Dawn Patrol:

Last week I read a Orange County Local News Network article about Trestles.

The gist was that the estimated 300,000 people that visit Trestles each year have to make a risky railroad track crossing and a coalition had been formed to construct a safer crossing for pedestrians and cyclists.

Now I’ve never heard of surfers asking for anything to be made safer so was immediately skeptical and figured there had to be more to it. The “coalition” was identified as the Open Architecture Network, the San Onofre Foundation and the Surfrider Foundation, and they had opened a competition for architectural designs of the crossing structure.

If you scout the area you’ll find that only those bound for the beach at Lowers or Middles need to cross the tracks, and that’s only if they take the old highway route from San Clemente.

The path to Uppers goes under the trestle, San Onofre is way west of the tracks and Church isn’t affected either. Non-surfing bicyclists don’t cross, so really only a fraction of the visitors are making the traverse, and they’re almost all surfers who’ve had it figured out forever and aren’t worried about getting hit by a train.

The article did mention that the path to Lowers was a problem area, but if you don’t know the area well you’d get a wrong impression. I can’t remember one person who’s surfed Trestles mentioning train safety, but for due diligence, maybe it’s reasonable to put in a crossing in that area because it does get a lot of foot traffic when it’s opened up for contest parking three or four times a year.

So why not a standard railroad crossing like you find in nearby San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano? They’re just the generic arms with light and bell warnings that have worked for decades. Everyone going to the beach along the entire length of San Clemente needs to cross the tracks and that involves more people per year than Lower Trestles. Why have an architectural competition? Surfers aren’t going to haul a board and bike up an elevated structure, they’re going to run across the tracks like they always have. When I visited the San Onofre Foundation’s web site ( www.sanofoundation.org) I started to get the picture — they want to build all kinds of stuff. A raised boardwalk, visitor center, view points, amphitheatre, exhibits — in addition to the crossing structure, and all “environmentally friendly” of course.

Yikes! It’s hard for me to see Surfrider supporting that vision. After the long, grueling “Save Trestles” fight to keep the toll road out they’re going to develop the place themselves? As a Surfrider member and Trestles fan for over 40 years I hope not. My vote is to leave it alone. I’m sure it’s the cynic in me that sees businessmen disguised as surfers looking for a buck here, but I’m happy to be proved wrong and I’ll let you know what I hear from the coalition. In the meantime the task of getting approval from all the agencies involved makes any imminent construction unlikely.

JOHN BURTON’S surf column appears Fridays. He may be reached by e-mail at hot_dogger@mac.com.