Transportation Fix That Isn’t

The Orange County Transportation Authority recently received the results of a Cal State Fullerton study on the economic benefits of the proposed CenterLine light rail project. Using established economic multiplier factors, the study’s authors determined that the $2.1-billion construction and initial operation expenditure would pump $3.2 billion into the county’s economy. OCTA Chairman Todd Spitzer was quoted as saying that CenterLine is “not just a transportation project. It is an economic engine.”

But before we get carried away by the prospects of this money machine, it would be good to understand what the study really did and did not say. The study specifically reported only the impact of purchasing and employment for the construction and operation. It did not study the impact of transportation benefits, direct or indirect.

The multipliers that were used are common to any large project--say, spending $2.1 billion to dig and fill a hole in the ground. Such a “Hole” project would be expected to provide about the same multiplier and return to the county.

Ironically, if transportation impacts had been taken into account, the Hole would have a more beneficial impact than CenterLine. How is this possible? Therein lies a significant story, the dirty little secret of CenterLine.

CenterLine wold take most of its required right-of-way from some of the busiest streets in Orange County. Even the elevated version would take at least one lane of street capacity for its footings. As it turns out, the street capacity lost to that one lane of right-of-way is more than the effective capacity afforded by the new rail ridership. The result is a net loss of regional capacity and, inevitably, increased overall congestion, emissions and energy consumption.

This is independently confirmed in the environmental impact analysis. The objective quantitative results show that street congestion, intersection congestion, air quality and travel time all literally would be worse with the CenterLine alternative than doing nothing at all. While the energy analysis found a small annual operating energy reduction, only a tiny fraction of the much larger up-front construction energy would be recovered over the lifetime of the project. These adverse OCTA findings are all fully referenced and explained in detail on my Web site, www.urbantransport.org/ten.pdf.

OCTA’s environmental analysis provides this astonishing summary:

“Compared to the No Build Alternative, all build alternatives would have more adverse impacts on the environment (without mitigation) for traffic circulation, displacements, public services, visual quality, cultural resources, noise/vibration, hazardous materials, water resources, natural resources, parks/trails, and environmental justice. Mitigation measures are proposed to reduce these impacts.”

The “without mitigation” term here needs some explanation. At the time of the latest environmental assessment, measures to reduce or eliminate CenterLine’s adverse traffic impacts had been proposed but the costs were not estimated. Thus the impacts analysis was done without such mitigation measures and reflects the full, adverse impacts of Centerline itself.

Ironically, the only way these adverse impacts could possibly be mitigated would be to acquire new right-of-way and build new road capacity to replace that lost to CenterLine. If this were feasible, it surely would demand the question: Wouldn’t we be better off to build only the mitigating road capacity and skip CenterLine and its net adverse impacts?

Full mitigation will not occur because it would require, among other things, acquiring some 16 miles of street-front right-of-way along busy arterial streets. The cost of that, including legal defense fees, which OCTA assumes would be borne by the cities, is perhaps incalculable, but would probably be more than CenterLine itself. So we are going to be stuck with those adverse impacts.

The final irony is that the $2.1 billion to be spent on the proposed light-rail project, when added to a plan already top-heavy with transit allocations, would consume 84% of available transportation funding for the next 20 years, according to OCTA’s long-range financial plan. That would leave only 16% for our already under-capacity highway system, which is not enough to keep up with the projected 43% growth in demand.

CenterLine is a multibillion-dollar waste that will make Orange County traffic and travel times worse. The unprecedented congestion that we otherwise could have largely alleviated by using those billions of dollars to improve our highway system will be the true, lasting legacy of CenterLine.