Rail Route to Las Vegas Leaves Palmdale Out : Transportation: Officials had hoped that a link to the gambling hub would encourage passengers to use the local airport.

An international consortium unveiled a $5-billion proposal Monday to build a 280 m.p.h. magnetic levitation train system between Anaheim and the gambling mecca of Las Vegas--but left in doubt the status of a key spur line to Palmdale that could be extended into Los Angeles.

The plan faces Herculean challenges, including perfecting a rail technology that thus far has only been employed on a short test track, luring private investors into coming up with the financing, and avoiding possible political warfare between Los Angeles and Orange County officials over the proposed Palmdale leg.

Los Angeles County and city officials have been hoping that a westward spur across the Mojave Desert to little-used Palmdale Airport eventually would be extended south through the San Fernando Valley to Los Angeles International Airport.

They view the futuristic train as the long-sought key to opening the city-owned desert airport to significant passenger traffic, relieving congested LAX. They also say it could help relieve commuter congestion along the Antelope Valley and San Diego freeways.

But in the plan released Monday, Bechtel Corp. and its West German partners, the lone bidders on the project, designated the requested 41-mile Victory Valley-to-Palmdale line as no more than a “possible future spur.”

Bechtel’s plan “would bypass the major population center of Los Angeles County, and that makes no sense at all,” said Bill Chandler, Mayor Tom Bradley’s press secretary.

“The mayor has grave concerns about the routing.”

Noting that any plan must eventually be approved by the state Legislature, Los Angeles officials have suggested in the past that they might seek to block approval of any line that does not connect to the city.

In advertising for bids last October, the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission required that any plan include the Palmdale spur if “others provide a link from there to Los Angeles.”

In response, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and the city Department of Airports launched a study of the feasibility of building a line from LAX through the Valley to Palmdale to provide that link. Results are expected next month.

Clifton Moore, general manager of the city Department of Airports, said Monday that the wording of the Bechtel announcement “certainly doesn’t sound like the same thing we had come to expect.”

The Bechtel proposal envisions ferrying up to 5 million visitors annually across the desert--about half the number of Southern Californians who visit the gambling city each year, according to Las Vegas officials.

The 265-mile trip would take little more than an hour and fares would be at least 30% less than commercial airlines, said Bechtel Vice President Erv Koenig.

“We feel we are about to revolutionize ground transportation in the United States,” said Arnie Adamsen, chairman of the Super Speed Train Commission and a Las Vegas City Councilman.

Bechtel officials gave the commission a $500,000 deposit along with a three-inch-thick proposal that calls for a two-way train that would glide atop an elevated guideway running alongside existing highways, principally Interstate 15, between the two metropolitan areas.

The train could have commuter stops in Southern California. In addition to the possible future spur to Palmdale, Bechtel proposed possible spurs from Riverside to Palm Springs and from Anaheim to Santa Ana.

If Bechtel gets financing and overcomes other obstacles, construction would begin in 1993, with the system in operation four years later, company spokesmen said.

“We see this as a pilot system that will be the first part of a network that will eventually encompass the Southwest and the nation,” Koenig said.

The mag-lev system, which uses a magnetic field to propel the train and to elevate it 1 to 4 inches above the guideway, is being tested on a 20-mile track in West Germany but has not entered commercial use.

Before deciding whether to actually build the train, Bechtel plans to spend about 16 months on ridership studies, Koenig said.