A regional transportation plan released by the San Diego Association of Governments could bring new attention to an old idea -- opening a train station on Camp Pendleton.
One of the long-term goals in SANDAG's draft 2025 regional plan is to extend the Coaster commuter line from downtown San Diego past its northernmost stop at the Oceanside Transit Center to a platform on the Marine Corps base.
SANDAG's regional plan, like a city's general plan, is considered a blueprint for projects, goals and policies over the next 20 years. The agency reviews its regional plan about every five years. A final 2025 plan is expected to be adopted by the SANDAG board in December.
North County Transit District's board of directors reviewed the proposal for a Camp Pendleton train station at least as early as 2011, when it approved spending up to $334,000 on preliminary work to set the project in motion.
"We're excited to have the chance to serve North County's largest employer," then-NCTD Chief Administrative Officer Alex Z. Wiggins said almost 15 years ago. Camp Pendleton has about 40,000 active-duty Marines and sailors, along with at least an additional 30,000 civilian employees and family members.
The most likely location for the station was Stuart Mesa, where NCTD has a Coaster maintenance yard about two miles north of the Oceanside Transit Center.
The Stuart Mesa site is near a concentration of base housing, a $500 million naval hospital that opened in 2014, and a large military commissary selling groceries and department store items.
Transit officials said then the station could be built in as little as four years, though no estimate was released for construction costs.
In addition to Coaster commuter trains, the base station could serve Amtrak and Metrolink trains. Metrolink, which covers parts of six Southern California counties, makes its southernmost stop in Oceanside.
The idea appeared to be on track in late 2013, when then-San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn, who was also an NCTD board member at the time, said he had received a letter from the Pentagon granting "conceptual approval" of the Camp Pendleton station.
The letter from Maj. Gen. J.G. Ayala, of the Marine Corps Installations Command, said the station would be of "significant benefit" to personnel at Camp Pendleton and in nearby communities, according to an archived news story.
Base personnel also have the added incentive of Defense Department transportation subsidies for riding the train, transit officials said.
However, the proposal has made little headway since the initial studies. A SANDAG spokesperson said Wednesday that NCTD is the lead agency for the project, and that any update on its progress should come from them.
"NCTD commissioned a planning study and conceptual engineering of a potential rail station on Camp Pendleton near the Stuart Mesa Maintenance Facility in 2011," said Mary Dover, the agency's chief of staff, on Wednesday.
"NCTD has not been able to secure funding to advance the project past this point and ran into some security issues with base access," Dover said.
Any development along the coastal rail route requires the approval of multiple government agencies. Building on restricted federal property adds another level of difficulty.
"I don't think anything is different now than it's been in the past 10 years," Dover said. "The project had always been intended strictly for use by military personnel, families, and employees on base -- restricting access by others is what posed the challenge and required further discussion with the base and the Defense Department."
The district's Breeze bus routes cover several areas of Camp Pendleton. Much of the bus service is provided by the district's Flex on-demand program, although the Mainside area in the southeast corner of the base is on the regular route No. 315 that also takes passengers through parts of Oceanside and Carlsbad.
Asked about the chances of approving a train station, a base spokesperson said Thursday that no negotiations are underway at present.
"Camp Pendleton is not currently involved in any official discussions regarding a ... train station on base property," said 2nd Lt. Anna R. Hornick. "However, base officials maintain a positive and enduring relationship with NCTD."
The coastal route is San Diego County's only railroad link with Los Angeles and the rest of the United States. It also is part of the nationwide Strategic Rail Corridor Network, which consists of 38,800 miles of track serving 193 military installations nationwide.
Coaster and Amtrak service extend as far south as the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego. However, also in the transit district's long-range plan is a proposal to open another Coaster passenger station south of the depot to serve the San Diego Convention Center.
The railroad has existed on the same route since the 1880s. From the beginning, it crossed land that became Camp Pendleton in 1942.
For many years there was a spur rail line that went from Oceanside through the Camp Pendleton Air Station to the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station. That line was used to transport military equipment during the Gulf War in the early 1990s, and in the late 1990s it carried thousands of Vietnam War-era napalm canisters removed from the weapons station.
However, the spur line went through a narrow canyon that was subject to erosion during heavy rains, and the tracks were removed after damaging storms in the early 2000s.
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