Electrify Metrolink
Southern California with 18.4 million residents, is one of the largest metro areas in the world, but ridership on Metrolink, our regional rail, lags behind smaller cities like Denver or Boston - because the trains are slow and infrequent. Southern California is also home to the nation’s longest commutes, worst air quality, and (in the Inland Empire) lowest transit mode share, and high quality regional rail service is the solution. We need all day, bidirectional 15 minute rail service that is faster than driving.
High speed rail is headed toward Southern California, but it’s not guaranteed to reach LA - unless we electrify Metrolink. Brightline West from Las Vegas will terminate in Rancho Cucamonga, because Metrolink to LA Union Station isn’t electrified. Meanwhile California High Speed Rail has a complete EIR for Burbank-LA, which will share tracks with Metrolink and will - but this segment isn’t funded and the timeline is unknown. Metrolink can ensure CAHSR reaches LA in a timely manner by taking the lead on electrification.
Electrify Capitol Corridor
Capitol Corridor, which connects the Bay Area with our State Capitol via San Jose and Oakland, is a lifeline for Northern California, but it could be so much more. Enhanced service could increase transit access to Silicon Valley and the Delta, better connecting the Central Valley to job centers. Capitol Corridor already shares Diridon station with electrified Caltrain, and the planned Link21 second transbay tube could allow electrified high speed rail and Caltrain trains to continue on to the East Bay via Capitol corridor. For all these reasons and more, Capitol Corridor’s 2016 Vision Plan and the 2018 State Rail Plan called for 150 mph electrified service. But now, the Governor and the hydrogen lobby are trying to force Capitol Corridor to abandon these ambitions in favor of unproven hydrogen trains that will lock in the slow, low frequency status quo for decades. We need to save the electrified vision plan and fight for frequent service that is faster than driving!
Building State Capacity: A Just Transition for Caltrans
Overreliance on consultants is a major contributor to cost overruns and schedule slip on Caltrain Electrification, California High Speed Rail, and other public infrastructure projects, while projects with in-house staff produce results on time and under budget. California’s highway projects, climate arson that tears communities apart, are designed and planned by expert, permanent staff - so why not rail? Caltrans continuously subverts the law and community needs to build more highways, but many of their staff could and should be building rail infrastructure instead of highways. We need to transform Caltrans into a State Department of Rail that local agencies can contract to, building a bank of expertise and economies of scale for more cost-effective, high quality transit. Right now though, Caltrans is all-in on hydrogen trains, pushing them on weaker, smaller agencies. We need to hold them accountable and push for radical transformation.
LOSSAN Climate Resilience and Electrification
The rail connection between CA’s two largest cities, the US’s second highest ridership intercity rail corridor, has had no direct service 40% of the last two years because the tracks are falling into the ocean - a problem that will only worsen with sea level rise. Moving tracks inland, with tunnels in Del Mar and San Clemente, is vital for the future of the corridor, but NIMBYs in some of California’s richest towns would rather shut down the rail line entirely. Making LOSSAN resilient to climate change is a multi-billion dollar project, and we need to ensure this investment grows ridership. How? By electrifying the route and upgrading it to 110 mph service, making a trip from LA to San Diego faster than driving. California High Speed Rail is not supposed to reach San Diego until Phase 2, which hasn’t started planning, but by electrifying and speeding up LOSSAN, we can get higher speed rail, with direct connections to the CAHSR terminus in Anaheim, far sooner.
CARB Accountability
The California Air Resources Board (CARB), which sets the tone for the nation’s environmental regulations and recently passed the first-in-the-nation In-Use Locomotive Rule mandating a transition to zero-emissions rail, has been disseminating rail misinformation. Research they put out in 2016 underlies Class 1 Railroads’ talking points against the regulation, while public-facing websites falsely imply that overhead catenary is an emerging technology with few real-world applications. Other CARB research and regulations disregards mode shift to rail, refuses to fully evaluate overhead catenary feasibility, and emphasize a tech-neutral approach that ultimately empowers fossil fuel interests and encourages inaction on rail emissions. We need to highlight their misinformation and push for a change of course.
Regional Rail Consolidation
In San Clemente, tracks on the 2nd busiest intercity passenger rail corridor in the U.S. are falling into the ocean. Everywhere in Southern California, capital projects vital for more frequent, reliable service are being delayed or canceled due to NIMBYism, friction between agencies, and lack of political leadership - wasting taxpayer money and making transit worse. The heart of the problem is that more than 9 different agencies, most of them apathetic or hostile to passenger rail, share track ownership and governance. For Southern California regional rail to live up to its potential, we need to consolidate capital and service planning, and eventually ROW, into a single empowered Southern California Regional Rail Authority. Read more here and check out our policy paper, joint with other SoCal transit advocates.
Electric Rail Streamlining
Electric rail is one of the greenest forms of transportation, but electrifying railways is currently too slow and expensive for the decade we have to take action on climate change. In 2024 we proudly sponsored AB 2503, which provides a CEQA exemption for public, passenger rail electrification on existing right of way - a direct response to frivolous CEQA lawsuits that delayed Caltrain electrification for over 3 years. In the future, we’re interested in speeding up permit timelines, reforming how permits are issued, and reforming rail project procurement and planning.
Freight Electrification
Diesel trucks are the top source of hazardous ozone in the state, while most freight locomotives fail to meet EPA’s most stringent standards, creating “diesel death zones” with elevated rates of asthma and cancer in places like Long Beach, West Oakland, the Inland Empire, Central Valley, and other working class communities around the state. Class 1 railroads are one of the top opponents of passenger rail electrification, frequently blocking wires for passengers on tracks they own with lies about catenary that ignore the many international examples of freight and passenger rail sharing the same wires. By forcing freight railroads to electrify, we solve many of these problems at once: enable mode shift from trucks to rail, clean up rail emissions, and make it easier to wire up passenger rail. How? We need strong regulations that force railroads to electrify. And we also need the public sector to get involved directly. We must to electrify publicly owned ports and the Alameda Corridor, which is critically below capacity in one of the nation’s top freight corridors. Building on BNSF’s agreement with the High Speed Rail Authority to allow wires on its tracks, we need passenger rail agencies like Metrolink and Capitol Corridor to take the lead on electrifying tracks they share with freight, regardless of ownership.