Is Orange County’s Coastal Train Entering its Final Days?

BY NOAH BIESIADA AND BRANDON PHO
7 hours ago



An Amtrak passenger train passes through San Clemente in May 2017. JEFF ANTENORE, Voice of OC Contributing Photographer

The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner passenger train has closed and reopened three times in the last year, and is currently closed indefinitely according to Metrolink.

While county transit officials are moving forward with multiple wall projects totaling over $20 million in construction costs to stop future falling debris from wrecking the tracks, it’s opening up a big question on the future of the county’s coastal rail line.

It has local transportation officials studying things like an entire realignment of the coastal track further inland, while construction crews continue to lay protective boulders called riprap in front of the rail line over the protests of environmental groups who say it’s destroying the beach.

Unlike the boulder walls that guard against the seas, county officials’ latest projects will face the cliffs in an effort to prevent rocks from falling on the track after a landslide at San Clemente’s historic Casa Romantica put the latest stop to train service last month.

[Read: Passenger Trains on South OC’s Coastal Railway Stopped by Another Landslide ]

“We have the contractor on site. And they started work yesterday afternoon,” said county Supervisor Katrina Foley in a July 6 phone interview. “They’ve driven eight of the pile drives into the ground, and they seem to have a good pace with the schedule.”

She said the estimated completion date is July 17.

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