Commuter-Rail Study to Revive Monorail Debate

The imminent release of a long-awaited cost and ridership study of San Fernando Valley rail alternatives has triggered a barrage of lobbying by advocates of four rival plans for moving people across the Valley in the next century.

The years-long debate over what kind of line to build in the Valley and where to build it enters still another stage Tuesday with the unveiling of the study, which appears to provide ammunition for reviving the once-dead proposals for a monorail or magnetic-levitation system on the Ventura Freeway.

The four proposals under consideration by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission all call for connections with the downtown Metro Rail subway, either in North Hollywood or Universal City.

The alternatives are: a subway extension from North Hollywood to Warner Center along a little-used Southern Pacific railroad right of way; a subway extension along Ventura Boulevard from Universal City to Warner Center, and a monorail or magnetic-levitation line elevated along the Ventura Freeway from Universal City to Warner Center.

The report says that construction of the 14-mile subway along the Southern Pacific route would cost $2.7 billion in 1994 dollars, the earliest that construction could begin. The 15.7-mile Ventura Boulevard subway would cost $3.8 billion and either the monorail or magnetic system would cost $2.3 billion.

The 16.2-mile Ventura Freeway line has almost no costly tunneling, making it an estimated 43% less expensive than the Ventura Boulevard subway plan and 26% less expensive than the subway along Southern Pacific’s little-used Burbank Branch, which roughly parallels Chandler and Victory boulevards and Oxnard Street across the Valley.

Monorail trains travel on rubber wheels on a concrete guideway, while magnetic- levitation trains ride on a cushion of air above a guideway, propelled by magnetic force.

The Metro Rail subway under construction downtown employs conventional rail technology, including steel wheels on steel tracks.

“It confirms what we have been saying all along--that monorail is a big cost savings,” said William Korek, chairman of Van Nuys-based Citizens Committee for Monorail.

But despite the lower cost for a monorail or magnetic-levitation system, the Metro Rail extension along the Southern Pacific tracks remains the choice of key elected officials, including State Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana).

Robbins, who along with Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude in 1988 put together a coalition of homeowners and business leaders supporting the Chandler-Victory-Oxnard route, “hasn’t changed his mind one bit,” said Teri Burns, his legislative aide.

“In fact, we just had a meeting of all the people supporting the subway extension and no one is wavering,” she said.

“From everything I’ve seen, the Valley’s best hope is a magnetic-levitation system along the Ventura Freeway built by a private firm,” Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) said.

“It could be built sooner and for less cost than any other plan,” said Katz, who has scheduled a news conference Tuesday to promote his plan.

“I certainly hope that we are not just going to look at cost,” said Nikolas Patsaouras, the leading advocate of the Ventura Boulevard subway.

Despite the higher price tag for this plan, Patsaouras, president of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, said the heavily congested street is the “commercial backbone of the Valley. It’s where the riders are.”

He expressed optimism that ridership projections for the Ventura Boulevard proposal, which were not expected to be available until Tuesday, would be higher than the 50,000 riders a day predicted for an elevated freeway line or the 58,000 for the subway along the Chandler-Victory-Oxnard route.

In March, the County Transportation Commission appeared to have ended the long-running Valley rail debate by voting for the Chandler-Victory-Oxnard subway, citing overwhelming technical problems with placing a rail line along the congested freeway corridor.

However, commissioners decided to mollify Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the leading monorail proponent, by authorizing an additional study of both monorail or magnetic-levitation along the Ventura Freeway. And to mollify Patsaouras, they voted to include in the study his plan for a Ventura Boulevard subway.

Proponents of the Robbins-Braude subway plan, saying they had achieved victory by killing a rival plan for a ground-level light-rail system, offered only slight protest.

But the new study did not turn out as they had expected.

Engineers have reversed earlier conclusions on key technical questions regarding an elevated freeway line.

In the report to be released Tuesday, experts say the line could be placed in the median, that pillars can be slender enough to fit within the current median and that construction could be done without closing lanes during rush hours.

Because Caltrans at the time wanted to reserve the freeway’s median and north shoulder for a possible upper deck for buses and car pools, the aerial line was studied initially for the freeway’s south side.

Experts found that the south-side location would have created massive traffic jams at every station as train-bound motorists from north of the freeway sought to get to parking lots south of the freeway. Most of the system’s patrons are expected to live north of the freeway.

Also, building the line on either shoulder would bring the trains close to hundreds of residences.

But last summer, Caltrans announced that it no longer opposed locating a rail line in the freeway’s median.

Caltrans’ Wally Rothbart said the road-building agency’s view “has evolved over time. We now feel that if a rail line is built along the freeway, we probably will not have to add a second level.”

A median alignment makes it possible to locate parking areas either over the freeway or on the ground north of the freeway--in either case eliminating the street-clogging effect of rail-bound motorists from the north trying to get south of the freeway.

Stations would be located over the freeway.

Also, engineers have concluded that an elevated line could be supported by 28-inch-wide steel columns placed in the existing median every 90 feet.

In the earlier study, columns were presumed to be concrete and 54 inches wide--too wide to fit within the existing median.

That would have forced Caltrans, which is in the process of widening the freeway to 10 lanes across the Valley, to once again widen the pavement and tear down and replace many of the outside retaining walls now under construction.

In June, the monorail proposal got a big boost when Valley voters overwhelmingly chose it in a non-binding referendum placed on the ballot by county supervisors at Antonovich’s behest.

To the delight of monorail proponents, 48% of voters chose monorail, while 21% favored a light-rail line in a shallow trench from North Hollywood to Warner Center and 21% voted for no rail line at all. Only 10% voted for the already-approved subway extension.

Rosa Kortizya, an Antonovich deputy, said that a study of precincts along the Ventura Freeway showed that voters there favored a monorail by a slightly higher margin than did voters in the Valley.

She called those results evidence that “despite what homeowner leaders say, there is strong support for monorail from those who would be most affected.”

But Sherman Oaks homeowner group leader Richard Close said he and other homeowner leaders along the Ventura Freeway continue to oppose the monorail or magnetic-levitation proposal as a “dangerous diversion.” He has urged that the latest study be ignored.

“We should instead be getting on with building the subway,” Close said. “The decision has been made.”