Rail Plan in Autoland

Plans for a rail mass-transit system for Los Angeles have had about as much success with local voters as middle-aged housewives have had at the drug counter where Lana Turner was discovered some years ago. In 1968 and again in 1974 the electorate voted down such plans and decided to continue its love affair with the automobile. Nonetheless, a third and more grandiose plan will be tacked onto the June 8 presidential primary ballot in Los Angeles County. It calls for 232 miles of track--almost exactly the same as the New York subway system--to be built over 30 years along freeways, flood-control channels and existing railroad rights-of-way, and to serve a total of 44 cities. The cost: $5.8 billion by today's official estimate, which puts the project in the same financial league as the Alaska pipeline.

The plan, developed by County Supervisor Baxter Ward, is unusual for its proposed financing. Initially, a series of massive bond offerings was contemplated, but state officials advised that the sale would glut the market. The plan now calls for a penny increase in the local sales tax, increasing the rate in Los Angeles to 7-c- on the dollar. That is expected to raise $289 million the first year and $300 million in each succeeding year. In an authoritative voice former Television Newscaster Ward says: "Nobody else is going to pay for mass transit. If we wait for the Federal Government, it will be two centuries before the job gets done." Even so, the proposal has been rushed onto the ballot partly because Ward hopes that an affirmative vote will enable Los Angeles to snare $800 million in unallocated federal transit-aid funds before some other area gets the money.

New Jobs. Ward's staff figures that the cost to Los Angeles County taxpayers will be only about a dime a day, and that all by itself the project would revitalize heavy construction in the area, creating 30,000 new jobs and cutting the L.A. metropolitan area's 9% unemployment rate by about one percentage point. Ward confesses that he has "no idea what the final cost will run to," but says it does not matter; if inflation escalates the cost of the project, it will also boost the yield from the extra sales tax.

Though the plan is supported by an impressive array of business, labor and civic leaders--including Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley--it has attracted a number of harsh critics. All believe that the plan has been too hastily developed and needs refining. Pete Schabarum announced that he would quit his post as a director of the Southern California Rapid Transit District in protest against the project. Says he: "I just don't believe that a fixed rail-transit system will work in Los Angeles. This is an area of urban sprawl, low density. with a great diversity of directions of trips." He also predicts that the cost will balloon to $13 billion. Fred Case, a member of the Los Angeles city planning commission, argues that area residents "are going to continue to use automobiles to get where they want to go."

Ward counters by saying that "when people are stuck on a freeway and see one of the new trains zip by at 85 m.p.h., they are going to figure out a way to use that train the very next day." The prospect that many voters from communities not included in past plans may now vote in favor of the system and the presence of a map of the network on the ballot give Ward additional hope that the proposal will pass.

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