$88.6 MILLION WOULD GO TO PROJECTS IN LOCAL AREAS.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

The five congressmen from north Los Angeles and Ventura counties won $88.6 million in local ``demonstration'' projects as part of a six-year, $218.3 billion highway bill approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Those projects are part of $9 billion in demonstration money doled out to nearly every congressional district in the country as part of the Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act.

Though budget hawks have criticized the demonstration spending as budget-busting pork barrel, U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Woodland Hills, defended his projects, including a bike path and other transit improvements.

``I'll put my proposals up dollar for dollar with projects put up by the MTA, and my projects are going to look like lean greyhounds,'' Sherman said. ``There's politics and pork barreling in projects chosen by bureaucracies too.''

The area's three Republicans - Elton Gallegly, Howard ``Buck'' McKeon and James Rogan - won support for far more projects than did Democratic colleagues Sherman and Howard Berman, though with Republicans as the House's majority party, that disparity was expected.

The projects include:

$36.4 million for Gallegly, R-Oxnard, to widen State the Moorpark Freeway between Moorpark and Thousand Oaks, and to improve the Rice Avenue-Ventura Freeway intersection in Oxnard.

$23 million for McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, for part of the cost of a Antelope Valley Freeway overpass at Avenue H in Lancaster, and improvements to Magic Mountain Parkway's Santa Clarita interchange with the Golden State Freeway, as well as additional Santa Clarita buses.

$20 million for Rogan, R-Pasadena, for a small portion of the billion-dollar Alameda Corridor Gateway road improvements in the San Gabriel Valley, and repairs to Pasadena's La Loma Bridge.

$7.7 million for Sherman for a string of bike paths that would some day connect Sherman Oaks all the way to Moorpark, as well as around Chatsworth Reservoir. Other money will go to a transit hub and shuttles in the Warner Center area.

$1.5 million for Berman, D-Mission Hills, to improve road access around the Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink station and to recreation areas around Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace.

An attempt by McKeon to force the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to share $100 million in federal appropriations with local cities failed, said McKeon press secretary David Foy. Sharon Landers, the deputy head of the MTA, said in a statement she was pleased with the funding, but hopes for more. ``We are going to do our utmost to make our needs clear to Congress in the coming weeks as the bill is negotiated in the House-Senate Conference Committee, as well as throughout the appropriations process,'' she said.