Does consultant's subway report have built-in bias?

Antonovich seeks review of study favoring subway

Two companies involved in studies for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the feasibility and cost of building a subway vs. an elevated rail system in the San Fernando Valley are both subsidiaries of the same holding company, which has a financial interest in the subway being chosen, the Business Journal has learned.

And a status report released last week on those two in-progress studies indicated that they will conclude the MTA could save more money building the subway. That development prompted Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich to call foul and request an independent review.

Last year, the MTA board of directors chose an elevated line, likely a monorail, along the Ventura (101) Freeway as the preferred route for bringing rail to the valley, partly because studies at that time indicated that choice would be at least $400 million cheaper.

The subway route, known as the Burbank Branch alignment, would run north of the Ventura Freeway along such streets as Chandler Boulevard, Oxnard Street and Victory Boulevard. It was then estimated to cost about $3 billion.

The MTA hired Engineering Management Consultants (known as EMC), a consortium of firms that has designed Red Line subway tunnels for the MTA, to further study the feasibility of the Burbank Branch alignment, including researching cost-saving alternatives. Frederic R. Harris Inc. was hired to study the Ventura Freeway route.

Harris is a subsidiary of a Wilshire Corridor-based holding company called AECOM, which also is the parent company of one of the two principal EMC partners - Daniel Mann Johnston & Mendenhall (known as DMJM and pronounced Dim-Jim), confirmed a DMJM spokeswoman. AECOM stands for Architecture, Engineering, Construction management, Operations and Maintenance, she said.

The other principal partner in EMC is Parsons-Brinkerhoff. Parsons Corp. also has partnered with Dillingham Construction to provide construction management services on MTA subway building projects.

If the MTA were to choose the subway route, the design work would most likely go to EMC, confirmed David Mieger, MTA project manager for the San Fernando Valley East-West Rail Transit Project.

But if the MTA chooses the Ventura Freeway elevated rail proposal, the authority may take a "turnkey" approach - going to bid for one company to do both the design and construction work, Mieger also confirmed. None of AECOM's subsidiaries is a construction company, Mieger said.

Last week, Mieger released a "status report" on the studies being conducted by EMC and Frederic R. Harris. While not including any hard numbers, the report indicated the MTA could realize substantial savings by switching the subway line from a subterranean tunnel to a partially "open air" trench with smaller, one-level stations. (The subway alignment also includes some above-ground rail segments.)

Meanwhile, the costs of the Ventura Freeway alignment appear from the report to be increasing, due to new seismic building standards adopted after the Northridge earthquake.

"My first impression is it (the report) is an attempt to sway the cause toward the subway by shortchanging the San Fernando Valley," said Nick Patsaouras, alternate MTA board member for Antonovich. Both Patsaouras and Antonovich favor the elevated rail system, and Patsaouras has categorized the proposed subway as "bastardized" because it includes above-ground sections, and now open-air trenches.

It was Antonovich's transportation aide, Habib Balian, who raised the issue of the connections between the companies involved in the studies.

"It (the report) turned out to be: How can we build the subway cheaper to make it more competitive with aerial?" said Balian. "This went way beyond the scope of the geologic study (requested by the board). There were internal pressures and lobbyists who wanted to find a way to save on the subway."

Antonovich is requesting that "independent estimators" review the cost analysis figures in the final report, which is due in August, Balian said.

Mieger said the consultants looked for ways to save money on both alignments and found more on the subway route. He said the MTA only recently learned about the AECOM connection and will be looking into it.

So far, Mieger said, he has learned that employees of AECOM subsidiaries own stock in the holding company and therefore do profit through each other's success, although the subsidiaries also compete with each other for work.

"The issue is the holding company. Our initial reading is there's no potential conflict, but we've just become aware of this," said Mieger.

He added that hiring another firm to review the figures in the upcoming report, as Antonovich suggested, could delay the project.

AECOM executives declined comment.

The status report released last week states that the MTA's costs for building subway stations could be reduced 30 to 40 percent by constructing "modular open air" stations with no mezzanine level. These stations would consist of ground-level escalators and elevators descending directly to a subway platform, with the subway running along an open-air trench.

The number of subway stations would be cut from 10 to seven, while the number of stations along the Ventura Freeway rail route is recommended to be cut from 15 to 11.

It is further recommended that the MTA board consider changing the subway route between the Chandler Boulevard/Lankershim Boulevard station and the Van Nuys Boulevard/Oxnard Street station to run primarily along Oxnard Street, instead of Chandler Boulevard.

Balian said such a change would require preparation of a new environmental impact report.

"It's a shell game they're playing," said Balian. "The community won't like this open trench running through the center of the community."

But Jerry Silver, co-chairman of the Valleywide Transportation Council -- a coalition of homeowner groups and chambers of commerce that favor the subway route -- said he is mostly pleased with the status report.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a rail line above the Ventura Freeway is an economic and environmental disaster," said Silver. He said an open-air subway station would be safer in an earthquake than an elevated rail station.

Mieger said original plans called for a station "about every mile, and some were projected (to carry) only 1,000 riders (per day)."

However, he acknowledged that adding stations later would be more expensive than building them along with the rail line, and that the absence of stations would hamper ridership to some degree.

Bonny Matheson, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, said the group favors fewer, open-air stations "if it brings down the cost and gets it going."

VICA prefers the subway route to the Ventura Freeway route because it "goes through the middle of town" and would be more likely to survive a serious earthquake, Matheson said.