Light Rail in Irvine

[dasubergeek]

Today's OC Register was talking about using some of the money for the long-dead Centerline project for a potential streetcar around the Great Park in Irvine, connecting the Metrolink station, the Great Park (and that stupid balloon), and a couple of Lennar developments.

They're planning to go after money from Renewed Measure M for this, and since OCTA's stated goal is to leverage the existing Metrolink system (which will provide half-hour headways between Fullerton and Laguna Whatever beginning in 2009) and provide connecting transit, this could be the beginning of light-rail in Orange County. With money from Renewed Measure M (which might just be the most successful transportation spending fund in the history of California) they could get money from Measure 1B and possibly some federal transit funds.

www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1759162.php

[whitmanlam]

Any talk of connecting UC Irvine to the Metrolink Station ? If not, this streetcar idea is exactly that useless. But it's good that light rail will be possibility once Metrolink service expands.
Oh..... Centerline. If only it hadn't died so young.

[kenalpern]

What needs to be done is to have certain people create local grassroots entities (or expand Transit Advocates of Orange county) and work with the OCTA to create forums where they get input from the populace as to what THEY want. The Centerline, which TTC fought vigorously for, fell apart because it was too top-down in its advocacy and couldn't achieve the broad support needed for such a major endeavour.

[nickv]

I agree. The citizens of Irvine themselves need to support this or else the chances of this project receiving state and federal support will be slim. A light rail line needs to be regional, fed by other forms of transit. I personally think a people mover (or even rubber-wheel trolley cars) might be better for this corridor.

As far as the Centerline corridor, a good idea is perhaps educate the public on the benefits of a regional light rail transit line, and I mean present those benefits front and center. Present them at board & committee meetings, present them on the Web, even air them on television if there's demand. The presentation should not only include mobility benefits, but TOD benefits and quality of life benfits as well.

The City of Albuquerque, put together, I think, a well done 30 minute presentation of a proposed light rail transit in their area 2 years ago:

www.cabq.gov/transit/tmrw.html (streetcar home page)
www.cabq.gov/transit/ltrailb.wvx (video)

If anybody has 30 minutes, check out how they presented their proposed light rail line (now it's a proposed streetcar line). This video is 2 years old; so I don't know how long it will be available for viewing.

[James Fujita]

I hope all of you read the comments to this article? especially:

"Whenever tried to ride public transportation anywhere in Southern CA in the past, the bus was filled with people who are poor and can't speak english. I felt like I was in another country. A lady sitting next to me had so much perfume on that I was almost going to pass out from the aroma on that hot day."

I'd be ROTFLOL if it weren't for the fact that this sort of "ewww, icky poor people" is way too prevalent in Orange County.

I honestly want to see light rail succeed in Orange County, because I think they need it as much as Los Angeles does, but I'm really not sure this is the best way to go about it.

I mean, it clearly doesn't get anywhere near UC Irvine or the airport; it just seems to connect a bunch of suburban sprawl developments. and any potential extension of this rail line towards Costa Mesa would require passing through a large pocket of NIMBYs.

[nickv]

"Whenever tried to ride public transportation anywhere in Southern CA in the past, the bus was filled with people who are poor and can't speak english. I felt like I was in another country. A lady sitting next to me had so much perfume on that I was almost going to pass out from the aroma on that hot day."

That's of course changing. When I lived in Mission Viejo and attended Saddleback College, a good portion of riders from OCTA Bus 85 deboarded at the college and went to class as an alternate of dealing with campus parking. Teenagers used this line quite a bit during the summer to go to the beaches in Dana Point. I'm sure ridership will increase even more with the advent of 30 minute Metrolink service.

The NIMBY's need to be shown that change is necessary to keep OC moving smartly and building more roads without any other transit alternative such as LRT will not work.

[bluelineshawn]

To me it's not about income or language, but depending on what you're used to you will be exposed to other pax who's ideas of acceptable behavior and sometimes hygiene is lacking. I think that these are two things that turn people off mass transit. It doesn't turn me off, but it can be annoying.

