(The following editorial appeared on the Tracy Press website on February 6.)
TRACY, Calif. — Altamont Commuter Express trains haven’t been able to deliver the dependable mass transit system that Tracy commuters deserve.
But we aren’t taking a poke at ACE, whose trains provide an inexpensive and far less stressful trip between home and job for thousands of San Joaquin County residents each workday. We’re pointing fingers at Union Pacific Railroad, the owner of the track that ACE leases to operate trains on four times a day.
Between November 2006 and September 2007, ACE trains were late 23 percent of the time — defined as any train arriving more than five minutes behind schedule. The rate has been better this winter, with delays of about one in 10 trains.
Delays usually are for faulty track signals or UP freight trains blocking the line. UP is supposed to give ACE trains priority if the on-time rate is less than 95 percent, but it hasn’t. That’s understandable, as moving freight by rail is big business for UP — or, as Brent Ives, Tracy’s mayor and a San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission member, explains, “(T)he problem is we’re a very, very small fish in this big pond called Union Pacific.”
The obvious solution is for the rail commission to acquire its own track. It’s eyeing the old Southern Pacific rail line that runs through downtown Tracy, and there have been discussions with the owner, UP. But UP has the leverage; it holds sort of a monopoly on the tracks and can raise the price as interest from ACE grows. Rail commissioner Scott Haggerty, an Alameda County supervisor, uses the word “extortion” to explain the slow negotiations.
Haggerty wants the federal government to run interference for the rail commission and be its rich uncle.
There is another solution: Ride the interests of Bay Area and northern San Joaquin Valley rail agencies, since an on-time and expanded ACE would be to their benefit. Urge the agencies to acquire the old Western Pacific Railroad right-of-way over the Altamont. That barren path is owned by Haggerty’s Alameda County, so the biggest expense would be laying a new track and tying the line into the Bay Area Rapid Transit system that should extend to Greenville Road in Livermore.
Then, an on-time ACE can do what it does best on its own track — take commuters to their jobs and back home.