SAN DIEGOSAN DIEGO — New momentum behind California’s long-delayed high-speed rail system, including a $3.1 billion federal grant, has prompted state and local officials to dust off tentative routing maps for San Diego created 13 years ago.
Routing for the San Diego leg of the system won’t be finalized until construction is complete on the system’s first phase, connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles — currently slated for sometime in the 2030s.
But tentative maps created back in 2011 envision two possible routes through the county that both end at San Diego International Airport, an idea that could dovetail with more recent plans to bring local mass transit to the airport.
The need to revamp the coastal rail line linking San Diego to Los Angeles because of eroding bluffs has prompted some to suggest high-speed rail could be a solution — but state officials say that’s unlikely.
Interstate 15, not Interstate 5, has long been the preferred path of entry into San Diego County for the state’s eventual high-speed rail system, they said last week.
To one local official, known to some colleagues as “the mother of high-speed rail,” it’s ironic that San Diego is being left out of the first phase of California’s high-speed rail construction, since it was here that the idea first gained traction.
Lynn Schenk, who represented San Diego in Congress in the 1990s and has served on the state’s high-speed rail authority since 2003, told The San Diego Union-Tribune last week that the idea of bringing high-speed rail to California began in 1981 after she visited Japan.
Schenk, then serving as Gov. Jerry Brown’s business and transportation secretary, had seen high-speed bullet trains on her visit and pitched a route from San Diego to Los Angeles — then already the second most traveled rail corridor in the nation, as it is today.
Brown embraced her idea and helped her get the ball rolling, but she said political maneuvering by Northern California politicians and lukewarm in San Diego eventually got the city pushed back in line.
Now, construction is under way in the Central Valley, and environmental approvals have been secured for most of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The $3.1 billion in new federal money will allow construction of the 119-mile Central Valley segment connecting Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties — a key precursor to connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, San Diegans can look at the old maps and wait.
Where high-speed rail might go
The proposed San Diego route would use I-15 instead of I-5 for two reasons, Schenk said. One is a desire to run the system through fast-growing Riverside County and the other is opposition among coastal communities in San Diego and Orange counties to having high-speed rail there.
The tentative maps from 2011 show the line following the path of I-15 through Temecula, Escondido and Mira Mesa, where it could then take one of two possible routes to the airport.
“The plan they came up with either cuts over from I-15 to I-5 just north of Miramar, or it takes state Route 163 to I-8 and then over to I-5,” said Jim Patrick, a high-speed rail authority spokesperson.
While the old maps will almost certainly need to be re-done — they’re based on public input gathered long ago in 2009 — Schenk said they are a worthy starting point for discussion of San Diego’s leg of the system.
For all the growth and development in the region these last 15 years, much of the reasoning behind decisions made back then remains valid today, she said.
What was then Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley was considered and rejected as the system’s southern terminus, mainly over the need to remove a gasoline tank farm across Friars Road from the stadium.
That site, which has been significantly revamped since San Diego State University took it over, has also since lost one of its most appealing characteristics to high-speed rail planners: a gigantic parking lot.
The international border was also considered and rejected as a terminus station back in 2009, partly because the border is already served by the San Diego trolley.
Schenk said momentum continued to grow behind the airport as the terminus because people were already frustrated by the lack of transit at the airport.
The county’s regional planning agency, the San Diego Association of Governments, said last week there’s no conflict between high-speed rail and its own current but still years-off plans for a transit connection to the airport.
Five years ago, SANDAG launched an effort to study connecting transit to the airport by extending the trolley, building an underground or aerial people-mover or some other method.
“SANDAG is actively monitoring all future rail plans across the state, and we will continue to coordinate with the California High-Speed Rail Authority as plans develop for a direct transit connection to the San Diego International Airport,” said SANDAG chief executive Coleen Clementson.
For a high-speed rail line, of the two routes contemplated 15 years ago, the path along 163 and 8 would have the advantage of using already existing public right-of-way — similar to how the rest of San Diego’s route would use the I-15 right-of-way.
The other possible route would likely travel through environmentally sensitive Rose Canyon before connecting to I-5 a bit north of state Route 52.
‘I was just one vote’
Shortly after Schenck first proposed high-speed rail in 1981, early momentum behind the idea was crushed in 1982 when Democrats unexpectedly lost to Republicans in two key elections — Brown to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson for U.S. Senate and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley to George Deukmejian for governor.
She revived the idea a decade later once she was elected to Congress. She got a bill ed and signed by President Bill Clinton designating five high-speed rail corridors across the nation, including California.
“That was my ion and motivation,” she said last week.
Those designations laid the groundwork for the federal funding California has since received for its years-long high-speed rail project — including $3.1 billion awarded two months ago from the $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure law of 2021.
The 1994 legislation Schenk authored also led to creation of the state’s high-speed rail authority. That’s when the idea expanded to include the Bay Area and other parts of the state.
But San Diego’s high-speed rail aspirations really took a hit during negotiations in 2008 over Proposition 1A, a voter-approved ballot measure that committed the state to high-speed rail and provided $10 billion in seed money.
That measure stipulated for the first time that the system would be built in two distinct phases — first the connection between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and then the extension to San Diego.
Schenk chalks the project’s northward shift up to a combination of deft moves by Northern California politicians and San Diego leaders expressing either opposition or only lukewarm .
“This is when power plays come into reality,” said Schenk, explaining she was outvoted by her colleagues on the authority board. “I was just one vote, and I didn’t have San Diego strongly behind it. It was a blow.”
Schenk, now 79, hopes high-speed rail will come to San Diego during her lifetime — but she doubts it. The earliest reasonable estimate for San Diego appears to be 2040, although state officials decline to provide any formal estimate these days.
But Schenk finds one potential cause for optimism in high-speed rail’s popularity in Asia, which she hopes could sway things here. “Once it’s a reality and trains are really running, that will build up the enthusiasm and could create a groundswell,” she said.
Patrick, the high-speed rail spokesperson, said officials are working to extend the active construction another 50 miles beyond the work under way in Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties. Those additional 50 miles would connect major cities Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield.
The estimated cost of phase one is $106 billion — a figure state officials say is far less than the $153 billion they say it would cost to build the 4,200 highway lane miles and 91 airport gates they would otherwise need to carry as many people as high-speed rail.
They say high-speed rail will fundamentally transform how people move around the state, spur economic growth and create a cleaner environment.
