A look back: "What’s Next for O.C. Transportation?"

Abe Ahn, who writes for the UC Irvine student publication Forest Fire, has graciously allowed me to re-publish his article, which gives some insight into the politics of Orange County's public transit, and dives into the stories of people who ride OCTA.

Santa Ana College professor Roy Shahbazian has not owned a car in over a decade, an impressive feat in a county that embraces private transportation. As a member of the non-profit Transit Advocates, he lobbies city council meetings and citizen advisory boards for improved services. But in Orange County, it’s difficult for Shahbazian to persuade people to leave their cars.

“When I say I’m taking the bus home, people who don’t know me are sort of alarmed and they want to help me out and ask me, ‘What’s wrong? How come you’re taking the bus home?’” said Shahbazian.

This kind of reaction is typical in the county. In the 1990s, transit advocates pushed for the construction of the CenterLine, a nine-mile light rail system running from Santa Ana to Irvine. But in 2005, lack of public support resulted in the suspension of all plans for the rail. Instead, the county reallocated its funds to improve express bus services and the Metrolink train system.

“At different times, [OCTA] was working on a light rail, and that was a plan that would connect the central area of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana to the [Irvine] train station,” said Shahbazian. “That eventually got tabled. I think OCTA’s approach to this is ‘Well, let’s let the cities figure out what they want to do for transit.’ I know cities are developing smaller plans to improve connections to the train station. They call it the Go Local program.”

In fall 2006, the OCTA proposed a four-step process for Go Local. The first phase involves allocating a $100,000 grant to each of the 34 cities in Orange County, money that will be used to assess transportation needs. Once a city has a safe and effective plan, it can compete for additional funding from the county. Phases three and four involve the actual implementation of the plan. Santa Ana and Anaheim, two cities highly impacted by the OCTA, entered the Go Local program in January 2007 to respond to the growing demand for public transit.

The willingness of cities like Santa Ana to improve public transit may be the beginning of a slow crawl to the past, when public transportation didn’t always take a backseat to city planning. In the 1950s, the Pacific Electric rail served Orange and Los Angeles counties, operating routes that traveled as far south as Newport Beach. With the advent of the automobile and aggressive buyouts from car industries, the Pacific Electric rail was dismantled. But in the eighties, city planners considered reviving the rail system to boost economic development, just as Pacific Electric did for the county in the fifties.

In 1990, O.C. residents voted yes to Measure M, a half-cent sales tax reserved for transportation improvements that could provide up to $1 billion for the development of a railway. But the county was not without its detractors. In June 2003, transit opponent John Kleinpeter, an Irvine Valley College professor, and his group Fund Alternatives Instead of Rail (FAIR) succeeded in rallying voters to put the CenterLine in limbo.

Irvine voters sent mixed messages by voting against both the pro-CenterLine, OCTA-backed Measure A and the anti-CenterLine, Kleinpeter-backed Measure B, with about 52% voting against both initiatives. Without clear approval from Irvine residents, the OCTA halted the plan and decided to focus its resources toward improving bus services, eventually turning plans for the CenterLine into the Go Local program.

Although Orange County could not yet boast a light rail system, improvements to bus services paid off. In 2005, the American Public Transportation Association commended OCTA for its record bus ridership gains—from 45 million passengers in 1992 to 62 million in 2002. But attempts at improving bus services have not always succeeded.

In 2000, the OCTA restructured its bus service by focusing its routes toward major streets, eliminating deviations that cost more money to operate. Implementation of the plan was disastrous, as commuters packed themselves into overworked buses. The new bus routes added more transfer points, which led to more walking for transit riders. In response, the Transit Advocates started BetterCommute.org, a trip planner service that allowed commuters to more easily navigate the buses.

“[The website] got started in 2001 or so, when OCTA wanted to change a lot of the routes and have a new paradigm for designing the routes. . . . There were some good ideas in there, but it seemed like it was more of a philosophical decision than what would be best for the passenger. . . . That’s the crisis that burst forth the Transit Advocates. Sometimes there are these crises that we respond to, and we’re doing some proactive thinking about what needs to change in the system to make it easier for the passenger,” said Shahbazian.

The latest transportation crisis occurred in July 2007, when the Teamsters Union held a strike demanding higher wages from the OCTA. For nine days, the OCTA operated only a portion of its bus services, relying on sub-contractors to drive heavily congested routes like the 57, which runs from Brea to Newport Beach. When the OCTA doesn’t operate at full capacity, hundreds of thousands of people are left inconvenienced or worse—immobile.

Today, four months after the strike, I’m traveling from Irvine to Old Towne Orange, a route that usually takes about 20 minutes by car—up to an hour if traffic on the 55 Freeway is particularly grueling. Route 59 carries passengers from the University of California, Irvine, to Brea, passing through communities with diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds. It’s also one of the county’s busiest bus lines, serving commuters in Irvine, Santa Ana, Orange, Anaheim and Brea.

