3 Light-Rail Lines, Subway Recommended : Council Sends Cross-Valley Proposals to Transit Agency

The Los Angeles City Council, sharply divided over proposed San Fernando Valley rail routes, on Friday voted to urge county transit officials to study three light-rail routes plus a rival plan to extend the Metro Rail subway across the Valley.

After a fractious two-hour debate, the council voted 11 to 0 to send all four proposals to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which has the final say in route selection.

A key member of the commission, which is expected to order an engineering and environmental study of Valley rail routes next month, suggested Friday that commissioners may ultimately select a route without consulting the council again.

The council’s decision Friday pleased Valley rail proponents but angered those who have been fighting any plan that would bring a rail line into residential neighborhoods.

Recommended light-rail routes are from Universal City to Warner Center along the Ventura Freeway, from Union Station to Sylmar along the Southern Pacific railroad main line that parallels San Fernando Road, and from North Hollywood to Warner Center along Southern Pacific’s little-used freight right of way that parallels Chandler and Victory boulevards.

Proposal Unheeded

No precise route has been suggested for the fourth proposal--a westward extension across the Valley of the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro Rail subway, which is expected to be completed to Chandler and Lankershim boulevards by 1997.

Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Michael Woo, in an effort to boost the prospects for a cross-Valley Metro Rail extension over any of the three proposed light-rail lines, proposed unsuccessfully that the council go on record declaring that “all rail transit construction in residential areas in the San Fernando Valley shall be in subway configuration.”

About a third of the Ventura Freeway and Chandler-Victory routes run through populated areas and would have been affected by the Yaroslavsky-Woo motion.

Most transit experts agree that if a substantial portion of a Valley line is to be underground, it makes more sense economically to extend Metro Rail westward rather than force passengers to switch from the high-speed, high-capacity Metro Rail line in North Hollywood to a light-rail system for crossing the Valley.

But Yaroslavsky and Woo, who represent southeast Valley districts, abandoned their effort without putting it to a vote when only Councilmen Joel Wachs and Ernani Bernardi, both northeast Valley council members, voiced support.

The council then unanimously approved a watered-down provision that encourages--but does not demand--that the commission consider the possibility of placing the rail line underground in residential areas.

Because of the added cost of a Metro Rail extension and competition for available rail-construction funds, northwest Valley Councilman Hal Bernson said that approval of the Yaroslavsky-Woo motion would be “saying that we are not going to have mass transit in the San Fernando Valley.”

The council’s action in approving all four rail

proposals was termed “just fine because it moves things along” by Roger Stanard, a Warner Center attorney and co-chairman of the Campaign for Valley Rail Transit, a coalition of business and homeowner leaders who favor an east-west light-rail line.

But Encino homeowner leader Gerald A. Silver, who joined about a dozen other opponents at the council session, said “clearly the people who live along the Ventura Freeway and along Chandler are exposed to trains in their back yards by this action. The fight will go on.”

He said that the County Transportation Commission “has signaled it favors the Chandler line because it is cheaper” than other routes and noted that commissioners can now say that the Chandler-Victory route has been approved by the council.

New Debate Expected

Although there is no legal requirement that the question of a Valley light-rail route be submitted again to the council, several council members said they expect to debate the issue again.

“Same place, same scenario six months from now,” Bernardi predicted after the vote.

The politically heated issue landed in the council’s lap in November when the County Transportation Commission abruptly halted work on a $1.6-million environmental study of five cross-Valley routes--Chandler-Victory, the Ventura Freeway, the Los Angeles River, Victory Boulevard, and the Southern Pacific railroad coast main line, which crosses the Valley diagonally from Burbank Airport to Chatsworth.

Commissioners complained that in the face of vigorous opposition to all five routes, elected officials from the Valley were staying out of the cross fire when they should be leading the way in selecting a route.

Commissioners gave the council until Thursday to recommend a route or routes for further study or suggested that available light-rail funds would go to one of two competing projects--a downtown-to-Pasadena line or a northward extension of the Century Freeway line to Marina del Rey.

In response to the ultimatum, the council created a 32-member Citizens Advisory Panel on Transportation Solutions, which studied routes for four months before submitting both a majority and three minority reports to the council.

The council action Friday encompassed both the majority report, signed by 21 members, urging study of the two east-west light-rail routes plus the westward extension of Metro Rail, and an eight-member minority report that endorsed a light-rail line along San Fernando Road.

Rancho Palos Verdes Councilwoman Jacki Bacharach, who chairs the commission’s Rail Construction Committee, said Friday after the council action that commissioners may decide themselves on a Valley rail line.

Passage by Los Angeles County voters in 1980 of the extra half-cent sales tax for rail construction “gave the commission a mandate to build a regional rail network,” she said.

“We usually like to seek a council’s guidance and approval,” Bacharach said, “But where a council is unable to make a decision on a route, the commission stands ready to act.”