Why Bust the Budget on an Experiment? Go with the Proven : Green Line: We can still stop the Sumitomo contract, dump automated trains and bring more jobs to Southern California.

Each new piece of news seems designed to make citizens angrier about the contract awarded to Sumitomo Corp. to build automated, driverless cars for the Green Line rapid transit system. Despite an uproar, and in the face of a scheduled reconsideration motion, the staff of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission secretly signed the Sumitomo contract last week.

The process should be reversed right now. The LACTC board should move immediately to terminate this contract, before Sumitomo can spend any contract dollars. What’s more, the transportation committee should abandon automated technology at its next meeting, Jan. 22.

The facts are these: The use of automated technology on the Green Line will cost too much; it robs Americans of jobs; it’s incompatible with the other lines in our rapid transit system and it’s an unproven technology.

Cost: Automation will cost at least $97 million--$67 million more than budgeted. When LACTC first proposed automated trains in 1987, the technology was expected to cost an added $30 million, to be balanced out by $30 million in labor savings over 30 years. At today’s price, it will take 97 years to save enough to pay for the technology--far longer than the lifetime of the cars. It was because of the cars’ potential to bust the Green Line budget that the commission staff recommended dumping the concept of automated cars last fall.

Jobs: The decision to go automated drove the decision to select Japan-based Sumitomo Corp. to build the Green Line cars. The staff report that recommended abandoning the automated technology also said that if automation was not to be dropped, Sumitomo’s was by far the better bid. Had the LACTC requested bids for a conventional trolley car, it is possible that Sumitomo would still have been selected; it was Sumitomo, after all, that built the cars for the Blue Line. But the fact is, a more standard vehicle here and for our other rail lines would maximize the possibility of finding a U.S. manufacturer who could win the job.

Unemployment in Los Angeles County stands at a stunning 8.3%. Sumitomo proposed spending 22% of its contract dollars in the United States, while its competitor, Idaho-based Morrison-Knudsen Corp., promised 66%. Sumitomo proposed 12.5% Los Angeles County content to Morrison-Knudsen’s 16%. Yet Sumitomo got the job.

Incompatibile technology: Automated rail on the Green Line is incompatible with the rest of our rail system. We currently have conventional trolley cars on the Blue Line and we are building heavy rail on the Red Line. There are plans for diesel-powered trains, monorails and magnetic-levitation technology. Each type of train will require its own parts, signals, controls and yards, and its own operating and maintenance personnel.

Some LACTC commissioners have called for the creation of a standard “Los Angeles Car” that we can use on all our rail lines. This would make eminent sense. The commission admits that the price of the Green Line went up in part because we were ordering so few cars. A standard car design would reduce the price and increase the likelihood that these cars would be manufactured here in Southern California.

Unproven technology: Not a single rail system in the world uses the technology proposed for the Green Line. Automated trains in London, Vancouver and Lille, France all receive power from a “third rail,” not from an overhead catenary as proposed for the Green Line. The combination of technologies proposed for the Green Line is unprecedented and unproven. That’s why the chairman of the LACTC’s technical panel, when asked his view of the technical difficulties facing the Green Line, called it a “very complex” and “extremely risky project.”

The city of Los Angeles is familiar with the risks of experimenting with unproven technology. The city’s sewage-sludge-to-electricity plant, begun in 1983, ran tens of millions of dollars over budget and still doesn’t work as planned. We face the same risk in committing to automated cars.

Many questions have been raised about the process that led to the staff’s recommendation for Sumitomo. Sumitomo was not the low bidder. Morrison-Knudsen had three times the domestic content of Sumitomo. The lobbying on this procurement was totally unregulated and reminiscent of the “smoke-filled room” method of government decision-making.

The Los Angeles City Council and the California Assembly (both by unanimous vote), two members of the Board of Supervisors and nine members of Los Angeles County’s congressional delegation have urged the commission to eliminate driverless cars on the Green Line. The LACTC should dump this ill-considered project before it’s too late.