Trolley’s End May Be Boost for Blue Line : Transit: Some officials view MTA’s cancellation of costly electric bus project as necessary because funds can be redirected to higher priorities.

The decision to scuttle an ambitious countywide electric trolley bus system--including a line connecting Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena--has received reluctant support from San Gabriel Valley officials who say completion of the Blue Line to Pasadena is a greater priority.

Empathizing with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, which faces a $126-million deficit, Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole said: “These are tough economic times and they require some hard choices. The electric trolley’s principal advantage is for clean air, but it does not add capacity to the (transit) system. So I’m not surprised it got pushed further down the priority list.”

By an 8 to 4 vote Dec. 15, the MTA board unexpectedly dumped the $1.2-billion project, including planned trolley bus lines in Los Angeles and the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. The San Gabriel Valley line would have replaced two bus lines between Burbank and Pasadena, paralleling the Ventura Freeway (134).

Sharon Clark, a member of the Pasadena Transportation Commission, said the trolley bus “is a good idea, but this project was badly conceived and designed.”

*

Clark is a former president of the Tri-City Transportation Coalition, made up of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena representatives seeking to improve transportation along the east-west corridor of the Ventura Freeway.

In the voting, the San Gabriel Valley’s MTA board member, Duarte Councilman John R. Fasana, abstained due to a potential conflict of interest. Fasana is an employee of Southern California Edison Co., which had developed proposals for the trolley system.

Acting as an alternate in Fasana’s place, Diamond Bar Councilwoman Phyllis Papen was one of those voting to kill the trolley. The trolley system, she said, does offer great efficiency in combatting air pollution.

The trolleys are virtually smog-free, especially when contrasted with diesel-burning buses. But “zero-polluting” trolleys don’t come cheaply.

“For every three electric trolley buses you could buy 4 1/2 methanol buses,” Papen said, explaining her vote.

But Jeff Johnson, the MTA’s director for the trolley project, pointed out that electric buses have much longer life spans--18 to 21 years--compared to buses that run on diesel, methanol or natural gas and may last 12 to 13 years.

He acknowledged that in the short run the trolley bus is more expensive. And some board members, he said, were put off by the trolley system’s potential capital costs of between $4.5 million and $5 million per mile just when the MTA was facing increasing expenses.

Unlike liquid-fueled mass transit, the trolley system would require building a series of fixed power stations as well as installing overhead wiring to propel the cars.

“You don’t have to put all of that in when you’re using buses,” Johnson said.

If the entire system were ever completed, it would add 184 miles of trolley routes to the mass-transit system, MTA officials said.

The MTA already has invested $11.6 million in the project, most of it for design and engineering work.

*

By canceling the first phase of the trolley system, Johnson said, the MTA reaped an immediate savings of $38 million, part of which would have paid for an east-west trolley line running across downtown Los Angeles.

That $38 million, he said, now could possibly be used to help pay for extending the Blue Line light rail to Pasadena, which San Gabriel Valley officials have said is critical for the region. The Blue Line project is estimated to cost $841 million, and transportation planners have been grappling with ways to finance it in the face of recessionary times.

Already, design work for the 13.6-mile extension from Union Station in Los Angeles to Pasadena is under way. Thirteen stations are planned, including six in Los Angeles and six in Pasadena and one in South Pasadena. A ground-breaking ceremony will be scheduled within the next few months for the project, which is expected to take four to five years to complete.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan came out against the trolley proposal, and this led others to follow suit, according to trolley supporters, including Long Beach city officials and business groups now lobbying to reverse the MTA vote.

*

Long Beach and Los Angeles were the first two areas scheduled to have trolleys.

Long Beach business and community groups had been counting on the trolley system, with amenities including antique-style street lamps and bus shelters, to help refurbish Anaheim Street there.

The MTA board is not scheduled to reconsider the trolley project. But a vote for reversal is always possible, said Johnson of the MTA. “In private business, no means no,” he said. “In public business, no means ‘not now.’ ”