Area Transit Planning

“A Missing Link in Transit Planning” (Part A, Aug. 12) fails to point to the distinctions between two types of transportation and two types of taxes for their financing. Both distinctions are critical and, believe it or not, the voters recognize the importance of the distinctions.

Voters have favored measures which include large and visible rail transit and rail interurban projects. They voted for Prop. A (1980), for Propositions 116, 111 and 108. Prop. 111 may have been “pulled-through” despite its heavy highways content, because of Gov. Deukmejian’s linkage with the rail Prop. 108.

Prop. 111 also had the virtue of increasing the gasoline tax and relieving the Gann limit, albeit marginally.

Voters have more often rejected measures which have depended on the sales tax to finance expansion of the freeway system. They are catching on to the highway bias of the Legislature and to the highway lobby’s use of our weaknesses.

If Orange County voters are smart as they have been in the recent past, they will reject Measure M even more decisively. Despite Reed Royalty, the Board of Supervisors, the Orange County Transportation Commission and the highway lobby.

STANLEY HART, Chairman

Sierra Club, Angeles Chapter

Transportation Committee