At the start of the route, students make up most of the ridership. Some live only a few blocks away from campus. Others, as far as Santa Ana. Long Vu, 19, is a UCI student who takes the bus everyday from his home in Santa Ana to school. He takes the bus because he can’t afford repairs to his car.

“By car, it takes 25 minutes to get to campus. By bus, 45 minutes. It’s usually not crowded and I like to read and study before coming to school during exams,” said Vu.

As a UCI student, Vu can ride the bus free of charge. Despite the 20-minute delay in commute, the OCTA bus is comfortable and affordable for him.

Thirty minutes into the ride, the bus reaches the Irvine city limits. It stops near business complexes and warehouses, where laborers from Santa Ana catch the bus to go home.

Alicia Lopez, 55, is a textile worker in Irvine. She lives in Santa Ana and commutes by bus four times a day, everyday. She has taken public transportation for 10 years.

“Usually the bus ride is pleasant, although the drivers can be a bit crazy sometimes. They can have bit of an attitude,” said Lopez.

During the July strike, she had to wait for her daughter to get out of work and pick her up in Irvine. But others who do not have family members or acquaintances with cars are left without an option in case of a strike.

Maria Garcia, 38, is a drycleaner working in Santa Ana. She takes Bus 59 to get from her home in McFadden Ave. to her workplace on 17th St, a distance of five miles. Because she and her husband no longer work together, Garcia began taking the bus in June.

“The strike was a problem. I had to walk from McFadden to 17th St., which took 40 minutes to complete,” said Garcia.

Without her husband to drive her, she walked an average of 80 minutes per day during the strike.

Making a stop at Century High School in Santa Ana, Bus 59 picks up a group of students. By now, the ridership is mostly made up of high school students and low-income workers, all Hispanic.

Myra Mendoza, 14, attends Century High School and has taken Bus 59 for three years to get to school. Although she wasn’t affected by the strike, a breakdown of OCTA bus services could potentially disrupt her commute.

Stopping in front of the O.C. Register offices on N. Grand Ave., I meet Carol Ryan, 51. She works in telemarketing but is currently unemployed. Ryan cannot afford a car, so the OCTA buses are her only means of transportation. She recently has been traveling throughout the county, in search of a job.

“With the buses, you can get anywhere for cheap. I think that public transportation here is better than anywhere else, even Los Angeles,” said Ryan, referring to the timeliness and accessibility of OCTA buses.

While it may seem that Bus 59 caters to low-income commuters, the ridership along Old Towne Orange, a primarily white middle-class suburb, includes passengers like Isa Lang, a librarian at Chapman University. Lang takes the Metrolink train from Santa Ana to Irvine, where she parks her car and drives to her home in Lake Forest.

“I take public transportation to save energy and save wear and tear on my car. I also get employee benefits for taking the train,” said Lang.

Bus 59, like many other OCTA buses, operate along an economically diverse path of neighborhoods. The 57, another highly congested OCTA line, runs along Bristol St. from Costa Mesa to Santa Ana. It carries passengers through Santa Ana’s toughest neighborhoods as well as places as wealthy as South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

Anil Pasupulati, 27, regularly takes the 57 to travel between his home in Costa Mesa to UCI, where he is a post-doctorate student of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. As a biologist who works with ecological problems, Pasupulati is conscious about his impact on the environment and does not own a car.

“I don’t have to pay for a vehicle, and the bus is better for the environment. There is less pollution. Most importantly, I don’t have to look for parking. I take the bus to come to school and I take it to go shopping. Compared to public transportation systems in Chicago and San Francisco County, the buses here are very clean and are always on time,” said Pasupulati.

He owns a monthly pass that costs $45, a small price to pay when compared to the combined cost of a car payment, insurance and a full tank of gas. Regular fare is $1.25, 50 cents for seniors.

While the OCTA has come a long way since its formation in 1972, criticisms like the lack of frequent service, with wait times during some weekend and evening schedules that reach up to an hour, are one of many issues that the Transit Advocates continue to work on through citizen-based advocacy and public committees.

“[A difficulty facing advocacy] which I think is important is that the people who make decisions about the system don’t ever use the bus. The OCTA Board of Directors and executive staff, they’re not really using the bus system. Some of them may take the train, but there’s only a few people who use the bus system. They don’t realize that this is a problem we really need to work on because they never see it. They never experience it first-hand,” said Shahbazian.

Although some Orange County residents may have been resistant toward a rail system in the past decade, they must understand all too well that transportation cannot end with what the county has today. On November 6, 2006, a 69.7% majority voted to extend Measure M until 2041, an initiative that will fund transit improvements for another three decades. With the Go Local program in effect, the county may eventually find vestiges of the original CenterLine plan implemented into its cities.

“I think it’s a matter of time before it happens,” said Roy of the future development of O.C. transportation. “But it will be a long road. And I think that as long as people find their cars convenient, there probably won’t be much change. But people with longer commutes are going to start looking for options. I do expect, decades from now, we will figure out that we need a better transit system. Hopefully, we’ll figure that out, but it’s a long road.”