State Sen. Catherine Blakespear announced Tuesday she is introducing bipartisan legislation to improve passenger train service on the 351-mile coastal rail corridor between San Diego and San Luis Obispo.
California cannot accept shutdowns like the one happening in San Clemente, Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said at an online news conference in Sacramento. A landslide in San Clemente has suspended passenger service between San Diego and Orange counties for almost three weeks.
Freight traffic was again halted Monday after measurements showed the slow slide continued to inch closer to the tracks near an area known as Mariposa Point. For most of last week, the long, cargo-laden trains were allowed through the work area at slow speeds overnight.
Transit officials plan to build a barrier wall along the tracks so that passenger service can resume below the slide. A similar wall was built last year about a half-mile away below a slide at the city’s Casa Romantica, where repairs to the hillside are ongoing.
“Interruptions to service have become commonplace in recent years, and that has hurt ridership,” Blakespear said. “It is time to get ahead of the curve, plan for the future and turn the rail corridor into the highly efficient and reliable mover of goods and people it was designed to be. S.B. 1098 puts us on track to do that.”
Senate Bill 1098, or the Southern California Rail Revitalization Act, directs the California State Transportation Agency to create a prioritized list of the rail corridor’s capacity and resiliency projects.
It also directs the four regional planning agencies along the corridor — the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments, Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, Southern California Association of Governments and San Diego Association of Governments — to create local plans for improved rail services.
And the bill calls for the state secretary of transportation to manage and lead stakeholders within the corridor, according to Blakespear.
“This is about aligning action for the benefit of passengers,” she said. “To have passenger rail service completely shut down in one portion, as it is now in San Clemente due to an unstable hillside, is unacceptable.”
Coauthors of the bill are Sens. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica; Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara; Josh Newman, D-Fullerton; Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana; and Assemblymembers Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel; Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach; and Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara.
“Coastal erosion and unstable tracks have resulted in unprecedented closures,” Newman said at the news conference.
“It’s clear at this point there must be a more active effort at the state level,” he said. “We need to build a faster, more frequent and more reliable rail corridor.”
The so-called LOSSAN corridor, for Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo, is the only link for San Diego rail passengers and freight to reach Los Angeles and other points across the United States.
Blakespear chairs the Senate Transportation Subcommittee on LOSSAN Rail Corridor Resiliency. Over the last year, the subcommittee held several public hearings with transportation experts to examine challenges, such as the railroad’s increasing vulnerability to sea-level rise and climate change.
Unstable bluffs and hillsides have caused prolonged passenger service shutdowns five times in the last three years in the San Clemente area.
Ridership on the corridor reached 8 million people a year in 2019 before the pandemic began. In early 2020, it fell as much as 90 percent when health concerns kept people at home and train service was reduced. Since then, some riders have returned, but the total was only about 4 million in 2023.
