Assessment of Community Planning for

Mass Transit: Volume 6—Los Angeles Case

Study

February 1976

NTIS order #PB-253684
OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT

DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

Emilio Q. Daddario, Director

Daniel V. De Simone, Depuly Director

URBAN MASS TRANSIT ADVISORY PANEL

George Krambles, Chairman, Chicago Transit Authority

Walter J. Bierwagen Bernard M. Oliver

Amalgamated Transit Union Hewlett-Packard Corporarion

Robert A. Burco Simon Reich

Oregon DOT Gibbs and Hill

Jeanne J. Fox Thomas C. Sutherland, Jr.

Joint Center for Princeton University

Political Studies

Lawrence A. Goldmuntz Frederick P. Salvucci

Economics and Science Planning Massachusetts DOT

Dorn McGrath Stewart F. Taylor

George Washington University Sanders and Thomas

OTA TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM STAFF

Gretchen S. Kolsrud, Program Manager

Mary E. Ames Larry L. Jenney

V. Rodger Digilio Bev Johnson

Thomas E. Hirsch, 111 Teri Miles

Inc.

CONTRACTORS

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill System Design Concepts, Inc.

. . .

111
PREFACE

This report on urban transportation planning in the Los Angeles,

California metropolitan area is one of nine case studies undertaken by the

Office of Technology Assessment to provide an information base for an

overall assessment of community planning for mass transit.

The findings of the overall study are reported in the summary

document, An Assessment of Community PlantzingforA4ass Trasit, which forms the

first volume of this series. The assessment was performed at the request of

the Committee on Appropriations of the U.S. Senate, on behalf of its

Transportation Subcommittee.

The study was directed by the Office of Technology Assessment’s

Transportation Program Staff with guidance and review provided by the

OTA Urban Mass Transit Advisory Panel. The firms of Skidmore, Owings

and Merrill and System Design Concepts, Inc., were contractors for the

study. This assessment is a joint effort, identifying different possible points

of view but not necessarily reflecting the opinion of any individual.
INTRODUCTION

This report assesses how one of nine major

United States metropolitan areas made its decisions

about the development or modernization of rail

transit.

The assessment of the nine cities attempts to

identify the factors that help communities, facing

critical technological choices, make wise decisions

that are consistent with local and national goals for

transit. The study investigates the following issues:

• Are there major barriers to communication

and cooperation among governmental

agencies involved in transit planning and

operating? Do these barriers interfere with

making sound decisions ?

• Do transit decisions reflect the combined

interests of all major public groups, including citizen organizations, trade unions,

the business community, and others?

● Does the planning process provide enough

information about the advantages and

disadvantages of alternative courses of

action to provide a solid basis for making

decisions ?

• Does the availability or lack of financing, or

the conditions under which financing has

been provided, unnecessarily limit the

range of options that are considered?

The ultimate purpose of the work has been to

cast light on those prospective changes in national

transit policy and administrative programs which

might improve, in different ways and to different

extents, the way communities plan mass transit

systems. The nine cities were selected to represent

the full range of issues that arise at different stages

in the overall process of planning and developing a

transit system.

San Francisco, for example, has the first regional

rail system built in decades, while Denver is

planning an automated system, and voters in

Seattle have twice said “no” to rail transit funding

proposals.

The assessment of transit planning in each of the

nine metropolitan areas has been an inquiry into an

evolving social process. Consequently, the study

results more closely resemble historical analysis

than classical technology assessment.

This study employs a set of evaluation guidelines

to orient the investigation in the nine metropolitan

areas and to provide the basis for comparative

judgments about them. The guidelines were

derived from issues identified during preliminary

visits to the metropolitan areas, a review of Federal

requirements for transit planning, and an investigation via the literature into the state-of-theart in the field.

The evaluation guidelines cover major topics

which were investigated during the case assessment process. They deal with the character of the

institutional arrangements and the conduct of the

technical planning process.

GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSMENT:

INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

Some of the most significant influences on

transit planning are exerted by the organizations

responsible for conducting the planning and

making the decisions. Three guidelines were used

to evaluate the institutional arrangements in the

nine metropolitan areas:

●

●

●

Agencies responsible for various aspects of

transit decisionmaking should cooperate

effectively in a clearly designated “forum”.

The participants in this forum should have

properly designated decisionmaking

authority, and the public should have

formal channels for holding decisionmakers accountable for their actions.

Citizens should participate in the transit

planning process from its beginning and

should have open lines of communication

with decisionmakers.

vii
GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSMENT:

TECHNICAL PLANNING PROCESS

The technical planning process provides the

information that public officials and their constituents draw upon in making plans and decisions.

Four guidelines were used to assess the technical

planning process in the nine metropolitan areas:

●

●

●

●

Broad, explicit goals and objectives should

guide technical planning and decisionmaking.

A range of realistic alternative solutions

should be developed.

The evaluation of these alternatives should

give balanced consideration to a full range

of goals and objectives.

A practical and flexible plan for financing

and implementation should be developed.

During visits to each of the nine metropolitan

areas, the study team interviewed the principal

representative of the transportation planning

institution and other main participants in the local

planning process. The visits were supplemented by

interviews with UMTA officials in Washington.

Pertinent documents-official plans, reports,

studies, and other material—were reviewed in each

case.

The information thus collected was used in

compiling a history of the transit planning process

in each case area, organized around key decisions

such as the decision to study transit, the selection of

a particular transit system, and public ratification

of the decision to pay for and build the system. The

main political, institutional, financial and technical

characteristics affecting the conduct of the planning process were then assessed in light of the

evaluation guidelines.

The same set of guidelines used in assessing each

case metropolitan area was employed in making a

generalized evaluation of the metropolitan experience. The results of the generalized evaluation are

summarized in the report, An Assessment of Community Planning for Mass Trasit: Summary Report, issued by

the Office of Technology Assessment in February

1976.

.

Vlll
CONTENTS

SUMMARY AND HIGHLIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

CHRONOLOGY OF THE TRANSIT PLANNING PROCESS . . . 33

SUMMARY CASE ASSESSMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 9

ix
x
●

●

●

●

●

Los Angeles, the second largest

metropolitan area in the United States,

spreads out in a distinctive style of

development. Although the city’s CBD is

strong, major centers of employment and

residential development are scattered

throughout the area in a decentralized,

low-density pattern.

Planning for rapid rail in Los Angeles has

been dominated since 1964 by the

Southern California Rapid Transit District

(SCRTD). SCRTD has narrowly interpreted its mandate to develop a regional

mass transit system by calling for a

BART-type fixed-guideway technology.

This preference, combined with the

requirement to seek areawide financing

support in regional referenda, has encouraged the design of extensive transit

systems in order to provide adequate

service to voters in Los Angeles suburbs.

Ironically, the systems placed before

voters in 1968 and 1974 were defeated

partly because the suburbs were unwilling to bear the cost of so expensive an

investment.

With the encouragement of the State

legislature, SCRTD has now taken a

different approach by trying to develop a

consensus on an acceptable “starter

line,” financed with “voter-free” State

funding. This project, much more limited

in scope than the previous ones, seems to

have a good chance of success.

Summary and Highlights

●

●

●

●

SCRTD’S single-minded advocacy of a

fixed-guideway rapid transit system has

made it uneasy with the task of evaluating

alternative transportation modes. UMTA

has repeatedly urged SCRTD to provide a

balanced view of alternative transportation options and to formulate short-term

transit improvements.

The Southern California Association of

Governments (SCAG) has not been

strong enough to exert control over the

activities of SCRTD. Although SCAG’S

influence is growing, SCRTD until recently has operated with a considerable

degree of autonomy. This situation

hindered UMTA’S efforts since 1971 to

ensure that the Los Angeles transit

system was designed within the context

of a regional transportation plan.

SCRTD’S community involvement

procedures have included public

meetings and a citizens’ advisory committee, as well as the two referenda. However, SCRTD has failed to structure and

regularize participation at regional, corridor, and neighborhood levels.

Planning for rapid transit in Los Angeles

has become more sophisticated during

the past 5 years, albeit in large part under

pressure from UMTA and SCAG. SCRTD

gradually has expanded the process to

include an examination of regional and

local objectives, more thorough analysis

of alternatives, and greater consideration

of short-term transit improvements.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Los Angeles lies at the heart of one of the most

complex metropolitan regions in the United States.

As a major center of commerce, finance, and

industry in the West, and the Southern California

region for many years has captured the imagination

of those who see in the patterns of its development

the shape of the American city of the future.

The Southern California region extends well

beyond the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan

area (SMSA). As defined by the boundaries of the

regional planning agency, the region covers 38,000

square miles containing a population of more than

10 million residents. Aside from Los Angeles

County, the region includes the counties of

Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, and

Imperial.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach SMSA encompasses the most heavily populated area of the

region. With a population of slightly over 7 million

in 1970, the SMSA is the second largest in the

United States. It covers 4,069 square miles and

includes 76 municipalities other than the cities of

Los Angeles and Long Beach. The City of Los

Angeles covers 464 square miles within the County

of Los Angeles, and the boundaries of the county

coincide with those of the SMSA.

Built on a vast plain surrounded by mountains on

the north and east and the Pacific Ocean on the

south and west, Los Angeles spreads out in a

pattern of development that gives the region a

distinctive style. Although the city’s CBD is strong,

major centers of employment and residential

development are scattered throughout the area in a

decentralized, low-density pattern of growth (see

Figure 2).

During the past 25 years, shifts in population

have reinforced this decentralized pattern. The

largest change in population for the SMSA took

place during the decade between 1950 and 1960,

when the SMSA grew by 45.5 percent. During the

Metropolitan Settingl

1950-60 period, the most pronounced growth took

place in the suburbs. While the population of the

City of Los Angeles increased by 25.8 percent and

Long Beach grew by 37.2 percent—substantial

increases in both cases—the population of the

remainder of Los Angeles County increased by 66.6

percent.

Population growth during the next decade

reflected the same pattern but indicated that the

overall rate of growth had slowed. Starting with a

total population of 6,038,771 in 1960, the entire

SMSA increased by 16.5 percent to a total of

7,036,887. As it had the decade before, the

distribution of this growth also favored the

suburban areas of the county. In 1960, the City of

Los Angeles held 41.1 percent of the population,

Long Beach 5.7 percent, and the remainder of Los

Angeles County had 53.2 percent. By 1970, the

share of the two central cities had dropped to 39.9

percent and 5.1 percent respectively, and the

percentage of the population living in the suburban

areas of the county had increased to 55 percent.

One characteristic of this pattern of development

is that the distribution of population has become

relatively even throughout the county. Based on

studies undertaken by the Southern California

Rapid Transit District, Wilshire Boulevard in the

CBD had the highest density (20 persons per acre)

and percentage of population (18 percent) in 1970.

The areas surrounding it were less dense but not so

radically different in terms of population. In the

northwest, the San Fernando Valley had 14.4

percent of the population and a density of seven

persons per square acre. The areas to the

southwest and south of the CBD averaged

densities from 12 persons per acre to 8 persons per

acre. East of the CBD, in the Santa Ana area, the

figures are higher. In 1970, 17.2 percent of the

population lived in the area at a density of nine

persons per square acre. With 6 percent and 5.5.

percent of the population respectively, Pasadena

and the San Gabriel Valley were considerably lower

than the other areas; but their densities were

comparable at seven and nine persons per acre.

I See Figure 1, pages 20 and 21

This pattern of population distribution and

density stimulated a considerable amount of debate

3
LAND AREA (1970)

(square miles)

Suburban Ring 3,556. 6

Los Angeles City 463.7

Long Beach City 48. 7

Entire SMSA 4,06 9

POPULATION

Suburban Los Angeles Long Beach

Ring City City

1960 3,215,58 8 2,479,01 5 344,168

1970 3,868,65 8 2,809,59 6 358,633

DENSITY

(population/square mile)

Suburban Los Angeles

Ring City

1960 879 5,34 6

1970 1,08 8 6,05 9

POPULATION

Percent Change 1960-1970

20.3%

Long Beach

City

7,067

Suburban Los Long

7,364 Ring Angeles Beach

FIGURE 2:LOS ANGELES METROPOLITAN CHARACTERISTICS

Source: Urban Transportation Fact Book, American Institute of Planners and

the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the U.S., Inc., 1974.

A Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) includes a center city (or

cities) , usually with a population of at least 50,000, plus adjacent counties

or other political divisions that are economically and socially integrated

with the central area.

4
about the type of mass transit system best suited to

serve the area, Whether a high-capacity mass rapid

transit system could be justified in any of these

areas was a central question throughout the

planning process.

EXISTING PASSENGER

TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

Los Angeles has come to be known as the

freeway capital of the world. Although the region

had a highly developed interurban railway network

until shortly after World War II, it was replaced by

an extensive system of freeways, and Los Angeles

has become one of the most auto-dependent

metropolises in the United States.

The total number of vehicles registered in the

seven-county region was 7,095,138 in 1973.

Automobiles amounted to 76 percent of this total,

and Los Angeles County had 3.7 million

automobiles or 69 percent of all automobiles in the

region. It is estimated that 41 percent of the

population owned an automobile in 1973 and that

nearly 65 percent of the land area of downtown Los

Angeles was devoted to the service, storage, or

movement of motor vehicles.

Downtown Los Angeles lies at the center of an

elaborate grid of freeways that links together the

entire region. Roughly speaking, the grid is formed

by four north-south freeways and several freeways

running east and west, The first four are the San

Diego Freeway (I-405) to the west of the CBD; the

Long Beach and Harbor freeways connecting the

city to Long Beach and Pasadena; and 1-605, which

runs east of the city. The second group is formed by

the leg of the San Diego Freeway that crosses to the

east just north of Long Beach; the Santa Monica

and Hollywood and Golden State freeways linking

the city to the coast and San Fernando Valley on the

west; and the Santa Ana, Ramona, and San

Bernardino freeways that link the city to areas in

the east and south. Interstate 210 and the Ventura

Freeway mark the northern line of the grid.

Historically the system of interurban railways

that provided public transportation to the region

closely resembled this elaborate network of

freeways. The Pacific Electric System, as it was

called, had over 1,100 track miles connecting more

than 50 communities in the region before it began

to go into decline in the 1930’s and was gradually

replaced by buses.

The Southern California Rapid Transit District

(SCRTD) is now responsible for the provision of

public transit service in Los Angeles County.

Although there are 13 other transit companies in

the region, SCRTD is by far the largest. The

number of buses it operated grew from 1,771 in

1973-74 to 2,111 in 1974-75. Although SCRTD ran

a $44.6 million deficit in fiscal year 1974, the

number of revenue passengers it carried had risen

from 139.3 million riders in 1966 to 152.5 million in

1974 (see Figure 3). Table 1 shows the amounts of

Federal assistance provided to SCRTD (and its

predecessor, the Metropolitan Transit Authority)

since the beginning of the UMTA program.

TABLE I.—Federal Assistance to

Los Angeles Transit Programs

From F.Y. 1962 to May 31, 1975

Type of Assistance Federal Share Total Costs

Capital Grants . . . . . . . . . . . $78,530,000 $110,717,000

Technical Studies . . . . . . . . 6,440,000 9,560,000

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . $84,970,000 $120,277,000

Source: Urban Mass Transportation Administration

The statistical data on the mode and distribution

of the journeys to work underscore the decentralized land use pattern described earlier and the

predominant role the automobile plays in the

county (see Figure 4). In 1960, 75 percent of the

employed residents of the center cities and 86

percent of the employed residents of the suburban

ring used automobiles to get to work. The figures

for public transit use were 13 percent and 5 percent,

respectively. In 1970, the pattern was even

stronger: 82 percent of the employed residents of

the center city and 89 percent of the employed

residents of the suburban ring used autos to get to

work, while the percentage of employed residents

in each who used public transit was 9 percent and 3

percent, respectively.

The distribution of trips to work illuminates the

comparative importance of trips to and within the

suburbs over CBD-oriented trips. Between 1960

and 1970, the number of work trips into the center

city increased by 7 percent; but the work trips from

the central city into the suburban ring increased 41

percent, and work trips both beginning and ending

in the suburban ring increased by 26 percent.

