LA Metro Board adopts FY11 budget

Written by jrood

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors adopted a $3.8-billion budget for Fiscal Year 2010-11. The spending plan is $47 million less than the current Metro budget but still advances a variety of transportation improvements for the region including a spate of new highway and transit building projects. These are funded largely with federal stimulus funds and the new Measure R transit sales tax.

Against the backdrop of
the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Metro has seen a sharp
drop in local transportation sales taxes and fare box revenue compounded by
cuts in state transit funding. As a consequence, Metro faced an historic $181-million
operating deficit but CEO Art Leahy has managed to balance the budget by
severely cutting administrative costs including the elimination of 20 percent
of the agency’s non-contract staff, 240 full-time equivalent positions.

For the second year in a
row, the budget assumes no wage increase. However, Metro is negotiating new
contracts this spring with its major labor unions representing operators,
maintenance employees and clerks.

In addition the budget
reflects improved capital budgeting and centralizing bus operations to improve
efficiency. A five percent reduction in bus service is assumed along with a
previously approved fare change that will be implemented July 1. However, less
than half of Metro riders – 48 percent – will be impacted by the fare change,
which is only the third Metro fare increase in the past 15 years. Thanks to the
passage of the Measure R transportation half-cent sales tax in Los Angeles
County in November 2008, fares for seniors, students, the disabled and Medicare
recipients will stay at current levels until 2013. Silver Line fares also will
not change.

The new fares will still
be among the lowest charged by any major transit agency in the nation. Even
under the new fare structure, riders will only pay 28 percent of the cost of
operating Metro buses and trains. The rest is subsidized by other funding sources,
primarily local sales tax revenue.

Metro will program $625
million in local Measure R sales tax monies in FY 11. These include monies to
advance planning and construction for more than two dozen transit and highway
projects plus monies to subsidize bus operations and $87 million in local
return monies that will be given the various cities in Los Angeles County to
use for major street resurfacing, pothole repair, improving traffic congestion,
bikeways, pedestrian improvements, signal synchronization and transit
improvements.

Among major transportation
advances in the coming fiscal year, Metro will purchase 125 new compressed
natural gas buses, order new rail cars, continue construction funding for the
Expo light rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City and a four-mile
extension of the popular Metro Orange Line busway from Canoga Park to
Chatsworth, oversee construction of a 10-mile northbound carpool lane on the
I-405 freeway from the 10 to 101 freeways and advance numerous planning studies
for new transit projects throughout Los Angeles County. Construction of an
11-mile Foothill extension of the Metro Gold Line from Pasadena to Azuza also
will begin this summer.

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