The Future of Transportation : OCTD Chief Looks Beyond Buses to Ease Transit Crunch

James Reichert presides over a $111-million empire from a modest office in the Orange County Transit District building in Garden Grove.

Most people know the transit district’s oval logo from the hundreds of buses the district operates in Orange County. But over the years, under Reichert, OCTD has branched out into some non-traditional activities for a mass transit system: Running a computerized ride-sharing network, helping to organize van pools for commuters and even building commuter lanes on the freeways.

Reichert joined the district in 1973--shortly after the first buses began running--and was named general manager, the post he holds now, in 1978.

But these are troubled times for transportation in Orange County: Freeways are choked, streets are clogged and little money is available to fix the problems.

More roads aren’t the answer, most experts agree. Traffic tends to expand to fill them again shortly after they’re built. So the kind of alternatives OCTD is promoting will probably figure prominently in the way county residents get to work in the future.

Changing the way people commute would probably have been a long, slow process had not the South Coast Air Quality Management District not passed Regulation 15 last year. The regulation--designed to clear up the Los Angeles area’s dirty air--requires every employer of more than 100 people to come up with incentives to get employees to use ride-sharing and other alternatives to driving to work solo. The goal is to raise the average from the present 1.1 commuters per car to 1.5, which would get thousands of cars off the roads.

In this interview, Reichert--a native of the Chicago area who now lives in Villa Park--talks with staff writer Michael Flagg about the traffic mess, Regulation 15 and the future of transportation in the county.

Q. How do you run buses efficiently in a county as sprawling and suburban as this one?

A. If you look at what’s happening in the county now, it’s not so much sprawl as it is high-rise development. Right now our buses are probably carrying between 1% to 2% of the commuters, but in certain business activity centers we’re getting a larger percentage.

Right now in downtown Santa Ana, for instance, we’re probably carrying between 10% and 15% of the riders in the area. Over a period of time, these activity centers will get more dense. At South Coast Metro (in Costa Mesa), for instance, as development takes place there, it’s going to be more difficult to have one person per car come into the area. The streets won’t be able to accommodate it. If people want to get into the area they’ll have to use some other means.

Q. Has bus ridership reached a plateau or are you still growing fairly regularly?

A. We look for pretty slow growth over a long period of time, because when you look at the economy of the county you’re talking about a few percentage points of growth each year. As population grows and there’s more jobs, there’s a corresponding increase in ridership. As long as the economy is healthy, we’ll grow.

Q. Three-quarters of your riders don’t own cars. That statistic makes it pretty clear people wouldn’t ride buses if they didn’t have to. How do you get the people who own cars to ride the bus?

A.. Convenience and service. Another statistic is that 60% of our riders are taking the bus to work. If we can tie the service into the job locations--where the businesses are--we can increase ridership, especially now that people are having trouble getting workers.

Q. The transit district has stockpiled a lot of money. Do you have some definite plans for it?

A.. We’re going to use that for transit lanes. We realized we have to put in some kind of traffic system with a higher capacity. Back in 1984, we thought that would be a rail system, but it didn’t get approved at the polls. After that, we thought that if we’re going to move people around the county efficiently we’re going to have to have some kind of system, and we came up with transit ways. A transit way, you might say, is a high-grade commuter lane. It has its own barrier separating it from the rest of the freeway lanes and has its own off- and on-ramps. To access that you have to have two or more people in a car or a van pool or a bus. That provides additional carrying capacity for the existing freeways. We’re going to build them alongside the current lanes, because if we took away a lane we’d be shot.

Q. How much is that going to cost?

A.. Right now we’re talking about 19 miles of transit ways, and that’s tied with about 50 miles of commuter lanes like the one you see on the 55 Freeway at the present time. Our 19-mile system will probably cost about $350 million. Right now we’ve identified in our reserve about $200 million for that, so we’ll be looking for another $150 million somewhere along the line.

Q. Where will that additional money come from?

A. We’re hoping it will be a combination of some additional state money and some additional federal money. And then with what’s taking place right now in the state, we’re talking about an additional statewide gas tax and maybe at some point an additional sales tax here in the county.

