Brighter hopes for bringing ACE to Modesto, high-speed rail to Merced

The Northern San Joaquin Valley heard rumblings Thursday of new developments for commuter and high-speed rail transportation.

Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, said that he and Valley legislators are working on drawing state transportation funds to bring ACE passenger rail to Modesto. He told the Modesto Bee’s editorial board that he’s working on the effort with state senators Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, and Cathleen Galgiani, D-Manteca.

The ACE train service would make it easy for Stanislaus County residents to commute to jobs or take day trips to the Bay Area. At present, ACE – or Altamont Corridor Express – trains carry passengers between stops in San Joaquin, Alameda and Santa Clara counties. Modesto riders have to take a bus to catch a train in Lathrop.

In another development, California High-Speed Rail Authority officials proposed changes to put Merced back into the initial plans at a meeting Thursday, a decision local officials are calling a “huge win.”

In February, the board announced a revision to its business plan that would bypass Merced in the first part of the rail’s construction. But in Thursday’s meeting, the authority recommended a proposal that marked Merced as the starting point to the Central Valley section that would end in Wasco, instead of Shafter, near Bakersfield.

“If in fact this comes to fruition ... I think it is a huge success and win for the entire northern San Joaquin Valley,” Gray said. “This is a big win.”

In Stanislaus County, local government officials are not including a significant amount of seed money for an ACE extension to Modesto in a half-cent road tax measure proposed for the November ballot.

Gray said the possibility of getting state funding for the extension should not have a bearing on whether local voters approve the countywide road tax. Both Stanislaus and Merced County, which is discussing its own tax, are in dire need of funds to fill potholes and repair crumbling roads, Gray said.

“I have always supported the notion of a self-help (transportation) tax,” Gray said. “People argue between fixing roads or getting new regional projects. We ought to stop limiting ourselves.”

Gray, Cannella and Galgiani are trying to work the ACE extension into a statewide plan calling for an enormous investment in transportation. The cost of bringing ACE service to Modesto has been estimated at $200 million.

The board that oversees California’s high-speed rail system put off a vote Thursday on the revised business plan to give state officials more time to assuage lawmakers and citizens upset by the recent decision to first send the train to Northern California rather than the Los Angeles area.

Officials proposed changes to the latest business plan at a meeting in San Jose where the board was expected to adopt the $64 billion business plan, which calls for the bullet train to head from the Central Valley to San Jose rather than south to the San Fernando Valley as originally planned.

Part of the compromise to include Merced in the initial section is making the section a single rail instead of a double rail to save money, Gray said.

Gray said the authority realized it made a mistake by planning to bypass Merced since officials there always have supported the rail.

“They publicly apologized,” Gray said. “(It was) total mismanagement of their process.”

The board still must officially vote on the plan, but Gray said he is confident it will be passed. The Merced high-speed rail station would open in 2025, putting it on the same timeline as the Fresno project.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 7:46 PM with the headline "Brighter hopes for bringing ACE to Modesto, high-speed rail to Merced."