ARTIC Chill

Next week, Anaheim California will open the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, which is a grammatically contorted and glorified way of saying “Anaheim train and bus station.” A recent article suggests that some people think the station is an architectural monstrosity, but the real question that should have been debated is cost: was it really worth $185 million to build a train and bus station?


All this could be yours for a mere $2,784 per square foot. Click image for a larger view.

At 67,000 square feet. the station’s cost works out to an incredible $2,764 per square foot. Can you imagine any private firm spending that kind of money on a building to serve even the most profitable business, much less a money-losing one?

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Proposed Anaheim Streetcar

Anaheim is another city planning a streetcar line, in this case from the Amtrak/Metrolink station (and planned high-speed rail station) to Disneyland. Disney is reportedly enthused about the project, since otherwise it might have to provide its own buses. The consultants planning the streetcar have also no doubt convinced Disney that the streetcar is “high-capacity transit,” a term that is naturally used numerous times in the city’s alternatives analysis.

Click to download the table of contents to the alternatives analysis for the Anaheim Slow Connection.

Maybe it is due to my poor Googling skills, but I haven’t actually been able to find a page on the city of Anaheim’s web site linking to the alternatives analysis. However, I have found individual chapters of the analysis, including the executive summary, chapter 3: transportation analysis, and chapter 7: comparison of alternatives. If you want to download any of the other chapters, read the table of contents and then copy and paste http://www.anaheim.net/images/articles/4947/ChapterX.pdf into your browser, substituting the number of the chapter you want for the X.

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