SAN DIEGO — Transportation officials in San Diego are studying what it would take to revive operations on a long-dormant 70-mile segment of the former San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railway to provide a direct freight link from San Diego to eastern markets, bypassing Los Angeles, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
The so-called Desert Line between Tecate, Mexico, and Plaster City, Calif., is owned by the San Diego Metropolitan Transportation System. It has been leased to a number of private operators over the past two decades but has seen little actual traffic, in part because of the costs of work needed to repair the route’s 57 bridges and 17 tunnels.
Metropolitan Transportation System CEO Sharon Cooney told the Union-Tribune the “numbers are staggering” regarding what is needed to fix the route, but California Department of Transportation officials for the San Diego area have begun a study to try to determine an exact price. The last leaseholder, Baja California Rail, had planned to spend about $60 million on the route, but the cost could be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. A Caltrans estimate could guide future leaseholders or set the stage for pursuing money from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“We don’t want to put public transportation dollars into bringing it up to speed,” Cooney told the Union-Tribune, “but if there are freight-dedicated pots of money that could make it financially feasible, then sure.”
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