Committee Picks Apart, Detours Antonovich Plan for Monorail

A proposal by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich to build a monorail or magnetic-levitation train along the Ventura and Hollywood freeways received a chilly reception Friday from a key group of county transportation commissioners.

The proposal was criticized by members of the commission’s Rapid Transit Committee as offering no advantages over the conventional light-rail lines under construction elsewhere in the county.

Besides, monorail systems are expensive and unsafe, and monorail spare parts would not be interchangeable with other local rail parts, commission staff engineers said.

And magnetic-levitation technology is in its infancy and not ready for commercial use, staff members said.

After about 90 minutes of fault-finding, the committee decided against recommending that the full commission order an immediate environmental study, as requested by Antonovich.

Referred to Committee

Instead, it referred the plan to a committee that the Los Angeles City Council created earlier this week to decide what type of mass transit, if any, is needed in the San Fernando Valley and what route it should follow.

However, at the suggestion of John La Follette, Antonovich’s representative on the commission, the Rapid Transit Committee invited the manufacturers of magnetic and monorail systems to make presentations at a future meeting.

Antonovich, who represents most of the Valley and is facing a vigorous reelection challenge in the June 7 elections, has been pressing for a prompt study of his plan. He was not available for comment Friday.

Under his proposal, the commission would scrap its tentative plan for an east-west light-rail line in the Valley between Warner Center in Woodland Hills and North Hollywood, where it would connect to the northern terminus of the Metro Rail subway under construction in downtown Los Angeles.

Downtown to Westlake

Antonovich’s monorail or magnetic train would extend from Union Station downtown to the Ventura County line in Westlake Village. “You can’t duplicate Disneyland” over such a distance, said Commissioner Marcia Mednick, referring to the amusement park’s monorail.

Richard Stanger, director of program development for the commission, said an elevated monorail entering Union Station would need to be about 50 feet in the air, whereas Metro Rail trains will be operating nearly 50 feet underground at the station.

“That amount of vertical separation would present some very serious problems in getting people from one system to another,” he said.

He also said existing monorails present safety problems because, unlike light-rail systems, they do not provide a walkway for passengers to escape disabled cars.