Planners to Seek Parallel Rail Transit Programs : Transportation: Proposal for buying standardized cars while encouraging component manufacture is intended to create jobs and get system rolling on schedule.

Trying to balance short-term transportation needs and long-term regional prosperity, county transit planners today will propose parallel programs for rail car buying and industrial development as a way to create jobs and let the county open mass-transit lines as planned.

Development of a standardized light-rail car design based on the Blue Line trolley is central to the 26-page proposal, prepared by Los Angeles County Transportation Commission Executive Director Neil Peterson for a committee studying the Metro Green Line.

If the committee approves and the commission concurs, the agency will order 100 cars--52 immediately for use on the Green Line and a Blue Line extension to Pasadena, and 48 later for lines yet to be chosen, Peterson said.

While the first 52 cars are built, he added, the commission plans to encourage local companies to use their aerospace know-how to develop innovative rail-car components.

These innovations could be tested on two experimental prototype cars, Peterson proposes, using the Green Line itself as a test track. Successful innovations could be incorporated on the remaining 48 cars to be manufactured.

This would give local suppliers both an interested potential purchaser and a chance to establish a “service-proven” record of reliability that would later make it easier for them to sell components elsewhere, he said.

As this process unfolds, Peterson also proposes to open the Green Line on time in October, 1994, by leasing light-rail vehicles from St. Louis or another city. This, he said, would let the commission slow the purchase process, attract more bidders and thus lower costs.

“It may not be the sexiest political solution,” Peterson said Wednesday, “but it realistically addresses the goal we are all trying to accomplish, which is the creation . . . of long-term jobs in Los Angeles.”

He recommended that all 100 of the cars be convertible between manual and driverless modes, but he said that the Green Line should open with manually operated cars. A decision on whether to switch to driverless cars could be put off for several years, he said.

Initial reaction from commission board members is positive. “It satisfies both the non-dreamers who want the Green Line up and running as soon as possible, and the dreamers, like me, who want to develop a permanent transportation industry,” said alternate member Nikolas Patsaouras.

Peterson’s plan also recommends a fundamental policy change that could significantly lower car costs.

The plan calls for scuttling the practice of mandating every feature on new rail cars. Instead, he said, the commission should set broad performance standards and let industry find the best way to meet them. Rather than require one specific door design, for example, the commission could simply set a minimum door size and let bidders find the best deal on any one of a number of electrically or pneumatically operated doors already on the market.

The broad goal of Peterson’s plan is not to force the local manufacture of a whole trolley car--which industry leaders said would inflate costs, not create permanent jobs--but to plant a seed for a rail-car component industry. Local firms could sell first to the commission, then branch out to supply cities around the county and perhaps around the world.

A large amount of local participation in the building of all 100 cars is not possible, Peterson said, because no local companies are prepared to do significant amounts of work at this time. The commission also cannot wait years to see if any will gear up only to produce for the local market, he said.

“We have to develop these niche-market (products) that can be sold elsewhere,” Peterson said. “We’re ordering cars in, what, eight years? It’s not enough for a (long-term) business, right?”

Besides, he said, federal funds will be required to pay for a 100-car order, and federal regulations forbid mandating local participation in assembly or the manufacture of parts. Federal regulations only state that rail cars built with federal funds must be made mostly in the United States.

Efforts to interest local aerospace companies in developing transit components are scheduled to begin today, when Lockheed Corp. engineers sit down with transportation commission engineers to discuss product niches that they might fill.

In recent weeks, commission staff members have identified a number of promising markets, ranging from train bodies to electronic components. Additional opportunities may be found in such aerospace-related fields as lightweight-metal fabrication and electronics.

Peterson said Southern California aerospace companies are curious about the project--Northrop Corp., for example, is exploring a partnership with Sumitomo Corp.