Metro Rail Cost Estimates Jump by $338 Million : Transportation: Added to a previously reported overrun of $135 million, the total escalation has now reached $473 million.

Cost estimates for building the 17.4-mile Metro Rail subway project have escalated by $473 million and Los Angeles transit officials now put the total at $3.9 billion, a California Transportation Commission official told The Times on Tuesday.

A $135-million cost overrun had been previously reported. But Los Angeles County Transportation Commission officials have informed the state that the costs will go up an additional $338 million as a result of federal funding delays, according to Robert Chung, deputy director of the state Transportation Commission.

The federal Department of Transportation is providing more than 40% of the funding for the downtown subway, but the county commission said that delays in reaching a funding agreement have set the project back at least a year, thereby increasing construction costs.

Linda Bohlinger, a top fiscal planner for the county commission, said the cost increases were presented to state officials in April. She said the federal government is being asked to pick up $170 million of the cost overrun.

The subject of Metro Rail cost escalations was brought up during a state Assembly Transportation Committee hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles that was called to examine the cost of developing a 300-mile rail transit system in Southern California. The state is funding part of this development.

During the hearing, state officials testified they had been told last March that the cost of building the subway was increasing. The state had asked the county for a detailed cost breakdown, but never received a reply, said Robert I. Remen, executive director of the state commission.

The state was seeking the cost per passenger mile of building Metro Rail, a subway linking downtown Los Angeles with North Hollywood.

Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) asked Richard Stanger, the county’s director of rail development, to explain why the county had not supplied the state with the cost figures. Stanger said he could not explain why, but promised to get the figures as soon as he could.

“I want those numbers by the close of business Friday,” Katz ordered.

He accused the commission of stalling and using “a shell game” to obscure the cost increases.

In a telephone interview after Tuesday’s hearing, Chung explained that the county commission had provided broad cost overrun figures in a report filed with the state commission.

“The 1990 LACTC financial plan for the Metro Red Line has increased $473 million over the plan presented to the (state commission) in 1989,” the April 26, 1990, report concluded.

It stated that the added costs were due in large part to a yearlong delay by federal officials in signing a funding agreement on the second phase of construction.

In addition, federal officials are requiring the commission to build the next 13 miles of the subway project in two stages, instead of one long project. County transit experts said this was less efficient and would delay completion of the project by another year or more. The subway now is scheduled to reach North Hollywood by 1997.

Some delays have been caused by the conflict between the county commission and the Southern California Rapid Transit District, Chung said.

The RTD was responsible for constructing the 4.4-mile first phase under downtown Los Angeles. But the commission stepped in and took over the project in July after audits revealed a $135-million cost overrun. The first phase of the project is two years behind schedule and will not open until the fall of 1993.