Before This Train Leaves the Station : Answers to hard questions are needed about the Sumitomo Green Line project

The Metro Green Line keeps running yellow lights--lights that warn it could devour funds needed for other rail systems to keep L.A. County moving into the next century.

The Green Line is on transit planners’ maps as a 23-mile commuter line between Norwalk and El Segundo. It is to be built as part of a $150-billion program to expand regional rail and bus service over 30 years. This is one of the most important and extraordinary projects in the history of this region. An efficient mass-transit system, made up of trains, buses and unclogged freeways, would help drive the region’s economy and provide future generations with superior transportation. Southern California must not blow this chance to improve itself.

But last week the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission made a troubling decision on the kind of trains it will use for the Green Line. Two companies had bid on the project. Morrison Knudsen Corp. of Boise, Idaho, offered a state-of-the-art proposal for trains driven by motormen. But the winner was Sumitomo Corp. of America. It offered an automated train operating without a crew--and carrying with it a feel of the future. It presumably would save labor costs.

That’s a very arguable point, however. Those labor savings already are being eaten up by cost overruns on the Sumitomo version--estimated at $276 million even before construction begins. Moreover, the professional staff of the L.A. County Transportation Commission--as opposed to the public officials on the commission--says a driverless train may be the wave of the future but it’s also the more costly way to go. The staff would prefer a system that would get commuters to work without mortgaging the future. Yet the policy board ignored the professionals and voted, 7-4, to run the fiscal yellow lights.

Last week Assemblyman Richard Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, asked the commission to postpone its vote until it could tell Los Angeles commuters just which lines would have to be canceled or postponed to make room in the budget for the very costly Green Line. A good question, but Katz didn’t get an answer.

A driverless train design may be a wonderful thing in theory, but somebody or some thing is driving LACTC’s policy-makers to override their technical staff. Maybe it’s all those train-company lobbyists, who advocate the high-price spread every time the commission votes on the project. The Green Line contract should be held up. It would be foolish to make a final commitment until the public gets some straight answers about this pivotal, and costly, project.