How a traffic jam in a Los Angeles suburb made trains late up and down the West Coast

Severe traffic congestion on I-5 north of Los Angeles during 2018's busy Thanksgiving travel period (photo courtesy of The Santa Clarita Valley Signal)

Last Saturday, I took Amtrak from the Los Angeles area, where I had spent Thanksgiving, to Davis, CA, where I spent a week working remotely from my childhood home before attending tomorrow’s rescheduled Cal-Stanford football game.

California is constructing a high speed rail line to help meet the state’s north-south mobility needs. But currently, the once-a-day, circuitously-routed Coast Starlight train is the sole option for single-seat rail travel between Los Angeles and the Bay Area or Sacramento. Though the route is quite scenic, scheduled travel time between L.A. and Sacramento is nearly 14 hours.  

I opted for a more popular alternative, scheduled to be several hours faster than the Starlight: a shuttle bus from Los Angeles’s Union Station to Bakersfield, where riders can catch a northbound San Joaquins train seven times daily. Though Union Pacific refuses to allow passenger trains to continue through to L.A., citing capacity constraints on its tracks through the Tehachapi Pass, the route is one of Amtrak’s most heavily used corridors. A complex network of Amtrak Thruway intercity bus routes connects the route not just to L.A., but also to a diverse array of locations including Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Yosemite National Park.    

The 113-mile L.A.-Bakersfield bus ride would take about two hours if vehicles on Interstate 5 operated at the road’s speed limit, but thanks to the realities of urban geometry and induced demand this is almost never the case. To account for the relentless highway congestion likely to delay the bus, Amtrak built 50 minutes of padding, plus an additional 20 minutes of layover prior to the train’s departure, into its schedule.

On this day, 70 minutes was not enough cushion. While the high-speed trains of the future will arrive at their Northern California termini less than three hours after departing Union Station, on Saturday it took that long just to get out of Los Angeles County. My bus left on time at 2pm, but was crawling past a Six Flags theme park in the northern part of Santa Clarita, an LA suburb, when it should have been approaching Bakersfield.

We did not arrive at Bakersfield until after 6pm, nearly an hour after our train was originally scheduled to depart.

Since many San Joaquins riders transfer from the shuttle buses, and my train was the last of the evening, Amtrak held the train’s departure until all the buses arrived. The last of those buses arrived at 7:20pm, about an hour behind my bus and two hours after the train’s originally scheduled departure. It took over nine hours for that bus to complete its 238-mile route from Indio, CA, a town east of Palm Springs.

Due to these car-caused bus delays, the train departed Bakersfield – and all 14 of its subsequent stops – more than two hours late. Passengers down the line were left waiting in the dark. Even projecting a real-time arrival was impossible prior to the train’s departure from Bakersfield.

Compared to my traffic-plagued bus trip between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, travel aboard Amtrak's San Joaquins train was welcome relaxation (photo by me)

Our train didn’t experience any additional delays on Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s tracks, arriving in Stockton at around 11:30pm. The café car even offered 20% discounts on food to help appease frustrated riders. 

In Stockton, I transferred to another shuttle bus headed to the Sacramento area, while the train proceeded west to the Bay Area. Though the Northern California roads were remarkably free of cars in the middle of the night, the bus had to wait for us to arrive before it could depart, and thus still was about two hours behind schedule. I rode the bus to Davis, its final stop, and since there was no local transit available at 1am I hopped on a Jump e-bike (with luggage in tow) to get home.  

Many riders on my bus transferred in Sacramento to the aforementioned Coast Starlight train, which continues north through the night from Northern California to Seattle. That train arrived in Sacramento a minute early, but like our San Joaquins train earlier that evening, Amtrak held it in the station until our delayed connecting bus arrived to ensure no one was stranded.

The Starlight departed Sacramento for its 15 remaining stops 51 minutes late, delayed by a traffic jam nearly a half-day earlier and 300 miles away.

High speed rail will save millions of riders from I-5. But California needs a solution sooner. 

A rendering of the proposed California High Speed Rail segment between Bakersfield and L.A. (photo courtesy of Bakersfield Californian)

Until the proposed high speed rail line through the Tehachapi Mountains and south to L.A. opens – which won’t happen for at least another 15 years – the Bakersfield-L.A. gap will continue to serve as an impediment to people in Southern California wishing to access rail service to points north. Thus, if the expanding system is to succeed, something must be done to ensure riders never have to tolerate the traffic congestion I experienced last Saturday.

