Angels Flight Is Still Stuck in Park

Nearly 10 months after the Angels Flight funicular railway cars crashed downtown, killing one person and injuring seven, plans to reopen the attraction are still in limbo. The necessary safety improvements have not even been officially identified.

Railway officials say nothing can be done beyond repairing the two badly damaged cars--work that has already begun in an Eastside warehouse--until the National Transportation Safety Board reports on the cause of the Feb. 1 accident.

David Watson, the NTSB’s local investigator, has told the agency’s Washington headquarters that he does not expect to submit his findings to the board until early in 2002 “at the soonest,” according to an NTSB spokesman.

John H. Welborne, president of the nonprofit Angels Flight Railway Foundation, which leased the century-old system from the Community Redevelopment Agency, said Friday it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a new, safer drive-and-gear system and put the railway back into operation.

“I have not gone out and gotten bids yet,” Welborne said, saying he would not do so until he reviews the NTSB report.

“We have talked to several engineers in the funicular business, with firms that have been building them around the world for 50 years,” Welborne said. “The equipment, the expertise, exists to build a thoroughly safe system.”

Patronage during the five-year period that Angels Flight was in operation after its 1996 restoration--about 60,000 one-way rides a month--indicates the popularity of the 298-foot-long cable railway, which carried riders up and down Bunker Hill.

With a 25-cent fare, the railway required a subsidy financed with fund-raising by the railway company.

“This was never meant to be a moneymaker,” Welborne said. “The fare between 1901 and 1969 was only 5 cents. The idea is, it’s been a downtown institution.”

Today Angels Flight--which reopened in 1996 after a 27-year hiatus--is rather dilapidated, with rusted rails and trash collecting inside the gates. Many on the street outside Friday had only a hazy idea of what happened to shut it down.

Angels Flight is only a block long, but its restoration in the early 1990s cost $6 million, Welborne said. Repair and a new drive system will cost less, however, because the trestle, the track structure and the operations building on top of the hill are in place.

Welborne said insurance money will be available to do the required work, although there has already been some litigation between the various insurers over responsibility for paying for the accident, and more appears likely before another restoration. There was adequate liability coverage for the accident.

The operating company’s insurer, Federal Insurance Co., has already paid a claim of $281,000 to repair the two cable cars, named Sinai and Olivet.

Seeking reimbursement for that payment, the company has sued the insurers of other firms and consultants involved in the restoration of Angels Flight. The suit contends that the accident was caused by improper design and construction of the funicular system.

The Feb. 1 accident, in which one of the two cable cars hurtled down the steep track and collided with its twin, killed 83-year-old tourist Leon Praport and severely injured his wife, Lola.

The largest suit for damages was filed on behalf of the Praport family, but there are eight other claims pending.

Gary Dordick, the attorney representing the Praport claim, said a mediator has made a confidential proposal for a settlement of that claim, and the latest deadline for an insurer response will be Friday.

Dordick said that if the Praport claim is settled, he believes the others will be too, because they are for much less. A complicating factor, however, is the recent bankruptcy of the Redevelopment Agency’s insurance company, Reliance General.