COMMENTARY ON TRANSPORTATION : Mass-Transit Plan Falls Short, Some Say; Forget It, Foe Offers

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last month the Orange County Transportation Authority unveiled its plans for a countywide mass - transit system that, besides bus service, includes a rail network providing more commuter trains on standard tracks and an elevated urban rail line. The system is to be developed in stages , with the first increment operating by the year 2000. Public meetings have been held throughout the county . The OCTA board is scheduled to adopt a final master plan Oct. 28.

Following are reactions to the proposal.

Mark Leyes

The Draft Countywide Rail Study is a good beginning, but it is incomplete.

The study presents data supporting the premise that the six-city monorail system will be the core of the plan. I agree with this premise, but other important information is noticeably absent.

Specifically, West Orange County has been ignored. The best example is a map showing “Existing and Future Major Activity Centers.” Not one “center” west of Disneyland appears on this map. Garden Grove has the largest industrial center in the county, yet it is not shown. Where is the Los Alamitos Race Course? Westminster Mall? Cypress College? And Huntington Beach?

What about employment centers across the Los Angeles County line? Shouldn’t we consider ridership to destinations such as the big aerospace employers, Los Angeles Harbor and LAX?

The first phase of the plan doesn’t really go anywhere. We would laugh at a proposed freeway that does not connect with other freeways. Yet this plan does not connect with existing and planned rail systems in Los Angeles.

A connection with Los Angeles needs to be provided for now !

The most obvious means of achieving this is to utilize the old Pacific Electric right of way that the OCTA has already purchased. This would connect our system with the Green Line in Norwalk and put several West County activity centers within reach.

The West County voters who supported Measure M and all the taxpayers who pay for it expect and deserve this type of return for our investment.

Mark Leyes is a Garden Grove city councilman and actively involved in county transportation issues.

Sarah L. Catz

It will cost more than $40 million a mile for an urban rail system. Will Orange County residents take advantage of it? Will rail mass transit work in Orange County?

After diligently working for the past 18 months with local residents and transportation consultants and staff, the Citizens Rail Committee for the Orange County Transportation Authority has concluded yes. In 1991, the majority of Orange County residents are indeed looking for a viable alternative to their car, and rail is that alternative.

Poisonous air, wasteful congestion and dependence on foreign oil have created the need for an integrated long-range public transit plan. Orange County policy-makers need to start concentrating on the safe and efficient movement of people, not vehicles. The countywide rail plan that is being presented to the OCTA this month is a good place to begin.

But the key word is countywide. In order for this plan to work, it must meet the needs of those who live and work in not only the central portion of the county, but also the south, north, east and west, and be integrated with the rail networks of neighboring counties.

The plan must also be long range. While we currently do not have the financial resources to implement an entire master plan, it is important to start planning for our children’s future. Creative ways to finance rail may occur in the next 20 years, and we should be prepared for such an eventuality.

Detractors from rail may ask, “How can we afford to spend millions of dollars a mile for urban rail?” However, the more responsible question is, “How can we afford not to?”

Sarah L. Catz is chairwoman of the OCTA Citizens Rail Committee and is on the board of directors of the county chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar.

Robert Shelton

Orange County transportation planners and the motoring public are wakening to the new reality: We cannot continue to rely primarily on the one-occupant automobile, the freeway and a few buses to move us from place to place. That “system” is fast becoming unacceptable because it simply cannot keep pace with growth in population, jobs and registered vehicles, and because it won’t meet mandated air quality standards.

We must find, evaluate and agree on alternatives to approaching gridlock. While helpful steps are being taken to improve and make more efficient use of freeways, to pioneer tollways and to upgrade commuter rail service, much more is required to solve our transportation dilemma.

The recently released countywide rail study brings fresh thinking and a needed new perspective to transportation planning. It looks thoroughly at a wide range of transit options and, most importantly, does so in a regional context.

It offers a well-documented vision of what, in the long run, can be an integrated, functional combination of bus and rail systems to service both Orange County and regional travel.

As public and official reaction to the study develops, there will be questions and some alarms about assumptions, specifics and cost projections. Let’s hope, however, that from the review process the OCTA embraces a Master Plan that sets goals and time frames for moving ahead systematically with feasible elements. And let’s recognize that achieving those ends will require energetic support, particularly from the business community.

Orange County officials can lead the way to necessary new thinking about how we move people and goods in the years ahead. Giving status to a long-range transit plan will be a good start.

Robert Shelton is a former Newport Beach city manager and Irvine Co. executive.

Dana Reed

The problem with this project is not where it goes but where it doesn’t go.

Questions are sure to be asked by those who want to know why the core system doesn’t serve the 10 million or so passengers, visitors and employees who go in and out of John Wayne Airport every year?

Of far greater concern is the question of why the core project doesn’t connect with the Los Angeles Metro Rail.

Metro Rail, as we all know, is a 150-mile regional rail system under construction just to the north of us.

The Orange County core project is slated to begin 14 miles south of where Metro Rail ends.

The planners have provided for one or more connections to Metro Rail sometime around the year 2010, but they don’t make it part of the initial core project.

In my opinion, building a rail system in Orange County without connecting it from Day 1 to a 150-mile regional system just 14 miles away is wrong.

I agree with the authors of the study that we should move Orange County into the 21st Century by constructing an urban rail system, but let’s do it in coordination with our neighboring counties.

Let’s agree to connect with Metro Rail when our system opens, not sometime in the future.

Dana Reed is the public member on the Orange County Transportation Authority governing board.

Bill Ward

For about 20 years, an itinerant band of trainmongers has crisscrossed the country, leaving behind a trail of failed rail transit systems--black holes for taxes. Next stop: Orange County.

The handful of companies winning these billion-dollar construction contracts reinvest their profits to continue selling politicians and social planners the idea that every modern city must have passenger trains. When that much money talks, people listen.

Their lobbyists are warmly received. Social planners resent the unpredictable, stubborn individuality of freeway drivers, preferring the discipline, uniformity and centralized control imposed by mass transit. And bureaucrats love any politically correct excuse to tax and spend.

There’s a pattern. Beforehand, “consultants” provide wildly optimistic projections of costs and ridership. During construction, of course, costs go way over budget, and afterward there are far fewer passengers than expected, leaving taxpayers stuck for hundreds of millions of dollars every year to subsidize the resulting losses.

The sales pitch for Orange County now estimates construction costs of more than $2 billion. At best, rail would carry less than 5% of commuter traffic. That same investment could build roughly 60 lane-miles of freeway every year for 30 years--more than doubling freeway capacity, which would benefit everyone.

On a “person-mile” basis, rail transit costs taxpayers 20 to 100 times more than freeways. There can be no justification whatsoever for raising taxes, then wasting our money on trains.

Any politician voting for this tax giveaway deserves immediate recall.

Bill Ward is the founding member of Drivers for Highway Safety.