One other aspect of the region’s travel patterns is

worth noting, although it is not directly tied to the

5
VEHICLE MILES OPERATED

(millions of miles )

Peak Year =1973 (63.8 million miles)

Low Year =1966 (53.7 million miles)

REVENUE PASSENGERS

(millions of passengers)

Peak Year:=1974 (152.6 million riders)

Low Year= 1966 (135.5 million riders)

54. 4 57. 5 67. 5

139.3 142.1. 152. 6

NET OPERATING REVENUE

(millions of dollars )

Peak Year= 1968 ($4,217,534)

LOW Year =F.Y. 1974 ~-$43,003,000 )

-3.1

-43. 0

FIGURE 3 : LOS ANGELES TRANSIT OPERATIONS 1960-

1974

Source: American Public Transit Association records for the Metropolitan

“ Transit Authority and the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

1Data not reported for 1965-1968.

6
WORK TRIP DISTRIBUTION

Center City to Suburban Ring

Suburban Ring to Center City

Beginning and Ending in Center Ci

/ 1960 1970

WORK TRIP MODE

1960 1970

t y

Ring

Suburban Ring

FIGURE 4: LOS ANGELES SMSA TRAVEL CHARACTERISTICS 1960-1970

1 In both 1960 and 1970, 13% of auto work trips and 7% of public transit

work trips were taken by Long Beach residents.

Source: Urban Transportation Fact Book, American Institute of Planners and

the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the U.S. , Inc. , 1974.

A Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) includes a center city (or

cities) , usually with a population of at least 50,000, plus adjacent counties

or other political divisions that are economically and social 1 y integrated

with the central area.

7
relationship between center city and suburban trips

to work. The trips in the region tend to be short

ones: approximately 50 percent of all personal trips

in the seven-county region are less than 3.3 miles in

length, and so percent of home-to-work trips are

less than 6.4 miles in length. The fact that most of

the travel is comparatively localized affected the

debate about the planning of a rapid transit system

for the Los Angeles area.

TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

INSTITUTIONS

The organizations involved in the recent history

of planning for rapid transit in Los Angeles

represent regional and local interests. The State of

California and the Urban Mass Transportation

Administration also have played an important role

in the process.

TABLE 2.—Federally Recognized

Regional Agencies

Designation Agency

A-95 Southern California Association of

Governments

MPO Southern California Association of

Governments

Southern California Association

of Governments (SCAG)

The Southern California Association of

Governments was created in 1965 to carry out

comprehensive regional planning and coordination

activities in the six-county region. SCAG’S

membership is composed of III municipalities and

the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura,

Imperial, San Bernardino, and Riverside. SCAG’S

activities are financed by an assessment on local

governments and by Federal and State grants.

Since 1971, SCAG has been responsible for

regional transportation planning. It functions as

the A-95 review agency for the region2 and the

2 Office of Management and Budget Circular A-95 requires

one agency in each region to be empowered to review ali

proposals for Federal funds from agencies in that region.

Circular A-95 replaced Circular A-82, which was created to

implement Section 204 of the Demonstration Cities and

Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 (42 U.S. C. 3301).

officially designated Metropolitan Planning Organizations

In addition to these Federally related responsibilities, SCAG also exercises a number of State

functions. Under the provisions of Assembly Bill

69, SCAG must prepare the southern California

regional element of the statewide transportation

plan. The association also approves and allocates

State transit assistance funds available under

SB325.

The rapid transit planning carried out by the

Southern California Rapid Transit District

(SCRTD) is a subregional transit element of

SCAG’S Regional Transportation Plan. Coordination between SCAG and SCRTD planning occurs

through a series of SCAG’S existing committees,

including the Comprehensive Transportation

Planning Committee, which is a policy committee;

the Transit Advisory Committee, which is concerned primarily with coordination of technical matters;

and the Council of Planning.

Southern California Rapid

Transit’ District (SCRTD)

The Southern California Rapid Transit District

was created by the California State Legislature in

1964 to operate bus transit service in Los Angeles

County and to plan, design, and implement a mass

rapid transit system. SCRTD’S jurisdiction covers

over 4,080 square miles and includes bus lines

extending beyond Los Angeles County into

Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties.

SCRTD is governed by an Ii-man board of

directors. The Los Angeles County Board of

Supervisors appoints five of the members; a special

city selection committee representing 76 cities in

3 The Urban Mass Transportation Administration and the

Federal Highway Administration require Governors to

designate a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) in each

area to carry out the “continuing, comprehensive transportation

planning process . . . carried out cooperatively . . .“ (the “3-C”

process) mandated by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962 and

the Urban Mass Transportation Assistance Act of 1974.

According to joint UMTA-FHWA regulations published in

September 1975, MPO’S must prepare or endorse (1) a longrange general transportation plan, including a separate plan for

improvements in management of the existing transportation

system; (2) an annually updated list of specific projects, called the

Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), to implement

portions of the long-range plan; and (3) a multiyear planning

prospectus supplemented by annual unified planning work

programs.

8
the county appoints four; and the mayor of the City

of Los Angeles appoints two.

Aside from participating on SCAG policy and

technical committees, SCRTD reviewed and coordinated work on the Study of Alternative Transit

Corridors and Systems through an ad hoc technical

advisory committee composed of representatives

from the SCRTD, SCAG, Los Angeles County, the

City of Los Angeles, the Orange County Transit

District, the CALTRANS regional office, and the

League of California Cities.

Rapid Transit Advisory

Committee (RTAC)

In March 1975 SCRTD established this committee to develop a consensus on an acceptable transit

“starter” line. The committee has representatives

from the State transportation department, SCAG,

Los Angeles County, Orange County Transit

District, the League of California Cities, and the

City of Los Angeles. All these bodies would be

responsible for providing financial support to the

project in one way or another.

Los Angeles County

The Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County

is responsible for land use planning in the county’s

unincorporated areas, transportation planning

(which has meant highway planning), and health

and welfare. The county’s Department of Planning

prepares a general plan.

City of Los Angeles

The City of Los Angeles is a major institutional

force on the regional scene. Its involvement in

transit planning occurs in several ways. The Mayor

of Los Angeles participates in SCAG and appoints

members of SCRTD’S board of directors. In

addition, the city’s Department of Planning

develops a general development plan that contains

a transit element. All city departments concerned

with transportation have representatives on a

transportation technical advisory committee.

SCRTD also has a representative on this committee. The City Council of Los Angeles also has an ad

hoc committee on rapid transit.

League of California Cities

The League of California Cities provides a

mechanism for coordination among the 78

municipalities in Los Angeles County. The League

has a transportation task force made up of elected

officials from several major transportation corridors in the Los Angeles County area. The League

also provides a lobbying

terests.

California State

Transportation

force- for municipal-inDepartment of

(CALTRANS)

CALTRANS was established by Assembly Bill 69

in 1972. Part of the Department of Business and

Transportation, CALTRANS is a multimodal

agency incorporating the former Division of

Highways. The bill creating CALTRANS also

mandated the adoption by 1976 of a State transportation plan assembled from separate regional

transportation plans.

68-468 0 -76 -2

9
Critical History of Transit Planning

and Decisionmaking

The recent history of planning for rapid transit in

the Los Angeles metropolitan area reveals the

range of issues confronting policy makers concerned with developing transit systems for today’s

metropolitan regions. During the past 10 years, the

Southern California Rapid Transit District has

presented two rapid transit proposals to the voters

of Los Angeles County, and both times the

proposals were voted down. Although some

similarities exist between the first defeat in 1968

and the second in November 1974, the period

between them witnessed the arrival on the scene of

new institutional and political forces that have

signaled fundamental shifts in the public perception of the role of rapid transit systems in

metropolitan areas.

Between the two referenda, the context for rapid

transit planning changed in the region. The

Southern California Rapid Transit District

(SCRTD) stuck firmly to its basic commitment to

design and implement a rapid rail system for the

region. But other participants in the process began

to take a more active role and to raise critical

questions about the advantages and disadvantages

of such large-scale regional systems. Federal transit

policy moved away from giving unreserved support

to rail rapid transit; both the City of Los Angeles

and the Southern California Association of

Governments joined UMTA to urge the SCRTD to

place more emphasis on community and

neighborhood-level circulation and short-term

transit solutions; and Los Angeles area citizens and

their representatives increasingly began to raise

questions about the financial feasibility, social

equity, and political and technical wisdom of

committing the area to the implementation of a

long-term program that might become obsolete

before it was finished. By the end of 1974, the

planning process had not resolved the differences

between all these contending policies and viewpoints, and after the failure of the transit referendum in November of that year,

ticipants in the process once again

for a new institutional framework

planning.

the major parbegan to search

for rapid transit

The subject of this historical narrative is the

evolution of the regional planning process. After a

brief review of the early history of transit in Los

Angeles and a look at the failures of the SCRTD’S

first attempt to finance the development of a rapid

transit system in 1968, the narrative will trace the

evolution of the plans that went before the voters

in 1974. It will conclude with a description of the

present status of rapid transit planning in the

region. For some observers the story is one of a

turbulent but increasingly sophisticated planning

process; but for others it is nothing more than an

example of the institutional struggles that for years

have characterized decisionmaking in Southern

California.

EARLY HISTORY

The history of transit in the Los Angeles region

dates back nearly 100 years. Between the time the

first interurban electric railway lines were organized in 1876 and the establishment of the Southern

California Rapid Transit District in 1964, the

region witnessed the growth and decline of what

has been called the most complete and comprehensive system of interurban and suburban electric

commuter transit in the Nation. The image of this

system persists today in the pattern of the transit

corridors proposed in SCRTD’S plans.

Los Angeles’ rail transit system encompassed

both municipal trolley lines and an interurban

electric system. The Southern Pacific Railroad and

Henry E. Huntington, one of its largest

stockholders, figured prominently in the development of both systems. The first municipal street

railway company, the Los Angeles Cable Railway

Company, was organized in 1887. During the next

10 years, this company joined several other singleline companies serving the city to form the Los

Angeles Railway Company. Following its failure,

Huntington bought and reorganized it in 1899. The

company remained a local passenger operation

primarily serving the City of Los Angeles, and it

made little effort to expand with the growth of the

1 1
city during the period from 1913 to 1925, when Los

Angeles annexed several surrounding areas.

The growth of the region’s extensive interurban

electric railway system began in 1876, when four

independent electric railway enterprises started

serving the region. With the exception of the line

connecting Long Beach and Wilmington, the routes

centered on three major corridors connecting

downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, to

Sawtelle and Hollywood, and to Monrovia in the

San Gabriel Valley.

The several interurban railways were consolidated into the Pacific Electric Railway Company

(P. E.) in 1911. The Pacific Electric Railway was

owned by the Southern Pacific Company and

operated both passenger and freight services. At its

height the P.E. included over 1,100 track miles and

formed a completely integrated system linking

downtown Los Angeles with most of the cities in

Los Angeles County and urbanized sections of

Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties.

The Pacific Electric Company network had a

definite influence on the development and eventual

urbanization of the Los Angeles area. By linking the

scattered cities of the county together, it provided a

regional passenger and freight system that spurred

suburban residential development in a number of

ways. It made it possible for people to live in

outlying cities and new suburban developments

and work in downtown Los Angeles. And with its

freight service, it provided a- system for the

distribution of goods throughout the region that

facilitated the location of commerce and industry

outside Los Angeles. The Pacific Electric’s

ownership of land development companies made its

influence on land development even stronger.

These subsidiary companies owned property in

Glendale, Burbank, the San Fernando Valley,

Redondo Beach, and Newport Beach.

The growth which the Pacific Electric helped

promote eventually contributed to the demise of

the interurban railway. These new developments

of single-family dwellings on separate lots produced a pattern of settlement too dispersed to be

effectively served by fixed-rail transit. The pattern

was better served by more flexible modes of

transportation such as private automobiles or

buses. Gradually, as the growth of the

metropolitan area accelerated, the P.E. began to

operate more bus lines. Conversion of rail lines to

bus service increased after 1930; and, as private

auto ownership grew, freeway construction expanded and traffic congestion increased. The

trolleys and electric interurban railway suffered

ever-greater financial losses. Although World War

II halted the abandonment of some of the lines, the

number declined steadily after the war, until the

last one stopped operating in 1961.

Los Angeles has come to be known as the

freeway capital of the world, but the region’s

experience with the electric railways left an

indelible image of a comprehensive regional rapid

transit system in the minds of public transit

advocates. Long before the abandonment of the

electric railways, public officials and civic leaders

began to make proposals to study and build subway

lines or rapid transit systems. As early as 1906 twin

subways were proposed from downtown Los

Angeles to Fourth Street and Vermont Avenue,

where the line would surface and continue to Santa

Monica and Venice. A business recession stopped

work on this project, but in 1924 a proposal was

made to build a 4-mile subway. This proposal led to

construction of the l-mile Hollywood Subway in

1925.

The Hollywood Subway was the one rapid transit

proposal that was actually carried out. Two other

extensive proposals were made before the war, but

both were rejected because of high costs. In 1926

proposals were made to convert the Pacific Electric

routes serving Santa Monica and Long Beach

subway, but the projected $20 million cost of the

Santa Monica extension and the $40 million cost of

the Long Beach subway both were considered to be

exorbitant. Again in 1933, during the depth of the

Depression, proposals to extend the Hollywood

Subway to Glendale and to build subways to Santa

Monica and Pasadena along with an elevated

railway to Long Beach also were rejected for

reasons of cost.

Despite the upturn in transit usage during the

Second World War, Los Angeles moved away from

support for public transportation. Both the city and

the county supported a freeway-building program

in 1943, and by 1947 construction of California’s

famous freeway system was well underway.

The first major step toward revitalizing public

transit and providing an alternative to the private

automobile was taken by the Los Angeles Chamber

of Commerce in 1948. Representing a broad

spectrum of business interests in the downtown

area, the Chamber sent a Rapid Transit Action

Program to the California State Legislature. This

12
effort led to the creation of the Los Angeles

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in 1951.

Civic leaders and public officials promoted the

MTA for two reasons. They believed that an

integrated public transportation system was essential to the economic health of the metropolitan area,

and that a public agency should provide a system

since private investment lacked the necessary

capital.

In addition, there were intense rivalries between

local communities over the control of transportation. MTA’s supporters believed that one way to

overcome these rivalries was to create an independent agency authorized by the State. The Governor

of the State appointed the MTA board after

consulting local officials.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority was empowered by its original enabling legislation to

formulate plans for a mass transit system, but it

was not empowered to develop or operate a system

until that legislation was amended in 1957. Under

its original mandate, it did a feasibility study and

presented a plan for a monorail system connecting

the San Fernando Valley to Los Angeles and Long

Beach. Later on, once it obtained the power to

purchase and operate existing bus lines with capital

provided by the sale of revenue bonds, the MTA

presented two more extensive rapid transit

proposals. The one presented in 1960 was for a 75-

mile, four-corridor line, and the other, presented in

1963, was a 64-mile, four-corridor line. It should be

noted that during that period, in 1957, the Bay Area

Rapid Transit District in San Francisco was created

to plan, build, and operate a rapid transit system,

and the successful referendum adopting the BART

plan took place in 1962.

The MTA revenue base was hardly sufficient to

finance the implementation of a mass transit

system. In an effort to establish a firmer financial

basis for its activities, the MTA was abolished and

replaced by the Southern California Rapid Transit

District (SCRTD) in 1964.

The creation of SCRTD not only sheds light on

the financial constraints restricting the MTA’s

operation but also reflects the political opposition

that surrounded the MTA. The MTA’s autonomy

had been vigorously criticized by other municipal

and county officials in the region. Many of these

leaders considered the MTA to be excessively

oriented to downtown Los Angeles, paying too

little attention to the concerns of other local areas.

The character of SCRTD appears to reflect a

response to these criticisms. The district did not

extend beyond Los Angeles County, and the

members of the board of directors were appointed

by the county supervisors, the City of Los Angeles,

and by a city selection committee representing 76

other municipalities in the district. However, many

of the criticisms about MTA accountability y and lack

of responsiveness are now leveled against SCRTD.

The creation of SCRTD set the stage for the 1968

referendum. Before discussing the proposal of

1968, it is important to outline several other

institutional changes that occurred in 1964-65 to

shape the context in which SCRTD operated.

These affected the forum for transportation

planning and comprehensive regional planning.

