Riding The Rails

One of the joys of living in Southern California is driving the PCH. Mind you, traffic can be crazy, insane, and backed up going through every hamlet along the coast. And that’s on a quiet weekday. Don’t get me started about weekends or holidays? The PCH, Pacific Coast Highway or Highway One, winds its way from San Diego to the Northern end of the state. At times, it hugs the coastline so close you’d think your toes are going to get wet and other times loses the ocean view completely. It’s another taste of California, closeup but rarely personal.

Now riding the San Diego Coaster is another story. Rail travel has always been on my short list of imaginative ways to get about and the Coaster answers a need to see my surroundings without the stress of driving, parking, or those ‘idiots on the road.’

My first introduction to rail travel came from reading Woody Guthrie’s best-selling novel ‘Bound for Glory.’ It celebrated Woody’s hard living, rambling lifestyle as he hoboed around the country by rail during the Great Depression. It was high-octane fuel for the imagination of a ten-year old shouting out: “I wanna be like that too.”

The Coaster is an amalgamation of two separate rail lines; commuter and long-distance rail travel. Commuters range from suburban moms on a quick jaunt into town to a wide assortment of humanity in-between. Long distance travelers range from college students, sales folks, seniors on holiday and anyone else looking to escape for a day or longer. When I was there, it was to look, listen and sneak in a picture or two.

The Coaster’s normal run goes from Oceanside, just south of Camp Pendleton, down to San Diego. The ride from Oceanside to San Diego costs a little over six dollars round trip and takes about an hour. One glance at traffic on highway 5 morning or evening and its benefits can’t be denied. The East Coast is another soap opera entirely.

For several years, Sharon and I traveled with friends on the Amtrak commuter run from Washington, D.C. to New York city. It was a wonderful way to take in the Great White Way, the High Line, several plays, Greenwich Village, and other assorted tourist spots. All without the hassle of driving around Manhattan and spending our retirement on parking.

The Manhattan commuter run (actually we boarded in Annapolis) was about a four-hour trip. It was a fascinating reveal on the East Coast and its inhabitants. At each stop along the way, a wide variety of rail travelers poured into and exited out of the cars. Each stop was another ensemble of characters; some easily recognizable and others strictly Off-Broadway.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times a couple of years ago that spoke directly to the railfan in me. It was entitled: “Why the West Coast is suddenly beating the East Coast on Transportation.”

“It is an incredibly exciting time to be in urban transportation,” the New York transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, told a breakfast gathering of powerful New Yorkers, pointing to California’s progress.”

The Los Angeles area, the ultimate car-centric region with its sprawling freeways, approved a sweeping $120 billion plan to build new train routes and upgrade its buses. Seattle has won accolades for its transit system, where 93 percent of riders report being happy with service – a feat that seems unimaginable in New York, where subway riders regularly simmer with rage on stalled trains.

“It’s a tale of two systems,” said Robert Puentes, the president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonpartisan research center in Washington. “These new ones are growing and haven’t started to experience the pains of rehabilitation.”

We’ve ridden the rails from San Diego to Santa Barbara a couple of times and hopped the Coaster for a day-trips when we’re in San Diego. Off hours and in between rush hour, it’s a leisurely way to watch the coast flow by and take in daily life in the numerous beach towns it glides through.

Los Angeles plans to build 100 new miles of rail – essentially doubling the Metro system, whose first rail line opened in 1990. There are now six lines and 93 stations. “I made sure we included funding for long-term maintenance,” said Dow Constantine, the executive of King County, which is home to Seattle, “so you don’t get the situation we’re seeing in New York and Washington where the systems have been neglected and it’s expensive and inconvenient to rebuild.” *

There’s even talk of a rail line extending from downtown Los Angeles to the Coachella Valley. Having spent some time on highway 10 going into L.A., I can only hope it will come sooner rather than later.

*Excerpts taken from the New York Times article “Why the West Coast is suddenly beating the East Coast on Transportation” by Ms. Camille Fink.