House Panel Approves $110 Million to Keep Metro Rail on Track : Transportation: Funding is less than what was requested by subway proponents but is the most earmarked for any city.

WASHINGTON —  A key House committee voted Wednesday to allocate $110 million for construction of the Los Angeles Metro Rail system next year--considerably less than the subway’s proponents had sought but more than enough to keep the project on track.

The funds are earmarked for completion of the second segment of Metro Rail as well as for engineering, acquisition of land and initial construction of lines that, as the project’s third segment, will extend to the San Fernando Valley, East Los Angeles and toward the Westside.

The House Appropriations Committee included the Metro Rail money in its $35-billion transportation spending bill for the 1992-93 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The Los Angeles funding represents more than one-sixth of the $640 million that the panel approved for construction and extension of all transit systems nationwide.

Nevertheless, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission had requested $175 million, and congressional Metro Rail advocates had expected $135 million or more. But they said that they ran into severe budget constraints that forced the panel to dramatically reduce funding for major transit projects everywhere.

“I was certainly disappointed that Los Angeles did not receive the requested amount,” said Appropriations Committee member Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles). “However, Los Angeles received the largest amount of any request and twice as much as the next city, which was St. Louis at $51 million.”

The transportation appropriation bill goes to the full House, which is expected to adopt the committee’s recommendation. The Senate is slated to pass its version of the spending measure later this month. The two bills will be negotiated by a conference committee of members from both chambers. Dixon said “the prospects are very good” that the Senate will approve $110 million for Metro Rail as well.

In any case, LACTC officials said that the lower-than-expected funding would not set back construction.

“The big construction effort here today is segment two of the Red Line,” said Ed McSpedon, president of the Rail Construction Corp., an LACTC subsidiary overseeing Metro Rail construction. “We’ll be able to keep that moving apace.”

But McSpedon said the allocation may be insufficient to allow accelerated construction of the third segment--which would have created more jobs and assisted the region’s economic recovery.

“We know how to move faster on segment three,” he said. “We know we could do more if we had more as well.”

The LACTC had hoped for enough money in 1992-93 to compensate for an unanticipated cut in the current fiscal year’s funding. Last year, the Federal Transit Administration, which oversees federal construction grants, reduced the $135 million earmarked by Congress for this year to $70 million.

The 1992-93 allocation includes $50 million to complete the second segment of the Metro Rail Red Line--a 6.7-mile stretch extending from Alvarado Street to Vermont Avenue and continuing west to Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue as well as north to Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

The other $60 million would be evenly divided among three new Red Line and Orange Line extensions considered Metro Rail’s third segment. These lines are scheduled to open by 2001.

The funds would be used to acquire real estate for all three legs, begin construction of an extension from Hollywood and Vine to North Hollywood, perform preliminary engineering and final design of a line from Wilshire and Western to Pico and San Vicente boulevards and begin preliminary engineering on a yet to be selected three-mile route from Union Station to East Los Angeles.