CARLSBADCARLSBAD — Inflation, environmental concerns and spiraling costs have added $42.5 million to the expense of replacing an 80-year-old wooden railroad trestle crossing the Batiquitos Lagoon in Carlsbad.
That brings the total cost to $165.6 million for the bridge, which will have two sets of tracks instead of the one on the existing span. The project is part of the San Diego Association of Government’s efforts to double-track the entire 60-mile coastal rail corridor.
“Replacing these trestle bridges is really important,” said SANDAG board member and Encinitas Mayor Tony Kranz. The bridges are long past their expected life, and double-tracking is important to improving service and efficiency on the rail route.
“These are important things, as painful as it is to come up with this additional money,” Krantz said, before the board approved the additional expense on a 10-4 vote at its meeting Friday.
More frequent, reliable train service will take more vehicles off the freeways, and reduce congestion and greenhouse gases, SANDAG officials said. The agency’s goal is to reduce travel time to 33 minutes on the Coaster commuter train between Oceanside and downtown San Diego.
The new bridge also will be higher than the present one, to avoid sea-level rise, with less of a footprint in the water to impede tidal flows in the lagoon.
Carlsbad City Councilmember Melanie Burkholder, also on the SANDAG board, opposed the increase. She said she’d rather see the money go elsewhere, perhaps to further a proposal to place the tracks in a trench below street level in downtown Carlsbad.
Costs for the bridge increased by 27 percent in just the last year, according to a SANDAG report.
New requirements to avoid construction during the Californian least tern nesting season, from April 15 to July 31, have extended the project’s schedule from two-and-a-half years to four years, also adding to the cost. Construction is now expected to start in August and be completed in 2029.
The bridge replacement is one of many transportation projects completed, underway or planned by SANDAG and the state Department of Transportation in what’s called the North Coast Corridor Program.
That program includes environmental projects, such as the restoration of the San Elijo Lagoon completed in 2020, and the addition of car-pool lanes on Interstate 5. The final segment of that, between Palomar Airport Road in Carlsbad and state Route 78 in Oceanside, is nearing completion at a cost of $76 million.
HOV lanes between Manchester Avenue on the border of Solana Beach and Encinitas, and Palomar Airport Road, were completed in 2022 at a cost of $322 million.
