COUNTY MEASURE A; BRAKES APPLIED TO MTA.

Byline: Douglas Haberman Daily News Staff Writer

Measure A, which is Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's anti-subway initiative, appeared headed to passage Tuesday as voters backed a redirection of mass transit planning.

Measure A would prevent the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from paying for additional subway construction with revenues from two half-cent sales taxes approved by voters in 1980 and 1990.

``The voters sent an unambiguous message to the political leadership of Los Angeles County about the direction of transportation policy,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``This is not a divided county on this issue, and I hope people once and for all recognize that. The voters are saying . . . that the subway is not a sustainable technology. They don't want their investment wasted.''

Yaroslavsky, a member of the MTA board of directors, wrote the measure and organized the petition drive to place it on the ballot. It took only seven weeks to collect the 171,000 signatures needed.

The measure would make it difficult, if not impossible, to ever carry out proposed Eastside and Mid-City extensions to the Metro Red Line subway, although Measure A allows completion of the North Hollywood extension now under construction.

Susan Kelly of Tarzana was a case in point. She voted for Measure A, saying ``I believe they put too much money into the subway.''

Once the segment to the San Fernando Valley is finished, the subway's total length from Union Station will be 17.4 miles and the price tag roughly $4.5 billion.

The subway's construction will have cost $260 million a mile by the time the North Hollywood line opens in May 2000. Predictions are for an average 200,000 boardings each weekday, compared to 1.1 million boardings a weekday on the MTA's bus system.

Proponents of Measure A said the subway provides too little transit for the money. It has driven the MTA so deeply into debt, they said, that debt payments now add up to a quarter of the agency's $1 billion operating expenditures each year.

Plagued by cost overruns, construction problems and questions about contracting awards, the subway should be replaced by more cost-effective mass transit alternatives, according to proponents of the measure.

Yaroslavsky said Measure A would do what the MTA board wouldn't do - remove the subway as an option and force the MTA to weigh mass-transit alternatives.

Opponents contended Measure A would go too far by removing an important option as the MTA struggles to meet the transportation needs of a densely populated and growing region that needs to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.

Initially, the measure appeared so unbeatable that subway advocates submitted no written ballot argument against it.

However, opposition began building as county Supervisor Gloria Molina, Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, and others representing the transit-dependent Eastside spoke out against the idea, saying it would be a mistake to take away any potential choice when it comes to planning the county's transportation future.

The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter officially opposed the measure, as did a coalition of Eastside subway advocates.

However, the Bus Riders Union, an organization representing passengers, supported Measure A. The union predicted that voter approval of it would help free money the MTA needs to meet a court order requiring the agency to reduce bus overcrowding, union co-chairman Eric Mann said.