Del Mar doesn’t want a train tunnel beneath its homes. Neither does its neighbor Solana Beach.
The two small beach cities are at odds over a decades-old proposal to reroute the railroad tracks off Del Mar’s crumbling coastal bluffs and into an inland tunnel.
After years of studies, community meetings and preliminary planning, this month the San Diego Association of Governments announced three potential routes for the tunnel in its official “notice of preparation” for the project’s environmental impact report.
One of the proposed routes affects Solana Beach more than the others. Surprised by its inclusion, the city’s mayor, Lesa Heebner, issued what she said is “a call to action” for residents to oppose it.
“Alternative A was recently proposed by a group of Del Mar residents who do not want a tunnel in their city,” Heebner said in a public letter to residents. “So they removed it from Del Mar and placed it in Solana Beach.”
Alternative A is the only proposal with the northern portal, where trains enter and leave the tunnel, in Solana Beach.
The route would avoid most of Del Mar by tunneling under the San Dieguito Lagoon and the Del Mar Fairgrounds, then following along the western side of Interstate 5 to end at a southern portal outside Del Mar in San Diego.
Alternatives B and C both would have a northern portal in Del Mar, then go under the city to a southern portal in nearby San Diego.
Alternative B would go from a northern portal at Jimmy Durante Boulevard, under Crest Canyon to the same southern portal at Alternative A near Interstate 5. Alternative C also would use the Jimmy Durante portal, but would go along Camino Del Mar to a south portal at Torrey Pines Road.
Solana Beach Councilmember Jewel Edson represents the city as chair of the North County Transit District board and is on the board of the LOSSAN rail corridor agency. She said Tuesday that all three agencies were surprised to learn that SANDAG plans to study Alternative A further.
“It shouldn’t be in there,” Edson said. Alternative A is “ludicrous,” she said, and it should never have been included in the notice of preparation.
SANDAG officials have said Alternative A would be twice as expensive as the other two routes and could take twice as long to build.
It also would require the removal of a new railroad bridge, which has been approved and funded but not yet built, to replace a century-old wooden trestle across the San Dieguito River, said Danny Veeh, SANDAG’s rail planning program manager.
Because of the lengthy process required to plan, design, approve and fund rail projects, the bridge will be built long before any tunnel construction begins.
Also at risk is a long-anticipated train platform at the fairgrounds, which would allow train passengers to disembark there for special events such as the annual horse races and the San Diego County Fair. It would have to be hundreds of feet below ground for Alternative A, Veeh said.
Del Mar City Council members said Heebner’s letter is inaccurate, without addressing the details, and that they need to work with Solana Beach on the issues it raises.
“There is a lot of misinformation in it, for sure,” said Del Mar Councilmember Tracy Martinez. “The best way to go about it is to start a dialogue with Solana Beach.”
Heebner’s letter also points out that Alternative A would stop most activities at the fairgrounds, including the horse races and the county fair, for five to 10 years during construction. Both events are huge moneymakers for the fairgrounds and neighboring communities.
Heebner defended the letter Tuesday. Everything in it came directly from conversations she and Edson have had with SANDAG staffers, she said in an email.
Solana Beach has been largely left out of SANDAG’s tunnel planning and outreach efforts so far, Heebner said. Until SANDAG released its notice, the council and most residents thought any tunnel construction in Solana Beach to be unlikely.
Any of the tunnel routes would involve two types of construction. One is called “cut-and-cover,” used near the portals, where shallower sections of the tunnel are dug from above and covered when finished. Deeper sections will be bored from the sides using specialized equipment.
“SANDAG staff told us that the fair would not be able to operate for seven-plus years because their staging area and where the two tunnel types meet up in Alternate A would be right at the location of all the rides, and the construction impacts would not be conducive to a safe environment,” Heebner said.
“The races, we were told, would most likely not be able to operate due to the noise, dust and vibration from construction, which would unsettle the horses,” she said. “The overall construction of Alternatives B and C, we were told, would take seven years. But Alternative A would take up to twice that.”
Fairgrounds CEO Carlene Moore said Wednesday that, in addition to stopping or limiting fair activities, the Alternative A route could interfere with Del Mar’s plans to build its state-mandated affordable housing on the fairgrounds.