Although they did not seriously hinder SCRTD’S

activities in 1968, they later shaped the planning

and decisionmaking process that led up to the 1974

referendum.

In 1960 and 1964, two organizations were

established that immediately had bearing on the

highway planning process. The first was the Los

Angeles Regional Transportation Study (LARTS).

Like its counterparts in other cities—such as

Chicago (CATS), the San Francisco Bay area

(BATS), and Atlanta (AATS)—the Los Angeles

Regional Transportation Study was created by the

State Highway Department to undertake longrange regional transportation plans. LARTS

researched regional land use and travel patterns,

and its population and employment forecasts

provided the foundation for much of the technical

analysis carried out in the planning for the 1968 and

1974 proposals by SCRTD’S consultants. LARTS

issued a long-range transportation plan in 1968

that, predictably, was oriented toward highway

travel and also included the proposal that led to the

construction of the Ii-mile San Bernardino-El

Monte busway. This busway has become an

integral part of SCRTD’S transit system.

The birth of another highway-oriented institution occurred in 1964. Responding to the Federal

requirements for a “continuous, coordinated,

comprehensive” planning process contained in

Section 134 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of

1962, the California State Highway Agreement

established the Transportation Association of

Southern California (TASC). Through a committee structure that included representatives of the

State Highway Department and municipal and

county transportation agencies, the TASC exer-
cised the required policy and technical review

function for the regional transportation planning

process. The Transportation Association operated

as an independent institution until February 1971,

when it merged with the Southern California

Association of Governments (sCAG).

The Southern California Association of

Governments was the third arrival on the regional

planning scene in the mid-1960’s. Organized in

1965 to undertake comprehensive planning for the

Los Angeles region, SCAG’S membership includes

the county governments of Los Angeles, Orange,

San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, and imperial,

as well as the governments of 111 cities within

these counties.

When it was created, SCAG was solely concerned

with comprehensive planning for land use, open

space, air and water quality, housing, and other

non transportation matters. Although it is now the

A-95 review agency and U.S. Department of

Transportation’s designated Metropolitan Planning Organization, it did not take over transportation functions until it merged with the Transportation Association of Southern California in 1971.

DECISION ON SYSTEM SELECTION:

THE 1968 REFERENDUM

The Southern California Rapid Transit District

was given an explicit mandate by the legislature in

1964 to operate the existing public transit system as

well as design, engineer, and implement a mass

transit system. The enabling legislation authorized

the district to submit to the electorate a plan for

financing the construction of such a system

Soon after SCRTD was created, its board and

staff took steps to carry out this mandate. As

guardians of the transit mission in Southern

California, they seem to have felt a driving

obligation to follow the example of BART and to

finish what the MTA had started but had been

unable to complete.

Planning for the new system had begun by early

1966. SCRTD contracted Kaiser Engineers; Daniel,

Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall; and Coverdale and

Colpitts to prepare the plans. (The first two firms

later were members of the consulting team that

prepared the plans for the 1974 referendum.)

Funds for the planning work came from two

main sources other than revenues transferred from

the MTA to SCRTD. In 1966 the State appropriated $3.6 million from State tidelands oil and

dry gas revenue to complete the planning and

engineering of the first stage of a rapid transit

system. The following year, the U.S. Department

of Housing and Urban Development gave SCRTD a

$975,ooo technical study grant. This was one of the

first such grants given for the development of a

rapid rail transit system, and it marks the beginning

of the Urban Mas s Transportation Administration’s financial support for this aspect of

SCRTD’S work.

The rapid transit proposal was prepared in two

stages. As required by the State legislature, a

preliminary report was issued to the public for

review in October 1967. After nearly 1,000

conferences with community leaders and public

officials, SCRTD drew up a final plan that the board

adopted in August 1968.

The preliminary report proposed a 62-mile rapid

rail system with four corridors connecting in

downtown Los Angeles. The north-south corridor

ran from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach,

and the east-west corridor ran from El Monte to

Fairfax Avenue. The total cost of the plan was $1.5

billion.

A final report was issued in May 1968. Reflecting

the results of the period of review, the new plan

contained a number of major changes. It was

expanded to become a five-corridor, 89-mile rail

system. According to one observer, the Los Angeles

Chamber of Commerce and other downtown

business interests pushed for the adoption of the

fifth corridor, which connected downtown Los

Angeles to the Los Angeles international Airport.

Other major changes responded to both business

interests and community demand for immediate

improvements in transit service. Rather than use

property taxes to finance the plan, the report

recommended the use of the proceeds of a %-cent

increase in the general sales tax. In order to expand

transit service immediately, the report also

recommended the development of 250 miles of

express bus lines and 300 miles of feeder bus

services.

Understandably, the total cost of this revised

plan was also greater: $2.5 billion. This figure

included approximately $8 million dollars for

preliminary engineering for the second stage of the

plan, and a cost escalation factor of 7 percent per

year until 1975 , the year in which SCRTD’S

consultants expected the system to be finished.

1 4
The Southern California Rapid Transit District

adopted the final 89-mile, five-corridor plan on

August 20, 1968. Between then and November,

transit supporters campaigned for passage of

Proposition A, the proposal for sales tax financing

that the State legislature had authorized SCRTD to

place on the ballot of the general election in

November.

According to newspaper accounts, support for

the sales tax approach was widespread in Los

Angeles County. The Citizens’ Committee for

Rapid Transit, which was organized in August to

promote the proposition, was directed by

representatives of major businesses, civic organizations, and the Los Angeles County Federation of

Labor. Other groups supporting the proposal,

listed by SCRTD board member Herbert H. Krauch

in early May in an article in the L.OS Angeles Times

(May 2, 1968), included the Los Angeles Chapter of

the League of California Cities; the League of

Women Voters; the L.A. Chamber of Commerce

and the chambers of commerce from the Harbor

District, Long Beach, and Wilshire Boulevard areas;

Governor Reagan; the County Board of Supervisors; and city officials of more than 17

municipalities in the area.

Opposition to the proposal was presented by

highway interests and outlying communities in the

county. The Southern California Automobile Club

opposed the plan and helped form the California

Freeway Support Committee, which hired a public

relations firm to mount a campaign against the

proposal. The communities that opposed the plan

generally were those that would not have been

served well enough by the system to justify their

participation in financing it.

The attitude of the Los Angeles Times also raised

questions about the system. The paper’s general

editorial position argued that public transportation

was important for the people of the region, but that

citizens should make sure the system would live up

to the claims of its advocates. Using information

gleaned from a benefit-cost study of the proposal

that the Stanford Research Institute had prepared

for SCRTD, some of the advocates of the system

were arguing that it would return $1.87 to the

community for every dollar invested, that over 50

percent of the projected passengers would be

former automobile

would constitute a

region. Opponents

these claims, and

users, and that the system

major economic boon to the

of rapid transit questioned

their criticisms subsequently

were supported by experts like Martin Wohl. The

Los Angeles Times also unearthed a scandal involving

the general manager of SCRTD during the period

of the campaign.

The activities of the opposition had not produced

a discernible groundswell of public reaction against

the plan before the referendum. Nevertheless,

when the voters of Los Angeles County went to the

polls in November, they came out strongly against

Proposition A. All the propositions on the ballot

were defeated that year, and Proposition A, which

by law had to receive 60 percent of the vote to pass,

only received 44.7 percent.

Although no single reason for the proposition’s

defeat can be identified, two studies of the

referendum cast some light on the question.

SCRTD and Dorothy Corey Research did a postelection survey to analyze the reasons for the

failure, and 2 years later a report prepared by a

Harvard Law School group on Atlanta’s 1968

transit referendum drew some interesting comparisons with the defeat in Los Angeles. 4 I n

general, these analyses point to the overall political

and economic climate at the time of the elections,

the socioeconomic background of the voters, and

the technical characteristics of the proposed transit

system.

The general climate in which the referendum

took place did not favor a major public works

project financed by a tax increase. Los Angeles was

suffering from the consequences of the economic

recession that hit the aerospace industry in 1968,

and the residents of the area were by no means

predisposed to face the possibility of both higher

prices and unemployment. Both the city and the

State had already raised taxes once, and the Federal

Government had put a 10 percent surcharge on

personal income taxes. The Presidential election

campaign also had the Republican candidates

blasting the Democrats for excessive government

spending. It was hardly a propitious time to get the

residents of the area to saddle themselves with the

responsibilit y for financing a long-term project like

the proposed transit system.

The findings of the survey taken by Dorothy

Corey Research clarify how the favorable votes

were distributed among different socioeconomic

levels. In general, low-income center city residents

J Matthew A. Coogan et al., Tri7 HSJIOrIi7/IOtt POIIIIL. < III A 11[7 HIiI,

Cambridge, Mass., 1970,

15
and high-income suburbanites supported the best remedy was the quick one of expanding and

proposition, while the middle-income population improving the existing bus system.

voted against it. Within the upper-income

category—defined as people with over $20,000 a

year income—56 percent voted in favor of the

proposition; in the lower-income category, defined

as people with less than $7,000 per year, 58 percent

supported the proposition. In the middle, 42

percent of the people with incomes between $7,OOO

and $10,000 supported the proposition, and 47

percent of the people with incomes above $10,000

favored it. The distribution of these income groups

within the metropolitan area also suggested that

support for the proposition was strongest within

the City of Los Angeles and weakest in outlying

municipalities.

SCRTD’S proposed system was not helped by the

criticism of the Regional Plan Association (RPA) of

Southern California, an organization devoted to

the promotion of integrated-regional planning. In

its official bulletin, The Planner, this private organization sharply criticized SCRTD and its plan. The

RPA’s overriding concern was that the proposed

system was not coordinated or integrated with

other systems in adjacent areas in the region. In

addition, the system was not related to other

transportation modes in the corridors, failed to

provide the governmental machinery that would be

required to coordinate its development with

environmental and land-use plans, and had not

One ethnic aspect of the vote is noteworthy. The been justified on the basis- of a benefit-cost

black population in the Watts-Willowbrook area analysis. s

strongly supported the proposition. But the

Mexican-American population, which tends to be The weight that should be given to any one of the

reasons behind the defeat of the 1968 referendum concentrated closer to the downtown area, did not

favor it. is difficult to judge. Clearly, traffic congestion and

smog were not onerous enough to overcome the

Some of the technical characteristics of the plan

also raised doubts in the minds of public officials

and voters. According to newspaper accounts,

some residents of some of the outlying areas

rejected the system not because it was too large and

expensive, but because it was not large enough.

These people believed that there was no point in

paying for a system that would not provide their

community with the service it needed,

Debate also arose about the rapid transit

technology that SCRTD proposed to use. Following the lead of the Bay Area, SC RTD’S system

would have used modern high-capacity fixed-rail

transit cars similar to BART’s. According to

Coogan’s comparative study, SCRTD’S critics

argued against committing the region to such an

inflexible technology at a time when new advanced

technologies were being developed that might be

better suited to the region’s needs. News of cost

overruns and technical difficulties with the BART

system imbued this argument with special force in

the minds of many critics.

The argument against adopting a large-scale,

relatively inflexible system that would require a

long time to build also coincided with the views of

people who felt that the public transportation

problem in Los Angeles needed an immediate

basic attachment of area residents to their

automobiles. Furthermore, SCRTD’S plan

represented an expensive proposition that many

people were unwilling to accept in bad economic

times.

But it is worth noting that there are many

parallels between the SCRTD’S defeat in 1968 and

the failure in 1974. Along with the difficult

economic situation in 1974, many of the questions

that were raised about the plan in 1968 came up

again in 1974. The record suggests that either the

people of Los Angeles County have not yet reached

the point where they see the need for rapid transit,

or that SCRTD has not learned the lessons

provided by past experience.

DECISION ON SYSTEM SELECTION:

THE 1974 REFERENDUM

Three years went by before the beginning of the

next period of rapid transit planning in Los

Angeles. After the failure of the 1968 referendum,

SCRTD concentrated on the management and

improvement of its bus operations, and it was not

until the latter part of 1971 that any serious new

—

solution. As many of SCRTD’S community review s ~~t Planner, Regional Plan Association of Southern Califorsessions showed, many people believed that the nia, No. 6, August 1966.
steps were taken to develop another plan for the

region.

The round of planning that culminated in 1974

can be divided into two general historical stages.

The first is the period of negotiation and preparation that preceded the official beginning of the

planning effort, and the second covers the 2 years

of technical planning that produced the plan

underlying the proposal presented to the voters in

1974 .

During the period between November of 1968

and the fall of 1971, several changes took place

which influenced the transit planning process in

Los Angeles. On the national level the promulgation of the National Environmental Protection Act

of 1969, the publication of Circular A-95 in 1969 by

the Office of Management and Budget, and the

passage of the Urban Mass Transportation Act of

1970, which authorized $3.1 billion dollars over 5

years for UMTA’S program, all influenced the

direction of Federal policy. These changes altered

the role of the Southern California Association of

Governments (SCAG). SCAG became the area A956 agency, and by early February 1971 it was also

responsible for setting policy for the regional

transportation planning process when it merged

with the Transportation Association of Southern

California (TASC). The merger also made SCAG

the 3-C agency7 for the region. DOT already had

begun to support this unified, multimodal approach

in June 1970 when it extended the first of what

became an annual series of technical studies grants

to SCAG to support long-range transportation

plans. UMTA was to support the transit element of

this process by channeling funds through SCAG

(see Table 2).

The prospect for funding rapid transit projects

had improved during the 3-year hiatus. On the

national level the passage of the Urban Mass

Transportation Act of 1970 may have increased

local expectation of transit funding.

At the State level in California, the passage of

Senate Bill 325 (SB 325) in 1971 also made more

money available for transit. The bill permitted a

sales tax on gasoline for funding public transporta-

~ The A-95 agency in each region is responsible for reviewing

that area’s requests for Federal grants.

T The s-C agency is responsible for seeing that regional

transportation planning is carried out in a continuing, comprehensive, and coordinated process.

tion improvements, and in July 1972, the first year

it went into effect, it made approximately $55

million available to SCRTD and the City and

County of Los Angeles. The availability of this

money was one of the factors that stimulated the

renewed interest in rapid transit in Los Angeles.

The City of Los Angeles made the first public

move that started the process leading to the 1974

proposal. In mid-November 1971, City Planning

Director Calvin Hamilton presented the

preliminary details of a rapid transit plan to the

State, County and Federal Affairs Committee of

the Los Angeles City Council. The committee was

evaluating the progress that the city departments

and SCRTD had made on rapid transit.

The Planning Department proposal called for the

development of a $2.4 billion rapid transit program

that would provide the region with a 100-mile

system by 1990. The plan was part of the city’s

General Development Plan, and it suggested tax

allocation bonds and levies on gasoline and motor

vehicles as the means to secure the bonds needed to

build the system. Hamilton urged the city to build

the system even if the SCRTD would not.

Councilman Thomas Bradley used the committee session to underscore the lack of leadership and

coordination among the agencies supposedly

responsible for developing rapid transit. According

to the Los Angeles Times, Bradley (who would succeed

Sam Yorty as mayor in 1973) lamented SCRTD’S

lack of progress on rapid transit and said the city’s

plan represented an attempt to provide some

leadership in planning for a rapid transit system.

SCRTD’S General Manager Jack Gilstrap defended the district’s record against these charges. He

said SCRTD’S top priority had been providing

mobility to the region’s bus riders, and that it would

take action on rapid transit in 1972.

SCRTD did not wait until 1972 to move on rapid

transit, despite Gilstrap’s statement. On December

7, 1971, less than 3 weeks after the City Council

meeting, the district’s board of directors unveiled

plans for a $420 million rapid transit line linking the

central city and south Los Angeles. The board billed

the line as the first-stage “starter” line in the

development of an overall master plan and pledged

SCRTD to provide $70 million of SB 325 money to

implement the plan. The pledge depended, however, on the county and the city contributing shares

of the new funds they would be getting under SB

325 .

1 7
The plan proposed a 14-mile-long south-central

line. Starting as a subway, it would serve the

central city, become an elevated line near the

Coliseum, proceed south through Watts, and

terminate at Willow Brook at the planned Century

Freeway. The system was to tie into a bus transit

corridor planned for the freeway median strip,

which would connect to the Los Angeles International Airport.

