Panel to Make Final Decision on Rail Route : Transportation: The county commission will be weighing the merits of an elevated versus an underground line--and the attendant costs.

When a Los Angeles County transportation panel meets today to make a final decision on a San Fernando Valley rail line, the debate will center on whether the cheapest line is best, according to proponents of two rival rail systems.

The county’s Transportation Commission voted tentatively last month to support an east-west elevated rail line over the Ventura Freeway, rejecting a mostly underground line paralleling Burbank and Chandler boulevards.

The reason was that a freeway line would be cheaper to build. But the commission added that it might reverse its decision if a study determined that the freeway line would be more expensive to operate over the long run than the Burbank-Chandler line.

However, an independent consultant’s report that the commission will review today concluded that the freeway line would not only be less expensive to build, but also to operate. The freeway line would cost $500 million to $1 billion less to build than the Burbank-Chandler line, $13 million less annually to operate and would generate about 16% more in passenger revenue, the report said.

Supporters of the Burbank-Chandler line said Tuesday that they will urge the commission to ignore the cost savings and concentrate on other issues, such as the traffic, noise and visual blight that they say the freeway line will create for residents along the freeway route.

“Financial cost will be one factor, but it’s not the only factor,” said Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood), a supporter of the Burbank-Chandler line whose district includes parts of the Valley. “It’s overly simplistic and bordering on foolishness to focus on cost alone.”

Gerald A. Silver, an Encino homeowner who heads a coalition of homeowner groups opposed to the freeway line, agreed.

“We are going beyond the numbers and saying other things need to be looked at,” he said. “The whole thing should not hinge on dollars and cents.”

But supporters said they will argue that the money saved by building the freeway line can be used to build another rail system elsewhere in the county.

Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and supporter of the freeway line, said the elevated line is superior because it could be extended to Ventura County by continuing along the freeway.

“Why build a system that ends?” he said, referring to the Burbank-Chandler line.

The elevated freeway line, which is commonly referred to as the monorail alternative because backers support a monorail on the freeway, 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. The Burbank-Chandler line would connect with the Red Line in North Hollywood and extend 14 miles to Woodland Hills.

Despite heavy lobbying from both sides, some commissioners say they are still unsure how they will vote today.

Palos Verdes City Councilwoman Jacki Bacharach, a commission member who has supported the Burbank-Chandler proposal in the past, said Tuesday that the consultant’s report about operating costs left her “in a quandary.”

Although she is not sure that the report is completely accurate, she said, she is undecided how she will vote. “I just have a problem with the data we’ve been given,” Bacharach said.

In a development that may further complicate the decision today, James W. Van Loben Sels, director of the state Department of Transportation, said in a letter to Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) that he could not guarantee that an elevated freeway line could be built without widening the freeway, increasing the cost of the project.

Katz, an opponent of the freeway line, said the letter is “just another indication that the proposed Ventura Freeway route will turn out to be more expensive and more disruptive.”

Construction of the rail line above the freeway would require closing one traffic lane in each direction for two years, Katz said.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “We just went through the recent widening process and it would be an intolerable nightmare to lose a lane again.”