Rail Station in Carlsbad OKd Despite Protest

Over protest, the North County Transit District’s board has resolved to build a transit station in downtown Carlsbad for a $164 million Oceanside-San Diego commuter rail line that starts in late 1994.

City officials and some downtown property owners urged the district to reconsider its plans for a station at Grand Avenue and State Street, arguing the facility would ruin the area’s quaint atmosphere and cause businesses to relocate.

However, the district, its plans for similar commuter rail stations in Encinitas and Solana Beach also under attack, decided in a 5-3 vote Thursday night to close ranks and go ahead with the Carlsbad facility.

“We had a minor victory,” district spokesman Pete Aadland said Friday. “We’re going ahead with the project.”

Carlsbad City Councilwoman Ann Kulchin, who also serves as chairwoman of the transit district’s board of directors, was disappointed that her request to delay the downtown station wasn’t heeded.

“They dug in on me,” she said, predicting Carlsbad will abide by the independent transit board’s decision.

“We won’t litigate it,” Kulchin said, explaining the city signed an agreement in February, 1990, allowing the transit station. Opposition to the facility arose only last summer.

The station is one of nine planned for coastal communities that will allow passengers to catch the train for peak hour service to jobs in San Diego and back home to North County in the evening.

While the commuter rail project has won widespread support, a few political brush fires have broken out about the specific location of several stations, including the one in downtown Carlsbad.

Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis, in a letter to the transit district, said the city “has no intent to jeopardize the entire commuter rail system” but he noted “growing opposition” to the location and timing of the downtown station.

The city wants the transit district to go ahead and build a second planned transit station on Poinsettia Lane near Interstate 5 in southern Carlsbad. But officials asked the district to hold off on the downtown facility until it was determined whether there were enough commuter rail passengers to justify building it.

The district believes that commuter rail would lose almost 10% of its ridership if the downtown station weren’t constructed.

Kulchin maintained that delaying the downtown station is “a good option” because there may be a funding shortage since voters on Nov. 3 defeated a statewide bond measure for rail transit projects.

She thinks a key reason the district board decided to forge ahead with the station was worry about yielding to community protests.

“The feeling was, if we start making exceptions for one city, we have to make exceptions for all the cities,” she said.

Despite the acrimony over the downtown Carlsbad station, the goal of commuter rail advanced in other areas:

* In Cardiff, some residents are showing interest in having a transit stop built there if Encinitas doesn’t want a proposed station.

* During the Thursday board meeting, directors formally approved an earlier announced deal for the $90-million purchase of Santa Fe Railroad right of rail for the commuter rail project and an Oceanside-Escondido light rail line.