Passengers and SRO

Once you settle into a regular commute pattern, you get to know the other commuters (at least by sight). They all congregate along the platform in regular spots, where experience tells them their favorite car will pull up. Some people make a beeline for the old Superliner car, preferring the big seats and low light and curtains. People tend to be quiet in that car (often dozing off). Others head for the cafe car for morning coffee, or an evening beer. (They have locally brewed beer from Stone on the Surfliner, including sometimes that premium ale, Arrogant Bastard). In the evenings, things can be loud and cheerful in the cafe. In the morning, there are teenagers in uniforms going one stop to a private school. And there's the guy who on Thursday afternoons leaving LA always has a bouquet of flowers for his wife.

Often the irregulars have a suitcase (there is a bus connection from LA Union Station to LAX airport). Around school holidays or weekends, college students in UC-Santa Barbara or Cal-Poly sweatshirts (and generally barefoot in flipflops, no matter how cold it is) drag their suitcases and pillows on board for the long ride up to Goleta or San Luis Obispo. I guess students from the many universities between San Diego and LA drive, because I seldom see them!

The occasional travelers can be recognized by their uncertain steps, compared to the purposeful strides of the regular commuters heading to their favorite seats. They look hesitant at the station, worried about getting on the wrong train. This is particularly true in Los Angeles, where there are numerous platforms. On the train, they look confused. Can I sit anywhere? Is this business class?

Business class is always the car next to the locomotive, and costs around $11 more than the regular, unreserved tickets. The seats are larger, with more room around them and more power outlets. In the morning they give you coffee and a newspaper; in the evening, a "snack pack" with cellophane crackers and a single-serving bottle of wine. Business class, which requires a reservation for a particular train, also guarantees a seat (the rest of the train can be Standing Room Only at times). The regulars seldom use it; multi -ride unreserved tickets are much cheaper and don't limit which train you take. Besides, the old superliner seats are just as big, and for $11 you can get better wine (or beer) from the cafe car. But during high season, especially Friday afternoons in the summer, it can be worth it.

When the train gets crowded, particularly on late afternoon trains, and particularly in the summer, the conductors make exasperated announcements asking people to move their things off the seats so everyone can sit down. "If it isn't warm and breathing, take it off the seat!" says one, scolding. Another says, matter of factly, "I will be happy to sell your laptop a full-price ticket. Otherwise, it can't have a seat." A third wheedles, "Who knows? you may meet your future ex-husband!" People getting on at downline stations wander forlornly through the train, looking for seats together. When there are no seats left, they sit on the stairs, or wedge themselves next to the luggage racks.

Normally people are friendly on trains, but I'm still surprised at the occasional rude person who sits in an aisle seat , drapes his things over the window seat, and glares if someone tries to slip past him into the window position. Regulars walk through searching for open seats by looking for the seat checks, the color-coded card that is tucked above the seat when the conductors take your ticket. One seat check generally means only one person is sitting there, so yes, that other seat is likely empty.

There's a camaraderie to rail travel. People swap stories, e.g., Do you remember that time there was a mechanical that lead to them hooking two trains together? Or that other time when the train hit a car? (people can be surprisingly stupid around trains.) Or when the rails were flooded south of Oceanside, and everyone got off and queued up to share taxis to the downline stations? With commute buddies and the regular conductors, the train becomes a little community, rolling along the California rails.

Gays on a Train!

I don't usually bring politics over here but....apparently Amtrak is putting some advertising dollars into GLBT media, and the anti-gay folks are outraged. (Never mind that travelling gays have dollars to spend, and isn't that what a company should pursue?)

Speaking as a GLBT person, who has met a number of GLBT people on the rails, this cracks me up. Hello? We're here too! I wonder if those conservatives ever wonder who is sitting next to them?

A trip on the Coast Starlight: part 1

Last week, we cashed in some of my Amtrak "guest rewards" miles and took a sleeper-roomette on the Coast Starlight to Portland. We left San Diego on the morning Surfliner, and connected in Los Angeles with train #14. In short, it was a blast. We had a wonderful time, loved the experience, and would do it again in a minute.

