Subway Plan for Valley OKd : Transit: MTA board picks Burbank-Chandler route, rejecting an elevated line over the Ventura Freeway.

A long political battle over the future of mass transit in the San Fernando Valley ended Wednesday in victory for a line to be mostly subway and defeat for an elevated railway proposal.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to approve the mid-Valley subway option from Universal City to Canoga Park along Burbank and Chandler boulevards. The vote was 8 to 5, although neither side dared predict victory until the last moment.

“It’s a great day for the Valley,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA Chairman Ed Edelman, the most outspoken defender of the subway alternative, after the vote.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, an MTA member, introduced the winning motion to adopt the subway route and move forward with the environmental studies that must be conducted to qualify the project for federal funding.

“It’s clearly the right decision,” said Riordan, who had supported the proposed elevated line over the Ventura Freeway during his election campaign last year, but announced Tuesday that he had changed his mind.

The mayor said he reversed his endorsement because the subway will cost far less than believed, serve more heavily populated areas and provide an alternate transit corridor in the event of damage to the freeway. It also is supported by most homeowner and civic groups in the Valley--a key political base for the mayor.

But Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has lobbied for years for the rail line above the freeway median, lambasted Riordan for “lacking vision.” He accused the mayor of going “back on his word,” and cited a non-binding referendum in 1990 when the freeway rail option drew the most ballots from Valley voters.

Antonovich characterized the decision as a triumph for interest groups with stakes in subway construction. Pointing to the problems plaguing work on the Metro Red Line in Hollywood and elsewhere, Antonovich said extending the subway into the Valley will be an expensive boondoggle that will drain scarce funds from other important transportation projects.

“The taxpayers were hit between the eyes by the big liberals who never bat an eye spending other people’s money,” he said.

Antonovich pressed the case for an elevated freeway line as a cheaper alternative and contended that an at-grade railway would cost even less, possibly as much as $500 million less than a predominantly underground system.

But recent studies erased the huge financial advantage planners once ascribed to an aerial system. Fellow MTA directors rebuffed Antonovich’s last-ditch attempt to delay a vote for 90 days to further study the at-grade freeway option, a relatively recent idea that he had pushed to make the Ventura Freeway route more palatable.

In addition to selecting the subway alignment, Riordan’s motion called for exploring the postponement of some station openings to save money. It also asked planners to consider using less costly construction techniques, such as putting the rail line in a covered trench rather than traditional deep-bore tunnels.

The mayor’s backing of the below-ground route was key to its success before the MTA board, which has wrestled with the issue for a decade. Despite a bloc of five subway votes going into the meeting, victory was not assured, as both sides frantically counted votes and consistently came up short of the majority of seven needed to win.

Throughout the discussion, lobbying continued intensely as board members passed notes, drew aside for whispered consultations and jotted facts and figures on sheets of paper. The proceedings took on the air of a courtroom drama as Antonovich and Edelman chided each other, quizzed planners and consultants, produced visual aids to bolster their cases and delivered what sounded remarkably like closing arguments to the panel of MTA directors.

Mel Wilson, a Northridge real estate broker who sits on the MTA board as one of Riordan’s appointees, gave a slide presentation--unusual at an MTA meeting--that touched on topics ranging from cost analyses to educational demographics, to press the case for a mid-Valley subway line.

A parade of elected officials from the Valley--including Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick and Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills)--also made appeals, mostly on behalf of the Burbank-Chandler route.

More than a dozen audience members testified, to scattered cheers and jeers from the packed hearing room. One man was dragged away by police officers when he refused to leave the lectern after Edelman cut off public discussion.

In the end, voting for the subway were Edelman, Riordan, Wilson, Los Angeles Councilman Nate Holden (sitting in for Councilman Richard Alatorre, who underwent oral surgery and was absent from the afternoon meeting), Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky (standing in for Riordan appointee Stan Sanders), county Supervisors Gloria Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gardena City Councilman Jim Cragin.

Against the motion were Antonovich, county Supervisor Deane Dana, Huntington Park Councilman Raul Perez, Glendale Councilman Larry Zarian and Duarte Councilman John Fasana.