[tonyw79sfv]

There is a StationLink bus that connects Tustin Metrolink station with UCI; it's route 470. However, it's tailored towards OC-bound Metrolink commuters meaning it'll take you to UCI in the morning and out of UCI to Metrolink in the afternoon and evenings. At other times, like when I go to meet up with my brother at the end of the workweek, I would drive him in his car home, but not until I take the Metrolink to Santa Ana station and catch the 59 bus that terminates at UCI. It takes 40 minutes to ride the 59 between Santa Ana station to UCI; a distance of 9.4 route miles. However, the 59 runs a short line on weekends and no bus connects between UCI and any Metrolink stations. The original CenterLine would connect the Disneyland Resort with UCI (in one of the many proposed alignments), I would wonder how many would take that line to Downtown Disney if it was to exist because there is no direct bus from UCI to Disneyland in the first place.

[dasubergeek]

Yeah, the "OMG BROWN PEOPLE EW" thing drives me nuts... it's why I have to physically force myself to read only the article and not the comments underneath.

And yet when I take the bus (the 46 bus) it's a cross-section of North County -- white people, Latinos, Asians, a few blacks, young, old, parents, singles... the same with the 43 bus, except you're jammed into people's bodies on the 43 bus, it's as bad as the 38 Geary bus I used to take when I lived in San Francisco.

[whitmanlam]

bluelineshawn said:

To me it's not about income or language, but depending on what you're used to you will be exposed to other pax who's ideas of acceptable behavior and sometimes hygiene is lacking. I think that these are two things that turn people off mass transit. It doesn't turn me off, but it can be annoying.

No, I think the main barrier that turns people off to mass transit, is that they'll pay for something they won't use.

They scoff at how expensive it is, how impractical, how useless (to them) as an wasting of taxpayer dollars,

and until we convince them otherwise, or educate them about the benefits. This balloon is not getting off the ground.

[jeffe77]

Man...I'm so appalled by the sweeping generalization made in the comments. Let me get this straight, so if you use public transit you either smell, a lib, poor, or illegal. Very nice. Being hispanic, I don't smell, I'm not a liberal nor am I poor and yes...I'm legal, last I checked. What turned me around to advocating public transit was my trip to San Francisco and riding the bus. Only reason I did was because we (Friends from SF) were going to a brewery for a tour/tasting and figured it be best not to worry about who is going to drive. It was great to see mixture of people from all types of backgrounds riding together. People reading, listenning to IPods, blue collar, white collar. Public transit is the way of life there. I see those similarites in riding Metrolink and I believe that OC and SoCal for that matter will have no choice but to look at public transit as a way to get around. It kills me that the same people who complain about funding going towards Public transit will then complain about houses being torn down when freeways have to expand. Go figure.

[bobdavis]

There are a lot of people who have what I call the "Lake Wobegon Syndrome"--they want things peaceful and timeless like a small town in Minnesota. A dynamic, ever-changing environment bothers them. From long-time Southern Californians I hear laments for the old Red Car days. They love the thought of a time before gridlocked freeways, suburban sprawl to the far reaches of Moreno Valley, spray-can graffiti and police helicopters. I suspect some of them don't want a return to rail transit, they want a world where non-Euro-Americans "knew their place". Even if someone were to magically restore all 1000 miles of the Pacific Electric, getting Southlanders to leave their cars at home or at the station would be another matter. A large percentage of people don't like to wait for trains, don't like to share a vehicle with strangers and don't like to transfer (usually involving another wait). Only when fuel prices take a significant bite and/or driving becomes (literally and figuratively) a major headache will they consider alternatives.

[nickv]

There's actually a bunch of peaceful and timeless spots all around So Cal. People who prefer to live in these spots have numerous locations to choose from, and I don't think they're going away anytime soon. Tustin has Cowan & Lemon Heights, Irvine has Turtle Rock. Then there's spots in Villa Park near the City of Orange, Rowland Heights in Industry, and Meadowview & all of Wine Country in Temecula.

