RAIL PANEL SEEKS MORE STUDY; GROUP DECIDES TO DELAY URGING BALLOT MEASURE.

Byline: Michael Coit Staff Writer

Faced with alternative routes for inter-city travel in California, the state's High-Speed Rail Authority decided Wednesday to seek more environmental study rather than recommend a $25 billion bond issue on the November 2000 ballot to pay for the system.

Members of the state panel said the route recommended by the authority's staff has potential shortcomings, including bypassing the Antelope Valley and not stopping at Los Angeles International Airport, so more study is needed before a final alignment is selected.

``It's an important project. It would be unwise and imprudent to proceed full bore at this point,'' said Bill Leonard Sr., a former state senator and a panel member from San Bernardino. ``It's like any business you start - you do not go forward unless you doggone know it's going to work.''

The 10-member panel is overseeing development of a system of 200 mph trains that would whisk passengers up and down the state from the Bay Area to Southern California.

But until more is known about the project's viability, rail authority members said Wednesday, a bond measure to pay for the intrastate project should not be submitted to voters as initially planned for next year.

The public is unlikely to support a program that lacks more accurate cost estimates and is competing with other pressing state needs, commissioners said.

``To try to press for full funding at this time in the face of that does not seem reasonable,'' said James Mills, a member from Coronado.

Wednesday's move, at a public hearing in downtown Los Angeles, came as the rail authority completes its final recommendations. Following public hearings, the recommendations are expected to be submitted to state lawmakers and Gov. Gray Davis by late spring.

Although the election on the bond issue will be delayed, rail authority members said the project would still be on track to begin operating sometime after 2016.

Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster, said the rail authority took the necessary approach because even the best project will face a tough test with voters statewide.

``They're coming to realize that the voters are going to have to look very hard at approving it,'' Runner said.

Gaining support from state officials will depend on whether the alignment goes through enough heavily populated areas and attracts workers with long commutes, as well as travelers, Runner said.

``That would mean an alignment through the Antelope Valley, and it also gets back into the issue of airport use. Those all weigh into the thinking of the Los Angeles County delegation, which is a large one,'' he said.

``I think we will have to continue to convince them that rail should go where people are going to use it.''

Under intense lobbying from state and local officials, the rail authority decided this summer to consider four alternative corridors, including ones serving the Antelope Valley and LAX. Other alternatives would serve serve the East Bay and Orange County.

The environmental analysis, as well as some construction and engineering planning, would take two years and cost $25 million in state funding.

If the study confirms the promise of trains speeding upward of 200 mph from the Bay Area to Southern California, four more years of study would be needed before a final design and construction could begin.

Two separate but related studies will determine whether trains carried by a magnetic levitation propulsion system could be used on spokes of the high-speed rail system.

The rail authority and the Southern California Association of Governments received a $5 million federal railroad grant to consider the Maglev technology for a corridor connecting LAX and Riverside with stops at Union Station, the east San Gabriel Valley and Ontario Airport.