Q. But both of those are a long way from reality now. What’s the chance of voters approving either?

A.. As things get worked out, as the compromises get worked out in Sacramento, a proposal for a gas tax might appear on the ballot by this November. I think at some point they’re going to have to do something statewide, and also something strictly from a countywide standpoint, because the main problem we have now in transportation in the county is a lack of funds.

When you look at some of the surveys, it’s been something like 50-50 in terms of the voters passing it. What we need to do is a better job of informing the public what the problems are and assuring them there is not enough money around to solve all the things we want to solve.

We might have to go to county voters and say: “Would you vote for a quarter-cent sales tax in order to add, for instance, two additional lanes to the Santa Ana Freeway between point A and point B? Yes or no?”

That way they know exactly what they would be paying for. I think you could get voters to go along with you.

Q. But if that money is used just for roads, won’t they fill up with more traffic shortly after they’re built?

A.. That’s right, when we’re talking about one person per car. That’s the disaster in this county, that there’s just not enough space or money to build all the roads we need. That’s why we need to go to some kind of higher capacity system like a transit way or commuter lane, where you build a single lane and you’re carrying a lot more people on that lane. It’s like adding three or four general-purpose lanes.

Q. So conversely, would you favor taking over a couple of lanes on the freeways for buses, car pools and the like? Wouldn’t that be the most cost-efficient way of doing it?

A.. I think you need both. What we’re doing on the Santa Ana Freeway now, there’ll be two additional lanes: One will be a general purpose lane and the other one will be for car pools and van pools and buses. Eventually we can see a countywide system of roughly 140 miles of commuter lanes and transit ways.

It would be difficult to add a lane on the Garden Grove Freeway because there’s not enough space. But most of the other freeways have enough space to have an additional car-pool or van-pool lane. If you could do that on every freeway, it’s like adding three or four more general purpose lanes.

Q. Where will the first transit way be?

A.. On the Santa Ana Freeway. But we’re talking about a system in the central part of the county, on the 5, the 55 and the 57, that will then tie into commuter lanes on the 55 and the commuter lanes that are being built right now on the 405. And eventually they’ll run up the 57 and the 91, and even extend on the Santa Ana Freeway to pick up the San Joaquin and Foothill freeways.

Q. So eventually you’ll be able to take these things all over the county?

A. Yes. We get a lot of traffic now from San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and if you’ve been on the 91 Freeway lately you know it’s a disaster. What you can do, getting on the 91 in a car pool, is come down the 55 or over to the 57, and then come onto the Santa Ana Freeway, taking the interchanges and everything all on a transit way or a commuter lane. They’re going to have their own on- and off-ramps and direct access to business activity centers, so you won’t have the weaving back and forth that you see on commuter lanes right now.

Q. Isn’t that one reason the commuter lane seems so unpopular now on the 55 Freeway?

A. I really think it’s a small group that doesn’t like it. In a lot of cases I’ve gone out and explained a little bit about why you have to have them, and people listen. Look, some people are probably going to have to change their life style a little bit to use them.

But we find when people understand what we’re trying to do with the lanes, and they learn they can save themselves maybe half an hour going back and forth to work, then that’s something they want. If you talk to them about getting in a car or van pool to save money, it doesn’t mean anything to them, because money doesn’t really do it. But when you talk about saving time, that’s a factor that changes their minds.

Q. Why were commuter lanes so unpopular in Los Angeles in the 1970s?

A. The reason that it didn’t work in L.A. was that they took a lane away. The Santa Monica Freeway--the old diamond lane--took away a lane from existing traffic. And that’s what made people angry. Now, if they had added a lane, then I think it probably would have gone over. But don’t take their freeway lanes away--you’ll get tarred and feathered.

Q. Even if it would save time and make sense?

A. It would, but see there’s such a demand out there. I call this John Wayne country, every person has a gun, a horse and one person per car. If you take that away, you get an uprising.

