O’Connor Is Named To MTA Board

Hannah Heineman
Mirror staff writer

   Santa Monica City Councilwoman Pam O’Connor was elected last Thursday to the board of the Metropolitan Transit District (MTA) which operates most of the bus and rail service in Los Angeles County.
   She will represent the Southwest sector which includes 16 South Bay cities, as well as the cities of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Culver City and West Hollywood.
   The 13-member MTA board is comprised of the five Los Angeles County Supervisors, four people appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles and one representative from each of four sectors in Los Angeles County.
   O’Connor will serve until 2003, finishing out the term of former Gardena Councilman Jim Cragin, who made an unsuccessful bid for the Gardena mayoralty cost him his seat on the MTA board.
   O’Connor is “very excited about representing the Westside and the South Bay cities....(we) need to look at our transportation needs as a sub-region to maximize traffic flow by applying technology and traffic management systems as well as making transit work better. We have cities such as Torrance, Gardena, Culver City and Santa Monica that have municipal bus systems that are models of efficiency and there are lessons to be learned from them.”
   Now in her second term on the Santa Monica City Council, O’Conner has also served as both Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem. She has worked on transit policies as a member of the Southern California Association of Government and the League of California Cities’ transportation and policy committee. She was also a member of the City’s Transit Mall working group and has lobbied for the City’s Big Blue Bus system in Washington D.C. and Sacramento.
   As a regular bus rider herself, O’Connor said she “understands the issues first-hand.”