MTA CHOKES SERVICE TO GET RAIL OUT OF STATION, CRITICS SAY; MTA CALLED SLOW TO EXACT CHANGE.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

While the MTA struggles to keep its rail construction program on track, critics say it continues to starve its bus system, used by 1 million riders a day.

Both the rail and bus plans depend on money that critics say the Metropolitan Transportation Authority does not have - and probably won't have.

The MTA is under a federal court decree to spend $922 million through 2013 on its sprawling bus system - about 50 percent more than what the agency had proposed initially.

And to accomplish this, the MTA is relying on nearly $900 million less in operating costs and what critics say are questionable sources of money, including overly optimistic estimates of property taxes.

``There is no way, with the plan they have,'' Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said last week.

The MTA's plan to meet the consent decree is part of a larger effort to satisfy the federal government's concerns about lags and other problems in the agency's $6 billion rail construction projects.

The larger effort calls for more spending on buses and expanding the fleet by about 400 buses, to 2,400, by 2002 while reducing overcrowding by half. By the year 2007, the plan calls for replacing all worn-out buses in the fleet each year.

The agency has 900 buses that are either more than 12 years old or have more than 500,000 miles of use, the federal standard for replacement. The agency also has an additional 300 buses in its fleet with methanol-ethanol engines that break down repeatedly and should be retrofitted or replaced.

MTA Acting Chief Executive Officer Linda Bohlinger said meeting the consent decree is the agency's highest priority and the plan lays out a way to do that - and build its rail projects.

For subway construction, the MTA is counting on Congress giving it $99 million this year and $100 million annually for the next 13. But that is a lot of money to expect, critics say, given a penny-pinching Congress unhappy with the agency's many problems, which include the city of Los Angeles' battle to speed construction of the East-West San Fernando Valley rail line.

If there are cuts, Bohlinger said, they would come out of rail, not buses.

``If we get zero from Congress, to the extent that reserves don't cover it we'll have to change (construction) schedules,'' Bohlinger said. ``If Congress doesn't come through, we have to step back and look at what can be done.''

Dubious assumptions

Critics say the plan relies on too many dubious assumptions, while skimping on the agency's biggest responsibility: taking care of the 1 million riders of its buses each day by meeting the requirements of a consent decree, signed last fall, that settled a landmark civil rights suit on bus service.

``They're not doing anything they agreed to do under the consent decree,'' said Goldie Norton, a spokesman for the union that represents the agency's bus drivers. ``There's no way they can afford it.''

Bus advocates say the recovery plan has far less money than will be needed to meet the consent decree.

``We believe they need to spend $269 million this year to replace worn-out buses and expand their fleet,'' said Eric Mann, executive director of the Bus Riders Union, one of the lawsuit's plaintiffs.

Tom Rubin, former treasurer of MTA's bus predecessor, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, said the agency picked the bottom end of the range of likely costs to meet the consent decree.

``That's the low end of the reasonable likelihood,'' Rubin said. ``At the high end, we're seeing numbers two to 2-1/2 times larger.''

In discussions with the court-appointed overseer, attorney Connie Rice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the suit that led to the decree, has been raising her concerns.

Rice said she believes the agency must spend about $1 billion to replace all the worn-out buses in its 2,000-vehicle fleet and another $1 billion to pay for consent decree requirements.

``I don't see that money,'' Rice said. ``They still can't service all their obligations. My job is to warn the court.''

Critics say the plan relies on huge new revenues and substantial cost-cutting.

On the revenue side, the agency projects sales tax growth averaging 5.1 percent a year through 2010.

Bond rating houses say the tax projections are overly optimistic, and Yaroslavsky agrees.

``The last time you had 5.1 percent growth was back in 1989,'' he said.

A defensible plan

For their part, MTA officials say financial projections were reviewed and approved by consultants for the Federal Transit Administration, and they are hoping for regular funding at the $100 million level.

``Nobody truly believes we're going to get that,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``The last speculation was zero. Now we're hoping to get $40 million.''

Another assumption on the MTA's part is that it can save nearly $900 million in ``efficiencies'' over the next 13 years, savings that critics said are dubious because they depend on factors beyond the agency's control, such as union contracts.

``There are certain things in our labor contracts that limit their options,'' Norton said.

Contracts with all three MTA unions expire June 30, and people on both sides predict a lengthy strike over core issues such as reducing overtime, health and pension costs and the hiring of more part-timers.

``These efficiencies are ephemeral,'' Yaroslavsky said.