Santa Ana Station: The County's Transit Crossroads in a Spanish Revival Landmark

The Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center does not look like a bus-and-train station is supposed to look. Opened in 1985 in Spanish Colonial Revival style, with red-tile roofs, arched windows, tile work and a clock tower, it was deliberately built as a civic landmark, and it remains one of the most handsome transit stations in Southern California.

Inside that landmark is a working crossroads. Metrolink commuter trains on the Orange County Line and the Inland Empire-Orange County Line stop here, carrying workers toward Los Angeles, Irvine and the Inland Empire. Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner trains connect the station to San Diego, Los Angeles and the Central Coast. OCTA buses and intercity bus services use the station as well, making it a transfer point for the whole county.

The station's location explains its role. It sits in east Santa Ana, near the civic and government center, on the rail corridor that has served the city since the nineteenth century, when the railroad's arrival turned Santa Ana into the seat of a new Orange County. The streetcar project under construction downtown is designed to begin here, which would add one more layer to that long transportation history.

For travelers, the station rewards a little planning: check Metrolink and Amtrak schedules separately, since the two services share tracks but not tickets, allow time for parking or a bus connection, and arrive early enough to appreciate the building itself, with its fountain courtyard and murals of local history.

Plenty of cities have a train station. Santa Ana's is also a postcard, and a daily reminder that this city has been the county's crossroads since before the county had freeways.