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Streetcars by Disneyland? What could be wrong with that?
Last year, an Anaheim City Council majority approved a $318 million publicly-funded streetcar running about 3 miles from the ARTIC transportation center (train station) north of the 57 freeway through the Platinum Triangle to the Resort, with funds from County Measure M2 gas taxes, TID (tourism improvement district) taxes (2% of the 17% bed tax), and anticipated Federal taxes through the FTA (Federal Transit Authority) New Starts program.
“Taxes” means you and I, the public, pay for it.
The rejected alternative to this over-$100-million-per-mile boondoggle? A $53 million enhanced bus proposal. That’s still expensive, but over $250 million less than what they voted for.
Who benefits from this project?
The Disneyland Resort, of course, along with hotels, and other resort businesses. That’s because they can use the train station’s remote parking and get extra business that might be coming from the train. It also means Disney can potentially get their parking lot off the old strawberry field they bought and use it as the 3rd park they have been planning for.
And what are these businesses CONTRIBUTING to this project that benefits them so much?
Nothing.
Zero.
Zip.
No private funding has been offered.
Plus, beneficiary Disney will not even allow the project on their property, requiring us to build an expensive walkway over Harbor Blvd., complete with elevators for ADA access! Their attitude? Let the taxpayers like you and me pay for it! In fact, transportation/planning expert Randall O’Toole calls this “a giant taxpayer subsidy to Disney.”
Yet Anaheim councilmember Kris Murray strongly insists that tourists subsidize this project with their incoming tax dollars. She has testified twice to the OCTA Board, the Board on where fellow councilmember Gail Eastman sits on the Transit Committee, both of them acolytes of Curt Pringle, who of course is the lobbyist for the clients benefiting from this project.
But don’t taxpayers ALSO benefit from this “pubic/private” partnership? Don’t we get all that money back?
No! The city staff report for last month’s controversial and much-publicized $158 million subsidy to the GardenWalk Hotel debunks the oft-repeated claim that “5% of the city [The Resort] generates 50% of General Fund revenues in Anaheim.” It turns out that expenses reduce the benefit to only 20%.
But if that’s true, is your neighborhood 20% better than surrounding cities?
Now that the hotel guests’ Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) is being diverted to private hoteliers and a future Convention Center expansion, where is Anaheim’s incentive to grow that fund?
Well… but isn’t the streetcar a better deal than that one?
NO! The bus option is not only over $250 million less, but buses also transport more passengers than streetcars, and offer flexibility to add vehicles during peak periods. Buses are cheaper to purchase, operate, repair, and maintain, and do not require tracks and a special maintenance facility. Buses are easily removed for repair and can be rerouted during emergencies. On the other hand, a disabled streetcar leaves the tracks unusable. They’ll all back up until it can be fixed. Buses seem to work just fine. In fact, that’s what Disney paid for themselves to move people around Walt Disney World in Florida.
Streetcars entail risks, too!
Alarmingly, the “trendy” new streetcars in Portland, Tucson, Seattle and Little Rock have created a cottage industry: attorneys suing on behalf of the pedestrians, bicyclists, and passenger vehicles colliding with streetcars in mixed traffic (the reason the old streetcars were abandoned in favor of buses 50+ years ago!) There have been 100+ deaths involved with the LA Metro Blue Line… SO FAR.
The City of Anaheim’s General Fund would be targeted for those lawsuits and liability, negating the misinformed City Council majority’s assurance that there would be “no risk” to the City in operating this system!
Don’t we taxpayers get a say in how our dollars are spent?
Anaheim and OCTA (Orange County Transportation Authority) staffers claim that the public was already involved in selecting the streetcar. However, early promises of Public Meetings, a proper Public Comment period to review documents prior to a final decision, and a Public Hearing when City Council made that final selection were dropped! The Alternatives Analysis was quietly posted to the Internet, without Public Notice of any kind (a December 2012 Public Records Request from activist/blogger Cynthia Ward confirmed this oversight!). 20 days later, City Council selected the streetcar on the Consent Calendar of the October 23, 2012, meeting – without any public hearing comments!
What’s worse, Mayor Tom Tait’s motion to continue, to delay the vote for more study, was voted down 3-2, with Councilmember Murray and Public Works Director Natalie Meeks chastising the Mayor, insisting there had been plenty of public input, implying he’d just “failed to keep up,” despite their failure to properly disclose information!
