In April of 2021, Councilmember Kellie Hinze and I co-wrote a blog post advocating for the city council to change course on railroad crossings north of Leucadia Boulevard to pursue at-grade crossings (AGx’s) similar to several that have been built along the coast in the City of San Clemente. (You can read that post here.)
Our colleagues on the city council supported our efforts and funding for a study to justify a request for AGx’s added to the budget.
The good news is that the consulting firm that was hired, RailPros, recently reached a milestone where the study is complete and the preliminary engineering has been completed. Images of those drawings are at the top.
The next step is to present the drawings and data to the California Public Utilities Commission and make our best case for AGx’s as an interim solution until decisions are made about double tracking and grade separating Leucadia Boulevard. Those two projects are many years away and the community cannot wait that long before creating a cross-connection between Vulcan Avenue and Highway 101 in a couple places in this very busy stretch of the city.
A discussion about these drawings and the safety study is tentatively scheduled for the city council meeting on January 18th. The staff report will include many more details, but I wanted to share these drawings and this good news with you.