RtS: IMAX at GardenWalk, Anaheim

[The Original OC Adventure]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Pipe dream. "Easily upgraded to light rail"? Hahahah, you slay me.

Why not?

They could do it in three steps.

1. Reserve the left-most lane for buses, using center island platforms for stations. This would require doors placed on the left side of buses. Shouldn't be too hard to do.

2. Replace the fossil fuel buses with electric trolley buses.

3. Gradually lay track and replace the trolley buses with street cars similar to those used by the city of Portland Oregon.

It might take a couple decades, but in the end Orange County would be far better off.

The big problem with people living in Southern California is they lack vision.

Why can't we be the first in transit?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by The Original OC Adventure

Why not?

They could do it in three steps.

1. Reserve the left-most lane for buses, using center island platforms for stations. This would require doors placed on the left side of buses. Shouldn't be too hard to do.

2. Replace the fossil fuel buses with electric trolley buses.

3. Gradually lay track and replace the trolley buses with street cars similar to those used by the city of Portland Oregon.

So not only does your simple 3 step plan require investments of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, for each step, it's investment in things that would be designed to be made obsolete by the next step?

Put doors on the left sides of buses. But then get rid of those buses you've just spent about $100 million* on modifying in favor a different, more expensive kind of bus. But then dump those buses for another, even MORE expensive type of vehicle.

Seems to me it would make a lot more sense to start with a plan that's designed to make use of the money spent rather than throw money down the drain in pursuit of some master plan that's liable to have the plug pulled at any point down the line. L.A.'s model of building small, achievable chunks that, on their own address a need and can be later networked together to addresses more general needs strikes me as a far more reasonable solution that neither necessitates huge spending on temporary solutions that will be scrapped, nor leaves things in a lurch should there be a change in course/funding/popularity a decade or two down the road.



*OCTA's got about 1000 buses if my research is correct. If fixing a couple dents on GC's car door costs $5000, I think $10K is a lowball estimate for making that kind of modification to a bus.

[The Original OC Adventure]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

So not only does your simple 3 step plan require investments of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, for each step, it's investment in things that would be designed to be made obsolete by the next step?

The whole process might take decades to complete. By the time Step 2 was completed, the buses purchased for Step 1 would be ready for the junk yard.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by The Original OC Adventure

The whole process might take decades to complete. By the time Step 2 was completed, the buses purchased for Step 1 would be ready for the junk yard.

It requires large amounts of overlap, redundant spending, and it still is a plan that will require years and years of infrastructure work with no short term benefit, only inconvenience as traffic on every major street across the county is interrupted.

Whereas starting with local trouble spots and popular destination spots solves problems immediately while simultaneously laying the groundwork for future improvements.

Every city that has a viable public transit system operates with a hub or multiple hubs. It's more efficient, allows for significant sharing of infrastructure, and ensures that the most pressing needs are served first. If being first in transit is the goal, it would serve us well to learn from the ones that do it best right now.