CONSORTIUM PROPOSES PRIVATE RAIL LINE ON 101.

Byline: Chip Jacobs and David Bloom  Daily News Staff Writers

A team of private businesses is negotiating with Caltrans to build, finance and run a surface rail line down the middle of the Ventura Freeway between Woodland Hills and Burbank.

The proposal adds new complexity to a 15-year effort to bring rail rapid transit to the San Fernando Valley.

Supporters said the $1.2-billion, 19-mile project would bring sleek rail cars zooming down the median of the congested freeway by 2003, the year construction is supposed to begin on a proposed publicly financed line across the Valley along Burbank and Chandler boulevards.

However, plans released Wednesday were light on specifics. Supporters say a bank has offered financing, but wouldn't disclose the name of the bank. The supporters say the team also includes a designer of rail cars, signal and track experts, a construction company and planning experts. But only an engineering company and an architectural firm are named.

The proposal is a variation on a long-sought project by Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who repeatedly has failed in his efforts to persuade other members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board to champion a monorail towering over the Ventura Freeway.

Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky as well as other Burbank-Chandler proponents charged Antonovich with creating dissension over a Valley rail line in an effort to kill it.

``He's clearly trying to muddy the waters,'' said Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino and co-chairman of the Valley-Wide Transportation Council. ``I think the consensus of the Valley remains in support of the Burbank-Chandler route.''

Antonovich responded that his intent is to save taxpayers money and to provide a rail system quicker, not to act as an obstructionist.

This time, rather than relying on MTA dollars, Antonovich said he has found private partners to foot the construction bill.

``It will be no cost to taxpayers, provide safe rail service and allow us to connect to a regional system,'' Antonovich said. ``This is going to bring mass transit to the Valley.''

MTA Board Chairman Larry Zarian said he thought the proposal was ``exciting'' because it did not involve public funds.

``I'm very open to listening to anyone who's going to save us money and transport people,'' said Zarian, a Glendale councilman. ``That's what we're here for. I'm very concerned about finishing a rail system in my lifetime.''

Eight companies - led by Los Angeles-based architectural firm McCoy Associates and the San Pedro-based Frederic R. Harris engineering firm - have developed the plan after meeting with Antonovich and California Department of Transportation officials.

``We did this physical survey and discovered there was a lot of room,'' said Joseph LoBuono, vice president of the Harris firm, which earlier did Ventura Freeway rail line studies for the MTA.

``We said, `Why would you need to put the train on an elevated structure?' so we said, `Let's put it at-grade just like the (MTA's) Green Line'' between Norwalk and Redondo Beach.

Primary financing, LoBuono said, would come from a California-based bank he would not identify. Once up and running, the team would be repaid through fares and operational subsidies from the MTA.

The team expects to submit its formal plan to Caltrans by November, LoBuono said.

LoBuono declined to identify other members of the consortium pending a formal presentation.

The consortium estimates it will spend $2 million of its own money to develop the plans.

The proposal was greeted cautiously by some transit leaders and roundly criticized by others who have backed the Burbank-Chandler transit route.

``I think it's flaky,'' said Yaroslavsky, who cited a series of other failed private proposals to finance transportation projects.

``We've heard this before . . .,'' he said. ``This is a nonstarter.''

Nate Brogin, chairman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association's transportation committee, added that even with private financing, the problems that have dogged proposals to put a transit line along the Ventura Freeway all along remain unsolved.

``We've had longstanding objections to the freeway route because it doesn't serve enough destinations or people in the Valley,'' Brogin said. ``Sometimes building the cheapest system is not necessarily the right system.''

Jim Drago, a spokesman for Caltrans in Sacramento, said the agency has begun preliminary discussions of the project with its backers, but many difficult questions would need to be resolved, including legislative authority to allow a private company to use public rights-of-way.

``We're basically open to all sorts of ideas,'' Drago said. ``What has happened is we've started initial inquiries about what the actual physical impediments are to the project. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.''

Jim de la Loza, the MTA's deputy executive officer for planning, said the agency would at least evaluate the idea, but added that it wants more input from the full board on dealing with the idea.

``We'll always be willing to talk about proposals to save money,'' de la Loza said. ``But any change in course needs to involve the full board in those discussions.''

Though no current law allows private companies to negotiate directly with Caltrans for the rights to lease the freeway median for the trains and buy roughly $80 million worth of land for 11 rail stations, Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Larry Bowler, R-Sacramento, has a bill in conference committee that would allow such deals.

The freeway route would have 11 stations between Valley Circle Boulevard in Woodland Hills and Buena Vista Street near the Walt Disney Co.'s headquarters in Burbank.

Plans also call for the rail line to connect with the MTA's North Hollywood subway in Universal City. Because it would be built on the surface, it would avoid many of the construction woes and delays that have plagued subway work.

To make room for the trains that could ferry as many as 100,000 passengers daily, LoBuono said the team would expand the roadway approximately 32 feet by tapping unused room on the freeway's outside shoulders. Doing that, he said, would mean no narrowing or eliminating of the existing lanes.

The team would run the system for 35 years to 50 years and then allow it to revert back to the state to operate. Caltrans runs several train systems, including one in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The MTA must make some final decisions about how it will configure a Valley rail line by the end of the year, to be ready for the 1997 five-year reauthorization of transportation construction money by Congress.