Orange County’s grand jury is asking for answers on what happened with the Orange County Transportation Authority’s Santa Ana Street Car, pointing out the project is now six years late, nearly $400 million over-budget and has no clear customer base for a four-mile long rail line.
The streetcar has long been one of the county’s most questioned projects, with the original idea popping up in 2006 when officials from the city of Santa Ana pitched the plan.
The transportation authority took over in 2015, and announced in a press release at the time they expected the four mile long track to pick up over 6,000 passengers per day according to the grand jury report.
That was the last time a ridership study was completed according to the grand jury, who highlighted that it’s unclear who will be using the streetcar.
“The Grand Jury was unable to determine how strongly the residents of Santa Ana wanted a streetcar in their city,” grand jurors wrote. “Given the fact that the project is now limited to its 4.1 mile route with no plans to lengthen it, enhanced bus routes could have been a viable alternative.”
Eric Carpenter, a spokesperson for the agency, said the authority is still working on the formal response to the grand jury but that they had always been “transparent” about the street car’s issues.
“We continue to work with the community and all stakeholders to find the best solutions and to advance the OC Streetcar as quickly as possible to completion,” Carpenter wrote in a Wednesday statement. “We look forward to sharing the benefits of this new transit system with the community when operations begin in 2026.”
Another major delay came after the transportation authority was sued by Walsh Construction, their lead contractor on the project, who alleged the agency failed to properly plan for the project and cost their company an extra $50 million in mistakes and delays.
Transportation authority leaders counter-sued, and the lawsuit is still ongoing, with a jury trial currently scheduled for 2027 according to court records.
The transportation authority was also sued by the NOVA Academy Early College High School, which claimed they were impacted by the construction, and they ultimately settled with the transportation authority.
While jurors admitted there isn’t much that can be done at this point, with the rail line now scheduled to open to the public late next year, they mapped out a series of recommendations for the future.
Some of the recommendations included increasing public outreach and focusing on projects that benefit a wider swath of the county, along with the creation of a business interruption fund to help business owners whose work is interrupted by any future construction.
“Despite OCTA’s oft-repeated statement that ‘this is what Santa Ana wanted,’ the Grand Jury is uncertain that Santa Ana would have been as eager to proceed with this project had the city known there would be this level of construction delays, continuing cost overruns, monetary damages to local businesses, and an unknown completion date,” jurors wrote.
Tom Tait, former Mayor of Anaheim and one of the most outspoken votes against the streetcar when he was on OCTA’s board, said he was “not surprised,” by the grand jury’s findings in a Tuesday interview.
“For rapid transit, I felt that it was just a project looking for a reason to be there,” Tait said. “They tried to sell it as something that would make transit better and I think it’ll really make it worse.”
In 2018, Santa Ana city leaders threatened to take away money from downtown businesses that sued the street car amid concerns about the impact on local businesses.
Merchants were later faced with street closures amid construction and protested the ongoing project, ultimately netting around $5 million in support payouts for impacted businesses as they tried to survive what they call the “Train to Hell.”
[Read: How the OC Streetcar Put Downtown Santa Ana on A New Path]
One local business owner, Maria Perez saved up for years to open her own store in downtown Santa Ana, but was ultimately forced to close in 2023 due to the construction and loss of revenue from the COVID-19 pandemic closures.
[Read: Battling to Survive Santa Ana’s Street Car]
“It is impossible and difficult to swim against the current of the authorities that authored the permits of the train,” Perez said at the Santa Ana City Council’s April 18, 2023 meeting. “They didn’t contemplate the economical disaster that it created to the businesses of Fourth Street and in these moments we are an economic disaster provoked by the construction of the train.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.