The Journal. - The Race to Save an Iconic Train From Falling Into the Ocean

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

The Pacific Surfliner train in Southern California runs along some of the most beautiful coastlines in America. But some fear it might soon fall into the ocean. WSJ’s Jim Carlton reports on how coastal erosion is impacting an iconic train route and the controversial plans to move parts of the line inland.   Further Reading: - The Race to Keep an Amtrak Train From Falling Into the Pacific  Further Listening: - What Caused a Train to Derail in East Palestine, Ohio?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, I'm on the Pacific Surfliner, riding from San Juan Capistrano to San Diego today. That's our colleague Jim Carlton, riding one of California's busiest train lines, the Surfliner. We're going maybe 50 miles an hour zooming past traffic on the nearby 5 freeway. And it's really beautiful. We've been passing gorgeous beaches. You can see surfers, you know, crashing waves. I was looking for dolphins. Couldn't find any dolphins, but I was looking. The train runs for 351 miles, all the way from San Diego to the central coast of California. It makes stops in Orange County, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. It's called the surf liner because it runs alongside the ocean

and in many places on top of cliffs. When you look closer, the bluffs above the track in many places are crumbling. You can see tarps of plastic, you know, keeping the erosion at bay. On the beach side, you can see giant boulders in many stretches, separating the tracks from the waves crashing just maybe 20, 30 yards away.

So it's pretty clear there's a real fight against Mother Nature here. Erosion, crashing waves, crumbling bluffs. The surf liner is basically at risk of falling into the ocean. The first 130 years that this line was in existence, the track through San Clemente, for example, had to close only three times. The last three years has happened five times. Wow.

Five times there have been, you know, the bluffs have been destabilized enough to close the tracks. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, May 17th. Coming up on the show, the fight to save the surf liner. Attention all soccer fans. From Orlando to Los Angeles, take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation.

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The Pacific Surfliner runs along an old route. The first tracks were laid in 1888, from San Diego to Los Angeles. Back in those days, you wanted to do things easy, and the beach was the easiest way to go along the coast. If you're familiar with Southern California, if you go very far inland, you run into mountains, so there's not too many other places you can go.

So they just laid it right along the beach. For more than a century, the train has carried people and goods up the California coast. It's now run by Amtrak, and its scenic views make it popular with tourists. Cruise along tracks that connect you to Southern California's top destinations and experience an unforgettable ride.

And how important is it as like a commuter line? I mean, Southern California is like famous for its traffic, but like, you know, do people use this as a way to get around that? Oh, 100%. I was actually surprised when I started researching this to find out that actually 3 million people a year at the peak took this Amtrak train, second busiest Amtrak quarter in the country. In addition to that, there's $1 billion a year worth of freight goods go on this train, and so it's vital for freight. A lot of people will take it from Orange County down to San Diego and vice versa.

That's about, in traffic, it'd be an hour and a half. With a train, you know, maybe somewhat less than that, but at least you're not spending gas. We stopped on Oceanside, and there was a woman who got on on Oceanside, and she works at SeaWorld. I take this train daily. That's Allie Nelson who Jim met on the train. My schedules are different every day so I take our local coaster train or I take the Amtrak depending on what what my time to clock in at work is. And how is that compared to driving a car? It's a lot faster. It's a lot easier. It's usually not too problematic, and it times out with me to get a bus.

I transfer at Old Town, and it's like a 15-minute bus ride there. So I've done it for 21 years. For others, like Laurel Wanger, it's convenient for long trips, like the roughly 200 miles from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Just tell me a little bit about why you're doing this. Well, I go out up to Santa Barbara a lot to see my son, but it's just me in the car. It cost me three times what it takes the train. So as a senior, I get a senior discount. So I think it's $78 round trip.

I can't drive for that. And I don't want to be going through LA on a holiday weekend. While many people like the train, it's become harder for people to use it. I can't drive for that, and I don't want to be going through L.A. on a holiday weekend. While many people like the train, it's become harder for people to use it. And in Southern California, a thing like a railroad track is being attacked from two sides. It's being attacked from above by more intense storms. That causes more rain, and that causes more erosion of the bluffs, which falls down on the tracks. And that's one problem.

