Encino Activist Vows to Bar MTA’s New Billboard Buses

As the first of a series of billboard buses hit Los Angeles streets this week in an MTA pilot program to raise money for the cash-strapped agency, an Encino homeowner activist vowed Wednesday that such “rolling graffiti billboards” would never roll on San Fernando Valley streets.

“We won’t allow them,” said Gerald A. Silver, president of the Homeowners of Encino. “This kind of advertising basically legitimizes graffiti and we won’t allow it.”

Silver’s group and the nonprofit Los Angeles environmental organization, Los Angeles Beautiful Inc., sent out 1,200 letters in April in a direct-mail campaign opposing the project. Silver said the homeowners are now considering a new mailing campaign, picketing Metropolitan Transportation Authority meetings and lobbying efforts to have the project blocked.

Ted Woo, director of Los Angeles Beautiful, said his group also plans to continue to fight the project but cannot lobby against it because of the group’s nonprofit status.

“It’s just very sad,” Woo said of the campaign, which aims to place giant painted or vinyl ads stretching from headlight to taillight on 100 city buses. “It’s undignified for a public conveyance to carry commercial messages to such an extent.”

But transportation officials say the campaign could bring in $570,000 over three years, helping to offset recent budget cuts.

Unveiled on Tuesday, the first billboard bus, which runs a route along Wilshire Boulevard, sports an ad for Orion Picture’s “RoboCop 3.” The second bus in the program is expected to serve a Valley route.