Orange County, CA: what happened to 30min headways on Metrolink? (newb

[beautifulplanet]

Hi everyone.

I have a question about California's Metrolink service: I read that Orange County planned to offer Metrolink service every 30 mins between the cities inside of Orange County. I think it was after the CenterLine light rail was cancelled.

There's still some info about that on Wikipedia:

"In October 2005, the Orange County Transportation Authority announced that it would increase service on the Orange County Line, running trains twenty hours daily, seven days a week every 30 minutes. The first part of the additional service was implemented in June 2006 with Saturday service, and July 2006 with Sunday service. The plan has drawn criticism as many Metrolink stations are located beyond walking distance from important destinations such as Disneyland and the adjacent Anaheim Convention Center, Knott's Berry Farm, and the Irvine Spectrum. Funds for new rolling stock and track improvements were allocated from the voter-approved Measure M half-cent sales tax, while critics had advocated using the money for bus operations or other transit service instead. To address some of these issues, OCTA operates a series of Stationlink shuttle routes that connect Metrolink stations in Orange County to nearby destinations."

So what happened about the plan for 30min headways?

It seems like now in January of 2014, there are f.e. 15 trains Mondays to Fridays inbound on the Orange Line (and only few of them even running the whole line). Being commuter rail, there are a lot of departures in the morning, but f.e. between 9.35a.m. in 3.00p.m. there is just one sole departure at 11.30p.m. at Laguna Niguel/ Mission Viejo.

What happened?

Appreciate any info. Thank you in advance.

 

[Trogdor]

Metrolink has a history of overpromising and underdelivering, while not operating in e world of reality.

First off, if you're just talking Orange County, then that wouldn't include the whole line. They do run Fullerton-Laguna trains, but only a handful and they're often empty. When those trains were introduced a few years ago, hey didn't even consider existing traffic on the line when scheduling them and the result was a huge drop in OTP for everybody (especially Amtrak, which has to operate over multiple railroads including two commuter districts with tightly scheduled services over single track).

For the rest of the corridor, Metrolink doesn't have the slots on the BNSF to run more trains Fullerton-LA, and the new slots they're going to get soon will require a major political fight for Metrolink to run those trains to Orange County, since those slots (plus a few existing slots used by Orange County trains) are actually owned by Riverside County. Metrolink can't really expand much south of Laguna because the railroad is single track and already, more or less, at capacity.

So, long story short, there would be absolutely no need, from a ridership perspective, to run frequent service between Fullerton and Laguna, and there is no railroad capacity to run the trains to/from LA and/or Oceanside.

 

[Paulus]

The economy also went to hell and that resulted in major cutbacks to service as I recall.

 

[beautifulplanet]

First off, if you're just talking Orange County, then that wouldn't include the whole line. They do run Fullerton-Laguna trains, but only a handful and they're often empty. [...]

Metrolink can't really expand much south of Laguna because the railroad is single track and already, more or less, at capacity. [...]

So, long story short, there would be absolutely no need, from a ridership perspective, to run frequent service between Fullerton and Laguna, and there is no railroad capacity to run the trains to/from LA and/or Oceanside.

Thank you so much for this response. That seems to make a lot of sense. Do you happen to have any links to press reports or government docs about that topic?

Of course I was aware of the fact that when Orange County talked about improving the rail service inside of Orange County, that it then wouldn't include the whole Orange County Metrolink line (meaning definitely not the parts of it that are outside of Orange County).

I was surprised to begin with, to read that Orange County was supposedly planning something like this 30 minute headway Metrolink service, as I also read Orange County is pretty much anti-transit. Then again, I assumed, wasn't 2005 pretty much the time when CenterLine was officially cancelled, so I thought it could have been some kind of political "Oh, we're going to get rid of CenterLine light rail, but we're going to improve existing rail service instead" argument.

I just found it peculiar to read about the plans to introduce that service each 30 min, but never to read headlines along the lines of "Orange County delays introduction of 30 min headways" or "Orange County abandons plans for Metrolink every 30 mins". So one doesn't really have an idea if it's still an active proposal and just on the back burner, or if the plan has been scrapped.

Probably for more aspects of Southern California Rail, I should start a new topic.