Effort Begun to Derail Pact for Driverless Trains : Green Line: Katz calls for starting the project over because of questions about costs and contractors. The transit board head agrees, but key support seems lacking.

A state assemblyman and the chairman of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission agreed Friday to try to scrap a highly controversial contract with a foreign firm to build a driverless transit line from Norwalk to El Segundo.

But the proposal apparently lacks enough support among the commission’s board members.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), while questioning LACTC Chairman Ray Grabinski at an Assembly Transportation Committee hearing on the innovative but controversial Metro Green Line, said that so many questions have been raised about costs and contractors that it is time to start over.

“I’d like to see the contract stopped,” he said. “It may cost some dollars today, but it will save us more in the long run, and it will restore public confidence” in the commission and its nascent rail transit system.

Grabinski, who opposes driverless cars because of their high cost, agreed and said he would urge the commission at its Jan. 22 meeting to start the process anew.

The commission will be asked to rethink two issues. One is whether the Green Line should use driverless cars, which will cost $97 million more than conventional trolleys. The other is whether those cars should be built by Japanese-owned Sumitomo Corp. of America, which submitted a higher bid than an American competitor but was awarded the contract because of superior experience.

Both Katz and Grabinski said some commission members are rethinking their positions on the Green Line in light of the public uproar over their December selection of Sumitomo, when local unemployment was soaring.

“There are turning points all the time in this kind of process,” Grabinski said. “This (concern over the selection of a foreign contractor) is a turning point.”

Katz, a candidate for mayor, said: “Even the mayor (Tom Bradley, an ardent advocate of driverless trains) has to respond to a public outcry. Just because (LACTC members) made a bad decision in 1988 doesn’t mean they have to stay with that decision in 1992.”

The LACTC decided in 1988 to put driverless cars on the Green Line. Because of technical difficulties and cost overruns, the board has affirmed that decision three times since then, most recently last month.

Whether it will reverse itself seems unlikely, based on a survey Friday of the 11 LACTC board members. That survey, by The Times, did not find a decisive shift in support for driverless trains or for Sumitomo. Driverless technology was approved by the board last month 7 to 4. Sumitomo was approved 7 to 3 with one abstention.

Some board members Friday did say they will reconsider Green Line issues in light of public concerns about foreign contractors, but none said the uproar had changed their minds.

“Certainly, public opinion has always been very important to Mr. Hahn, and he is trying to respond to it,” said Mas Fukai, named to the LACTC board by Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. But he declined to commit to anything until Hahn consulted LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson.

Don Knabe, representing the seat held by Supervisor Deane Dana, said: “We’re still pretty firm in our support of automation.”

“I’m not some automaton who said I made this decision in 19-whatever and I’m never going to change my mind,” said LACTC board member Jacki Bacharach, mayor pro tem of Rancho Palos Verdes. “But . . . until I hear new information, I have no reason to change my mind.”

Bradley, continuing his aggressive posture on this issue, even went on the attack against Grabinski and Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose LACTC representative has been the leading opponent of driverless technology.

“The mayor wishes Gloria Molina, Ray Grabinski and others who voted to send American jobs to Japan would stop trying to obscure their vote by debating the issue of automation,” said Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler.

Bradley says he supports driverless cars because he believes they are the technology of the future and because the more efficient service that they seemed to offer was used to woo political and financial support from cities and companies located along the line.

Grabinski, Molina and others oppose driverless cars because they will cost more to build than they will likely save in reduced operating costs and because it is uncertain that they will be able to operate faster or more often than manually operated cars.

Once they lost the fight against automation, Grabinski and Molina joined the majority in selecting Sumitomo to build the cars. They said they did this because they agreed with the staff’s opinion that Sumitomo was more experienced, and therefore more likely to complete the system on schedule and on budget.

Bradley was among the minority that ignored the staff’s suggestion and opposed the selection of Sumitomo because its American competitor, Morrison Knudsen, submitted a bid that was about 4% lower in price and promised to use mostly American-made components.

The controversy is further clouded because the most technically complex part of the system, computerized train controls that let the trains operate without drivers, is being developed by Union Switch & Signal Co. of Pennsylvania.

Scrapping the system as planned would deny that American company the opportunity to develop driverless technology, with which it could compete with French and Canadian manufacturers that already market such automation.

FO, METRO RAIL: State Assemblyman Richard Katz, above, and the chairman of the Los Angeles Transportation Commission agreed to try to scrap a highly controversial contract with a foreign firm to build a driverless transit line from Norwalk to El Segundo.