Rerouting the buses via an alternate, inland highway may have eased the delays I experienced last weekend. But any mixed-traffic route can become a parking lot in a heartbeat, rendering an on-the-fly detour useless.

Thus, a more permanent solution is necessary. I see three main options: more effective messaging to the public regarding holiday travel options, working with freight rail companies to restore conventional train service between Bakersfield and L.A. until the high-speed line opens, and constructing dedicated bus lanes on the most chronically congested sections of I-5.

Google Maps tracks my bus as it creeps through severe traffic congestion in Santa Clarita (screenshot by me)

Multimodal messaging: Authorities and the media often instruct travelers looking to avoid the worst traffic congestion during busy periods, like the Thanksgiving weekend, to drive at off-peak times or on alternate routes. But messaging intended to convince people they can avoid traffic only encourages more driving, and thus more congestion. And if too many drivers shift their trips to alternate times, the roads can become just as congested then as they are during traditional travel peaks.

A better solution would be to educate Californians, many of whom are accustomed only to cars and planes, about bus- and rail-based options. Such options include not just the San Joaquins and Coast Starlight, but also a plethora of intercity bus options. These options typically serve central locations that, in contrast to outlying airports, are accessible via a variety of modes

A rerouted Coast Starlight train makes its way through Tehachapi Pass (photo courtesy of Clear Signal Trains via Reddit)

Rail restoration: Much of the existing L.A.-Bakersfield rail route already sees passenger trains, as Metrolink, the region’s commuter rail provider, operates its Antelope Valley Line between Union Station and Lancaster.

The primary obstacle to a full LA-Central Valley passenger rail connection is the segment through Tehachapi Pass, farther to the north. Freight trains from all over the country converge on low-speed, winding tracks owned by Union Pacific to get through the pass. The last regularly scheduled passenger train to traverse these tracks – Southern Pacific’s San Joaquin Daylight – was cut in 1971, when Amtrak took over most of America’s intercity rail system.   

UP occasionally allows the Coast Starlight to detour through the pass when track maintenance necessitates a closure of that train’s regular coastal route. But peak intercity travel periods, like Thanksgiving, arguably strain California’s transportation infrastructure much more than a disruption to the Starlight. Thus, Amtrak and the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority (the consortium of regional governments that manages the San Joaquins route) could try working with UP to temporarily extend at least a couple daily San Joaquins to L.A. during such peak periods.

Over time, perhaps the passenger rail providers could work with the freight company on infrastructure improvements that would allow for permanent extension of the San Joaquins line, as the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (SJJPA’s sister agency that manages the busy Amtrak route connecting Sacramento to the Bay Area) is doing to increase train service to Sacramento’s suburb of Roseville.

Such improvements could even allow some high speed trains to continue through to L.A. via the existing conventional tracks once the initial San Francisco-Bakersfield line opens. Barring electrification of the existing UP line, any such trains would have to switch to diesel power in Bakersfield, as Amtrak trains traveling from the Northeast Corridor to points south of Washington, DC do in the nation’s capital. 

A bus uses a dedicated lane to pass slow-moving cars on a freeway outside of London, UK (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Bus improvements: A possible alternative – or complement – to restoration of conventional Bakersfield-L.A. rail service would be to implement dedicated bus lanes on the most congested portions of I-5. Amtrak’s buses, as well as local transit routes in Santa Clarita and L.A., would use these lanes and avoid traffic congestion-caused delays. Riders would enjoy faster – albeit less comfortable – transit service than would be possible via the existing railroad through Tehachapi Pass.

Such bus lanes would undoubtedly face opposition from drivers and those who make money off them. A possible compromise could involve “managed lanes” that some automobiles in addition to the buses would be able to use, or simply a redesign of the road's shoulder that would allow buses to use it during periods of severe congestion. Even this may face substantial obstacles, as a two-year, $171 million rehabilitation project of I-5 currently underway failed to include any such upgrades.

In the end, the best solution is simply to complete the high speed rail line to Los Angeles as quickly and efficiently as possible, allowing trains to fly through Tehachapi Pass via a series of tunnels and bridges completely separated from the existing freight tracks.