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For those who don't live in Orange County, or at least drive along the Orange Freeway, I thought it might be interesting for some to learn about the giant new Amtrak station in final construction in Anaheim. It's called ARTIC (Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center), and at 67,000 square feet it's got to be one of the largest new train stations built in America in at least 20 years. It's certainly one of the most modern looking, at a cost of $200 Million for construction.
And a construction photo from a few months ago, showing a Surfliner passing by the future platforms.
The official website, with more renderings and current construction photos, is found here. http://www.articinfo.com/
The current Amtrak/Metrolink station is in the parking lot of Angel Stadium, about 300 yards west of where ARTIC is being built. It's a sort of Amshack Deluxe building circa 1990, with a small waiting area and nicely landscaped gardens and patios beside the double-track platforms.
What's interesting is that ARTIC was designed and approved five years ago, with the assumption that California High Speed Rail would use it as the southern terminus. But that seems very doubtful now, and if HSR ever does operate in California it won't arrive in Anaheim for another 20 years. But ARTIC has tens of thousands of square feet of ticketing and passenger service space, offices, waiting areas, retail, and multiple restaurants and dining facilities under its soaring roof. And it all opens in December. Plus 1,500 new parking spaces and room for dozens of buses, even though the existing parking lot is never full and maxes out around 200 cars (mostly Metrolink commuters), and only 3 OCTA bus lines currently serve the station and adjoining avenue.
By this Christmas they are going to move the existing Anaheim station, with its sleepy ticket counter and small waiting area, over to ARTIC with tens of thousands of square feet of retail and dining space. I wonder if they'll move the old Pepsi machine over too? Here's a photo the existing Anaheim waiting room where many of my train trips begin and end, with a Pepsi from that machine...
And here's a photo of what the new ARTIC ticketing area will look like by Christmas, with restaurants and retail and sky-bridges to the tracks on the second and third floors above.
Where do you think they should put the Pepsi machine?
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Posts: 56 | From: Orange County, CA | Registered: Jun 2007
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Very impressive. Certainly not your grandfather's station. Hope HSR trains actually use it.
Posts: 2397 | From: Camden, SC | Registered: Mar 2006
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Pepsi Machine goes to museum. Joins the chest like, water filled machine from which, in my youth. we drew glass bottles of cold, refreshing soda.
Posts: 460 | From: North Central CT | Registered: May 2004
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Impressive and appears to be huge!! Is long distance walking required ??
Posts: 460 | From: North Central CT | Registered: May 2004
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Looks like there's plenty of room for plenty of Pepsi machines. I was at a local shopping mall this week and it looked like the mall had been invaded by Coke machines. I couldn't walk 100 feet without having to walk around a new Coke machine. How many machines can Pepsi or Coke fit in the new terminal?
Posts: 831 | From: Seattle | Registered: Jan 2011
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quote:Originally posted by DeeCT: Impressive and appears to be huge!! Is long distance walking required ??
It appears that it would be a several hundred yard walk/escalator ride from the front doors to the actual platforms.
Posts: 56 | From: Orange County, CA | Registered: Jun 2007
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quote:Originally posted by chrisg: too bad Anaheim is wasting money on this after they had the station in the perfect location before.
Chris
What will be FASCINATING to watch is if they can get anyone to fill the tens of thousands of square feet of retail and dining space built into this complex.
Anaheim is going from this modest and sleepy Amshack with two dozen seats and a Pepsi machine as the sole retail/dining offering.
To the huge new ARTIC facility with the following space to lease out:
I can't imagine they will get anyone to lease restaurant space in ARTIC. Or retail space. Anaheim currently serves just over 900 passengers per day in combined Amtrak and Metrolink service. The majority of those daily boardings are Metrolink passengers going quickly to/from their car in the park-and-ride lot. They won't be having dinner or shopping for souvenirs before or after their train.
But even if you got 950 people per day to be avid train station consumers and diners, that's not enough to keep a station the size of ARTIC running multiple restaurants, bars and shops.
ARTIC will need to patiently wait for 20 years for a high speed train to arrive.
Posts: 56 | From: Orange County, CA | Registered: Jun 2007
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This project didn't make much sense until I dug deeper into the project information. The city of Anaheim is trying to redevelop the area between Disneyland and ARCTIC into a more urban community and build a grade-separated transit line that connects ARCTIC with Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center. Also, the land between the stadiums and Disneyland is being converted from industrial/warehouse uses into a transit-oriented development community called the Platinum Triangle (similar to Portland's Pearl District--upscale residential with shopping/dining facilities available within walking distance).
With grade-separated transit between ARCTIC and Disneyland it would be possible to take Amtrak or Metrolink to ARCTIC and easily connect to the Platinum Triangle/Disneyland/Convention Center/Anaheim Stadium/Honda Center and not have to deal with SoCal traffic and parking costs. I'm guessing that the large restaurant spaces will be sports bars (take public transit to the game and get drunk at the train station).
