Letters : Diverting Transit Funds for Freeway

I oppose the Orange County Transportation Commission’s effort to transfer $8.5 million annual interest from the county’s mass-transit fund to pay for highway improvements (Orange County section, Jan 8).

The commission ignores the fact that more freeway lanes and faster surface streets will do little, if anything, to lessen congestion. Even if Proposition A--proposing massive highway improvements--had passed, the transportation commission itself estimated that congestion would continue to worsen, albeit at a slower rate.

The $8.5 million diverted from transit to highways each year would only be enough to widen a freeway by one lane for less than a mile. The new lane would be capable of carrying 2,500 people per hour. In contrast, the same mile of medium-capacity rapid-rail transit could carry 12,500 people per hour in the same space for the same cost (including the cost of transit vehicles).

A double-track rail transit line could be built through the county for the same $1.4 billion proposed for the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway, but the rail line would have the carrying capacity of an additional eight-lane freeway.

The transit line also would use less costly right-of-way, displace fewer homes and businesses, and it would be a needed step away from the county’s backward over-reliance on an automobile transportation system that threatens to drain our economic and environmental resources.

The money wasted on hideous “super-streets” with their freeway-type “fly-over” interchanges could be better used to connect the rail system and feeder networks so that people would not have to drive to the transit stations.

If county residents desire future mobility, economic health and a high qualify of life, they should oppose the commission’s proposed squandering of public funds. It would actually make more sense to tap the interest from the highway fund for mass transit rather than the other way around.

KIRK SCHNEIDER

La Habra