A coordinated, multi-agency effort is essential to save Southern California’s coastal rail corridor from sea level rise and erosion, Sen. Catherine Blakespear warned last week.
“The data is clear and the message more urgent than ever that our near-railway coastline is at critical risk of failure,” Encinitas Assemblywoman Blakespear said during a subcommittee hearing. on the resilience of the LOSSAN rail corridor which she chairs. Sacramento.
Seven different state and regional administrators briefed the subcommittee Monday on the status of problem areas along the 351-mile Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo rail corridor, focusing primarily on areas San Diego County and San Clemente in neighboring Orange. County. The route is San Diego’s only passenger and freight rail connection to Los Angeles and the rest of the United States.
The Del Mar and San Clemente rail sections are particularly vulnerable.
About 1.7 miles of the trail in Del Mar follows the edge of a tall, fragile cliff 60 feet above the ocean. The San Diego Association of Governments, the regional planning agency, has been working for years on plans to reroute the tracks to a tunnel away from the cliff, but that won’t happen until at least 2035.
In San Clemente, a seven-mile stretch of trail runs along the beach that narrows beneath crumbling cliffs.
“The rail is under attack from both sides,” said San Clemente City Manager Andy Hall. Mother Nature attacked the tracks there from the west by scouring the sand from the beach, and from the east by weakening the steep cliffs and triggering landslides.
The Orange County Transportation Authority recently began considering long-term solutions for the seven miles of waterfront rail, including the possibility of a new inland road. However, relocation there is uncertain and, if chosen, will take place decades away.
Any solution, even a quick one, is expensive. OCTA, working with Metrolink, spent $9.2 million to clean up and construct a catchment wall completed in March after a landslide at Mariposa Point in San Clemente.
As of December 2023, OCTA identified four new hotspots that require protection from beach erosion and possible slope failures, said Darrell Johnson, the agency’s executive director.
“Potential solutions, in a perfect world…should be in place…or largely underway, by fall 2024, before the next storm season,” Johnson said.
A rough estimate of the cost of the work needed immediately is between $210 million and $310 million, he said. A more realistic timeline would be that it would take up to four years to plan, design, secure funding and complete the projects.
Several presenters at the hearing emphasized the need for a multi-pronged approach to protecting rail lines.
The three basic tactics are: replenishing beach sand, adding and extending rock revetments west of the railroad tracks, and installing barrier-like catchment walls east of the railroad tracks where they are threatened. by landslides.
Sand replenishment is widely considered the best solution.
In addition to protecting the railway, wider beaches preserve access to the coast and provide recreational spaces popular with residents and visitors. Additionally, many people view sand as a more natural solution to the railroad’s problems than building walls or dumping rocks that can contribute to beach erosion.
However, dredging sand from the ocean, harbors and lagoons to widen beaches is expensive and time-consuming. Additionally, the sand ends up being washed away again.
“It’s probably not realistic to expect that a nature-based solution can stand on its own,” said Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the California Coastal Commission. “We understand the need for some sort of multi-component, but it (sand) should be an important part of any project.”
In Del Mar, the Coastal Commission approved new seawalls in 2022 as part of ongoing efforts to protect cliff trails until a new alignment is completed. However, the Coastal Commission also required the installation of stairs and pathways as part of the project to preserve public access to the beach.
Overall rail ridership remains down from pre-pandemic peaks of 2019. However, passengers are slowly returning.
Amtrak’s ridership per passenger per mile in March of this year, when limited service was restored after the Mariposa Point slide, reached 101% compared to March 2019, said LOSSAN General Manager Jason Jewel.
At the end of March, Amtrak restored service to its previous level of 10 daily round-trip trains between San Diego and Los Angeles. As a result, April attendance is expected to increase 8 to 10 percent compared to March, Jewel said.
Amtrak expects this upward trend to continue through the summer, when more people will tend to choose the train for holiday travel and for special events such as the X-Games in Ventura , horse racing in Del Mar and Comic-Con in San Diego.
Tuesday’s hearing was the subcommittee’s fourth, the second this year. After its January meeting, the subcommittee sent a letter to the California State Transportation Agency suggesting a formal partnership between agencies using the corridor.
The state agency has a “task force” that helps identify and respond to issues along the corridor, but so far it has not taken any steps toward a formal partnership.
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