Inconveniences of construction causing headaches for business.

As workers in hard hats toil away on the Metro Orange Line busway, an ambitious 14-mile path that will connect Woodland Hills to North Hollywood, some nearby business owners are lamenting the parking and traffic woes associated with construction.

The $329 million Orange Line project, about 30 percent complete, is scheduled to be operating in a little over a year. When finished, commuters will be able to take mass transit from the West San Fernando Valley to downtown Los Angeles by transferring in North Hollywood to the Metro Red Line.

In the next major phase, construction on the route's 13 stations is expected to start by the end of the month.

Meantime, area businesses have to deal with the disruptions that come with the prolonged public works project.

Nader Naziri, owner of Warner Jr. Market, a liquor store in a strip mall on the northwest corner at the intersection of Victory Boulevard and Variel Avenue, wishes the project will be done much sooner.

"As long as they have worked here, business is down 60 to 70 percent," Naziri said. "A lot of my customers are from the office buildings--they don't have time to stand in line in the street (waiting to make a left turn)."

Naziri anticipates that when completed the Orange Line will bring him more business. But before that happens, he is barely able to afford paying the $2,000 in rent for the store. "I pay the rent from my pocket," Naziri said. "The busway is very good but if it goes like this, I'll lose everything I have."

It's not just small businesses taking the hit. Adelphia Communications Inc. has been left With a massive parking headache for its hundreds of employees in Van Nuys.

Adelphia's parking lot, on land rented from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was lost to the project, forcing the cable company to park its fleet of 250 vehicles on the already crowded and narrow side streets near its offices on Oxnard Street.

The company has instructed its service technicians, line technicians and installers to drive company vans, pickups and even "bucket-trucks" home at night.

"There is a liability to the company having employees drive the vehicles home, as well as the expense of gas, and (traffic) tickets for parking trucks illegally," said Rick Pohl, regional construction supervisor for Adelphia. "It's having a major impact."

The busway is being installed along a railroad line route originally built by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1870s. It follows the same route as a branch line that connected downtown to a San Fernando Valley line running from Bakersfield to L.A. through the Fremont Pass.

The Southern Pacific-owned Pacific Electric Line later built and ran its Red Car commuter train from Hill Street downtown to Owensmouth Avenue in Warner Center--now the western terminus of the busway project. The Red Car to the Valley was established in the years preceding World War I, partly as a way for developers to promote the sale of their subdivisions in the Valley. The last Red Car was retired in 1961, falling victim to Angelenos' love of automobiles.

When completed, the dedicated busway will provide a 30-minute commute from Woodland Hills to North Hollywood. Construction is in progress along the length of the Orange Line, with four out of 33 intersections due to close or partially close, said Roger Dames, MTA deputy executive officer and Orange Line project manager.

"We require the contractor to maintain access to all businesses," Dames said. "To the extent of reducing a six-lane street to four lanes, inevitably that creates traffic congestion and because of that, it creates problems for business."

That has done little to mollify businesses squeezed by the ongoing parking crunch.

"The MTA didn't think of us. We have no parking," said Gabriel Assor, owner of Golden Gate Iron, a steel fabricator, who noted that he has paid three $48 parking violation fines in two weeks. "We're getting killed by the parking problem."

Slav Kandyba is a staff reporter for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.