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Council backs OCTA term sheet to study moving transit center; residents raise fire-response and rider-impact concerns
Summary
The council approved a nonbinding term sheet with OCTA to guide study of relocating the transit center by 2031; residents and homeowners associations raised concerns about fire-station response times and bus-rider impacts in East Bluff and Port Streets.
The Newport Beach City Council accepted a nonbinding term sheet with the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) to guide studies into relocating the city's transit center, with OCTA evaluating alternative sites outside the city and the city acknowledging it would fund relocation costs under specified conditions. City staff said the term sheet is intended only to guide future negotiations and site evaluations and that OCTA will lead much of the site-identification work.
Residents and neighborhood groups urged caution. Walter Starn, citing a city-funded fire-department evaluation, said moving Fire Station 3 to the proposed OCTA site would improve coverage for some neighborhoods but worsen response times for East Bluff, adding roughly 221 lost annual calls in that area. Ron Urbino, representing the East Bluff Homeowners Association, said the report lacks a plan to maintain the existing four-minute response time from the current Jamboree access. Council members agreed that the agreement is nonbinding and debated whether it was premature; the council voted to continue with the study and approved the staff recommendation unanimously.
