San Diego to Los Angeles By Train

Recently, we saw the launch of a brand new express train from San Diego that will significantly cut travel time to many cities on the west coast and beyond. The northbound Pacific Surfliner Express Train is expected to cut travelling time by nearly half an hour on the journey between San Diego and Los Angeles.

One of the ways it will gain this extra time is by cutting the cities of Fullerton, Laguna, Niguel / Mission Viejo, Orange, San Juan Capistrano and Santa Ana from the normal Pacific Surfliner route. Instead, the new express route (the train will be called the Express Surfliner #563) will depart from downtown San Diego and the Santa Fe Station at 7:05am and will stop at Solana Beach, Oceanside, Irvine and Anaheim before arriving in Los Angeles.

Tickets for a one-way trip will cost $31 and the journey time between San Diego and Los Angeles is listed by Amtrak as taking 2 hours and 28 minutes. This will bring the journey time between San Diego and Oakland / San Francisco down to about 13 hours by train. For those people brave enough to take on the journey to Seattle (all the way up the west coast) the journey time will now be approximately 37 hours. Despite the length of the journey, those people mad enough to take on the full west coast train ride, known as the Coast Starlight, will be rewarded with one of the most spectacular train routes in the world, passing the snow-covered Cascade Range and Mount Shasta as well as stunning Pacific shoreline, lush forests and endless deep fertile valleys. In the other direction the journey time from San Diego to Phoenix should now be down to about 9 ½ hours.

The original Surfliner train route will continue twice daily, leaving San Diego at 6:10 and 8:10am and stopping at all stations, including Fullerton, Laguna, Niguel / Mission Viejo, Orange, San Juan Capistrano and Santa Ana. Both the old route and the new express trains cover some beautiful scenery, running parallel to the coast out of San Diego and from Torrey Pines to Oceanside. From Oceanside they move on to Camp Pendleton and then past the world famous surfing beach at Trestles. Both routes still use the same sleek, silver double-decker trains that travel at up to about 80 miles an hour (when they get a long open stretch) and these days they come with power for laptops and on board WiFi for business passengers. Commenting on the new express trains, Martin Tuttle, Deputy Director for Planning and Modal Programs at Caltrans said this week that ‘the new weekday express service will provide a faster trip for business travelers riding the Pacific Surfliner.’ Caltrans also pointed out the environmental savings on offer to businesses, noting that the Pacific Surfliner carried 2.5 million passengers last year and how that equated to Surfliner passengers saving over 8 million gallons of fuel by taking the train instead of driving.