MTA OKs Scaled-Back, 20-Year Transit Plan : Transportation: Board approves $72-billion guideline that cuts rail lines, provides for small expansion of bus system.

A scaled-back transportation plan that delivers a dose of hard fiscal reality to Los Angeles County’s dreams of entering the 21st Century with a vast network of new bus and rail lines was approved Wednesday by local transit officials.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board approved the $72-billion, 20-year plan that left a diverse crowd of bus riders, community activists and politicians bitterly disappointed because it cuts back long-promised rail lines and provides for only a small expansion of the overburdened bus system.

The blueprint slashes by more than half the county’s rail system, to 95 miles over the next two decades. The MTA had previously planned to build 225 miles of rail over the next three decades but was forced to cut back because of the recession.

The plan concentrates new rail construction on a handful of projects: a Downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena rail line and extension of the Downtown subway to the Westside, the Eastside and through the San Fernando Valley as far as the San Diego Freeway.

The board agreed to resurrect plans to extend the Red Line subway west of the San Diego Freeway to Warner Center, but on a list of second-tier projects.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said that getting the project back on the list was more symbolic than practical because it still remains unlikely that the project will be built in the foreseeable future.

But, he said, leaving the project off would have virtually guaranteed that it is never built.

“If the east-west extension had not been approved, it would have been dead not only in our lifetimes, but in our children’s lifetimes as well,” Yaroslavsky said. “It keeps hope alive.”

Several other proposed lines, including extension of lines through the Crenshaw district in South Los Angeles, from Downtown Los Angeles to Burbank and Glendale, and from Pasadena to Azusa or Irwindale, were also included in the plan for consideration should funds become available.

MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin White said the plan will “bring our ambition in line with our capability.” After critics asked the board to delay a vote, he said there was “no point in waiting until we have a perfect plan. We never will.”

After watching board members “rushing to the trough” with a flurry of motions “to get our little bit for our area,” board member James Cragin introduced his own motion--to extend the soon-to-be-opened Green Line to the Del Amo shopping center--and then urged his colleagues to vote against it.

“We’re a bunch of crazies up here,” he said.

The vote came after a contentious public hearing during which board members were jeered by the audience after limiting some speakers to one minute.

“You won’t get my vote the next time you’re up for election,” fumed one man to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who chaired the meeting.

The plan was sharply criticized by advocates for bus riders for providing an increase of only 300 buses over the next two decades.