It's been nearly a month since a landslide brought trains to a halt and damaged the Mariposa Trail Bridge in San Clemente, but now there’s some good news.
“We were excited to receive an allocation of $7.2 million from the state of California this past Friday, following the Orange County Transportation Authority’s request,” said Metrolink spokesperson Scott Johnson.
He said the money is being put toward a solution to catch falling debris from the privately-owned hillside and have rail service back up and running.
“With that (money) Metrolink was able to enter into a contract with a construction vendor to begin the design and ultimately the construction of a catchment wall,” Johnson said.
Passenger rail service stopped between San Juan Capistrano and Oceanside since Jan. 24 and even freight rail service has intermittently stopped due to the rail closure.
As part of the ongoing landslide issues, District 38 State Senator Catherine Blakespear recently introduced Senate Bill 1098 to improve the reliability of the Southern California rail system.
“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,” Blakespear said in a news release. “Interruptions to service have become commonplace in recent years, and that has hurt ridership.”
Johnson said this project will be similar to last year’s effort, which fixed a railway landslide at another location in San Clemente — Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens.
“The only way in or out of the current worksite is by rail. So that's a challenge,” Johnson said.
He said the current site poses serious difficulties, but they're using a similar footprint and the same construction contractor as the Casa Romantica location.
“In addition, just parking and the staging equipment and all the pieces it takes to build a wall — that will need to be brought in and removed each day to allow that freight movement to take place each night,” Johnson said about the current landslide location.
The precise design and the construction schedule will be finalized this week, but there’s still no exact timeline when passenger rail service will resume.
Johnson said the construction of the wall under the Casa Romantica site took about one month.
