Rail Issues Lack Easy Fixes

Some South County residents want to derail a proposal that would send high-speed trains barreling through the heart of San Clemente. The fatal Metrolink commuter train crash April 23 in Placentia is fueling a new sense of urgency for a plan that would move increasingly busy railroad tracks running through the city into a trench below street level.

The growing chorus of railroad blues might sound like a bad case of NIMBY in a county that just grounded an airport proposal. The noisy parade of passenger and freight trains rolling through the county is growing longer, though, and talk of 200-mph passenger trains racing between San Diego and San Francisco is moving into the realm of serious public policy debate.

Existing railroad tracks were laid decades before suburban sprawl blanketed the county, so there is no easy way to give frazzled commuters a ticket out of freeway gridlock, or accommodate freight traffic that carries goods to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Solutions that will eliminate bottlenecks along tracks are costly and will emerge in bits and pieces. The proposed four-mile trench through Placentia, for example, would keep automobiles and pedestrians out of harm’s way by eliminating 11 dangerous grade crossings. The plan is worth implementing as funds become available; Placentia residents are assaulted by the blaring horns of more than 70 daily Metrolink, Amtrak and Burlington-Northern Santa Fe trains.

The trench is a real-world solution patterned after the $2.4-billion, 20-mile Alameda Corridor that eliminated traffic jams and noise in municipalities bisected by busy tracks linking the port with freight yards in Los Angeles.

The April 23 head-on collision between a freight train and a Metrolink commuter train that left two passengers dead underscored another unfortunate fact of railroad life in the county. Existing corridors force freight and passenger trains to share tracks. Those bottlenecks threaten to stall discussion of innovative proposals, including the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s envisioned fleet of high-speed passenger trains.

One key bottleneck is in San Clemente, where northbound and southbound trains share a single set of tracks perched beneath delicate coastal bluffs. Stand at the foot of the municipal pier and it’s clear that the extremely narrow railroad right of way that barely accommodates one set of tracks wasn’t built to handle high-speed trains.

Safety is an issue in San Clemente, where seven people have died during the past decade while trying to walk across railroad tracks. On a recent morning, a middle-aged couple ignored the flashing red lights and crossing gates as they scrambled safely across the tracks and toward the pier. Seconds later, a northbound Amtrak Surfliner drowned out the rhythmic pounding of the surf.

The rail authority is considering two possible solutions in San Clemente. Unfortunately, neither is an easy or good one. The first would create a pair of high-speed tracks that would run along the existing seaside corridor. The second is a mammoth, five-mile railway tunnel that would run under Interstate 5.

The environmental cost of anchoring two sets of high-speed tracks near the fragile bluffs would be unacceptable. It’s difficult to imagine the rail authority finding hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to finance a massive tunnel.

The rail authority’s charge to move Californians into the future is laudable in a state where transportation alternatives are a necessity. However, the problems of Placentia and San Clemente show that it won’t be easy to move passengers and freight in a manner that coexists with nature and civilization.