California’s $308 million spending plan now in place for the fiscal year that started July 1 means within 10 or so years Manteca drivers will see a surge in train traffic passing through 11 of the city’s existing 12 railroad crossings.
The budget includes $4.2 billion for the California High Speed Rail’s initial 119-mile segment from Madera to Wasco to be completed, electrified and up and running.
Once that spine is in place, the tracks will be extended to Merced and Bakersfield.
The funding means high speed rail can have the first 175-mile section of track operational by the end of the decade
It may be years after that until high speed rail per se is extended to end terminals in Anaheim and San Francisco.
In the meanwhile, the plan calls for connection with non-high speed rail service in Bakersfield to reach Los Angeles and in Merced to reach San Jose.
And the way to San Jose will be accomplished by extending Altamont Corridor Express service to Merced.
That means dedicated ACE trains will move high speed passengers from Merced to San Jose through Manteca.
It is highly unlikely the trains will stop in Manteca, Ripon, Ceres, Turlock or Modesto.
But a stop at the planned Lathrop Wye — rail jargon for the merging of the Fresno and Altamont lines of the Union Pacific track system — is all but certain. That’s because it would allow transfers to ACE trains heading up to Sacramento and also the proposed Valley Link system that will connect with BART in Pleasanton and ultimately reach San Francisco.
ACE by the end of 2023 is targeted to have service up and running between Ceres and Sacramento. That will mean six trains — three in the AM and three in the PM — will not just pass through Manteca but also stop in downtown in addition to Ripon, Modesto, and Ceres.
The eventual ACE trains that will connect high speed rail to get the Los Angeles to San Francisco service in place are in addition to the trains going into operation in 2023.
The overall system from LA to SF has a price tag currently of $105 billion to be a 100 percent high speed service.
Voters in 2008 were told if they approved $9.9 billion in bonds, the LA to SF segment would cost $40 billion and would be up and running by 2033 thanks to anticipated private sector funding that has yet to materialize.
As it stands now the Merced to Bakersfield segment will be up and running as high speed rail by as early as 2029.
It is unlikely that the high speed rail connection to Anaheim or San Francisco will be in place even 10 years after that.
There are two reasons.
The backers in 2008 said the $9.9 billion in bonds would be the seed money to lure private investors willing to out up the rest of the tab that was $40 billion at the time. No private sector investors have shown interest and the overall cost is now estimated to eventually reach $105 billion.
That $105 billion price tag doesn’t include what the high speed rail authority calls “unforeseen issues.”
Besides major property condemnation work at both urban ends of the system, arguably the most problematic segment will be going from Merced to San Jose by tunneling under the San Andreas Fault below Pacheco Pass where significantly more unforeseen issues await.
Engineers that worked on the Chunnel between England and France have said they believe that segment‘s cost likely has been significantly lowballed by the rail authority.
Whether the 100 percent high speed connection from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles eventually happens there are two clear scenarios of what will take place once the Merced to Bakersfield link becomes operational. One will occur and the other is highly plausible.
The first involves a hybrid system to avoid the high speed rail from Bakersfield to Merced from being the butt of late TV jokes as being a train that runs from a cow city of 90,000 to the hometown of Buck Owens.
The plan to avoid that is to provide connecting bus service from Bakersfield to Anaheim/Los Angeles on the southern end.
On the northern end Altamont Corridor Express trains will connect Merced with the Bay Area.
Assuming service will be running before the problematic Pacheco Pass route to San Francisco is built due to a need to get people onto trains and not buses as well as the fact there isn’t likely money to be available to build both connections at once, the ACE service ferrying high speed rail passengers transferring riders at Merced will be in place easily for a decade or so.
That means many more trains than the three now planned to stop in Manteca and Ripon starting in 2023 will pass through both communities as part of the Senate Bill 1 funded endeavor to extend ACE service to Ceres and Natomas north of downtown Sacramento as well as connect Ceres to San Jose.
The impact will be minimal on Ripon as they have no at-grade crossings ACE will use. That is not the case for Manteca.
Additional ACE service to get high speed riders from Merced to San Francisco/Sacramento will involve eight at-grade crossings in Manteca as the 120 Bypass/Highway 99 upgrade will eliminate an at-grade crossing by having the replacement four-lane Austin Road bridge span the tracks as well.
Work on the new overpass will start in 2023.
Those on ACE trains taking high speed riders from Merced to San Jose will cross those eight streets as well as three others for a total of 11 Manteca crossings.
The other scenario that has been floated by some involves permanently abandoning the Pacheco Pass route in favor of a system that would send high speed to the Lathrop ACE hub being planned where transfers can get you to San Jose via ACE, to Sacramento via ACE or San Francisco via Valley Link and then BART.
That would plug Manteca, Lathrop, and Ripon directly into a rail system where you can literally catch a train at the new Lathrop station being built on the Sharpe Depot property with no transfers or just one to reach Los Angeles, San Jose, Sacramento, or San Francisco.
At the same time, it means a significant jump in rail traffic through the three cities with the biggest impacts being on Manteca with its 11 at-grade crossings.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com