(The following article by Phil Pitchford was posted on the Press-Enterprise website on January 27.)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Metrolink offers four train routes to Inland commuters weary of the road, but once again it is having trouble with its problem child, the Riverside Line.
Union Pacific Railroad’s announcement that it is about to undertake a track-maintenance project was both good and bad news to commuters such as Riverside resident Rana Zand, who takes the train to classes at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.
The work by Union Pacific, the track owner, will ultimately improve the speed and reliability of the route, but will make Metrolink service on the line unavailable at various times in the next three months.
Any improvement on the line would be welcome, said Zand, who got yelled at after a recent delay made her 20 minutes late for class.
“The annoying thing is when the freight trains come by and cause a delay,” she said.
“This should help raise the speed level on those tracks,” said Denise Tyrrell, a Metrolink spokeswoman in Los Angeles. “In the meantime, it (the work) will slow them down.”
The track-improvement project is expected to disrupt service on as many as 20 days over the three-month period, or about every third working day.
“That really screws me up,” Zand said. “If I have to drive, I’ll have to leave by 4:30 in the morning.”
Trains on the line were late so often last spring that Metrolink considered legal action against Union Pacific. Metrolink accused Union Pacific of unfairly giving its freight trains priority over Metrolink commuter trains, causing delays that pushed some train riders back into their automobiles and onto the jammed freeways.
Those delays are part of the reason the Riverside Line is the only one of four train routes to the area that is losing ridership. The three others have seen ridership increase between 9 percent and 16 percent in the past year, but the Riverside Line had 4 percent fewer passengers in December compared with the same month the year before.
Metrolink and Union Pacific eventually worked out a dispatching solution that has largely eliminated delays on the line, but riders have been slow to return. The track-maintenance project threatens to eliminate any good will that has been built up, so Metrolink is emphasizing that the improved track will be faster and more reliable by late spring.
The track improvements, which include replacing wooden crossties with concrete, should reduce the number of times that trains are required to reduce speeds to as low as 10 mph, said Mark Davis, a Union Pacific spokesman. Trains ordinarily can travel about 70 mph on most sections of that line, he said.
The work, part of Union Pacific’s $1.3 billion annual track-maintenance program, also will improve intersections where railroad tracks cross roads so that motorists will have a smoother ride over the tracks, Davis said. But those intersections will be closed during the work.
“The inconvenience will be short-term in exchange for significant improvements,” he said. “There are long-term benefits for commuters, for rail shippers and people driving the crossings in the area.”
Some of the wooden ties being replaced date to 1963, Tyrrell said. The concrete ties that will replace them are much less likely to break, reducing the frequency with which trains must slow to 10 mph.
Train riders loathe such delays because “they pretty much feel like they can walk faster” than the train is moving, Tyrrell said. Riders also hate delays caused by freight trains, although improved dispatching by Union Pacific has largely eliminated that problem, she said.
Metrolink must provide reliable service over an extended period of time to win riders back, Tyrrell said. The train system was making progress, but will likely suffer a short-term loss of riders’ confidence, she said.
“We were feeling very comfortable that these problems were about to be solved, but this maintenance work is another story,” she said. “We’re not happy about the disruption of our service, but it is a necessary project for safety purposes.”