El Toro ‘People Mover’ Plan Questioned

An El Toro airport plan endorsed this week by Orange County supervisors after years of controversy is raising a whole new set of questions about its central feature: the nation’s first rail system directly linking two airports.

Some aviation experts question whether the seven-mile “people mover” connecting John Wayne Airport and a new international airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station will ever be built.

“It’s an interesting concept, but they are going to have a lot of difficulty pulling it off,” said Mike Boyd, a Colorado-based airport designer.

County officials say the people mover is necessary because El Toro would handle strictly national and international flights, while John Wayne would handle only short-haul flights. Someone traveling from Tokyo to the Bay Area, for example, might fly into El Toro and take the people mover to John Wayne for a flight to San Francisco.

The plan works on the assumption that demand for air service throughout the region will be so great that people will be willing to use the Orange County system, even if they must shuttle from one airport to another.

But aviation planners and consultants across the country said the system might not attract enough travelers to justify its estimated $300-million price tag, which is roughly a quarter of the entire cost of building an airport at El Toro.

Others wonder whether such a system would be embraced in car-loving Southern California or would be considered too much trouble.

County supervisors on Tuesday voted to make the plan--known as Option C--its “preferred alternative” of the four airport proposals submitted by planners. Under Option C, El Toro would handle 25 million passengers by 2020, and John Wayne Airport would handle 9.5 million.

Option C is the only proposal that calls for the rail system between airports and is the only one that would require legislation mandating that commercial flights less than 500 miles go to John Wayne and those more than 500 miles go to El Toro.