Expanded Rail Service Is on Right Track : Transportation Agency’s Ambitious Plan Coincides With the Public’s Desires

There are a few miles of track to be laid, both literally and figuratively, between Orange County’s current commuter rail capacity and the dream held forth in the Orange County Transportation Authority’s ambitious $4.4-billion plan. The OCTA recently announced a master plan for expanding service and building an elevated urban rail system. Now comes the interesting findings contained in the 1991 Orange County Annual Survey, which suggest strongly that the public has come a long way toward embracing a rail system as a supplement for clogged freeways and surface streets. In a sense, it represents a coming of age for a county that sprang up around the freeway.

While there are some big questions with OCTA’s plan, the biggest of which is where the money will come from, the plan wisely lays out a long-term program that can be implemented in stages. An OCTA commuter train is already running between San Juan Capistrano and Los Angeles, once in the morning and once in the evening. These are in addition to the eight Amtrak trains serving the San Diego-Los Angeles corridor daily. New plans, which include eight new commuter trains daily from Oceanside to Los Angeles and four new stations, would bring the total number of trains to 17 each day, in each direction. Moreover, there are hopes for service between Riverside and Irvine.

The separate elevated rail system, which would operate between Irvine, Santa Ana, Anaheim and several north Orange County cites and Norwalk, with transfers available to Los Angeles County’s Metro Rail line, is a big financial question mark.

But despite such questions, public interest is encouraging. A convincing 69% of survey respondents say an intercounty commuter rail system is their top choice for spending Measure M sales tax money for transportation improvements. And recession has people thinking about ways of expanding opportunities. For example, Mark Baldassare, the UCI social ecology professor who conducted the survey, notes that people may want to look beyond the current job market or local housing market, while exploring new connections either from the job or house where they are now.

The importance of rail has never been simply as a stand-alone in a culture built around cars. But to provide alternatives--and to broaden economic or lifestyle horizons, the old workhorse railroad which opened the West has a modern twist and application. People in Orange County seem to be catching wind of that, which is a very good thing indeed.