Valley Transit Zone

Despite the myopic “facts” asserted by Richard Katz (“You Say You Want a Revolution in Mass Transit?” Valley Perspective, Oct. 31), the main obstacle to a transit zone being established in the San Fernando Valley isn’t a scheming cabal of City Hall insiders but the likely inability of the proposed zone to meet the cost savings requirements of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Zone Guidelines.

Provisions in contracts MTA has with its labor unions will require any zone to use current MTA employees. And I have yet to see how this can be done while producing 15% savings over current costs.

I should add the lower Foothill Transit operating costs Katz cites are chiefly due to low wages for contracted employees who operate and maintain its buses. This is not merely my opinion but the conclusion researchers at the University of California Transportation Center reached in a 1995 report titled “Transit Service Contracting and Cost Efficiency.”

Therefore it is not surprising that creation of the zone is most feared not by some cabal of City Hall insiders but instead by current MTA employees who work at the two MTA bus yards in the Valley. To them it is Katz and his zone-proposing cronies who are the cabal.

This process should proceed based on reality, not sound bites and rhetorical flourishes.

DANA GABBARD

President, Southern California

Transit Advocates

Los Angeles

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A separate San Fernando Valley Transit Zone remains one of the phoniest of issues. Comparing [it to] a small operation like the Foothill [Transit Zone], which has a total ridership barely what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority serves on Vermont Avenue alone, is absurd. Popular with secessionist-types and politicians eager to control a pot of money, the zone concept has virtually no support of actual transit-user organizations.

The Valley’s biggest lines go into the city, so while “businessmen” crow about “local control,” most actual riders will be forced to pay extra in transfer fees and monthly passes.

ROGER CHRISTENSEN

Sherman Oaks