OCTD to OCTA: Expensive Transition

The poorly designed periwinkle blue and white yuppie Metrolink train cars symbolize the arrogance and denial of the OCTA.

For $1.3 million a car, excluding the engine and last car, which has an engineer’s station for reverse running, you would think that the customer’s needs would be met or exceeded.

Was the knee-to-knee intimacy and no overhead baggage stowage that was traded for “improved lighting,” bathrooms, wheelchair lifts and soon-to-be-installed cellular phones reasonable?

Or could all of these needs have been satisfied and improved? (Can we expect flat screen TVs tuned into CNN or Wall Street next?)

This train is not for you and me; we don’t make enough money (over 50% of the daily commuters have a household income of over $80,000 per year!), but we pay over 80% of the actual costs of purchase and operation through the Measure M half-cent per dollar sales tax.

In less than two years, the $3.1 billion from Measure M will have been spent (less than $2 billion is available as funds because the interest on the bond amounts to over $1 billion! ) and the tax pirates will come back with their lies to coerce us into another Measure M.

Just remember one thing. Each $50,000 that’s robbed from the economy through these irresponsible taxes is a job lost!

HUGH BROESAMLE, Costa Mesa