COLUMN ONE : Is New Green Line a Road to Nowhere? : The rail line opens today, touted as an investment in the future. But budget woes, infighting and bypassing of LAX have already given it a bumpy ride.

Amid the cacophony of the Hollywood Park trumpeter, Beach Boys music and politicians’ grandiose speeches, a sparkling new Green Line train will roll out of an artsy station this morning for its first run across southern Los Angeles County, the debut of another spoke in the region’s expanding rail network.

But where will it go?

It won’t go to a massive employment center in El Segundo because thousands of aerospace jobs have vanished in recent years.

It won’t go to a new transportation hub in Norwalk and Santa Fe Springs that serves commuters between Orange County and Downtown Los Angeles.

And, most glaringly, it won’t go to Los Angeles International Airport.

“They’re going to open this thing with great fanfare--and I’m delighted to have it open--but I don’t believe there is going to be anyone to ride it because it doesn’t go anywhere,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

The story of the Green Line is a tale of changing realities here and around the world, influences that range from the recession, the end of the Cold War and the “Buy America” frenzy of the early ‘90s to parochial politics and turf wars among local agencies.

And the line--dubbed by critics as the train to nowhere--stands as another cautionary tale of the hazards of building mega-transportation projects amid such rapidly shifting events.

The line cost almost $1 billion (about $950 million), more than triple the original estimate. It is opening more than a year later than promised. It is expected to carry an estimated 10,000 passengers a day--a tenth of original projections and fewer than ride Los Angeles’ short subway line or the Disneyland monorail.

While boosters promised that the line would become the nation’s first driverless system, it won’t be, at least not right away--and perhaps never--because of costs and labor union opposition.

The Green Line is the first rail line built on a Los Angeles freeway--the Century--since the Red Car tracks were ripped up from the center of the Hollywood Freeway in the Cahuenga Pass in the early 1950s. The 20-mile Green Line increases to 46 miles the county’s once-ambitious but now scaled-down rail network for the 21st Century.

And it actually does go somewhere. It runs from Norwalk to El Segundo, and then leaves the freeway to become a Chicago-style elevated train ending just inside Redondo Beach.

Officials say the line should be viewed as an investment in the future--one that will gain stature and riders as other rail segments come on line and America’s No. 1 car-loving town becomes ever more gridlocked.

“In 50 years, let’s talk about whether the Green Line was a good idea,” said Jacki Bacharach, a member of the now-defunct Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which planned the line. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

Why Not to LAX?

As transit officials stage a gala opening today, one question they prefer not to hear is why doesn’t the line go to Los Angeles International Airport.

The line was originally built to serve commuters first, say those involved in the planning a decade ago.

“It wasn’t like we didn’t notice the airport was there,” Bacharach said.

Planners figured there was greater need for a commuter line, serving the then-burgeoning aerospace and high-tech center in El Segundo. They always envisioned a spur going to LAX, Bacharach said, but they didn’t think commuters would use the line if they had to go through the airport on the way to work.

When planners later tried to extend the line to LAX, airport and transportation officials could not agree on how to do it--even though then-Mayor Tom Bradley wielded clout with both agencies. It did not help that transit officials representing other parts of the county were more interested in bringing lines to their neighborhoods. Finally, money ran out.

“It surprises me that it doesn’t go to the airport,” said Robert Paaswell, director of the University Transportation Research Center at City College of New York. “There’s a big opportunity that’s been missed here.”

State Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, was more blunt. “It’s scandalous,” he said.

Even some MTA board members shake their heads. “It’s kind of like having an elephant with no tail and no trunk,” said James Cragin, a Gardena city councilman and MTA board member. He, nonetheless, believes the line was a good idea. “In time, it will be a success.”

Rail riders can get to the airport from the Civic Center, but only by transferring three times: from the Downtown subway to the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach Blue Line, then to the Green Line and finally to an airport shuttle bus--not an easy feat for anyone with more luggage than a briefcase.

Officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority say the line will draw riders over time.