The battles that erupted following the publication of this plan pitted the city against SCRTD and

eventually brought UMTA into the picture again.

Two days after the plan came out, members of the

Los Angeles City Council accused SCRTD of

“grabbing for headlines” and failing to consult with

the city. Although SCRTD board member Ed

Macke denied the charges, saying his Advance

Planning Committee had been studying the issue

for 9 months prior to the announcement, the

argument left no doubt that, at least as far as the

city of Los Angeles was concerned, its public

officials had not been consulted at all.

Shortly after the dispute began, the City

Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Rapid Transit

began examining the role that Los Angeles should

play in the new planning for rapid transit. Before

the council adopted a position in early March 1972,

the city’s Technical Advisory Committee on Rapid

Transit, a group composed of eight city department

heads, presented a report to the Council’s Ad Hoc

Committee recommending that a rapid transit

system be started in the Wilshire corridor. City

Planning Director Calvin Hamilton headed the

advisory committee.

The report of the city’s Technical Advisory

Committee argued that the Wilshire corridor was a

far better place to put a starter line than the

proposed south-central route. The Wilshire line,

starting in subway at Union Station and running

13.1 miles to Westwood, was preferred for a

number of reasons, Preliminary analysis showed it

could divert more passengers from automobiles

and would have a higher overall patronage. In

addition, if special tax districts were created, the

corridor offered the possibility of using tax

increment financing schemes to help implement

the plan. The report urged a thorough comparison

of the two lines.

The Wilshire corridor for many years had been

considered the logical location for a rapid transit

lines by downtown business interests as well as city

planners in Los Angeles. According to the executive

18

director of the Committee for Central City

Planning, the line was seen as the backbone of any

regional system.

The Committee for Central City Planning, a

private organization of downtown interests

created to plan the development of a downtown

urban renewal area, contracted the firms of

Wallace, McHarg, Roberts, Todd; Daniel, Mann,

Johnson & Mendenhall; Alan M. Voorhees; and

Development Research Associates to prepare plans

for the large renewal area in 1969-70. These plans,

which included a recommendation for a downtown

PRT circulation system with a connection to the

regional rapid transit system, were completed in

the spring of 1972. Once approved, they were to

become part of the city’s General Development

Plan.

Following the presentation of the Technical

Advisory Committee’s Wilshire corridor proposal

in February, the City Council held hearings on the

question of rapid transit and prepared both a

majority and minority report on the course of

action that the city should follow.

On March 2, 1972, the Council voted 10 to 4 in

favor of the minority report of its Ad Hoc

Committee on Rapid Transit. Both the majority

and minority reports addressed the issues

presented by SCRTD’S request that the city pledge

its estimated SB 325 funds for 11 years for the

development of the South-Central Line.

Although neither report accepted the SCRTD

proposition, the minorit y report took a more

cooperative position toward the district, Unlike the

majority report, which recommended what

amounted to a flat denial of the proposition, the

minority report favored a modified version of the

plan. The report’s three main points were:

●

●

“That the City Council impound all of its

funds from Senate Bill 325 (sales tax on

gasoline) for application toward development and construction of a mass rapid

transit system for greater Los Angeles.

“That the City Council request the County

of Los Angeles and all cities within the

Southern California Rapid Transit District

to commit all their funds from SB 325 for

the same purpose; and that SCRTD be

requested to commit at least so percent of

its funds from Senate BiIl 325.
●

The

“That the City of Los Angeles join with

SCRTD in filing a grant application to the

Urban Mass Transportation Administration to conduct a study of feasibility in

financing and priorities of routes for the

initial stages of the system, and that this

study include central, Wilshire and San

Fernando Valley routes, as well as the

possible use of existing rail lines.”8

Council’s vote helped define the city’s

position toward future rapid transit planning.

Although the prospects for getting the other 77

cities in the region to reserve SB 325 money were

not bright, the adoption of the minority report

indicated that the Council would go along with

SCRTD’S effort to get assistance from UMTA.

During the months preceding the Council’s

March vote, the SCRTD staff already had taken

steps to secure UMTA funds for planning studies.

In December 1971, a SCRTD delegation met with

Secretary of Transportation Volpe to discuss the

south-central line proposal, and by February of

1972, UMTA representatives had met with

SCRTD staff members to iron out the scope of the

work that had to be undertaken in developing rapid

transit plans.

At the time of the Council’s March meeting,

UMTA’S position on the impending new planning

effort had become clearer. UMTA Administrator

William Hurd expressed the Administration’s

strong support for the region’s commitment to

developing a rapid transit system, but he also

indicated the UMTA financial assistance would be

channeled through the Southern California

Association of Governments, and that SCRTD’S

work had to be closely coordinated with other

regional transportation and comprehensive planning studies going on in the area. SCAG had

become the regional transportation planning

agency the year before, and UMTA wanted

SC RTD’S rapid transit studies to be an integral part

of the Unified Work Program for fiscal year 1973.

UMTA’S viewpoint also emphasized the need for

SCRTD to vigorously maintain and improve the

existing service. In addition, according to one

source, UMTA also made it very clear that SCRTD

could not merely resurrect the 1968 data and plans

and expect to get capital assistance.

~ Valley Nms, Durwood Scott, March 3, 1972.

The negotiations over the scope of transportation studies culminated in April 1972 at the annual

meeting of the UMTA-FHWA Inter-Modal Planning Group (IPG) in Los Angeles. At that meeting

UMTA insisted that all transportation activities be

integrated in the Unified Work Program, and

agreements were reached on the activities each

agency would undertake. SCAG was to develop a

long-range multimodal transportation plan for the

region by June 1973. SCRTD was to carry out

corridor planning studies covering the full range of

possible corridors in the region and including an

examination of all transportation alternatives. This

work was to be phased into the development of

SCAG’S long-range plan.

The IPG meeting also produced an agreement to

start a transit study in Orange County which

would be coordinated with both SCAG and

SCRTD’S activities. This call for coordination went

virtually unheeded until nearly two years later

when SCRTD was sharply criticized for failing to

coordinate its plan with the Orange County

Transit District.

Following the IPG meeting, the final steps were

taken to initiate the technical planning studies. In

June UMTA approved SCAG’S application for a

technical study grant of $1,025,000, out of which

SCRTD was to receive some $600,000 to begin

work on the first phase of its analysis of alternative

transit corridors and systems.

That phase began in October 1972. Between then

and the time of the 1974 referendum, UMTA,

SCRTD, and SCAG were in a constant debate over

the character and extent of SCRTD’S evolving

plans for a rapid transit system.

Phase I

In October 1972, the Southern California Rapid

Transit District began the first phase of the

planning process that culminated in the referendum of 1974. During this phase a controversy

erupted between UMTA and SCRTD that marked

the beginning of a fundamental shift in UMTA’S

policy toward fixed-guideway projects and defined

the relation between UMTA and SCRTD for the

remainder of the period.

The purpose of Phase I was to establish the basis

for selection of the transit corridors and corresponding transportation modes that would be evaluated

and developed in subsequent phases of the study.

Accordingly, the phase included six basic work

tasks: developing the evaluation framework for

1 9
FIGURE 1 : LOS ANGELEs - LONG

n California Associ

n California Rapi d

145 Mile Guideway Program,

Major Highways

20
●

✼

●

✼

10 0 10 20

2 1
corridor and system selection; identifying the

alternative corridors; identifying alternative transit technologies; identifying the alternate transit

technologies that could be applied to each corridor;

examining the potential use of the existing railway

network for interim commuter service; and, finally,

analyzing the alternative methods for financing a

rapid transit system. This phase of work involved

an initial evaluation and ranking of alternative

corridors and modes but not a full-fledged evaluation of their impacts and benefits. Such an

evaluation was supposed to be undertaken in the

second phase of the study.

SCRTD hired consultants who already had

experience in Los Angeles to do the study. Three

veterans of the 1968 planning process—Kaiser

Engineers; Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall;

and Stone and Youngberg—were responsible for

engineering, planning, and financial studies,

respectively. Three of the other firms—Alan M.

Voorhees and Associates (AMV) and Wallace,

McHarg, Roberts, Todd/Kennard & Silvers— had

worked on the downtown renewal plan for the

Committee for Central City Planning. They were

in charge of patronage and revenue estimates and

socioeconomic and environmental impacts, respectively. The team was managed by Peat, Marwick,

Mitchell & Co.

Less than 3 months after Phase I started, UMTA

began pushing for a clearer definition of the study

and its relationship to the long-range transportation plan being developed by the Southern California Association of Governments. Two events

precipitated this action by UMTA.

One of these occurred in November 1972 soon

after the study began. After a year of debate and

revision the California State Legislature sent

Assembly Bill 69 to Governor Reagan for his

signature. The bill, which the Governor signed into

law on December 10, 1972, established a new

multimodal California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) and called for the adoption of a

State transportation plan. The State plan was to be

based on plans formulated at the regional level by

the accredited regional planning entities.

The Southern California Association of

Governments is the certified regional agency

responsible for long-range transportation planning

in the Los Angeles metropolitan area; area transit

agencies like SCRTD and the Orange County

Transit District are responsible for preparing the

subregional transit elements of the long-range

plan.

The provisions of Assembly Bill 69 set the

deadline in completing the State plan for 1976 and

required that the regional plan be finished by April

1975. Responding to this stipulation, the Southern

California Association of Governments decided to

postpone the completion of the long-range

transportation plan it was developing with assistance from U.S. Department of Transportation/UMTA until the 1975 State deadline.

This decision was unacceptable to UMTA. As a

matter of policy, UMTA insisted that a long-range

transportation plan had to be developed in order to

provide the framework for assessing transit

proposals in the region. If adoption of such a plan

were postponed, UMTA would have no basis for

evaluating the relationship of SCRTD’S transit

proposals to other short- and long-term regional

policies and projects.

The steps UMTA took to rectify this situation are

reflected in the agreement reached by UMTA,

SCAG, and SCRTD at the annual Inter-Modal

Planning Group meeting in April 1973. UMTA also

sought to resolve its controversy with SCRTD at

this meeting.

UMTA’S dispute with SCRTD began before the

work on Phase I started in October 1972. UMTA’S

acceptance of the work program in the study was

based on the understanding that not only all

alternative corridors but also the full range of

transit modes would be analyzed. Such an analysis

would include conventional all-bus transit

operations as well as advanced technologies.

SCRTD held a different view of the matter.

Convinced that its mandate required the development of a fixed-guideway system, SC RTD’S

general manager told the consultants for the study

that low-capital-intensive alternatives, such as

buses on freeways or buses on radial arterials, were

not to be considered as alternatives to a gradeseparated rapid transit system. Responding to this

stipulation, the consultants did not consider an allbus system in their analysis of alternatives.

The Urban Mass Transportation Administration

did not learn about this situation until January

1973. According to one source, when it did, UMTA

staff immediately began to negotiate a revision of

the scope of the study that included the bus

alternatives. These efforts also were concluded at

2 2
the Inter-Modal Planning Group (IPG) meeting in

April.

The agreement reached at that meeting involved

the interrelated issues raised by UMTA’S relation

with both SCAG and SCRTD. Instead of postponing its entire long-range transportation plan

until the State deadline in 1975, SCAG agreed to

prepare a “Critical Decision Plan” by November

1973. This plan would be used to evaluate critical

highway and transit issues prior to developing a

more refined regional plan by April 1975.

SCAG also agreed to develop a short-range

regional transportation improvement program in

order to respond to the Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) air quality guidelines. According to

UMTA, the transportation agencies in the region

had not cooperated a great deal with EPA before the

IPG meeting.

The program for SCRTD, which emerged from

the IPG meeting, required a restudy of all transportation alternatives within the corridors analyzed by

SCRTD’S consultants. SCRTD was informed that

UMTA would not provide any funds for

preliminary engineering until this analysis was

complete and SCAG had finished its Critical

Decision Plan.

UMTA’S insistence on a thorough study of all

alternatives rested on a number of considerations

that eventually filtered into the national debate

about the Administration’s position on rapid

transit. As UMTA’S program grew and more cities

began to develop plans for rapid transit systems,

UMTA found itself faced with the prospect of a vast

increase in the demand for capital funds to

implement these projects. One effort the Administration made to stem the tide was to try to

develop criteria for capital grants that would allow

decisionmakers to determine which types of transit

technology were most suited to different types of

urban areas. Although no official criteria were

adopted, this effort raised the question of whether

Los Angeles had enough density to support rapid

transit. Transit advocates argued that the region as

a whole had sufficient density to support a rapid

transit system. Skeptics, including some UMTA

officials, argued that a less expensive alternative

such as a bus system might provide a service more

appropriate to such a dispersed metropolitan

population.

Another related part of UMTA’S effort to

dampen local enthusiasm for expensive large-scale

fixed-guideway systems was the Administration’s

policy requiring the analysis of all transit alternatives. It was believed that a thorough examination of the costs and benefits of alternative systems

and modes would lead local planners to examine

less costly solutions. The agreement reached at the

IPG meeting was designed to achieve this end.

SCRTD’S Phase I report was published in March

1973, before the IPG meeting took place. Phase 11

began shortly thereafter, and its work program was

supposed to have included the results of the IPG

meeting.

Phase II

The primary objective of Phase II of SCRTD’S

study was to develop a final proposal for a transit

system for the count y. Recommendations for

short-term transit projects, as well as a long-term

rapid transit system, were to be included in the

proposal. After it had been reviewed at a series of

public hearings and communi t y meetings ,

SCRTD’S consultants were to prepare a final

refined plan that would be submitted to the voters

in either June or November 1974.

The consultants began work on Phase II in April

1973 and reported their recommendations in July

1973. The Phase II report recommended a regional

master plan for public transit and a short-term

program.

The master plan set a long-term goal for a

regional system. It recommended a 250-mile

system of rapid transit serving the region’s most

heavily traveled corridors.

The short-term program called for the immediate expansion of the bus transit system. Based

on a 5-year implementation period, the program

included an increased number of buses, express bus

service on freeways, priority treatment of buses on

arterials, and additional park-and-ride lots. This

plan was to provide the basis for feeder services to

the rapid transit system.

The first stage of the long-range rapid transit

plan called for the construction of 116 miles of rapid

rail transit facilities and 24 miles of exclusive

busways. This 116 miles covered the following

corridors:

• Los Angeles/CBD and Wilshire Boulevard;

● San Fernando Valley and Hollywood;

● Los Angeles International Airport and

southwest;

23
● The south-central route from SCRTD’S

1971 plan;

● Santa Ana;

• El Segundo and Norwalk (busway); and

• San Gabriel and Pasadena (busway).

The total cost of this recommended system was

$3.3 billion in 1973 dollars. Using a 9 percent

escalation factor over a 12-year period of construction, the cost rose to $6.6 billion.

The financing plan for the system rested on a

mixture of Federal and local sources. Over twothirds of the capital cost was expected to come from

the Urban Mass Transportation Administration,

and the bulk of the remaining requirements were to

be financed by bonds supported by a .75 percent

sales tax. SCRTD also planned to draw on its share

of SB 325 funds.

The reaction by public officials to SCRTD’S

Phase II recommendations raised more questions

than plaudits. A number of local officials criticized

it sharply, and UMTAconsidered the publication of

the report an irresponsible act of defiance.

Local criticism of the plan came out at public

hearings held on August 1, 1973, by the Subcommittee on Los Angeles Regional Transportation of

the California State Assembly Committee on

Transportation. Chairman Alan Sieroty took

testimony from a number of witnesses including

Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley; Los Angeles

County Supervisor Peter Schabarum; Ralph Clark,

an Orange County Supervisor; the Executive

Director of SCAG, Ray Remy; and two private

citizens, Robert Profet, a consultant, and Laura

Ingman, a representative of the League of Women

Voters.

Mayor Bradley had taken office approximately 2

months before the hearings and his testimony

reflected the program he had outlined to his own

city department chiefs in June. While supporting

the need for a regional transit system, Bradley said

that energy shortages and EPA Air Pollution

Guidelines made it imperative to develop immediate action programs for transit. An imaginative “immediate” program which used buses,

carpools, jitney cabs, and “dial-a-ride” minibuses

was necessary. Bradley pointed out that a wellplanned program of this sort could help boost

transit ridership in corridors in which rapid transit

later would be introduced.

