YOU’D THINK PUBLIC OFFICIALS WHO RECENTLY WENT THROUGH AN EMBARRASSING county bankruptcy would be able to spot another boondoggle when they see it coming down the tracks.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case with the proposed light rail system for Orange County. The 11 members of the board of the Orange County Transportation Authority (10 of them elected officials) have been, in the face of a growing chorus of opposition to the project, largely non-committal about their own feelings. That has raised the very real prospect that when they get together next month, they’ll actually vote to proceed with this fantastic undertaking, which will cost an estimated $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion to build and an estimated $35 million or so a year to operate. December’s vote will commit $30 million for planning.
OCTA’s directors should think long and hard before they start rumbling down that path. A 28-mile system of trolley cars running through the towns and along the byways of Orange County is the wrong idea at the wrong time in the wrong place. It’s a 19th century response to the 20th century problems of a 21st century community. It is a project whose costs (both in dollars and disruption) will far outweigh the dubious benefits.
Let’s start at the station. Why build a rail system in the first place? The most obvious answer is to reduce traffic congestion. After that, to reduce pollution. Maybe to lower overall transportation costs, too. Light rail will achieve none of these objectives.
The sorry fact, shown in city after city, is that light rail is better at cannibalizing existing bus riders than it is at persuading people to get out of their cars. Light rail gets almost nobody off the road. Hence, no impact on congestion or pollution.
Moreover, light rail is the least efficient and most tax-intensive form of transportation.
Public transit is the only mode of passenger or freight transportation that has become less efficient since 1980; studies suggest it costs four times as much per passenger mile as cars, and a far higher percentage of transit’s costs are borne by taxpayers. And light rail is the least efficient form of public transit. Buses are twice as efficient, and they’re flexible–you can change bus routes to better serve demand; you don’t reroute rails.
As for boosting the economy (other than providing some construction jobs), please. When is the last time anything grew up around a rail line? In fact, with its potential for condemning some business properties in northern Orange County, this light rail system may be an economic detriment.
By the OCTA staff’s own estimate, the light rail system when completed will carry 60,000 passengers a day. That’s less than one-half of one percent of the total commuters in Orange County. And given that light rail may actually eat up a lane of traffic on some surface streets–Main Street in Santa Ana and Anaheim Boulevard, for example–light rail may cause more traffic problems than it solves.
Even light rail’s supporters don’t argue very hard, if at all, that light rail will ease OC’s traffic congestion. Instead they only make vague comments about adding “an arrow to the quiver” of transportation options.
The most plausible argument for light rail is that the Measure M sales tax earmarks $340 million for it, and the $340 million can be leveraged into more than $1 billion of federal funds. But that federal funding is not certain–other communities are also vying for the available monies. Let ’em have it. As one light rail opponent has noted, if the feds were offering $1 billion to dig a hole and fill it up, there would be public officials who would go for it.
Light rail may be no better than a hole. For a county perplexed by the supposedly horrible impacts of a ready-to-go El Toro airport, consider what light rail would mean: Relocations of a few homes and dozens of businesses; noise problems for hundreds of others; traffic disruptions and an eyesore of tracks and overhead lines.
All for what? A trolley system that not only has almost nowhere to go, but which stops short of wherever it is going. The line will drop passengers a long walk away from both Disneyland and South Coast Plaza, an apparent concession to the (ahem) parking priorities of both. The line stops a mile short of the proposed El Toro passenger terminals and it leaves John Wayne passengers on the other side of the freeway, necessitating shuttles. Only one of three alternative plans calls for a station at the UCI campus.
Its backers also like to say that light rail is the will of the people, since funds were set aside for it by Measure M. But light rail was in the fine print of the ballot. If any OCTA officials are concerned about the will of the voters, let’s have another referendum, just on light rail.
The light rail plan would already be dead if not for the encouragement of engineering firms and government empire builders. Local politicians are beginning to squabble over routes, stops and who gets to go first in laying tracks.
It’s time for OCTA’s board to derail this gravy train. Spend the $340 million on more buses or more car lanes. If OCers want to see a cable car, they can fly to San Francisco.
— Rick Reiff
(For the withering goods on light rail, see Wendell Cox’s The Public Purpose website at www.publicpurpose.com. It includes the full text of last May’s OC Grand Jury report which blasted the light rail plan.)
