Bidding Extended on LAX-Palmdale Rail : Transportation: County officials also ease the guidelines on the $4-billion project because of funding questions.

Los Angeles County transportation officials said Wednesday that they have eased guidelines and extended deadlines for private firms bidding to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles International Airport to Palmdale.

The changes were made to ease the concerns of potential bidders, who in the past have expressed concern about the high cost of designing the project and the possibility that the county may not provide enough money to make it viable.

“They are nervous as to whether the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission is going to go through with this,” project manager George A. Swede told a committee of the commission Wednesday.

The $4-billion project was originally designed to be financed almost entirely through private funds. But potential bidders and county and state transportation officials have conceded that the project will not be built without substantial government funding.

The county and the city’s Department of Airports have so far spent $1.22 million on administrative work on the project.

It is still unclear how the private firms and the county will split the cost of the project, county transportation officials said.

But the county has tentatively set aside $1.56 billion for the project and transportation officials are working to identify other funding sources.

Swede said county transportation staff agreed to give the bidders the option of designing the entire project or designing it in phases, first to Sylmar and then all the way to Palmdale. He said that the county thus is helping the bidders save on the cost of designing the entire project.

He said the county has also extended the deadline for bids from April 15 to Sept. 1.

In meetings with county transportation officials, the five bidders have said that they are leery of spending millions of dollars to design the 71-mile line with only tentative financial support from the county, Swede said.

Commissioner Nikolas Patsaouras proposed to the Planning and Mobility Improvement Committee that the county consider purchasing existing railroad rights of way to establish a commuter line from a Sylmar to Palmdale. He said such a line would improve transportation between Palmdale and the San Fernando Valley long before the LAX-to-Palmdale line is built sometime around the year 2020.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who is chairman of the state Assembly Transportation Committee and has been a strong supporter of an LAX-to-Palmdale line, said last month that he is frustrated by the bidders’ complaints.

“We are always hearing about what the private sector can do,” he said. “But here is a great case where we are getting a lot of whining and not much cooperation.”

Patsaouras, who has been critical of the project because he said the county does not have sufficient money to back it, said he is happy that the deadlines have been extended and that bidders will be allowed to submit modified designs. He said the changes may give the bidders and the county more time to re-evaluate the project.

Despite promises of financial assistance, the five private companies that have sought permission to draft the project bids are also required to propose ways to fund the project without huge government subsidies.

The magnetic-levitation line, which would propel trains as fast as 125 m.p.h. by electromagnetic force on a cushion of air, was initially 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.

However, HSST, which is considered by some experts to be one of the leaders in the development of magnetic-levitation technology, temporarily pulled out of the project last month because the company was undergoing a reorganization.

Company officials said it is uncertain whether they will participate in the project at some later date.