Over the past 20 years, it has become increasingly clear that the 61-mile San Clemente to San Diego segment of the coastal train is unsustainable. The region's coast is eroding at 6 inches annually. The train is a few feet from the bluff's edge in Del Mar and nearly in the surf in San Clemente. Twenty years of armoring at a cost approaching $1 billion have kept the train running most days, although outages are long and frequent.

The Union-Tribune regularly reports on the coastal train and the efforts to relocate the rail away from the coast. Sadly, the stories echo the communications from SANDAG, which offer a steady spin on how essential the train is: "the only rail connection to the rest of the United States" or "the second-busiest rail corridor in the United States." As recently as Jan. 10, the paper reported on a federal grant intended to expand train service between Los Angeles and San Diego without a single comment on whether demand for this exists and what the true costs per user would be. Whether intended, this lack of critical perspective supports the myths about the train's value to the area. The articles, like SANDAG, never ask, "Does the train still make sense for the San Diego segment?"

Opinion pieces have offered a more reasoned response to the issue. Trains cannot climb over mountains, so the solution requires tunnels in Del Mar and relocating the tracks in San Clemente, which, combined, may cost $20 billion over more than 10 years. This is despite the increasing evidence that existing heavy rail functions can be more economically accomplished in different ways, including light rail and electric vehicles — trucks, buses, cars, bikes and scooters — and information technology-supported transportation management via dedicated lanes along existing freeway corridors.

Let's estimate the per-user subsidy to gauge the absurdity of the coastal train. The calculation is hampered by poor transparency in ridership. We focus on 2023, the most recent year for which we have data, and only on the projected costs to relocate the train, not the additional annual expenditures for operations and maintenance nor the opportunity cost of using the right-of-way for other purposes.

Three passenger trains make use of the segment — Surfliner (San Clemente-San Diego), Metrolink (San Clemente-Oceanside) and Coaster (Oceanside-San Diego). We wish to calculate the annual per-user subsidy of a commuter taking the train to and from work five days per week for 48 weeks of the year. The round trips from all trains in 2023 were 576,884, and the annual amortization of $20 billion over 30 years with a 4 percent discount rate is $1,157 million, yielding a yearly subsidy per commuter of $481,137. Such a subsidy is indefensible.