Landslide in San Clemente halts train service
By Dean Fioresi
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SAN CLEMENTE, California (KCAL) — A landslide in San Clemente has brought train service through the area to a complete stop late Wednesday afternoon.
Metrolink service between the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo and Oceanside stations will suspended due to boulders and debris falling onto the tracks caused by a landslide damaging the Mariposa Bridge in San Clemente. It is unknown when service will resume.
The Mariposa Bridge has reportedly been sliding for several weeks, but the earth finally gave way near the Mariposa Bridge sometime around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
Additionally, Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner service that runs from Los Angeles to San Diego was also disrupted, with several scheduled trains canceled.
Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said that work on cleaning the tracks is already underway, but there was no timetable for when the rail would be fully reopened.
“With less than one month into the new year, the railroad tracks in South County are already closed due to a landslide in San Clemente,” Foley said in a statement. “Decades of climate change denial leaves Orange County behind in a race between us and Mother Earth. To protect our local economy and way of life, we cannot afford for these disruptive service suspensions to continue on a yearly basis. I remain committed to working with our partners to clean up and monitor this situation, but more importantly, find solutions for rail stability.”
Crews will also need to work to determine what caused the slide, and if the bridge and bluff it’s built upon are stable enough for regular operation to continue.
During a news conference on Thursday, Rep. Mike Levin spoke, noting the importance of the railway getting reopened as quickly as possible.
“This is really, really important for so many reasons,” he said. “The rail corridor connecting LA and San Diego is the second-busiest rail passage corridor in the United States. Roughly eight million people per year commute.”
On top of the amount of people who rely on the service to get around, it is also projected to have a significant impact on Southern California’s economy.
“It’s also of great significance to our regional economy,” Levin noted. “Every year about $1 billion … in commercial travel is facilitated by the corridor.”
He said that just a month or two of the corridor’s closure could impact the surrounding area by hundreds of millions of dollars.
It’s just the latest land movement that has impacted the railway running along the Orange County coast, after a devastating landslide underneath the iconic Casa Romantica in early 2023. The slide caused extensive closure of the rail lines in both April and June.
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