Grand Jury Hits OCTA on Plan for Urban Rail

The Orange County Grand Jury accused transit officials Thursday of ignoring evidence that a proposed urban rail system costing at least $1.3 billion would fail to reduce traffic congestion or pollution.

In a scathing report, the grand jury questioned whether officials at the Orange County Transportation Authority were spending more time promoting urban rail than studying it.

“This decision should not be based on public relations fluff,” the report said. “It should not be a ‘done deal’ followed by a search for a justification.”

Transit board members are scheduled to make a final decision on the fate of the 28-mile rail line in December. The system would run from Fullerton to Irvine, with stops at such spots as the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

Transit officials said Thursday they were disappointed by the grand jury report and upset by its tone.

“It’s almost like telling you how to do your job,” said county Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson, who chairs the transit board. “They are saying they know as much or more about transportation than transportation officials. I don’t think that is true or fair.”

Board members say the report contains little that is new.

“The issues they’ve raised are all issues that we have already been asking about,” said Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who has repeatedly questioned how urban rail will be funded. “We’ll be getting answers to all of these questions before we make decisions.”

The report targeted not only the viability of urban rail in Orange County but also the decision-making of transit officials, calling their process “wanting.”

The grand jury report pointedly recommends that transit officials include the downside of urban rail in public statements, publications and presentations. “To date, that data has not been forthcoming,” the report states.

But Lisa Mills, the transit agency’s chief executive officer, said she believes the grand jury did not consider all the information her staff has made available to the public.

Sheldon Singer, grand jury foreman, disagreed.

“They gave us all the information we wanted,” Singer said. “The information they are putting out is just too glowing and the reality isn’t. Rail is very expensive, and people just won’t get out of their cars to use it.”

Singer said the issue came to the grand jury after a resident wrote a letter to the grand jury to complain about the proposed rail line.

The jurors studied 12 light-rail systems built in various parts of the country over the last two decades. None, they said, can be called a success.

Transit officials have spent about $2 million studying the possibility of bringing rail to Orange County.

Wilson said transit officials were mandated to look into a rail alternative in the county when voters in 1990 approved Measure M, the half-cent sales tax earmarked for transportation improvements.

About $340 million in Measure M funds will be set aside for light rail.

In a written response Wilson said he will send to the grand jury early next month, the supervisor told jurors they were wrong to say light rail was being promoted, not analyzed, by transit officials.

“Nothing can be further from the truth,” he wrote.

He said the report “unjustly attacked” the agency’s efforts. It was inappropriate, he said, for the jurors to suggest transit board members were incapable of making “educated and wise decisions.”

But long-time light-rail opponents said the findings released Thursday support what they have said all along.

“I think if OCTA had been doing its job properly, there would have been no need for the grand jury to give them such a criticism,” said Dave Mootchnik, a vocal opponent of the rail project. “They made up their minds that they wanted light rail” and have spent the last several years “finding ways to justify it.”