Mudslide Derails Commuter Plans : Transportation: Many who use Amtrak service between L.A. and San Diego reluctantly opt for cars or buses after tracks in San Clemente are blocked.

One of Bob Edelman’s greatest pleasures is taking Amtrak from Union Station in Los Angeles to Del Mar, where he hops a bus to UC San Diego. Edelman, a professor of Russian history, recently completed a book (not reading one, writing one) while riding to work.

So Edelman is not one bit happy when a deluge intervenes and gums up the tracks, shutting down rail service between San Juan Capistrano and San Diego--a grim reality for thousands of Amtrak veterans after last week’s ocean-bluff landslide in San Clemente.

Often pressed for time, Edelman now has to drive, which he despises. He cannot sip coffee or munch a Danish or look over a box score. More important to him, he is deprived of writing, or reading, or filling his head with something besides freeway signs and shock radio.

After the massive slide, Amtrak announced plans to bus rail commuters from here to Los Angeles, for the same round-trip fare of $31. Southbound passengers are traveling by train to San Juan Capistrano and busing to San Diego. But delays of almost an hour have plagued some bus routes.

The Greyhound bus company charges $25.15 for a round trip between San Diego and Los Angeles.

Edelman is hardly alone in his preference for the train. Amtrak provides service for more than 5,000 riders a day between San Diego and Los Angeles. Amtrak spokesman Bruce Heard said last week that ridership is down “about 20%, which means we’re hauling about 1,000 fewer people a day than we normally do.”

But Brian Rosenwald, a district manager for Amtrak in Los Angeles, said the figures--on 18 daily runs, nine between San Diego and Union Station and back--are closer to 50%, with sharper declines expected today.

“People have either postponed their trips, or they’ve started driving,” Rosenwald said at the Santa Fe depot in San Diego, flanked by five chartered buses and a fleet of idle rail cars.

“For us, this is a major problem. Our customers’ travel plans have been sorely affected. Not to mention how stressful it is.”

Amtrak’s Heard said officials in Dana Point are worried that removal of debris from the slide area could trigger further erosion or endanger homes on the bluffs 75 feet above the tracks.

Five homes in San Clemente were declared in ruins last Tuesday after tons of rubble crashed down on Coast Highway, burying more than 400 feet of track under mounds of mud. The slide also has halted rail freight service in and out of San Diego County.

“We are unfortunately being held hostage until this is resolved,” Heard said.

Officials for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, which owns the tracks used by Amtrak, said repairs will not begin until today and could take until Wednesday, at the earliest. In the meantime, Edelman said, “rail regulars” will have to suffer.

Edelman, 47, who lives in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, where his wife is a banking executive, can remember only a handful of times in about six years of train travel when the trip from Union Station to Del Mar was off schedule, let alone fraught with hassles.

He said shutdowns usually occurred “when someone standing on the tracks got hit, and the conductor had to wait for the coroner.”

On a gray afternoon late last week, passengers stood in line near the tracks here, waiting to board buses. Most wore winter clothing and frowns, and a few looked surprised at having to “bus it.” Several cast looks of longing at the idled rail cars.

“We’re really disappointed. This is the first time this has ever happened!” said Sandy Elliott, 60, a Northridge travel agent, who not only takes Amtrak’s San Diegan on a regular basis but also books it for others--with enthusiasm.

“This is my baby! The train is really the way to go, but not like this,” she said, as she and her husband, Bob Elliott, 60, boarded a bus. “Ordinarily, you look out the window at the blue Pacific, and now, we’ll be stuck in traffic. I’m not a bit happy about it.”

For Susan Huff, 36, the change in plans lingered like an unwanted guest. Her 12-year-old daughter travels by train every other weekend to San Juan Capistrano. Putting her on a bus was, Huff said, “a little strange--and kind of jarring.”

“I’m glad they provided alternative transportation. It would be real inconvenient if they didn’t,” Huff said. “We’ve come to take the train for granted, and I hope they get this resolved as soon as possible, for my daughter’s sake.”

As passengers waited in line, second thoughts etched on their faces, some seemed confused about which bus to board. Should it be the “express” that travels nonstop between here and Union Station? Or the local that stops in Del Mar, Oceanside and San Clemente?

Visual aids and people to answer questions were as scarce as sunlight.

“I work (in downtown Los Angeles) for the state Department of Justice,” said Malcolm Venolia, 34. “I travel to San Diego every two to three months and always take the train. This would happen one of the few times I need to go. I’ve never experienced anything like this. On the train, I mean.”

Rosenwald, the Amtrak executive, said the worst delays through Thursday had been 45 minutes, with southbound treks faring worse.

Edelman, the professor, provides testimony that taking the train has its aesthetic--and academic--benefits. While hunched in an Amtrak seat, he managed to finish “Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sport in the U.S.S.R.,” which Oxford University Press will publish in May.

“But that ride, it’s also incredibly beautiful,” he said. “One of the prettiest in America. And when you get to L.A., the tracks are above ground level. You look over and see City Hall and all of those buildings. And you realize: ‘Hey, I’m back in the big town again.’ Take the car, and you come home a worn-out mess.

“Under normal circumstances, my only complaint is that the bar car is simply lacking in good food. Unless you like breakfast McMuffins. Other than that, it’s a true pleasure and one I miss when it’s taken away. I hope it never ends as a method of travel.

“After all,” he said, “driving and reading are dangerous, even more so than driving and drinking.”