MTA Panel Backs Valley Subway, Light Rail Plans

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority board committee approved recommendations Wednesday night for a subway linking North Hollywood and the San Diego Freeway, and for light rail or enhanced bus service in the west San Fernando Valley.

The plans for these services were developed by MTA’s staff members to meet the 21st century needs of mass transit in the Valley. Now that the recommendations have been approved, they will go to the full MTA board for consideration.

Although the board committee approved the subway, which would run between Chandler and Burbank boulevards, they did not decide whether it would be in a covered or open trench.

In taking the action, the board committee rejected other proposed modes of transport, including the type of “deep-bore” subway required by state law along that route, as well as electrified rail and a hybrid between heavy and light rail known as advanced rail technology, or ART.

For travel from the subway terminus into the West Valley, the board committee recommended that staff members evaluate the possibility of providing light-rail cars or buses that would lead to Warner Center.

The board committee also approved study of two new longshot rail alternatives for mass transit in the Valley.

One is the use of Red Line subway cars that could be modified to allow them to run on light-rail tracks from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills.

David Mieger, project manager for the east-west Valley corridor, said if overhead electrification were added to the cars, the MTA could avoid the steep cost of digging a subway west across the Valley while at the same time preventing the expected loss of ridership if commuters were forced to change from subway cars to light-rail cars in the middle of their ride.

Mieger said, however, it’s not clear whether the electric frames needed for the Red Line cars would fit in underground tunnels used to extend the route to downtown.

In the second alternative, a representative of an MTA citizen advisory group suggested that a cross-Valley system could be built most quickly and economically by using a type of light-rail car on tracks already used by Metrolink and Amtrak from Burbank to Chatsworth.

The representative, Michael E. Dickerson, said the citizens group next week would elaborate on its proposal for light-rail cars that could start in Glendale, swing past Burbank Airport, zoom at 90 mph across the Valley to Chatsworth, then hook south from there to Warner Center on a rail spur that lies adjacent to Canoga Avenue. The route, Dickerson told board members, would require little new construction, could be completed “in our lifetime” and cost about $400 million.

The full board of directors will consider the proposals Wednesday. The board must decide on a final route and technology by December for presentation to the federal government for $1 billion in funding.