Officials planning a multibillion-dollar, 800-mile high-speed rail were met with contention at a special study session of the Santa Clarita City Council on Tuesday night.

The proposed train would travel west from the Palmdale station and roughly follow Highway 14 south to the Newhall Pass, extending to a Los Angeles station.

No Santa Clarita station is planned, but Councilwoman Marsha McLean had more concerns than the lack of a local stop.

“Why not a system that is proven to have less impact on the community, that is more environmentally friendly, that is much easier to maintain?” McLean asked. “They need to change their mindset. I don’t get why we’re sticking with steel-on-steel technology that’s 60 or 80 years old.”

Valerie Martinez, Southern California communications director for the California High Speed Rail Authority, said the train isn’t supposed to reinvent the wheel.

“It needs to be able to fit the California system with existing infrastructure,” she said. “It’s augmenting, filling a gap between cars and the air. There is no  middle transportation that will shrink California like the rail will.”

If completed, the high-speed train would deliver Sacramento passengers to Los Angeles, and vice-versa, in under three hours. The study session was a chance for local leaders to voice their input on the proposed plan.

Councilman Frank Ferry noted that Palmdale residents can get to Los Angeles Union Station in 25 minutes, which could relieve commuter traffic on Highway 14.

The California High Speed Rail Authority was established after Proposition 1A was passed in 2008, making almost $10 billion in bond money available to pay for the 800-mile high-speed train that would extend from Sacramento to Los Angeles. High-speed rail officials also secured $2.5 billion from the federal stimulus package. The 520-mile first phase of the project will cost around $45 billion.

The council expressed concern that the rail would have negative impacts on residents.

McLean said she had serious concerns on spending tens of billions of dollars on outdated technology. McLean said she didn’t understand why the high-speed rail authority didn’t at least study other transportation technologies, like the Maglev. European and Japanese officials are currently testing “magnetic levitation” technology.

Mayor Laurene Weste agreed. She said Santa Clarita would be shouldering the burden, with a rail line that extends from Palmdale south to the San Fernando Valley by running alongside Highway 14, but that doesn’t stop in Santa Clarita.

High-speed rail authority officials said they’d lessened the impact. Most of the rail line passing by Santa Clarita will be underground.

“Why not tunnel it all the way through?” Weste asked.

Authority officials replied that they’d be happy to do so — if Santa Clarita was willing to pay the added cost.

High-speed rail authority officials expect a draft environmental report to be released in the spring of 2011, and a final environmental report to be completed by that fall.