“Build it, and they will come” said MTA construction chief Stanley Phernambucq. “I remember them saying, ‘Why the hell would we put a road to dad-gum Arizona?’ ” Phernambucq said, recalling the building of the transcontinental highway. “It’s just a damn desert. ‘Who would want to go to Arizona?’ . . . This is an investment in the future.”

The line--funded largely by a pair of half-cent sales tax increases approved by county voters in 1980 and 1990--is the third segment of a planned 95-mile rail system to be put into service in Los Angeles County over the next 20 years.

The Green Line connects to the Blue Line, which hooks up with the Downtown subway. The subway is scheduled to open to Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue late next year and eventually run through Hollywood, into the San Fernando Valley and to the Eastside and Westside. A trolley line from Downtown to Pasadena also is under construction.

Today’s opening will begin with trains leaving Redondo Beach at 9:51 a.m. and Norwalk at 10:21 a.m. with VIPs aboard. They will stop at each of the 14 stations for a ceremony, arriving at the Imperial Highway and Wilmington Avenue station for the 10 a.m. grand finale. Trains will open to the public at noon.

The MTA is offering free rides for the first weekend. A 25-cent fare will be offered until Sept. 1, when the regular $1.35 fare will take effect (90 cents with a token).

Trains will run every day from about 4 a.m. to about 11 p.m.--every 7 1/2 minutes during weekday rush hours (pared down from the promise of every two minutes) and every 12 minutes at other times.

Noise, Artwork and the Yen

The Green Line has undergone a bumpy journey.

* It was the subject of an international political dispute when local transit officials awarded--and then canceled--a contract with Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. for the train cars during the “Buy America” frenzy, or what some characterized as Japan-bashing. In the end, the MTA bought the cars from Sumitomo for millions of dollars more than the original deal.

* Early brochures promised “the first fully automated rail rapid transit line in the United States.” But the trains will have drivers at the controls, even though the MTA spent more than $60 million for driverless technology. The chief advocate of the driverless trains was former Mayor Bradley, who touted them as a state-of-the-art showpiece for the region’s new transit system. But the effort faded when Bradley retired two years ago.

* The stations on the freeway are noisy. The 85-decibel average sound level is equivalent to the sound of some older airplanes on takeoff. MTA engineers say the noise is no louder than a bus stop near an overpass. For the speaker system, the agency has used a technology developed for aircraft carrier flight decks.

* Officials boast that the Green Line, which is separated from street traffic, is safer than other lines, such as the Blue Line, where 26 people have been killed on the tracks in its five years.

Trains are separated from freeway traffic by concrete barriers and a fence. To warn operators of climbers, the fence is equipped with electronic intrusion detectors. Sensors should detect anybody or anything that falls on the tracks.

Stations feature colorful artwork. A large polychromatic bee sculpture decorates the station at Norwalk, which was once known by Sejat Indians as the “Place of Bees.” And a 26-foot wire-mesh hand poised to launch a paper airplane stands at a station in El Segundo.

* Some critics, citing low ridership estimates, have suggested that the Green Line sit idle.

The plaintiffs in a court case seeking increased funding for the bus system complained that the transit agency will spend $21 million a year to shuttle 10,000 passengers a day on the Green Line, a taxpayer subsidy of $7.03 per ride. In contrast, the MTA will spend $6 million a year to move 40,000 passengers a day on the most crowded bus line, the Vermont Avenue line--a subsidy of $1.15 per ride. As ridership on the Green Line increases, the subsidy will decline, MTA spokeswoman Andrea Greene said, adding, “We build for the future.”

* Some of the Green Line’s inflated costs could have been avoided, officials concede. The MTA estimates that it spent an extra $2.1 million because, at the request of Sumitomo Corp., about 37% of the car payments under the 1992 contract were to be made in yen.

It was essentially a gamble that the dollar would hold against the yen, but the MTA bet wrong. The dollar has plummeted. Transit officials soon realized this and, in early 1993, authorized a “hedging” arrangement designed to effectively reduce or eliminate the exchange loss. But that move was not implemented for months because currency traders suggested that the dollar would rebound against the yen, records show. It didn’t.

