Rail-Line Rivals Look for Support

An indecisive skirmish over where to build the county’s next rail line was fought Wednesday on the Los Angeles City Council floor between champions of an east-west San Fernando Valley line and those who back a competing, downtown-to-Pasadena line.

At stake was which of the two routes the council will endorse before the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC), the body that controls mass transit funding and the forum where a major battle is shaping up between the pro-Valley and pro-Pasadena forces.

A third rival for designation as the next project in line for funding is a northward extension of the Century Freeway light-rail line from El Segundo to Marina del Rey. The commission on March 28 is to choose the next route to be built.

All eight council members who represent parts of the Valley said Wednesday that they will support the Valley route over the Pasadena one. Eight votes constitute a majority of the 15-member council. But several other council members--including Gloria Molina and Richard Alatorre, who represent Eastside areas that would be served by the Pasadena line--are opposed.

Hollywood Councilman Michael Woo, who represents parts of Studio City, predicted that the Valley route will prevail with the council but that its supporters will face a tougher fight in winning support from the transportation commission for that line.

“It may be easier for LACTC to back a Pasadena route,” Woo said. That route is “hassle-free,” unlike the Valley route, he said. Valley lawmakers and community leaders have squabbled for several years over the precise alignment of a Valley route.

Wednesday’s fight arose unexpectedly during a debate over cutting the cost of the Metro Rail subway project, now under construction, when Nate Holden, who represents South-Central Los Angeles, introduced a motion to make the Valley route the council’s top choice for receiving transportation commission funding.

Holden’s motion was referred to the council’s transportation committee, which he chairs. He said he will propose that Alatorre and the city’s other LACTC appointees be instructed to vote for the Valley line. Holden vowed to return his plan to the council in two weeks.

Supporting Holden was Councilman Marvin Braude, an architect of a fragile compromise that calls for building a rail line from North Hollywood--the Valley terminus of the original Metro Rail line--to the San Diego Freeway along a freight-train right of way paralleling Chandler and Victory boulevards. Braude represents Encino and Woodland Hills.

The compromise plan, which the LACTC selected last week as the preferred rail route in the Valley, would make the Valley line a subway through a four-mile residential area.

Braude said that if a rail line is not built in the Valley, residents will withdraw their support for any basin-wide mass transit system.

“It’s long overdue for the Valley to get the feeling that they’re part of the city and are going to get their fair share of transit dollars,” Braude said.