Valley Link — from the perspective of two non-profits — is the equivalent of an illegal bait and switch.

It is essentially one of the claims made by the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association as well as the Transportation Solutions and Defense Fund in an 83-page  lawsuit filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court in a bid to stop the project.

The Tri-Valley-San Joaquin Valley Regional  Rail Authority is seeking to build a $3.6 billion commuter rail line to connect the proposed North Lathrop Altamont Corridor Express station at the site of Sharpe Depot with the BART station in Dublin-Pleasanton with the goal to get it up and running by 2028.

Key points of the lawsuit include:

*The Alameda County Transportation Commission illegally shifted $400 million in 2013 Measure BB sales tax funds — that county’s equivalent of San Joaquin County’s Measure K — from the long-promised BART to Livermore extension.

*The ACTC has exceeded its legal mandate.

*The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is illegally funding Valley Link with bridge tolls that are supposed to pay for seismic retrofits.

The ACTC, in shifting the funding, contended the BART extension was too cost prohibitive and that Valley Link would be an effective way of further reducing congestion on the Interstate 580 corridor.

In a press release Monday, the litigants noted the largest project cost element is the demolition and relocation of the I-580 freeway to make room for the tracks. They pointed out more than  a billion dollars would be wasted tearing up 11 miles of recently built freeway, adding no transportation capacity in itself.

“We want to nip this terrible project in the bud, before it metastasizes into a mini-version of the High-Speed Rail boondoggle,” said David Schonbrunn, President of the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund.

The Tri Valley-San Joaquim Valley authority was created by the California Legislator to close the gap between ACE and BART.

Litigants note what was a 5-mile gap in Livermore between Ace and the Pleasanton BART station has resulted in “mission creep” with the 42-mile proposed line from North Lathrop to Pleasanton-Dublin.

There is already $750 million set aside in a bid  to leverage federal funds for the Valley Link project that is now going through environmental review.

The move to make the ACE-BART connection in Lathrop is the linchpin of an effort to create a rail transit network connecting Merced, San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, Manteca, Lathrop, Ripon, River Islands, Stockton, Modesto, Turlock, Ceres, and Elk Grove  along with other communities along the ACE, BART and Valley Link systems is the Union Pacific Railroad’s Lathrop Wye.

It is where the North Lathrop ACE transfer station will be built complete with parking ultimately for 3,400 cars just off Lathrop Road in eastern Lathrop near the Manteca city limits.

ACE service to Sacramento and San Jose from Ceres will start in 2023 with stops in Manteca, Ripon, and Modesto.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com