Transit Panel Studies Plan to Buy 424-Mile Coastal Rail Line

Opening the prospect of high-speed rail service between Northern and Southern California, Los Angeles County transit leaders have taken a no-cost, no-commitment one-year option to buy the Southern Pacific Railroad’s entire 424-mile Coast Line from Burbank to San Jose.

Los Angeles County Transportation Commission officials, who last week closed a deal to buy Southern Pacific’s 67-mile Saugus Line for $67.8 million, will discuss possible uses for the line with Caltrans officials and planners in the other counties through which it runs.

Among the possible uses is an extension of Metrolink commuter-train service out to Oxnard. Service from Moorpark in western Ventura County to downtown Los Angeles is scheduled to start Oct. 26.

“The biggest benefit, though, is not for L.A. alone, but for the state in general,” said LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson. “This is the first opportunity to link the state’s two major urban areas with a high-speed alternative to airplanes.”

Southern Pacific officials said Wednesday, when the option was announced, that a consultant had concluded that, for $360 million, the line could be upgraded to carry 110-m.p.h. passenger trains from Los Angeles to San Francisco through Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties.

Peterson and state Department of Transportation planners said this intercity service could be operated by Caltrans or by a coalition of counties. Money to buy the line would come from $1 billion in state rail-transportation bonds approved by voters in 1990 or from a second $1-billion bond plan up for voter approval next month.

Cost of the route is almost certain to be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. But Southern Pacific, which stands to benefit by turning relatively unproductive assets into cash, has sought to make the purchase easier by agreeing in advance to an appraisal process favoring any potential purchaser.

State officials have long planned high-speed train service between Northern and Southern California, but prefer an inland route through the San Joaquin Valley. That route would permit faster service--125 m.p.h. initially, with the potential to build up to 300 m.p.h.--because the land is flatter and the route could be straighter.

The coastal route already carries Amtrak service between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and Southern Pacific asserts that improvements to the roadbed could halve the current travel time to under six hours. Supporters think this could make trains more competitive with air travel.

“If you’re a guy in Palo Alto and you want to go to L.A., you can either catch a train at the local station and be there in six hours--or you could get in your car, drive to an airport, park, wait and fly down, then get a taxi and arrive downtown in about four hours,” said Tom Houston, a Los Angeles lawyer representing Southern Pacific.

Skeptics among transportation planners in government and at universities still prefer the San Joaquin Valley option, for its greater speed potential and for the fact that it can serve a larger population base.

Fresno, Bakersfield and Stockton, three big and fast-growing cities along the inland route, are home to nearly 740,000 people--more than twice the number of people in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, Salinas and Santa Cruz combined.

But San Joaquin rail lines already are jammed with freight trains. Planners have concluded that weaving 125-m.p.h. passenger trains among 80-m.p.h. freights would be difficult at best, dangerous at worst.

A nine-volume study of high-speed trains, published earlier this year by the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley, concluded that high-speed trains can work only on their own San Joaquin Valley right of way alongside Interstate 5 or California 99.

However, the Berkeley planners estimated that building a new railroad of this sort between Los Angeles and San Francisco would cost $9 billion. Adding a branch to Stockton and Sacramento would add $1.3 billion.