New Look at High-Speed Train Asked : Transit: A commissioner says the county can’t afford to pay its share of preliminary expenses for the LAX-Palmdale line.

Los Angeles County Transportation Commission member Nick Patsaouras said Monday that he will ask county transportation officials to re-evaluate a proposed high-speed train line from Los Angeles International Airport to Palmdale before spending any money on the project.

Although private money is expected to pay almost entirely for the $4-billion LAX-Palmdale line, Patsaouras said the cost to the county of environmental and administrative work on the project would be almost $2 million--money he said the county can’t afford.

The county commission and the Los Angeles Department of Airports have set aside $1.2 million for the project, which would employ still-developing magnetic-levitation technology, but none of the money has yet been spent.

“The LACTC is facing a tremendous budget shortfall that could require bus service cuts and fare increases in Los Angeles County,” said Patsaouras, who also sits on the Southern California Rapid Transit District board of directors.

Patsaouras said he will make a request that the county re-evaluate the proposed project at a Feb. 12 meeting of the county Planning and Mobility Improvement Committee.

He said his concerns about the cost of the project were a reaction to a statement this month by a group of high-speed rail experts who said projects like the LAX-Palmdale line are unworkable without substantial government funding.

“It is going to need a tremendous amount of subsidies,” Patsaouras said.

Five private companies are drafting proposals to the county commission to build the LAX-Palmdale line. The companies have also been asked to propose ways to fund the project without tax money.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee and a strong supporter of the LAX-Palmdale line, said in an interview Monday that the county should not “close the door” on the project until transportation officials have evaluated the proposals submitted by the private firms.

He said that if the private firms determine that the project is too costly to build, then the county can re-evaluate the line.

“I can’t believe that Nick would want the Valley to be denied a vital transportation system like this,” he said.

The magnetic-levitation line, which would propel trains as fast as 125 m.p.h. by electromagnetic force on a cushion of air, was proposed by a consortium formed by Massachusetts-based Perini Corp., the Los Angeles engineering firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall and the HSST Corp. of Japan.

But before a private firm would be allowed to build the high-speed line, Patsaouras said the county would have to spend more than $1 million on consultants to select the firm to build the project and another $750,000 for an environmental study of the winning proposal.

Other transportation projects in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere “could be in jeopardy if we permit the LAX-Palmdale line to absorb most of the available funds,” he said. “It is imprudent to proceed with the LAX-Palmdale line as proposed.”

County transportation officials said the city Department of Airports has already set aside $465,000 to hire consultants to evaluate the proposals that the private firms will submit. The county commission has set aside $560,000.

Instead of a high-tech magnetic-levitation line, Patsaouras suggested that the county contract with a private firm to build a conventional Metro Rail line from LAX to Sylmar, with an extension to Palmdale utilizing Southern Pacific railroad tracks.

He said this line could be built with private money at a substantially lower cost and could begin operating in two or three years. The magnetic-levitation line would not be in operation for 10 or 15 years, he said.

Proponents of the magnetic-levitation line, however, have said any line between LAX and Palmdale--a distance of about 70 miles--would not be attractive to passengers unless the trip could be made in about an hour.

Magnetic-levitation supporters have also said the United States lags behind Japan and Germany, which have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars on magnetic-levitation development in the past 20 years. But Patsaouras said the county commission can’t afford to invest in the project.

“There is no money right now,” he said. “We are broke.”