INVASION OF THE ADS: MTA SELLS L.A. OUT.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

THE most disturbing thing about the 2002 movie ``Minority Report'' wasn't how Tom Cruise and his crew busted criminals before they committed crimes by peeking into the future. How many people believe that could happen in our lifetime, or ever?

Nope, what's most frightening were the things that seemed not only plausible, but even possible with current technology. I'm talking, of course, about the animated advertising posters plastered all over every public space that greeted passers-by by name and shoe size after a quick eye-scan. Like TiVo, they knew things about a person they shouldn't have. And a Victoria's Secret ad should never, ever talk back.

This brings me back to the month I just spent taking the bus. Just wait -- there's a connection. Thirty days on the bus taught me that, at best, crossing the city daily is a test of one's patience and resolve. At worst, it is a soul-sucking experience that lingers for days in the form of knotted muscles and a vague general uneasiness.

I imagined that surely the engineers and planners and executives and other smart people at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were working on ways to improve the ride, from its speediness to the quality of the riding experience. One day it would be better, maybe even pleasant.

It turns out that in all likelihood, one day fairly soon the public transportation system in Los Angeles will actually be worse, and not just for the patient people who ride it every day. Why? Because the MTA board, enthusiastically encouraged by chairman and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, is selling out the city's already aesthetically challenged visage by offering every flat surface up for paid sponsorship. This is an unfortunate turn for the mayor, who has actively sought to improve L.A.'s looks and environmental health with his Million Tree Initiative and community-based ``Days of Service.''

Last month, the MTA board in full endorsed a change in long-standing board policy limiting advertisements on city buses and prohibiting them completely on rail lines and in stations. In exchange for allowing the further uglification of L.A., the MTA might receive as much as $17 million. That sounds like a hefty chunk for a SuperLotto jackpot, but it's petty cash to a $3 billion agency like the MTA. Furthermore, it does very little to close the $131 million budget shortfall that may force up fares, the official reason for subjecting MTA riders to an aesthetic onslaught.

Get ready for Big Macs plastered across the side of the Orange Line buses, for El Cucuy's face peering up from busway and metro station walls; for iPod people dancing in the dark of the subway tunnels. Actually dancing.

Here's where we circle back to ``Minority Report.'' Among the surfaces that MTA is opening up to advertisers in this shameless giveaway are the Red Line subway tunnel walls between stations for animated ads. The long stretch between Universal City and Hollywood & Highland is especially attractive, and two companies are already interested.

The proposed moving tunnel ads might not employ the eye-scan technology -- not yet, anyhow -- but their intrusion into aesthetics and individual privacy of each and every captive train rider is just as outrageous. It's bad enough that Transit TV was forced on unsuspecting bus riders. (Despite the MTA's own suspect poll that showed most riders like the blaring and dull programming on the bus TVs, I have yet to see anyone actively watching it.)

MTA officials must be betting that the bulk of those who ride the bus won't offer up a complaint to the further encroachment of ads.

Anyone who cares about how Los Angeles looks, from its parks to its skyline to its freeway off-ramps, should be upset about the expansion of government-sanctioned visual pollution. Upset, but not surprised, because this is a city where politicians have historically been in the pockets of billboard companies, which hand out a lot of campaign cash and get a free pass on spreading ugly.

The city has a quick eradication program for gang graffiti, but corporate graffiti gets not only a pass, but a welcome wagon. In my council district, there's a large billboard perched on a small residential front lawn, which happens to be on the City Council president's route home.

Maybe it's silly to protest more mass-consumption appeals in this culture of billboards and commercials and individual sponsorship, but there has to be a line somewhere where it's too much. And for me that line is Orange.

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Photo:

(color) A bus wrapped in advertising for the movie ``Superman Returns'' stops at Topanga and Ventura boulevards in Woodland Hills on Friday to let a passenger off.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer