Officials Pin Big Hopes for Area on Light Rail : Trains: The $841-million Blue Line extension will link Pasadena to Union Station by way of Chinatown, Highland Park and South Pasadena.

To say northeastern Los Angeles community leaders are pinning high expectations on the newly approved light-rail line between downtown and Pasadena is like saying the drive home from work on a Friday evening is a tad on the slow side.

They are hoping the line will draw shoppers to Highland Park, boost property values and revitalize neighborhoods by attracting newcomers looking for shorter commutes.

The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission approved the 13.6-mile light-rail line last week. The $841-million project will extend the Blue Line, which runs between Long Beach and Los Angeles.

“It gives real cause for optimism for the future of Los Angeles,” said Bob Jamieson, the light-rail committee chairman of the Mt. Washington Assn. “It is a rare opportunity for more pedestrian-oriented communities.”

The line, with 13 station stops, will run north from Union Station in Los Angeles to Sierra Madre Villa Avenue in east Pasadena. There will be six stations in Los Angeles, including Chinatown, Avenue 26, Marmion Way, the Southwest Museum, Avenue 51 and Avenue 57. There will also be one stop in South Pasadena and six in Pasadena.

A one-way trip to Union Station from any point on the line will cost the same as a Southern California Rapid Transit District express bus, now $1.10. The cars will be the same as those on the Blue Line.

A ride from Avenue 57 to Union Station is expected to take no more than 15 minutes.

Glendale and Burbank also have lobbied hard to win priority for a light-rail line along the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks from downtown Los Angeles to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport. County transportation officials last year said the proposed 11.9-mile Glendale-Burbank route could be among the first to be built under a 30-year Master Plan for regional transit development.

Unlike Orange County or the San Fernando Valley, where there have been controversies over rail transit, Glendale and northeast Los Angeles neighborhoods have presented a relatively uniform voice of support for light rail.

Virginia Neely, founder of the preservationist Highland Park Heritage Trust, said she hopes the line will boost the sagging commercial interests in northeast Los Angeles.

“We feel it would be very good for local business. More people will come to the area. Property values will rise,” Neely said. “This will become a place people can make a short commute to downtown.”

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But she was concerned that the project would attract high-density, poorly planned housing developments. “We don’t want to see our area turned into a rabbit-warren of cracker boxes.”

Gerard Orozco, legislative deputy for Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre, whose district used to include Highland Park, said the rail line can represent “a good wedding of transportation and community. We’re looking for this line to become part of Highland Park, not just run through it.”

To Assemblyman Richard Polanco, whose 55th District encompasses part of the area where the line will run, the project is long overdue.

And Polanco said he is elated the funding has been approved. “It is now actually only a matter of digging the dirt,” he said. “The community has fought diligently for many years to get this line built. I’m over the moon.”

One of the stops will be at the Southwest Museum to enhance museum access, Polanco said.

Tom Wilson, the Southwest’s executive director, said the museum has considered moving but that “anything like a Metro station at the museum is a factor we will have to consider.”

Charles Fisher, president of Highland Park Neighborhood Assn., said his group at first had fears about the rail line’s effect on the historic architecture in the area.

Initially, plans called for constructing a railroad bridge over the Pasadena Freeway (110) at Avenue 61, replacing the existing turn-of-the-century, riveted-steel bridge.

Fisher said he and other preservationists had been worried that the historic bridge would fall into disrepair or be torn down. Now, after negotiations, no new bridge will be built, and the 1896 bridge will be incorporated into the rail line.

Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole said the line “is really just the spine of what we hope will be a transportation network.”

It will be as big, Cole said, as the Pasadena Freeway’s construction half a century ago.

“It ties us with the largest public works program now going forward in the United States,” the mayor said. “It will allow us to have safe, convenient and affordable options for travel.”

For the freeway-fighting forces of South Pasadena, the advent of light rail is a boon, said Mayor Harry A. Knapp, a leader of those opposing completion of the Long Beach Freeway to Pasadena.

“We’ve been looking forward to this all along,” he said. “It’s part of the transportation mix we’d like to see in the L.A. Basin.”

By removing commuter traffic from the Pasadena Freeway and the Foothill Freeway (210), Knapp said, the light-rail line would lessen the demand for completion of the 6.2-mile gap on the Long Beach Freeway between Alhambra and Pasadena.

The project plans call for the rail line and its stations to be constructed starting in Chinatown and then heading north to Pasadena.

As a safety measure and for aesthetic reasons, the tracks will be recessed in two locations. The trains will travel below street level just north of French Avenue, then pass under Figueroa Street and come back up one-half mile north of Figueroa.

Likewise, the tracks will pass through a one-third mile tunnel in Old Pasadena.

Since the Blue Line opened from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles in July, 1991, 12 fatalities have occurred along the 22-mile route. Transportation planners say that to submerge the tracks on portions of the downtown-to-Pasadena stretch should help reduce pedestrian and vehicular accidents.

Councilman Alatorre, newly elected chairman of the county Transportation Commission, predicted the rail line will be completed in 1997. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 1994.

The project was delayed by three years of bare-knuckle negotiations between county transit planners and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, which owned rights of way.