North Valley Touted for High-Speed Rail Terminus

Los Angeles city airport officials are urging that the Southern California terminal for a proposed high-speed train to Las Vegas be located in the San Fernando Valley--enabling the train to do double duty by carrying passengers to the huge airport planned someday in the Mojave Desert.

The California and Nevada legislatures have ordered formation of a bistate commission to study the proposed rail link, which is being promoted by Nevada interests.

One of the chief questions:

If the line is built, where will the Southern California end be located?

Ontario originally was discussed as the southern terminus, but local opposition to the project has placed that in doubt. Anaheim also has been suggested, with the 200-m.p.h. train providing a link for tourists and convention-goers between the fantasy worlds of Las Vegas casinos and Disneyland.

But officials of the Los Angeles Department of Airports say they are pushing for the terminal to be in the northern San Fernando Valley, suggesting the area where the Golden State and San Diego freeways come together in Mission Hills.

Like the proposed super-airport at Palmdale, which has been discussed for 20 years, the rail line is still in the talking stage, with no guarantee that it will be built, much less where or when. The line’s backers say they hope to complete it by the mid-1990s, or at least before the turn of the century, if all goes well.

In return for California’s permission to build the rail link, airport officials argue, the builders should be required to route it northward from the Valley, with a stop in Palmdale, where the airport department hopes to handle air-traffic growth in the future.

Santa Clarita Suggested

“We’d like to see the terminal right where you enter the northern end of the Valley, anywhere from the confluence of the freeways to a little farther north,” said Clifton Moore, executive director of the Department of Airports, who also serves as chief executive officer of the Southern California Regional Airport Authority.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana, chairman of the Regional Airport Authority, also voiced support for the idea. Dana suggested that, besides the northern Valley, the Santa Clarita Valley may be considered as a terminal site, “somewhere around Valencia or Newhall.”

Moore and other airport department officials said, however, that they want the terminal placed farther south, in the San Fernando Valley, to give it the largest possible population to draw from.

Airport officials, pointing to mounting complaints from their urban neighbors and forecasts of rapid increases in the city’s population and air traffic, have a two-stage plan for using the open spaces of the Antelope Valley:

First, attract commercial air traffic to the Palmdale Air Terminal, an Air Force base that the city has agreed to share with the Pentagon, until that field’s capacity is exhausted, along with the capacity at Los Angeles International and the other commercial airports in the Los Angeles area.

Next, build a giant “airport of the future” on the 18,000 acres Los Angeles owns in Palmdale. Although the city has spent $101 million on the land in the last 21 years, holding it for just this eventuality, the super-airport probably would not be built until well into the 21st Century, airport planners agree.

Nevertheless, “the train is very important to us,” said Jerry Epstein, one of the seven airport commissioners who set policy for the Department of Airports.

“We’ve got to find a way to open the airports in Palmdale. We need to get people out to Palmdale so the airlines will go there too. All we need is the transportation system and we could get this airport going and take some of the heat off LAX and Burbank Airport.”

Plans for the giant airport in Palmdale, first announced in 1968, have been on the city’s back burners for a dozen years. Problems with the site have included its remoteness, the absence of airline service and the lack of a rail connection. Also, the administration of former Gov. Jerry Brown tried to revoke the airport’s state permit. That led to a court battle that ended only last year, with the permit restored.

Price Tag a Handicap

It was presumed that passengers would not travel all the way to Palmdale--55 highway miles from Burbank, for example--unless they were carried there by some swift, sophisticated new transportation system. So, from the beginning, a high-speed train was envisioned for the new airport. The train’s price tag--$216 million in 1970 for construction alone, without the cost of the trains--was a handicap, however.

But the newly proposed rail line to Las Vegas would be financed by private interests or Nevada agencies, giving the airport department a free ride.

That is precisely what he has in mind, said Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Sepulveda, who introduced the California legislation that set up the bistate commission last year. The commission, with eight members from each state, has until 1992 to study the routes, financing, environmental factors and other aspects of the proposal, select a builder and present a package to the two legislatures. The commission’s charter forbids the use of any tax money from within California to build the line.

“Supposedly there are private interests willing to put up $2 billion or $3 billion for this project, and I’m interested in seeing that these people solve some of our transportation problems in Southern California while they’re about it,” said Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee.

‘Helps Us, Too’

“If we leave it up to the Las Vegas forces, all they’re interested in is taking money out of Southern California” by carrying gamblers and other tourists to Las Vegas, Katz said. “It should be built so that it helps us, too.”

The Mission Hills site suggested by airport officials would be just west of his district, he said. Katz said he has not decided whether to support such a proposal.

The bistate commission is not expected to hold its first meeting until mid-summer, Katz said, so it is too early to discuss where the terminal would be.

However, “the Los Angeles airport folks are hot on the Valley idea,” he said. “They’d love to see it there. . . . They’ve been pushing for a Palmdale link so they can make good on their investment after they spent millions of dollars on all that land up there.”

The state legislation setting up the bistate commission specifies that the route must be laid out “principally following the route of Interstate 15,” utilizing the highway’s right of way.

High-Speed Technologies

To be considered are high-speed rail technologies, such as Japan’s bullet train and the European magnetic-levitation technology, which would carry trains at 150 to 300 m.p.h., said Paula Treat, lobbyist in Sacramento for the city of Las Vegas.

She said the project originated with the Las Vegas municipal government and gained the support of the governments of Nevada and Clark County, which includes Las Vegas--and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Bureau. But those governments are counting on private investors--large international financial institutions, such as investment banks--to pay for construction and retain ownership of the line, operating it as a public utility, she said.

Many have expressed interest, but which ones become involved will depend on which technology is selected, she said. “Some groups are only interested in backing the Japanese technology; others would be interested if it was the German technology that was selected,” she said.

Developers of the high-speed rail technologies are particularly interested in the Las Vegas-Southern California link because the long stretch of more than 200 miles of open desert would allow the trains to hit top speeds, bypassing problems common elsewhere, such as annoyed residents along a route, she said.

She estimated the cost at about $3 billion.