The other problem is the sea is getting higher and that's resulted in waves coming closer to the track and hastening the erosion. The waves will chew at the base of the bluffs even more and so causing more erosion. How has that affected the train? In 2022, the track actually got moved like 28 inches towards the ocean. That actually moved the track. So they had to bring in boulders. They call it riprap, but it's boulders, hundreds of boulders, and put it on the ocean side of the track to keep it from moving anymore.

Because the track was like literally starting to slide 28 inches toward the water. Yeah, which is kind of a horrifying prospect when you think about, you know, how many trains go, there's like dozens of trains and, you know, there's people on it, there's freight, there's cargo. I mean, it's, you know, it'd be bad. There's one place, Del Mar, California, which is north San Diego County, and the train actually goes atop the bluffs there, not on the bottom.

And it's about maybe 75 feet off the cliffs. So there you have the prospect of maybe a train could actually go flying into the ocean. Like if there's a landslide where the train is running over the bluff, like the whole train might just go over. Right, the whole damn thing. It could be like an action movie or something in real life. Or a horror movie. One person who's been watching the trailer

for this horror movie is Terry Gasterland. She's the deputy mayor of Del Mar. Do you remember noticing when the train line and the tracks started to have these problems where it was, you know, looking like it was going to start falling into the ocean? For me, it was distinctly Thanksgiving a few years ago. There was an enormous storm, just the skies opened up and an unprecedented amount of water came rushing down the hill. It's all downhill for about a mile

from Crest Road all the way down to the beach. And all that water just went pouring down 10th Street, pouring down Stratford, took a turn and went on down to the bluff and washed out an entire section of bluff right there in Del Mar. And what did you think when that happened? I was unaware before that of the degree to which the tracks were so vulnerable. And that was one storm with this huge washing out.

The water just took the bluff away. So far, engineers have been trying to fix the train line with temporary solutions, like those boulders they pile up along parts of the coast. And they've reinforced sections of the bluffs with walls and giant pylons to prevent the cliffs from falling into the ocean. They know it's not going to work in the long run. It's a

band-aid. They're hoping the band-aid is going to hold for 30 years with the local. They want to, like, short fix for 30 years, 20, 30 years. How difficult is it to put things like this in place? And how much does it cost? Well, they spent between Orange County and San Diego counties, and this has been mainly state money so far, it's been about $140 million. Just building sort of makeshift walls. Right, these makeshift walls, nets, boulders, all these fixes, everything they're doing, all these short-term fixes. All the Band-Aids. All these Band-Aids.

And that's $140 million. Those are some expensive Band-Aids. It is an expensive Band-Aid, but, you know, they feel like they have to do it. But the long-term solution is going, you know, they feel like they have to do it. But the long-term solution is going to be billions, not hundreds of millions. That long-term solution is to move parts

of the train inland. But moving a train inland in crowded Southern California is no easy task. That's next. 1800 Tequila believes that taste is more than just a detail. It's everything. Taste changes the game. It attracts all the attention. Taste elevates everyday moments into extraordinary experiences. Savor the best taste in tequila.

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Oh. And seeing your favorite artist at a giant outdoor music festival. Ah. Adventure awaits in Ottawa. From O to Ah. Plan your Ottawa adventure at OttawaTourism.ca. One place where officials are thinking about moving the train inland is in Del Mar, a small beach town north of San Diego. It has a population of 4,000 people, including Terry Gasterland, the deputy mayor who you heard from earlier.

4,000 people, including Terry Gasterland, the deputy mayor who you heard from earlier. So I've been to the Del Mar racetrack before, but that's about the extent of my experience with Del Mar. So what's it like there? Del Mar is just this lovely, lovely spot. It's nestled between two lagoons and a natural canyon and the ocean. So on all four sides, they're very special, protected, environmental places to enjoy. And we have river paths, we have bluff paths, and we have trails through the coastal canyon. So it's all just a lovely, lovely place to be. What's your favorite thing about living there? My favorite thing about living there is, in fact, going out and taking a run on the Bluff Top Trail over the ocean alongside the tracks. That was the very first thing I did when I very first came to Del Mar 25 years ago.

