Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Bill Buchanan in SFGate, Dream­star Lines of New­port Beach signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MOU) with Union Pacif­ic, paving the way for the first Los Ange­les-to-San Fran­cis­co night train since 1983. “Most U.S. trav­el­ers aban­doned trains for dri­ving or fly­ing decades ago, but Dream­star believes con­gest­ed roads and the has­sles and envi­ron­men­tal cost of air trav­el cre­ate an open­ing for its ser­vice.” 

As Buchanan explains, “Union Pacif­ic owns most of the 470-mile route. To com­plete the link between San Fran­cis­co and Los Ange­les, Dream­star also needs agree­ments to use tracks owned by region­al tran­sit oper­a­tors Cal­train and Metrolink.”

Union Pacif­ic acknowl­edged that it “entered into for­mal nego­ti­a­tions” regard­ing the line. Cur­rent­ly, the only rail ser­vice between the Bay Area and Los Ange­les is Amtrak’s day­time Coast Starlight ser­vice.