Halfway railway makes no headway in solving transportation woes

Geoff West

Despite the fact that the federal government recently threw a curve

at proponents of the ill-advised CenterLine light rail project when

it chose to withhold funding, the billion-dollar fiasco continues to

ooze its way into the transportation future of Santa Ana and Costa

Mesa like the creature in the old Steve McQueen movie “The Blob.”

Even though this now-diminished project will serve a minuscule

portion of the county’s population -- those few souls eager to ride

from John Wayne Airport to the Santa Ana Regional Transportation

Center via South Coast Plaza and the Santa Ana Civic Center -- the

local politicians who conjured up this white elephant many years ago

just won’t let go.

The most recent numbers I’ve seen published project fewer than

20,000 riders would use this system each day. However, reports

published earlier this summer clearly pointed out that, with almost

no exceptions, such light rail systems have never come close to

original ridership projections and have never covered operating costs

from fare revenues. They always required hefty government subsidies

to keep operating. Construction costs for such projects have always

exceeded even the most pessimistic projections.

This project will remove few, if any, riders from their cars.

History shows us that riders of light rail most often come from other

forms of public transportation -- mainly buses. I fail to see how

spending more than a billion dollars of our tax money to extricate

relatively few riders from their more flexible and efficient buses

only to plunk them down onto a rigid, costly and inefficient light

rail system makes any sense at all.

Now some current politicians have decided that they, too, wish to

leave their mark on this project. At the behest of major

beneficiaries of the project -- the folks who own South Coast Plaza,

among others -- they tell us they now want to have part of it

constructed underground. It’s kind of like saying to us, “Oh, we love

CenterLine, we just don’t want to see it.” Of course, building part

of this boondoggle underground jacks up the cost considerably. It has

been reported that, amazingly, this subterranean section would

contain no passenger boarding stations. The train would simply dive

from view at the Santa Ana/Costa Mesa border, squiggle around

underground as it skirts the South Coast Metro Performing Arts

complex, then pop up again as it heads for the airport -- spewing out

passengers like a migrating whale surfacing for air.

Those who support the CenterLine project will try to convince you

that all the other cities, which have carefully assessed this project

in the past and have chosen not to participate, will come to their

senses and flock to link up with the initial segment once it is

constructed. They want you to believe that, as in the movie “Field of

Dreams,” if you build it, they will come. Since current optimistic

estimates indicate it will take the rest of this decade to complete

this project if -- and that’s a very big if -- construction begins on

schedule in a couple years. I find myself wondering how many of our

children will be around to make the decision on such an expansion.

The murkiness of this project got a little clearer when I recently

read that the city of Santa Ana will use CenterLine funds to

accelerate their redevelopment of Bristol Street by decades, the

widening of which will displace almost 1,000 people and will involve

the destruction of more than 150 homes and 170 businesses. I wonder

where these displaced persons, the majority of whom are

Spanish-speaking, will find open arms and an infrastructure ready and

willing to provide support in their hour of need? Well, of course,

right down the road on the Westside of Costa Mesa.

The critical question of who, specifically, will be riding this

system remains unclear. It’s difficult to imagine wealthy residents

of Newport Beach and Irvine driving their cars to the airport, then

jumping aboard the train for a day of shopping at South Coast Plaza.

It is also unlikely that they will use this system to reach the Santa

Ana Civic Center as they visit the courts. How many residents along

the northern portion of the route will avail themselves of this means

of transportation for an evening at “the theater” at the Performing

Arts Center? Not many, I suspect. So, who will ride CenterLine? Who

are these ethereal 20,000 people supposedly poised to jump aboard?

While these questions and many others remain unanswered, our

friends north of the border, in Santa Ana, are busily planning to

hack away at neighborhoods along Bristol Street, using the bloody

meat cleaver known as eminent domain to acquire land along the right

of way for this monstrosity.

We don’t have to look very far to measure the Orange County

Transportation Authority’s track record with “innovative” solutions

to this region’s transportation problems. Witness the toll roads --

great ideas gone bad. Yes, they move the traffic, but at such a cost

that several are near financial ruin. And what is their solution to

declining use and fiscal red ink? Instead of reducing fares to

encourage greater use, and thereby increase revenues, they have

increased fares. This, of course, will discourage users. For example,

drivers on the San Joaquin Toll Road now pay a nearly 17% surcharge

to use the road at “peak” times. And that is on top of an already

exorbitant fee, which has increased 50% during its brief lifetime.

It’s no wonder that more drivers are choosing to take the San Diego

Freeway these days.

CenterLine, in it’s present shrunken configuration, makes no sense

at all as a solution to Orange County’s transportation woes. If, at a

time of great fiscal distress in this state, it is determined that we

simply must spend more than a billion dollars on transportation

improvements, let’s spend it where it will do the most good for the

greatest number of people. Let’s improve our roads, provide greater

incentives for car pooling during peak hours, incentives for

super-economical cars and cleaner, more economical buses for those

who use them.

Forget CenterLine -- it’s a bad idea that only gets worse as time

passes.

* GEOFF WEST is a Costa Mesa resident and frequent contributor to

the Daily Pilot Forum pages.