Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 14 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#98)
Los Angeles San Luis Obispo: 4 hours, 32 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#98)
1964 (via)
Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 15 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#99)
Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo: 4 hours, 33 minutes Southern Pacific fastest scheduled time (#99)
Los Angeles-San Diego: 2 hours, 40 minutes ATSF fastest scheduled time (#79)
1971 A-Day
Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 13 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#98, #12)
Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo: 4 hours, 30 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#98, #12)
Los Angeles-San Diego: 2 hours 45 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#11, #12)
Los Angeles-Santa Barbara: 2 hours, 23 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#14)
Los Angeles-San Luis Obispo: 5 hours, 5 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time (#14)
Los Angeles-San Diego: 2 hours 28 minutes Amtrak fastest scheduled time
Now, to give Amtrak some credit, some of the delay is due to extra stops and there has been a major increase in frequencies as well. Additionally, this may ignore periods of faster running. For instance, while today, only the oft delayed Pacific Surfliner Express ran San Diego-Los Angeles in 2 hours 28 minutes, with the remaining trains running 2:40 or longer, from 1975 until 1980 the San Diegans 12 daily trains ran at 2 hours, 35 minutes.
With that said, after billions of dollars in investment including the deployment of coach fleets designed to minimize dwell times (California and Surfliner cars), the fact that it takes just as long, or longer, now as it did then is absolutely atrocious.
Id love to see "then and now" numbers for all of the Amtrak routes.
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