The Coast Starlight leaves from Los Angeles at 10.15am. The train was packed with about 600 passengers, so it was full. The consist included 3 revenue sleeper cars, the restored Pacific Parlor car, dining car and cafe lounge, and 4 superliner cars, one with a video arcade. It's a class system on the train with the sleeper car passengers staying upfront, and the coach passengers staying in the back. In my next post, I'll tell you more about the on-train experience. In this post, I'll tell you more about the trip itself. Click on any image for a closer view.

From LA, the Coast Starlight runs through the San Fernando Valley over to the coast, and up past Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. Through this part of the trip, there are spectacular ocean views, and beautiful vistas of the rolling golden hills.

There were lots of people getting on and off at most stops. Although it tracks with highway 101 here and there, most of the time the train goes through roadless regions, farmland, and vineyards. It turns in through Salinas, arriving in the Bay Area (Oakland and Emeryville) around 10pm. There was a big transition at that point with lots of people getting off (particularly those who had joined in the central coast/Santa Barbara stations) and those getting on.

At this point we climbed into our bunks to go to sleep, and we didn't register the late night/early morning stops in Sacramento, Chico, Redding or Dunsmuir. We woke at dawn, looking out at a very different landscape of conifers and steep hills. We saw the sunrise behind Mt Shasta, which was spectacular, and then on up through the cascade range picking off one snow capped volcano after another.


There were lots of tunnels in this section towards the Cascade Summit, and snowsheds as well. In one spectacular section we did a 180° into the Williamette valley.

Then it was through central Oregon, with rural farmlands and covered bridges, before the final stretch into Portland. We disembarked into the wonderful old Portland Union Station.

This train is popular, and not just with people willing to spend on the sleeper accommodation. There were lots of people riding in coach class, and for many it's the only practical way into smaller towns (like San Luis Obispo CA, or Eugene OR). I had thought that some of these long distance trains are a bit of an anachronism, but it's clear they aren't, and for every casual tourist couple like us, there are many people relying on them for access.

By the way, we were on time or early into every station--beats my poor Surfliner, which is plagued with traffic delays!

Next time: life on board the train.

Happy 10th anniversary, Pacific Surfliner!

It's the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Surfliner! It now averages over 2.5 million riders a year. As part of the celebration, they sponsored amazing 3-D sidewalk-murals at cities around CA. Check it out!

In addition, Amtrak California is working on new railcar design. See what you think.

Spring on the rails

I know it's not spring any more but this got caught in the queue.
I've often thought that the reason California is called the Golden State has nothing to do with 1849. Rather, I suggest it's because most of the year, the hillsides in this state are golden brown, reflecting our long dry summers. But for 6 weeks or so in the spring, the hills turn green and lush from the winter rains. March is the greenest month.

On the train from San Diego to Los Angeles, signs of spring are all around. But you can see spring most strikingly on the long stretch of track through the Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton, the great expanse of open space that prevents San Diego from merging with Orange County. The hills somehow look softer in their green mantle.

The flowers are out, too. In the warm glow of early morning, the colors are partiicularly vivid. The brilliant orange dots of the clusters of California poppies, opening up as the sunlight hits them (they furl up at night). The lavender-blue of the stalks of lupine. The leggy mustard, with the balls of bright yellow flowers.

The story goes that the Spanish Franciscans marked their path from mission to mission by throwing mustard seed from the pockets of their habits. Now, it's everywhere, and it looks like someone scumbled patches of cadmium yellow paint across the hillsides with a brush.



Along the beach side, there are glimpses of muted yellow daisies, and purple sea lavender with its flat leaves like lapping tongues. New growth on the coastal sage has a grey-green color, giving it a silvery glow. There's a carpet of green grass underneath.

The visiting birds are still feeding in the lagoons in their dull winter plumage. The beaches are still victims of winter waves that hide the sand offshore, exposing patches of smooth beach stones like scars . But soon enough the birds will migrate north wearing brighter colors, and the summer rhythm of the waves will return the beach sand to cover the stony areas. And we will move through the dry season into fire season and into winter again, all framed by the windows of the train.

