Council Report : Panel Endorses 2 Light-Rail Routes, Subway

A Los Angeles City Council committee Wednesday recommended two possible San Fernando Valley light-rail routes, although committee members also indicated they favor studying a plan to substitute a subway for the proposed ground-level trolley.

After a stormy public hearing, the council’s three-member Transportation and Traffic Committee voted unanimously to endorse a citizen’s advisory committee report calling for further study of two east-west light-rail routes--along the Ventura Freeway and along a railroad freight line that largely parallels Chandler and Victory boulevards and Topham Street.

The council members appeased some of the well-organized homeowner groups that have been fighting those routes by also urging study of a new plan to continue the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro Rail subway west across the Valley.

The committee report now goes to the full council, which is expected to take action next week. The council has until Sept. 1 to recommend a route or routes to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which is building a countywide network of rail lines.

Environmental Study Expected

The commission is expected to order an environmental study of one or more routes and make its selection next year.

“We don’t know what the final line will look like,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, a transportation committee member. “But we know traffic is terrible and getting worse, and this keeps the study process moving.”

Although transit experts say a Metro Rail subway extension would be much more costly than a trolley, elected officials increasingly are coming to view it as the only way to overcome persistent homeowner complaints that a light-rail line at ground level or on elevated tracks would bring noise, ground vibrations and visual blight to their neighborhoods.

The shift toward building Metro Rail across the Valley began last week when State Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) announced introduction of a bill to force construction of a rail line below ground--either in a deep trench or a tunnel--in large sections of North Hollywood, Van Nuys and Reseda.

Robbins and City Councilman Michael Woo, who represents Studio City and helped draw up the plan, said the proposal could end years of bitter fighting in the Valley over rail routes.

The Robbins-Woo plan has been endorsed by several crucial legislators, including State Sen. President Pro Tempore David Roberti and Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana).

Robbins and Woo acknowledge that although the Metro Rail extension would eliminate most environmental complaints, its higher cost will probably force the Valley to settle initially for a line that does not go all the way to Warner Center.

They say they are unsure, in fact, how far such a line could be extended.

Consultants to the Citizens Advisory Panel on Transportation Solutions, whose report was the subject of Wednesday’s public hearing, estimate that it would cost $800 million to extend Metro Rail from North Hollywood to the intersection of Balboa and Victory boulevards.

The estimate assumes that the 8-mile line would be tunneled under North Hollywood residential areas but would be at ground level or elevated through commercial areas of Van Nuys and the Sepulveda Basin.

County Transportation Commission staff planners say they expect to have $915 million available for additional rail projects in the county over the next 12 years.

By contrast, the advisory committee’s consultants estimate that it will cost more than that for either project--$1.2 billion for an elevated Universal City-to-Warner Center light-rail line along the Ventura Freeway and $940 million to build the North Hollywood-to-Warner Center trolley line in a shallow trench along Chandler and Victory boulevards.

The freeway line is 16 miles long, and the Chandler-Victory route is 14 miles.

Both trolley routes would traverse residential neighborhoods, and both would force passengers to change trains at the line’s connection with Metro Rail.

The freeway route would meet the subway at Universal City, and the Chandler-Victory route would join Metro Rail in North Hollywood.

The committee members are Nate Holden, who represents the Crenshaw district; Braude, whose district includes Encino, and Woo.

The advisory committee’s report with the possible Metro Rail substitution also was endorsed Wednesday by Council President John Ferraro, who represents a portion of the southeast Valley, and southwest Valley Councilwoman Joy Picus.

Holden, though endorsing the majority’s report, also insisted that an anticipated study of Valley rail lines should include a proposed route that parallels San Fernando Road from Union Station to Sylmar.

He vowed to lobby for the route--which was endorsed by eight of the 31 advisory panel members--when the issue goes to the full council.

The discussion of substituting a subway for the proposed trolley mollified some longtime protesters, but others were not appeased.

“You’re screwing around with us,” said Tom Paterson, president of Valley Village Homeowners Assn. in North Hollywood, which opposes both light-rail routes. “You say you know damn well that a subway is going to be too expensive.”