REGION — A state senate subcommittee met for the first time to address the significant concerns regarding the nation’s second busiest rail corridor.
Known as the Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo-San Diego, or LOSSAN, corridor, state Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) chaired an informational hearing on May 16 in Sacramento for senators to hear from regional and state agencies regarding the dire need to improve the corridor.
Others on the subcommittee include state Sens. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara), Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), Janet Nguyen (R-Huntington Beach) and Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana).
Representatives from the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, SANDAG and Orange County Transit Authority stressed the need to realign tracks inland in their respective jurisdictions as soon as possible.
“It’s unprecedented because the LOSSAN corridor has never been in more jeopardy,” Blakespear said. “We need to make decisions on what the LOSSAN corridor should look like and do it fast. We need to identify strategies to avoid competition for funding … and look at models around the country to see what is achievable.”
Blakespear said some of the subcommittee’s aims are to identify goals and threats, improve service and ridership, and incorporate a more fluid system for freight according to future projections on population growth and goods and services. State and federal governments have also identified double-tracking the 351-mile corridor to meet those goals.
The corridor is vital to the federal government and not just for economic purposes. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense has identified it as part of the Strategic Rail Corridor Network (STRACNET) with its access to the naval fleet in San Diego and military bases in Miramar, Camp Pendleton and Vandenberg, according to Jason Jewell, managing director of the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency.
San Diego County
SANDAG Deputy CEO Ray Major and Danny Veey, SANDAG’s rail planning program manager, discussed the county’s 60 miles of rail but emphasized the urgency in Del Mar to move a five-mile stretch of tracks inland and build a tunnel under the city to avoid disaster along the increasingly temperamental coastal bluffs.
In Del Mar, the average bluff retreat is six inches per year in some places, according to Veey.
Last year, SANDAG received a $300 million grant from the state to begin realigning the tracks. Still, Major said the agency would need $3 to $4 billion to complete the project.
Both SANDAG officials said the agency is on track to begin construction by 2028 with an estimated completion date of 2035 if they can secure the funding.
In a presentation, Major and Veey showed a video depicting a bluff collapse near the rail line in 2019, along with another video featuring federal officials touring the line to see how close it runs to the bluff’s edge.
Major said each bluff collapse costs about $100 million to stabilize while knocking out service from San Diego. The stabilization work includes:
- Drilling piles and tie-backs to hold tracks laterally.
- Adding seawalls.
- Improving drainage and regrading the impacted area.
Passengers traveling to and from San Diego must take a bus, known as a bus bridge, to avoid an impacted area before reboarding a train at a different location.
“We need a major investment in funds and the tunnel is a part of that,” Veey said. “The old bridges are expensive (to repair). There is no low-hanging fruit and everything else to do is hard.”
The final vision for the SANDAG corridor, Veey said, is a complete double-track rail line with high-speed trains traveling 110 mph.
Orange County
Since September 2022, the rail line in San Clemente has shut down service twice due to bluff collapses. The first collapse resulted in a six-month stabilization project, leaving passengers with fewer options to travel to San Diego County or vice versa. Two weeks after crews completed the work, the corridor shut down again after landslides in April forced the passage closed.
Like SANDAG, Orange County Transit Authority pours in millions for “Band-Aid” fixes, so urgency and permanent solutions are needed, said Darrell Johnson, the agency’s chief executive officer.
Johnson told the Transportation subcommittee that San Clemente’s beaches had lost 20 feet of sand over the past several years, further jeopardizing the tracks. While sand replenishment is a partial solution, Johnson said it can’t be the only one.
In addition, he compared the rail line to the highway system and how there are two different approaches to each with sagging results for rail. He said if those processes were in place, repairs for the September collapse would have seen faster decision-making and work.
“We do not have a good process in place to react quickly for when things happen,” Johnson said. “That exists on the highway side, it needs to exist on the publicly owned passenger side. It does exist on the private rail side.”
LOSSAN corridor, agency
Jewell said the corridor dates back to 1887, with service from San Diego to Los Angeles beginning in 1938. There are several owners of specific tracks, such as the North County Transit District, which owns the 60-mile stretch in San Diego County.
Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe own 55% of the corridor.
There are three passenger rail operators — Metrolink, Amtrak and North County Transit District’s Coaster — along the corridor, which also hosts the busiest state-supported Amtrak service (Pacific Surfliner) in the country.
While freight accounts for 70 trains daily, delivering more than $1 billion in goods annually, the pandemic deeply impacted commuter and leisure travel along the rail line. Eighty-five percent use the trains for leisure, with a 30% uptick in weekend travel. However, ridership continues to struggle as passenger trips are down.
“Our trends were hovering around 70-75% ridership pre-COVID levels before the rail closure for Amtrak,” Jewell said. “It’s about 40%-50% now for Amtrak.”
As of March, farebox recovery for the Pacific Surfliner is between 35%-40%, short of the state’s 50% mandate. In 2015, farebox recovery went from 64% to 80% just before the pandemic, Jewell said.
In San Diego County, “prolonged interrupted service” projections could lead to 2,000 to 3,500 jobs lost, a GDP decrease between $200 million to $400 million per year, cumulative GDP losses in the billions, and losing permanent tenants at the Port of San Diego.
Jewell said the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency is looking to leverage federal funds for solutions and search for other federal grant opportunities. In addition, the agency is working with Caltrans to mitigate costs and researching ways to raise revenue without increasing fares.
