Session Closed to Public : Residents Plan 2nd Look at Rail Options

San Fernando Valley homeowner leaders, most of whom have opposed all of the mass transit proposals for the Valley, have decided to take a second look at the question of whether to build a local rail system.

Leaders of 17 homeowner organizations are to meet today for what was termed a “fact-finding session on rail” by Richard H. Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

Scheduled to address the leaders are rail planners from the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which is studying two possible cross-Valley rail routes, both of which would terminate at Warner Center.

The routes are the south shoulder of the Ventura Freeway and Southern Pacific railroad’s Burbank branch, a little-used freight right of way that crosses the Valley parallel to Chandler and Victory boulevards.

Both would connect to the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro Rail subway--the freeway route at Universal City and the Chandler-Victory line in North Hollywood.

Preliminary Study

The commission, which is building a countywide rail network, is scheduled to release a preliminary study of the two routes in October. In March, it plans to choose a route and determine if the line should be a Metro Rail extension or a light-rail trolley, which probably would be built at ground-level.

Also invited to today’s session, which is closed to the public, are state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana) and Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, co-authors of a plan to extend Metro Rail partly underground from North Hollywood to the Sepulveda Basin. In the basin, passengers would transfer to buses to Warner Center.

Robbins has incorporated the plan into a bill that has picked up bipartisan support among Valley representatives in the Legislature.

The bill would prohibit the county Transportation Commission from building any line in the Valley that is not at least partly underground in residential areas, thereby meeting one of the chief complaints of homeowner leaders.

Although the legislation would not force the commission to build a Valley line, commissioners have conceded that the Valley is the next likely candidate for such a line.

Robbins’ bill has been approved by two Assembly committees and is expected to be voted on in the full Assembly and Senate next week.

Teri Burns, Robbins’ legislative aide in Sacramento, said Friday that she is optimistic that the bill will be approved by both chambers “but the governor is anybody’s guess.”

Last year, Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed a Robbins bill that the Tarzana Democrat said would have given the Valley control over design of a line.

Although the Robbins-Braude plan has drawn widespread support, most homeowner leaders have remained uncommitted. Close said he and fellow leaders “still want to have answers about where stations would be built, where passengers would park and whether stations will be magnets for intense development.”