But, yes, you still have a chance to have a say!
On June 24, 2013, OCTA delayed their final vote another two weeks. That means the July 8th meeting will be the last opportunity for residents to ask for an enhanced bus option, or even to drop this massive taxpayer subsidy of Resort businesses and demand they mitigate the traffic impacts of their own highly profitable customers. To date, the private businesses benefitting from the project do not offer incentives for their guests to carpool or take the train – why should they if they can get taxpayers to fund their streetcars and the parking garage at ARTIC that’s sure to act as Disney’s remote parking option in the future.
Here’s what to do:
- Contact the OCTA Board of Directors at: Clerk of the Board (714) 560-5676
- email the OCTA Executive DJohnson@octa.net
- Attend the meeting at the OCTA Headquarters, July 8th at 9 a.m. (get info at octa.net)
- Contact the Anaheim City Council by email at SRay@anaheim.net or anaheim.net
- Write letters to the editor of our local newspapers:
OC Register – letters@ocregister.com
LA Times – letters@latimes.com
Want more information?
- Anaheim resident and Blogger Cynthia Ward has spent 6 months digging through this project and is happy to share technical details. Cynthia@Ward-Associates.net
- Get informative reviews of streetcars in general, and Anaheim’s specifically, by transportation expert Randall O’Toole at the Cato Institute and the Antiplanner websites shown here:
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/great-streetcar-conspiracy
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa727_web.pdf
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=7522
This is so good that I have moved back the Weekend Open Threat to the safe distance of 5:30 just so that it will not get crushed by it.
This is truly amazing. This idea is just off the top of my head, but they want to help out, how about spending this money on buses from ARTIC, and then others including perhaps an intercounty bus that goes all the way from the Fullerton Road at the 60 (I’m sure that LA County would cooperate) straight down Harbor (except downtown Fullerton) to Disneyland or beyond?
In fact, make it two lines: one a local and one an express. Both would start at Puente Hills Shopping Center and the express would stop only at Whitter (North Hills Plaza Shopping Center), Bastanchury (St. Joe’s), switch to Lemon and stop at Fullerton College, then take Santa Fe back to Harbor (stopping at the Transportation Center) and stop at Orangethorpe, La Palma, Lincoln, Katella/Disneyland, and then maybe stopping at Garden Grove or Westminster. (I seem to remember that bus service is pretty good from there on.)
This idea may or may not be good, but we could serve Disneyland’s needs perfectly adequately and then come up with ten or more (maybe many more!) routes like that that actually serve the taxpayers of the county! This is madness!
It’s also maddening that the first question I know I have to ask is: OK, who’s getting rich off of brokering and/or managing this?
Now Greg, a girl does not give up all of her secrets at once. If I put all of that behind the scenes stuff in there, what would I have to write about Monday? Now go write a letter to OCTA and tell them this is not what you thought you were getting with Measure M gas taxes set aside for “transit”….since most of us figured that meant some measure of moving us ALL, and not just patrons of Le Mouse.
Corporations are people, Cynthia. The rest of us, unless we’re paying tourists, not so much.
thanks Cynthia.
I tried to explain to Robert Lauten on the previous Juice Article how the U.N. and the New World Order were not the only Wolves in town.
These transportaton projects lobbied by the Private Sector, Developers and Corporations by rigging city councils and county boards are perfect examples of the battles that need to be fought on the local level.
You guys need to storm city hall with pitchforks and torches.
Yeah, that always works.
Stop sounding like a provocateur, Paul.
Whatever happened to Ed Snell’s Traveling Recall Petition Circus? Haven’t seen him or them on the recorded archives lately (family matters keep me out of the area, sadly). Were they as fake as his rubber nose, or is he now in DisneyGitmo under the Matterhorn? Wouldn’t (3?) recall petitions accomplish more than many issue petitions? Just wondering.
Oh, that’s low – ridiculing a clown activist!
Vern, High minded -ness was long ago lost in my rear view mirror in clouds of cynicism. I like my circuses with lions, tigers, ELEPHANTS, and clowns to laugh at, have never been to Cirque d’Soleile, sorry. But REALLY, where are the recall petitions? Or have those who grind the poll results more than I do concluded THAT’s a waste of effort ???
it would be a prohibitively expensive endeavor, and disney would throw ANY amount at protecting their Murray & Eastman.
Their Murray, anyway. Eastman is expendable — as I suggest in the story just posted she may have now figured out..