Transit Board Delays Ruling on Trolley Dispute : Transportation: Harbor View-Little Italy track alignment on hold while officials try to secure $16 million from Port District to build rail underground.

Trying to fashion a compromise over a bitterly disputed San Diego Trolley alignment through Harbor View and Little Italy, the Metropolitan Transit Development Board on Thursday postponed its decision for three weeks to allow more time to seek $16 million needed to put the tracks underground.

After an at-times contentious 2 1/2-hour debate, the transit board backed away from a climactic showdown over the issue--arguably the most controversial that has faced it since the trolley’s inception--in the hope that the San Diego Unified Port District’s treasury could resolve the dispute before its Nov. 14 meeting.

By a 14-1 vote, the MTDB agreed to ask the Port District to provide the additional $16 million needed to build underground tracks at two major crossings--Grape and Hawthorn streets--included in a 3 1/2-mile trolley expansion to Old Town from downtown.

If the Port District rebuffs that request--and even proponents concede that the chances of quickly securing a $16-million commitment are slim--next month’s MTDB meeting could produce the final, divisive confrontation that its members have assiduously sought to avoid in deciding whether the trolley tracks should pass through Harbor View-Little Italy at ground level, above it or beneath it.

Echoing earlier debates, Thursday’s meeting saw MTDB members weighing aesthetics and cultural considerations against economics and traffic factors in selecting the trolley’s path through the community, bounded by Interstate 5, Laurel Street, Grape Street and Harbor Drive, just northwest of downtown.

As part of the $89-million expansion, top MTDB officials prefer to elevate the eight-block section passing through the Harbor View-Little Italy neighborhood in order to prevent congestion for both trolley cars and automobiles.

During peak traffic periods, the street-level trolley and trains would eventually block autos for 38 minutes per hour, according to Tom Larwin, MTDB’s general manager.

Residents and business leaders, however, complain that the 23-foot-high elevated track would, in San Diego Councilman Bob Filner’s words, create a “physical and psychological barrier” destructive to the neighborhood’s panoramic bay views, property values and character.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor, whose appearance at her first MTDB meeting during her nearly 5 1/2-year mayoralty underlined the importance of Thursday’s vote, stressed that street-level crossings also would save millions of dollars.

The cost of elevating the tracks throughout the entire community is estimated at $16 million, while an alternative plan calling for the tracks to be underground at Grape and Hawthorne streets and elevated over Laurel Street--a concession to its higher traffic volume--would increase the price tag by $32 million.

“People around the world live with at-grade trolleys with higher traffic volumes than we have,” O’Connor said. “Plus, it’s so much cheaper that it seems the logical way to go.”

In July, the MTDB gave opponents of the elevated-track proposal 60 days to try to secure funds to cover the $16-million gap between it and the combination underground-overhead proposal.

Though no progress was made on the financial front during those two months, some MTDB members expressed optimism about their prospects during the three-week extension, noting that Thursday’s vote marked the agency’s first formal request for Port District funds.

On Wednesday, San Diego City Manager Jack McGrory also sent a letter to Port District officials in which he lobbied for the needed $16 million, a request that is to be reviewed along with other capital improvement programs at a Port District staff meeting next week.

Some have suggested that businesses and residents in Harbor View-Little Italy should be willing to pay a special assessment to pay for the extra cost of the underground tracks. San Diego officials, however, argue that the Port District should bear a major share of the expense, noting that studies show that most of the traffic through the neighborhood is generated by trips to and from Lindbergh Field, from which the Port District derives much of its income.

Even so, O’Connor conceded that she has doubts about “moving mountains” at the Port District before the Nov. 14 MTDB meeting. Because of the “regional nature” of the trolley, O’Connor added, any Port District funds committed to that project should not “count against” her efforts to obtain port assistance with her plan to build a bayfront library on property controlled by the port.

If the financial stalemate continues, however, O’Connor predicted a “long, bitter fight” that could reach the courts if the MTDB eventually votes for the track-elevation plan.

“Elevated tracks destroy neighborhoods,” O’Connor said. “I can’t see the city ever accepting that, whatever it takes.”