Proponents of Metro Rail Subway Play Down Delay : Mass transit: Backers of a rival proposal to build a monorail or magnetic-levitation line seize on the schedule as evidence their plan is better.

Supporters of a plan to extend the Metro Rail subway across the San Fernando Valley sought Thursday to downplay the announcement of a long delay in completing the final leg to Warner Center.

“This is disappointing but not fatal to our cause,” said state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana), a leader of the Metro Rail coalition.

However, backers of a rival proposal to build a monorail or magnetic-levitation line along the Ventura Freeway seized on the delay as evidence that their plan would better deal with the Valley’s traffic woes.

“This line will never be finished, so we should not start it,” said Nikolas Patsaouras, a monorail proponent who heads the Southern California Rapid Transit District board of directors.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County Transportation Commission officials mounted an effort to assure Valley leaders that they were not being singled out, citing as evidence projects from other areas that have also been postponed.

Neil Peterson, commission executive director, also said that the expected completion date for the east-west Valley line is actually 2024, not 2020 as indicated in documents released by the commission Wednesday.

The postponement of the eight-mile segment of subway from Van Nuys to Warner Center was contained in the final draft of a 30-year rail and highway construction schedule released by the commission staff Wednesday.

Earlier drafts of the plan released in December and February showed the West Valley rail segment completed at various times between 2008 and 2019, depending upon income projections and the priority assigned to the dozen or more rail projects under consideration in the county.

The final draft, which is expected to be debated by the 11-member commission for several months before action is taken, contains no significant slippage from earlier completion dates suggested for other Valley rail and highway projects.

The eight-mile link of Metro Rail from Hollywood to Lankershim and Chandler boulevards in North Hollywood and the six-mile leg from there to the San Diego Freeway would be completed in 2000.

And two commuter rail lines--from downtown to Moorpark and downtown to Santa Clarita--that will use the Southern Pacific railroad’s main lines through the Valley are to be operating by October, 1992, according to the 30-year plan.

However, the postponement of the Valley’s final rail leg could rekindle the lengthy debate over what kind of east-west line to build in the Valley and where to build it.

“I think this delay might make people start to wonder about supporting a Metro Rail extension,” said Ron Palmer, a Litton Industries spokesman in Warner Center and business representative on the pro-Metro Rail coalition put together by Robbins and Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude.

Palmer said he has heard several other business representatives “express serious doubts” about continuing their membership in the coalition but said he knew of no one ready to desert the group.

Completion in 2024 is “obviously too late, because the need is now,” said Roger Stanard, a Warner Center attorney who often speaks for the Valley business community on transportation issues.

“But no other plan will work,” he added, “because there isn’t enough money to build a monorail or mag-lev line all the way to Warner Center either.”

Stanard predicted that Valley rail advocates would “strongly petition the commission to move the date up.”

New cost estimates released by the commission Thursday indicate that the proposed 16.2-mile monorail or magnetic-levitation line from Universal City to Warner Center would cost $2.2 billion.

A 14-mile subway extension from North Hollywood to Warner Center would cost $3 billion, and the first six miles of that line--from North Hollywood to the San Diego Freeway--would cost $1.3 billion.

The subway extension would be built in the Southern Pacific right of way that crosses the Valley parallel to Chandler and Victory boulevards and Oxnard Street.