Posted on September 8, 2025
Officials have marked a key milestone in the effort to protect a coastal rail line that stretches to downtown San Diego.
The line connects Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner – the route begins and ends in San Diego – with Orange and Los Angeles counties, but it has been hampered by closures due to the unstable ground that surrounds it.
Ongoing work to stabilize the line now includes a sand nourishment project that began in San Clemente.
The Orange County Transportation Authority brought in more than 300 truckloads of sand from a quarry in Palm Springs, totaling approximately 3,400 cubic yards, officials said in a news release.
The sand is scheduled to be delivered to the shoreline between the rail and the ocean over the next week along a more than quarter-mile span of beach where it will help reinforce the line. Longer-term reinforcement work continues.
Current work to place the sand on the shoreline is not expected to affect passenger rail service.
Officials called it an “important initial deposit” on a much larger effort to place up to 540,000 cubic yards of sand along the San Clemente coastline. Additional state and federal permitting approvals are required for the greater project to proceed.
The partial sand placement is estimated to cost about $900,000. The total package of projects in the plan will cost an estimated $310 million.
Additional work near Mariposa Point is scheduled to begin later this month and will include restoration of the popular San Clemente Pedestrian Beach Trail and construction of a nearly 1,400-foot-long catchment wall to protect the rail line from debris caused by sliding on the hill above.
The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner is one of the services that runs along the LOSSAN corridor from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. File photo courtesy of OCTA)
That work is scheduled to be completed in summer 2026.
Since 2021, San Clemente’s eroding bluffs – on both city and private property – have repeatedly forced closures due to threats on a 7-mile stretch of the line.
The first part of the emergency work started in April and finished in June, including the repair and placement of large boulders known as riprap to protect the track from coastal erosion.
OCTA worked in partnership with Metrolink and the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, which operates Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner, to temporarily halt passenger service while that work was completed on an expedited schedule over six weeks.