But now, those bluffs pose a serious risk to the surf liner. But now, those bluffs pose a serious risk to the surf liner. You know, so relocating the railroad tracks is something that we've been talking about ever since these bluff slides started becoming kind of at least once a year. And since there is no way to predict where the slide is going to be, that's a serious risk. So a study was conducted for how to move the train inland. And the idea officials came up with was to move the train underground. Here's Jim again. Well, the idea is tunnel technology is pretty well established,

and you would take it several hundred feet below ground. There's a lot of rock down there. And other places like Boston, they've done it. Basically, that's the way to get it off the coast. There's not too many other options, honestly, because there's the coast, there's a bunch of homes, there's Interstate 5, and then more homes. Yeah, it's not like there's a lot of land. There's not a lot of open green space they could just move the tracks to. Right. There's just not too many places to put it. And also just the topography is very hilly. So they think the only real solution is to do a fairly, you know, like a, almost a

two mile tunnel that would start before you get to the gloves and then go kind of inland enough to get away from them. Then it would pop up in kind of a safe spot. up in kind of a safe spot. But moving the train inland might mean that the train would have to pass under people's homes. It's an idea many in Del Mar hate. Here's Terry. Well, the study started talking about tunnels through Del Mar, all the different ways that a tunnel could go underneath people's homes and the places where a tunnel could go into the ground and come out of the ground. Those places are called portals. So I looked at this and thought, can this really be done? Is that all you thought? Well, I thought, can this really be done? Probably not. And how could freight go underneath people's homes, given that all freight carriers are required nationally to carry hazardous materials, if they must? You know, hazardous materials underneath somebody's bedroom doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

It sounds like you kind of thought, heck no. What I thought was, I can't imagine how this could possibly happen. Terry says that the portals where the train would come in and out of the ground would be the size of a two to three story building. And in one of the proposed routes, there would be a portal right in the middle of a residential neighborhood along a road called Jimmy Durante Boulevard. Well, a portal under Jimmy Durante Boulevard going in there is going to be intrusive. It's going to be loud.

The fans are going to run constantly. And when trains go through, it's an open question how much vibration will be felt at the surface. So the train through the tunnel at Jimmy Durante will harm houses, several dozen, and it'll have unknown impacts to other houses. Terry tried to come up with an alternative plan. So I took out Google Maps and I started using the distance function to draw some dotted lines and figure out what are the distances, where could the railroad track go, where it would not be underneath people's homes. How do we avoid that?

Can we avoid it entirely? And where could this train go? Her solution would be to move the portal north to another location that she thinks would be less intrusive, and then have the train go under the Del Mar fairgrounds instead of under homes. Representatives for the Del Mar fairgrounds oppose the idea. They say they're focused on bringing people to the fairgrounds, not through them.

At this point, it's not clear what will happen. State and local governments are still conducting environmental studies, and local planning officials say it'll take years to make a final decision. But officials hope that the project to move the railway will be finished by 2035, and they estimate that it'll cost several billion dollars. It's unclear how government agencies will split the costs. Amtrak itself isn't responsible for the costs because the tracks are managed by local entities and companies.

Do you think the train is worth saving? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it is a way to transport people and goods. And it's a way to transport goods sometimes that are just difficult to take on a highway. So it has economic value. The question is, does it need to go through Del Mar Hill? And does it need to be on a fragile bluff? There's got to be a better solution than the current situation that we have. So where does this all leave the surf liner?

I mean, it feels like it's really sort of facing a bit of an existential crisis here. Yeah. I mean, basically, it's a race against time. Also, by the way, Ventura, Santa Barbara counties, these are issues that face them as well. There are many, many cliffs along the surf liner route up in those areas. They haven't crumbled completely yet, but it's a race against time as well up there. What's at stake if nobody's able to come up with a solution? Well, I mean, it's almost difficult to conceive.

I mean, you've got Interstate 5, so I guess you'd have to have a lot more truck traffic, freight traffic, you know, commuters. You know, Interstate 5 itself is limited, so it'd just be a shutdown of this vital transportation artery. But, you know, you put more people on the road, that hurts the air pollution, you know. So if it were to get shut down permanently, it would not be good. And this is just like the first of so many situations where infrastructure in the U.S. and many other things are going to be threatened by a rapidly changing climate. Yeah, it's kind of mind-boggling, really. I mean, I cover—I mean, I've been in Alaska. They're moving whole villages in Alaska because of the waves, you know, villages that used to be protected.

Erosion is so severe that now they're having to move them inland. Mother Nature is just eating away at this infrastructure. And so I think that we just have to adapt. And it's just, it's not easy and it's not cheap and The Wall Street Journal. The show's made by Annie Baxter, Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphries, Matt Kwong, Kate Leinbaugh, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff,

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