Caltrain Is Sending Its Old Diesel Fleet to Peru. 1 State Lawmaker Is Not Happy

For Caltrain, its recent deal to sell 19 vintage diesel locomotives and 90 well-used passenger cars to an overseas city that will use them for a badly needed commuter train line is nothing but good news.

Not everyone sees it that way.

State Sen. Dave Cortese (D–San José) said sending the fossil-fuel-burning engines to Peru is just shifting pollution and greenhouse emissions from one place to another and shouldn’t be allowed. To prevent it from happening again, he’s introduced a bill to block similar transfers in the future.

Caltrain, which launched its all-new electric fleet this year, will soon send its 1980s-era rolling stock to be lifted aboard cargo ships in the Bay Area for a trip to Peru, where the equipment will go to work carrying passengers between the Lima suburbs of Callao and Chosica.

Sam Sargent, Caltrain’s director of strategy and policy, said the deal gives new life to equipment that would otherwise be scrapped while also promising to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by giving people an alternative to personal vehicles in a traffic-choked city of 10 million.

“This is really just step one towards transit being a tool for environmental sustainability down there,” Sargent said. “We love the idea that we’re going to get to move more people going into the future with the equipment that we lovingly maintained.”

Diesel engines, however, are a target of environmental advocates because they produce high levels of particulate pollution that has been implicated in a wide range of respiratory and circulatory diseases.

People living near freeways, rail lines, ports and other major producers of diesel pollution suffer a much higher incidence of illnesses like asthma and various forms of heart disease than those who live farther from those sources.

Cortese is among dozens of Bay Area officials who have signed the “Diesel Free by ’33” pledge, a Bay Area Air Quality Management District campaign that aims to reduce diesel emissions “throughout California and beyond.” He said legislators need to “make sure that we’re not exporting the problem outside our state boundaries.”

California rail agencies that could be affected by his bill include Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) and Amtrak California, which operates the Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin, Metrolink and Surfliner routes.

“I’ve been a big proponent of climate restoration, getting back to pre-industrial levels of carbon in our atmosphere, and they’re not going to do that by swapping out diesel from one area to another, from the Bay Area to Peru or to Arizona or to someplace [with] lax standards just because they’re going to give you a check,” Cortese said. “To me, that’s selling out.”

Sargent said the environmental issues Cortese raised were top of mind when Caltrain considered the deal with Peru. He adds that those concerns prompted the U.S. State Department and Commerce Department to support the $6 million sale. The transaction also required and received approval from the air district.

“That was in large part because of the environmental benefits of getting people out of their cars,” Sargent said. Those benefits include removing as much as 20,000 metric tons of carbon emissions from Lima’s air every day when the new train service goes into service next year.

City transportation officials say the 25-mile Callao-Chosica line will carry about 200,000 passengers a day — more than the current ridership of every California transit agency except L.A. Metro and San Francisco Muni.