Aside from the need for an “intermediate” action

program, the mayor also pointed out that the high

cost of SCRTD’S regional system raised questions

of social and financial equity. Sales tax financing

often affected those least able to pay, and Bradley

felt that some mechanism was needed to offset this

burden. He suggested finding a way to guarantee a

low transit fare, as had been done in Atlanta in

1971 .

L OS Angeles County Supervisor Pet e

Schabarum, who had opposed SCRTD consistently, raised questions about the purpose of the plan.

After pointing out that SCRTD had not yet made

any technical data available to the county, he

emphasized the need for a system that served

suburban as well as local community trips. He

claimed that the SCRTD plan was too downtownoriented and, moreover, that it did not adequately

justify the corridors selected, the specific types of

interim projects, or the ultimate benefits to be

derived from the expenditure of $6.6 billion on a

rapid transit system that would carry only about 4

percent of the total trips in the region. With these

issues in mind, Schabarum questioned whether

SCRTD should be given a “blank check” to build a

transit system. ,

The testimony of Orange County Supervisor

Ralph Clark raised an issue that was reminiscent of

1968. Clark was chairman of the board of the

Orange County Transit District as well as chairman of SCAG’S Transportation Planning Committee. He voiced four main concerns about the plan.

The first was that it was so exclusively concerned

with Los Angeles County that it neglected to give

any consideration to the connection between the

county system and other regional systems, such as

the plan that was being developed by the Orange

County Transit District. Secondly, the SCRTD

plan appeared to be based on excessively high

regional population and employment projections,

which SCAG and Los Angeles County were in the

process of reducing. Rather than the 16 million

population figure projected for the region in 1990,

SCAG was considering a figure somewhere

between 12 and 14 million. Thirdly, the cost of the

SCRTD system was so high that it would put other

communities and districts that needed funds at a

severe disadvantage; and, finally, Clark pointed out

that the plan made no provision for direct service to

Orange County. This lack of regional coordination

between systems was an excellent example of the

problems of subregional transportation planning.

2 4
SCAG’S representative, Executive Director Ray

Remy, did not comment directly on the plan, but he

did explain that the amount of funding required for

it would exceed the Federal limit of 12.5 percent of

grant monies to any one State.

Both of the private citizens who testified before

the State Assembly Committee supported

SCRTD’S extensive series of public review

meetings and expressed the belief that the region

needed a rapid transit system. However, Robert

Profet, a transportation consultant who had

advised BARTD, pointed to the urgent need to

devise a process by which the many outlying

communities within SCRTD’S jurisdiction could

participate in the formulation and evaluation of

policies, objectives, and priorities for the transit

district. This issue came to the fore later on when

many communities failed to support the system

because it appeared to offer them so little.

One other person who testified at the hearing is

worth mentioning because his testimony reflects

the efforts that were made by the aerospace

industry in Los Angeles to influence the planning

process. This spokesperson was Jack Irving, vice

president of Aerospace Corporation, a scientific/engineering research company engaged in

work for government agencies primarily involving

the space and military fields. Aerospace recently

had presented a PRT proposal to the Los Angeles

County Board of Supervisors. In lengthy testimony

at the hearing, Irving described the basic concept of

PRT and the PRT system Aerospace proposed for

Los Angeles, claiming that this system would not

only be less costly to construct than conventional

heavy rail but also that its passenger revenues

would cover operating costs. Another strong

supporter of the PRT idea was Baxter Ward, a

member of the Board of Supervisors, who strongly

advocated rejecting RTD’s proposal in favor of a

PRT system. The industry’s exact role is difficult to

document without more investigation. But it is

clear that manufacturers were out to sell their high

technology products long before the planners had

defined the technological requirements of the

system.

The most pronounced reaction to the SCRTD

Phase 11 report occurred before the subcommittee

held its hearings and before the report was released

to the public. This was the reaction of UMTA’S

staff, who had urged SCRTD not to release the

report because its recommendations did not rest on

a complete and thorough analysis of alternatives.

The dispute between UMTA and SCRTD

centered on the latter’s apparent refusal to give

serious attention to an all-bus alternative. Despite

the IPG meeting, SCRTD treated the all-bus

alternative in what appeared to be a perfunctory

manner. Although the Phase II report does consider

an all-bus alternative, the alternative is dismissed

as being too costly and less effective in reducing

congestion and pollution than a fixed-guideway

system. The report did state that the bus alternative might be suitable to provide community

transit service, if this alternative were integrated

with mass transit line-haul services.

UMTA renewed its efforts to get SCRTD to

analyze alternatives more thoroughly after the

Phase II report was released in July. At that time,

SCRTD submitted drafts to UMTA of the contracts for the work the consultants were to do on

Phase III. In SCRTD’S mind, the purpose of Phase

III was to refine the Phase II plan and, accordingly,

the draft contracts contained no provisions for

further analysis of alternative transportation

modes or corridors.

UMTA seized this opportunity to revise the work

program for Phase III. In mid-August, after

discussions with SCAG and SCRTD, UMTA

presented a revised work program that called for a

full evaluation of all alternative modes, as well as a

corridor-by-corridor analysis. This evaluation was

to include the corridors recommended in the Phase

II report. Given the emphasis of this effort, UMTA

suggested that the transportation consultants

(Alan M. Voorhees & Associates), rather than the

management group (Peat, Marwick, Mitchell &

Co.), be made the project managers, Another

objective of the revised work program was to

ensure that SCAG and SCRTD integrated their

efforts more thoroughly. UMTA made it clear once

again that the SCRTD Phase 111 work had to be

closely coordinated with SCAG’S Critical Decisions

Plan.

SCRTD reacted strongly to UMTA’S action,

arguing that the revised work program made it

impossible for SCRTD to place a rapid transit plan

on the June 1974 ballot. General Manager Jack

Gilstrap emphasized SCRTD’S legislative mandate

to design and implement a comprehensive mass

rapid transit system, and reiterated that an all-bus

system could not satisfy the requirements of the

region.

Before the negotiations over the consultant’s

contract were completed, UMTA Administrator

2 5
Frank Herringer traveled to Los Angeles to make

UMTA’S position clear. Speaking to the SCAG

General Assembly in September, Herringer

emphasized that UMTA would examine all the

alternatives in order to determine whether fixed

rail or buses on freeways were the most cost

effective. With limited resources, UMTA was

obliged to examine closely the way it allocated

capital assistance.

The month after the UMTA administrator’s

speech, SCRTD submitted to UMTA the revised

consultant contracts, which reflected the

stipulations UMTA had laid down in August.

UMTA approved the contracts and the final phase

of the planning process began.

Phase III

The third phase of SCRTD’S planning work

lasted roughly from October 1973 until May 1974.

During the period a number of plans were debated,

and both SCRTD and SCAG approved a plan to

present to the voters in November. Despite their

action, however, it was clear that no strong

consensus on a transit plan existed in the region.

The SCRTD consultants presented a report in

March 1974 that contained an entirely new

approach. Rather than flatly recommending one

short-term and one long-term proposal, the report

coupled short-term (1- to 3-year) and intermediateterm (3- to 8-year) proposals with a number of

alternative long-term proposals.

The short-term proposal contemplated immediate improvements in local and express bus

service, while the intermediate-term proposal

called for a continuing program to expand the bus

fleet and improve service. The fleet would have

been expanded to 2,700 buses in 1977 and 3,4oo by

1984 .

The long-term plan represented a significant

new departure. Recognizing the financial constraints on UMTA, the plan took an incremental

approach that rested on four “building blocks,” each

of which represented a different-size rapid transit

system requiring different levels of investment and

different assumptions about the extent of Federal

participation in that investment.

The least extensive plan was Level I. It covered 33

miles at a total escalated cost of $2.7 billion over an

8-year implementation period and assumed only 10

percent participation from UMTA.

The second, Level II, was 57 miles of fixed

guideway costing $3.9 billion over an 8-year period

of implementation. UMTA’S share of the cost

would be 35 percent.

Level 111 was 77 miles. It would take 9 years to

implement, for a total cost of $5.2 billion, 50

percent of which would be contributed by UMTA.

Level IV, the most extensive, covered 121 miles.

It would cost $7.5 billion over a 12-year implementation period, and UMTA’S share of the cost was

assumed to be 60 percent.

All these alternatives included the short- and

intermediate-term programs. Level IV was a

modification of the Phase II proposal of July 1973.

This “Building Block” plan, presented in March,

set the stage for the debate that culminated in

summer 1974 with the adoption of a plan more

extensive than any of the four long-range alternatives. Although the plan seemed to offer

something for everyone and UMTA regarded it as a

constructive approach, it stirred up opposition

from many of SCRTD’S suburban critics and

touched off a round of proposals and counterproposals that finally concluded in the adoption of a

145-mile system with no incremental features.

The suburban critique of the step-by-step,

building block approach rested on the length of

time it would take to provide service to outlying

jurisdictions. In his article for Railway Age (June 1,

1974), Tom Kizzia quotes one businessman who

helped kill the incremental approach: “I’m 50 years

old,” he said. “With these priorities I would be long

gone before rapid transit ever got my way.”9

In April and Mayseveralother voices entered the

forum. Although they were not directed at the

March plan as such, they illustrate the lack of

consensus that existed around any one plan.

In April, in a draft of its Critical Decisions Plan,

whose publication had been delayed, the Southern

California Association of Governments (SCAG)

took a position on transit reflecting an approach to

regional growth that ran counter to SCRTD’S rapid

transit plans.

SCAG’S view was that the region should be

decentralized as it grows, by developing activity

centers other than the Los Angeles CBD. With this

9 Tom Kizzia, “Los Angeles, Will Tracks be Back?”, Railway

Age, June 10, 1974, p. 30.

26
in mind, the draft plan recommended reemphasizing line-haul commuter trips and improving local

community transit services. Accordingly, the

recommendations in the plan took a gradualistic

approach to the development of transit in the

region. They called for implementing immediate

transit improvements and waiting until the results

of their improvements were known before

proceeding with investments in a fixed-guideway

system. The report also suggested that an

intermediate-capacity rapid transit system capable

of carrying up to 25,000 passengers per hour

seemed more compatible with original goals and

policies than a heavy-rail, high-capacity system.

On May 16, SCAG held public hearings on this

draft. Although there was extensive criticism of

SCAG’S failure to have more public participation in

the preparation of the plan, the most forceful

criticism of the plan came from SCRTD and its

counterpart in Orange County. Both took particular issue with the recommendations regarding

fixed-guideways.

The Critical Decisions Plan was revised after

these hearings and a final plan was adopted by the

Executive Committee of SCAG on June 13, 1974.

This report established the framework for

evaluating regional transportation in the Preliminary

Regional Transportation Plan issued by SCAG in

November 1974 as part of the statewide transportation planning process,

The mayor of Los Angeles stated his views on the

extent of a new system in early May. Addressing

the Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Rapid Transit,

Mayor Bradley suggested that an intermediate

capacity fixed-guideway system of 50 to 70 miles

would be a suitable initial step, The mayor later

reemphasized the question of the system’s capacity, suggesting that it could be determined during

preliminary engineering.

The State of California issued a report on May

31, 1974, on both the SCRTD and the Orange

County Transit District (OCTD) plans. Prepared

by CALTRANS for the California Legislature, the

evaluation raised two points that echoed the

criticism of others. First, the report recommended

that the SCRTD board of directors strongly

consider adopting an intermediate-capacity rapid

transit system approximating the mileage of Level

IV (120 miles), as well as an improved feeder and

local circulation system, It also suggested that this

be done after making a thorough comparative

evaluation of such a system in relation to a highcapacity system.

Second, CALTRANS raised a point, made less

than a year before at the hearings on the Phase II

report, that SCRTD and OCTD had to coordinate

their planning and design work more effectively in

order to achieve an integrated regional system.

All these suggestions and proposals had been

raised by the time the board of directors of SCRTD

moved toward a decision on the system they would

select to put on the November ballot. In addition,

one of SCRTD’S consultants had raised a fundamental question of whether more than 60 miles

of fixed-guideway was needed for the foreseeable

future.

In May 1974 Voorhees prepared an interim

report indicating that there was a need for a 60-mile

fixed-guideway system. Such a system would cost

between $2.4 and $3.2 billion. AMV’S report

concluded that 60 miles was clearly justifiable and

that a case might be made for a system as long as

120 miles. The issue, the Voorhees interim report

said, “is whether it is necessary and desirable for

the region to commit to a fixed-guideway development beyond 60 miles at this time. ” The report

went on to say that this question was not so much a

technical or financial issue, but a question of basic

policy.

The issues raised in the interim report failed to

reach the public forum. At a presentation to UMTA

representatives, SCRTD had consultants from

Kaiser rather than Voorhees explain the proposed

plan. They contradicted the Voorhees team, and

recommended 145 miles of fixed guideway rather

than the 60-mile system.

The plan which SCRTD’S board of directors

finally accepted on August 2,1974, was a modification of this 145-mile system (see Figure 5). Aside

from a short-term bus improvement program, the

adopted plan called for 145 miles of fixed-guideway,

which included a 5-mile extension through Long

Beach, and the extension of the n-mile San

Bernardino busway for another 20 miles to the

Ontario International Airport. The plan contained

no priorities for implementation, and it Was

described as the first stage in the achievement of an

overall regional goal of a 240-mile system. The first

stage would cost between $8 and $10 billion over a

12- to 15-year implementation period.

The reaction to the adoption of this plan was by

no means overwhelmingly favorable. Although

27

SCAG had adopted it on July 11, 1974, as the Following what one SCRTD official called the

subregional transit element of the regional “Denver Strategy,”ll the district hoped that the

transportation plan, and although Mayor Bradley voters would vote their approval of Proposition A

and other transit advocates eventually stood because they supported the rapid transit concept

behind it in the election campaign, the plan evoked sketched out in the adopted plan. The details of the

some forceful criticism from public and private system would be” worked out in the preliminary

officials. engineering stage.

For some local municipal leaders from outlying

communities, the plan was not extensive enough.

One councilman from Glendora stated that the

plan offered very little to the East San Gabriel

Valley. “I can’t see the people in may community

subsidizing a transportation plan for the San

Fernando Valley and the Wilshire Corridor,” he

said. “I’m going to work very hard against it.”10

For others, it was unrealistically expensive. RTD

board member Arthur Baldonado voted against it

on these grounds, and a group of Los Angeles

County mayors, which were organized in the fall to

oppose the measure, called it inflationary and too

much oriented to downtown Los Angeles.

Both SCAG and UMTA also stipulated a number

of issues that had to be resolved. In preparing the

program for the next phase of work to refine the

plan, both organizations required that the plan had

to be properly meshed with the plans of the Orange

County Transit District.

Finally, the Citizens’ Advisory Committee on

Rapid Transit (CACORT) viewed the sudden

adoption of the 145-mile system as a unilateral

breach of faith. The CACORT organization had

been organized by Mayor Bradley to provide citizen

input to the planning process. At the time the

SCRTD board acted, the CACORT committee had

been working on evaluation of the March 1974

“Building Block Plan.” To them SCRTD’S sudden

action appeared to obviate all the work they had put

into the evaluations, and although CACORT later

endorsed the ballot proposal for financing the plan,

SCRTD’S action did little to dispel their distrust of

the transit agency.

The Vote on Proposition A

The strategy was based on the correct perception

that, among public officials as well as the populace

at large, there was broad support for a transit

system. The disagreements that existed had to do

with the specific characteristics of the system, its

mileage, technology, service characteristics, and

cost. According to SCRTD’S reasoning, these were

all things that people would negotiate later on after

voting to give SCRTD the wherewithal to accomplish the fundamental objective of building

some sort of public transportation system.

Proposition A was put to the voters of Los

Angeles County on November 5, 1974. Unlike the

referendum in 1968, the measure required only a

simple majority to pass rather than two-thirds of

the vote. Despite this advantage, it only received

46.4 percent of the vote in Los Angeles County.

The outcome of the election does not necessarily

discredit the basic premises of the SCRTD strategy.

