MTA UNVEILS SUBWAY COST CUTS; CROSSOVER TUNNELS COULD GO TO SPEED BUILDING, SAVE $27.3 MILLION, OFFICIALS SAY.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

The MTA can reduce blasting under the Hollywood Hills by half, and save five months and up to $27.3 million by eliminating two subway crossover tunnels planned between Hollywood and Universal City, officials said Monday.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority construction officials joined Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an MTA board member, in unveiling the money-saving idea during a press conference Monday in Hollywood.

``This is a no-brainer. There's no downside at all,'' said Yaroslavsky.

The agency had been planning for years to build two crossover tunnels just north of the La Brea construction access shaft that would connect the subway line's main north- and southbound passages.

The crossover passages would allow trains to run more quickly in both directions on a single track when one of the tunnels is closed for maintenance and repairs. Without them, trains would have to use crossovers at other places along the line, said Charles Stark, the MTA executive officer for construction.

On Wednesday, the MTA Board's Construction Committee will consider a staff recommendation to kill off that part of work on the $1.3 billion North Hollywood subway extension, saving $27.3 million while delaying trains only an additional 2 minutes during tunnel closures. The entire board will take up the matter next week.

``This is the first evidence that I see that the MTA is putting the needs of taxpayers ahead of the inflated aspirations of the engineers and bureaucrats who designed this project,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``The tunnels are a nice convenience, but they're not worth $27 million.''

The crossovers were part of a storage area the MTA had planned to build under the Hollywood Hills, but partially eliminated in 1990 to save money, according to MTA documents.

The crossovers remained, however, until builders presented an $11 million bill to move the passages slightly north to avoid problems with quake-shattered rock surrounding the passages' original location.

Rather than paying the new bill, a staff cost-benefit analysis showed that eliminating the crossovers would cut costs, five months of delays and half the blasting planned in the area, saving 70,000 pounds of explosives.

As well, the agency no longer would have to haul off 2,000 dump-truck loads of rock, nor would it need 1,200 truckloads of concrete.

And, in what Yaroslavsky termed a ``major environmental victory,'' the agency will no longer have to blast at all beneath seasonal springs in Runyon Canyon Park.

The fate of those springs, a major concern to neighbors and park users, sparked a federal consent decree that dramatically reduced blasting, and required monitoring and other expensive mitigation.

Builders still would have to do a small amount of blasting to cut a pedestrian cross-passage between the main tunnels, said Stark. He said the MTA is looking for other ways to cut spending on the project, but doubted anything of this proposal's magnitude would be found this far into the project, which is scheduled to be completed in almost exactly two years.

Hollywood subway critics welcomed the news, but groused that the agency took far too long to figure out how to save on subway spending.

``This is what we asked them to do in the (Hollywood Project Area Committee) lawsuit two years ago,'' said Hollywood activist John Walsh, whose group sued to reduce blasting. ``The suit is now moot. But how much did they spend on planning for the blasting before they stopped the work?''

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PHOTO County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky discusses subway changes Monday.

Bob Halvorsen/Daily News