EDITORIAL : SIC TRANSIT MTA VALLEYWIDE AGENCY COULD PROVIDE BETTER AND CHEAPER BUS SERVICE.

IMAGINE a locally managed Valleywide bus system that provides better service - with lower fares - than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That's no pipe dream, folks. That's precisely what Foothill Transit is doing in the San Gabriel Valley.

And it can happen in the San Fernando Valley as well.

Valley Rapid Transit Now, a group that includes business, homeowner and community organizations, has begun a campaign to take the same approach to improve public transit in the Valley by establishing a transportation zone similar to Foothill's.

The Valley transportation zone concept gained momentum Thursday when county Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Zev Yaroslavsky persuaded fellow MTA board members to study the proposal.

``We think that's the only way the Valley is going to get control of our own destiny,'' said Mel Wilson, a former MTA board member and co-founder of Valley Rapid Transit Now.

Under the transit zone approach, transit revenues derived from local sales taxes are turned over to the local governing body rather than the MTA. The governing body in turn awards contracts for bus service.

Since Foothill Transit began operation in 1988, it has nearly doubled bus service. Fares are 90 cents, compared with an average of $1.35 for MTA.

The idea of a Valley transportation zone isn't new. But nothing much has happened until now, thanks largely to the opposition of the MTA's powerful transportation unions and other special interests.

But the MTA's days as a cash cow for insiders and pork provider for some politicians are ending. The agency's finances are in shambles. Julian Burke, the MTA's interim chief executive officer, has made austerity a top priority. He announced Thursday that 85 employees will be laid off, and 85 vacant jobs will be eliminated, as part of a plan to save up to $50 million.

A Valley transportation zone would complement, rather than conflict with, the long-overdue financial reforms that Burke is trying to achieve.

The MTA needs to find more efficient and less wasteful ways of doing things. Foothill Transit provides a model for how to stretch the transit buck.

Municipal bus lines in Santa Monica, Long Beach and Culver City have long provided better and less expensive bus service than the MTA and its predecessor, the Southern California Rapid Transit District. The MTA can learn from those agencies, too.

Opposition to a new transportation zone can be expected from people downtown and elsewhere who would have to get along with less if the Valley gets its fair share. But that's something they will have to get used to.

Valley residents have served notice that they no longer are content with second-class citizenship and third-class services.