Mass transit advocates are calling for state officials to electrify the rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego, known as the LOSSAN corridor.
Last September, the grassroots advocacy group Californians for Electric Rail released a report titled Electrolink: Modern Passenger Rail Service for Southern California. It argues that electrification will be worth the upfront investment by offering faster, quieter, cleaner and more frequent train service that is more competitive with driving.
Electric trains can accelerate faster and achieve faster top speeds compared to the diesel-powered trains that are currently in use on the LOSSAN corridor. The report also calls for train station designs that optimize speed and passenger comfort.
Andrew Graves, one of the report's co-authors, said in a webinar Monday that electric trains have lower operating costs, enabling them to run more frequently.
"You want to make it so that people can just show up at a station and get on a train," Graves said. "They don't have to think about looking at the schedule or planning their whole thing around it. It makes it a lot more easy for people to shift their way of thinking to just show up at the station and take the first train that comes."
The 2024 California State Rail Plan aims to electrify most of the state's rail corridors by 2050. But the LOSSAN corridor — the second busiest passenger rail corridor in the country — is excluded from the electrification plans.
Sen. Catherine Blakespear, who represents coastal North County, said the state needs to increase oversight and coordination among all the different counties that actually own the train tracks. She added that California needs to employ more professional rail experts to reduce its reliance on consultants.
"In California, we've really hollowed out our rail expertise," Blakespear said. "We don't have a Caltrans equivalent for rail, which would be great. So building that back up, of course, takes a financial commitment."
SANDAG, San Diego County's transportation planning agency, is preparing an environmental impact report analyzing options to realign the LOSSAN corridor through Del Mar, where bluff collapses have frequently disrupted train service.
Blakespear said SANDAG has allowed opponents of the rail realignment project to slow down the process.
"We have had a lot of inaction along the rail line," Blakespear said. "Because we have such a hyperlocal process for decision making, things get very, very bogged down. And so we don't end up moving forward with really important projects for essentially parochial reasons."
