Break the Gridlock on Mass Transit for Valley : Decisive action and accord on Red Line extension are vital

We’re not sure what the record is for the total number of studies and reports written for an unbuilt and unfunded mass transit line. Unfortunately, we’re beginning to believe that the pile of paperwork for the Red Line extension across the San Fernando Valley must be in the running.

If you care about finding solutions for freeway traffic jams and surface street gridlock in the Valley, then you know exactly what we are referring to. If you don’t care, and don’t know, you should.

For five years, a bitter debate has raged over where and how the Red Line would be built. Unless a decision is reached soon, it will be time to pose two other questions: when it will be built, and if it will be built.

On one side of the dispute are the stalwart proponents of an above-ground rail system that would follow the path of the median of the Ventura Freeway. That option might involve a monorail system, but that has not been determined. On the other side of the debate are the equally intransigent supporters of a subway line under Chandler and Burbank boulevards. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is due to make a decision on this matter before the end of the year.

Last year, when we first offered an opinion on the Valley Red Line, the cost differences between the two options were relatively large: $3.03 billion for the subway, and $2.59 billion for the freeway. We suggested a compromise between the two options: extending the subway to the 405 Freeway, and studying the feasibility of an above-ground or monorail option for the rest of the route into the west Valley.

Now, another cost analysis of the two options has been completed, one that takes new technology and recession-reduced real estate prices into consideration and thankfully shaves hundreds of millions of dollars off the price tag for both. The latest information suggests that savings is much less of a factor in the debate. The cost of going underground is now at $2.27 billion, while the freeway route figures to run about $2.25 billion.

We were pleased to note the release of the cost-comparison analysis. We were not pleased by the response to the report, but we should have anticipated it.

“I am very glad that the (freeway route’s) cost savings have been verified,” said county supervisor and MTA member Mike Antonovich, as if that savings had not been whittled down to a difference of less than 1%. Meanwhile, the subway’s proponents acted as though cost was the only factor in the forthcoming decision.

We are left with two main concerns. One is that the 13-member MTA come up with a decisive and final vote on the matter, and soon. And Valley residents must try to accept that decision.

We’re not sure how realistic that is. Opinions run deep, as suggested by the fact that homeowner associations opposed to the freeway route were putting out mailings to as many as 17,000 people earlier this month.

One thing is certain, however. If both sides in this debate are so firmly entrenched that they are prepared to delay matters further with legal action, then the chances of any line being built are going to be reduced. The news has been filled with such warnings of late.

The transit strike, for example, was an indication of how complicated and vulnerable our region’s mass transit system is to factors that go far beyond the route of one line, however important it might be. The unexpected blocking, by a federal judge, of the MTA bus fare increase also exposed the possibilities of funding problems that were already precarious because of the recession, declining fare-box revenues, and other matters.

How much attention do you think the Valley’s Red Line extension will receive if the matter of its route is still being contested, in some way or another, into 1995 and beyond?