The Compton City Council recently approved a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for the expansion of the Compton Martin Luther King Transit Center.

The grant was authorized by the MTA in 2001 but the city has not begun the project.

“The MTA has advised the city that the project needs to be initiated or the grant will be rescinded,” said City Manager Barbara Kilroy in her report to the council. “It recently granted the city an extension, requiring the project to be completed by 2009.”

The project will house a transit management center and regional traffic coordination operation. It will also provide support functions for transit maintenance.

The expanded transit center will include a Regional Traffic Management and Operation Center, Renaissance Bus Transit System, a Dial-a-Ride service, a Dial-a-Taxi service, a parking lot for the Blue Line and a bus layover facility. It will accommodate maintenance with fueling facilities for diesel and compressed natural gas, a recharging station for electrical vehicles, washing facility and storage for parts.

The project will support the eventual expansion and improvement of the entire Los Angeles transportation system, a vast plan that will include four major projects that are projected to cost $332 million.

The plan to relieve congestion in Los Angeles includes bus lines, light rail, freeway and arterial highway improvements as well as facilities that encourage carpooling and alternative forms of transportation. It includes the expansion of Metro Rail, the completion of the San Fernando Valley Metro Rapidway, 28 Metro Rapid lines, 200 high-capacity buses placed into service in key areas, 70 miles of additional carpool lanes and many rideshare, joint development and other local initiatives.

The Compton project will cost $5,096,860. A total of $3,299,000 of the funding will come from the MTA through the Prop C “10%” program. The city will provide the remaining $1,797,860 as part of a “soft match” arrangement.

The soft match amount is 35 percent of the entire cost for the project. Compton will pay $500,000 of the engineering and administrative support for the project. “The balance of the local match, $1,297,860, will come from the City Proposition A and C Allocations,” said Kilroy.

According to MTA Chief Executive Officer Roger Snoble, “If all goes as planned, we will see hundreds of transportation projects over the next six years. Our Short-Term Plan is an aggressive one, but it will meet the challenges and assemble the transportation puzzle to secure our transportation future.

“Our region’s mobility and our quality of life depend on it.”

A key element in the Short-Term Plan and the Long Range Plan is a “smart transportation” system that will control public transit lines in a way that will be responsive to the needs of various areas of the Greater Los Angeles complex. It will be an interface between local bus lines, Metro Rapid, the Metro Rail and Metro Rapid Transitways and the Metrolink lines.

Local buses — the “workhorses of the public transportation system,” according to Snoble — comprise a network covering more than 1,400 square miles. They serve more than 1.4 million riders a day.

The MTA is trying to obtain more funding for the implementation of a Regional Transit Center development plan. The MLK facility will be a part of an overall effort to streamline mass transportation with high technology.

It is also seeking funding for transit operations and additional capital and operating funds to meet the increasing demands on systems serving the subregions that were delineated several years ago. Compton is part of the Gateway Cities subregion.

MTA’s Short-Term Plan will form the basis for the more extensive projects that are part of the Long-Term Plan, which is being designed with significant projected growth in mind.

It is hoped that by 2009 the MTA will have completed work on two transportation corridors that will serve as examples of a concept that will improve all transportation methods and systems and join them as part of an overall transportation operation.

However, the state’s financial crisis has put a crimp in those plans. “State budget cuts could reduce funding for Los Angeles County’s transportation needs by $2 billion from the $21.3 billion that was originally estimated to be available,” said Snoble. “Our plans call for proactive and innovative options aimed at generating new revenue that can fully implement our transportation vision.”

Transportation revenues come from various federal, state and local sources.

Approximately $19.3 billion is estimated to be available over the next few years to maintain and expand the area’s transportation system. Much of that funding comes from two half-cent voter initiatives, Propositions A and C.

The MLK Transit Center project is an important part of the local component of MTA’s plans. At this time, there has been no schedule set for completion of the project other than the MTA deadline of 2009.

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