Letter to the editor, Daily News, March 4, 1998
(Portions of my original letter omitted from publication are highlighted in underlined italics.)
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board of directors, at its meeting Feb. 26, did the transit-riding residents of the San Fernando Valley a considerable disservice. Ever since the Rapid Transit District's West Valley bus division moved to Chatsworth in 1986, the former location at Sherman Way and Van Nuys Blvd. has remained vacant except for some occasional short-term uses. On Feb. 26, the MTA voted to sell that
property to a developer to be used to develop a supermarket.
The San Fernando Valley Transit Restructuring Plan, adopted by the MTA in late 1994, identified the intersection of Sherman Way and Van Nuys Blvd. as the location in the Valley with the highest total of weekday passenger boardings and endorsed the concept of "transit
centers" where multiple bus lines would meet to facilitate transfers.
Such a transit center, located at this intersection, would serve five bus lines, and possibly a sixth line which runs within a half-mile and one Los Angeles Department of Transportation commuter express line. It would also allow the relocation of MTA's present customer service center, presently located across the street in a strip mall. Yet the MTA did not choose to use property it already owned, at this high volume transit location, to create this convenience for transit users.
The MTA, in the documentation made available to the public at the meeting, said they had provided for a "bus layover area" as a condition of the sale, but I fail to see where space to park buses while the operators are on their breaks provides any kind of service to MTA's constituency.
I urge MTA to insist that a transit center become part of the development of this parcel.
