Mel Wilson Wants to Get Off This Train

Mel Wilson rose early enough Wednesday morning to catch the 6:26 Metrolink from Northridge to Union Station. The fare, subsidized by you and me, was $5.50. Wilson says that ridership on this line, which originates in Oxnard, was healthy enough that he had to look for a seat. From Northridge, the trip took about 40 minutes.

Using mass transit is both convenient and politically correct for Wilson. His destination was a board meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, on which he serves as an appointee of Mayor Richard Riordan. He is the only San Fernando Valley resident serving as a regular member on a powerful, contentious countywide panel that includes Riordan, all five county supervisors and other influential politicians.

“In a room full of big shots, I’m a little shot,” the president of the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors said later over breakfast in the MTA headquarters cafeteria. “I’ve got a rifle. They got bazookas, man.”

Sometimes they aim the bazookas at each other. Outgunned, weary of the controversies, frustrated by the wavering political leadership, Wilson wants out. Three months ago, he says, he asked the mayor to find somebody new. Riordan, running for reelection, said he’d get around to it. The MTA has often seemed to be something the mayor would get around to.

“He’s the one everybody looks to,” Wilson said. “It’s up to him to make the difference.”

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Wilson wants to get off the MTA board, but not out of the debate. That was apparent last week when, on assignment in Washington, I bumped into him in the lobby of a congressional office building.

A few months before I’d written about Wilson, when he became the first African American to be elected president of the Realtors association. For a guy who is eager to leave the MTA, he had a packed schedule lobbying lawmakers to support funding for a westward extension of Metro Rail from North Hollywood. He was wearing three hats--one for the real estate industry, one for the MTA and one for a fledgling alliance called Valley Rapid Transit Now.

In his gentlemanly fashion, Wilson is pushing the case that the Valley isn’t getting its fair share of transit dollars. The distrust is such that Wilson, along with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, floated the idea that taxes raised in the Valley should be reserved for the Valley. Other regions, of course, would want the same.

No matter the issue, Valley activists, especially the secession-minded, often complain, not always with good reason, that the area is getting shortchanged. When it comes to the MTA, however, a Metro Rail map helps make the case.

Remember first of all that Metrolink isn’t Metro Rail, but part of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, a system that reaches deep into Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

On a map, Metro Rail now resembles a sickly if colorful tree. Think of the Blue Line as the trunk growing north from Long Beach to downtown; the next destination for this surface light-rail line is Pasadena. The Green Line, running in the median of the Century Freeway, sprouts east to Norwalk and west toward (but not reaching) Los Angeles International Airport, then south into the South Bay.

The Red Line is the multibillion-dollar, multi-controversial showpiece subway that intersects the Blue Line downtown. From there it stretches east to Union Station, with construction underway toward the Eastside. The Red Line reaches west out Wilshire Boulevard, with new construction forking in two directions, one toward southwest L.A. and the other tunneling north through Hollywood and beneath Cahuenga Pass into North Hollywood.

This 1 1/2-mile section from Universal City is the only funded portion of Metro Rail construction in the San Fernando Valley, even though Valley residents, like those throughout the county, have committed 1% of sales taxes to transit projects. Over the years this can add up to billions of dollars. That’s why Wilson and politicians such as Yaroslavsky are floating proposals to make sure that sales tax money raised in the Valley stays in the Valley.

But why does the Valley have so little to show for its contributions? Part of the reason is the nature of mass-transit construction, which of course started downtown and reached outward. But a big part of the Valley’s problem, he says, is the Valley itself--the lack of a unified voice, the failure of leadership. The Valley, plagued by its own NIMBY attitudes and internecine rivalries, has dawdled and been left behind.

The Blue Line extension to Pasadena is a case in point. Wilson hadn’t been on the board long when, at the behest of Riordan, he joined the majority in approving the Pasadena line even without a budget plan in place. By using an existing right of way, the MTA had sound reasoning for making a Pasadena-to-Long Beach trip--and the sooner, the better. The way Wilson tells it, Councilman Richard Alatorre and Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose districts would benefit from the Pasadena line, persuaded the mayor to leapfrog this project ahead of the Valley’s westward extension. In hindsight, Wilson says, this decision drained many millions more than was anticipated from other projects.

But the Pasadena light-rail line, as well as the Eastside extension of the Red Line, at least enjoyed unified support from politicians along the route. The Valley, meanwhile, has been riven by disputes over which route is best. Wilson complained that Valley elected officials often said they needed to study a plan that “had already been studied to the tune of $10 million.” Instead of demonstrating spine, Wilson said, he heard officials fret: “Oh, but I’ve got to please this homeowners’ group, and that other homeowners group might get mad.”

Valley Rapid Transit Now, like most of the Valley’s movers and shakers, has united behind the Burbank-Chandler route toward Woodley Avenue, but Antonovich continues to push for a route in the Ventura Freeway right-of-way.

Wilson finds it interesting that, in advocating this route, Antonovich in effect helped advance the Pasadena line. But Wilson says he doesn’t question Antonovich’s motives.

“He fights for what he believes in. Nobody has been as tireless about Burbank-Chandler as Mike has been about the freeway. Nobody has been as focused about the Valley as Alatorre has been focused on the Eastside. Or as Molina is, for that matter.”

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Alatorre and Supervisor Gloria Molina have been feuding for years, and it often turns nasty in the board meetings. Although they may disagree on contractors, Wilson points out, these enemies at least agree on the best route.

The Valley leaders, meanwhile, seldom seem to be quite sure what they believe in, though certainly Valley voters showed faith in the mayor.

Mel Wilson hopes he won’t have to attend many more MTA board meetings. Riordan is scheduled to assume the chairmanship of the MTA board on July 1. Wilson hopes he assumes the leadership as well.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth CA 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected] Please include a phone number.

But why does the Valley have so little to show for its contributions? A big part of the Valley’s problem is the lack of a unified voice, the failure of leadership.