Mass Transit: Getting Around in the Valley : Key decision looms--whether to build subway or monorail

Meeting today, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission is scheduled to discuss how to extend mass transit into the west San Fernando Valley. Current plans call for the Red Line subway from downtown to terminate in North Hollywood in the east Valley. Two options are on the table:

1. Extend the subway westward from North Hollywood under Chandler and Burbank boulevards. This would be least disruptive of traffic, but could cost more than option No. 2.

2. Build an above-ground system along the median strip of the Ventura Freeway; less costly, but it could disrupt the freeway for several years.

THE POLITICS: A plan for a monorail along the Ventura Freeway was backed by 48% of Valley voters in a 1990 referendum; only 10% supported a subway. The lopsided vote was undoubtedly the result of cost estimates. A wholly above-ground route then would have been considerably cheaper than a subway.

No longer. Current estimated savings on the Ventura Freeway route range from a high of $1.4 billion to a low of $142 million. Why the disparity in estimates? Because both current options would have to be built in two phases: the first from North Hollywood to Interstate 405, the second from the 405 to Warner Center. The lower figure reflects the lower cost of completing the project’s first leg by extending the subway.

This is a key point. Although monorail and light-rail technology is normally cheaper than subway technology, the two would be roughly equal for option No. 1. By 1995, when construction on the first leg of the Valley transit system presumably would begin, so much money will have been spent building the Red Line to North Hollywood that extending the subway six miles to the 405 Freeway would not add much over the cost of a monorail.

Not true for the second part of the project: Extending the line from the 405 to Warner Center, about 10 miles, is much costlier--no matter what route or technology is chosen. This is where the cost of pushing the subway into leg two runs as high as $1.4 billion more.

THE SUGGESTION: The split personality of this cost issue would thus seem to argue for a Solomon-like decision: Extend the subway to the 405, then continue from there to Warner Center above ground.

The powerful officials involved, who have have dug their heels in on both sides, should consider this sensible compromise. Supervisor Mike Antonovich pushes the Ventura Freeway route, promising the Valley a Disneyland-like monorail. Politicians critical of Antonovich’s monorail idea, such as Supervisor Ed Edelman and state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), warn direly that the project may never be built unless it is a subway extension.

The Transportation Commission should adopt the middle ground: Move forward on the subway extension to the 405 but study the feasibility of a monorail after that.

This would at least commit the commission to expand the city’s new transit system into the Valley, while giving the transit agency staff time to study this new option. When the study is complete, later this year, the commission will have been replaced by a Metropolitan Transit Authority board, which will include among its 13 members four new ones appointed by the next L.A. mayor. That new board will be in stronger position to take a better look at the transit options for the Valley.