MTA: DITCHING BUSWAY WOULD BE DISASTER.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Staff Writer

VAN NUYS - Halting the $330 million Orange Line busway will rob the San Fernando Valley of a much needed rapid transit corridor and lead to an unprecedented waste of taxpayer money, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Monday in an appeals court filing.

On Aug. 2, the California Court of Appeal ordered construction stopped until at least Wednesday so the MTA could make its case that the project should continue. Earlier the court said the MTA should also evaluate the viability of a Rapid Bus network in the Valley, a plan backed by Citizens Organized for Smart Transit.

The 60-page MTA filing says that evaluating the Rapid Bus option could take nine months and cost taxpayers up to $109 million, including rebidding the project, and result in the loss of $68 million in state funding.

The filing also notes that the MTA has already spent $100 million on the project, which is 30 percent complete. If the busway is scrapped, up to $189 million in taxpayer funds will be lost though what has already been spent and what it will cost to demobilize the project, the MTA said.

COST initially sued to block the project last year, but the case was dismissed in Los Angeles Superior Court. COST appealed, and in July the state Court of Appeal ruled that the rapid bus study should proceed.

COST must respond to the MTA filing by Wednesday, and the court is expected to make a quick decision.

Potentially making all of this moot is a bill introduced Monday by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, that would retroactively exempt the Orange Line from the appeals court ruling. Levine said enough study has been done on the busway.

``What you've got here is a very small group of people standing in the way of progress for the entire San Fernando Valley region,'' Levine said. ``It's got a number of benefits for air quality in the Valley, getting people out of their cars and into clean-burning natural gas buses.''

Diana Lipari, COST chairwoman, was surprised by Levine's move.

``My right to monitor my government agencies would be taken away by this legislation,'' she said.

The MTA's filing came several hours after Valley civic leaders and elected officials excoriated COST and the appeals court for stopping the project.

``Delays caused by the COST lawsuit and the court's subsequent action put the Metro Orange Line's August 2005 date in jeopardy and are costing taxpayers over $70,000 each day work is stopped. COST is costing us money,'' Bruce Ackerman, president and chief executive officer of the Van Nuys-based Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, said during a morning rally.

``Traffic in the San Fernando Valley along the 101 corridor is a mess,'' said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors. ``The one hope we had to do something about this mess was the the Orange Line.''

He vowed that the project will be finished, regardless of cost, and will take the issue to the California Supreme Court if the appeals court decision goes against the MTA.

Lipari, who attended the rally, said officials were simply dispensing ``platitudes and half-truths.'' She disputed claims that the busway would take 20,000 cars off the road. The Rapid Bus system makes more sense because it will move more people around more of the Valley, she said. And she doubts that the cross-Valley buses will get all the traffic-signal priority officials promise.

``The real facts are that it's a safety hazard, and I think it's going to do horrible things to north-south traffic,'' she said.

Gregory J. Wilcox, [phone]

greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com

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