Emergency repairs could cost $200 million over the next year along a 7-mile stretch of coastal railroad tracks in San Clemente, where multiple landslides have stopped trains traveling between San Diego and Orange counties.
Orange County Transportation Authority officials also are monitoring a half-dozen other places in San Clemente where the eroded beach could undermine the railroad or the steep seaside bluffs could collapse on it.
"This is what we have to do now, this summer, to be prepared for (next) winter," OCTA Program Manager Dan Phu said Monday.
Phu presented an overview Monday to the agency's Regional Transportation Planning Committee of the work completed so far and still under way to protect the railroad tracks.
So far, the OCTA has spent about $38 million for repairs at three sites — below the Cyprus Shore community near San Onofre State Park and the San Diego County border, below San Clemente's historic Casa Romantica cultural center, and most recently along the San Clemente Beach Trail near Mariposa Point.
The additional work proposed is primarily to install more boulder riprap along the beach to protect the tracks from the ocean waves. That tactic does not sit well with many Orange County residents, who say that the growing rock wall occupies too much of the shrinking beach and may contribute to the erosion problem.
"What was glaringly missing from this study was sand," said Katrina Foley, an Orange County supervisor and member of the OCTA's Regional Transportation Planning Committee.
"I'm concerned that our focus predominantly on riprap as a solution is only going to exacerbate the coastal erosion and the removal of the sand from the beaches," Foley said
Orange County beaches, as in San Diego County and elsewhere, have shrunk to a fraction of their former size. Until recently, the wide swath of sand protected the railroad for more than a century.
"Ignoring sand replenishment as part of this solution is a mistake," said Dana Point Mayor Jamey Federico, also a member of the OCTA committee. "For many decades the sand that was there helped to protect the train tracks."
San Clemente, working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, launched its first beach restoration project in late December. However, work was suspended in early January after the material dredged from an ocean site near Oceanside proved to be more rocks and gravel than sand. Officials say finding another source could prove costly and time-consuming.
Passenger train traffic has been suspended at the Mariposa Point slide since Jan. 24. Construction began last week on a 200-foot-long, 10- to 15-foot-tall barrier wall below the slide. Passenger service is expected to resume when the wall is completed in about another three weeks.
Other areas being monitored include additional spots along the 2.3-mile beach trail, the North Beach area north of the San Clemente Pier, South Doheny Beach, and the Poche Beach outfall and pedestrian underpass, according to a report prepared for the committee.
OCTA has spent about $21.7 million so far at Cyprus Shore, where the slow-moving slide pushed the tracks as much as 30 inches toward the ocean. The biggest part of that work was the installation of tie-back anchors into the bedrock. Most of the cost was covered by a $6 million federal block grant, an additional $6 million from the state's Interregional Transportation Improvement program, and $1 million in federal coronavirus relief funds, with the rest of the money from OCTA.
The Casa Romantica project cost the OCTA $6 million, most of which went to build a temporary barrier wall, and the state paid half that cost. The slide there is on city property, and San Clemente officials have said their stabilization work will cost about $8.5 million.
At Mariposa Point, the cleanup costs so far were about $2 million and the wall under construction will be about $8 million. That work has been funded by the state, OCTA officials said.
OCTA owns more than 40 miles of the tracks in Orange County and serves as that segment's managing agency for the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo (LOSSAN) Rail Corridor Agency. Metrolink is the operator of record on the Orange County tracks and leases track rights to Amtrak and BNSF Freight.
Metrolink, also known as the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, provides passenger train service in six Southern California counties, normally including one southernmost stop in Oceanside.
North County Transit District continues to run Coaster commuter trains on their normal schedule between downtown San Diego and Oceanside. During the San Clemente stablization work, Metrolink trains run as far south as the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo Station on weekdays and San Juan Capistrano on weekends.
Amtrak has halted some of its Pacific Surfliner trains on the route, but some continue serving San Diego with a bus connection between Oceanside and Irvine.
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
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