Rail: MTA votes to recommend that a Valley line be removed from state funding priority in favor of projects that could be begun sooner.

Citing revenue shortages and construction delays, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted Wednesday to recommend that a rail line for the San Fernando Valley be removed from a list of state funding priorities and replaced with a dozen other projects from Pasadena to Marina del Rey.

The board did set aside $51 million in local transportation dollars to begin engineering studies on the Valley line in order to avoid delaying the planned start of construction in 2003.

The only “no” vote came from Bob Abernethy, an alternate MTA member representing Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents large portions of the Valley.

After the vote, Yaroslavsky said he opposes the decision to take the project off the funding list because he fears that it may not be restored in the future or future transit money may not be available to build the line.

But MTA staff and others, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, said they are trying to obtain a guarantee from state transportation officials that the project will be added to the list in 1998 and will be built on schedule.

Despite the concerns raised by Yaroslavsky, MTA staffers said state officials are predicting an increase in transportation money in 1998 due to an improvement in the economy. Much of the MTA transit money comes from two half-cent sales-tax increases approved by voters.

MTA officials also said the state is expected to finish funding a backlog of transit projects and should have additional money for new projects such as the Valley line.

As currently proposed, the $2.2-billion Valley subway would connect with the Red Line subway in North Hollywood and end in Woodland Hills, running parallel to Burbank and Chandler boulevards. The project has been sought for years as a partial solution to impending traffic gridlock.

The state requires that the list, known as the State Transportation Improvement Program, only include projects that can be built within the next seven years.

Because the MTA does not have its share of the necessary funding to begin building the Valley line before 2003, MTA staff recommended that it be replaced with 12 projects that can be built within the next seven years.

Those projects include a light rail line between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena, a subway from Hollywood to North Hollywood, several carpool lanes and an access route to the proposed Marina del Rey offices of DreamWorks SKG, formed by the union of entertainment giants Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and other transit activists who support increased funding for bus lines, decried the MTA vote, saying the $51 million set aside for Valley engineering studies should be used to buy more buses.

“DreamWorks is still a dream,” Hayden said.

Constance Rice, an attorney representing a group that is suing the MTA to force more spending on buses, said the decision “will be Exhibit A in how you run a two-tier transportation system.”

Plans for a Valley line have been in the works for nearly 20 years. In 1990, MTA officials began studying an alternative to the subway: a monorail along the median of the Hollywood Freeway from Universal City to Woodland Hills.

The debate over the two proposals split the Valley into feuding factions until the MTA reaffirmed its support for the subway line along the so-called Burbank-Chandler route last year.

Under the MTA’s 20-year plan, construction of the Valley line was to have begun in 2003, with completion expected by 2010.

Valley line supporters and MTA staff have conceded that the latest threat to the project is partly the result of delays due to squabbling among Valley residents and lawmakers over the route and design of the line.

Nonetheless, during Wednesday’s debate, MTA member Nick Patsaouras, an electrical engineer from Tarzana, requested that the MTA eliminate any plans to build the Valley line below ground and instead study only surface lines.

No other MTA members supported the proposal.

Riordan described Patsaouras’ measure as “a legitimate thing to go into” but said it should be debated at another time.

Despite the vote Wednesday, Riordan reiterated his support for an east-west mass-transit line in the Valley that is “cost-effective, environmentally sound and which has community support.”

Citing the costs of the subway in an interview Tuesday, Riordan said: “I don’t think we will ever build a subway beyond North Hollywood.”

But at the MTA meeting Wednesday, Riordan said The Times had “mischaracterized” his remarks. Riordan said there are “not enough dollars in the 1998 state funding to pay for the east-west Valley line as currently envisioned.”

The mayor said other alternatives should be considered, such as a surface light rail system. But Riordan also called the subway concept “one possible solution.” Riordan added that a Valley subway line would have a better chance of winning state funding if it is broken up into smaller segments that can be built in phases.