Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants to use the money for the subway extension, but he’ll need at least 7 votes on the board to get that approved. Interestingly, the person who might support a subway extension is County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the same guy who wrote a law preventing local sales taxes to be used on tunneling. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich will lead the obstructionist faction.

Then again, if you witnesses how choosing a color for a rail line can melt down the decision-making process, L.A. will be caught napping and our money may go to the Central Valley and the Inland Empire to widen their freeways.

The reason we don’t have the “dream map” system is that not all of the tax money goes to rail. A large chunk of it goes to fund bus operations as well, and there is also the local return money that L.A.’s 88 cities spend on their city bus systems. Only about a dozen of these are actually useful, though.

Much of the rail map was “salvaged” through Metrolink, but that’s only because construction costs are minimal and trains are oriented toward peak-hour commuters.

And re: Ward’s attempts — Maybe the 3rd time’s a charm? Simply giving up cuz the task’s a big one would REALLY keep any kind of change from happening –

THERE ISN’T MONEY FOR IT.

The reason so little rail has been built is that (1) the people who are wedded to their cars refuse to give up funds that are used for building more roads in order to fund mass transit and (2) organizations like the Bus Riders Union forced money into buses, even when there wasn’t a real need. (Did you know that the BRU claims that if there are more than four people standing on a bus, MTA should put another bus, which seats 43, on the street, to “alleviate the overcrowding”?)

Back in the 1970s, the late Supervisor Baxter Ward tried twice, both times unsuccessfully, to get the voters to pass a sales tax to fund a full 400+ mile rail rapid transit system in Los Angeles County. Adjusting for inflation, if the voters had been smart and approved Ward’s plan, that entire network of lines would have been built by 1995, at a cost less than what the Metro Red Line subway ended up costing in 2000 dollars.

All car owners care about is congestion and gridlock, and they think building more roads is the solution. They are wrong, but you cannot convince them of it.