Metro Rail Gets Go-Ahead as House Reverses Itself

WASHINGTON — The House on Friday gave Los Angeles officials the green light to break ground on the first 4.4 miles of the Metro Rail transit line by voting to rescind a hold on federal spending.

In Los Angeles, local officials ironed out their own financing agreements, providing added impetus to get the long-stalled project under way. Mayor Tom Bradley said construction will begin in September.

By a 231-153 margin, Washington lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House reversed an action approved only last week that would have effectively delayed the construction start-up for a year or more and might have led to the death of the entire 18.5-mile project.

“I think they’re going to go forward with Metro Rail,” conceded Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the engineer of last week’s maneuver to block the ground breaking. “I’m disappointed. I think Metro Rail is seriously flawed. It may be dangerous to the workers and riders and excessively costly.”

Last week, Waxman persuaded his colleagues to tack a Metro Rail construction ban onto a measure authorizing a wide range of highway and mass transit projects across the country. Waxman’s proposal, approved 210 to 201, would have required local transit officials to conduct a new, time-consuming study of the environmental risks posed by the subway portions of the line before work could begin on any part of it. Such a study had already been conducted for the initial leg and it had gotten a clean bill of health.

After Friday’s reversal on the Metro Rail question, the House then passed the full transportation bill on a 345-34 vote. The measure directs the secretary of transportation to authorize the first nine miles of Metro Rail construction and spend $870 million in federal funds on the project over five years. Even if the bill is approved in the present form by the Senate and signed by President Reagan, backers of Metro Rail would still have to come back to Congress for approval of all but the first 4.4 miles.

Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-Long Beach), chairman of a key House subcommittee that oversees Metro Rail, called the vote a “big turnaround” and said it represented “a very good shot in the arm for our needs in the Los Angeles area.”

“We’re going to start digging,” a beaming Bradley, flanked by Metro Rail allies, told reporters Friday in Los Angeles. He said ground-breaking would be on Sept. 22.

Lost Enthusiasm

A one-time Metro Rail booster, Waxman lost enthusiasm for the project last year after 22 people were injured when a portion of his district near Farmer’s Market was rocked by an underground methane gas explosion. At the time, the second phase of the subway was routed through the blast area, prompting Waxman and other critics to claim that tunneling could set off new explosions. They also contended that the system is vulnerable to earthquakes.

Although the system would eventually link downtown Los Angeles with the San Fernando Valley, project managers in the wake of the blast began weighing alternate routings of the second phase. Some of the proposals would leave much of the subway in Waxman’s district, while others would remove it entirely.

Rep. Julian C. Dixon, a Los Angeles Democrat, insisted that new safety tests had proved Waxman wrong. “I respect his opinion but in this case it is totally unreasonable,” he said.

Ralph Stanley, head of the Urban Mass Transit Administration, which would oversee dissemination of federal funds for the project, said construction of the first phase is now assured. But he insisted that the project would be riddled by cost overruns and that local taxpayers eventually would have to shell out considerably more money for the project than they had been led to believe by local transit officials.

Area resident would soon come to know “what shaky environmental and financial footing the thing is on,” he predicted.

Back-to-Back Meetings

In Los Angeles, a rapid-fire series of back-to-back meetings by city and county elected officials, as well as RTD directors, completed a package of agreements to provide the local funds needed to build the 4.4-mile, $1.25 billion first leg of the commuter line.

The actions wrap together a complex web of agreements designed to secure the release of federal funds needed to permit construction to begin in the next few months.

The agencies were rushing so that the RTD could meet a Friday deadline to file paper work to ensure that a special property tax on businesses near Metro Rail stations--expected to generate $130 million for the first segment--can begin being collected next year.

At day’s end, a slightly haggard City Council President Pat Russell, a strong Metro Rail supporter involved in much of the action, said the agreements, coupled with the action in Washington, represented “a historic day.”

Before it will release congressionally approved funds for the project, the Reagan Administration, which strongly opposes the project, has demanded that local officials put up hundreds of millions of dollars to cover possible shortfalls in federal aid and unbudgeted construction costs.

Triggers Tug-of-War

That requirement triggered an 11th-hour tug-of-war between city and county officials over who should pay for what.

A compromise hastily crafted Friday morning limits the city’s financial responsibility for construction and cost overruns to 10% of the project’s final cost. While not placing a dollar ceiling on the city’s potential liabilities, the limit curbs what the city would pay in the event of runaway cost overages.

As a result, the commission’s responsibility for overages will increase, but the commission and city will be given increased control over containing costs during Metro Rail’s construction. The commission’s previous $176.6-million share of construction costs has grown to include $203 million in possible federal financing shortfalls and an essentially unlimited amount of cost overruns.

While stressing that the actual extent of cost overruns is unknown, city and commission analysts have estimated that they could be approximately $76 million.

The council vote was 9 to 4 to approve the financing compromise, with past Metro Rail supporter Joan Milke Flores joining longtime critics Ernani Bernardi, John Ferraro and Hal Bernson in opposition. Flores said she has become increasingly concerned about safety and the cost of the project.

Accepts Limitation

A short time later, the transportation commission met and voted 6 to 4 to accept the City Council’s limitation. Several commissioners and the agency’s staff noted that estimates of cost overruns are significantly lower than the $250-million mark, at which the council’s limit would shift most of the burden to the commission.

But the commission minority, led by chairman Deane Dana, strongly objected to the city’s curb on its liabilities.

“This is an absolute joke,” Dana said, referring to assurances that there will be minor cost overruns. “We are going to have cost overruns and that is why . . . the city is taking this approach.

“If we capitulate, we will allow Metro Rail to become a parasite that steals” from other transit projects in the county, he said.

Contributing to this article was Times staff writer Edward J. Boyer.