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Re: METRO connecting to OCTA BOB2? Well...It's not a gauge width inferiority complex....
Author: BOB2
Date: 06-02-2019 - 08:45
Back when folks started looking at the West Santa Ana Branch as a potential "rail" or other "fixed guideway" transit corridor, around 2009-2010 there were a number of listening sessions, that included meetings in OC cities. I attended a few of these, while doing some work for one of the consultants on that project.
At a meeting in one OC communtiy, an "eighty something" (now gone) Mayor of one OC City made some truly "cringeworthy" "Nimby" comments on the races that would use LRT, while thirty kids, mostly representing the mostly Asian American local City itself, from the local junior college showed up, and wanted LRT.
Maglev Bruce from Cerritos, wanted a system that would not stop at "those" communities (only his, of course) because that would slow down the Maglev trip from LA to Anaheim and Santa Ana).
The south Orange County WSAB cities preferred a cute "trolley", or a cheap (but largely useless segment of) busway.
And, the rest of the cities in the LA County portion of the WSAB/UP alignment wanted LRT, which is in the MTA's current plan.
Eventually, MagLev Bruce (who once on a MagLev junket overseas was witnessed trying to convince the Chinese that he was "the big cheese" with the LA "MagLev" project they should deal with...), who was opposed to anything but his MagLev "vision", managed to get Cerritos omitted from LRT line planning, instead of connecting to two stations, beyond the I-605 in Cerritos.
The consultants looking at the corridor, back then, did some travel demand modeling for LRT that showed the LA to I-605 WASB/UP alignment would carry nearly 90,000 daily riders. They also modeled it all of the way to Santa Ana, which could generate as many as (IIRC) somewhere near 130,000 daily riders. But, the OC "only" WSAB LRT segment, was modeled as a stand alone, only managed to produced somewhere between 13,000 and 25,000 daily trips (well less than what OC would contribute with an LA County connections).
So, of course, with politics being "tribal" and "territorial", and not necessarily logical, rational, or efficient, OC and LA politicians chose to serve "only" the voters to which they were elected by. And today, we have two separate, disconnected, and likely incompatible, rail transit projects at both ends of the WASB corridor.
At a meeting in one OC communtiy, an "eighty something" (now gone) Mayor of one OC City made some truly "cringeworthy" "Nimby" comments on the races that would use LRT, while thirty kids, mostly representing the mostly Asian American local City itself, from the local junior college showed up, and wanted LRT.
Maglev Bruce from Cerritos, wanted a system that would not stop at "those" communities (only his, of course) because that would slow down the Maglev trip from LA to Anaheim and Santa Ana).
The south Orange County WSAB cities preferred a cute "trolley", or a cheap (but largely useless segment of) busway.
And, the rest of the cities in the LA County portion of the WSAB/UP alignment wanted LRT, which is in the MTA's current plan.
Eventually, MagLev Bruce (who once on a MagLev junket overseas was witnessed trying to convince the Chinese that he was "the big cheese" with the LA "MagLev" project they should deal with...), who was opposed to anything but his MagLev "vision", managed to get Cerritos omitted from LRT line planning, instead of connecting to two stations, beyond the I-605 in Cerritos.
The consultants looking at the corridor, back then, did some travel demand modeling for LRT that showed the LA to I-605 WASB/UP alignment would carry nearly 90,000 daily riders. They also modeled it all of the way to Santa Ana, which could generate as many as (IIRC) somewhere near 130,000 daily riders. But, the OC "only" WSAB LRT segment, was modeled as a stand alone, only managed to produced somewhere between 13,000 and 25,000 daily trips (well less than what OC would contribute with an LA County connections).
So, of course, with politics being "tribal" and "territorial", and not necessarily logical, rational, or efficient, OC and LA politicians chose to serve "only" the voters to which they were elected by. And today, we have two separate, disconnected, and likely incompatible, rail transit projects at both ends of the WASB corridor.