And to combine this thread with the solar train thread...how much energy could have been generated in the ARCTIC project if solar panels had been incorporated into the design of the roof?
Posts: 831 | From: Seattle | Registered: Jan 2011
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Ah, yes, Anaheim's infamous Platinum Triangle. I'm a HUGE fan of the Pearl District myself, and remember well braving that part of town in the 1980's to spend the evening at Powell's Books. The transformation of the Pearl District circa 1995-2010 is nothing short of miraculous.
But the Platinum Triangle is something totally different. It was an area made up of 1970's business parks and light industrial warehouses surrounding the 1966 Angel Stadium. The area is criss-crossed by two mega-freeways and is fed by 8-lane wide boulevards without medians or street life of any sort, with a few fast food drive-thrus and gas stations adding "commerce" to the area.
Around 2005 the Anaheim City Council, wanting to cash in on the real estate land boom then fueled by subprime mortgages and easy junk credit, basically condemned all the existing business parks and warehouses, rezoned the area from light industrial to residential, and sold the land off to the highest real estate bidders. The result was a tidal wave of shoebox condominium complexes proposed and thrown up very quickly in 2007-09, just as the subprime mortgage market imploded, the bank panic started, and the bottom fell out of the economy. But most of the Platinum Triangle sits abandoned and dead, after the existing business parks were bulldozed in 2007.
There used to be business parks here until 2007.
All of the condo complexes already under construction by 2008 were quickly rebranded as apartments as sales ground to a halt, and the area around the fast food stands and gas stations sprouted cookie-cutter pedestal apartments with lush marketing names like "Anavia" and "Alluria". The wide 8 lane boulevards without so much as a street tree remained, and the area around the stadium looked like this suddenly.
The Pearl District, it's not.
Now, Anaheim is flush with Measure M sales tax money that must be spent on mass transit, and it wants to build a streetcar line from ARTIC to the convention center, with theoretical stops along Katella in front of these apartment blocks and McDonalds. The streetcar makes a lot of sense for the stops between the convention center (largest on the West Coast) and Disneyland, but beyond those three stops it's a boondoggle all the way to ARTIC. Not to mention it's fraught with drama because several successful hotels and business across from Disneyland will need to be taken by the city's eminent domain powers to be used for tracks and stations for Disneyland. (Disney is wisely staying as far away from the project publicly as possible thus far) Posts: 56 | From: Orange County, CA | Registered: Jun 2007
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As for passengers using ARTIC to spend the day at Disneyland, connecting from ARTIC to Disneyland via streetcar, that's not feasible without a massive restructuring of the existing Metrolink and Amtrak train schedules.
Anaheim is served by many Metrolink trains per day, but the schedules are set up for commuters in early morning and late afternoon. Anyone wanting to go to Disneyland on a weekday will need to be prepared to leave the park by 6PM at the latest to catch the last Metrolink train home. Disneyland's fireworks and water shows don't start until 9PM, and most people stay into the evening once they've spent $96 per person for a Disneyland ticket.
On weekends and holidays when Disneyland is busiest the Metrolink schedule collapses to a skeleton service, and again evening service is impossible to find.
There is also Amtrak's Surfliners that call at Anaheim and will make up the flagship service for the new ARTIC station. But again the schedules are not conducive to a full day at Disneyland, and weekends are the worst. On a Saturday night, for example, there are two evening northbound Surfliners at Anaheim; one at 8:30 and one at 11:10 with two remaining stops in Norwalk and LA Union Station.
A family from LA or San Diego wanting to spend several days or a full weekend at Disneyland would do well by taking the Surfliner to Anaheim, and then shuttling to their hotel for the weekend. But that service is already available at the existing Anaheim station that is fed by a complimentary Amtrak Express shuttle bus run by OCTA and Anaheim Resort Transit that meets every arriving Surfliner and then shuttles passengers the 10 blocks west to the major Disneyland area hotels.
The streetcar running from ARTIC will duplicate this existing shuttle bus service that meets every train, but the streetcar will be confined to two only stops in the Disneyland area. The existing bus route can flex depending on which hotels the passengers on board need to get to.
Posts: 56 | From: Orange County, CA | Registered: Jun 2007
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quote:Originally posted by chrisg: too bad Anaheim is wasting money on this after they had the station in the perfect location before.
Isn't it just a hundred yards from the existing station? What's wrong with the new location compared to the old? I don't know the area.
quote:Originally posted by MightyAlweg: I can't imagine they will get anyone to lease restaurant space in ARTIC. Or retail space.
Generally the idea for something this size is for it to become a destination in itself, not just a place to pass through. Whether that would be true for this project, see my last sentence above!
-------------------- Geoff M. Posts: 2426 | From: Apple Valley, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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