Officials Scramble for Green Line Cars : Transit: The system could sit unused from 1994 till 1997 if at least 15 coaches can’t be bought, leased or borrowed. No qualified company is willing to build such a small number for the county.

Faced with the possibility of owning an $800-million train line with no trains, county transit officials on Wednesday scrambled to find cars for the troubled Green Line--reopening talks to borrow cars from St. Louis and negotiating directly with car manufacturers.

The redoubled effort to buy, lease or borrow at least 15 light-rail cars for the 23-mile, Norwalk-to-El Segundo line was prompted by the discovery last week that no qualified company is willing to build such a small number of cars to meet the county’s original custom specifications.

The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission wants enough cars to start at least some service on the Green Line once construction is complete in 1994. Without interim cars, the shiny new, service-ready rail line would sit unused until the full complement of 40 permanent cars arrives, which is anticipated in 1997.

“If everything we’re trying collapses, we would have at least an $800-million system not operating,” construction expert Bob Kruse told the LACTC board Wednesday with a nervous laugh. Kruse is chairman of the commission’s Rail Construction Corp. subsidiary.

Both options now being considered by the LACTC--borrowing the cars or persuading someone to build them--have been tried and failed in the past.

Most recently, the companies’ remarkable lack of interest in building the 15 interim cars indicates both the difficulty of gearing up factories for such small orders and the reluctance of companies to entangle themselves in the troubled Green Line project.

“I think it’s safe to say we are not the most desirable car purchaser in the world,” the plain-spoken Kruse told the board.

Earlier this year, LACTC officials decided not to lease cars from the Bi-State Development Agency in St. Louis because there was no guarantee that the agency would want the vehicles back.

St. Louis, which needs at least 31 cars for its new light-rail line, may eventually require 15 more--if it can get federal aid to expand the line. LACTC, hoping to lease the 15 cars, earlier this year asked St. Louis to order the cars, assuming that the federal aid will come eventually. But St. Louis wanted the LACTC to promise to buy the extra cars for about $30 million if the additional federal aid does not come through--a condition that Los Angeles initially rejected as too risky.

Now, however, RCC President Ed McSpedon thinks a deal might be worked with St. Louis.

For one thing, he said, St. Louis may not need all 31 of its original cars until ridership builds up; any “extra” cars could reduce the number of new vehicles ordered specifically for the LACTC, thus reducing the LACTC’s risk of being stuck with unwanted cars.

Besides, he said, the St. Louis cars, which need some minor electrical modifications to run in Los Angeles, cost under $1.8 million apiece--far less than the estimated price of each Green Line car. “So even if we’re stuck with buying (St. Louis cars), it’s not so bad,” he said.

Progress on building the Green Line cars was disrupted last January by a political uproar over the commission’s plan to buy cars for an unusually high price of $3 million apiece from a foreign-owned company, even though an upstart American competitor had a slightly lower price.

Under intense pressure from City Hall--where Mayor Tom Bradley and City Council members railed about the failure to use LACTC contracts to create local jobs--the transit commission canceled its contract with Japanese-owned Sumitomo Corp.

LACTC then set out to redesign Green Line cars to make them compatible with Sumitomo cars already running on the Blue Line, and to make it more attractive for U.S. companies to compete.

The redesign decision prompted the commission to more than double its car order to 100--with 15 bought off the shelf and the remaining 85 custom-made for Los Angeles. The LACTC also plans to use the cars on a Blue Line extension from Los Angeles to Pasadena, as well as on the Green Line.

The Pasadena line originally was scheduled to use Blue Line cars, but the unexpected success of the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach segment of the Blue Line will not allow that.

The Green Line vehicles--to be called “L.A. cars” because their standardization would let them run on all of the light-rail trolley lines being planned in the county--could convert from manual to driverless operation.

Bids on the 85 permanent cars for the Green Line are due by Oct. 12. LACTC officials expect more bids on that order because it is larger in size and allows more time for design.