U.S. Transportation Secretary Backs High-Speed Rail Through County : Transit: Speaking in Costa Mesa, Federico F. Pena also assures OCTA that its request for $318 million in federal funds for car-pool lanes is being recommended to Congress.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Federico F. Pena said Thursday that he strongly supports a high-speed rail line between San Diego and Los Angeles.

Visiting Orange County for the second time in two months, Pena said he will look into proposals to subject projects like the elevated rail line to California environmental tests only--skipping the more cumbersome federal tests. That could cut two years off the planning time for the transit line through central Orange County, said Stan Oftelie, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“It seems to me that this is an example of plain, common sense,” Pena said.

Pena’s remarks came during a speech to the 45th California Transportation Symposium at the Red Lion Inn in Costa Mesa and at a luncheon with Times reporters and editorial writers in Los Angeles.

He declined to enter the debate over the future of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station or the proposal to use federal money to turn a Disneyland garage into a regional transit center.

Pena reminded about 100 transportation officials and traffic engineers at the symposium that the Clinton Administration is asking Congress for $1.3 billion for high-speed rail systems. Last year, federal officials picked California’s San Diego-Los Angeles-San Joaquin Valley route as one of five high-speed rail corridors in the United States to receive some federal research dollars, but plans are still underway.

Pena said the route would be “ideal” for high-speed trains. But Oftelie said he and California Department of Transportation officials told Pena that the project would need a “significant investment” to upgrade the existing Amtrak route and separate the tracks from cross streets with new bridges.

“You either have to do that or buy new right of way, and in most areas there isn’t any available,” Oftelie said.

Pena and the Clinton Administration have backed off initial plans to spend huge sums on new technology, such as magnetically levitated and propelled trains, in favor of getting today’s 90-m.p.h. trains up to 125 m.p.h.

But Pena said that $300 million of the proposed $1.3-billion expenditure on high-speed rail would be devoted to technology research, which “has significance for defense firms” in Orange County and elsewhere that are trying to switch to non-military projects.

Asked about the Pentagon’s planned closure of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and lobbying by some, including air cargo carriers and Newport Beach, to convert the base into a commercial airport, Pena said: “That’s one I have not focused on.”

Pena also said he didn’t know enough to comment on state and county plans to use federal money to create a transit center as part of Disney’s $3-billion Westcot project in Anaheim, which some critics allege will unfairly benefit a single, private development.

But he assured Oftelie that OCTA’s request for $318 million in federal funds for car-pool lanes is on a list of projects the Department of Transportation is recommending to Congress. That request includes plans for the Disney garage, the first floor of which would be used as a transit station for buses and as an urban rail stop.

Under the plan, all parking revenues from the garage would be reserved for transit projects. But Pena declined to say if this means the project sufficiently benefits the county as a whole and not just Disney.

OCTA’s request is now before the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on transportation.

During his visit Thursday, Pena also praised Orange County’s toll-road projects, two of which are already underway, as examples of public-private partnerships--the theme of the weeklong transportation conference in Costa Mesa.