EDITORIAL `ORANGE LINING' THE VALLEY NORTH-SOUTH BUSWAY EXPANSION DESERVES A HIGHER PRIORITY.

THE term ``redlining'' refers to the way that insurance or mortgage companies use geographic riskiness to determine how to do business with people in generally less-affluent neighborhoods. It's widely considered a bad thing.

``Orange Lining'' could be the transportation equivalent. Like its cousin, orange-lining refers to the disparity between the priority the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gives to projects in the San Fernando Valley and the rest of the region.

The MTA has orange-lined the Valley by tossing it some change in the form of the east-west busway while spending many billions of dollars on subways and rail lines in other parts of the city.

Currently, the MTA has two Westside projects, the light-rail Expo Line and an extension of the Red Line subway down Wilshire Boulevard, with a rail line in the Eastside in the works. All three are tremendously costly, especially when compared with the low-cost busway that Valley residents are getting.

Extensions that open up the North Valley corridors should have top priority, or at least priority equal to that of one of the Westside projects. That is why it's incomprehensible the MTA can't open a six-mile busway extension to Chatsworth along the Canoga Avenue right of way until 2012 -- or even get started on the badly needed East Valley extension.

It's true that Valley residents in the past fought off subways or light rail, and because of this got a busway at $300 million. But it's also true that Westsiders so opposed the subway that they got a federal law passed to block it and that voters throughout L.A. blocked further use of local transit taxes for subway construction.

The Orange Line is a huge success and was built quickly and at low cost. Those are compelling arguments for giving the transit needs of the North Valley a higher priority.