Grand Jury foresees CenterLine woes

Deirdre Newman

The impasse over the city’s desire to underground its portion of the

CenterLine light rail system could kill the project if it is not

resolved in a timely manner, according to a report released by the

Orange County Grand Jury on Wednesday.

The Orange County Transportation Authority’s project calls for an

11.4-mile route to traverse the cities of Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and

Irvine with a construction cost of $1.5 billion.

The South Coast Plaza business community wants the CenterLine to

run underground so the light rail system doesn’t interfere with

existing developments, such as South Coast Plaza.

Paul Freeman, spokesman for C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, discounted the

grand jury’s opinion.

“The grand jury has no expertise in this realm,” Freeman said.

“The idea that they would opine on a public transportation system is

a joke.”

The grand jury reviewed the CenterLine plan, current and projected

demographic data for Orange County and the light rail experience of

nearby communities with similar characteristics. It also inspected

and rode several modes of public mass transit in Orange, Los Angeles

and San Diego counties.

The jury found that Orange County has sufficient population

density to support a light rail system.

The original CenterLine project, once proposed to stretch 28 miles

and include other cities, was put on hold in March 2001 because it

lacked support from some of the cities, the report states. Santa Ana,

Costa Mesa and Irvine revived the idea in September 2001.

The Federal Transit Administration, which is likely to provide

half of the construction funds for the system, mandates that each

city approve the route through its city. The issue is so

controversial in Irvine that two ballot measures on the subject will

be brought to the voters in June.

The report said that because Costa Mesa wants to see the light

rail going into the city below grade, cost of the entire project will

go up. Costa Mesa’s plan also creates an undesirable situation for

the city of Santa Ana, which plans for the light rail in its city to

be elevated on Bristol Street from Warner Avenue south. If the system

were to be undergrounded in Costa Mesa, the line must start

descending long before it reaches Sunflower Avenue, the report

states.

Freeman countered that undergrounding the project through a

portion of Santa Ana will not adversely affect the city.

“There are no undesirable effects on Santa Ana of undergrounding,”

Freeman said. “Of course, it would have to start descending before it

gets below ground -- that’s a matter of physics. But it can be done

in a relatively modest way and a relatively pleasing way,

aesthetically, and there’s only about 2,000 examples of how to do it

over the planet.”

Freeman pointed out that Santa Ana already significantly increased

the cost of the project by passing on a multimillion-dollar Bristol

Street improvement effort to the cost of CenterLine. He also stressed

the type of undergrounding the business community is calling for --

cut and cover -- doesn’t require as much undergrounding as a tunnel

and is therefore not as expensive.

The report said that Santa Ana has stated its opposition to Costa

Mesa’s request unless “the below grade rail begins at Warner --

adding yet more to the construction cost.”

Yet Jim Ross, Santa Ana’s director of public works, said the city

has not taken a particular position on undergrounding in Costa Mesa.

“We’re concerned what that would look like, and so what Costa Mesa

had done was ask for a study,” Ross said. “I don’t think we’d

necessarily indicate what our position is until we saw totally what

that would entail. At first blush, we had a lot of questions.”

Since the transportation authority has not stepped forward to pay

for the $3-million study of undergrounding in Costa Mesa, City

Manager Allan Roeder has said city officials will ask the South Coast

Plaza business community to help fund the study.