I just finished reading the recent Voice of OC piece on the OC Streetcar “How Did the Santa Ana Streetcar Construction End up Costing Over $150 Million Per Mile?“.
I agree that the county has much to learn from the streetcar project’s many issues. There is no shortage of articles citing cost overruns, business impacts, and lawsuits. This investigative journalism serves as a vital way to keep the public informed. With that said, the discrepancy in how freeway vs. public transit projects are scrutinized is hard to understate.
In the U.S., articles about bus lanes, rail lines, and bike lanes are often framed as:
Negative headline > Criticisms > Public Concerns (traffic/parking) > End of article
For comparison, road and freeway write-ups are often framed as:
Neutral headline > Potential Benefits > Criticisms > End of article
American freeway and road widening projects rarely encounter the same level of scrutiny as public transportation projects, leading to a plethora of problems.
Car-centric thinking is so ingrained in American culture that even when there are similar business disruptions, ballooning costs, and delays for road widening, they are perceived as annoying but inevitable by the public who are most likely car drivers themselves. When freeway delays do occasionally come under fire, the headlines and articles are more charitable than their public transportation counterparts.
This is not just arguing over semantics in writing. The reader often leaves with the takeaway that road and freeway projects are a necessary evil, while public transportation investments are a bad deal for taxpayers. The real life consequences play out in city council and transit agency meetings across the state, setting off a doom loop.
Imagine a well designed albeit expensive transit project gets introduced to your city. Negatively framed media coverage of the proposal emerges, highlighting sticker shock and skepticism around potential ridership. Galvanized critics swarm to the next city council meeting to voice opposition. Officials scale back the scope and slash the project’s budget. While these attempts to placate opposition eventually push the proposal over the finish line, it inevitably leads to a compromised project with inferior quality and worse ridership. Add a few delays and these combined failures become the fodder for the next round of critical news stories, reinforcing the narrative that transit investment is a bad idea.
We don’t have to imagine this hypothetical situation. Orange County is very familiar with this cycle. In the mid-90s, OCTA put forward a bold proposal to build a 28-mile light rail line called the CenterLine. It would serve as the core spine of a future transit network, connecting places like John Wayne Airport, downtown Fullerton, and Disneyland. While the usual suspects like lack of federal transit funding and OC’s notorious urban sprawl certainly didn’t do the project any favors, commentary like “OCTA needs rendezvous with reality” and “The strange thing about light rail: No matter how much it fails elsewhere, officials still push costly new projects” fanned the flames of local opposition. These combined factors led to the CenterLine plans being whittled down to a 9 mile shell of its former self before being axed entirely in 2005. Two decades later, a far more limited streetcar project now stands in its place.
To further illustrate this discrepancy in transit reporting, the OC Grand Jury’s report on OCTA’s latest projects spends four entire pages scrutinizing every angle of the OC Streetcar, including the negatively framed line “This cost to taxpayers is over two and a half times the initial stated cost and equates to a staggering $156.42 million per mile.” The same report spends only a few, brief paragraphs talking about freeways, including the matter of fact, neutrally framed line “The completed Interstate 405 improvement project, which included the 405 Express Lanes, cost $2.16 billion.” This framing is consistently used despite the fact that study after study shows widening roads and freeways is not a long-term fix to our traffic woes. Motor vehicle crashes continue to be a leading cause of death, a leading polluter, and many drivers don’t understand the true cost of driving.
Current trends have shifted slightly in recent years towards more awareness and investment in public transportation. Articles that hold freeways to the same standard as transit are beginning to pop up as shown in Erika Taylor’s fantastic report regarding the 55 expansion’s many issues.
So, where do we go from here?
I want to be very clear that we don’t need less scrutiny of bad public transportation projects. We do, however, need more balanced scrutiny of all transportation investment. The OC Streetcar deserves investigation for its shortcomings, but so do freeway expansions that cost billions, worsen air quality, induce more traffic, and historically displace communities, often with far less media blowback.
I’m not defending the OC Streetcar. It’s a project that should have been a more cost-effective bus rapid transit line with better regional connections. What I am defending is the idea of public transportation: efficient, affordable, and sustainable options for everyone. When projects fall short, we should fix them, not abandon the whole concept.
Instead of letting negative headlines kill transit projects before they even get off the ground, let’s demand better planning and implementation. We can advocate for bringing engineering and project management in-house to reduce our dependence on overpriced consultants that inflate costs and timelines. We can streamline the permitting process and reform litigation hold-ups that stall projects for years. L.A.-based transportation analyst Nick Andert has a fantastic video about implementing this at the state level.
And to the journalists doing the hard work of investigating agencies like OCTA: keep holding our officials accountable. Transit doesn’t need a free pass. It needs a fair fight. Until we hold freeway expansions to the same standard, Orange County will continue paying more for projects that deliver less.
I’m Tony Pelleriti, a 32 year old freelance video editor living in Tustin. I make most of my daily trips by bike and helped form an urbanism group Vibrant Neighborhoods Tustin [Instagram / Website], one of many advocacy groups under the umbrella of OC for People-Oriented Places [Instagram]. I’m speaking in my own capacity and all opinions are my own.
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