Group plans to bid on high-speed train projects - starting with L.A.

A Los Angeles-based private-industry consortium has been formed to bid on high-speed train projects around the world.

A key goal of the American Magline Group, said consortium officials, is to create a high-speed train industry in the Los Angeles County area. If successful, the consortium would establish large manufacturing facilities in the county, or in Southern California, they said.

The consortium has been in the works for some time and has already bid on one local project. But it was just late last month that the group formalized its operations and decided to bid on other high-speed train projects in the United States and elsewhere.

Among the four major participants in the group are Los Angeles-based Hughes Aircraft Co., and Thyssen-Henschel America Inc. in Santa Monica. The other primary members are General Atomics of San Diego, which produces high-power electronics and electromagnetic systems, and Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a McLean, Va.-based management and technology consulting firm.

The group does not have an office or staff but is being run out of the Santa Monica facility of Thyssen-Henschel, a German manufacturer of magnetic levitation, or maglev, train systems. Maglev train cars are attached to an elevated track system that uses electricity to propel trains up to speeds in excess of 300 miles an hour. Meglev technology is also available from two Japanese companies but so far is not in commercial use anywhere in the world.

Under the direction of Thyssen-Henschel, a handful of workers from the participating companies has been assigned to work on possible consortium projects. So far, the primary cost of the consortium has been in connection with assigning workers to potential American MagLine projects, said the officials.

None of the companies has put up a significant amount of capital to fund the group, which thus far has not incurred any major expenses, officials said.

"What we're doing is taking the technology developed in Germany by Thyssen and transferring it to the United States and doing it in the form of a partnership," said Charles Bridge, president of the U.S. division of Thyssen. "There are many potential high-speed train projects, and many of them are centered here in California. From a base in Southern California, we want to be able to build an industry."

The formation of the MagLine group is the latest attempt to establish a passenger train, or mass transportation, industry in the Los Angeles area. Particularly since the decline of the area's defense industry started in 1990, several business and government leaders have been trying to put together various groups or consortiums to start a rail transit industry using unemployed aerospace workers.

Several of the area's major defense contractors have bid on various rail system projects, including Northrop Corp. and Rockwell International Corp.

Hughes, a major defense contractor in Los Angeles County, has also bid on rail projects and is involved in various aspects of designing rail systems, particularly in connection with communications and operations networks.

The American MagLine Group has submitted one of the four bids for the proposed Los Angeles International Airport-Palmdale train line. The on-again, off-again project by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could be worth as much as $4 billion.

The MTA is supposed to award the bid sometime this summer but consortium officials said the decision could be delayed because of financial problems.

If American MagLine wins the bid, the consortium would establish a manufacturing facility in the Los Angeles area that could employ 10,000 workers, said officials from the four participating companies. In addition, any projects would involve awarding contracts to area subcontractors.

Those officials emphasized that a primary goal of the group is to establish a high-speed rail manufacturing facility in Southern California.

"Part of the plan is to initially concentrate on getting the business going in Southern California," said Marie Lerch, a spokeswoman for Booz, Allen, which has an office in Los Angeles. "There are many high-volume, high-speed corridors out of Los Angeles and that is where we're concentrating."

In addition to the LAX-Palmdale line, potential high-speed train routes include: Los Angeles-San Francisco, Los Angeles-San Diego, Los Angeles-Las Vegas and Los Angeles-Phoenix. Other potential high-speed train runs that could be built out of Los Angeles include: San Diego-Phoenix, Las Vegas-San Francisco and San Diego-Las Vegas, consortium officials said.

According to consortium members, the group was put together by Thyssen-Henschel, which has spent $3 billion to develop a maglev train system. A prototype of the system has been built at a test site in Germany, where the government has certified the project as safe and ready for passenger service, according to the consortium.