Commuter Rail Coalition San Diego Pathing Study With NCTD and BNSF

In this Rail Group On Air podcast, part of our series with the Commuter Rail Coalition, North County Transit District Executive Director and CEO Matt Tucker, BNSF Assistant Vice President Passenger Operations DJ Mitchell and CRC Executive Director KellyAnne Gallagher discuss the San Diego Pathing Study with Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono. Released in November 2020, the study provides an implementation blueprint for a unique NCTD/BNSF partnership that will bring capacity and service improvements for commuter and intercity passenger rail and freight rail to Southern California’s LOSSAN (Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo) rail corridor, the second-busiest rail corridor in the U.S. In a typical year, the LOSSAN rail corridor moves approximately $1 billion of freight and more than eight million rail passengers. DB Engineering & Consulting USA, Inc., the international consulting division of Germany’s national railroad Deutsche Bahn, prepared the study, which identifies and prioritizes infrastructure improvements that are tied to a specific increase in service capacity over the near-, mid- and long-term future. DB E&C applied an approach to rail operations and infrastructure planning that allows rapidly iterating service design, operational adjustments and infrastructure improvements in order to derive an attractive solution. The blueprint will assist NCTD and its rail partners in growing service along a corridor that is currently bottlenecked by single track and other infrastructure deficiencies.