But it does cast doubt on the people’s confidence in

SCRTD, and on the prospects for developing a

large-scale rapid transit system in the region. In

order to succeed with such a strategy, SCRTD

needed the full confidence of the voters. In many

people’s minds, that confidence had not only been

eroded by the persistent institutional battles, but,

most importantly, by the bitter and prolonged

transit strike that ended only weeks before the

vote. The strike exposed SCRTD to daily reporting

and, regardless of the merits of its case, the

constant glare made the competence and character

of SCRTD a primary issue in people’s minds.

Other factors also weighed heavily in the vote.

The state of the economy made people reluctant to

vote an increase in the sales tax; the psychological

passing of the energy crisis may have made the

need for mass transit less compelling; and in most

The strategy SCRTD adopted to win the support

of all the disparate groups was to leave the precise 1 I In 1973 DenVer voters approved a %-cent sales tax to

details of the transit plan as vague as possible. support the Regional Transportation District in refining and

eventually constructing a rapid transit system. Technically the

issue before voters was the sales tax levy, although the tax was

linked closely to a promotional campaign for the personal rapid

10 Mikeward,“Leaders COOI to RTD Tax, ” L.w Angeles Times, transit-type system recommended in the RTD’s preliminary

JUIY 28, 1974. plan.

29
parts of the region there was a low voter turnout.

Some people may also have felt that the passage of

Proposition 5 in June 1974, which diverted State

gas tax money for the development of rail transit,

obviated the need for more money to build a

system.

All these things may have contributed to some

extent to the defeat. One thing worth noting is that

Proposition A, like its predecessor in 1968, was not

defeated by the lower-income residents of Los

Angeles proper, the residents of Santa Monica, or

the well-to-do of Beverly Hills. These cities

produced 56 percent, 61 percent, and 54 percent of

affirmative votes, respectively. It was the voters in

the suburban areas that once again brought the

measure down.

Postscript

Planning for rapid transit in the Los Angeles area

has taken a new course since the defeat of

Proposition A. It is a course reminiscent of the

proposal for a south-central line that SCRTD put

forward in late 1971. Like that proposal, it

represents SCRTD’S unswerving commitment to

build a rapid transit line, but unlike that proposal it

seems to have a reasonable chance of succeeding.

The new approach involves exploring the

development of a “starter” line project. After the

defeat in November, SCRTD began to examine

ways to use relatively unencumbered, “voter-free”

Proposition 5 funds for initiating a segment of a

rapid transit starter line (see Figure 6).

In order to establish an institutional forum for

developing such a project, SCRTD established a

Rapid Transit Advisory Committee (RTAC). The

committee has representatives from CALTRANS,

SCAG, Los Angeles County, Orange County

Transit District, the League of California Cities,

and the City of Los Angeles. All of these bodies

would be responsible for providing financial

support to the project in one way or another, and

they were all brought together on the RTAC with

the specific mandate to develop a consensus on an

acceptable starter line. Both the State Senate and

Assembly adopted resolutions urging SCRTD to

adopt such a starter line.

Since the creation of this committee in March

1975, progress has been made. A consensus on a

broad corridor running through the San Fernando

Valley, the central business district of Los Angeles,

and Long Beach-San Pedro area has been reached

and approved in resolutions by the City Council of

Los Angeles and the SCRTD Board. The City

Council of Los Angeles had previously adopted a

resolution authorizing the city to contribute its

share of Proposition 5 funds for 6 years toward the

financing of an acceptable starter line; in the fall of

1975, SCRTD received an initial one-half million

dollars in Proposition 5 funds from California.l2

The public agencies involved in RTAC are looking

currently at more detailed alternatives for an

alinement within this broad corridor. This process

will be followed by plan refinement and preliminary

engineering, and if the local consensus holds, by an

application for UMTA funding.

What makes this project more likely to succeed

than the other is that it is more limited in scope, not

dependent on voter approval, and assured of at

least Proposition 5 money as a local share. If it

succeeds, it will mark the end of a long struggle to

bring rapid rail transit to Los Angeles.

12 ~nglneerlng News Record, 4 September 1975.

30
FIGURE 6: LOS ANGELES RAPID TRANSIT STARTER LINE CORRIDOR

Source: Southern California Rapid Transit District, July 197 5

3 1
190 6

1911

1925

1926

1933

1948

195 1

195 7

196 0

196 1

196 3

196 4

Chronology of the Transportation Planning Process

Twin subways were proposed in downtown Los Angeles. A recession the

following year brought an end to the

proposal.

The Southern Pacific Railway consolidated eight interurban lines into the

Pacific Electric Company.

A demonstration l-mile subway in

Hollywood was opened.

Proposals to convert two P.E. routes to

subway were abandoned due to high

costs .

A proposal to extend the Hollywood

Subway and build two more lines was

abandoned due to high costs.

The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce

took the first step to revitalize public

transit by submitting the Rapid Transit

Action Program to the State legislature.

The State legislature authorized the Los

Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to formulate plans for a mass

transit system.

The MTA was given the power to

purchase and operate existing bus lines

with capital provided by the sale of

revenue bonds.

The MTA presented a 75-mile, fourcorridor line. The highway-oriented Los

Angeles Regional Transportation Study

(LARTS) was established by the California State Highway Department to

undertake long-term regional transportation plans.

Los Angeles’ last streetcar line was

abandoned.

The MTA proposed a 64-mile, fourcorridor rapid transit line.

The MTA was replaced by the Southern

California Rapid Transit District

(SCRTD), which was given an explicit

mandate to operate the existing public

transit system as well as to design,

engineer, and implement a mass rapid

transit system.

The highway-oriented Transportation

Association of Southern California

(TASC) was formed to exercise policy

and technical review for the regional

transportation planning process.

196 6 Early in the year, SCRTD contracted

Kaiser Engineers; Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall; and Coverdale and

Colpitts to prepare a rapid transit

proposal.

196 7 1n October, a preliminary $1.5 billion

rapid transit proposal for a fourcorridor, 62-mile system was issued to

the public for review.

196 8 In May, a final plan was issued proposing

a five-corridor, 89-mile, $2.5 billion rail

system to be financed by a general sales

tax. In August, SCRTD adopted the final

plan.

The State legislature authorized

SCRTD to place Proposition A, proposing the sales tax, on the ballot.

LARTS issued a long-range transportation plan oriented toward highway

travel including a proposal that led to the

construction of the Ii-mil e San

Bernardino-El Monte busway.

In November, Proposition A was

defeated.

1971 SCAG began to assume more formal

powers over regional transportation

planning. It was given responsibility for

setting policy for the regional transportation planning process, merged with

TASC in February, and became the A-95

and 3-C agency.

In mid-November, the City Planning

Department made the first public move

that started the process leading to the

3 3
1974 referendum.

committee of the

It presented to a

Los Angeles City

Council a $2.4 billion rapid transit

program to build a 100-mile system by

1990.

On December 7, SCRTD’S board of

directors unveiled an alternative plan

calling for a $420 million, 14-mile

“starter” line in the south-central corridor, linking the central city to southern

Los Angeles.

1972 In early March, the city’s Technical

Advisory Committee on Rapid Transit

argued that the Wilshire corridor was a

far better place to put a starter line. The

City Council, although it did not accept

the SCRTD position, indicated that it

would go along with SCRTD’S effort to

get aid from UMTA.

In the spring the Committee for Central

City Planning, a private organization of

downtown interests created to develop a

downtown urban renewal area, completed its plan, calling for a downtown

PRT circulation system. This proposal

became part of the city’s General

Development Plan.

In April, during the annual meeting of

the Inter-Modal Planning Group,

UMTA mandated SCAG to do longrange transportation planning for the

region. SCRTD and the Orange County

Transit District (OCTD) would be

responsible for corridor-level planning.

In October, SCRTD hired Kaiser

Engineers; Daniel, Mann, Johnson &

Mendenhall; and Stone and Youngsberg

to do engineering, planning, and financial studies for the first phase in

developing the plan presented in the

1974 referendum.

In November, the State legislature

passed Assembly Bill 69, creating

CALTRANS, a new multimodal California Department of Transportation. The

same act mandated SCAG to prepare a

regional long-range transportation plan

for Los Angeles by April 1975, incorporating subregional transit elements to

be prepared by OCTD and SCRTD.

1973 In March, SCRTD’S Phase I report, Study

Of Alternative Transit Corridors and Systems,

was released.

In April, at an annual meeting of the

Inter-Modal Planning Group, UMTA

and SCRTD negotiated their

differences. An agreement was reached

whereby SCAG would prepare a Critical

Decisions Plan to guide transportation

planning until a detailed regional plan

was completed. Also, SCRTD agreed to

restudy the alternatives it had examined

during Phase I studies and include an

evaluation of all-bus alternatives.

In July, Rapid Transit for Los Angeles, the

Phase II report, was published. It

recommended a regional master plan

calling for the construction of a $3.3

billion system including 116 miles of

rapid rail and 24 miles of exclusive

busways. The report gave highest

priority to a two-part program of transit

improvements.

In mid-August, UMTA presented a

revised work program calling for full

evaluation of all alternative modes and

corridors.

197 4 In March SCRTD consultants presented

A Public Transportation Improvement Program,

which suggested an incremental

“building block” approach of four alternatives of between 33 and 121 miles of

fixed-guideway, with each alternative

including a short- and intermediateterm program

In may, the Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Rapid Transit (CACORT) issued

its summary report, Public Transportation:

The Citizen’s View.

On May 31, the State of California

issued a report urging SCRTD to adopt

the most extensive transit system and

recommended that SCRTD and the

Orange County Transit District coordinate their planning and design to

achieve an integrated regional system.

Also in May, Alan M. Voorhees &

Associates prepared an interim report

that stressed the need for a 60-mile

fixed-guideway system costing $2.4 to

34
$3.2 billion. SCRTD had consultants

from Kaiser explain the proposed plan to

UMTA. They recommended a 145-mile

system instead of the 60-mile.

On

the

the

On

June 13, 1974, after public hearings,

Critical Decisions Plan was adopted by

Executive Committee of SCAG.

August 2, SCRTD’S board of directors accepted a modified version of the

145-mile system. The sudden adoption

of the 145-mile system alienated transit

advocates who had been working on the

basis of the March 1974 “building block”

plan.

On November 5, Proposition A was

defeated at the polls.

1975 In March, SCRTD established a Rapid

Transit Advisory Committee (RTAC) to

develop a starter line in a broad corridor

running through the San Fernando

Valley, the CBD of Los Angeles, and the

Long Beach-San Pedro area. This route

has been approved by the City of Los

Angeles and the SCRTD board.

35
INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

The institutional context for transportation

policymaking, planning, and implementation in the

Los Angeles metropolitan area is highly complex.

Although the role of the regional planning agency

has been strengthened during the past decade, a

single authoritative mechanism for negotiating

agreements among the public agencies concerned

with mass transit within the county has not yet

been clearly defined. Policymaking and implementation functions are fragmented, and decisionmaking is characterized by competition rather than

coordination among the participating institutions.

Within the region it is extremely difficult to

formulate responsive policy and plans that rest

firmly on an areawide consensus.

Forum for Decisionmaking

Assessment of the Planning and

Decisionmaking Process

The institutional forum for decisionmaking in

Los Angeles is not well integrated. Although the

Southern California Association of Governments

(SCAG) provides the official forum for regional

policymaking, it does not have sufficient authority

to establish and enforce priorities for transportation development programs in the region. One

result of this is that, until recently, a subregional

transit operator like the Southern California Rapid

Transit District (SCRTD) has operated with a

considerable amount of autonomy. Fashioning an

institutional mechanism that could forge effective

and responsive countywide transit policy and plans

has become a prime concern of regional decisionmakers.

Since SCAG was established 10 years ago, its

ability to influence and discipline the planning

process has increased. Both the Federal Government and the State have taken steps to provide

SCAG with the leverage to coordinate the regional

transport at ion planning process. Federal

designations have made SCAG the 3-C agency for

the region, given it the A-95 review power, and,

more recently, have made it the Metropolitan

Planning Organization. While SCRTD’S rapid

transit plan was being prepared, UMTA exerted

external pressure to integrate the planning with

SCAG’S work on the regional transportation plan.

The State of California also vested new authorit y

in SCAG that has increased its influence in the

region. Under the provisions of Assembly Bill 69,

SCAG is responsible for developing the region’s

transportation plan, and as the designated administrator of SB 325 local transportation funds for

the region, SCAG must evaluate and approve

claims for this assistance from local transit

operators.

Despite SCAG’S growing influence, it has not

exerted direct control over the activities of the

Southern California Rapid Transit District. Some

of the reasons for this are rooted in the institutional

character of SCAG itself, while others can be traced

to characteristics of the SCRTD.

Although SCAG does provide a context for

debate and negotiations about regional issues, it

does not function as the authoritative forum for

regional decisionmaking. The primary reason for

this is that it does not have statutory powers to

establish and enforce a set of program priorities,

and it is not empowered to implement programs.

Although SCAG’S Regional Development Guide

Program and Regional Transportation Plan can set

the framework for the evaluation and discussion of

regional land-use and transportation issues,

neither one is imbued with the force of law. County

and municipal government still exercise control

over the use of land, and the ultimate authority for

transportation programs lies with the modal

agencies that have the power to implement those

programs.

Another reason SCAG has not provided an

effective forum for transit decisionmaking is that

its perspective is too broad. The size of the sixcounty area SCAG covers is so large that the

organization’s ability to concentrate resources on

any one area is weakened by the demands of other

areas. In effect, SCAG’S authority is too diffuse to

37
be applied effectively. In contrast, SCRTD is

considerably more powerful.

SCRTD was created in 1964 for the specific

purpose of developing a transit system in Los

Angeles County. Its legislative mandate gives it full

statutory powers to operate the existing bus transit

system and to plan, design, construct, and operate a

new mass transit system for the county. Though

dependent on voter approval for financing the

development of a new system, SCRTD could

function with virtual autonomy once such approval

or an alternative independent source of finance is

obtained.

Historically, SCRTD has held a very clear idea of

the objectives of its mission and has pursued them

steadfastly. As the record of the years from 1968 to

the present shows, SCRTD regards its top priority

as providing Los Angeles County with a fixedguideway rapid transit system. Despite growing

concern over the suitability and costs of such a

system, SCRTD has remained committed to this

view of its mission; modifying its short-term

programs where necessary, and negotiating the

extent of the guideway system to gain political

support, it has never lost sight of the fundamental

concept of its legislative mandate.

In some instances, SCRTD has pursued its

mission without coordinating its activities with

other regional agencies. In 1968, the Regional Plan

Association criticized SCRTD for its failure to

coordinate with other regional agencies, and

throughout the period of planning that led up to the

referendum in November 1974, UMTA repeatedly

urged SCRTD to coordinate with SCAG and the

Orange County Transit District (OCTD). Finally,

in March 1974, CALTRANS’ evaluation of the

transit planning activities being carried out by

SCRTD and OCTD underscored the lack of

coordination between the system being developed

by SCRTD and the plans OCTD was preparing.

Like SCAG, other institutional participants in

the decisionmaking forum have competed with

SCRTD for policymaking and priority-setting

powers. Aside from being represented on the

SCRTD board, the City of Los Angeles and the

County of Los Angeles also participate in the

Technical Advisory Committee that was established to review SCRTD’S rapid transit plans.

Although

SCRTD’S

responded

38

the city exerted some influence over

immediate action programs, SCRTD

to a broader countywide constituency

when the board approved the 145-mile system that

went to the voters in 1974. The county has tended

to regard SCRTD functions as ones that it should

exercise itself.

The County of Los Angeles is a powerful actor on

the scene. It has played a key role in the process and

is a source of competition for SCRTD, County

control over revenue sharing funds puts it in a key

position to vote to use those funds to subsidize

SCRTD’S 25-cent fare. This move pushed SCRTD

toward giving a more serious look at bus transit

alternatives. In addition, county supervisors have

promoted the idea of using existing railroad lines

for commuter service. With considerable experience in designing and maintaining the vast county

highway network, the county has always felt it was

the logical candidate to run the area’s transit

system.

Since the referendum in November 1974, the

attempts that have been made to get a new

“starter” line approved have not fundamentally

altered the institutional forum for decisionmaking.

The Rapid Transit Advisory Committee which

SCRTD established in March 1975 was designed to

formulate a consensus on a broad corridor for a

starter line and as such it represents a positive

change in the style of local transit decisionmaking.

