Two Contracts for Metro Rail Green Line Delayed : Transit: Officials act to try to keep the project from going 20% over budget and slipping behind schedule.

A month after President Bush visited Los Angeles to praise the Metro Rail Green Line as proof of American technological know-how, county officials Monday acknowledged serious problems with the project by delaying the award of two contracts vital to developing its futuristic, driverless cars.

The decision by Rail Construction Corp., the construction arm of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, is intended to prevent the $886-million Green Line from going 20% over its budget and slipping behind schedule. The project is already 8.8% over budget and the subject of several lawsuits alleging contract improprieties.

At a meeting of the RCC board in Los Angeles on Monday, members voted to withhold approval of contracts to buy driverless train cars and the computerized train-control system needed to run them until the policy-making LACTC decides whether to increase the budget to pay for the costly automation.

The LACTC is scheduled to take up the issue Wednesday.

During the RCC board’s session, questions were also raised about Metro Rail planners’ history of using a new and different type of train for each of its lines, often custom-designing the cars and electronics instead of buying proven, cheaper, off-the-shelf equipment developed for--and road-tested by--other agencies.

The board also revived debate about the sincerity of Metro Rail’s commitment to federal programs designed to help minority- and women-owned “disadvantaged businesses.”

Even before questioning the cost of the Green Line’s cars--bids for which were 22%, or $24 million, over budget--RCC directors had challenged the method that staff members used to calculate how much of the car-building contract would be shared by minority- and women-owned subcontractors.

“We’ve had limited bidding, limited competition,” complained RCC board member James Pott, former public works director in Long Beach. “If we really want to drive the price down, we ought to throw the whole thing out and rebid it.”

RCC President Edward McSpedon conceded that the unexpectedly high costs of cars and controls make it “difficult to justify” the mushrooming price for the Green Line, which is supposed to be the first U.S. system to operate without drivers and thus is expected to be a showcase for Los Angeles’ new transit network.

However, McSpedon told the RCC board that the cost of building the automated system is threatening to wipe out any savings from not having to hire drivers.

“The only realistic option for us to consider at this time is to remove all the automation technology features from the Green Line,” he told the board. “By doing this, we think we can bring it back within the budget.”

Blame for the high costs was attributed to the LACTC’s 1987 decision to automate the line--forcing Los Angeles to buy wholly different kinds of vehicles, control-and-signal networks and propulsion systems for each of its rail-transit routes.

The Blue Line, opened last year, uses conventional, manually operated trolley cars. Commuter trains, scheduled to start running next year, will consist of diesel engines trailing separate double-decked passenger cars. The Red Line, scheduled to open in 1993, will have larger subway cars. A monorail, now limited to amusement parks, is under consideration for an east-west line in the San Fernando Valley. Unproven magnetic-levitation technology is planned for a train to run along the San Diego Freeway between Los Angeles International Airport and Palmdale.

Each kind of train requires different parts inventories, controls, signals, train yards and crew training.

Under this system, vehicle costs are further increased because the custom-built cars must be bought in relatively small lots--40 cars for the Metro Rail Green Line compared to a 256-car order for more traditional vehicles used by the Chicago Transit Authority. One 90-foot Green Line car was to cost $2.9 million; two 45-foot Chicago cars go for a total of $1.6 million.

RCC Vice Chairman Robert E. Kruse, president of Kruse Construction Co. in Sun Valley, urged rail construction staff to use the renewed debate over the Green Line cars to develop one standard “Los Angeles car” that could be used on all future lines, and perhaps eventually retrofitted to the Blue Line.

“What we really ought to work on is standardizing the cars. We’re now on our third type of car,” he said. “I don’t want to abandon automation at this time. I’m more interested in developing a car, a standardized car, that can be run manually or automated” on all lines.

However, board member David E. Anderson, former president of General Telephone, warned that it is now too late to consider standardization. “The decision to standardize should have been made two years ago, not after we’re out on the street” soliciting construction bids, he said.

The car-building contract was to have been awarded to Sumitomo Corp. of Japan, and the control system to Union Switch & Signal Inc. of Pittsburgh.

Before the board voted unanimously to delay the awards, it huddled in executive session to consider the possibility that the entire project may be delayed by a lawsuit over the issue of minority- and women-owned business participation in the car-building contract.

Sumitomo, the company originally recommended by RCC staff to build the cars, barely met the goal of subcontracting 10% of the construction work to small businesses owned by women and minority men--known in federal contracting shorthand as “disadvantaged business enterprises,” or DBEs.

However, RCC board members Pott, Judith Hopkinson and Herbert L. Carter noted in an earlier meeting that Sumitomo received special consideration that let it meet the goal. Specifically, freight and tariff charges were deducted from the total value of the contract--at the request of Sumitomo--thus making the company’s otherwise inadequate DBE program seem larger by comparison.

The losing bidder, Morrison Knudsen Corp. of Boise, Ida., has complained about that point, because it met the goal without any post-bid modifications--and its bid price was $1.4 million lower than Sumitomo’s.

When it appeared that Morrison Knudsen might lose the contract anyway--RCC staff found the company and its partners, General Electric Corp. and veteran Japanese coach maker Kinkisharyo, to be too “inexperienced”--it hired the high-powered Los Angeles law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to press its case.

George D. Kieffer, an attorney with the firm, said his client had no plans to sue, but it would not be alone if it chose to challenge the RCC’s contracting process in court.

Three companies that competed unsuccessfully for the third Green Line engineering contract, to build the “traction power,” or propulsion, system, already have filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court.

In separate complaints, all three firms alleged that the RCC’s “negotiated bid” process--the same one used in the two contract awards delayed Monday--was abused to steer the contract to a certain company, regardless of its bid or technical prowess.

That traction power contract was awarded to Mass Electric Construction Co. of Boston, which at $22.8 million was the highest of six bidders. The lowest bid, of $17.8 million, was made by Kirkwood Dynalectric Co. of Los Alamitos.

Mass Electric was nominated by RCC staff members to win the contract based on their subjective ranking of its innovation and technological superiority. Lawyers for the three companies that have filed suits complained that the basic technology behind electric trains is a century old, and the few new elements sought by RCC staff members were included in supplemental bid specifications drafted by a competitor after the initial bids were submitted.

One of the suits, filed by Kingston Constructors Inc. of Burlingame was rejected Monday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian. That suit had asked to have the contract reconsidered only on price, without subjective consideration of experience and technical innovation.

The other two suits, challenging how the process was applied, are pending.