Orange County Transportation Mode Selection
Submitted by Don L. Kirk on 5 July, 2010 - 12:49de la tarde
Orange County is lucky that Walt Disney chose Anaheim. Besides building an amusement park, Walt also wanted to suggest things that would help us in the future. For that reason, Walt Disney built a Monorail system not only in the park, but to the D-Land Hotel as well.
In his dreams, Walt wanted to extend the monorail system to Knott's Berry Farm, the Convention Center; and Anaheim Stadium would have been in his plans.
Now Orange County is ignoring what Walt gave to the area and is building Light Rail. I am a public transportation speaker; and while parts of the system would work as light rail, most of the system needs to be Monorail and or Maglev.
Wake up citizens of OC and insist that the transit planners build the proper transit system, rather than a system they later will wish that they had not huilt.
Don Kirk
Comments
Orange County isn't even
Orange County isn't even close to building any light rail.
Light Rail ?
OCTA's "CenterLine" LRT system was first proposed in the early 1980's and studied for nearly 20 years before being dropped entirely in 2005. It was originally proposed as a mostly elevated LRT, directly serving most major trip generators from Fullerton to Irvine. The cities didn't want the elevated structures, so then it was brought down to operate mostly at grade in city streets. Then the cities (Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Orange and Irvine) didn't want the traffic impacts so it was shortened to a nearly useless 8-mile length on Bristol St. in Santa Ana. It had already been re-routed to avoid nearly all useful trip generators. Many CenterLine supporters no longer supported the line after the cities and OCTA got done decimating the potential of the line.
There is no really useful rail right-of-way for LRT in Orange County, so LRT would have to use either city streets, elevated structures or a combination of both. The only thing that would really work well would be a grade-seperated elevated system, perhaps automated, directly serving trip generators county-wide. Something like the SkyTrain in Vancouver BC. It is perfect for directly serving the dispersed trip generators in Orange County. Build it right or don't build it at all.
"Something like the SkyTrain
"Something like the SkyTrain in Vancouver BC."
1. NIMBY's don't like elevated systems.
2. SkyTrain is fully automated - no drivers. The local transit unions would fight it.
What we need is a subway, but there's no money for that. They can cost as much as $2 billion per mile.
A true BRT system with dedicated lanes could work, but the cities don't want it.
So what options do we have? The current system isn't working.
I wonder if in my lifetime
I wonder if in my lifetime (40 more years) we will see a light rail in OC, even if it is just a LA-Santa Ana connection.
>Orange County isn't even
>Orange County isn't even close to building any light rail.
The City of Anaheim wants to build a light rail line (probably elevated) that would connect the ARTIC with the Disneyland Resort.
I'm hoping that this will end up being a starter system for a much larger county-wide light rail system. If it works in Anaheim, why not extend it further out?
>I wonder if in my lifetime (40 more years) we will see a light rail in OC, even if it is just a LA-Santa Ana connection.
Sign up for cryonics.