Officials Support High-Speed Rail Plan : Transportation: The ‘21st-Century technology’ would provide a link from LAX to Palmdale Airport.

A coalition of public officials--including Mayor Tom Bradley and Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar)--voiced their support Wednesday for a proposed high-speed magnetic-levitation train that would connect Los Angeles International Airport and Palmdale Airport.

At a press conference atop a Sherman Oaks parking structure overlooking the San Diego Freeway, Katz said the 69-mile line, which would be built with private funds, would reduce traffic and smog.

“All of us in Los Angeles view this 21st-Century technology as a solution to our problems today,” he said.

The line--which faces formidable economic, political and technological hurdles--would carry trains at up to 100 m.p.h. on elevated tracks along the San Diego, Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways. Trains would ride on an electromagnetic field and would not touch the tracks. Magnetic-levitation trains are smoother, quieter and cleaner than conventional rail systems.

The proposal is one of eight that the state Department of Transportation will evaluate in the next two months under a new program mandated by the state Legislature in which firms are authorized to build projects in return for free use of state rights of way. The state would own the projects, but the firms building them would lease the facilities for up to 35 years and keep all tolls or fares.

The public officials endorsed the projects without knowing many of the details, such as costs, fares and specific routes, which were not made public by the would-be builders.

“What people are supporting right now is the concept,” said Brad Rosenheim, a transportation consultant at Emerson & Associates, a Glendale consulting firm.

The first phase of the project--a 36-mile line between LAX and Santa Clarita--could be operational as early as 1996, said Daniel T. Townsend, vice president of DMJM, a Los Angeles-based engineering firm that is part of the private consortium proposing the line.

After a two-year study of the proposed line, Townsend estimated that construction would take about four years, adding that the technology currently exists to build the line that would serve commuters, airport-bound travelers and gamblers headed for Las Vegas.

He said High Speed Surface Transport Corp., another partner in the consortium, is building a similar system in Osaka, Japan, and a train has been in operation at a Yokohama amusement park for the last decade.

Although Townsend declined to reveal anticipated costs, Rosenheim said similar projects cost between $30 million and $40 million per mile, putting the price of an LAX-Palmdale line at more than $2 billion.

Los Angeles airport commissioners have voiced support for the proposal as a way of increasing traffic at the city’s planned Palmdale Airport to relieve overcrowding at LAX. The city has owned thousands of acres in the Antelope Valley since 1967 and has long sought a rail line to transport passengers to what officials hope will become a major airport.

City officials also hope that the line would salvage plans to make Los Angeles part of a proposed 265-mile magnetic-levitation line between Las Vegas and Anaheim, a separate proposal that is under review by the Nevada and California state governments. The proposed route for that line passes through Palmdale, where the two lines could meet and passengers could change trains.

Preliminary plans call for the southern terminus of the LAX-Palmdale line to be near parking Lot C at LAX, where it would intersect the Norwalk-El Segundo Light Rail line. From there, elevated tracks would follow the path of the San Diego Freeway north into the San Fernando Valley.

The proposal calls for stops in the Valley at most freeway interchanges, some major street intersections and proposed mass transit centers, Townsend said.

The northern terminus of the first phase is proposed for the Newhall area, near the Antelope Valley Freeway. Phase 2 of the project would follow the Antelope Valley Freeway to Palmdale Airport. No construction date was given.