MTA FUNDING PLAN TOTALS $723 MILLION : AGENCY'S REQUEST TO U.S. INCLUDES 650 BUSES.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

The MTA's $723 million wish list submitted to Congress this week includes for the first time a special $250 million request to buy 650 buses, part of what agency officials call a bellwether shift from rail spending.

``It's our highest priority,'' said Jim de la Loza, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's executive officer for planning and programming. ``If we don't ask for it, we won't get it.''

MTA officials delivered the funding requests Monday to the House Surface Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to meet a Tuesday deadline in the reauthorization of a federal act paying for transportation projects across the nation.

The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act was first passed in 1991 without a dime in special funding requests for Los Angeles buses, MTA officials said.

It did, however, contain a huge rail-funding request, totaling about half the cost of the $2.7 billion Metro Red Line segments in Hollywood and North Hollywood.

This time, however, the agency's priorities have changed, spurred by a landmark consent decree signed last fall that settled a federal lawsuit by advocates for bus riders. Among other things, the deal commits the MTA to increase its bus fleet by about 15 percent and reduce passenger crowding.

``It is a lot of buses'' being requested, acknowledged MTA Board Chairman Larry Zarian, a Glendale councilman. ``There's not a lot that we can do. It's a court mandate.''

But the request, even marking as it does an about-face by the agency, has been roundly criticized from several directions.

San Fernando Valley partisans said the move was the first step in a plan to leapfrog the east-side extension of the Metro Red Line subway over a long-sought Valley east-west rail track.

Indeed, east-side members of Congress last week pressured the MTA board to add $44 million for Eastside Red Line work to the overall request.

But the proposal's bus portion was criticized for being both too big and too small.

``It is a request that is so big as to be preposterous,'' said U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills.

Berman said the east-side/Valley fight over rail projects ignored ``some fundamental questions,'' such as whether the bus request, coupled with all the other projects the agency is requesting, was unrealistic given Congress' tight financial constraints.

``When you ask for everything, sometimes you end up with nothing,'' Berman said.

Meanwhile, the Bus Riders Union, whose suit led to the consent decree, said the agency's dependence on Congress to finance the decree's fleet expansion shows that MTA priorities really haven't changed at all.

``The fight that's broken out between the Valley and the east side is obscene,'' said Union organizer Chris Mathis. ``The reality is they haven't got the money to do either. And our position is you need to take care of the workhorse of the system, the buses.''

Mathis called the overall request ``a joke,'' because it includes so much money for new rail projects at a time when Congress has little new money for anyone.

``It's a local decision what they ask for,'' Mathis said. ``They need to make the hard decisions.''

Zarian agreed that Congress ``is probably going to ask the same questions'' of the MTA, but said, ``We can never do enough (to please all the agency's critics). We've got to plan for a regional transportation system that includes buses, rail, bikeways and HOV (car pool) lanes.''

The MTA request to Congress included:

$250 million for buses, including 650 buses for the MTA and about half as many more for 17 city bus operators, including Los Angeles.

$202 million for rail projects in the San Fernando Valley, the Mid-City area and the east side.

$154 million for Interstate 10 car pool lanes and $97 million for rail overpasses to speed traffic in the San Gabriel Valley.

$20 million to finish work along the Santa Monica Boulevard Transit Parkway in West Los Angeles.