Representatives from the City of Los Angeles,

Orange and Los Angeles counties, SCAG,

CALTRANS, and the League of California Cities,

as well as SCRTD, all sit on the Rapid Transit

Advisory Committee (RTAC). Collectively they are

charged with exploring alternative corridors and

reaching a common agreement on a starter line in

order to demonstrate to UMTA their willingness to

provide local support for its construction. By July

1975 the members of the board of directors of

SCRTD, the city, other members of RTAC, and the

State Senate and Assembly had reached a consensus on a starter line corridor running from the San

Fernando Valley, through the central business

district, and south to the Long Beach-San Pedro

area. Local financing for such a corridor would

come from State funds provided by Proposition 5.

The institutional approach offered by the Rapid

Transit Advisory Committee does not represent a

permanent solution to the institutional issues

posed in the area. RTAC is an ad hoc response to an

immediate problem. The committee’s authority is

derived from a collectively perceived need for

action but does not extend to a long-term arrangement for establishing policy and program priorities.
At this point no clear long-term restructuring of

the institutional forum is in evidence. Like the

special purpose agencies that dominate the transit

field in San Francisco (BARTD) and Denver (RTD),

SCRTD has guarded its autonomy jealously and

has resisted attempts to create a broader-based

organization.

One legislative initiative has been taken that may

represent a new departure. Under a proposed bill,

Assembly Bill 1246, the primary forum for

decisionmaking for transportation within Los

Angeles County would be a new Los Angeles

County Transportation Commission. Although

SCAG would retain responsibility for long-range

regional transportation planning and coordination,

the new commission would have specific countywide responsibilities for transit policymaking,

priority setting, service coordination, short-range

transportation planning, and approval of a new

public mass transit system. SCRTD’S function

would be entirely restricted to operating transit

service.

The future of this proposal is not clear at this

time, and other alternatives have been suggested—

such as the idea that the County Board of

Supervisors should assume responsibility for rapid

transit.

All these suggestions illustrate a central point—

that the official forum provided for decisionmaking

in Los Angeles is too weak to contain and direct the

actions of the autonomous SCRTD. The region

needs a more clearly delineated structuring of

responsibilities for policymaking and transit

operations in order to achieve a responsive and

accountable planning process. As things stand now,

conflicts between decisionmakers can be resolved

only in an ad hoc manner that depends heavily on

the relative distribution of power and public favor

among the participants in the process. Should the

State of California begin to play an even more

active role in Southern California transit affairs, it

might provide the outside “third party” required to

structure an effective forum for conflict resolution

and transit decisionmaking.

Accountability of Decisionmakers

The Southern California Rapid Transit District

(SCRTD) brings into focus the issue of accountability inherent in a special purpose transit district.

Although SCRTD’S legislative mandate gave the

agency clear authority to develop a mass transit

system, SCRTD has been unable to produce a

flexible and financially feasible plan that responds

to the varied demands of the several constituencies

within Los Angeles County.

The problem can be traced to several interrelated

factors. But one primary reason is that SCRTD’S

board and staff held to such a strict interpretation

of their mandate that they were caught in the

untenable position of trying to apply the same

technological solution to the needs of both the City

of Los Angeles and the outlying suburban jurisdictions. The cost of such a single-minded vision

ultimately made it impractical and led to its defeat.

SCRTD’S legislative mandate charged the agency

with designing, implementing, and operating a

mass transit system for the county. As we have

seen, the legislation required SCRTD to seek voter

approval for financing the development of such a

system.

From the outset, SCRTD’S board and staff

committed themselves to developing a fixedguideway system that would provide service to the

county. Pressure from UMTA and the demand for

immediate transit improvements led SCRTD to

formulate short-term bus transit service solutions.

But SCRTD did not waver from its basic commitment to plan a regional rapid rail system. Most

people expected the plan to resemble the BART

system in San Francisco. It was this type of

technological solution that SCRTD asked the

voters to approve in November.

By trying to apply this system to the entire

region, SCRTD was caught in a situation in which

it could satisfy neither its own mandate nor the

demands of the several jurisdictions of the region.

Providing the jurisdictions beyond the central city

of Los Angeles with the same rapid rail technology

as the one applied to the city resulted in a system so

costly that the voters of the county were unwilling

to approve the mechanism for financing their share

of the cost, and UMTA also was extremely

reluctant to commit itself to the Federal share.

The reasons why SCRTD persisted on its course

bear on the issues of accountability and responsiveness. Aside from the constraining imperatives

of its own legal mandate, SCRTD also stuck to the

course for a number of other reasons.

The composition of SCRTD’S appointed board

lessened its ability to respond to the complexities of

the region. Although the City of Los Angeles is the

39
jurisdiction most interested in mass transit, it is

underrepresented on the board. The mayor of Los

Angeles appoints only two of the members, while

the County Board of Supervisors appoints five and

the City Selection Committee appoints four.

As Mayor Bradley pointed out in his testimony of

December 13, 1974, before the Subcommittee on

Los Angeles Regional Transportation of the State

Assembly Committee on Transportation, the

composition of the board made SCRTD beholden to

areas whose demands for equal treatment were

most likely to lead to an overly extensive rapid

transit system.

One reason SCRTD was caught in this vicious

circle has to do with the method of financing the

system. Having chosen to develop a large regional

system financed in part by an increment of the sales

tax, SCRTD needed to get voter approval for

increasing the tax. In order to secure the support of

local officials in outlying areas for the tax increase,

SCRTD had to provide them with the modern

service it provided to the City of Los Angeles, and

doing so required extending the system beyond its

justifiable limits.

The irony of this situation is that if SCRTD has

been able to take a flexible, incremental approach to

building a system, it might have succeeded. The

record suggests that a less extensive rail rapid

transit system serving the central city combined

with relatively short-range express bus and local

circulation improvements would have been more

responsive to the requirements of the county. Both

the technical justification for a rapid rail system and

its primary voter support were strong in the City of

Los Angeles, while the technical rationale for

providing such a system to outlying suburban

jurisdictions was much weaker. Suburban jurisdictions were only lukewarm about financing a system

that would take such a long time to construct and

provide them with service.

Had SCRTD been able to produce a flexible plan

that provided the dense central city with a line and

outlying areas with express bus services and

innovative local transit services, the outcome of the

referendum might have been different. As it was,

the attempt to serve the suburban areas with the

same technological solution as the center city in the

end penalized the people most willing to support

mass transit.

district had had a stable and assured source of

funding that was not subject to the vagaries of

political horsetrading. By using Proposition A

funds, SCRTD can put up a local share for a usable

segment of a transit system to provide service to an

area that has clearly expressed its support for it.

There is a potential drawback to a financing

mechanism that is not dependent on voter approval. To a great extent, the referendum vote is

the voter’s best recourse for holding appointed

officials accountable for their actions. An independent source of funding could conceivably be used by

an agency in a manner which rode roughshod over

the wishes of the public. This is one of the problems

posed by trust fund financing for special purposes.

In the case of SCRTD, however, the use of

Proposition 5 funds is not without constraints.

Other jurisdictions would be contributing to a

starter line, and the State legislature and the State

Transportation Board are both bodies to which

SCRTD can be held accountable.

One other measure of the degree of responsiveness of SCRTD should be mentioned before

closing this discussion. Whether justifiably or not,

the autonomous character of SCRTD was regarded

with considerable wariness prior to the November

1974 referendum. In an evaluation of the Rapid

Transit “Building Block Plan” issued in May 1974,

the Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Rapid Transit

(CACORT) specifically recommended taking

measures prior to the November referendum to

assure that strong controls would be placed on the

manner in which any money approved by that

referendum was spent.13 

In another move to ensure that local jurisdictions

would have control over SCRTD’S activities, the

State Assembly passed HB 3896. Originally proposed by Assemblyman Lanterman of Pasadena, the

bill prohibited the expenditure of SCRTD funds

from the 1/2-cent sales tax for purposes other than

planning and design, such as capital development,

unless approved by the affected local jurisdictions.

Had the referendum succeeded, the bill would have

given local municipalities strong leverage over

SCRTD’S capital expenditures for mass transit.

In summary, the mandate of SCRTD and the

structure of its board seriously reduced its ability to

As SCRTD’S current efforts indicate, a far more 13 CACORT, public Transporfatiom The Cifizen Ouemiew, Ma y

realistic plan could have been developed if the 1974, p. 22.

40
fashion a plan that could respond to the complex

requirements of such a varied area as the County of

Los Angeles. The new effort to secure approval for

a starter line responds more directly to a commonly

felt need.

Public Involvement

The Southern California Rapid Transit District

did not establish a formal and permanent structure

for community participation in the planning

process that led to the 1974 referendum. Following

the precedent set during the 1968 campaign, the

SCRTD and local transit supporters carried out a

widespread public relations campaign designed to

sell the idea to the voters, but their “sales pitch” was

not a substitute for a truly responsive citizen

participation program. The ill-fated 1974 plan

might have fared better if those potentially affected

elements of the public had been involved from the

beginning of the process.

Public participation in SCRTD’S planning process

occurred in a number of ways. The primary

approach employed by SCRTD was to conduct

community meetings and presentations during

different stages of the process. By its own count,

SCRTD held 10 meetings during Phase I, 18 in

Phase II, and over 100 meetings during Phase III of

the project. These meetings and conferences were

followed by formal public hearings on the rapid

transit proposal.

These meetings provided a forum for SCRTD to

describe alternative proposals to the public and to

receive comments from the public and local

officials. During Phase III these criticisms were

incorporated into the evaluation of alternatives and

contributed to the formulation of a more extensive

short-term bus improvement program.

This type of approach has a number of drawbacks. First, it does not involve a formal period of

public involvement in the setting of goals and

objectives for the process. Through participation in

the early stages, the public and the planners can

make their values, objectives, and concerns explicit.

Second, because the approach is not formalized,

laymen and technicians seldom have enough time

to learn each other’s language and begin discussing

the issues that concern local neighborhood groups.

This is particularly true with systems-level planning where the technicians are dealing with

regional issues that are not immediately comprehensible to locally oriented groups, For these

reasons, public meetings tend to offer little more

than a one-way process of providing the public with

information.

A more formal approach to public involvement

was initiated by Mayor Bradley in early 1974 when

he established the Citizens’ Advisory Committee

on Rapid Transit. CACORT had two primary

objectives. One was to review and comment on

SCRTD’S plans, and the second was to conduct

voter education and public information programs

for the campaign for the November referendum.

The committee was made up of civic leaders,

business organizations, labor officials, and environmental groups.

Although CACORT did a commendable job on

both counts, it suffered from a number of

weaknesses. It was not institutionally integrated

into the SCRTD process. It had difficulty getting

information from SCRTD and, as CACORT was

evaluating the SCRTD’S March 1974 plan, SCRTD

was already considering the proposals that it later

adopted in July. CACORT’S evaluation comments

and recommendations were answered on July 12,

1974, after the transit plan had been adopted.

CACORT’S dual role not only created considerable friction within the organization itself but

made it difficult for members to discuss publicly

their criticisms of the district’s plan. Although a

separate committee structure was established for

the campaign, it was identified closely enough with

CACORT to dampen the criticisms of all but those

members of CACORT who were vehemently

critical of SCRTD.

Aside from the participation of the Los Angeles

County voters in the referendum itself, SCRTD

had no other mechanisms for public participation.

According to one observer, the district has not yet

established any mechanism for the public to

provide input to the starter line project. Without a

serious effort to structure and regularize participation at regional, corridor, and neighborhood levels,

SCRTD may find itself in the very same position as

the highway engineers whose projects have been

stopped by community opposition.

TECHNICAL PLANNING PROCESS

The long process of technical planning leading to

the proposal presented to voters in November 1974

was governed from the outset of SC RTD’S

41
adherence to its legislative mandate to build a

comprehensive mass rapid transit system for Los

Angeles County. Historically, SCRTD has interpreted that mandate to mean that the district was

charged with developing a rapid rail transit system

for the area, and it was that specific definition of its

mandate that shaped the overall character of the

technical planning process. This fundamental

commitment provided the underlying goal of the

process, conditioned the manner in which alternative transit systems were developed and

evaluated, and, finally, influenced the course of

action the district chose to follow after the defeat of

Proposition A.

In retrospect, one could argue that planning for

rapid transit in Los Angeles has become more

sophisticated during the past 5 years. Under

pressure from UMTA and SCAG, SCRTDgradually expanded the process to include an examination

of regional and local objectives, more analysis of

alternative transit corridors and systems, and

greater consideration of short-term transit improvements and ways of staging the implementation of the proposed system. By the time the board

adopted the proposed plan in July 1974, SCRTD’S

consultants had generated a considerable amount

of information upon which to base a preliminary

decision on an overall system of transit corridors.

But to say that the process was evolving in a

positive direction does not mean it was an

exemplary process. SCRTD did not pursue a stepby-step process of establishing clear goals and

objectives, objectively exploring and evaluating a

full range of alternatives for achieving those

objectives, and formulating staged implementation

programs that were coordinated with other

regional development programs. SCRTD’S objective was predetermined from the beginning, and

the modifications it made to the process as it

pursued that objective were dictated by the

exigencies of negotiating with other institutional

and political actors in the region and responding to

pressure from the Federal Government.

study, the original development of alternative

corridors responded primarily to SCRTD’S

legislative mandate to build a regional rapid transit

system.

Southern California Rapid Transit District’s

enabling legislation directed SCRTD to provide the

Southern California area with a mass rapid transit

system and stated:

There is an imperative need for a comprehensive mass rapid transit system in the Southern

California area, and particularly in Los

Angeles County. Diminution of congestion in

streets and highways in Los Angeles will

facilitate passage of all Californians motoring

through the most populous area of this State

and will especially benefit domiciliaries of that

county who reside both within and without

the rapid transit district.l4

SCRTD has based all its major planning efforts on

this fundamental legislative objective.

During the planning that led to the proposal

adopted in July 1974, SCRTD developed a broad set

of goals to guide the process. The goals and

objectives were derived from a number of sources

and provided the basis for the analysis of alternative corridors and modes that was carried out in

the three main phases of the process. The general

transportation goals that guided the Phase I effort

were derived from the Regional Development Guide of

the Southern California Association of

Governments, the Environmental Development Guide of

the County of Los Angeles, and the city’s proposed

citywide plan. In Phase II and Phase 111 of the

process, these goals and objectives were elaborated

upon in evaluating the selected alternative corridors.

The Summary Technical Report produced during the

study of alternative transit corridors and systems

and finally published in October 1974 contains a

brief review of the regional goals and objectives set

forth to guide the process. It cites the broad

regional goals in SCAG’S Regional Development Guide:

. To develop a transportation system which

Development of Goals and Objectives will support the comprehensive goals of

the region, taking into account the effect of

SCRTD conducted the technical planning mode selection, location, and time upon the

process that led to the proposal of July 1974 within

the context of a set of comprehensive goals for

regional development, transportation, and en- 1 ~ AS ~uOted in southern California Rapid Transit 13istrkt,

vironmental improvement, Although these goals Trnnsit for Los Angeks County: A Sub-Regional Transif Efemerd of the

provided general guidelines for the conduct of the Transportation Phn, July 1974, p. i.

42
physical, social, economic, an d

organizational environment.

● To create a balanced transportation system

integrated with planned land use in order

to give effective mobility for all people and

to provide efficient and economic movement of goods.

Ž To minimize the need for long-distance

intraregional travel, particularly work

trips, by guiding the development of the

region in a manner as to create selfsufficient communities which have a

balance of service facilities, employment

and housing.

Ž To develop a transportation system for the

region that will be compatible with the

environment, use the available resources

wisely, promote the esthetic beauty of the

region, and not result in any undesirable

environmental changes.

• To develop a transportation system that is

financially, legally and politically feasible,

has broad public support, and has a

commitment to its. implementation by

elected officials and those providing

transportation services.

SCRTD’S consultant team established a number

of more specific objectives to guide its planning and

evaluation activities. As described in the Summary

Technical Repro+, these included: (a) mobility needs;

(b) considerations involving transit service

characteristics; (c) environmental objectives such

as improved air quality and energy conservation;

(d) effective coordination with land-use and

development policies; (e) financial feasibility; and (f)

consideration of promising new technologies.

