Orange County Memories: Light Rail in Orange County

Light Rail in Orange County

by Steve
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I just found an article published in the Los Angeles Times regarding a new light rail project planned in Irvine.

This particular project involves a short rail of only 5 1/2 miles...
The proposal, which won an initial endorsement from the Irvine City Council last week, would use millions in state money that the city had earmarked for CenterLine to instead help connect the future Orange County Great Park with Irvine's Metrolink station and the Spectrum shopping center.
This reminds me of another project called "Irvine PeopleMover" interestingly enough, that had also been proposed back in 1998, which was published right here on the old OCThen website.

I remember back in the 1980's the City of Santa Ana was mulling over a light rail project called CenterLine that would connect people from John Wayne Airport, to South Coast Plaza, to Santa Ana Civic Center, to Main Place Mall, and to Disneyland. I used to work at the Santa Ana City Library in downtown, and saw the plans. Apparently, this project is still in the works.

Of course, light rail is nothing new to Orange County. The Pacific Electric Red Cars ran from Orange County to Los Angeles County from 1904 to 1950. My mother-in-law took the red car from Santa Ana to high school in Long Beach at St. Anthony's, the only Catholic High School in the area at the time before Mater Dei opened.

You can visit some Red Car history at the Spaghetti Station restaurant in Fullerton, where they have plenty of stuff on exhibit.

In Santa Ana, there is a stretch of Red Car track still in place crossing Fairmont street, running adjacent to Spurgeon Intermediate School, and crossing over the Santa Ana River in the form of an old railroad bridge.

Labels: Irvine, Railroads

1 Comments:

Quite interesting that the Orange County area is looking into Light Rail. Orange County had rail....even term it light rail if you would. Prior to the rise of the Automobile as the mode of transport extraordinair for Southern California there was rail transportation to Orange County from Los Angeles. The Pacific Electric Railway, know as the Red Car covered Los Angeles and its neighbors.

The system was divided into three districts:

Northern District: Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino.

Southern District: Long Beach, Newport, San Pedro, Santa Ana.

Western District: Hollywood, Burbank/Glendale, San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica.

Originally, there was an Eastern District, but this was incorporated into the Northern District early in the company's existence.

I remember as a youngster having older Orange County residents tell of riding the red car into LA. It was cheap and busy. Linked by about 1911 and run by Huntington himself this was the largest electric system in the world.

The system was divided into three districts:

Northern District: Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino.
Southern District: Long Beach, Newport, San Pedro, Santa Ana.
Western District: Hollywood, Burbank/Glendale, San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica.
Originally, there was an Eastern District, but this was incorporated into the Northern District early in the company's existence

The system was divided into three districts:

Northern District: Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino.
Southern District: Long Beach, Newport, San Pedro, Santa Ana.
Western District: Hollywood, Burbank/Glendale, San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica.
Originally, there was an Eastern District, but this was incorporated into the Northern District early in the company's existence

There was some controversy about teh dismantling of the red car because Firestone and Standard Oil had been in the business of attempting to turn all mass transit into buses to keep the tire and gas business viable. You may remember Roger Rabbitt...the Disney movie with its plot quite similar.

By Mark for Cab & Chocolate, at December 02, 2007 11:28 AM

Sponsored Links

Light Rail in Orange County

1 Comments:

Search OCThen

Previously on OCThen