Q. Do you think some sort of rail system will come eventually?

A.. I think it probably will, because what you’re seeing are these activity centers springing up, like the airport area, South Coast Metro area, up through Santa Ana into Anaheim with Disneyland and the Convention Center. You’re talking about some pretty major development. You can look at that as the spine, the central part of the county. We’re trying to provide access from the freeways, but at some point I don’t think even that will be able to handle it. We’re going to need some kind of higher carrying capacity, and the best thing for that will be some kind of elevated light rail system to tie those activity centers together.

Q. There’s a proposal to consolidate the various transportation agencies in the county, and you’ve been lukewarm about it publicly. Why?

A.. I am not against consolidation. The thing I’m trying to point out is: What are we consolidating for? What I’m trying to do is get people talking about this in order to have a better idea of what they’re trying to solve.

I’ve been accused of trying to protect an empire over here. But there’s no empire to protect. There’s a bus system and a commuter network, and I think they’ll always be entities.

If the general perception of consolidation is that it will solve all of the traffic problems, then in a couple of years people are going to look around and say, “Nothing has changed.” Because the main problem is that we need more money, and consolidation isn’t going to give us more money. At some point we’re going to have to ask the voter out there for some additional funds to build the facilities we need, and we need the credibility with the taxpayers that comes from being forthright and honest with them about what are the real issues.

Q. Is traffic going to get a lot worse before it gets better?

A. With the growth in jobs and population, and the increased demand, yes, I’m afraid so. One reason is that the solution’s got to be a lot of different answers: Buses, car pools, van pools, telecommuting, alternate work hours, transit ways, commuter lanes, skateboarding, bicycling, jogging, you name it. It’s going to take all those and more. We’re going to be barely able to keep our heads above water.

Q. Isn’t it unusual for a bus system to be into all these alternative forms of transportation?

A.. Yes. I hear from transit managers across the county saying: “Aren’t you competing with yourself, providing all these other things?” But there’s so much action out there, we’re not competing with ourselves. What we’re doing is offering different products, because people do not use any single product. They don’t want to. So just out of necessity, we had to grow from more than a traditional bus company because not everybody uses the bus. And buses are not the solution to getting around. Frankly, they’re too expensive. The best thing from the taxpayer’s standpoint is if you can get people to car-pool or use vans, because they’re using their own cars and vans, so it doesn’t cost the taxpayer money to operate the system.

Q. Mass transit loses money everywhere, but you seem to get an especially low amount of your total revenues from fares. Why?

A.. Yes, only about 25% of our budget comes from the fare box. The rest is from state and federal money. But that’s not a lot. If you’re looking at bus systems, you find their revenue from the fare box varies from 10% to maybe 50% or 60%. The national average is probably about 30% or 40%.

Buses are an expensive proposition. But you have to look at your alternatives. It’s a good investment for taxpayers. Sixty percent of our riders are going to work, and if they didn’t have that way to get to work they’d probably be on the welfare rolls.

Q. What impact is Regulation 15 going to have on traffic and on what you do?

A. Through our commuter network (a service that matches riders by computer for car pools and van pools) we’ve been trying for the last couple of years to get people to think about car pooling and van pooling and alternate work hours. And we’ve been somewhat successful. But it’s been hard sledding.

Now all of a sudden the Air Quality District is coming out and saying, “You’ll be involved in these kinds of programs, because if you’re not involved it will cost you up to $25,000 a day.”

So all of a sudden, whereas we’d talk to some companies and have difficulty getting them involved, now all of a sudden they’re saying, “Uh oh, it’s going to cost us some money.” So now the incentive is there to get involved.

Q. What does an employer have to offer people to get them out of their cars?

A. There are all kinds of incentives: Special parking spaces close to work, free lunch, free dinner, microwave oven, passes to the ballgame or anything an employer wants to do. Lottery tickets, whatever.

But the biggest incentive is time. If you can get in a van or car pool and get on a transit way and save yourself 30 or 40 minutes a day, that’s the best incentive of all.