White Pass and Yukon Railway

Skagway, Alaska is a tiny town at the top of Lynn Canal, that basically lives on cruiseships. It's the familiar boom-n-bust story of frontier living. Imagine it in the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s, where miners offloaded their gear from crowded steamers at low tide, and then desperately dragged it ashore before the sea took it. They then painfully climbed the narrow paths up the mountain over White Pass, to eventually float down the Yukon to the gold fields at Dawson City.

Entrepreneurial spirit led to the construction of an impressive narrow-gauge railway, the White Pass and Yukon, to carry people and products over the mountains into British Columbia. In fact for years after the Klondike, it was container and freight company. The railway fell onto hard times but was reborn for the tourist trade and now you can take a ride on the spectacular railway up several thousand feet to White Pass (or beyond, into British Columbia if you choose) on replica and original passenger cars. Most trains are pulled by sturdy diesel-electric locomotives, but there are a couple of beautiful old steam locomotives for special trips. The train we were on was at least 20 cars long with three locomotives.

Our train turned around at White Pass, although some go on to Fraser, BC. Apparently hikers can also flag down a train and selected points on the line.


The single track line hugs narrow canyons and switchbacks, with spectacular views. It crosses the White Pass and into Canada, marked by a couple of flags and a replica RCMP hut, but no one is there. "Turning around" means switching places with the people on the other side of the aisle and flipping the seatbacks while the train stops at a siding. The locomotives then uncouple and run down to the other end. But the best views are from the platforms outside the cars--really cool!

Although no longer used, the huge old cantilever bridge, the tallest in the world when it was built, is still an impressive piece of engineering.




The last picture is of a rotory snowplow--an impressive, impressive machine.

More pictures from the San Diego Steam Special

Sorry for the delay in posting. It's been a bit crazy. Here's another view of the locomotive, plus another Great Dome, and the end, a California Zephyr car.

Update: San Diego Steam Special

More pictures to come. She pulled some old California Zephyr cars.

Great story in the LA Times!

Steam train to San Diego

The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner is a nice, modern train, and most of the time quite efficient at getting from San Diego to LA and beyond. As it passes the yard next to the LA River, you can see locomotives and train cars and one big, old, beautiful steam locomotive, the tender car of which is marked Santa Fe 3751. When it rains (like today) it's sheathed in huge tarps, but on a sunny day, when you can see it, the round barrel shape makes quite a contrast with the flat rake of the modern locomotives. And you can see her in action on Saturday, May 1.


According to the locomotive's website, the locomotive is a 4-8-4 configuration built in 1927 that initially served passenger rail in New Mexico, moving on to Arizona and a run from Los Angeles to Kansas City, finally retiring in 1953 after serving the San Diegan route.

On Saturday, Santa Fe 3751 will pull a special train to San Diego, her old route, returning to LA Sunday. Some old classic cars will be in the trainset, including another historical dome car related to the wonderful great dome I told you about a while back. Tickets start at $98 and go up for a seat in the dome. More info here. The locomotive also has a facebook page.

Now, I admit, riding a train pulled by a locomotive that you mostly can't see doesn't appeal to me. (I'm not a true railfan, just a casual afficionado). But I'm sure going down to the tracks to watch her go by and hear that wonderful whistle. This video gives you a look.



If anyone is riding the steam special on Saturday, could you tweet your whereabouts and timing along the way, so I know when to expect the meet? I'll be a little ways north of the Elvira Curve. (Oh, I don't know, howabout #sf3751?)

Surfliner Stories: This service will be delayed

This morning I learned that there was an overnight freight derailment south of my station that was blocking rail traffic. Since I catch the first northbound train of the day, I figured I was going to be stuck for hours till the trainsets from San Diego could get through. However, right on schedule, a train pulled into the station from the other direction. They had run one down empty from LA very early, to start the service at my station. Way to go, Amtrak! Unfortunately, there was chaos on the Coaster commuter train schedule, so we fell off schedule pretty quickly.