The Early Years

The line was born out of the 1981 court decree that ended a decade of litigation over the then-proposed Century Freeway.

The decree provided for construction of a transit way down the freeway’s center, but left it to local officials to decide what kind of system should be built.

The county Transportation Commission in 1984 chose light rail, even though its staff said a busway would serve an equal number of riders and cost millions of dollars less. But the commissioners decided that light rail would fit better with the other rail lines planned for the region.

A major consideration was that transit officials would not have to buy up much land for the route. The MTA spent about $718 million building the line, and Caltrans spent an additional $242 million designing and building the stations and park-and-ride lots.

The reasons for the line not going to the airport are complex.

The line was never designed to go directly into LAX. Plans called for the line to go to airport parking lot C, where passengers would transfer to a small automated train called a people mover that would connect to the terminals. The Green Line would continue on to Westchester and eventually Marina del Rey.

The plan ran into trouble with the Federal Aviation Administration, which expressed concern that the train’s lights could distract pilots, its electric-power system could disrupt electronic navigation aids and its overhead wires, near the ends of two runways, could endanger low-flying aircraft in an emergency.

Planners came up with an alignment that resolved the FAA’s concerns, according to airport officials.

But in 1992, transportation planners dropped the extension to parking lot C, citing budget troubles.

More recent, the extension also was cut out of the MTA’s 20-year plan.

That is not to say the line will never reach the airport.

City officials are studying a people mover as part of a new airport master plan. For two years now, each departing airport passenger has paid $3 into a fund for airport projects, including construction of a people mover.

Los Angeles is not alone in having a rail system that stops short of the airport. Passengers can ride a train to the airport in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., but not New York or San Francisco. Officials in San Francisco, however, have been working on a plan to extend BART to the airport.

Some transit planners privately blame airport officials for the Green Line not reaching LAX. They suggest that airport officials resisted public transit because they wanted to protect airport parking revenues.

Airport officials deny that.

In the end, alignment disputes, lack of communication and financial troubles doomed hopes for an airport extension, leaving behind a small, unfinished stub that points toward the airport hanging from the Century Freeway at Aviation Boulevard.

Richard Stanger, who served as director of rail planning for the county Transportation Commission, said that planners never expected many airport travelers to use the Green Line anyway.

“You can’t be everything to all markets,” he said.

Caltrans has been building bus and car-pool lanes on the Harbor and Century freeways, allowing airport travelers to travel by bus or car-pool between Downtown and LAX without having to stop at train stations.

“In retrospect, had we known 15 years ago what we know now, we probably would have done things differently,” said Jack Graham, director of airport planning.

Officials Say Ridership Will Rise

“The building of the Green Line is a major step forward,” said MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin E. White. “The fact that it doesn’t tie in at the moment to the airport doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good idea.”

Transit officials say they have no idea how many people will ride the line. The 10,000 riders a day is a guess, they say.

Over time, transit officials say, ridership will build--especially when motorists trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic see trains whizzing by at 55 m.p.h.

Their optimism is based on ridership on the Blue Line, which has doubled over its five years, from 19,000 riders a day to 39,000.

Disneyland plans to run shuttle buses for a yet-to-be-determined charge from the Norwalk station. A shuttle also will ferry passengers the one mile between the Norwalk Green Line station and the Norwalk-Santa Fe Springs Metrolink station.

And there will be a 25-cent shuttle bus to Hollywood Park from the Crenshaw Boulevard station--which could turn the Green Line into the racetrack express.

“Some people will question whether it was a wise investment,” said Don Camph, executive director of the El Segundo Employers Assn., which lobbied hard to get the line built.

“When you open a new freeway and there is no traffic on it, everybody says it’s great. Nobody questions whether it was worth spending a billion dollars. But when you open the rail line and initial ridership is not what everybody wishes, everybody says that’s terrible.”

“I’m quite excited,” said Sandy Richardson, who drives alone from Seal Beach to her job at TRW in Redondo Beach. “I would welcome the opportunity to do something to get me out of the car and help the environment. The fact that it stops at my front door at work is absolutely wonderful.”

Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.