End of line for new rail projects.

WITH next month's opening of the Gold Line to Pasadena, L.A.'s grand experiment in rail will be grinding to an unscheduled halt.

Since 1990, the Metro Red Line subway system has been built out from downtown to North Hollywood, and light rail lines have been built to Long Beach, the South Bay and now Pasadena.

All told, 73 miles of rail will have opened to passengers by next month, not including the hundreds of miles on the regional Metrolink commuter rail network.

But with the exception of the six-mile, $1 billion Eastside Rail project through Boyle Heights -- slated to begin construction next year and open in 2009 -- the construction boom is coming to an end.

No other rail project is expected to begin construction this decade. The once boundless pool of state and federal funds that built out the current system has now dried up, and there's only scant hope more funds will be found in the near future.

"We have a base grid in place now," said Dana Gabbard, executive secretary of Southern California Transit Advocates, a mass-transit advocacy group. "From now on, it's going to be one segment at a time. It will be slower and much less dramatic.

The main reason for this slowdown: a dramatic cutback in the flow of federal dollars for rail projects around the nation.

Through the 1970s, the federal government typically covered 75 percent or more of the cost of building these systems. But at a cost of $300 million to $500 million per mile, subways came to be viewed as too expensive and federal policymakers began favoring cheaper modes of transportation, like light rail or ramped-up bus service.

Federal tightening

The federal government started stipulating that funds for local rail projects would require a local match. Adding to the slowdown has been increased competition from other congested urban regions.

On the state level, funding for rail has followed the boom-bust cycle of the state's budget. With a huge surplus three years ago, Gov. Gray Davis promised more than $1 billion for transportation projects statewide, including several in the L.A. area. But state funding has been pulled back for all but a select few projects.

"There's no question that the traditional state and federal government sources of revenue for these rail projects are shrinking," said David Mieger, director of Westside planning for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "We are looking for other, non-traditional sources of revenue, such as user fees or public-private partnerships."

Not helping is that local public opinion turned against rail and subway projects in the 1990s as cost overruns and construction difficulties mounted. The most glaring example: the collapse of Hollywood Boulevard in 1995 due to digging underneath the street for the Red Line subway. In 1998, voters passed an initiative banning the use of local sales tax dollars for subway projects.

That doesn't mean rail has entirely disappeared -- witness the proposed rail projects still vying to be considered for the next step in L.A.'s rail network. Among them:

* A $630 million, 9.6-mile light rail line along Exposition Boulevard starting downtown, going by the University of Southern California to Culver City and possibly another five miles -- and $300 million -- further into Santa Monica.

* A 24-mile, $1.4 billion extension of the Pasadena Gold Line out to Claremont.

* A rail line along Crenshaw Boulevard through South L.A.

* An extension of the subway along Wilshire Boulevard to Fairfax Avenue from the current terminus at Western Avenue.

* Connecting the light rail Green Line to Los Angeles International Airport. Currently, it veers off towards the south, missing the airport by 1.5 miles.

Kuehl's efforts

Of these, the Exposition light rail project was long considered closest to reality -- until the federal government pulled $156 million in funding for the route back a year ago and the state pulled $100 million of its own funding earlier this year.

Much of the preliminary engineering and environmental work has already been done and MTA officials had projected a start date of 2004. Now, the start date is 2010 and officials from around the region are scrambling to save the project.

The latest proposal comes from two Sacramento lawmakers representing the Westside.

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, is carrying a bill that would set up an independent joint powers authority to assume control of building the line from the MTA. Kuehl has modeled her proposal on the successful joint-powers construction authority that has brought the Gold Line in on time and on budget.

"From experience, the better way to build a rail line is to have a separate construction authority," said Laurie Newman, senior deputy to Kuehl. "We want to have it in place ahead of time, so when the funds arrive, we can proceed in a more efficient manner."

One other motivation for Kuehl involves the route itself. Right now, the Expo line is slated to stop in Culver City because that's all the MTA believes it can reasonably expect to fund. Kuehl's bill specifies that the Exposition line would continue through her district to downtown Santa Monica.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Culver City, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, is carrying a bill that would hike L.A. County's sales tax by a half-percent for five years. That would bring in an extra $535 million a year for as-yet-unspecified transit projects.

Besides bringing in additional local dollars, Murray said his bill would move the funded projects up the list for federal dollars. "It gives us the ability to leverage local sales tax dollars to other funds, either from the federal government or from the private sector," he said.

Murray's sales tax idea faces a long road. While it may pass the Legislature and get Davis' signature, it would still need to garner two-thirds support from L.A. County voters to take effect,

That task could be pushed out of reach if another statewide half-cent sales tax hike also goes before the voters on the same ballot. Taken together, the two measures would hike L.A. County's sales tax from the current 8.25 percent to 9.25 percent, among the highest rates in the nation.

Other longshots

Meanwhile, Murray said he also supports the proposed Crenshaw transit project and would like to see funds from the sales-tax hike go towards that project as well.

But the MTA board last December directed its staff to explore bus alternatives, not a rail line. One idea being considered is a pair of dedicated bus lanes similar to the busway now being built in the San Fernando Valley.

As for the extension of the Gold Line east through the San Gabriel Valley, that, too, is considered a longshot. So far, according to Habib Balian, chief administrative officer of the Los Angeles-to-Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority, only about $35 million has been earmarked toward the estimated $1.4 billion project. That would be enough for some preliminary environmental and engineering work, he said.

The current stated construction start date of 2006 is now considered unrealistic.

The Green Line extension to LAX, long on the drawing boards, is tied up plans to remake the airport. L.A. Mayor James Hahn's current $10 billion overhaul would have the line connect with a remote parking area near the San Diego (405) Freeway and then hook into a people mover system to the terminals.

Finally, there's the proposed four-mile extension of the Red Line subway along Wilshire Boulevard from Western to Fairfax avenues. That project was consigned to the dustbin in the 1980s after a methane gas explosion in the Fairfax district raised safety concerns. It stayed on the back burner as voters soured on the idea of building more subways.

But late last year, the MTA board voted to reconsider the Wilshire extension and ordered staff to find out whether the technology to mitigate the methane gas problems had improved.

Mieger said that MTA staff has found that the methane problems can be mitigated.

But with the federal government now favoring smaller, cheaper transit projects, securing federal funding for subways anywhere now is considered virtually impossible. The agency is now focused on plans to improve bus service on Wilshire, including a dedicated bus lane.