When I lived on the East Coast, I joked that Amtrak's motto should be, "no matter what, we'll be late!" I've been pleasantly surprised about the schedule on the Surfliner. It's rare to have a serious delay and most of the time, the trains I ride are within 10 minutes of the timetable. I've only had a train cancelled once on me, and serious delays (30 minutes or more) are uncommon.

Still, once a train gets out of its "slot", it becomes the bottom of the dispatcher's list and tends to acccumulate more delays waiting for other traffic. So, what starts as 15 minutes may end up being 45 by the end of the ride.

The biggest reason the Amtrak Surfliner runs late is "train congestion". This reflects two things:

First, a lot of track particularly in San Diego and Orange County is single track. Trains have to stop frequently in sidings to let other trains pass. Thus, all the passenger traffic--not just Amtrak, but the local commuter trains, the Coaster (San Diego) and Metrolink (Orange and LA counties)--has to play stop-and-go at the busy times of day.

The railway runs right along the coastal bluffs, and there isn't room physically for two tracks through those areas (not without eminent domain taking down a lot of expensive houses, which is Not Going to Happen). Then, it runs across lagoons and turns unexpectedly east, eventually curving back through Rose Canyon, leading to a long, looping detour between San Diego and Solana Beach (making for a ridiculously long ride between these two stations).

Options are limited as the area is built out and environmentally impacted. Perennial discussions about tunnels under La Jolla or elevated lines over interstate 5 founder against the shoals of expense, environment, and earthquakes. The best solution is probably to double track as much as possible in open areas, while admitting that there is politically no way to double track the Del Mar or San Clemente bluffs, or some of the lagoons.

Second, daily passenger trains are temporally separated from night freight traffic in San Diego and much of Orange County, but freight shares the daylight rails north of Fullerton. The track is actually owned by the freight companies, so Amtrak has low priority. There are frequent delays north of Los Angeles for those Surfliners that run up as far as Goleta or even San Luis Obispo, on the central coast. (The long-distance Coast Starlight also takes that route, going from LA all the way to Seattle). The main freight lines turn away from the coast route to push up into the central valley, but Amtrak isn't allowed use those tracks (which is why America's Rail Company has to run a bus from LA to Bakersfield.) Instead, Amtrak stays on the coast route which is lovely, but slow, and can be closed for days at a time due to winter mudslides.

Then there are mechanical problems. This actually doesn't happen very often, but can lead to cancellations. And they can be awkward; there's a sinking feeling when the train coasts to a stop between stations and suddenly everything goes quiet. You aren't going to be allowed off the train in the middle of the rails so you'd best settle in. If it happens in a station, everyone is offloaded and piles onto the next train like clowns into a Volkswagen.

Accidents involving people are another possibility, thankfully rare. Still, people can be amazingly stupid around trains. Cars get stuck on tracks and occasionally are hit. Sometimes there are suicides; other times, playing "chicken" , or trying to beat the train to the crossing. (Hint: TRAINS ALWAYS WIN.) You'd think you would always hear something as big as a train, but it can be surprisingly quiet rounding a bend, with only a faint vibration on the continuous rail to warn you of its approach. They even painted one of the Surfliner engines red with big "STAY AWAY! STAY ALIVE!" notices on it, to try to discourage surfers from running across the tracks to get to the beach.

I've had my share of "one-offs". For example, a morning earthquake in San Diego required that the line be inspected before traffic could resume. A gas leak during construction under a crossing in Santa Ana shut down the line in both directions, leading to massive delays and cancellations, and an eventual "bus bridge." And of course, the freight derail that started this story.

So as I sit at a red signal, as we fall further behind schedule this morning, I'm philosophical. Delays happen, whether on trains or freeways. I'd still rather be sitting comfortably in my oceanside seat in the Superliner car, looking out at a red-wing blackbird displaying his wing patches in the reeds in the lagoon, rather than eating exhaust in a gridlock on the 405 freeway.

