Santa Ana to Host Talks on 18-Mile Monorail : Transportation: Four cities will be asked to support a system linking Anaheim in the north with John Wayne Airport and Irvine in the south.

Santa Ana officials are scheduled to meet next week with leaders of surrounding cities to discuss plans for a futuristic, 18-mile monorail line that would run through the heart of Orange County.

Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young said the meeting Thursday with the mayors of Irvine, Orange, Costa Mesa and Anaheim should help determine if those cities support the idea of an integrated, regional commuter system.

“We’re hoping to kick off a top-level planning effort to not only have it run in Santa Ana but through the entire central core of Orange County,” Young said. “Through cooperation among just five cities, we could have an 18-mile system.”

Some of the cities have already hatched similar plans of their own and may welcome the opportunity to join Santa Ana to pursue a monorail system cutting through the county’s busiest office and commercial districts.

Anaheim officials have talked about a people mover. In Irvine, city leaders have gone even further, joining with a private firm that builds monorails to study a system that would link John Wayne Airport with a new train and bus station being built on the city’s southern flank.

Santa Ana officials also are considering participating in the study with Irvine and Florida-based Transportation Group Inc. The Santa Ana City Council is expected to discuss the matter Dec. 4.

Transportation Group Inc., a subsidiary of giant Bombardier of Canada, is slated to build a short monorail spur to ferry passengers from the airport terminal to an office complex planned nearby on MacArthur Boulevard by McDonnell Douglas Realty Co. Plans for that half-mile-long spur helped spark the current proposals for a more ambitious regional system.

As envisioned, a regional monorail network could link Disneyland and Anaheim Stadium in the north with the MainPlace shopping mall and Civic Center in Santa

Ana, and continue south, serving several large office developments, John Wayne Airport, and the sprawling Irvine Spectrum office and industrial complex. An alternate line in Costa Mesa could connect with South Coast Plaza.

The backbone of the system would be a single line with monorails capable of about 60 m.p.h. running along a raised rail stretching from Irvine in the south through Costa Mesa, Santa Ana and Orange, then terminating in Anaheim. Lower-speed monorail lines would branch off the main system to ferry passengers to locations to the east and west.

Officials say the monorail network could be built along existing streets, requiring the purchase of little or no private property through eminent domain.

Young said he believes that Santa Ana would play a key role in any regional monorail system because of its central location and position as the home base for county government.

In addition, Young said, residents of the city make up more than one-third of the passengers on Orange County Transit District buses, meaning that Santa Ana could provide a ready base of riders for the monorail system.

Young said he would like to see the cities join together and seek proposals from firms willing to privately build and operate the monorail line.

“We think now is the time to get out there and see who wants to put down rail along an 18-mile urban corridor,” Young said. “We’ve come to the realization that monorail technology is no longer a toy. It’s been transformed into something that’s efficient and cost-effective for areas like Orange County.”

If necessary, he said, some public financing or assistance could be tapped. In Irvine, for instance, officials are hoping that a multimillion-dollar state rail bond initiative expected on the June, 1990, ballot will provide $125 million for a monorail system in that city.

Santa Ana officials have already met with developers of several large office projects in the city to discuss helping fund a monorail line or even taking on the task of building stations, which represent about one-third the cost of the proposal, Young said.

“The developers would get the advantage of having mass transit delivered right to their doorstep, and we’d get the advantage of getting stations essentially for free,” he explained.

Other Santa Ana officials are equally bullish on the idea of a monorail linking their city with others.

“It’s not a question of whether some system is built, it’s a question of when,” said David Grosse, Santa Ana’s public works director. “We want to have a plan in place by next summer showing the routes, the stations, how it would be financed. . . . We could potentially have a system operating in five years.”

Grosse said a monorail system would have lower construction costs than a subway, as well as offering trains that are quiet and non-polluting. Support columns could be fitted into the median strip of existing streets, meaning no new property would have to be purchased for the right of way.

For Santa Ana, an ultramodern monorail would also fit in nicely with the city’s ongoing downtown redevelopment efforts, Grosse said.

As yet, officials have not selected what type of monorail trains they prefer--and the issue could potentially become a dividing point among the various cities.

Some seem to be leaning toward traditional monorails that straddle a single rail and ride on wheels inside the undercarriage. That basic design, which is the style marketed by Transportation Group Inc., is akin to the monorail in operation at Disneyland.

Other officials, however, have suggested “magnetic levitation” trains, which use electromagnets to float the vehicle just inches above the tracks and provide propulsion.