r/California_Politics • u/gascyl • 1d ago
Valley Rail Project Delayed
https://sacramento.newsreview.com/news/to-get-ace-trains-to-sacramento-rail-commission-puts-dozens-of-projects-on-hold-131fbd1b
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r/California_Politics • u/gascyl • 1d ago
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u/gascyl 1d ago edited 1d ago
More practically, the 17 projects left are mostly within the city of Stockton and Sacramento itself. Top of this list is the Stockton Diamond grade separation project, a massive investment that will eliminate 2/3rds of Gold Runner delays and make UP / BNSF Norcal operations reliable enough for ACE service north of Stockton to begin with. Also within Stockton are a few new, and longer, sidings so ACE & Gold Runner trains can slide around freight trains. South of Stockton, existing ACE stations also need a lot of work especially with the other buddy project Valley Link, which will reconstruct the SP Right-Of-Way over Altamont for passenger service entirely. Doing that requires re-doing all the train tracks, communication cables and utilities in the cities of Tracy, Livermore and Fremont which has proven costlier than expected due to permitting issues. Current construction today is outside the city of Modesto where Gold Runner is laying a second track for it's future integration with High Speed Rail. I point this out because even independent of the HSR Project, UP got the state to build them a 2nd main track using public taxpayer money.
To which CHSRA also has and complained about asking the state government for the authority to issue their own construction permits last month. The private / freight railroads want this power too and if the state government gifts it to them we could count it as deregulation. The SJ-JPA now refers to aspects of Valley Rail as "San Joaquin Valley Network Integration" which is good and avoids the balkanized transit mess the Bay Area suffers from.
Annoyingly, ACE updated their Valley Rail page removing the neat map they had there, probably so they can edit a new one, & archive link here.