CenterLine Is No Solution to Traffic

Re “Successful Transit (Not CenterLine),” Commentary, Jan. 20:

You print a picture of congestion on the San Diego Freeway, then ask: Is rail the answer or a waste of money? The answer, believe it or not, is in all the studies that the Orange County Transportation Authority has acquired. In summation: Light rail will carry about 0.5% of daily traffic, thus doing zero toward solving congestion. It just wastes money that could be spent for highway solutions.

Stop wasting time and money searching for the holy grail; get down to basics and do that which works.

Chris E. Ema

Institute of

Transportation Engineers

Santa Ana

*

Re “What CenterLine Can and Can’t Do,” Letters, Jan. 27:

Christopher Koontz supports CenterLine, the billion-dollar boondoggle that goes nowhere and criticizes the toll roads, saying, “The toll roads through eastern and southern Orange County have done an excellent job at accelerating sprawl ... but not at reducing traffic.” He attributes the heavy traffic on South County arterials to failure of the toll roads.

We have a rail system in place called Metrolink. I ride it twice a week into Los Angeles, and a new station in Mission Viejo will open this spring. Second, CenterLine is supported only by Irvine and will not do anything to reduce traffic. It doesn’t go anywhere. It will soak up funding that could be used to upgrade Metrolink, a real transit system, and improve arterial roads in the county. Third, the toll roads that Koontz attacks are being blocked by his environmentalist allies from connecting with Interstate 5 in San Clemente.

The Eastern Transportation Corridor was seriously damaged by a political decision years ago to connect it to the Riverside Freeway instead of to the Costa Mesa Freeway near the Santa Ana Freeway junction because of opposition from North County residents.

Completion of the Foothill corridor would help Mission Viejo residents who are being deluged by traffic from new developments to the east. Stopping it will not stop development unless Koontz wants to buy Rancho Mission Viejo and turn it into a park. We have the U.S. Constitution that prohibits “taking” of private property without compensation.

Those of us who are trying to find real solutions for real problems in Orange County are not amused by the antics of ideologues who are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Michael T. Kennedy

Mission Viejo Planning and

Transportation Commission

Mission Viejo