Better News Below Ground

Down in the hole, deep in the Earth, no one can hear the politicians scream. But that’s only because the equipment is so loud.

On the day when the MTA met a deadline to present a new subway-construction plan and code of conduct to federal officials, tunneling went on as usual under the Santa Monica Mountains in half-darkness and in a din.

Hour after hour, as board members have debated the fate of the underground excavation for the $5.9-billion rail project in their plush downtown headquarters, the dirty work of digging a tunnel connecting Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley has proceeded slowly and steadily.

Sometimes, things have even gone right on the troubled project. On Wednesday, for instance, the MTA proudly took reporters on a tour of a section of the hills that was expected to be so hard that it would require blasting with explosives. Instead, a 600-foot probe hole drilled through an active earthquake fault recently revealed that the ground there is soft enough to be dug by hand and truck-mounted drills, sparing residents overhead the possibility of noise and shaking, although there will still be blasting in other areas under the spine of the mountain.

Miners for contractor Traylor Bros./Frontier-Kemper are digging the tunnel seven feet wider than elsewhere in a 300-foot stretch of the quake zone, however, in case the fault slips someday. The theory, according to MTA tunneling consultant Z. Daniel Eisenstein, is that the extra space will give post-earthquake work crews some elbow room to realign the tracks.

Without blasting, though, the work is slow. Eisenstein said the passage is advancing north toward Studio City at just four feet a day as workers bore into the tunnel face with a three-foot-wide auger, then erect support ribs and shoot a thick coat of concrete liner on the newly mined section.

Other miners working their way south from Studio City progress in fits and starts, sometimes covering 100 feet a day behind the grinding force of a 300-foot tunnel-boring machine, but often getting nowhere at all, according to records. Work is hampered now, officials said, because the contractor’s muck-hauling elevator, which has broken three times in recent months, is being replaced after being shut down by state safety officials last week.

In Washington, meanwhile, there was also a nice surprise: A Federal Transit Administration spokesman said the agency had received the MTA’s paperwork on time, along with its board members’ solemn vows to treat one another and the staff with more courtesy.

The spokesman said it could take up to two weeks before federal financial and engineering analysts are able to determine whether the paperwork would suffice to restore the Clinton administration’s confidence in the MTA’s ability to spend federal rail-construction funds wisely.

County transit board Chairman Larry Zarian said the FTA’s regional administrators in San Francisco had signaled their tentative satisfaction with MTA plans to shift money and construction schedules to meet firm deadlines set long ago by federal funding guidelines.

But while tension over that deadline recedes, another looms. On Wednesday, the MTA board’s finance committee voted to snub a demand by the city of Los Angeles for a construction timetable on a still-pending project--an east-west subway across the San Fernando Valley. Last summer, the City Council told the MTA that it would give the agency $200 million it owes for recent subway construction only if the North Hollywood-to-Woodland Hills rail design milestones are met.

“We cannot make those commitments,” said Zarian. “It would not be prudent.”

The rejection of the city’s request must be adopted by the full MTA board before the agreement goes back to the city for further negotiation.