TAMC Rail Policy Committee meeting of Sep 8, 2008 October 5th, 2008
Report by Chris Flescher
The first part of the meeting was news of passenger rail south of here. The local transit agency in San Luis Obispo County offers free transfers from the Pacific Surfliner trains. At this time, in Grover Beach, the passenger train platform is on one side of the tracks, but the stop for connecting buses is on the other side of the tracks. There is an interest in changing the layout of the station, so that passengers making a transfer between trains and buses will not have to cross the tracks. Recently, the Coast Starlight began to stop at Paso Robles. Some other issues include: on the LOSSAN corridor, a study was done about service improvement projects, and about 20 improvements were found that can implemented quickly and relatively cheaply; Orange County wants to have mid-day stops on some long distance trains; soon there will be a single statewide timetable booklet, which will include the Capitol Corridor trains (whose schedule is not in the present timetable booklet); and about 50% of delays on Pacific Surfliner trains come from commuter or other Amtrak trains, so freight trains are not the biggest problem at this time.Â
