since the Pacific Electric Railway
gave up the ghost, the debut of
Metrolink connected major cities in
Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San
Bernardino and Ventura counties,
giving long-distance commuters
and others their only alternative to
slogging through worsening traffic.
And today Metrolink also runs service
to Oceanside in San Diego County.
others all over Southern California
were squeezed in a knot of ever-
tightening traffic. That gave impetus
to voter approval of transit sales
taxes in the late 1980s and the
early 1990s first in Riverside and
San Bernardino then Los Angeles
and Orange counties. For the first
time funds were committed for a
commuter rail system. And coupled
with new state rail funding, the timing
Santa Fe and Union Pacific were
eager to sell hundreds of miles of
railroad right-of-way for the venture.
should leverage their collective
bargaining power in negotiations with
the railroads before the opportunity
slipped away.
through the clouds for a brief period,"
recalls Richard Stanger, Metrolink's
first executive director and a founding
member of the triad including Neil
Peterson, executive director of the
former LA County Transportation
Commission, and South Bay
transit leader Jacki Bacharach that
conceived and delivered Metrolink.
there never would have been a
can take decades to
debate, plan, cobble
together funding
rail line or busway,
the visionaries behind
Metrolink launched one
of the nation's largest
regional rail systems just
two years after acquiring
hundreds of miles of
underutilized freight
railroad right-of-way.