Surfliner Stories: The Conductors

Conductors are characters. They just are. There are at least two conductors on a train, as well as service staff in the café car. (More about that on another post). The senior conductor is the boss of the train: he's the captain. All of them wear radios where you can hear verification of signals, comments from dispatch, or a mechanical voice noting the passage of crossing points. If there is a traffic signal out, or another problem, the conductor will drop off the train and stop the cars to let the train through. It's not just collecting tickets.

Conductors have quirks that you get to know, as individual as the different hole punch each one carries. For example, there's one guy who loves aliteration. "Next stop, Solana Beach, scintillating superlative Solana Beach." Or the matter of fact woman who allows herself a little sneer at the OC: "Next stop, Irvine, jewel of suburbia". On one early train, there is an African American woman who reads a quote for the day as the train passes Laguna Niguel, a short, inspirational saying. Many of them are older guys with richly modulated voices. It must be boring saying the same thing over and over, but they manage to keep their voices inflected. One of my trains routinely has a woman in charge with a no-nonsense voice. One's instinctive reaction to her is "Yes, Ma'am!"

If you ride the same train regularly, you get to know your conductor, and have conversations in short sentences, one per day. After a few months you might exchange names. "Yeah," one guy told me. "I've been railroading for 30 years." That's the term: railroading.

The younger conductors often seem callow by comparison. For some of them, it's just a job. For others, you can tell they are already railroaders. They have a certain walk, call it the sway of steel rails, under their feet.

Next stop....

Update Image from here

Surfliner Stories: Blast from the Past

Although most people assume that Southern Californians live in their cars, rail is quite important and very popular around the LA and San Diego metro areas. Short distance commuter rail (Metrolink around LA and the Coaster in San Diego) complements the longer distance Amtrak. The Pacific Surfliner runs back and forth along the coast between San Diego and Los Angeles, with a few trains a day going as far as Goleta (near Santa Barbara) or even San Luis Obispo on the central coast. If you ride it enough, you get to know the equipment.

The Surfliner is a joint effort of the California Dept of Transportation and Amtrak, and uses dedicated trainsets with distinctive silver and blue paint that distinguishes it from the regular interstate Amtrak trains. To avoid the difficulty of turning around along the way, the trains use a back and forth "push-pull" model where the locomotive is on one end and a cab car is on the other. The cab car allows the engineer to drive the train in one direction with the locomotive pushing, rather than pulling the train. The cars are double decker, with wide electronic doors at either end of each car that open at platform level. That means that the conductor can open all the doors at once and it facilitates the large numbers of passengers getting on and off. Each trainset has (in addition to the locomotive and the cab/baggage car) a cafe car, a business class car with larger seats, and 3-4 regular coach class cars. The trains are comfortable and spacious with good views, and power outlets for computers. Given that American passenger rail can't go the light-and-lean style of Europe (because our trains have to be crash-worthy on mixed-use rail), this is about as good as it gets.

The Surfliner has been so successful in attracting passengers that they have run out of the dedicated cars. During the summer or holidays, some trains are standing room only. So, they supplement the Surfliner trainsets with an extra Superliner car. These are the long distance interstate Amtrak cars, also double decker, but with a different configuration. Most are in the national Amtrak livery of silver, though a few have been rebuilt in Surfliner Blue. The ones here are quite tired and darkly lit by comparison to the bright Surfliner cars, with rougher suspensions. Additionally, they don't have automatic doors downstairs, so you can't board them directly; the only way to get in them is from the neighboring cars. So entering them can appear a bit like going in a cave. This puts off a lot of people, but regular commuters love the Superliners because the seats are enormous and have leg-rests. Additionally, there are curtains on the windows, which means that on an early morning train you can darken your space, put up your feet and take a nap on your way to work. (If you get up at 5am to catch an early train, this is a good thing). Regular commuters tend to migrate to the same car each day, which leads to a certain camaraderie with the other passengers, and with the conductors.

