Study Backs Elevated Rail as Cheaper Way to Go : Transportation: Commissioners told a line above the Ventura Freeway would cost less to build and operate than a Valley subway.

Over a 50-year period, an elevated rail line over the Ventura Freeway would be 25% to 56% cheaper to build and operate than a rival, mostly underground line across the San Fernando Valley, a report prepared for a county transportation panel declared Tuesday.

The elevated line, tentatively chosen last month by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, would cost $560 million to $1 billion less to build, $13 million less annually to operate and would generate about 16% more passenger revenue, according to the report prepared by an Atlanta-based consulting firm.

The report’s findings represent a serious setback for subway supporters who had hoped it would show the underground alternative would be cheaper to operate, and thus persuade the Transportation Commission to reverse its decision supporting the elevated line.

A committee of the commission will review the report today. The entire commission meets Jan. 27 to discuss the report and take a final vote on the Valley line.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, a vocal subway supporter on the Transportation Commission, said he questioned some cost assumptions of the report. But he also stressed that the decision should not be based solely on cost, but also on environmental impacts on adjoining neighborhoods.

“I’m not persuaded by these new figures,” he said. “We ought not to let numbers blind us to the reality.”

Gerald A. Silver, who heads a coalition of seven Valley homeowner groups that opposes the freeway alignment, also questioned the validity of the report, calling it a “last-minute hit piece.”

“This is not the kind of thorough assessment that one ought to base an important decision on,” he said.

But county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, chairman of the Transportation Commission and longtime advocate of a monorail over the freeway, said he was pleased with the report’s findings.

In the past he has said that a freeway line would be cheaper and would free up money to build additional rail lines elsewhere. He won a crucial victory in 1990 when he helped put a referendum measure on the ballot that showed 48% of the voters in the Valley supported a freeway monorail and only 10% backed a subway.

“These huge cost savings reinforce why the majority of San Fernando Valley residents prefer the elevated freeway route over the subway,” he said. “It saves tax dollars and it can be built quicker.”

The elevated freeway line would extend 16 miles from Warner Center in Woodland Hills to Universal City, where it would connect with the Metro Rail Red Line to downtown Los Angeles. It would cost $2.24 billion in 1992 dollars, according to the report by Manuel Pardon & Associates of Atlanta. The rival subway proposal, paralleling Burbank and Chandler boulevards, would cost $2.79 billion, the report said.

(Previous county transportation studies estimated the freeway line construction cost at $2.59 billion and subway line at $3.03 billion in inflated 1998 dollars.)

Cost savings were a determining factor when the Transportation Commission voted 6 to 3 last month to support the elevated freeway route instead of the Burbank-Chandler line. The savings are even greater based on proposals by two private partnerships that have offered to build the project for as little as $1.86 billion as part of a longer high-speed line connecting Los Angeles International Airport with Palmdale.

However, the commission staff had not calculated the operating costs of the projects over a 50-year system-life cycle. Commission members said they might reverse their decision if such a study showed that the freeway route would be more expensive in the long run than the Burbank-Chandler alternative.

However, the study appears to show the freeway line would return even greater savings than proponents had originally contended.

Under new ridership projections that for the first time take into account increases generated by other rail lines connecting with a Valley line, the elevated freeway line would serve 973.6 million passengers and generate $564.7 million over a 50-year period, compared to 832.8 million passengers and $483 million for the Burbank-Chandler line, according to the report.

The freeway line would cost $1.4 billion to operate and maintain over 50 years, compared to $1.8 billion for the Burbank-Chandler line, the report said.

On a cost-effectiveness basis, the elevated freeway line would cost $3.77 per passenger trip, compared to $5.52 for the Burbank-Chandler line, the report said.

Edelman and Silver said the report erroneously assumes that ridership from other rail lines--Metrolink and a proposed Palmdale line--will increase passenger volume. They said it is uncertain whether those rail lines actually will connect to the Valley line in the next 30 years.

Silver said the currently operating Metrolink trains may not still be in service when the cross-valley train is completed. He and Edelman questioned whether a proposed LAX-to-Palmdale line will ever be built.

“There is just a series of questions,” Edelman said.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee and a supporter of the subway line, said the report is flawed because it calculates security costs for the freeway line under one type of rail technology and operating costs under another technology.

“It’s amazing how they are manipulating the numbers,” he said. “It’s almost frightening.”

But La Habra Heights City Councilwoman Judith Hathaway-Francis, a commissioner who voted for the freeway line, said supporters of the Burbank-Chandler route would not be questioning the report if it had shown a cost savings for the subway line.

“It’s almost like whose ox is being gored,” she said.

Times staff writer Hector Tobar contributed to this story.