Earlier this year, the city signed an exclusive negotiating agreement with the 22nd District Agricultural Association, the fairgrounds operator, to consider the housing proposal.
“We utilize all that (fairgrounds) space,” Moore said, and any additional uses, whether for affordable homes or access to the train, will take a toll on fairgrounds activities.
Alternative A would take the trench lower than the other routes to get below the San Dieguito River and lagoon. It would require deepening the existing trench that takes trains below street level in Solana Beach and lowering parts of the Solana Beach train station.
While the Del Mar council has not officially said which route it prefers, council members and residents have said they do not want the tunnel beneath their homes. They repeatedly urged SANDAG to include an I-5 route in the alternatives.
Their many concerns about the tunnel included noise, fumes, hazardous chemicals and vibrations, also the effects on property values, and the possibility of losing their homes to eminent domain.
“We can take a clear position” on some of these issues, Del Mar Councilmember Terry Gaasterland said at a recent meeting. “I would like to say we are opposed to any alignment that includes eminent domain of private property.”
Councilmember Dan Quirk said he supports none of the alternatives. Quirk rarely agrees with his fellow council members and they twice have sanctioned him for misrepresenting the council’s position on various issues.
“I do not believe any tunnel is justified,” Quirk said Monday, adding that he is “utterly amazed” that a cost-benefit analysis was not one of the first steps in the process.
“The cost-benefit analysis will help everyone see that this (rail corridor) is a dinosaur, and it should have been retired a long time ago,” Quirk said.
Quirk and his identical twin brother, Steve Quirk, formed a nonprofit called The Surf Line Trail that advocates abandoning the entire 65-mile rail segment between San Diego and San Clemente and turning it into a pedestrian and bicycle trail.
Not everyone in Del Mar opposes the tunnel.
“We need to do it yesterday,” said Alice “Ali” McNally, a long-time resident of Stratford Court.
The coastal cliffs erode at the average rate of six inches annually, placing about 1.7 miles of the railroad in Del Mar in greater danger of collapse every year. Sea-level rise adds to the erosion, and climate change is expected to bring powerful storms more frequently.
“We are in a climate crisis,” McNally said, and it’s imperative that the tracks be moved to a safer location.
McNally said she favors Alternative C because it would be the shortest, least expensive, and probably the fastest to build. She’s optimistic that the railroad’s planned switch from diesel to electric power will reduce noise, fumes and vibrations within the tunnel.
The coastal train tracks are San Diego’s only rail connection to Orange County, Los Angeles and the rest of the United States. The San Diego segment is used by NCTD’s Coaster commuter trains, Amtrak passenger trains, and BNSF freight trains. It’s also part of the Defense Department’s nationwide Strategic Rail Corridor Network, which consists of 38,800 miles of track serving 193 military installations.
Each of the possible routes is likely to need eminent domain to acquire private property near the portals.
Eminent domain “could be a nightmare for this city,” said Del Mar Councilmember Tracy Martinez.
“I would never support eminent domain,” Martinez said. “I don’t support a tunnel in our bluff-sides … stay away from homes.”
All three proposed routes are only preliminary and could change as the environmental impact report is prepared and the project proceeds. No specific properties for the tunnel have been identified.
Should eminent domain be required, it would be used by SANDAG and not the cities that could be involved. Also, the action usually only comes into play after the agency has offered the property owner what an independent party has determined to be fair market value for the property.
The notice of preparation issued by SANDAG gives anyone interested 45 days to submit written comments on the proposed routes, which ends July 19.
Del Mar has asked to extend the comment period by 15 days, subject to SANDAG’s approval. Council members said they need more time, in part, to employ consultants and to learn what comments other agencies are submitting so they can adjust their own comments, if necessary.
Completion of the draft environmental impact report, or EIR, is expected to take about one year and will include the staff’s recommendation for a preferred route, SANDAG officials said. Responses to the comments submitted will be included.
The draft EIR will be subject to approval by the SANDAG board of directors, which includes mayors, city council members and county supervisors from each of the region’s 19 local governments.
After that, the completion of the final EIR will take an additional four to six more months, and it also will need the SANDAG board’s approval.
Certification of the final EIR is one of the last steps in getting the project “shovel ready,” which will help SANDAG and the other agencies involved obtain state and federal funding for construction.
