Panel Clears Obstacle for Elevated Rail : Transit: A state Senate subcommittee rejects a bill that would have derailed the Valley proposal.

In a surprise move at the eleventh hour, Gov. Pete Wilson and Caltrans officials Wednesday helped remove a potential obstacle from the path of a much-debated proposal to build a commuter rail line over the Ventura Freeway.

After hearing the Administration’s objections from Caltrans officials, a state Senate subcommittee rejected legislation that backers of the elevated rail line said would have killed their hopes for the project.

The legislation--the second attempt by Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) to derail the monorail plan in as many years--would have imposed conditions that proponents said would have made the elevated rail line too costly to build. The governor and the California Department of Transportation opposed it as expensive meddling in a local issue.

Supported by numerous community leaders and groups, the bill would have required that portions of the Ventura Freeway from Studio City to Woodland Hills be widened to meet minimum state and federal safety standards before any rail line could be built along its median. Like many other freeways in the Los Angeles area, the Ventura Freeway does not meet the standards, which are often suspended to allow narrower traffic lanes in urban areas.

The train above the freeway is one of two rapid transit options the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is studying for the southern corridor of the San Fernando Valley. The rival proposal is a subway that would run beneath Chandler and Burbank boulevards.

At issue, Rosenthal said, is whether the freeway median--which was reduced in width along with individual traffic lanes as part of the long-awaited freeway expansion completed this year--is now wide enough for the train supports.

“I’m actually convinced they can’t build it on top of this freeway because of safety concerns,” Rosenthal said in an interview. “I’m afraid of a car hitting the poles,” he said, noting that by his calculations support columns would sit only 12 inches from cars passing in the fast lane.

The measure would have required widening the freeway median from 8 feet to 22 feet, widening traffic lanes and adding larger shoulders on either side in accordance with federal and state standards.

The issue attracted the governor’s notice because state legislators were attempting to intervene in the domain of Caltrans and local planners, said Bob Pipkin, a spokesman for the governor’s office.

“The administration is opposed to the bill because it would limit Caltrans’ flexibility in meeting the transportation needs of the corridor,” Pipkin said. “Caltrans is very good at balancing issues like safety, traffic mobility and cost to the taxpayers, and this bill would deprive them of that ability.”

Pipkin said the Wilson Administration was aware that there is a spirited debate between supporters of the elevated rail proposal and the subway. The Republican governor’s decision, however, was “a practical one, not a partisan one,” he said.

Tim Egan, representing the MTA in Sacramento, said that while Rosenthal’s measure would not have directly killed the elevated rail proposal, the costs of complying with it would have accomplished just that. Caltrans and MTA figured that meeting the requirements of the bill would have increased by a third the project’s $2.6-billion price tag.

“We (MTA) and Caltrans estimate we would have to condemn houses and businesses on each side of the freeway,” Egan said. “Taken with the freeway reconstruction portion, that adds up to nearly $1 billion.”

Before the 3-4 vote Wednesday by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, the bill had stalled until Rosenthal amended it to say that the MTA alone--and not the state--would bear its costs.

Rosenthal’s legislative assistant, Charles Harder, said his office was not notified until Wednesday that Caltrans and the Administration were opposed to the bill.

“Caltrans has the audacity to come out against it,” Harder said. “In doing so, they are basically taking their own highway design safety standards and throwing them right out the window.”

Egan of the MTA noted that one of the consequences of the measure might have been to effectively undo much of the expansion of the Ventura Freeway. The measure was submitted only months after the four-year freeway project began providing relief to thousands of commuters daily by opening a fifth lane in each direction to speed traffic.

Caltrans legislative coordinator Howard Posner said that if the bill became law, his agency would have considered restriping the freeway to reduce the number of lanes to three each way.

Said Egan: “I’m not going to be the one to stand out there and tell the citizens of the Valley we’re now going to take freeway lanes away.”

Last year, another bill by Rosenthal would have required any rapid transit built along the Ventura Freeway to go underground in a subway system. That measure failed in a committee for lack of support.