Calm After Storm : Foul-Weather Friends of Train Return to Cars, Easing Tuesday’s Crush

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  Bob Schultz, 55, settled comfortably into his seat on the 6 a.m. Metrolink commuter train to Los Angeles on Wednesday, glad to be able to read the newspaper from front to back.

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The quiet was a relief from Tuesday’s packed Metrolink rides, when hundreds of Orange County commuters abandoned their cars for mass transit to avoid hellish commutes on soggy and muddy highways plagued by lane closures and accidents.

“They should have put Velcro on them (the passengers) and stuck them to the walls,” said Schultz, a Perini Building Co. employee and regular Metrolink rider from Dana Point. “It was like a cattle car.”

More people ride Metrolink and other mass transit systems during stormy weather, and the past week in Orange County has been no exception.

On Jan. 4, when the first of several fierce winter storms slammed into the county, flooding streets and homes, ridership on the Orange County Metrolink line rose almost 10% over the day before.

And on Tuesday, 3,040 people took the Metrolink into and out of Orange County, which was more than on any other day so far this month, said Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo. Ridership figures for Wednesday were not available.

“Trains are a lot safer than being out on the roads, especially right after the rains when the roads are slick with oil,” Hidalgo said. “In a car you’re rattled with all that traffic congestion.”

Laguna Niguel resident Ken Jackson, 32, sure wished he had been relaxing with a good book, an interesting conversation or a friendly game of cards on the train Tuesday evening. Instead, he had spent three long, lonely hours battling washed-out roads, detours and other uptight drivers on his way home from his Downtown Los Angeles office.

So Wednesday morning he hopped aboard the periwinkle-and-white train in San Juan Capistrano and worked on a company contract during the 1 1/2-hour ride into Union Station.

“The surface streets were unbelievably packed on Tuesday,” Jackson said. “I spent 5 1/2 hours total in traffic. What a waste of time.”

“Although,” he added with a rueful smile, “I am now completely versed in Mark and Brian,” a deejay duo on KLOS-FM.

However, trains were not immune from storm woes. The heavy rainfall over the past week did interrupt service on several Metrolink lines, Hidalgo said.

Flooding at a Simi Valley bridge stopped trains from going to Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard through Wednesday morning. Debris and mud clogged a tunnel beneath the interchange of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways, forcing the cancellation of two Metrolink trains on Tuesday from Los Angeles to Lancaster.

Trains were not canceled along the Orange County line, but some were delayed because of high water on the San Clemente tracks and Metrolink’s decision to slow down all trains to avoid accidents.

“Even if we’re moving only 8 miles an hour, we’re still moving,” said Schultz, who added that engineers stopped the trains briefly while they got out to check the safety of railroad bridge footings.

After witnessing the stream of red brake lights on the Santa Ana Freeway Tuesday night from the comfort of a Metrolink car, Dana Point resident Bob Pliska, 48, said he went home and told his wife, “I am so thankful I can take the train. . . . “

“You’d look out at the cross streets and see the cars backed up as far as you could see,” said the pipeline project engineer, who has been riding Metrolink for four months. “The times I drive, it’s just so stressful.”

During the first heavy storm last week, physician Diane Nugent, 45, a regular Metrolink rider from San Juan Capistrano to Anaheim, tried driving home instead of getting on the train.

“I sat on the (Santa Ana) freeway and just watched the train go by and thought, ‘Oh,’ ‘ said the doctor who works at Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange, shaking her head. “It was so frustrating.”

Fellow riders Brian Mueller, 43, and Tom Clark, 40, both of San Clemente, said what aggravates them on rainy days is finding parking spots at the San Juan Capistrano depot, because the newcomers quickly gobble up the few all-day parking spaces.

But even that inconvenience, Mueller said, glancing up from James Michener’s novel “Caribbean,” can’t spoil the joy of gazing out a rain-spattered window at backed-up cars and knowing the engineer is doing the navigating for him.