OCTA to Address San Clemente Rail Hazards Amid Service Suspension

OCTA track stabilization crews clearing vegetation.

OCTA

Orange County transit officials have proposed an effort to better protect the county’s sole railroad link to San Diego by adding more boulder seawalls along seven miles of the coast between San Clemente and Dana Point.

At a December California Coastal Commission meeting, officials shared a map displaying new sections of rock revetment to be installed in multiple locations along the rail corridor, as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Orange County Transportation Authority officials and the Coastal Commission are working to better identify the corridor’s most vulnerable points and obtain permits for new or expanded seawalls, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

During the recent commission meeting, OCTA project manager Jason Lee shared efforts currently underway to mitigate a landslide in San Clemente, where passenger service has been halted since late September.

Thus far, OCTA has added boulders to fortify the rock revetment along the beach and is working to install ground anchors at the site to stabilize the slope on the shore side of the tracks. Amtrak and Metrolink passenger service is expected to resume from Oceanside to San Clemente following the project’s completion in January or February, according to the Tribune.

A temporary state of emergency declared by OCTA has expedited the work at San Clemente, as reported by the Tribune. Some local officials have taken issue with the emergency orders—the latest being the fourth such order in little more than a year—and seek a long-term solution. 

“With this Band-Aid approach of repeated emergencies we can only focus on 700 feet of track [in San Clemente],” said Rick Erkeneff, vice chairman of the South Orange County Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. Erkeneff added that aerial photos indicate that beach erosion has long posed hazards along the tracks in San Clemente, the Tribune reported.

While the San Diego Association of Governments has worked for years to plan a reroute of the railroad around an unstable 1.7-mile section of the tracks in Del Mar, officials say the Del Mar realignment is unlikely to be completed before 2035, according to the Tribune.

Stabilization work so far has included seawalls, soldier piles and other efforts, with more mitigation work to come, officials say. The structures would later be removed when an alternate route through an inland tunnel is completed, the Tribune reports. 

OCTA is developing a new feasibility study that will begin in late 2023 and take 18 to 24 months to complete. The associated cost is estimated at between $1 million and $2 million, Eric Carpenter, communications specialist for OCTA, told the Tribune. 

“It will look at things such as beach erosion, sand replenishment, why soil and sediment from inland rivers may not be reaching the coast, watershed impacts and other factors to help better understand the situation,” Carpenter told the Tribune. 

Previous coverage of the agency’s stabilization work is available here.