Vista railroad crossing tops NCTD priority list for grade separations

A Vista location tops North County Transit District’s new priority list for railroad crossings that need grade separations, which are bridges or underpasses where vehicles can cross the tracks without stopping for trains.

Grade separations greatly improve safety by reducing the chance of collisions between trains and cars, as well as cyclists and pedestrians. The separated crossings also enhance reliability for rail travel, as well as for buses and other vehicles on the roads by eliminating the delays caused by the flashing lights and barricades of at-grade crossings.

Six of the nine at-grade crossings on the NCTD priority list are along the east-west Sprinter route between Oceanside and Escondido. The other three are on the north-south Coaster line between Oceanside and San Diego.

Completion of any of the proposed separations is years away. So far, no money has been allocated for construction, which generally costs more than $90 million and can be well over $200 million per crossing, according to Caltrans.

Leading NCTD’s priority list is the Sprinter’s Vista Village Drive crossing in Vista. The list was presented to the agency’s board April 16 at the request of board member Corinna Contreras, a Vista City Council member.

“We want to make the Sprinter to go faster and more frequently, but the gate-down time is a factor,” Contreras said.

Grade-separated rail crossings can be difficult to install because of the many government regulatory agencies involved and the high cost of construction. The work can take years and generally includes relocating multiple utilities and acquiring additional property or rights-of-way.

“We’ve always known that Vista Village …. is extremely problematic for us,” said transit district CEO Shawn Donaghy. The crossing there is in a high-traffic area near downtown Vista with little room for an overpass or underpass.

Second on the priority list is the Sprinter’s Buena Creek crossing in an unincorporated area of San Diego County between Vista and San Marcos.

“Buena Creek was kind of low-hanging fruit because there isn’t a lot of development there,” Donaghy said, adding that the positions of any crossings on the list could change depending on factors such as the amount of grant money acquired.

Third and fourth on the list are Sprinter crossings at El Camino Real in Oceanside and at Nordahl Road in Escondido. Fifth is a Coaster crossing at Leucadia Boulevard in Encinitas.

No. 6 on the list is a more complicated and costly proposal on the Coaster route, which also is used by Amtrak and BNSF fright trains.

That is a decades-old plan to lower the railroad tracks into a trench to be placed about 30 feet deep between Grand Avenue and Tamarack Avenue in downtown Carlsbad, which would involve multiple grade-separated crossings. Lowering the railroad greatly increases safety, reduces noise and has other benefits.

In 2024, the Carlsbad City Council unanimously agreed to contribute up to $5.2 million in matching funds for preliminary designs and technical studies needed to get the project to the 30 percent design level.

The San Diego Association of Governments is the lead agency on the Carlsbad project and will share the costs along with NCTD. Officials said in 2024 construction of the trench would cost more than $500 million and could begin as soon as 2029 if grant money becomes available. Completion could take as long as four years.

The final three locations on NCTD’s priority list are a Sprinter crossing at Pacific Street and Mission Road in San Marcos, and Coaster crossings at Washington Street in San Diego and at Coast Boulevard in Del Mar.

“This is a great document to get us started,” said board member Mike Sannella, a San Marcos City Council member. “These are all pretty important, and I know the numbers (for construction costs) are astronomical.”

He suggested the district might have a better chance of obtaining grant money if it packaged some or all of the projects together for applications.

However, a single large application can be less competitive than multiple individual smaller grant requests, Donaghy said.

“If we tried to do something like that we would probably be the first project to be pushed off the list,” Donaghy said.

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This story was originally published April 27, 2026 at 5:14 AM.