Commission OKs Driverless Trains for Green Line : Transit: Panel approves contracts for 23-mile system despite concerns of the builder and eventual operator. The project is running as much as $276 million over budget.

Angrily shunning doubts expressed by the builder and eventual operator of the Metro Green Line, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission voted 7-4 Wednesday to affirm the use of driverless cars on the 23-mile system despite rising costs and technical difficulties.

The commission, after months of heavy lobbying, also chose Sumitomo Corp. of America to build the cars and Union Switch & Signal for the train controls.

The votes came despite some board members’ arguments that the system--now running as much as $276 million over budget--will not improve service and may consume money needed to build other lines elsewhere.

Mayor Tom Bradley, the driverless system’s leading proponent, verbally slapped down staff engineers for questioning its cost-effectiveness, then told fellow commissioners to “get off this board” if they were unwilling to take a chance on the $1-billion-plus system.

The Norwalk-to-El Segundo Green Line overruns come as the LACTC is wrestling a $133-million budget shortfall. A similar shortfall is expected next year, leading some commissioners to ask whether some rail lines will have to be delayed, perhaps indefinitely.

Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee and a potential mayoral candidate, scored the LACTC for giving as a “Christmas gift to the city . . . one of the biggest white elephants ever seen.”

Complicating the vote Wednesday was the issue of whether the LACTC’s $150-billion, 30-year transportation improvement plan should be used to generate local jobs as well as build local transit.

A growing number of elected officials, including Bradley, argue that the LACTC should use its financial clout to hire and buy from local companies, or at least to require outside firms to open local offices and hire local workers.

For example, the Green Line car contractor, Japanese-owned Sumitomo, was criticized because only 22% of the money it will be paid will go to U.S. subcontractors. That is well in excess of the 15% minimum set by the LACTC, but considerably below the 66% promised by losing bidder Morrison-Knudsen Corp. of Boise, Ida.

An angry Morrison-Knudsen CEO William Agee called for an investigation of the LACTC staff, which he said was bent on awarding the contract to Sumitomo.

“If their intentions were to truly give it to the qualified people who can deliver it at the lowest price, as they do on all of their other bids, they would not have conducted . . . themselves this way.”

The biggest issue Wednesday, however, was the cost and wisdom of the driverless cars.

The Green Line’s fully automated technology--the first such application in this country and the fourth in the world--originally was conceived as a way to cut operating costs because the cars will not need well-paid union drivers.

That hope has since been laid to rest by Ed McSpedon, president of the Rail Construction Corp., the LACTC’s construction subsidiary. He has acknowledged that construction costs have overrun any reasonable savings in operations.

One continuing advantage of driverless cars is flexibility. Driverless trains can be added to the system instantly to cope with unexpectedly heavy demand. Staffed trains would require that drivers be called in and paid overtime.

LACTC board members were split over whether that feature justifies the system’s cost, which began at $814 million but will climb well over $1 billion once a route to LAX is chosen next month.

They were especially anxious because staff engineers and outside consultants agreed in a private briefing before the public meeting that the proposed Green Line cars are “the most complex” transit vehicles they have ever heard of.

While it is possible for builders to stick to the current schedule and budget, engineering consultant Maurice M. Carter of San Diego acknowledged that it will be “extremely difficult” to do so.

The Railroad Construction Corp. estimates each month of delay in the project would add at least $2 million to the cost of the cars alone.

“They (driverless Green Line cars) don’t get passengers there any faster and they don’t get them there any more often” than cheaper, conventional trolleys, said Garry Hertzberg, Supervisor Gloria Molina’s alternate on the board.

Bradley shot back that it was time critics “come into the 20th Century.” Dire predictions of cost overruns on the 22-mile Los Angeles-to-Long Beach Blue Line--which went from $166 million to $871 million--didn’t stop that project, he said, and it should not cause the board to renege on its promise to build this line with driverless cars.

“If you don’t like vision, if you don’t like taking risks, you should get off this board,” he said.

Supervisor Ed Edelman, also on the board, acknowledged two earlier votes in favor of full automation, but said the board should not be irrationally bound by them.

“While we did vote for this system, conditions change, doubts arise,” he said. “We don’t have to stick by our decision.”

Chairman Ray Grabinski said favoring driverless cars now just because of past support “is like lemmings going over a cliff.”

Voting for driverless cars were Bradley; Bradley appointee James Tolbert; Supervisor Michael Antonovich; Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s alternate, Mas Fukai; Supervisor Deane Dana’s alternate, Don Knabe; Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre, and Los Angeles County League of Cities representative Jacki Bacharach.

Voting against them were Edelman, Hertzberg, Grabinski and another League of Cities representative, Judith Hathaway-Francis.