Irvine and OC have grown up and need their present transportation systems upgraded. As I posted earlier, a regional rail system is what OC really needs; the NIMBY's need to wake up and see how great a regional rail system will be for them in the long term future. Based on experience, many NIMBY's fear that such systems are loud and noisy, but hopefully the agencies are smart enough to use their resources to address this issue.

[James Fujita]

you know, I honestly really don't mind if people want to live in an Amish time-warp bubble; I figure that's their imperative. it's only when these bubble people expect the rest of us to live according to their petty little paranoid rules that I get mad.

it's kind of like the five stages of death: the Orange County NIMBYs are in denial, while Cheviot Hills has moved on to Anger and Bargaining

[wad]

nickv said:

Irvine and OC have grown up and need their present transportation systems upgraded.

Orange County is somewhere where Los Angeles County was in the late 1970s, just before the first sales tax was passed. North OC is farther along in its urbanism than South OC, which is still in the "few years after the streetcars stopped running" phase.

First, though, Orange County has to upgrade its bus system. Measure M provides nothing for local bus service. While Metrolink service at clock headways sounds nice, remember that transfers are inevitable, and keeping a grid system with largely 30 minute service sucks.

[nickv]

First, though, Orange County has to upgrade its bus system. Measure M provides nothing for local bus service. While Metrolink service at clock headways sounds nice, remember that transfers are inevitable, and keeping a grid system with largely 30 minute service sucks.

That's true! In the Irvine Spectrum where the Light Rail line is proposed to be, I think Line 70 needs to be realigned to serve the Irvine Transportation Center. I also think that there needs to be a direct connection between this area and the Laguna Hills Transportion Center. Perhaps Line 83 (former Line 205) can do the job.

[nickv]

This was a presentation that was presented at the OCTA Board meeting:

www.octa.net/pdf/102207/irvine.pdf

I'm not quite sure if "guideway" is the best name for this project since Wikipedia defines guideway transit as a "grade-separated transit system in which rubber-tired vehicles are guided...on a guideway". The Irvine guideway will operate at grade mostly on existing roads in its own traffic lane.

It also looks like the Irvine TC is going get a facelift too.

[tonyw79sfv]

Wow, at least get something with a caternary wire and a pantograph in Orange County for once! It will give the OC some kind of light rail they can be proud of. I noticed they used a Metro stock photo of the Orange Line NABI BRT bus in their PDF, I thought that's cool seeing a pic of a Metro bus for a project that is 70 miles away. Those NABI 60BRT are a hot commodity if Foothill Transit and Santa Clarita Transit uses them, among Metro's Local, Rapid, and Liner buses.

[rwsconsulting]

Any chance of including the "Tustin Legacy" in such a plan?

The Tustin Legacy is the re-use plan for the Tustin Marine base. Most of the project is controlled by Shea Homes in the same manner that Lennar controls "The Great Park". Here is what the project will look like:


More information on The Tustin Legacy is available at:

www.tustinlegacy.com/

[Jason Saunders]

From L.A. Times 2007

"According to the plans, streetcars powered by overhead electrical lines will run 3.4 miles through the Great Park to the Irvine train station, where passengers will transfer to a shuttle bus along Alton Parkway to the Irvine Spectrum 1.6 miles away. The bus portion is expected to be in operation by 2009, and the streetcars by 2012. The goal is to install rail along the entire route and possibly expand it to other parts of Irvine, city officials said. The hybrid rail-bus line would attract about 5,000 daily riders, officials say. All nine planned stations will be at street level, except one built into the Irvine train station, where riders will transfer between rail and bus. Part of the bus line will be elevated to cross over Interstate 5, officials said."

Source =
latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottleneck/2007/08/irvine-light-ra.html

I haven't heard anything about this project and a Google search returns pages that are over three years old. Without knowing anything about this part of Southern Orange County I would speculate that it is unlikey you will see light rail any time soon.

From looking at Google Maps It appears there is a lot of single family low density homes. This doesn't bode well for Federal funding of such a project.

If anyone is more familiar with what's going on down there please share it.