Transit Bases Would Anchor Valley System

Even as its sinking subway project continues to attract controversy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is moving forward with plans to overhaul the San Fernando Valley’s antiquated bus system--but at a slower pace than originally anticipated.

Enacting a blueprint approved 18 months ago, the agency expects to open new transit centers by the end of the year at the MetroLink train stations in Burbank, Sylmar and Chatsworth, where buses would converge to allow easier transfers between lines, or onto the rail system.

However, three additional transit bases, including one to serve Warner Center, are currently in limbo as officials and property owners haggle over potential sites and await improvements to existing infrastructure.

“This has not been easy,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose office is trying to help establish a site in the busy Warner Center employment and shopping district.

Once constructed, the six Valley transit nodes will sit at the heart of bus lines radiating from the centers in a “hub-and-spoke” pattern. Transportation planners have already begun plotting and instituting some of those routes, which would replace the traditional north-south, east-west grid pattern that has governed the Valley’s flagging bus system for 20 years.

The user-friendly transit bases form the linchpin of the MTA’s Valley bus restructuring plan, developed in response to longtime criticism that bus lines do not serve the right areas or connect in a sensible way.

“The system as it is presently configured is inconvenient and inaccessible,” said Nick Patsaouras, a member of the MTA board of directors and one of the Valley’s strongest mass transit advocates. “When you have to take three buses to go from Canoga Park to Ventura Boulevard, that’s why you have ridership dropping.”

Together, the Valley’s 60-some bus lines move 150,000 passengers each day, only a fraction of potential users. The ambitious overhaul seeks to increase service within neighborhoods, link buses to high-employment areas and allow riders to switch between routes and between rail and bus travel more easily.

Last year, the MTA canceled several underused bus lines and combined others to streamline service as part of the plan’s first phase.

Phase 2--building the transit centers--has proved more difficult, although MTA officials remain optimistic about completing the project within the next two years.

A prime example is Warner Center, one of the Valley’s busiest spots with several corporate headquarters, new apartment complexes, upscale shops and movie theaters.

The area has been heavily targeted for transit improvements as the eventual terminus of the east-west Valley subway. But local merchants, fearful of increased traffic and noise, have been unable to agree on an interim location for a transit stop pending the projected construction of a subway station 25 years from now.

“We really want to try to have this transit center concept working in that part of the city. We think it’s good for them,” said James Okazaki, chief of transit at the city Department of Transportation. “But these businesses are very concerned about how transit vehicles coming down the street might destroy the nice quiet neighborhood [feel] in that area.”

Chick, who represents the area, also cited concerns that a transit base would turn Warner Center into a transfer point for commuters rather than an end point.

“We don’t want it to be a facility that ends up having commuters driving into Warner Center, parking their cars, getting on a bus and leaving and going elsewhere. We want to make Warner Center a destination,” Chick said.

Her office and the city Transportation Department have held a series of meetings with local merchants to try to reach a consensus on a site for the transit center. All the short-listed locations are on city-owned property, so in theory, at least, transportation officials could act independently. They have emphasized throughout the search process, however, that public support is essential.

City officials say they are closing in on a potential location around The Promenade mall, but “we’re not going to push it down their throat,” Okazaki said of local business owners.

Delays have also beset the establishment of hubs in Universal City and at Cal State Northridge.

As with Warner Center, transit officials have run into problems identifying a hub site in Universal City, although one prospect is the county-owned park-and-ride lot on Ventura Boulevard, near Lankershim Boulevard. The potential problem with that site is that the Hollywood Bowl’s use of the land for remote parking could present a conflict, officials say.

At CSUN, lingering effects of the Northridge earthquake forced a delay when officials determined that the location required some improvements to the infrastructure. The proposed site is on the southeast side of the campus near Zelzah Avenue and Prairie Street, where the road buckled during the Northridge earthquake and where modular classrooms would have to be moved.

And for all three pending transit bases--at CSUN, Universal City and Warner Center--there remains the possibility that the MTA’s perennial budget problems may lead the agency to cross the projects off the list in its annual funding derby. At present, the CSUN hub has received only partial funding, while Universal City and Warner Center have received none.

“It’s a competitive process,” said Renee Berlin, director of the MTA’s Valley-North County area team. “So depending on who else comes in [with transit proposals] and what the funding targets are going to be next year, it’s not a sure thing; it’s going to have to compete.”

But Patsaouras, a longtime proponent of the bus system, is hopeful that his fellow MTA board members will recognize the restructuring plan’s importance.

“Dwindling resources or not, this should be a top priority,” he said. “It’s very critical to the Valley and for the whole of L.A. County.”

According to the MTA’s timeline, the Chatsworth transit center, with four new bus bays, is scheduled to open in June.

The Sylmar-San Fernando and Burbank centers are expected to open in December.