This article discusses the history of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA, also known as "Metro"), the regional transportation planning agency for Los Angeles County, California.
Predecessors
LACMTA is the product of the merger of two previous agencies: the Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD or more often, RTD) and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC). RTD was during the 1960s and 1980s (until the LACTC was created) the "800 pound gorilla" in bus transportation in Southern California. This led to some hostilities and problems with other agencies, as described in the above article on RTD.
Merger and early expansions
The State of California created the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority effective February 1, 1993 per AB152 (Katz). The former SCRTD and LACTC entities went out of business officially on April 1, 1993 after a 60 day cross-over and close out period, due to the inability of LACTC and SCRTD to cease long-standing feuds. The final straw and most embarrassing example of inter-agency contentious relations was based on a report in the Los Angeles Times on the Blue Line to Downtown Los Angeles (an LACTC project). The newspaper wrote that the line would terminate a mere six blocks (at the Pico Station) from the under construction 7th Street Metro Center subway station (an SCRTD project) preventing a logical ease of connection between the two rail lines. The public was outraged and politicians felt the heat as they too were outraged that the well-known poor relations between the two agencies would result in such a gap in what was supposed to be a regional system. Soon after, then assemblyman Richard Katz authored and was successful in passing legislation to combine the LACTC and SCRTD into the current LACMTA. The legislation went further to making the new agency more accountable to the public by centralizing policy authority in the MTA board's permanent seats, held by the top Los Angeles City and County elected office holders (among them the Mayor of Los Angeles and the entire five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors).
Initially, the LACMTA retained the locations of the predecessor agencies in Downtown Los Angeles, but later moved to the 25-story Gateway Plaza Building adjacent to historic Union Station in 1995 with former SCRTD Operations staff occupying the lower half of the tower and former LACTC staff in Planning and Construction occupying the upper half demonstrating that old hostilities were still present after the merger. In addition, local media reports of expensive Italian marble, granite and limestone used in its construction resulted in the structure being derisively dubbed the Taj Mahal. MTA officials also pointed out that the funds used for its share of construction costs (it is a Turnkey private real estate development of the BNSF) could only be used for capital improvement or construction and not for operating expenses, subsidy of fares or the purchase of buses or trains. Housed within the building is the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Research Library and Archives, a comprehensive collection of transportation-related books, videos, and other materials, said to be one of the largest in the nation held by a transit operator. The library is open to the public by appointment.
In 1994, the United Transportation Union (UTU), representing bus drivers, went on strike. At stake here were the issues of wages, insurance, and other necessities. This was settled, with operators and maintenance workers receiving a 4% wage increase initially and a 3.5% one for the second year. They also received considerable improvements in health insurance.
Employees of the former Los Angeles County Transportation Commission were transferred in December 1996 to the Public Transportation Services Corporation, an independent corporation. PTSC allows former LACTC employees to participate in CalPERS and opt out of Social Security, and permits Metro planning employees to do planning for other agencies, which Metro currently does for Metrolink. Some union members have argued that PTSC is a "sham corporation" designed eventually to outsource Metro jobs.
