benefit.
Sixty businesses along Canoga Avenue will be destroyed. That’s because the busway would run right adjacent to Canoga Avenue, instead of using Canoga Avenue itself. The businesses across the street will also suffer from the reduced business traffic of the thousands of customers daily.
Hundreds of employees will be displaced along with the businesses. Thousands of customers will lose their favorite close-in establishments. Comparable nearby commercial properties in the West Valley are nearly nonexistent for relocation.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the current chair of the MTA’s 13-member board. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has promoted the Orange Line as his pet project. They endorse spending more than $200 million of tax money on construction, and then tens of millions of dollars of annual tax-subsidies forever for this very low ridership extension.
This “busway to nowhere” goes from the existing Orange Line station at Canoga Avenue and Victory Boulevard and heads northward to the Chatsworth train station. It does not replace an existing bus line on Canoga Avenue. That’s because there is nearly no bus ridership there. On the parallel bus line on De Soto Avenue, the weekend service is so low that it is discontinued by MTA on the weekends.
One would have thought that the MTA would have established a real demand for a separate busway. In 2007, it retained consulting firm Iteris Inc. for $9.3 million to conduct studies, including projected ridership. Iteris came up with a number of 9,023 daily boardings, or about 4,500 riders on round trips.
Mysterious model
Iteris used a mysterious ridership model to arrive at this 9,023 figure. It is mysterious because it did not provide to the MTA or the public the methodology by which nearly zero ridership today along Canoga Avenue will jump to 9,023 boardings daily. When a public record request was made for the ridership model, MTA’s representative wrote, “MTA’s consultant prepared the projections, which is based on consultant’s proprietary analysis, and is therefore not public information.”
Thus, MTA was not even able to evaluate or intelligently vote on the Orange Line Extension with any realistic cost-benefit analysis. The public could not make any intelligent evaluation of the environmental impact report.
This boondoggle by the MTA board is truly disheartening. The construction cost of $200 million-plus for 4,500 persons daily comes to nearly $50,000 a rider or the cost of two or three good cars. These 4,500 persons are a truly microscopic part of the public way less than 1 percent of the area, and way less than one-one-hundredth of 1 percent of the county’s population. But the taxpayers of all Los Angeles County are being taxed for all MTA operations.
When one puts together all of MTA’s transit lines, they provide service to less than 5 percent of the public, with no real growth in sight. The other 95 percent of the public prefers their own vehicles for convenience, speed, economy and business operations. The other 95 percent of the public also pays the taxes to support the services provided to the less than 5 percent.
So, who could possibly benefit from this enormous boondoggle? Undoubtedly the construction contractors will benefit from the $200 million-plus. The bus drivers, mechanics and transit unions will benefit from the highly subsidized buses. That’s about it. But then again, they certainly make plenty of campaign donations.
MTA is planning on breaking ground in June. In this economic downturn of major proportions, the public may want the MTA to defer this vast diversion of tax funds for such a minor benefit. In addition to Mayor Villaraigosa and Supervisor Yaroslavsky, the public should talk to the other MTA board members Supervisors Michael Antonovich, Don Knabe, Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas; Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian; Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar; Lakewood City Council member Diane DuBois; Duarte City Council member John Fasana; Santa Monica City Council member Pam O’Connor; and Villaraigosa appointees Richard Katz and Rita Robinson.
Maybe MTA’s board will respond with a reconsideration. Maybe they will request consultant Iteris to come clean with its ridership projections. Maybe the EIR will be reopened so that an actual public evaluation can be conducted with all the facts. Maybe they will establish a regular bus line on Canoga Avenue and see if anybody gets on board. Maybe they will use the $200 million-plus to benefit the 95 percent of the taxpaying public, such as speeding up the poorly performing freeways.
It’s worth a real try.
Carl Olson is a college accounting instructor who heads two public policy groups. He lives in Woodland Hills.