However at times even this isn't enough, and Amtrak has to use some old, single-level cars, the Amfleet series or the Horizon cars from back east. These are single level, about half way between the two levels of the regular Surfliner cars. Also in shiny metal skins, with red and white stripes, these cars cars lack electronic doors which in any case open a few feet above the low platforms, requiring the conductors to laboriously fold down rickety aluminum stairs when they open the doors. They can't be mixed in with the Surfliner cars, because their floor level doesn't match, so the whole train has to be made up of these. In most of them, the seats aren't quite as nice as the Surfliner, and the suspension is much much worse. They lack a cab-car feature, meaning that they have to have a locomotive at each end to do the back-and-forth on the route. The tall, elegant Surfliner locomotives look awkward flanking the short, cigar-shaped Amfleet cars which are the ones I usually see.

On one trip, I got stuck on an Amfleet trainset. Instead of the 5 or 6 cars of a typical Surfliner, there were 9 cars, including a baggage van and the café. In the middle was a very old "dome" car with a 360° view. According to Wikipedia, this car is Amtrak's last remaining full-dome car, #10031, and it's seen only rarely. (Fortunately railfans are obsessive about keeping Wiki up to date!) Downstairs is a lounge with tables and benches (booths). I went up a cramped little stairway to take a look up above. It's quite awkward up there, with a low ceiling, and ugly and uncomfortable plastic seats mounted on metal poles, scattered around occasional tables; very dated. It would be okay with a drink and a conversation, I suppose, if you were going through worthwhile scenery. But it seemed flimsy. Besides, I work on the train, I need a table for my computer , and a better seat for my back for two hours. So I regretfully snapped a couple of photos and went back down to the Amfleet seating. All the regulars were dispersed to different places, and both passengers and conductors kvetched with one another about the inconvenience of the old trainset.

Hopefully the Surfliner, which is one of the most heavily traveled and revenue-successful routes on Amtrak, will endure the CA budget crisis and keep rumbling up and down the coast. Obviously they need more cars! But I keep my eyes out for the anomalies, the pieces of railway history, that occasionally ride the rails with me.

Update User johnnygunn in the comments to my Daily Kos cross post provided this photo, of the dome car as part of the Great Northern Empire Builder in its original color scheme. He points us at a great site with more info about the Great Northern, and I pulled the vintage upstairs view frmo that. One thing about railfans, is that they never lose that sense of history!

Surfliner Stories: Forgotten People, Forgotten Places

The train to Los Angeles rumbles through the ruined orchards north of San Juan Capistrano. The trees seem remote and cut-off from the overbuilt developments of coastal Orange County. In amongst the groves you can spot signs of habitation: a shack in one place, or a trailer over there. There's one house trailer that is collapsed and crumbled, surrounded by abandoned and fragmented vehicles. There's no road, only a dirt track.

Does anyone live in these places? are they farm workers, scraping by in the remnants of OC agricutlure? Or illegal immigrants, grateful for a temporary roof overhead as they make their way to the anonymous streets of LA? Maybe they are locals down on their luck, or drug-addled drop-outs lost from the wealthy community nearby.

A little further along, the train slides into Irvine. The abandoned El Toro Marine Air Station is on one side, grass and bushes poking through the asphalt next to empty buildings painted institutional yellow. On the other side, open fields, freshly plowed and planted, with scarecrows hanging along their edge.

Unlike the untended orange orchards further south, these bits of urban agriculture are active, constantly worked and re-worked, an improbable remnant of farmland in the heart of suburbia.

There is an almost artistic sense of contrast between the decaying buildings of the airport among the weeds , and the ever-renewing fields, with the railway line in between.

Surfliner stories: against the elements

Last week California was battered by a series of ferocious storms. You may have heard about the fear of mudslides in the areas burned out by the wild fires. But another problem was along the coast, where the storms coincided with very high tides. There was a water spout near Long Beach, and localized tornado warnings. Highway 101 runs very close to the ocean; it’s always unnerving to have surf or beach gravel spatter your windshield while driving. And the rail tracks run close to the ocean in parts of Orange County and San Diego, with the single track barely above beach level in some spots, and seeming to skim along the surface of the tidal inlets and lagoons. Indeed, on Thursday, there were train delays due to flooding along the tracks in San Diego County.

