Transit Body to Seek New Bids for Train Cars : Green Line: Five months after national furor and cancellation of disputed deal, bid invitation is issued without specifically requiring the creation of any new local jobs.

Five months after canceling a $121.8-million order for light rail cars--a deal that inflamed a national debate over foreign trade and domestic unemployment--county transportation officials Wednesday agreed to seek new bids without specifically requiring the creation of any local jobs.

The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission approved an 85-car order that includes compatible cars for a 13.6-mile Blue Line extension to Pasadena, in addition to providing vehicles for the Metro Green Line from Norwalk to El Segundo. The Pasadena extension also was approved Wednesday.

The train car order, hurriedly forged after January’s political debacle, requires that the cars be mostly American made, but does not mandate that any of the cars or components be made in Los Angeles or California--a prime source of controversy in January.

Instead, the commission’s Rail Construction Corp. subsidiary will award “bonus points” to bidders offering to hire local workers. These bonus points will be added to scores given to each bidder’s technical skills and price; together, they will determine who wins the contract.

Board member Mas Fukai said he was disappointed by the new plan. He said the LACTC canceled its order with Sumitomo Corp. in January because the company would not create many local jobs, but did not mandate that bidders on the new contract at least match Sumitomo’s projected 370 jobs.

The five-month delay “cost us a lot of money for not very much (benefit),” he said.

However, LACTC board member Nick Patsaouras, who raised the idea of using the commission’s $184-billion 30-year plan to create local jobs long before the Sumitomo controversy, said the commission’s new plan is the only one that will work in the marketplace.

“It’s a healthy thing to do, to rely on the free market,” he said. “That way you develop a healthy industry that is based on what the market will continue to support for a long time, not one imposed by regulation. That won’t last.”

In an effort to address public concerns about local job creation, the LACTC agreed to order two additional cars for use as “rolling test beds” by transportation companies that develop innovative rail car and component designs. The commission also agreed to give $16,960 to UCLA to study how to develop an advanced transportation vehicle industry in Southern California.

The commission promised to use the programs to try to marry existing local electronics and aerospace industries to an emerging worldwide market for advanced transportation vehicles--such as electric cars, low-pollution buses, lightweight and driverless trains or the sophisticated components they contain.

This, the commission’s staff suggested in one report, “may ‘bootstrap’ the start-up of an advanced transit product industry locally.”

The 87-car order approved Wednesday--for 85 modular trolley cars convertible between manual and driverless operation, and the two “rolling test beds”--is in addition to a 15-car order approved last month.

The smaller order, for an off-the-shelf design, is designed to make sure the Green Line can open with minimum service in the fall of 1994. The order approved Wednesday is for more sophisticated, customized cars and is not expected to be filled until 1997.

The full Pasadena line to San Gabriel Boulevard at the Foothill Freeway is not scheduled to open until July, 1997, although a part of that line--through Chinatown, Mt. Washington, South Pasadena and western Pasadena to Del Mar Boulevard--could open a year earlier.

In other action, the LACTC approved a $2.63-billion budget for the fiscal year starting July 1--a 72% increase over last year, primarily because of the state Supreme Court’s recent support of a second half-cent sales tax surcharge passed by voters in 1990.

But the commission postponed until next month a decision on whether to increase its subsidy to the county’s primary transit supplier, the Southern California Rapid Transit District. RTD President Marvin Holen said the district needs $117 million next year to avoid a fare increase or service cuts.

In a particularly busy meeting, commission board members also affirmed an earlier decision to strip the RTD of two San Gabriel Valley express bus lines and turn them over to a private operator, even though a court has said the action may not be legal. RTD had ignored the first LACTC decision in order to comply with the court.

As a result, the RTD and private Foothill Transit Zone both have been running buses on the same route since Sunday. The RTD, which estimated that the duplicative service costs at least $53,700 a week, said it could not stop its buses for at least three days because it will take that long to notify riders that it is abandoning its service.

In a prepared statement, United Transportation Union President Earl Clark called the repeat service disgraceful.

“At a time when people throughout Los Angeles County are crying out for more public transportation, when service is being curtailed, when employees are being laid off, the commission is fostering a situation whereby two routes are being operated simultaneously by two transit agencies,” he said.

Commission members clearly were flustered by the unexpected turn of events and ordered the two agencies to meet Friday to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The LACTC also reconsidered and approved more than $3 million in payments that it had earlier rejected. The payments, for such things as changing the interiors of the Red Line subway cars and fixing persistent leaks in subway tunnels, had sparked criticism over allegedly excessive and unauthorized spending by commission staff members.