Interesting idea to connect Santa Clarita thru to Ventura w/ rail by extending existing tracks from Santa Paula along existing ROWs to the Metrolink station in Santa Clarita to aleviate future commuter congestion, and its already running into opposition by the NIMBYs BANANAs and CARDs.
SANTA CLARITA - An ambitious plan to re-establish a passenger-rail line between Santa Clarita and the Ventura coast faces serious hurdles, although all sides agree an alternative is needed to the region’s increasingly congested freeways.
A draft study commissioned in part by the Ventura County Transportation Commission recommends extending the existing east-west Santa Paula line to the north-south railroad that runs through Santa Clarita. There, planners hope to reclaim an abandoned rail corridor through the city’s commercial and business hub.
“The most important thing is that we think about it and do some long-range planning so maybe in 30 years, if we start reserving the right-of-way now, we can do something,” said Kerry Forsythe, the commission’s deputy director.
For several months, commission executives have been talking up their plan with the various stakeholders to collect comments before delivering the results in October to the full panel.
The proposal got a lukewarm reception during a recent session with the Santa Clarita City Council, which objected to the route through the city’s densely developed town center area.
“It’s irrational,” Councilwoman Laurene Weste said. “I support rail travel, but to wipe out a lifestyle, to literally impact hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate, I can’t see it working.”
Still, the city where commuters face a gridlocked Interstate 5 heading south to jobs joins Ventura County in its quest to study a new passenger rail spur to connect with its exis
Very interesting–as a person who has a daughter in Carpinteria (not far from Ventura) and an uncle-in-law in Santa Clarita (and who made that drive a couple of times earlier this year), I’ll be interested in looking at what comes of this.
Let’s hope that something does, so I can die happy, decades from now.
I love that one of the Santa Clarita officials wants a bus connection between two separate rail lines. Yeah, that will get a lot of passengers.
The area in question is your typical 2000s suburban development… huge setbacks, huge parking lots, huge amounts of land behind the properties. If the original rail line can be followed exactly, it would not be that difficult to direct it slightly of the way.
As to freight, who is going to run this freight they are afraid of? It’s not an open access railroad. And unless there’s some sort of an emergency, UP has other access to everywhere it needs to go that this line would go.
When I went out to Fillmore a few years back, it looked like the widening of Highway 126 took out part of the former ROW. If I am correct, finding a way through Santa Clarita would not be the only difficult part.
What is the deal with the two dufuses opposed to freight? I can see it now, people fleeing in terror and massive suicides because the mall rats saw a freight train. “You mean the stuff on the shelf does not get there by spontaneous generation?” How about no passenger trains on freight lines. I wonder how they would like that.
I don’t think the widening of 126 (once called Blood Highway because of its narrow and dangerous nature) is a problem. Where it was widened, you have farmland on both sides. Easy to put in a new roadbed.
I like the part where they say, “Maybe in 30 years…” Maybe in 30 years that part of California will be so congested with freeways and houses that there won’t be any place at all to run a rail line.
I held the 3rd trick opr job at Saugus for 2 or 3 years and it seems that they want to run a connection between 2 sets of bedroom communities when the traffic potential is between the bdrms and the jobs (LA Basin) Of course I left SoCal in 1975 and things might have changed a bit (like Saugus becoming Santa Clarita and breaking the line between Saugus and Montalvo, which used to be a viable detour route between Burbank Jct and Oxnard) but it seems like “pie in the sky”," let’s run it up the flagpole and see if somebody saltes" time.
Fascinating. Another line gone for 20 years now, and it looks like they could use it again. {Sigh} {Groan}. Actually there are places where the existing Metrolink/UP/SP line in Santa Clarita is on an embankment over the adjacent roadway, so maybe an elevated connection is not such a bad way to go. Expensive? Sure…
WHAT??? Around Santa Clarita they are planning to build 81,000 new houses?? that would amount to @ 325,000 people, where are these people coming from, China??? that is a lot of people, are there jobs for them??? Can you just go anywhere in California and start build 80,000 houses and expect to fill them??? what kind of an economy is this? there are more people in California than all of Canada now, maybe it might be time to slow things down a bit or is the state in a race to compete with the population of China. Fresno a few years back put a slowdown on expansion and heard everyone say it’s the end of the city, I think Fresno is still there isn’t it???
You’re right ! I just looked on Google Earth and there is nothing there but vast areas of brand new broccoli and carrot fields, oh well, back to building more 50,000 home subdivisions. Who would have thunk eh???