Cost, Station Site Are Stumbling Blocks : Is Commuter Rail Plan on Right Track?

There are 217,000 motorists driving Interstate 5 through North County daily who might be interested to know that they will be joined by nearly 200,000 more drivers by the year 2000.

Government transit planner Mike Zdon said that’s just a theoretical figure because the 400,000 motorists on I-5 would not be driving. They would be sitting, probably cursing, and certainly frustrated at the prospect of spending two or more hours on the freeway to get to work.

Zdon is working on a plan to ease that theoretical gridlock by creating a commuter rail system that will run from Oceanside to San Diego each morning and the reverse direction each evening.

Already, traffic on the coastal freeway has reached levels that match those on the Santa Monica freeway and can only get worse, Zdon said. So his present project is sure to be an instant success if and when, in late 1992, it begins to pick up passengers at Oceanside, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Solana Beach/Del Mar and drop them off at Sorrento Valley, Miramar, Old Town and downtown San Diego.

Zdon, a San Diego Assn. of Governments planner, is project manager for the commuter rail system. He sees only green signals along the line.

On the Other Hand . . .

Jim Mills, on the other hand, is a veteran politician with a long, long memory and the political savvy to spot a couple of situations that could delay or even derail the much-needed commuter trains.

In order of importance, the problems Mills foresees are the purchase of the railroad tracks and right-of-way from the Santa Fe Railway and the insular attitude of Del Mar city officials over location of a commuter rail station in their city.

To Mills, a former state senator who now heads the Metropolitan Transit Development Board’s policy board, the coastal commuter line is a better solution to freeway congestion than MTDB’s own San Diego Trolley system. Plans to extend the trolley up the coast to Oceanside make less sense than using existing tracks for more conventional rail commuting because the track is in place and can be put into service without the $10-million-a-mile expense of building a light-rail route along I-5.

What worries Mills is the direction that negotiations for the Santa Fe line are taking. Appraisals by both buyers and sellers are being based on “across-the-fence” values, Mills said, which “could result in an impossible price.”

Across-the-fence appraisals base property value on the value of adjacent property, Mills said.

Imagine the square-foot price of land along the coastal bluffs in Del Mar based on the million-dollar view of the surf, Mills pointed out. Imagine the price of railroad right-of-way past industrial parks and shopping centers.

He called it an unfair way to value the rail land because it would not be used for ocean-view homes, office towers or industrial plants. It would continue to be a railroad and should be valued as a railroad, he said.

Purchase of Santa Fe right-of-way from Fullerton south to the Santa Fe depot in San Diego is the key to the Oceanside-San Diego commuter line. Santa Fe has made it clear that it will not allow local commuter service to operate on its line, Mills said, preferring instead to sell the right-of-way. (Santa Fe operates one freight train on the line, which is also used through agreement by Amtrak.)

Finding the Money

Mills sees a solution to the purchase price: a statewide initiative sponsored by an environmental group, the Planning and Conservation League, which, if approved, would authorize $1.99 billion in bonds to fund rail projects throughout California.

The $45 million that the North County commuter rail system would receive from the bonds would be a hefty down payment on the Santa Fe tracks, Mills said. With the additional revenue that would be generated from agreements with Amtrak and Santa Fe to run passenger and freight trains along the line, San Diego County could afford to buy the 43-mile length of trackage needed for the commuter rail system, he said.

Zdon has a more optimistic outlook on the Santa Fe line purchase. True, both sides are using across-the-fence appraisal methods, but the buyers are “discounting” the appraisals based on local zoning restrictions. If the railroad right-of-way is restricted to transportation usage, Zdon explained, then the land value will be appraised at a much lower value.

When the two sides--buyer and seller--complete their appraisals, the real negotiations will begin, Zdon said. He’s convinced that the local transit agencies can afford to buy the rail line. He estimated that purchase talks will start about the first of the year.

If purchase efforts fail, San Diego transit agencies might be able to lease time from Santa Fe to run the morning-evening commuter trains, Zdon added. One way or another, he said, “we plan to have commuter trains running by the end of 1992.”

Santa Fe spokesman Mike Martin defended the across-the-fence appraisal method as a standard practice in the state. Santa Fe is a “willing seller” and the several transit agencies seeking to buy the line are “eager buyers,” Martin said. He expects the sale to go quickly and smoothly.

The problem of locating a station in or near Del Mar, although important, is a much less critical problem to survival of the commuter rail system, Mills said.

Del Mar, at the midpoint of the commuter line, wants to keep its historic Amtrak station, which was built in 1910 and has very little parking. The city wants no part of an eight-train-a-day commuter system that would require a parking lot for 400 to 600 cars.

Even though Amtrak does not run morning-evening trains to serve commuters southbound to San Diego, Del Mar, for more than a decade, has vetoed the idea of a regional transit center that would serve as an exchange point between buses, commuter trains, taxis and ride-sharers headed for San Diego.

Despite Del Mar’s past opposition to a regional transit center, Solana Beach Councilwoman Marian Dodson believes that a new depot proposal to be unveiled next week will be embraced by Del Mar residents.

Underground and Out of View

The depot, the latest in a number of proposed Del Mar-Solana Beach station sites, would be located at the intersection of Via de la Valle and California 101 and is designed to be almost invisible. The station would be built under Via de la Valle, Dodson said, with most of the parking also underground.

Zdon, who hopes to distribute the latest station proposal to Del Mar and Solana Beach officials by Tuesday, said that the below-ground design would include a 1,000-foot-long platform extending south into Del Mar and north into Solana Beach. Direct pedestrian access to the Del Mar Fairgrounds is planned to cater to race track enthusiasts and others attending events at the fairgrounds.

Mills remembers when a determined local activist rallied opposition to a mass transit center at about the same site in the late 1970s, but he predicts that this proposal will be approved.

With traffic on I-5 increasing 10% a year, Mills said, “no one in his right mind would oppose an alternative transportation system.”

Del Mar Mayor Brooke Eisenberg reserved judgment on the newest proposal for a transit center, irked that she had not been informed of it, adding that she is still unconvinced that the area needs a new rail station at all.

But Mills is more pragmatic. A commuter rail line is the first in a series of measures that must be implemented to relieve I-5 congestion, he said, and is by far the fastest and least expensive to achieve.

Freeway commuters, frustrated by the slow-and-go driving on I-5, will soon seek less crowded routes through the coastal communities, including Del Mar, “no matter how many stop signs they erect,” Mills predicted.

That’s when even most determined opponents will join in the effort to create mass transit alternatives for North County commuters, he said.