The Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center only opened in December, but it already isn’t living up to expectations. Ridership numbers are failing to impress at the $185.2 million facility.
Where Anaheim officials originally projected 3,000 train boardings per day starting on opening day, the actual number was less than 800 in December, according to a recent report from Voice of OC. A significant drop from what was promised, but then the projections were clearly rosy from the start.
So rosy, that a 2013 report in the Register noted that many of the claims for the rail station were “overstated.” For example, when selling the plan to potential corporate sponsors, Anaheim officials promised more than 10,000 trips would begin or end, again, from day one, at the 67,000 square-foot terminal.
Those 10,000 trips were the result of double-counts, in the apparent assumption that all of the trips through the station would be round trips, and included those 3,000 train passengers, but also “other transit modes” that included buses, taxis and airport shuttles. Many of those other modes “exist only on paper,” the Register said. In fact, more than 4,000 of those trips were to be from shuttle and bus routes that didn’t even exist at the time, and many, if not most, still don’t.
The station is quickly proving itself to be the over-promised and under-delivered project we always knew it to be, but it is unfortunate that it has to cost $4.7 million annually to prove. However, maybe the station can prove a teachable moment to be wary of the overly optimistic projections that government planners often commission to justify even the most outlandish of proposals.
From the monetary value for Anaheim with or without the Angels, the revenue projections for the expanded Convention Center, the cost of a library in Irvine and the multimillion-dollar streetcar projects in both Santa Ana and Anaheim, the taxpayers should take the ever-positive outlook for these large public works projects with a grain of salt. After all, if these projects were such a guaranteed return, it is hard to believe the private sector would not be chomping at the bit to get in on the action.
Instead, ARTIC has been without a sponsor after a year of searching.
When the Voice of OC inquired about the ridership shortfall, they were told that news of ARTIC’s death is greatly exaggerated and that the railway station was built to accommodate “decades of commuter growth.”
Perhaps our government planners have more foresight than we do for the reemergence of the technologies of the past, but judging by previous premonitions, don’t count on it.
