Trolley Panel Passes Buck; Backs 2 Routes

Unable to choose a single light-rail route, a San Fernando Valley rail study committee on Thursday endorsed two of the east-west routes, leaving the Los Angeles City Council to make the final decision.

A sharply divided panel recommended both a proposal to build a line on the Ventura Freeway from Universal City to Warner Center, and another proposal to use the so-called Chandler-Victory route along a little-used freight right-of-way from North Hollywood to Warner Center.

The vote was taken in a Van Nuys auditorium packed with residents who insisted that both routes would bring noise, ground vibration and congestion to their neighborhoods.

The motion, approved by a 19-12 vote of the committee, permits--but does not require--that the line be partially underground in residential areas.

Committee member Howard Green called the motion “a cop-out” and said panel members “don’t have the guts to stand up and pick a single route.”

“We need more information,” insisted committee member Bruce Miller. “I can’t base a decision on what we now know.”

The committee’s recommendation, which will be put in a final form at a session next week, will go to the Los Angeles City Council, which created the panel.

Sept. 1 Deadline

The council has been given a Sept. 1 deadline by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to designate a Valley route.

Hoping to end years of political warfare over Valley rail routes, the council created the Citizen’s Advisory Panel on Transportation Solutions in March.

Initial committee meetings were harmonious, but a preliminary vote on routes in June revealed sharp divisions among members.

Since the June 23 vote, homeowners pressing to keep light rail from their neighborhoods have shown up in large numbers, generating intense pressure on the committee.

The greatest pressure has been by a well-organized group of North Hollywood homeowners fighting the Chandler-Victory route. More than 600 of them attended a public hearing last month to protest the committee’s initial vote favoring that route.

Their numbers were supplemented at subsequent meetings by more than 100 West Valley homeowners fighting the same route on the ground that it would disturb their now-quiet neighborhood along Topham Street between White Oak and Tampa avenues.

Before Thursday night’s endorsements, several members acknowledged privately that they feared committee members would be unwilling to incur the wrath of an auditorium packed with angry homeowners by picking the Chandler-Victory route.

To allay homeowner fears, several committee members had pledged in recent weeks to couple any route recommendation with stiff noise-reduction measures, such as building block walls or placing the tracks in a shallow trench with above-ground landscaped berms.

Critics contend that the County Transportation Commission will not consider itself bound by such recommendations. They predict commissioners will embrace a route recommended to them by the City Council and later, as costs mount, strip away the noise-reduction measures.

The commission staff, which has been highly influential with the commission in the past, has for years pushed Chandler-Victory as the route that presents the fewest technical problems and would best serve the heavily congested Ventura Freeway corridor.

Staff members say they have identified space for parking more than 5,000 cars along the Chandler-Victory route but can find room for only about 3,000 near proposed Ventura Freeway trolley stations.

Transportation planners, including consultants hired by the 32-member committee, contend that the availability of parking is critical to a line’s success because many--and possibly a majority--of Valley trolley riders would drive to light-rail stations.

If parking is not available and convenient, consultants say, motorists will drive to their destinations.

Opponents contend that the county staff favors the Chandler-Victory route because it is the cheapest--and could leave funds to build light-rail segments in other areas of the county.

The commission, which is building a countywide network of light-rail lines, estimates it will take in $785 million in light-rail construction funds over the next 12 years from the extra half-cent sales tax that voters approved in 1980.

Projects competing with the Valley are a proposed line from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena by way of northeast Los Angeles, and one from El Segundo--the eastern terminus of the Century Freeway light-rail line--north past Los Angeles International Airport to Marina Del Rey.

Since the competing projects will tie into existing rail lines, county engineers have said they could be built in segments with whatever funds are left after money is set aside for a Valley route.