Transit Area Development Outlined : Planning: Policies foster construction of housing and businesses near rail and bus stations. Guidelines allow less building than some feared.

As Los Angeles enters its new era of subways and commuter trains, city government moved Thursday to encourage intensified housing and commercial development near transit stations while seeking to preserve adjacent neighborhoods of single-family homes.

By a unanimous vote, the Los Angeles Planning Commission adopted guidelines that would foster growth in the quarter-mile radius around many of the 52 rail stations expected to be built in the city during the next two decades, and around existing major bus-transfer spots.

Responding to protests from homeowner groups, the commission dropped plans that would have allowed much more construction within a half-mile radius of a station.

Con Howe, Los Angeles planning director, said the new Land Use-Transportation Policy is significant to the future urban landscape. “We ought to relate land development to the big investment in transit,” he said. “They should reinforce each other.”

His department’s report envisions what some transit centers could be like by 2010.

“These pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods are identified by compact development that provides for a full range of economic and social services, including housing, ground-floor retail, community and entertainment facilities, grocery stores and cafes. Moreover, these areas contain safe and clean environments with attractive settings for living and working,” the report forecasts.

The new policies, which will be presented to the City Council within a few months, do not entail zoning changes or master plans for specific locations. Instead, the commission approved six prototypes that vary by degree of density around the stations.

Those include possible extremely dense development at downtown Red Line stations such as the 7th Street stop, medium-scale retail and housing projects that might be allowed at so-called urban complexes such as the Wilshire/Western and Hollywood/Highland subway stops, and garages and retail shops that might be constructed at suburban Metro Link stations such as the one in Chatsworth.

More specific plans are being worked on by city planners and officials of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA hopes the new developments will boost ridership on the network of rail lines it is building or planning.

In a significant change, the guidelines approved Thursday declare that transit-oriented development must seek to “protect and preserve existing single-family neighborhoods.” The commission killed a proposal to allow two housing units on current single-family lots within a half mile of transit centers.

Representatives of several homeowner groups said they were pleased with those changes but still urged the commission to delay guideline approval until more specific plans are ready.

Barbara Fine, vice president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., complained the guidelines are “too fuzzy” about protection for single-family neighborhoods just outside the quarter-mile zone. She said it would illogical to move ahead without more details, but added: “I guess logic doesn’t have much to do with what the city does these days.”

Bill Christopher, coordinator of People for Livable and Active Neighborhoods in Los Angeles, said that some of the zoning incentives suggested for the transit centers might backfire and worsen automobile traffic around the city. Commuters who drive to the stations from outside the neighborhood might be forced to seek parking on residential streets, clogging those areas with cars, Christopher said.

The debate over the final plans for stations and street corners will continue. Officials said it could take up to two years to hammer out the zoning for the first series of transit centers.