Plans for Magnetic Levitating Train Troubled by High Cost.

A consortium of local transit planners over the next two weeks will begin selecting a team of consultants to help them hone their pitch for $950 million in federal funding to build a $4 billion "maglev" train linking LAX to the Ontario Airport and Riverside County's former March Air Force Base.

Blueprints for the train, which would hover six inches above the tracks and be propelled at speeds of up to 200 mph by huge magnets, must be completed by a June 30 deadline to be presented to the Federal Railroad Administration.

The FRA is expected to choose from among at least a dozen competing maglev (or magnetic levitation) train proposals in late summer or early fall.

"It's more like an airplane without wings," said Albert Perdon, program manager for the California Maglev Deployment Program, a joint project of the Southern California Association, of Governments, the California High Speed Rail Authority and the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.

The plan is being developed with the $6 million in federal and local funds that the agencies received last year to come up with a plan for a maglev train route through Southern California.

With maglev technology, which is now being tested in Europe, the two-hour car trip from LAX to the former March Air Force Base would take 45 minutes; from downtown L.A. to Ontario Airport would take less than 25 minutes.

But to at least one transportation policy expert, the maglev express route is sheer fantasy.

"Maglev is a nonexistent technology," said Jim Moore, associate professor of civil engineering and public policy at USC. "Sure, test systems exist. And with enough money, I suppose you could move a carriage that floats on a magnetic field. But we could also move people around in space shuttles if we had a reason to. This is hardly what I would call a very cost-effective way of getting people from here to there."

As now on the drawing boards, the maglev train would have stops at LAX, Union Station in downtown L.A., the San Gabriel Valley (exact location yet to be determined), Ontario Airport and the former March Air Force base.

Besides technology issues, however, is the drawback of cost: an estimated $4 billion. And so far, not a penny of that is in the bank.

Given that shortcoming, proponents can't even say when this system could be up and running, let alone when plans for an even more ambitious rail network connecting LAX with Palmdale's now virtually empty airfield and Irvine might come to fruition.

"Assuming the funding is in place, we could have a small leg of this network up and running maybe by 2010 or 2012," Perdon said. "The rest of the system would be up some years after that."

Maglev proponents have their sights set on $950 million in federal funds earmarked for a single magnetic levitation demonstration project. But so do at least a dozen other states. And California's congressional delegation has shown a repeated inability to bring home this kind of bacon. (Remember the multibillion-dollar superconducting supercollider that was awarded to Texas 10 years ago, and the federal earthquake center that was snagged by New York three years later?)

Even proponents privately admit that if they don't get this federal money to jump-start the program, it would be virtually dead.