Riverside County Sidetracks Commuter Rail Project : Transportation: Officials there want Riverside-to-Irvine trains running by 1994 before they release funds for easement. OCTA has a 1999 target date.

In a potential setback to regional commuter rail plans, Riverside County transportation officials Wednesday voted to withhold their county’s share of money needed to purchase right of way between Fullerton and Los Angeles until Orange County agrees to advance the date of planned service between Riverside and Irvine.

The existing railroad right of way between Fullerton and Los Angeles is one leg to be purchased from Santa Fe Railway under the terms of a carefully crafted, $550-million regional agreement covering the acquisitions of needed easement. Each of the four counties in the region are supposed to pay a share of the costs based on the tracks their commuters would use.

The Fullerton-Los Angeles leg is part of a larger segment that begins in Riverside.

Orange County’s existing commuter railway service needs this stretch to expand operations between all of Orange County and Los Angeles. Commuter trains using the track under a lease agreement with the Santa Fe Railway currently have 14,000 boardings per month.

The Riverside County vote is mere posturing, said Dana W. Reed, public member at-large of the Orange County Transportation Authority, and Stan Oftelie, OCTA’s chief executive officer. Reed immediately called for a meeting between OCTA officials and their Riverside counterparts. Riverside officials agreed, but no date was set.

Oftelie said OCTA simply won’t have the money to launch Riverside-to-Irvine commuter service before 1999, while Riverside wants four trains per day operating by 1994, with an increase soon thereafter to six--something that would require an amendment to Orange County’s Measure M, the half-cent countywide sales tax for transportation improvements approved by voters in 1990.

Oftelie attempted to defuse the situation before Wednesday’s meeting by offering use of one locomotive and four cars by July 1, 1994, and to lease another locomotive to Riverside for $1 a year as of the same date.

But Jack Reagan, executive director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission, said Oftelie’s offer wasn’t good enough, considering that his commission will be spending more than $100 million on the project and would get only two trains operating by 1994 instead of four.

As a fall-back position, the Riverside County Transportation Commission said it would pay its share for the Fullerton-Los Angeles easement, but would pay for no improvements and would insist on holding title to the entire right of way.

Under that plan, the Riverside County Transportation Commission would merely pay only for the Santa Fe easement that is within the boundaries of Riverside County and nothing else.

Reed defended OCTA’s position as fair, noting that Orange County paid all of the costs of launching the Orange County-Los Angeles commuter service for two years, saying that Riverside County should be willing to make the same sacrifice if it wanted the Irvine-Riverside service earlier than planned.