Officials Alter Train Schedule, Miss the Bus

Orange County Transportation Commission officials have learned at least one lesson when it comes to dealing with Amtrak commuters: Don’t mess with the train schedules.

Fifteen minutes one way or another can make or break a commute for someone who depends on the Los Angeles bus system for another leg of the daily journey. Just ask Lorrie Hutton.

“It sounds picky, but it means the difference between riding the train and not riding the train,” said Hutton, who commutes daily between Fullerton and Los Angeles.

So when authorities announced plans to switch the departure time for the train that Hutton rides back to Orange County each evening, she was none too pleased. Banding together with scores of regular train riders, Hutton and her fellow commuters have spent the last two weeks fomenting opposition to the switch, which would bump the regular 5:45 p.m. departure time up to 5:30.

Walking the length of the train daily, Hutton and others have been rallying their forces, collecting signatures on copies of letters of protest that are being dispatched to the commission, demanding the return of the 5:45.

But the answer to the commuters’ concerns may be on its way to Southern California from San Jose. Amtrak has agreed to lease an additional train to make the 5:45 p.m. run. The new train is coming from CalTrain, a commuter line between San Jose and San Francisco.

“We’re 99% sure the new train will enable us to leave Los Angeles at 5:45,” said Adrienne Brooks, the commission’s associate transportation analyst.

The problem arose during the planning of the new and much-heralded $1.8-million commuter train service between San Juan Capistrano and Los Angeles, scheduled to start April 30. In order to attract riders, the Transportation Commission hammered out a deal with Amtrak to institute a new morning and evening commuter run between San Juan Capistrano and Los Angeles with stops in several other Orange County stations.

During the planning process, however, a glitch in the train scheduling prompted commission officials to propose shifting the 5:45 p.m. return trip to Orange County to 5:30, Brooks said. That would have meant the next available train for commuters who couldn’t make it to the station by 5:30 p.m. would not leave until 6:20 p.m.

And that’s when Hutton and her fellow travelers decided they were not going to sit and take it.

Hutton pays $180 each month to ride from Fullerton to Los Angeles and back five days a week. From the time she leaves her home in the morning until she arrives back in her driveway, it’s about a 12-hour day. She embarks in the morning on the 7:16 train to Los Angeles, arriving in about 35 minutes, and then catches a bus to her office at 8th and Hope streets.

“In the evening the traffic is much worse,” Hutton said. “It takes those of us who work in the vicinity of my office about an hour to get back to the train, when we allow time to wait for the bus, catch the bus and then walk to the train. I don’t think those people who make transportation decisions factor these things in.”