Pasadena Officials Seek to Keep Rail Line Intact : Transit: MTA board is asked not to shorten or delay a planned Blue Line extension threatened by budget shortfalls.

Stunned Pasadena city officials appealed to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday to keep intact the planned Pasadena light-rail line, which recently became a target for possible pruning by budget planners.

Pasadena City Councilman Bill Crowfoot pointedly told the MTA board that the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission had committed to the project when it voted in January to build the 13.6-mile extension of the Blue Line. Since then, the commission has combined with the Southern California Rapid Transit District to form the MTA.

“A commitment means something when one is building a rail system,” Crowfoot said. “There are other decisions dependent on that commitment.”

Nevertheless, MTA officials, faced with unanticipated losses in sales tax revenue and ballooning expenditures, presented the board with a budget plan that would either shorten the light-rail line or delay it.

Under the current funding situation, the Pasadena line, which was supposed to run from Union Station to eastern Pasadena, could stop at Del Mar Boulevard, near the South Pasadena city line, said MTA chief executive Franklin White.

Another option, he said, would be for the MTA to delay the $841-million project for two years to seek additional federal funding.

Pasadena officials said neither option is acceptable. A central element of the Blue Line extension had been to provide transportation to low-income workers in northwestern Pasadena, said Pasadena Public Works Director Cynthia Kurtz.

“A line that ended at Del Mar wouldn’t serve the northwest,” she said. Delaying the project while federal funds are sought “could mean that there would be no line at all,” she said.

“Any time a project is segmented or delayed like that, the minority community knows it usually means that it won’t be completed,” said Lydia Fernandez Palmer, director of a Pasadena social service program.

It was a day of harsh realities for the 13-member board. White’s staff presented a menu of program cuts, including reductions in bus service and increases in bus fares.

Under one scenario, bus service would be cut by 5% and bus fares raised by 10%, eliciting protests from bus riders and transit groups.

“In the end, the real question is: If not these funds, which?” White said. “We don’t like these proposals either.”

Most of the board members spoke vehemently against fare increases and several, including Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre, chairman of the board, defended the Pasadena line.

“I’m not going to vote for a budget that does not look at funding the Pasadena line--not segmented or federalized either,” Alatorre said.

The Pasadena line already has sopped up almost $140 million from the MTA, the city and private investors, Pasadena officials said. That includes money to pay for the right-of-way along Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway tracks, construction of a Blue Line station near Pasadena’s civic center and the purchase of other properties.

White, who assumed his post four months ago, said the Pasadena line was planned in another era. “I assume that the promises were made in good faith,” White said, “but the economic situation has changed drastically.”

Alatorre directed the staff to look elsewhere for funds. “What has to be done is to free up some money, either legislatively or administratively,” he said.