'Financing is the major hurdle' for train commuting

By ANNA DAVISON
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

	Railroad tracks link Ventura and Santa Barbara, but commuter train service between the cities is unavailable.

Anyone stuck in a snarl of cars on Highway 101 might look toward the ocean and contemplate the railway tracks that follow alongside the highway down the coast.

You'd think commuters would be swapping their cars for a journey spent clicking along the rails, gazing at the scenery.

Unfortunately, if you're working a day shift in Santa Barbara County, commuting by train from, say, Ventura County, isn't practical.

Metrolink — the regional commuter rail service based in Los Angeles — goes only as far north as Ventura, and while Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner makes stops in Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, Goleta, Solvang, Buellton, Lompoc and Santa Maria, the first morning run north doesn't even roll into the county until late in the morning.

When the train does glide into downtown Santa Barbara, around 11:30 a.m. or so, it usually disgorges a horde of sightseers clutching cameras and wheeling suitcases.

You'll seldom see a briefcase or laptop.

Hal Conklin, a spokesman for Southern California Edison who lives in Santa Barbara, commutes by train about once a month on business trips to Los Angeles.

He has to go down there every week, but most of the time he takes his car, "because I have to do a lot of driving around Los Angeles," he said.

But when Mr. Conklin commutes by train, he gets an extra hour or two of productive time.

Sometimes he uses it to snooze or catch up on the news, "but most of the time I'm on the laptop working," he said, explaining that with wireless Internet access, he can do pretty much everything on the train that he might do in the office.

Sharon Gavin, a spokeswoman for Metrolink, said "there's a whole community aspect" to riding the train.

"They throw parties on the train. They bring tamales and fresh fruit and guitars," she said. "We've had couples who have met and married on the train."

But it's unlikely that commuters in this area will be toting tamales on their afternoon train commute anytime soon.

Although Metrolink trains run through six Southern California counties, there are no immediate plans to extend the service to Santa Barbara, although "there has been some peripheral discussion," Ms. Gavin said.

"It's not that we don't serve the smaller communities," she added. "It also has a lot to do with Santa Barbara. Is Santa Barbara willing to take this on in a financial kind of way?"

Money is also a limiting factor for Amtrak.

The company, also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doesn't own the tracks its trains run on, and pays an access fee to the owner, the freight company Union Pacific. Union Pacific controls dispatching of the trains along its tracks, so freight runs are given priority.

"They have the right of way," said Sarah Swain, a spokeswoman for Amtrak's West Coast operation. "Certainly it's something that sort of limits what we can do."

To make it feasible for Amtrak to cater to commuters as well as tourists, Amtrak would have to make enough from the fares to cover the extra payments to Union Pacific, since track rental is tied to the number of trains using the lines.

And Amtrak's trains would have to fit in with Union Pacific's freight schedule.

Still, there may be hope for commuters coming to Santa Barbara.

The Pacific Surfliner route, which passes through the county, is Amtrak's fastest growing train service.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we had more services running in the near future," Ms. Swain said.

The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments is examining rail options as part of a larger study on alternatives to the 101 car commute.

"The financing is the major hurdle," said deputy director Michael Powers.

But another big problem is Santa Barbara's relatively modest population, Mr. Powers said. At this time, there just aren't enough people living here to make a regular commuter rail service financially viable.

"The population threshold is actually pretty formidable, especially when you combine it with the funding constraints," Mr. Powers said.

The association is looking for other sources of money that might prop up such a service, but Mr. Powers said he thinks there might be other more feasible alternatives — like buses.

"They have more flexibility," he said. "The rail systems are pretty much tied to where the stations are."