Light Rail’s Mini-Me
WITH LIGHT RAIL LAUGHED OFF THE TABLE (FOR NOW), I GUESS THE ORANGE County Transportation Authority figured it needed some new comic material. So it has unveiled a plan to build a 724-mile system of bicycle paths in the county, on the premise that if you build it, a significant number of Orange County commuters will leave their air-conditioned cars and peddle to work as motor vehicles buzz them by.
The price tag for this standing joke is $30 million for the first 205 miles, which OCTA hopes to develop over the next several years. (Presumably that doesn’t include an allowance for the shower facilities that employers will be obliged to install, or the medical bills for cyclists who are run off the road.) OCTA hasn’t even bothered to estimate the cost for the remaining 70% of the bike paths, which would happen well out in the future, perhaps by the time we have used up all fossil fuels and have no choice but to return to manual modes of transportation.
Now, in a county that lost $2 billion in the blink of an eye, $30 million is not a huge pile of money, but where the rubber meets the path it starts looking outrageous,OCTA’s cost projections work out to $146,000 per mile of path. That’s an awful lot of paint, given that most of what OCTA plans to do is to merely draw stripes and post signs to create lanes along the edges of existing thoroughfares.
But OCTA’s whoppers are three more ambitious projects, which it hopes to get going this year,a 2.5-mile stretch in Costa Mesa from Swan Drive to Canyon Drive, a 1.2-mile path in Orange linking the 22 freeway and Walnut Avenue, and a 1-mile path in Irvine from Jeffrey Road to Sand Canyon Avenue. Combined price tag: A shade under $2.5 million, or roughly $526,000 per mile.
In case you’re wondering, the cost to a private developer of installing a bike path with signage on dedicated land runs about $70,000 a mile for asphalt, $150,000 for concrete. But then, OCTA has to build retaining walls, add ramps and do landscaping. In Irvine it has to erect a bridge over the 405 freeway, and Costa Mesa wants a nice-looking surface.
Reality will probably frustrate at least some of these ideas. The only sources of money that OCTA has identified are its own and the Feds’, and those will only cover about half of Orange’s price tag and only one-fourth of Costa Mesa’s. Guess who’s fully funded? That path-starved city of Irvine.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for exercise and communing with nature. I’m all for people riding bikes and having fun. Bikes paths are a nice amenity, especially when they’re deep into parks and safely away from roaring traffic or hapless pedestrians.
But as for bike paths helping out our transportation problems, I can only ask: Horse trails, anyone?
