Over my seventy-one-and-a-half years of living, I’ve seen much change. The bulk of it, it would seem, has transpired in the last 20 or so years.
On the American passenger railroad front, meanwhile, my take is that the single greatest change that’s taken place was the creation of Amtrak in 1970.
As I am writing this, it should be noted that I support both the expansion of passenger rail service in the United States and across the globe generally.
So, staying with this premise, I’ve seen both sides of the domestic passenger-train-service-development program: contraction and expansion.
As to the former, I just so happened to be living in the city on the Pataspco River estuary of the Chesapeake Bay — Baltimore — when the retiring of the city’s streetcar network was underway. As it happens, the trolleys in the Baltimore metropolitan statistical area made their final run in 1965. And, in regard to the latter construct, rail-transit expansion, I was in San Francisco the day the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system was unveiled to the public. That was in Sept. 1972.
So, I would ask: What’s going on?!
I can say with some authority that the changes were prompted by the mass production of the automobile, highway expansion and suburbanization which can alternatively be called urban sprawl.
All well and good, but what could explain the current rail renaissance? Yes, that’s right. Rail renaissance. Would you believe the same three forcers or prompters? It’s true. We have automobile mass production, highway widening and urban sprawl to thank for that too.
More Change Coming
Now let’s turn our sites to one rail-expansion project in particular: the Valley Link project.
And what is Valley Link?
So, in an Oct. 2, 2018 Tri-Valley San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority news release, the TVSJVRRA described briefly Valley Link: “[A] rail service being planned to conveniently connect San Joaquin Valley communities with the Dublin/Pleasanton BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] Station, including connections with the ACE [Altamont Corridor Express] rail system,” adding farther on in the same release that it “would connect the existing Dublin/Pleasanton BART Station to the proposed ACE North Lathrop Station. A second phase would extend service from the North Lathrop Station to the ACE and Amtrak Stockton Station.
“Other proposed station locations in Phase 1 include: Isabel Station; Greenville ACE Intermodal Station; Mountain House Station; Downtown Tracy Station; and River Islands Station. The service is proposed to operate from 5 am to 8 pm, with service every 12 minutes between the Dublin/Pleasanton BART Station and Greenville Road during peak hours and every 24 minutes beyond Greenville to the North Lathrop Station. Trains would be scheduled to allow for convenient transfers to BART.”[1]
The agency furthermore on May 2, 2023 in a later TVSJVRRA news release announced: “Valley Link will ultimately close a critical gap in the statewide rail system with a 42-mile, 7 station rail connection between the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station and the North Lathrop Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) station with all day service on BART frequencies during peak periods. With 33,000 daily riders projected by 2040, Valley Link would remove tens of thousands of cars off Interstates 580 and 205 and connect nearly 500 miles of passenger rail with more than 130 stations in the Northern California Megaregion – removing up to 42,650 metrics [sic] tons of greenhouse gas emissions, creating 22,000 jobs, and supporting national goods movement by reducing heavy truck conflicts with cars on Interstates 580 and 205 that serve as life lines between the Port of Oakland and both domestic and international markets. Overall traffic on Interstate 580 is projected to increase by an estimated 60 percent by 2040 and truck traffic is expected to increase by 58 percent.”[2]
That all said, there should be absolutely no mistaking where Valley Link Rail — if not domestic passenger-rail service overall — is headed.
Notes
“Metropolitan Transportation Commission Approves $10.1 Million Request for Planning and Design Work on Valley Link Rail Project,” Oct. 2, 2018 Tri-Valley San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority news release. https://www.valleylinkrail.com/_files/ugd/b4e315_c7d252bbde2a45a68a936dbf58765ce4.pdf
“State Awarded $25 Million to Valley Link to Advance Project Development,” May 2, 2023 Tri-Valley San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority news release. https://www.valleylinkrail.com/_files/ugd/95df9a_ffcbb3fab6f249f39383192535d6fec3.pdf
Updated: Sept. 11, 2024 at 5:54 p.m. PDT.
For more on Valley Link, visit: valleylinkrail.com
Image data: Roger Puta/Wikimedia Commons
All material copyrighted 2024, Alan Kandel. All Rights Reserved.