METRO RAIL VS. LIGHT RAIL : A Perplexing Crossroads for Mass Transit

Metro Rail or light rail? Or neither? Or both?

Those are the prospects facing transportation planners as they consider the best use of funds available to the San Fernando Valley under the half-cent sales tax approved by Los Angeles County voters in 1980.

The Valley is competing with transit projects throughout the county for the funds, which are expected to total about $900 million for new projects by the end of the century. So far, a total of $4.3 billion in transit proposals are vying for these funds in Los Angeles County.

The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission is charged with deciding how the half-cent sales tax funds will be spent.

There is a division of opinion on the commission about what, if anything, should be done in the Valley. Some commissioners are concerned that the Valley may get a disproportionate share of the countywide tax funds for transit.

Among the possibilities is to build the Valley segment of the Metro Rail subway, on which construction has begun in downtown Los Angeles. The two-mile Valley leg from North Hollywood to Universal City is expected to cost $250 million to $270 million--or up to $135 million a mile.

Ideally, it would link up with the rest of the $3.3-billion Metro Rail system, but funds have so far been identified only for the 4.4-mile Metro Rail segment now being built from downtown Los Angeles to Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard. Many skeptics therefore say that the full 18.5-mile subway to the Valley will never be built, leading to the prospect that there would be a downtown segment and a Valley segment--and nothing in between.

The Southern California Rapid Transit District is building the subway with funds provided by the county and state transportation commissions, as well as the City of Los Angeles and federal government.

The county commission’s staff has said it makes better economic sense to use the half-cent tax funds available to the Valley to build a $412-million, 17-mile above-ground trolley from Warner Center to Universal City that could be used with or without Metro Rail.

However, state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) is leading a number of Valley politicians in opposing any effort to substitute a trolley for the Valley part of Metro Rail. He contends that the Valley is entitled to both projects.

Robbins was the author of a 1984 law requiring the start of the subway’s construction in the Valley within one year of its ground breaking downtown, which was Sept. 29.

Transit officials have declined to say how they propose to deal with the state law.

Robbins has indicated that he is not willing to wait for transit officials to act. He got himself appointed to the state transportation commission, which has asked the RTD to report at the state commission’s meeting Thursday in Fresno on how it plans to comply with the state law.

There also is the possibility that the county transportation commission will make Metro Rail the only project it finances in the Valley. Then, if the money for linking the downtown and Valley parts of Metro Rail fails to materialize from other quarters, the Valley could end up with nothing.

The Valley is in competition with a proposed South Bay line and a downtown Los Angeles-to-Pasadena line for money. But, even if the path were cleared to build a trolley in the Valley, many problems face a light-rail system, including community concern about noise, aesthetics, traffic congestion and vibrations.

The commission’s staff Friday narrowed their choice of light-rail routes to three. One of those is a route along Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood, which has been opposed by area homeowners. The others are a Victory Boulevard route, which would be elevated east of the San Diego Freeway and at street level west of the freeway, and one running from the southern end of Burbank Airport across the Valley diagonally to Chatsworth.

The commission’s Rapid Transit Committee will consider those routes along with four others--generally along Sherman Way, Ventura Boulevard, the Ventura Freeway and the Los Angeles River flood control channel--when it meets Friday. The committee will recommend to the commission which routes should be included in an environmental study.

The full commission is expected to take up the issue of trolley routes at its Jan. 28 meeting.