Amtrak chief visits Modesto to talk about adding trains

Amtrak’s boss rode his official train into Modesto to talk about upgrading its San Joaquin Corridor.

Joe Boardman, president and chief executive officer since 2008, said Tuesday that he sees great potential for the service. Amtrak has four round trips a day between Bakersfield and Oakland and two that take in Sacramento, but he said they are not convenient to many travelers.

“The more frequency that you have, the more comfortable people are with using that service,” Boardman said.

His four-car train was on a cross-country trip that reached Modesto on Monday night. It pulled off the Amtrak route into the railyard of the Modesto & Empire Traction Co., a short line serving the Beard Industrial District.

Boardman held onboard meetings with local, state and federal officials about funding and management of the service.

The San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, which oversees the corridor, proposes $1.5 billion worth of improvements over the next decade. The plan includes upgrades to tracks, which are shared with freight railroads, and other work that reduces travel times.

Now, a trip from Modesto to Oakland takes about 2 1/2 hours and gets there no earlier than about 11 a.m. The Sacramento trip is about 1 hour, 40 minutes, and arrives no earlier than about 12:30 p.m.

The corridor nonetheless is the fifth-busiest for Amtrak, with about 1.2 million passengers a year. The main route runs up the San Joaquin Valley from Bakersfield to Stockton, then bends west to Martinez, Richmond and Oakland. Two trains a day go straight north to Sacramento. Amtrak also serves the capital and many other cities with buses connecting to the train stations.

The authority is close to announcing a seventh daily round trip and is in the planning stage for an eighth. It also envisions starting some trains from midroute locations, such as Merced or Fresno, so residents can reach Oakland and Sacramento early in the day.

The authority last year assumed oversight of the San Joaquin service from the California Department of Transportation, which still provides funding. It also runs the Altamont Commuter Express, which gets people to work on a route from Stockton to San Jose by way of Livermore and Fremont.

Dan Leavitt, manager of regional initiatives for the authority, said the San Joaquin trains need to add business travelers to the leisure riders they now serve.

“We think there’s great potential for improving the San Joaquin service,” he said. “We have a really good service now, and it’s a great asset to the San Joaquin Valley, but the key issue is that we really need to get more trains running.”

Boardman’s trip started Thursday of last week in Washington, D.C. He rode the Capitol Limited route from there to Chicago, then switched to the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles. He got to Bakersfield via a slow ride across the Tehachapi Mountains, on substandard track that has forced Amtrak to use buses for regular customers. He passed stations that included Merced and Denair before arriving in Modesto.

“It’s the best way for me to see what’s going on with the railroad,” Boardman said. He planned to reach Sacramento on Wednesday to accept the last of 70 electric locomotives being built there by Siemens for use on the East Coast.

This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 12:49 PM with the headline "Amtrak chief visits Modesto to talk about adding trains."