Metro Rail Safety Issue Widens to Include Downtown

Questions of safety along the proposed route of the Los Angeles Metro Rail widened Monday to include not just the Fairfax district, where a rerouting already has been demanded by a congressional financing committee, but also the portion of the line running through a downtown area identified as also having potentially hazardous underground gas.

And, casting more doubt on getting construction under way on schedule early next year, a Reagan Administration official said Monday that the tunneling controversy has prompted a re-examination of previously approved environmental studies of the $3.3-billion project.

Until now, much of the discussion over tunneling through potentially hazardous gas pockets was concentrated on the Fairfax district, where a gas explosion last March tore through the Ross Dress for Less store and injured 21 people. But a substantial portion of the route under the heart of downtown Los Angeles is also designated “high-hazard” in a largely unnoticed, technical report prepared last year for the Southern California Rapid Transit District, which would build and operate the subway.

The high-hazard designation, based on gas concentrations detected in underground probes, was given to a section of the route running under Hill Street between the Civic Center and the financial district station at 7th and Flower streets.

RTD officials, their consultants and state engineers who will oversee the subway tunneling, say the designation amounts to no more than a precaution that greater care must be taken to properly vent gas pockets during construction and operation of the subway in those areas. “All it means is you apply certain technologies (to the construction),” said Nick Presecan, a group vice president for Engineering Science, the Arcadia firm that conducted the study for RTD. “Nothing there says you can’t build in that area. Metro Rail can be constructed in a safe manner.”

Funding Delay Wanted

But Westside Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) cited the report Monday as part of the reason he is insisting that federal funding for the first 4.4-mile section of the subway--the portion of the line that would run through downtown--be held up until an independent study of the safety of the entire subway route is completed. “We know the Fairfax area is a potential risk area because we’ve already had an explosion there,” he said. “What I am concerned about is even in that first 4.4 miles we may have an area that is just as risky.”

The safety of the first phase of the project, which faces a key financing vote by the full House of Representatives this week, has become more important since the money bill was amended last week to call for the route to be changed to avoid the Fairfax area. The bill would allocate $130 million in the next fiscal year to build the segment from Union Station to Alvarado Street and guarantee the entire $400 million needed to complete that section.

Waxman, in whose district much of the line would be built, has said he would seek to kill financing for the project unless the entire route is re-examined by an independent panel of experts.

If new environmental studies are required on the first segment, where RTD is ready to begin construction, supporters of the project claim the delays could lead to loss of promised state financing and scuttle the entire project.

Staff aides on Waxman’s Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health and environment, which investigates environmental problems ranging from acid rain to chemical plant leaks, have noted that some of the concentrations of methane measured along the downtown route are as high as those in some hazardous Fairfax areas. “Their own consultants have told them it’s a high-hazard area,” said Gregory Wetstone, assistant counsel to the subcommittee. “It’s something that needs to be looked at again. We’ve had testimony (at a Los Angeles hearing) that there is no technology to assure complete safety. It’s not that there’s no alternative route.”

But RTD officials point to portions of the report that found that the underground gas in the downtown area is under little pressure and, they say, therefore is not as dangerous. They note that the study recommends a series of design features--such as elaborate ventilation and gas-detection systems--that engineers say would make the project safe.

Byron Ishkanian, principal engineer with the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the man who would be responsible for the safety of the tunneling project, said the readings in the downtown area were “pretty high.” But he also stressed that “this tunnel can be excavated safely . . . we’ve worked on this for three years.”

‘Taking a Second Look’

Meanwhile, federal transit planners are re-examining the adequacy of safety studies on the proposed subway because of the new questions about tunneling.

“We’re taking a second look,” said Ralph Stanley, administrator of the Urban Mass Transit Authority, which has opposed Metro Rail as too costly. The agency, which oversees development and financing of transit systems, has already approved the environmental impact reports for the first leg of the 18.6-mile subway.

But Stanley said because of questions raised by Waxman and the clothing store explosion, he ordered a review of the project studies on tunneling safety. If the review, which is expected to take about two weeks, finds the tunneling safety conclusions doubtful, Stanley said, additional studies could be ordered.

He said that such studies could possibly delay construction. The formal environmental impact report that UMTA approved for the project does not address the issue of hazardous gassy areas “in great detail,” Stanley said, and his staff is now going over supporting studies from the RTD.

Whatever the review ultimately concludes, it may have more immediate political significance here in the next few days. By raising doubts, it may boost Waxman’s contention that the subject of tunneling safety has not been exhaustively explored.

One congressional staff source supportive of the project said the UMTA review, while potentially troublesome for the project, is not surprising. “The Administration doesn’t want anything,” the staff member said. “If they want to make their no-new-(transit)-start policy stick, why not try to throw up something like this?”

Efforts at reaching a compromise have faded and now both sides have begun concentrating on lining up support for fixed positions when the matter reaches the House floor.

Metro Rail backers, who say they tried to accommodate Waxman’s concerns, have become sharply critical of the congressman and his motives. “It’s sort of like the target keeps moving,” said one key proponent of the project who asked not to be identified. “He wants to bet the entire mass transit system for a city of 7 million on a hunch that there might be something wrong,” the source said. “He’s saying ‘satisfy all my doubts or there won’t be anything.’ ”

For his part, Waxman said the more he and his committee staff have investigated the tunneling question and met with RTD representatives, the more uneasy they have felt that safety considerations have not been adequately addressed.

“I don’t have confidence in them at this point,” he said, claiming that political and development decisions appear to have guided the decision about the route more than transit needs and safety--a charge that RTD officials deny.

“They’re just trying to hold it all together and hope they get this thing through,” Waxman said.