Reed Calls Rail Plan a ‘Disservice’

The former chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission has joined critics of a proposed light-rail system linking Irvine and Costa Mesa, saying it shortchanges residents promised a mass-transit rail service that would run the length of the county.

Dana W. Reed, now a member of the state transportation commission, told county transit officials they were committing a “tremendous disservice” to hundreds of thousands of Orange County residents who need an alternative to the traffic-choked Santa Ana Freeway.

Reed said Measure M, the half-cent sales tax approved by voters in 1990, included the creation of a rail service from San Juan Capistrano to Buena Park as the top priority among railway improvements. The cars would run on the same above-ground track used by Amtrak and Metrolink commuter trains, and stop in San Clemente, Mission Viejo, Irvine, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Fullerton.

Instead, Reed said, the Orange County Transportation Authority two weeks ago moved forward with plans for a separate light-rail system between Costa Mesa and Irvine called CenterLine that will include the Irvine Spectrum, South Coast Plaza, and possibly points west. That project was also designated for funding under Measure M, along with an extension in Anaheim, but both were lower priorities, Reed said.

“From a transportation perspective, it is completely backward,” Reed said in a Nov. 24 letter to the OCTA.

Reed demanded the OCTA put its proposal up for a new countywide vote, or scrap the entire urban rail project.

Reed Royalty of Orange County Taxpayers agreed that the OCTA proposal runs counter to the priorities in Measure M, which his organization campaigned for vigorously.

“That isn’t what the people voted for,” Royalty said. “I would think that if you’re going to change it around that much, you ought to have another vote.”

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On Friday, OCTA board members Tom Wilson, Sarah Catz and Mike Ward wrote a letter to Reed expressing their disappointment in his comments, pointing out that his votes helped approve the CenterLine proposal when he served on the board.

Further, they argued, the CenterLine project’s location “is virtually identical” to the corridor that now carries Metrolink and Amtrak trains.

The board members added that Measure M would not need to be amended by voters unless money was planned to be shifted from transit to another category of funding, such as freeways or local streets and road.

Stan Oftelie, former head of the OCTA, said that Measure M gives the transit authority some flexibility to alter project priorities. However, he said, Reed does have some legitimate concerns that the OCTA should address.

“The substance of his argument, of his concern, is that a railway should be built along the I-5 corridor, and not along the 405 corridor,” said Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Business Development Council. “Both ideas should be laid out side-by-side, and they should look at the data.”

The light-rail concept has been a contentious issue for years, and its future may live or die depending the OCTA’s Dec. 13 vote on the design of the system.

The route the OCTA recommended last week was far shorter than the original $1.5-billion, 27-mile route transit officials initially touted as the system they wanted. However, OCTA officials scuttled that plan after fierce opposition from the Santa Ana City Council made that route impossible.