Panel’s Choice for Light Rail Draws Angry Crowd of 700

About 700 people, most of them opposed to a trolley line in their neighborhood, packed a public hearing Monday on a San Fernando Valley light-rail route.

Most of the boisterous crowd at Grant High School in Van Nuys came to fight a proposed North Hollywood-to-Warner Center route that traverses numerous neighborhoods of single-family homes. Residents complained that the trains would bring noise, ground vibrations and street congestion to their areas.

The controversial route came out on top in a preliminary vote last week of members of the Citizens Advisory Panel on Transportation Solutions, which conducted the hearing Monday night.

The leading route would use the Southern Pacific railroad freight right-of-way on Chandler Boulevard and Oxnard Street east of the San Diego Freeway. West of the San Diego Freeway, the line would follow Victory Boulevard to Topham Street.

The route has strong support from business leaders, who contend that recent commercial growth at Warner Center makes mass transit to Woodland Hills a necessity.

Opposition leader Tony Sandifer demanded Monday that the panel “listen to the people for a change and not the businesses.”

“This panel was stacked from the beginning,” complained Gerry Lester of the Eastern Sector Transit Coalition, a North Hollywood group that organized much of the crowd.

Some Favor Other Route

As an alternative to the Chandler-Victory route, many speakers endorsed a proposed line parallel to the Golden State Freeway from Sylmar to downtown Los Angeles.

In the balloting last Thursday, the 28 committee members present voted for their first, second, third and fourth choices. The Chandler-Victory line was the top choice of 14 members. The Sylmar-to-downtown route was the first pick of eight members, while four members voted for a light-rail line on the Ventura Freeway shoulder.

A hybrid route that would parallel Chandler Boulevard east of the San Diego Freeway, go underground to avoid residential areas, and use the Ventura Freeway right-of-way west of the San Diego Freeway, got one vote. However, that route got eight second-place votes and three third-place votes, indicating that members view it with some interest.

The Southern Pacific railroad coast main line, which crosses the Valley diagonally from Burbank Airport to Chatsworth, drew little interest. Along with six other routes, it was dropped from further consideration.

The 32-member committee was created by the Los Angeles City Council after the County Transportation Commission in November abandoned efforts to designate a Valley light-rail route.

The commission, which is building a countywide network of trolley lines, had been considering five east-west routes for the Valley. But it backed away in the face of growing opposition to all five routes from established homeowner organizations and from coalitions formed to fight specific routes. The committee has been given an Aug. 1 deadline to come up with a recommended route or routes.

The council, which is free to accept or reject the committee recommendation, has until Sept. 1 to present a route to the Transportation Commission. If no plan with broad support is submitted, available funds will be shifted to trolley projects elsewhere in the county, commissioners said.