Ventura County Line


The Metrolink Ventura County Line is a commuter rail line serving Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles, in the Southern California system. The line is the successor of the short lived CalTrain commuter rail line.

Schedules

Metrolink trains on the Ventura County Line run weekdays only, mostly during peak commuter hours, and so with limited midday service. From Union Station—Downtown Los Angeles :
;East Ventura
;Moorpark
;Chatsworth
;Airport
Service is augmented during midday and on weekends by the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner line, serving most of the Metrolink stations on the Ventura County Line.
;Airport
Additional airport shuttle service operates between Union Station and Burbank Airport–South station as the Hollywood Burbank Airport LineBUR. Metrolink numbers Airport Line trains in the 900 series.

Tracks

The line operates between Moorpark and Los Angeles Union Station on tracks owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority – the Ventura Subdivision from Moorpark to Burbank Airport and the Valley Subdivision, the Valley Subdivision from Burbank to Glendale, becoming the River Subdivision into Los Angeles Union Station. It uses the Coast Line of the Union Pacific Railroad between Moorpark and Oxnard and into Ventura where the Santa Paula Branch splits from the rest of the Coast Line. The East Ventura Station and layover facility are on the Santa Paula branch line.

History

Service on this line began in 1992 as one of Metrolink's original three lines, with service from Moorpark to Los Angeles Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles. The line was extended to Camarillo and Oxnard in 1994 after the Northridge earthquake, then to East Ventura in 2002.
A trial service on Saturday was tried in 2020 for this normally weekday only line. The Amtrak service does run on the weekends.

Accidents

2008 Chatsworth train collision

At 4:23 p.m. on September 12, 2008, 25 people were killed in a collision between Metrolink commuter train 111 and a freight train. At least 130 people were injured, with at least one dying later at a hospital. The crash occurred on the Ventura County Line near Heather Lee Lane, south of the Ronald Reagan Freeway and east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Both locomotives, the leading car of the commuter train, and seven cars of the freight train were derailed.

2015 Oxnard train derailment

On February 24, 2015, according to Oxnard Police Sergeant Denise Shadinger, a Metrolink commuter train traveling from Ventura County to Los Angeles hit a road vehicle near Oxnard, California; she initially said there was an unspecified number of injuries. The incident was reported at 5:44 A.M. Three cars derailed, at least one vehicle was fully engulfed at some point, and the three derailed cars were on their sides; the locomotive was still upright. Little but scorched, mangled wreckage in an intersection and on the tracks was left of the truck; Oxnard Fire Department battalion chief Sergio Martinez said the driver fled the scene unhurt but was found and taken into custody. News helicopters and footage from CNN affiliate KABC showed footage of triage tarps lying in the 5th Street where on-scene firefighters were treating victims and monitoring the scene. The National Transportation Safety Board, in a tweet, acknowledged the incident and stated they were launching an investigation. The train engineer died a week later and 29 others were injured. A week after the incident, an Amtrak train collided with a vehicle in the same area as the first crash.

Stations