Homeowners Ready to Accept Delay in Subway Construction

Although they would like a longer delay, East San Fernando Valley homeowner leaders appear to be ready to accept a proposed one-year delay in the start of Metro Rail construction in Studio City and North Hollywood.

The plan was unveiled Wednesday by Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), who previously had insisted that subway tunneling must begin by the state-mandated Sept. 29 deadline, and Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Van Nuys).

The two legislators said that if community leaders support their plan, they will support legislation combining the delay with a 10-year ban on construction of a light-rail trolley system in North Hollywood and Van Nuys.

Robbins Stance Deserted

Homeowner leaders, who in recent months have deserted Robbins’ position of demanding a prompt start on subway construction, said in interviews Friday they probably will accept the plan as the best available.

However, several expressed doubts about the propriety of combining provisions affecting Metro Rail and light rail, which are two separate rail systems being planned by different agencies, in the same bill. Two Los Angeles City Council members expressed the same reservation.

“If anything, we feel the delay should be longer than one year,” Kurt Hunter, president of the North Hollywood Residents Assn., said Friday following a meeting of the group’s directors. “But it’s better than we had a week ago.”

“My own feeing is that I guess one year would be better than nothing,” said Polly Ward, president of the Studio City Residents Assn. “But we have not as a group taken a position to accept the plan.”

‘Minimum Support’

Robbins said Friday he has detected a “minimum amount of support, a lot of people thinking about the plan and no strong outright opposition. I think it will be next week before a consensus forms.” He reiterated that he will “not support this plan unless my constituents say they are in favor of it.” He also ruled out a longer delay in Metro Rail construction.

Bane said he has gotten no feedback yet but is “proceeding on the assumption my constituents like the idea unless and until I’m told otherwise.”

The plan has been praised by leaders of the East Valley Transit Coalition, a politically potent group organized last year to prevent construction of a street-level trolley through North Hollywood.

The coalition, which has turned out as many as 700 protesters at public hearings, contends that a trolley would bring noise and congestion.

They have been pressuring Robbins and Bane, who represent North Hollywood, to find a way to halt consideration by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission of two proposed trolley routes that would traverse their community.

The Robbins-Bane plan, said Robert Silver, a coalition founder, “will lift the dark cloud from us and will force the commission to begin looking seriously at routes that don’t have massive public opposition.”

Robbins is the author of 1984 legislation that requires the Southern California Rapid Transit District to begin subway work in the Valley within a year of the Sept. 29, 1986, ground-breaking in downtown Los Angeles.

The law, introduced with strong backing from homeowner leaders, was aimed at preventing the RTD from giving Valley subway construction a low priority, Robbins said.

Until Wednesday, he had insisted that the law be complied with, and had vowed repeatedly to go to court on Sept. 30 to force compliance if necessary.

However, Robbins has become progressively isolated on the issue since April when the RTD, which is building the downtown-to-North Hollywood subway, unveiled its plan for complying with the law.

Provided the state, the Los Angeles City Council and the County Transportation Commission pay the project’s $74-million cost, RTD officials said they would tunnel from Universal City 4,500 feet north to the Ventura Freeway over the next seven years.

But RTD planners acknowledge that, because of uncertainties over federal funding, the tunnel could lie unused for a decade or more before it is extended the final 1.4 miles from the Ventura Freeway to Metro Rail’s northern terminus at the intersection of Lankershim and Chandler boulevards in North Hollywood.

Also, RTD officials say it will be December--three months after the Valley Metro Rail deadline--before the RTD staff can say with certainty whether there will be enough money to extend the subway north from Hollywood to Universal City in the second phase of construction, scheduled to begin in 1988.

The first phase, begun 10 months ago, is a 4.4-mile stretch between Union Station downtown and the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Alvarado Street.

“We would get noise, we would get congestion and we would get displacement of homes,” said Dolly Wageman, transportation representative for the Studio City Residents Assn. “And for that, we would not get anything that could be used. We would get a tunnel that goes nowhere.”

Trust Fund Proposed

The Studio City and North Hollywood groups in recent months has been pushing a plan to put Valley Metro Rail money in a trust fund until money is available to connect the Valley leg with downtown.

The trust fund plan has been endorsed by the County Transportation Commission and several key Los Angeles City Council members.

However, Robbins has said he will block any effort in the Legislature to substitute a trust fund plan for the law he authored.

He contends that putting money in such a fund “is an invitation to future transit officials to break promises made to the Valley when the Metro Rail package was put together.”