In addition to the specific objectives falling within

these categories, SCRTD also set forth a number of

general considerations regarding the range of

travel needs that planning had to address. These

included the need for improved commuter-oriented

transit service; the need to include a mix of local,

community-oriented, and metropolitan travel

services; the need for combinations of express

services for longer trips requiring separate rightsof-way; the need to develop “communityresponsive” services; and the need to improve

mobility within major activity centers.

All these were regarded as important considerations for the planning process according to the

report. They provided the basis for developing

more specific evaluation criteria which the consultants used to evaluate alternative corridors and

systems.

While the statements of goals and objectives

formulated by SCRTD were comprehensive in

their coverage, critics of the SCRTD technical

planning process have raised a number of points

dealing with the specificity of the goal statements

and the manner in which they were used in the

process.

Although the goals and objectives covered a

broad range of concerns, they were not stated in

explicit enough terms to be useful in directing or

guiding the development of specific alternatives. In

its evaluation of the SCRTD planning process,

CALTRANS concluded that the goals were very

broad statements that did not always provide

specific direction.l5 The citizens’ group CACORT

criticized SCRTD’S March 1974 plan on the same

grounds. In its summary report, Public Transportation;

The Citizen’s View (May 1974), CACORT urged both

SCAG and SCRTD to develop objectives that

would be “sufficiently specific to permit judgment

of the degree to which any system design contributes to these objectives.”

The second major criticism of the process is that,

initially, the alternatives were not developed to

respond to the project’s goals and objectives.

CALTRANS’ evaluation commented directly on

this by stating that “. . . the goals apparently were

not used in the original development of the

transportation alternatives.” And UMTA’S controversy with SCRTD sprang directly from UMTA’s perception that SCRTD’S approach was to

develop a master plan for transit based on those

corridors most likely to support a regional rapid rail

system.

Judging from the Phase I and Phase II reports, the

contention that the system developed was based on

rapid rail transit technology appears to be justified.

This seems to be the bias in both reports, and the

corridors that seemed least susceptible to a rail

system were ranked low by the consultants. The

focus was on regional travel rather than the

shorter, community-oriented travel upon which

attention became focused later on in the process.

Is CALTRANS, Evaluation— Transit System proposals, Southern

California Association of Governments, and Orange County Transif

Disfricf, May 31, 1974, p. II-I.

43
44
The question of developing a plan that respondent

to more localized community level needs came to

the fore in Phase III in response to pressures from

UMTA, SCAG, and the City of Los Angeles. A clear

conflict existed between the regional rapid rail

master plan concept repeatedly put forward by

SCRTD and the goals of the citizens of the area as

seen by these agencies. Aside from seeking to

develop lower-cost transit alternatives, UMTA also

saw the need for more immediate bus improvements to meet air-quality and energy-saving

objectives.

SCAG, too, disagreed with SCRTD’S lack of

interest in shorter-term proposals, since SCAG had

formulated regional transportation goals which

sought to reduce trip lengths. SCAG’S strategy was

aimed at minimizing the need for travel in the

region and improving circulation in major activity

centers. SCAG also recommended a more gradual

approach to improving the overall transit system by

placing greater emphasis on incrementally building

up transit patronage with more imaginative use of

local and express bus services.

The City of Los Angeles generally agreed with

both these positions but also favored providing

rapid rail transit in a more limited number of the

most heavily traveled corridors. One of Mayor

Bradley’s early objectives was to secure better

circulation within the city’s more transitdependent communities, and he underlined the

need for more immediate transit improvements.

All these varying objectives had been clearly

enunciated by the time Phase III of the process got

underway. Nevertheless, they were not able to

dislodge SCRTD’S long-term commitment to a

major rapid rail system. Although the July 1974

report contained a major program for immediate

bus transit improvements, its basic long-term

program was to develop a 145-mile system of fixedguideway transit with express bus service as the

first step toward a regional master plan of 240 miles

of transit corridors.

Despite the Phase 111 summary report’s explicit

recognition of the objectives of providing more

community-oriented services, only the first steps

have been taken toward translating that recognition into action. The end result of the work on the

starter line may be to develop a regional system

which has a rapid rail “backbone” in the most

heavily traveled corridors and an extensive

network of community-level bus services, feeder

lines, and express buses. But if such a system comes

about, it will be the outcome of a long process of

debate, conflict, and negotiation over transit

objectives, rather than the logical outgrowth of the

goals and objectives that were originally established for the process.

Development and Evaluation

of Alternatives

The shortcomings of a planning process led by a

special purpose transit district become most

apparent in relation to the evaluation of alternatives. SCRTD’S legislative mandate to effect a

mass transit system, reinforced by its commitment

to a BART-like fixed-guideway system, made it

uneasy with the task of evaluating a full range of

alternative transportation modes.

During the debate prior to the 1968 referendum,

several groups reacted against Proposition A

because of shortcomings in the SCRTD plan that

stemmed from its failure to weigh alternatives to a

fixed-guideway system. The high cost of the

system SCRTD proposed was one such issue,

related to the evaluation of alternatives in the sense

that SCRTD’S commitment to very expensive

fixed-guideway technology ensured that the

system set before voters would be extremely

expensive. Another argument, which focused on

SCRTD’S commitment to BART-type technology,

was that the transit district was committing Los

Angeles to an inflexible technology just when more

advanced technologies were being developed that

might better serve the region’s needs. Finally, many

of the people who balked at SCRTD’S fixedguideway proposals would have been more comfortable with an alternative that offered a more

immediate if short-term solution to the need for

public transportation. Paradoxically SCRTD’S

commitment to BART-type heavy rail technology

may have been strengthened considerably by the

distorted but common public perception of the time

that rail transit technology was superior to cheaper

modes of transportation.

Since 1972, UMTA has been a force urging Los

Angeles towards a more balanced weighing of

alternative transportation modes. The results of

Phase I evaluation of alternatives did not respond to

UMTA’S interpretation of the work program. The

SCRTD study team examined some 15 candidate

transit corridors. Specialists on the team examined

development policies and the existing and forecast

distribution of population and employment; concentrations of transit-dependent groups; potential

45
transit patronage;

within the region.

and the patterns of movement

These analyses led to a ranking

of corridors based on these different factors. A

range of transit technologies were then identified

and the most applicable—mass rapid transit (MRT),

personal rapid transit (PRT), and busways—were

selected and applied to the potential transit

corridors. The eight corridorslb and modes which

SCRTD and the consultants selected for future

study in Phase II did not include consideration of

nonexclusive busway alternatives.

According to an UMTA representative, the

reason such an alternative did not appear was that

SC RTD’S general manager had told the consultants

not to consider it in the study. When UMTA

learned of the omission in early 1973, it exerted its

influence at the annual Inter-Modal Planning

Group meeting in Los Angeles to have SCRTD

examine an all-bus alternative.

The results of that study appeared in the report

entitled Rapid Transit for Los Angeles—Summary Reporf of

Consultants’ Recommendations (July 1973).

In UMTA’S estimation, the treatment of the allbus alternative in the July 1973 report was cursory

and biased. A review of the report supports this

conclusion. The overly generalized way in which

the alternative was defined made it much more

costly and impractical than it would have been had

an all-bus system been specifically tailored for the

region.

The all-bus alternative was defined as a “saturation” bus service. It involved an extensive grid

system covering the entire 2,000-square-mile

service area on which buses would run at 5-minute

headways at peak periods. A modification of this

system involved a grid network covering selected

areas only.

Having defined what critics considered to be an

excessively large system in the first place, SCRTD

concluded that the system would: (a) be much more

.

16 ●

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

Wilshire—MRT and special analysis of PRT

San Fernando—MRT

San Gabriel—MRT and busway

Airport-Southwest—MRT and busway

South-Central—MRT and busway

Santa Ana-MRT and busway

El Segundo Norwalk Freeway—MRT and busway

Northern “Extension of the Long Beach Freeway—

busway

(SOLJRCE-p~USC I progress RtvmL March 1973, p. VI-t3)

costly to finance; (b) attract more riders initially but

cause greater congestion in high-density areas; (c)

be attractive for short- and medium-distance travel

only; and (d) require too great a subsidy. However,

SCRTD felt that busways perhaps would be a

useful component of a mixed transit system.

The treatment in the report contained no

discussion of the types of all-bus facilities or service

that were contemplated. Whether the buses were

to run in mixed traffic, receive preferential

treatment, or be used in various combinations

seems to have been neglected entirely. Had these

combinations and characteristics been discussed, a

more exact evaluation of the alternatives could

have been made.

The dispute between UMTA and SCRTD by no

means abated after the July 1973 report. UMTA

continued to press for a more objective analysis of

bus transit options, a more detailed short-term bus

program, and a means for reducing the increasingly

large cost of the commitment the Federal Government would have to make to them. Although the

July 1973 proposal did not represent a finished plan,

its preliminary estimated cost, including an escalation allowance, was $6.6 billion over a 12-year

implementation period.

The alternatives that were developed in March

1974 responded to many of these concerns, though

a full-fledged bus alternative was not presented. As

described in the historical narrative, the report

prepared as part of the Phase III work in March

contained a “building block” approach that offered

different increments of development of a mass

rapid transit system. Each of these increments also

represented increasingly large local and Federal

commitments of funds.

Between the development of the “Building Block

Plan” in March 1974 and the SCRTD board’s

adoption of the technical planning process, the

board appears to have moved closer to the political

arena. Faced with studies indicating that only 60

miles of rapid transit could be definitely justified,

while the difference between 60 and 120 miles was

equally justifiable for fixed-guideway or bus,

SCRTD opted for the more extensive 145-mile

plan.

Both CALTRANS and CACORT raised

questions about the extent of the system that was

finally recommended and about the evaluation

process in general. CALTRANS’ evaluation was

that 120 miles of rapid transit was reasonable. But

46
it argued that greater attention needed to be paid to

a medium-capacity system before a high-capacity

system was decided upon CALTRANS said that the

design characteristics that the consultants had been

required to base their assumptions on were

excessively high. More evaluation was needed of a

medium -capacity system capable of carrying 25,000

passengers per hour rather than one carrying

45,000 before SCRTD proceeded with preliminary

engineering of the system.

The CACORT evaluation also raised a question

that appeared in the CALTRANS study: SCRTD

had not conducted a detail cost-effectiveness

analysis of the chosen alternative. In the Summary

Technical Report of Phase II published in October

1974, a general evaluation of the two all-bus

concepts, and limited (less than 40 miles), moderate

(60 and 80 miles), and large-scale (140 miles) fixedguideway plus bus systems does appear. But this

report indicated that a moderate-priority bus

system combined with limited (60 to 80 miles)

fixed-guideway services probably was more costeffective than an all-bus system. Assuming that

this information was available to SCRTD board

members in July, it was clear by then that the choice

between bus and rail was (in certain proportions)

not an economic but a policy question. On the basis

of policies favoring energy conservation or a nodal

pattern of development, the report said that fixedguideway up to 140 miles could be considered as

attractive as using buses alone.

This review suggests that the process of developing alternatives flowed directly from the fundamental legislative goal that governed SCRTD’S

activities. In addition, it is likely that the board’s

selection of the 145-mile system was influenced by

the political necessity of providing high-quality

service to as many voters as possible.

Financing and Implementation

The proposal adopted by the SCRTD board on

July 7,1974, set forth an overall plan for a 240-mile

arterial transit system and recommended the initial

implementation of a 145-mile system at a current

cost of $4.2 billion. The manner in which such a

plan would be implemented was a vital concern.

The primary source of funds for this system was

UMTA. UMTA was expected to provide 80 percent

of the capital cost with SCRTD providing the local

share derived from the .5 percent sales tax and onehalf of its SB 325 funds (State highway-users

funds). Local funds derived from the sales tax

would only be committed with assurance of a twoto-one Federal match.

SCRTD stated that the 145-mile system would

be constructed as funds became available. Although

the financial analysis described in the Summary

Technical Report (October 1974) laid out the financing

in terms of the “building block” approach, SCRTD

went to the voters with the general impression that

the additional 1/2-cent sales tax would produce the

local share to get Federal funds to begin work on

the entire system.

The need to secure local funding for the system

through a public referendum put SCRTD’S planning process on an unstable basis. First of all, it was

one of the factors that obliged SCRTD to make the

system extensive enough to secure the support of

enough voters to pass the referendum. Secondly,

the dynamics of this process produced a system so

extensive that the cost became too high for most

voters to support. If a source of funding had been

available to SCRTD that was stable and did not

depend on direct voter approval, the district would

have been in a much better position to begin the

first increments of the “building block” approach

laid out in its March report.

Ironically, the passage of Proposition 5 in June

and the defeat of Proposition A in November

appear to have led to a situation in which SCRTD is

engaged in carrying out a staged implementation of

a transit plan. The defeat of Proposition A killed the

chances for approval of a large regional system, but

the passage of Proposition 5 provided the steady

funds required to develop a limited transit system

incrementally.

One final observation should be made on the

implementation plans prepared for the July 1974

plan. While the SCRTD study team concentrated a

large share of its energy on exploring sources of

capital funding, the team’s analysis also included a

review of projected maintenance and operating

costs. This review indicated the rate of cost increase

would necessitate a search for other Federal and

local sources of assistance. Although the high

projected costs apparently were due at least in part

to the provisions for a 25-cent fare, SCRTD’S

current projected use of UMTA Section 5 moneys

suggests that mounting operating costs may be a

major factor in reducing the number of new transit

systems started in the Nation.

47
Summary Case Assessment

The purpose of this section is to summarize the

transit planning and decisionmaking process in the

Los Angeles region in light of the guidelines listed

in the Introduction to the case assessments. The

summary, therefore, is divided into two parts: (1)

Assessment of the Institutional Context, and (2)

Assessment of the Technical Planning Work.

1. ASSESSMENT OF THE

INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

. Forum for Decisionmaking. -The i n -

stitutional forum for decisionmaking in

Los Angeles is not well integrated, and no

authoritative procedure exists for resolving conflicts between decisionmakers.

Although the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is the official

forum, in fact the Southern California

Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) operates

with a considerable degree of autonomy.

The seven organizations involved in transit

in the Los Angeles area now sit on the

Rapid Transit Advisory Committee

(RTAC), formed to develop a “starter” line

plan after the 1974 defeat of a proposed

regional system. But the RTAC is only an

ad hoc arrangement and does not provide a

lasting resolution to the conflicts over

transit policymaking and priority setting.

• Accountability of Decisionmakers.—The

composition of SCRTD’S board has lessened its ability to respond to the complexities

of the region. The City of Los Angeles

appoints only two of the board’s members;

pressures from the suburban majority may

have influenced SCRTD’S choice of extensive transit proposals in 1968 and 1974.

The high cost of these systems led suburban voters to defeat them, thus penalizing

the people of the center city who were most

willing to support rapid transit.

• Public Involvement.—SCRTD’s community involvement procedures have

included public meetings, a citizens’ advisory committee, and two referenda. But

its failure to structure ongoing participation for citizens at regional, corridor, and

neighborhood levels of planning may have

contributed to defeat of SCRTD’S two

rapid transit proposals.

2. ASSESSMENT OF THE TECHNICAL PLANNING PROCESS

● Goals and Objectives.—While SCRTD’S

statements of its goals were comprehensive in their coverage, they were often not

explicit enough to be useful in guiding

selection and evaluation of alternatives.

SCRTD’S planning responded more to its

interpretation of its legal mandate (to build

a mass rapid transit system) than to local

community goals.

● Development and Evaluation of

Alternatives.— SCRTD’S legislative mandate to effect a mass transit system

combined with its commitment to a fixedguideway system to make SCRTD uneasy

about conducting an open-minded evaluation of alternative transportation modes.

Pressure from UMTA to enforce the

requirement of alternatives analysis focused on the issue of whether SCRTD had

given adequate attention to low-cost bus

system improvements.

. Financing and Implementation.—The

need to secure the local share of the

funding through a public referendum put

SCRTD’S planning process on an unstable

basis. SCRTD’S interpretation of its mandate led to the design of fixed-guideway

systems; its method of financing led to

extending these systems for the benefit of

suburban voters. Ironically, these voters

were unwilling to pay the high cost of the

systems designed to please them.

o

49