Group Attacks Diversion of Subway Route : Metro Rail: The county transit agency, bending to the will of two congressmen, has agreed to put the extension of the Orange Line south of Wilshire Boulevard. Critics say it’s a mistake based on outdated information.

Refighting a battle that already has been lost several times, a vocal band of local elected officials, architects and others are trying to prevent the Metro Orange Line subway from being diverted--perhaps permanently--south of Wilshire Boulevard and away from the county art museum.

County transit officials, bending to the will of two powerful congressmen, have proposed to steer the next westward extension of the city’s nascent subway system away from a station now under construction at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue toward the intersection of Pico and San Vicente boulevards.

In bureaucratic parlance, transit officials call the proposed southerly route the “locally preferred alternative,” but the critics say it is anything but the true local preference.

The critics, led by Beverly Hills City Councilman Allan L. Alexander, argue that building a subway a mile south of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Miracle Mile office towers is a multimillion-dollar mistake being imposed on the city by Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Julian C. Dixon.

Waxman and Dixon contend that the Mid-Wilshire district is so pocked with methane-saturated soil and abandoned oil wells that it cannot safely be tunneled. The two congressmen, whose support of a subway in their own districts is essential, have spent the last six years blocking all efforts to design a subway under Wilshire Boulevard.

Waxman, an ardent subway critic who once said that even the nearly complete subway segment through downtown was too dangerous to build, said Monday that despite new evidence produced by critics, he sees no reason to reconsider his opposition to the Wilshire route.

Critics, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art Board President Robert F. Maguire III, contend that Waxman and Dixon have based their position on incomplete, out-of-date and flatly inaccurate information on the methane danger.

As a result, they warned, Los Angeles is about to start building a subway line that is projected to cost 53% more to build and attract 48% fewer riders than if it were left on Wilshire Boulevard.

“We have to convince our elected officials in Congress that a terrible mistake is being made--a terrible mistake based on outdated information,” said Alexander.

The Metro Orange Line is envisioned as an east-west complement to the north-south Red Line that is under construction in downtown Los Angeles. Construction of the west end of the Orange Line is scheduled to start in 1995 and open in 2001.

The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, convinced that Waxman and Dixon cannot be persuaded to change their minds in time to let the city rewrite its federal grant proposal for this year, last week unanimously approved the locally preferred alternative. It would steer the subway south of Wilshire to the intersection of Pico and San Vicente boulevards.

At the time, LACTC board members promised to try to persuade Congress to eventually let the line jog back up to Wilshire to serve the Miracle Mile and museum. But there is no sign that such a circuitous route would be any more acceptable to Waxman and Dixon.

The problem is that the Miracle Mile and the museum--as well as any path back to Wilshire, such as La Brea Avenue, Hauser Boulevard or Fairfax Avenue--rest in the same “gas risk zone” that originally led the two congressmen to block the more direct Wilshire route.

That 400-city-block risk zone was adopted in 1985 by the Los Angeles City Council after a methane gas explosion and fire in a 3rd Street clothing store. However, the council, relying on more recent information, distanced itself from that report two weeks ago by urging Congress to accede to a route under Wilshire.

To sway the council, Alexander and others pointed out that mining experts, including those involved in a congressionally ordered 1986 study, generally concur that the tunneling can be done safely. Alexander also noted that there were no injury accidents while 4.4 miles of tunnel were bored under downtown, which has its own methane-gas problem.

The critics also alleged that the city’s “risk zone,” which Waxman incorporated into his federal prohibition against a Wilshire subway, was based on limited and erroneous information. Tests since then show there is as much gas under Pico and San Vicente as there is under Wilshire Boulevard.

Fears about tunnelers cutting into abandoned oil well shafts filled with pressurized methane also are unfounded, Alexander and others contended, because old photos and maps indicate that most of Wilshire Boulevard was built before oil wells were sunk in the area.

Waxman, however, was unmoved by those arguments.

“I see no reason to take a risk tunneling through an area where the city said there was a risk,” said Waxman, whose district includes Los Feliz, Hollywood and the Westside. “I think it is possible to tunnel safely and have no accidents, but it’s also possible there will be a terrible tragedy. I just don’t see any reason to take that chance.”

Waxman impatiently dismissed new information put forth by critics by saying: “I don’t know what to say about that.”

Dixon, whose southwest Los Angeles and Culver City district will benefit from the southerly alternative route, has said simply that without a change of heart by Waxman he will abide by the south-of-Wilshire compromise.

The support of both men--Waxman, who scoffs at the subway as a potential “white elephant,” and Dixon, a resolute supporter of public transit--is important in winning future federal money for the subway, LACTC officials said. Dixon is particularly critical because he is instrumental in securing federal grants as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee.

Federal money is expected to pay more than half of the cost of all subway projects in the LACTC’s 30-year plan. The rest will be made up from state and local funds, primarily two local half-cent sales-tax surcharges approved by voters in 1980 and 1990.

Funds for the controversial Orange Line extension were authorized by Congress last October, in a wide-ranging law that set federal transportation policy for the next six years. That law, however, specifically limited the westward extension to the Pico-San Vicente option. Changing the route would require changing the law.

LACTC officials said that rewriting the complex and comprehensive law would be unprecedented and difficult. They added that Congress, already nervous about financing the most expensive subway in history at a time of huge federal deficits, could use local indecision as an excuse to withdraw all funding for the extension.

“There are a lot of other cities eager to use the money if we can’t decide what to do with it,” said LACTC Director Jacki Bacharach, adding that the city cannot at the same time afford to risk alienating Waxman or Dixon. “The political coalition is extremely important.”

Alexander disagrees. An entertainment lawyer, he has drafted the legal language that can be inserted into the policy law. The language would mandate a western extension, but leave the precise route vague for now.

“I don’t think this has to kill the project, or even delay it,” he said. “It’s basically three little words. (The subway) would still head west for 2.2 miles. Why should Congress care which particular streets it runs under?”

With no one to carry Alexander’s language, however, LACTC officials are busy trying to make the best of the Pico-San Vicente route they have been forced to embrace.

“I’m not sure it’s as dumb as everyone says it is,” said Bacharach, who has been a leader in shaping rapid-transit policy for a decade. “It is not something we might have walked into, but it gives us an opportunity to serve people we might not otherwise have gotten to.”

By dipping down to Pico and San Vicente, Bacharach said, the line would skirt the edge of a vibrant Koreatown, stop in the middle of a fast-growing Latino community in the Mid-City district, and open the way for improved public-transit service to the Crenshaw and Baldwin Hills areas.

By sweeping across Olympic, Pico and Venice boulevards as well as Wilshire, the temporary terminus on San Vicente Boulevard also would allow for easier bus and car connections from the Westside, he said. If the subway stayed on Wilshire, bus lines and park-and-ride lots would have to be shoe-horned into that already crowded corridor, he said.

Critics don’t buy it.

“The construction of the Metro Rail is the single most important public works project to be constructed in Los Angeles in our lifetime,” said Katherine Diamond, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “Alignments should be planned where they will best benefit the city and serve the most people. That alignment is clearly Wilshire Boulevard.”