Rail Optimism Goes Sour : Sparks of Controversy Fly Again Over Transit Route

There was widespread optimism several months ago that a 32-member committee starting with a clean sheet of paper would have little difficulty agreeing on a rail transit route for the San Fernando Valley.

The Citizen’s Advisory Panel on Transportation Solutions, it was thought, would be free of the personal hostility and fixed-in-concrete positions of many who have engaged in the years-long battle to designate a Valley light-rail route.

For two months, the committee fed such hopefulness by politely and earnestly listening to rail engineers, noise experts and urban planners, as well as to residents apprehensive about trains in their neighborhoods.

But when the committee took its first vote recently on specific routes, optimism--and much of the civility--quickly went the way of the steam locomotive and the wooden water tower.

Members found they agreed only that a light-rail line should be built. They were sharply split on where that line should go.

In the resulting tension, one committee member accused another of using a parliamentary maneuver to “try to blow this committee apart.” Another bitterly accused fellow members of “not caring one bit what the people want.”

Heated Hearings

The stress was aggravated by a new wave of protest from residents opposed to a trolley line near their homes. About 700 people, most of them protesting specific light-rail routes, attended a public hearing in Van Nuys Monday, while 100 opponents attended a committee session on Thursday.

In a June 23 ballot that members insisted was preliminary, the top vote-getter was the Chandler-Victory route, a controversial North Hollywood-to-Warner Center route that critics say would create noise, ground vibrations and congestion in many residential neighborhoods.

A close second was a newly proposed route that parallels San Fernando Road from Union Station in Los Angeles to Sylmar, serving Glendale, Burbank and the northeast Valley.

Third was a much-studied elevated route over the Ventura Freeway from Universal City to Warner Center, while fourth place went to a newly proposed route that avoids most residential areas between North Hollywood and Warner Center either by using a subway or the Ventura Freeway shoulder.

Seven other routes were eliminated in the voting, in which members picked their first, second, third and fourth choices.

The voting set off furious behind-the-scenes politicking.

Lobbying for Support

Former Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, a Northridge resident who is a committee member, spent much of last week calling committee members to drum up support for the San Fernando Road route, while Warner Center attorney Roger L. Stanard lobbied on behalf of the Chandler-Victory route.

Also lobbying was Alan D. Havens, a transportation planner with the Southern California Assn. of Governments, who on his own time designed the fourth-place route.

Havens’ route would go underground to avoid residential areas east of the San Diego Freeway and would follow the Ventura Freeway west of the San Diego Freeway, thereby avoiding most residential areas.

The committee, which has not decided how it will proceed, has until Aug. 1 to recommend a route or routes to the Los Angeles City Council, which created the panel to break an impasse over Valley rail.

The council, which is free to accept or reject the committee’s recommendation, has been given a Sept. 1 deadline by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to come up with a consensus on a Valley route.

Commissioners, who are building a countywide network of light-rail lines similar to the San Diego Red Cars, say that if no route is recommended, they will divert available funds away from the Valley to two competing rail projects. Those are a proposed line from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena and one from El Segundo, which is the eastern terminus of the unfinished Century Freeway Light-Rail Line, north past Los Angeles International Airport to Marina Del Rey.

Both of those projects are vigorously supported by local elected officials, residents and business leaders.

But commissioners have acknowledged repeatedly that the Valley’s political clout is such that they would not divert funds elsewhere if there were broad support for any single Valley route.

At stake is an estimated $785 million in light-rail construction funds expected to become available in the next 12 years from the extra half-cent sales tax that voters approved in 1980.

The commission staff, which has proved highly influential with commissioners, gives all north-south routes in the Valley, including the San Fernando Road line, a lower priority than east-west routes.

Favored Route

The staff also has an undisguised preference for the Chandler-Victory route.

Staff engineers say that that route presents the fewest technical problems and would best serve the congested Ventura Freeway corridor.

But critics contend the staff prefers Chandler-Victory because much of it would be at ground level, making it a relatively cheap route.

If the Valley line can be built for less than $500 million, critics note, there would be enough money left to build segments of the two competing lines, thereby relieving political pressure on the commission.

Richard Stanger, the commission’s program development director, acknowledged that “cost is a factor when you have many groups vying for limited funds” but said the Chandler-Victory route “offers operational benefits as well as relatively low cost.”

The Ventura Freeway route, he said, would “probably use up all the light-rail money until after the turn of the century.”

Among members of the advisory committee, there has been sharp disagreement over what control the committee--or even the City Council--would have over recommended noise-reduction measures once a route is selected by the County Transportation Commission.

Noise-lowering measures under study include block walls, placing the tracks in a deep trench or placing them in a shallow trench with above-ground landscaped berms.

Accord Expected

Committee member Raymond Extract, a Woodland Hills businessman who favors Chandler-Victory, said his support is based on the assumption “that we will reach an accommodation” with those who fear noise.

But critics predict that the County Transportation Commission will embrace a route forwarded to it by the City Council and sometime later, as costs mount during the design process, strip away the costly noise-reduction measures.

Stanard, noting that 15 of the 30 committee members are on record in favor of Chandler-Victory, was bullish this week on the route’s prospects, noting that “no matter what group you put together to look at routes, it comes out on top.”

Fiedler, on the other hand, said it was “too early to predict the final outcome” because after the voting the committee “heard loud and clear from those worried about their neighborhoods. We will have to wait and see what effect that has on the committee.”