(The following article by Sally Connell was posted on the San Luis Obispo Tribune website on August 14.)
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Local governments are being asked to express their support for a new Amtrak train service called the Coast Daylight, connecting the downtowns of Los Angeles and San Francisco by way of San Luis Obispo.
The push for a new train service is under way even as the proposed train’s nocturnal cousin, the Coast Starlight, has a slacker’s reputation for tardiness.
The Starlight is so notorious — Amtrak’s own Web site suggests riders expect delays of six to 10 hours — that some rail enthusiasts and riders have nicknamed it the “Coast Starlate.”
The Starlight connects San Luis Obispo to the Bay Area and Southern California, as it runs between Los Angeles and Seattle. Its Bay Area stop is Jack London Square in Oakland. Riders must take an Amtrak bus or use public transit or other transportation to go to San Francisco.
The Pacific Surfliner — which connects San Luis Obispo to San Diego and 22 stations along the way — has a much better on-time reputation.
The Surfliner has a more commuter-oriented bent. The proposed Daylight line is expected to appeal to tourists visiting the state’s major metropolitan areas.
Officials hope the new line would have the Surfliner’s track record.
The Coast Daylight is a priority project for the state, although it is not yet subsidized, said Pete Rodgers, San Luis Obispo Council of Governments administrative director.
Its future could be assured if the statewide transportation bond measure known as Proposition 1B passes in the Nov. 7 election, but some believe its future is assured regardless.
“This is going to happen,” Rodgers said. “I don’t know if it is going to happen in a year or two or 10. But this train is proposed as the next service extension in the entire California Rail Plan.”
The state would have to contribute about $7 million annually to the operating costs of the Coast Daylight for it to be successful, Rodgers said. Local agencies will not have to pay anything, as it is proposed.
SLOCOG — the county’s transportation planning agency — has asked the San Luis Obispo City Council to adopt a resolution supporting the new rail service.
If the council passes the resolution Tuesday, the city will join Grover Beach and Paso Robles and transportation agencies from Santa Barbara, Monterey, and Santa Cruz counties in supporting the new service.
Old tracks
Beyond the funding, there is another hang-up for the train linked to the very problems that plague the Starlight: old, dilapidated tracks.
Union Pacific Railroad has told its proponents it will not support the Daylight operating on its tracks without help to improve them.
The cost to improve the tracks could run between $20 million and $100 million, Rodgers said, but a full assessment has not been completed.
The infrastructure issue is what plagues the Coast Starlight on its journey along the coast, particularly north of Sacramento.
The agreement that established Amtrak in the early 1970s called for passenger trains to get priority over freight cars on the nation’s tracks. But the reality has been much different.
Sidings, or the side tracks where trains pull out to let another pass, are often too small for freight trains, which can be a mile long.
The result is that Amtrak trains have to pull off in the sidings and let freight trains pass, repeatedly causing multiple delays, said Rodgers and some local train buffs.
Familiar name
Old-timers may find the Coast Daylight name familiar; it was the name given to one of the nation’s most popular trains in the 1930s and ’40s, the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Coast Daylight.
“It was a beautiful train,” said Arnold Jonas, who serves on the board of the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum. “The cars were sort of a vermillion red with an orangish golden stripe down the side.”
He said the Coast Daylight was faster than any train could run on the route in this day and age.
“Those steam locomotives could go 80 miles per hour. In those days, they kept the train tracks in good enough shape,” he said.
It was considered fast and convenient for traveling between California’s largest cities and in the ’30s and ’40s often brought celebrities up the coast.
“William Randolph Hearst had his own cars bring guests up this far,” he said. “They would take the cars off and set them aside for the weekend. He’d take his guests out to the Castle for the weekend, and then they’d come back and they would hook the cars up.”