Tracking New Uses for Old Rail Corridor

Like a long scar, the right of way that once carried Pacific Electric trains cuts a diagonal swath across the surface of Orange County.

Once a major transportation corridor, the route now is a 12-mile-by-100-foot strip of dirt and weeds spanning seven cities from Santa Ana to the Los Angeles County line and beyond. Nearby residents walk their dogs along it, joggers jog on it, and area pilots routinely navigate by its line.

“This isn’t hidden in some backwoods,” said John Standiford, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which owns the odd-shaped stretch that cuts through Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress and La Palma. “It crosses major thoroughfares which anybody who lives or works in the county has driven. People around here are aware of it.

“It’s a rare commodity: underutilized real estate.”

The OCTA hopes to change that. In a series of public meetings beginning Wednesday, transportation officials will begin listening to ideas from people who live or work near the right of way about what to do with it.

A survey of some 400 neighbors indicated that about 75% favor retaining it as a greenbelt. Other ideas being discussed include bikeways, playgrounds, roller hockey rinks and commercial development by adjacent cities.

Small portions of the strip have already been leased temporarily for use as a mobile home park, plant nursery, storage areas and parking lots for recreational vehicles and food markets.

It was in 1905 that the Pacific Electric railroad company first began using the line for its Red Car trolley system, ferrying passengers between Santa Ana and Los Angeles.

By 1950, however, ridership had so dwindled that passenger service was abandoned in favor of freight.

The OCTA acquired the property in two purchases beginning in 1982. Although the agency almost immediately tore up the tracks along the southern seven miles, it still leases the northern five miles to Pacific Electric’s successor, the Southern Pacific Transportation Co., which operates two freight trains a day from Beach Boulevard to Los Angeles. That arrangement could change, depending on what the OCTA ultimately decides to do with the line.

Although the transportation agency bought the property as a potential rail corridor through northern Orange County, said Ellen Harvey, the senior project manager overseeing the right-of-way study, a major study last year eliminated the route from immediate consideration for that purpose.

Because of the county’s changing demographics, she said, “it just wasn’t first” on a priority list of potential rail corridors.

So the OCTA is exploring other ways to use the strip until it becomes a transportation route again, which could be many years.

“This is a public asset,” Harvey said. “We need to preserve it for future transportation use.”

Some city officials welcomed the chance to do something with the right of way in the meantime.

Catherine Standiford, director of development for Garden Grove, where about four miles of the right of way cuts through several major redevelopment areas, said it “has impacted our ability to effectively redevelop.”

For example, she said, the city recently had to require developers to “chip the corner off” a planned Office Depot building rather than encroach on the right of way.

“It makes for an interesting design,” she said, “but we’d like to get some interim economic benefit from the right of way during the unspecified period until the transportation use comes in.”

Because the route travels through so many cities, Harvey said, “It looks like we’re going to be looking at it in pieces.”

To begin querying residents on what they would like some of those pieces to be, OCTA officials are hosting a public workshop at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Stanton Community Arts and Recreation Center, 7800 Katella Ave. Future workshops have not yet been scheduled.

OCTA officials may find that residents hope for nothing more than a park bench and a little landscaping along the old right of way.

“It’s not a problem,” Betty Foiles said of the large open space bordering the backyard of her Garden Grove house. “I’d like it if they left it alone or, if they have to do something, put in a bench and a couple of trees.”

Steve Zober, a resident for 11 years, agreed.

“What’s the motivation?” he asked, referring to the current study. “This is a nice, quiet neighborhood, and they’re always poking around in here.”

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Railway Byway

The Orange County Transportation Authority will begin hearing suggestions about what it should do with 12 miles of right of way cutting through seven cities.