How Southern California would benefit from electric trains
Electrification and level boarding platforms can significantly improve rail travel on the west coast, too.
Quick Unfinished Metropolis book tour update for Bay Area folks. On Saturday, November 15 at 3pm, I will be joined in conversation by former San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King at Book Passage Ferry Building. The event is open to the public. Then on Monday, November 17 at 6:30, I’ll be hosting a happy hour/ urbanism trivia night with YIMBY Action at the Halfway Club in the Excelsior. RSVP here.
Momentum is gaining momentum. The railroad infrastructure framework developed by Nolan Hicks of the Transit Costs Project has gone bicoastal.
The advocacy group Californians for Electric Rail released a report in September showing how regional rail lines on Southern California’s Metrolink system could benefit from electrification and level boarding platforms, the key components of the Momentum framework.
These infrastructure changes would unlock big time savings for passengers, more frequent service, and, eventually, better interconnectivity with California High-Speed Rail and Brightline West.
The report, dubbed “Electrolink,” adds to the growing stack of white papers calling on the U.S. to electrify its railroads. That includes Hicks’ original Momentum report for the Transit Costs Project focused on New York State, and a federal government report released in the twilight of the Biden Administration. Meanwhile, Caltrain’s experience with electrified service offers a real-world case study of how electrification can improve trip times and increase ridership.
This data, along with another Transit Costs Project report on speeding up the Northeast Corridor on a budget (now with a cool interactive website), is helping to make the case that American railroads should act more like their counterparts abroad — infrastructurally, technologically, and operationally. It’s a case I amplify in my book, The Unfinished Metropolis.
While from-scratch high-speed rail systems are the optimal choice in certain contexts, more often than not, incremental upgrades to existing track can deliver significant benefits much faster and at a much lower cost. Even California High-Speed Rail is increasingly looking to this approach on some segments of the corridor. Indeed, the Electrolink report is relevant to these efforts.
So what would Momentum — electrification plus level boarding — do for SoCal?
It would instantly make trains much faster than rush hour drive times, and competitive with off-peak free-flowing car trips. On the Antelope Valley Line trip from Lancaster to Los Angeles Union Station, train travel times would go from 111 minutes to 93 minutes. On the San Bernardino Line, the journey from San Bernardino to LA would go from 106 minutes to 70 minutes.
Factoring in the planned “through-running” infrastructure at Los Angeles Union Station could provide even greater time savings for many train journeys. LAUS is currently designed as a stub-end terminal station, requiring trains to spend at least 16 minutes pulling in and out. Through-running would eliminate this wasted time. That project, dubbed Link US, was originally approved in 2019, but was reimagined due to cost overruns. Just this month, the LA Metro Board of Directors approved the new $3 billion dollar plan. Construction is expected to begin in spring 2026.
Link US plus Momentum would mean that trips from Chatsworth to Laguna Niguel — from the San Fernando Valley to the fringes of Orange County, for those who don’t speak Angeleno — would decline from 142 minutes to 109 minutes.
These kinds of changes would clearly make Metrolink a much more useful service, especially when combined with frequency upgrades the agency already has underway through its SCORE program. With these upgrades, Metrolink hopes to eventually (“when demand and funding exist”) offer 30 minute frequencies on every line.
Californians for Electric Rail spoke about their report to the Metrolink Board in September. Adriana Rizzo, the group’s leader, told me that advocates made a number of public comments and connected with board members’ staff. Board members did not directly respond to the report, since it was not an agendized item, but it’s clearly on their radar.
Rizzo explained to me in more depth how these proposals could affect California High-Speed Rail and Brightline West. If California High Speed Rail is built out to Palmdale, which the agency has described as one possibility, riders would be able to transfer to Metrolink Antelope Valley Line trains bound for LA.
Electrifying that entire line — and running high-speed trains on it — could be impossible due to very narrow tunnels on part of the route north of Santa Clarita. Instead, the Electrolink report envisions regional trains running on batteries for the northern part of the route, and then running on overhead catenary the rest of the way.
In order for high-speed trains to run on the Antelope Valley Line, some new tunnels would be needed. California High Speed Rail currently envisions building an entirely new right of way through this area.
In theory, electrifying Metrolink’s San Bernardino Line could allow Brightline West trains to travel all the way to LA Union Station. There would be two key challenges there: One would be connecting the Brightline tracks and Metrolink tracks at Brightline’s Rancho Cucamonga terminus station, where its tracks will be elevated high above the surface-level Metrolink tracks. The other is a long stretch of single-track on the San Bernardino Line that is hemmed in by a freeway. This seriously limits the capacity of the track, making it difficult to run high-speed, regional and freight trains
Metrolink, unlike many other commuter rail agencies, owns most of the rails on which it runs, including the entire San Bernardino Line Antelope Valley Lines. That puts it in a strong position to electrify track, improve infrastructure and boost service.
The blueprints are piling up, and so is the evidence of what a modernized regional rail network can do for a metropolis. It’s up to leaders to act upon it.
Discussions about electrification versus Tier 4 Diesel locomotives took place during the run up to the SCAG 2008 Regional Transportation Plan. Metrolink finished upgrading all its locomotives in 2020. With a design life of 25-30 years, if they start planning now, they could start replacing locomotives now in 8-12 years, and sell off their current stock to other more polluting rail lines, possibly 5-10 years earlier than they would without advancing the agenda.
Bravo! Electrification of Metrolink could also be accompanied by some infill stations; while that would not benefit passengers with reduced overall journey times versus the journey times they have today, you'd basically be getting a couple extra stops without adding to today's journey times.
I do hope that the Link LA Union Station project will be smart enough to include provisions for future catenary systems for all the revised track infrastructure. Better to plan ahead now for the catenary infrastructure than to have to retrofit it later at much greater expense.