Local News in Brief : 2 Light-Rail Route Plans Win Support

A Los Angeles City Council committee on Wednesday endorsed two possible San Fernando Valley light-rail routes. However, committee members also indicated that they favor studying a plan to substitute a Metro Rail subway extension for the proposed ground-level trolley.

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. One lies along the Ventura Freeway, while the other lies along a railroad freight line that largely parallels Chandler and Victory Boulevards and Topham Street.

The committee sought to appease 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.

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