TRANSPORTATION : Panel Is Scrutinizing Blue Line for Cost Trims : MTA board member says a ‘sanity check’ is needed on ballooning estimates for the rail project to link Pasadena to Downtown L.A.

Hoping to trim the $73.4-million-per-mile cost of building the Pasadena Blue Line, a group of consultants and out-of-state transit executives organized by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to recommend cuts in engineering, staffing and design.

“Our feeling is that we need a sanity check to look at how we can bring the line in at a price that makes sense,” said John Fasana, a Duarte councilman who represents the San Gabriel Valley on the MTA board.

The changes buffeting the trolley were touched off when the MTA last month scaled back its 30-year, $183-billion anti-gridlock plan for Los Angeles County into a 20-year, $72-billion proposal. The retrenchment, caused by depressed sales taxes, overambitious planning and defeated bond measures, scotched dozens of rail, bus and highway programs, including several in the valley.

Once up and running, Blue Line trains are projected to serve 50,000 people daily while taking pressure off the congested Pasadena (110) and Foothill (210) freeways.

Hailed during its groundbreaking last spring as the first modern rail link between the San Gabriel Valley and Downtown Los Angeles, the 13.6-mile trolley line was to carry its first passengers in late 1997 or early 1998. Since then, its debut has been pushed back to 2002 while its cost has mushroomed to $998 million, up $157 million from earlier estimates.

“It’s had a frantic life,” said Laurence Weldon, Blue Line project manager for the MTA.

Supporters, especially Pasadena city leaders, say they have accepted the later opening date and welcome the peer review effort by consultants and transit executives.

The review board is scrutinizing a host of items in the trolley’s budget in the hopes of identifying some cost-cutting candidates for the MTA board, Weldon said.

The more than $50 million earmarked for contingency fees in case of change orders and unforeseen problems along the line’s route is one area being eyed. The board is also reviewing in-house staffing costs for planning, real estate and environmental issues, as well as various construction contracts, to see if their budgeted amounts can be pared.

Another potential money-saver, Weldon said, is consolidating a number of smaller contracts intended for minority and female-run businesses into larger pacts that other MTA bidders might be interested in.

More recently, another cost-cutting study commissioned by MTA from Fluor Daniel proposed eliminating four of the project’s 14 stations and ending the line near Pasadena’s Old Town instead of Sierra Madre Villa in the city’s eastern section. Transit board members joined Pasadena officials in quashing that idea, saying it would create a parking crunch in Old Pasadena and stymie private development plans near the tracks.

The uncertainty has made the Blue Line a difficult system to build, Weldon said, because the project only has enough money to award a few construction jobs.

“It’s limping along,” he added. “My schedule is changing all the time.”