CONSORTIUM PITCHES PRIVATELY BACKED VALLEY RAIL PLAN.

Byline: Anne Burke Daily News Staff Writer

What are a bunch of people doing in the middle of the Ventura Freeway?

A consortium of companies wants them to be sitting comfortably in gleaming new rail cars zipping down the 101 and 134 freeways, headed for work, shopping and school.

``The general consensus we pick up right now is rail is dead in the Valley. But we think this is a viable option,'' said Joseph P. LoBuono, vice president of Frederic R. Harris Inc., one of four companies backing the rail line.

The companies propose 13 miles of heavy-rail transit in the median of the Ventura (101 and 134) Freeway, from the Glendale Freeway to Woodman Avenue in Valley Village, to be completed by 2002. A second leg from Woodman to Valley Circle could be completed by 2003 if a consensus builds in support of it.

The project is called Valley Express Transit.

The New York-based firm Frederic R. Harris, the Metrolink consulting engineer, would provide management and engineering services for the project. Other partners are Millennium Partners of New York, Morrison Knudsen Corp. of Boise, Idaho, and McCoy Associates of Los Angeles.

The consortium is calling for public and private funding for the project.

LoBuono said the Glendale-Woodman Avenue leg would cost between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion. The money would come from $900 million in tax-exempt bonds and a $200 million loan from the federal government.

Construction would begin in 1999 and end by 2002. During rush hours, trains would run every four minutes at speeds of up to 60 mph.

LoBuono explained the proposal at a meeting of the Daily News editorial board Thursday.

The bonds would be issued through a public-benefit corporation formed with the cities of Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale, which would also operate the system.

Most public transportation systems survive only because of heavy government subsidies. LoBuono said his project is different because the construction cost would be fixed at $1.2 billion.

``It's basically a freeway widening project. It's not drilling tunnels hundreds of feet below the mountains, where you can have huge cost overruns,'' LoBuono said.

Some San Fernando Valley leaders are skeptical.

Councilman Hal Bernson worries that taxpayers would have to bail out bondholders if revenues fall short.

``He would scrutinize (the proposal) very closely,'' said Bernson spokeswoman Francine Oschin.

Local support for the project is crucial. Caltrans has said that it will grant easements, but only if the support is there, LoBuono said.

The rail line would require a 28-foot corridor down the middle of the freeway. That means that both sides of the freeway would have to be widened 15 to 16 feet from Woodman Avenue to the Golden State Freeway, and eight feet from then on east into Glendale.

Sylvie Beauregard lives on Sarah Street in Studio City near the Ventura Freeway. She thinks Los Angeles needs a good public transportation system, but she doesn't think the Valley rail line is a good idea.

``I'm Canadian, and we have a much better transportation system. But what concerns me is the construction. Oh, what a nightmare it would be,'' Beauregard said.

Backers first need to find an outside consultant to take a long, hard look at how many riders the rail system will actually have.

Preliminary estimates call for a base fare of $1.50, plus 10 to 11 cents a mile. That makes a Glendale-to-Woodman Avenue fare of $2.80 and up.

That works out to about $28 a week, $112 a month.

And then there's parking. That'll run $4 to $4.50 a day at those stations which have parking lots.

Will commuters jump aboard at those prices?

Backers say they'll get 53,000 riders a day at the beginning, increasing to 80,000 a day in 2010, as commuters get used to the idea of using public transportation.

But LoBuono cautions that the numbers are preliminary. Further studies may result in new estimates, or even show that the project has to be abandoned because fares will be too high to attract enough riders, he said.

One way that backers hope to make a rail line more economically feasible is by building offices and shops at stops in Burbank and Glendale, and using the lease revenues to support the system.

Down the line, plans call for extensions into Valley Circle Boulevard in Woodland Hills and Pasadena.

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Map: Valley express transit