O.C. Light-Rail Line Ranks High Among Cities Packed With Jobs

The 28-mile route being considered for Orange County’s first light-rail system sports more jobs per square mile than Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., Los Angeles, St. Louis, Sacramento, or Portland, Ore.

It has only slightly fewer than Boston, and more than four times the number in San Diego.

What the figures mean to county transportation officials is that there may be enough workers and residents along the proposed mass transit corridor to assure a rail system’s success.

“The message is that the central part of Orange County is as dense as any major city in the country and certainly as dense as those with rail systems,” said Dave Elbaum, director of planning and development for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which unveiled the numbers Monday. “That’s positive. It shows that light rail in Orange County is a very legitimate discussion.”

The figures were contained in a report for the OCTA’s board of directors as part of the agency’s planning for a proposed rail system along a 7-mile-wide swath connecting Fullerton and Irvine. Last year, the board voted to spent $6 million on preliminary engineering for the proposed $1.7-billion rail system.

The report compares Orange County’s population and employment densities--factors that tend to create a high demand for rail--to those of several other cities, most of which have rail systems considered the most efficient or cost-effective in the nation.

Sara Catz, chairwoman of the OCTA’s board, said the results “made me feel that we may be one step closer to accepting a light-rail system. We can’t use density as the only factor, but . . . it’s another step toward realizing that we really might need a light-rail system and it might be worth the investment.”

Some rail critics disagreed that the numbers support light rail.

Even with high densities, said Wayne King, a member of Drivers for Highway Safety, the proposed system would “carry a very, very small percentage of the people in Orange County” and constitute “the absolute poorest investment we could make.”

Nonetheless, the county--with 5,264 jobs per square mile in its central corridor from Fullerton to Irvine--stacked up well against other areas in employment density.

Only two cities--San Francisco with 8,045 jobs per square mile, and Boston with 5,931--had densities that were higher. And the total number of employees in the Orange County corridor--439,694--is greater than the entire populations of either Portland or St. Louis.

“I was surprised,” Elbaum said of the numbers, which were based on the 1990 census.

The county also stood out, though less dramatically, when compared to 10 other areas in terms of population density along the proposed rail route.

With 5,900 residents per square mile, the central corridor was the seventh most densely populated, followed by San Jose, Sacramento, Portland and San Diego. The cities with higher population densities were San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Newark, Los Angeles and St. Louis.

The cities used in the comparison were chosen, Elbaum said, because all have rail systems considered highly successful by the Federal Transit Administration in one of two ways. While some report operating costs per mile among the lowest in the country, he said, others carry the most passengers per mile.

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Tracking Jobs

The proposed light-rail line in O.C. has a “job density”--a ridership indicator--that ranks it behind only two other major established lines. Jobs per square mile:

San Francisco: 8,045

Boston: 5,931

Orange County: 5,264

Philadelphia: 5,051

Source: U.S. Census