A few days later, I was on Amtrak’s efficient Pacific Surfliner making the run up to Los Angeles. It was a sunny morning (although more rain was due later) and I turned away from my computer to look at the ocean. The rail line runs right along the beach near San Clemente, slightly elevated with a slope of boulders to act as a breakwater. The tide was right up against the bottom of the boulders, and I wondered whether the trains were delayed by surf last week. A little further along, the train is separated from the beach by a narrow road and a series of homes. They are actually double-wide trailers, but this little neighborhood has about as much in common with a regular trailer park as an old Ford Pinto has with a Lincoln Navigator, as most have been customized and expanded almost beyond recognition. They are right on the beach; at what point, I wondered, does the tide come in?

A little further again, and there were proper houses between the tracks and the beach. Typical of many California beach neighborhoods, the houses are packed tightly alongside each other, so that you can only get brief glimpse of the water in the small gaps between them. And the styles of the houses vary enormously, from fat wood-shingled homes that look like they should be in Maine, to tile-roofed Spanish style with central courtyards, to boxy modernist structures with lots of squared-off glass, to chunky stone that evoke fog and mountains. The only thing they have in common is that they all look very expensive. It is clear, peering through to the sand beyond, that many of these homes are very close to the tide. On the ocean side, you can see that many of them are constructed on low pillars. I could see there was a steepish slope down to the water , so I wonder if the sand has been built up as a breakwater, or whether the presence of the houses acts as a barrier that funnels the ocean to take out the sand. (This picture shows the old San Diegan, precursor to the Surfliner--probably in the 70s. I couldn't find an up-to-date version showing these houses).

What’s it like in those homes when the tide is high and the storm rages in, with the full force of the open Pacific behind it? Do the owners lie in bed at night, listening for the incursion of water? Do they fret over having an expensive edifice literally built on sand, knowing that it cannot, and will not last? And what headaches and nightmares does the city have, with a number of residences built on indefensible space?

It’s the same old problem as with people who build homes up canyons, far from the reach of city fire trucks, and then complain when the suburbs don't go that far out. What is the limit of civic responsibility for a defiant homeowner exercising his freedom to live where he chooses?

Originally posted at Daily Kos

Surfliner Stories: Cleaning up by the river

The final run into Los Angeles Union Station on the Amtrak Surfliner from San Diego is along the LA River.  The River is pinned into a wide concrete channel with steeply sloping sides.   Unless there is a storm, the water flow is confined to a narrow stream in the middle of the channel, leaving a broad flat concrete expanse on either side.  The sloping sides that rise from this, like every other broad surface in the city, are a canvas for graffiti artists and taggers, whose distinctive curly flourishes or brightly colored block letters  can sweep from top to bottom.  

On my ride this week on the train, it took me a minute to take in the suddenly monochromatic appearance of the channel before I realized that "they"  had painted over the tags.  It must have been a monstrously big job, covering all the huge tags with pale gray paint--and since no new tags have bloomed, it must have been very recent.  In some places the entire wall of the channel from top to bottom is painted; in others, little squares and boxes checkerboard the concrete.  Combined with a recent rain that washed trash away, and the whole thing seems oddly clean and bright, reflecting the winter light of the low sun.

I've written before about the homeless folks who live alongside the river.  I've seen people washing  clothes alongside the central waterway, and flattening them to dry,  like something out of the third world.  With the newly pale side walls, I was struck by the visual effect of how someone laid his  clothes out carefully,  halfway up the slope of the channel:  the pale gray forming a backdrop for the dark colors of the precisely arranged trousers, shirts, and sweater, forming a neat row.

Untidy as most of us are, we still crave order and cleanliness.   Whoever laid out his clothes so neatly on the side of the LA River made a statement about that.    Still, someone washing his clothes with a rock in the middle of a  city river -- that's not something we should see in the heart  a modern Superpower nation.  I feel hopeless and helpless and voyeuristic on the train, as powerless as I feel watching puffed up Congressmen spouting nonsense on the evening news.

Originally posted at Daily Kos