Panel Approves Metro Rail $707.6-Million Bond Sale

A key $707.6-million chunk of the financing plan for Los Angeles’ proposed commuter rail network fell into place Thursday when the county Transportation Commission approved its first bond sale to help pay for initial phases of the Metro Rail project and a more extensive trolley network.

Approval of the long-planned sale comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that an agreement has been reached with the Reagan Administration to release federal funds to begin construction of Metro Rail later this year.

Thursday’s action will create a large pool of local transit funds needed to complete the first 4.4-mile leg of Metro Rail, as well as a 21.5-mile light-rail line between downtown Los Angeles and Long Beach and the 16.5-mile Century Freeway light-rail line between Norwalk and Los Angeles International Airport. Transportation planners hope to eventually link together a 150-mile rail system.

The bonds will be repaid by the commission over the next 30 years with income from a half-cent-per-dollar sales tax increase for transit approved by county voters in 1980, and now generating about $100 million a year for rail construction.

With other pledged federal, state and local funds, the bond sale means that “we now have the money to move all three of these projects to completion in the next five or six years,” said Paul Taylor, who oversees rail projects for the commission.

About $100 million of the bond money is expected to go toward the $1.25-billion first leg of the Metro Rail project from Union Station downtown to Wilshire Boulevard at Alvarado Street. A funding plan for the remainder of the Metro Rail project has not been negotiated because it is uncertain what federal funding may be available to extend the $200-million-a-mile heavy rail line west along Wilshire Boulevard and through Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley.