Coastal erosion in Del Mar and a slow-moving landslide in San Clemente threaten the one rail connection to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and Naval Base San Diego, the principal house of the Pacific Fleet.
Navy items on the West Coast depend upon the strategically necessary railroad to move heavy tools akin to tanks, amphibious automobiles and armored personnel carriers, and navy provides, together with hazardous supplies akin to munitions. With out it, that tools may solely be moved by vehicles or ships, which might gradual responses in an emergency.
That might probably jeopardize nationwide safety, as San Diego’s Marine and Navy bases are the most important on the West Coast and are a jumping-off level to the remainder of the world. Naval Base San Diego alone has 54 ships, 20,000 sailors and 6,000 employed civilians. The Navy additionally has a submarine base, an air station and different installations in San Diego. The Marines, along with Camp Pendleton, have their very own air station and their West Coast recruit depot that trains over 21,000 enlistees yearly.
The rail line’s navy significance hasn’t been on the fore as officers scramble to shore up the 2 bluff-top areas most weak to break down. Passenger rail service between San Diego and Orange counties has been shut down for repairs in San Clemente since September and will stay suspended for one more month or longer.
Freight service continued till late November, when new issues in regards to the landslide required a suspension for 2 days till the route was deemed secure. There is not any assure there will not be additional closures.
An extended-term rail shutdown would have gradual, however wide-reaching results, mentioned Joel Sutherland, provide chain administration professor on the College of San Diego and a former government for CSX Transportation, a 190-year-old East Coast railroad firm.
“If you happen to do not plan for this, then it may be disastrous,” Sutherland mentioned. “We all know that hall is in danger … if it had been to shut for, say, greater than per week, lots (of freight) could be transferred to vehicles.”
Nevertheless, that’s solely a short-term answer. The nation’s federal and state freeway programs already are overwhelmed by a gradual development in visitors. Additionally, a restricted variety of vehicles can be found.
“Despite the fact that (freight) could be moved by vehicles, it is a matter of discovering the capability to try this,” he mentioned. “One trainload could be lots of of vehicles.”
Discovering sufficient vehicles to accommodate a train-load of freight could be troublesome, Sutherland mentioned.
“They must be diverted from someplace else,” Sutherland mentioned. “You’ll be able to’t simply make that many vehicles unexpectedly.”
San Diego’s railroad is a part of the nationwide Strategic Rail Hall Community, which consists of 38,800 miles of observe serving 193 navy installations, together with maritime ports akin to San Diego the place troops depart for abroad deployments. The rail section from San Diego to Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo on California’s Central Coast, generally known as the LOSSAN hall, carries tens of millions of passengers and about $1 billion in business freight every year.
“The LOSSAN rail hall is important for each financial and navy exercise all through the area, together with hundreds of Marines and sailors at Camp Pendleton who depend on continued rail operations,” mentioned Rep. Mike Levin, D- San Juan Capistrano, in an e-mail Thursday.
Levin helped safe a federal Division of Transportation grant of $11.5 million in 2020 for ongoing efforts to stabilize the eroding bluffs in Del Mar. This yr, he handed $9.3 million in federal funding for a San Clemente sand replenishment undertaking that can construct up seashores and assist safe a number of miles of tracks alongside the coast in Orange County.
Nonetheless, most individuals agree that the one long-term answer in locations like Del Mar and San Clemente is to reroute the tracks away from the shoreline. That answer is for certain to price billions of {dollars}.
“Whereas the federal funding we have gotten thus far will assist safe the tracks, we’re going to want a way more important federal funding to completely shield the rail hall,” Levin mentioned. “Delivering that funding will proceed to be one in every of my prime priorities.”
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, hosted by Levin, visited San Diego in October and rode the Coaster practice over the Del Mar bluffs to be taught extra in regards to the railroad and the growing environmental threats. And President Joe Biden, throughout a cease at Viasat in Carlsbad final month in help of Democratic candidates, mentioned, “We’re going to verify the second-busiest rail hall in America, connecting San Diego and Los Angeles, goes to be open and operating for a very long time.”
Navy automobiles from Humvees to 55-ton Abrams tanks generally transfer by rail. Lots of them are too massive and too heavy to journey lengthy distances on the highways, and dozens or lots of could be carried on a single practice.
When the Navy eliminated the final of the Vietnam-era napalm, about 3.2 million gallons, within the late Nineteen Nineties from its long-time storage bunkers on the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station, the flammable petroleum jelly was shipped to Houston for disposal in tanks on flatbed rail automobiles.
Rail freight transportation by non-public contractors akin to BNSF Railway, which serves San Diego County, is important to the U.S. navy. Due to that, the Protection Division has designated the Strategic Rail Hall Community to help the motion of heavy and over-sized tools.
“Navy cargo is shifting each day over the Strategic Rail Hall Community (STRACNET) and different rail traces all through America,” mentioned David Dorfman, a civilian senior engineer within the Railroads for Nationwide Protection Program.
“Navy cargo typically travels over different rail traces,” Dorfman mentioned in a latest e-mail, however the strategic rail hall is “a minimal community, so in a hall with two or extra parallel rail traces, just one is designated as STRACNET and navy cargo might transfer over one of many different traces.”
Nevertheless, within the Los Angeles- San Diego hall, there is just one rail line, he mentioned.
BNSF delivers rail shipments to Camp Pendleton and San Diego as wanted and never on any set schedule, he mentioned. Navy visitors volumes could be a lot larger throughout occasions of battle, however statistics aren’t available.
The Railroads for Nationwide Protection Program works with civilian corporations and businesses to make sure railroads are able to help navy deployment and peacetime wants, in response to GlobalSecurity.org, an unbiased assume tank.
“Rail transportation is extraordinarily necessary to DOD because the predominance of our heavy and tracked automobiles will deploy by rail to seaports of embarkation,” in response to the GlobalSecurity web site.
Heavy automobiles embrace the Marines’ “dragon wagon,” an eight-wheeled, all-terrain truck that may haul varied forms of tools and trailers. Tracked automobiles embrace tanks, armored personnel carriers and amphibious assault automobiles.
The Strategic Rail Hall Community dates to World Struggle I, then referred to as the Nice Struggle, when the emergency nationwide mobilization of troops resulted in confusion and mismanagement. The federal authorities stepped in and arranged the Railroad Administration, which took over and ultimately created the Strategic Rail Hall Community to make sure the infrastructure may help protection emergencies.
The U.S. Army depends more and more on business rail operators to maneuver materials cross-country to maritime ports the place troops embark for abroad operations, mentioned Todd Rosenblum, a nationwide safety strategist who served within the Division of Homeland Safety and as an performing assistant secretary for homeland protection on the Pentagon from 2009 to 2015.
A 2021 evaluation of the U.S. navy by the Authorities Accountability Workplace famous that the Army strikes about 67 % of its tools by rail from a fort or base of origin to a transport port throughout contingencies.
“The broader U.S. nationwide safety equipment additionally advantages from resilient business rail operations,” Rosenblum mentioned in a commentary for the web journal FreightWaves.
“It makes our nation extra productive, cell and engaging for funding,” he mentioned.
A excessive functioning rail system encourages onshore manufacturing of provide chain items starting from semiconductors to crucial boosters for area launch automobiles, he mentioned.
Railroads are by far probably the most environment friendly, cost-effective and environmentally pleasant method to transport any massive or heavy supplies, whether or not navy or business, Sutherland mentioned.
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