My friends and I had a wonderful Saturday of hiking in Point Lobos, California and we wondered why there is no longer any train service from San Jose into Monterey. Surely it would make sense for Amtrak California to run a Capitol southward or for Caltrain to extend down from San Jose? There is an old line that runs parallel to Highway 1 in places. It probably would need to be refurbished and I’m not sure if it still runs into Monterey proper. But surely the old Del Montes are an idea whose time has come again?
that would be nice, but there are other things they are working on first.
Brad
This was last seriously explored in the 1990s. A demonstration train actually crawled along the line at about 5 mph to Seaside, which is as far as the rails went.
As for restroring service, you are correct it would require a lot of refurbishment. The problem is the rail line goes the “long way around” (vs. Ca. 17 over the mountains) and it would probably be too slow for most people.
From http://www.caltrain.com/pdf/Caltrain_SRTP/All.pdf which is the CALTRAIN "Short Range Transit Plan: 2004 - 2013 " one finds the following at page 7-5:
Sounds to me like something is going on with regard to this topic.
I live in the area, things are getting farther, not closer to reality. Tracks now end in Sand City, about 4 miles from the still standing Monterey station. The line is a mess, the bridge over Salinas river probably needs replacement. I think the more feasible immediate solution would be to use the existing Coast line to Salinas, 20 highway/30 minutes to Monterey. After Loma Prieta earthquake in '89, Caltrain did run commuter service from Salinas (2 trains, I think) for a few weeks. From this, the current 4 trains to Gilroy service evolved.
In an incredible–and timely–fluke, I happened to meet a woman today who worked (or at least claimed to) for the County of Monterey. She said that the County had bought that old line into Monterey and was hoping to start rail service by 2009 (as the Caltrain long range vision plan spells out). She was a bit vague about who would run the service. She said her agency had two rail projects, one of which was the Monterey Branch Line. I am afraid I did not get a chance to ask her more about this. She said that they were also hoping Caltrain would extend from Gilroy to Salinas in the same time frame.
Sounds like the Central Coast rail scene might be heating up!
A few years ago I read in Trains Magazine that Monterey County bought the line from the UP for $13 million. A couple of months ago I contacted the transit person at the local paper and he replied that it’s coming but slowly. I can’t wait. If I recall correctly, the last commuter train was SP’s in 1964.