(The following story by Mike Martinez and Paul Burgarino appeared on the Tri-Valley Herald website on August 10.)
TRACY, Calif. — It’s been a longtime goal of many to bring trains to downtown Tracy.
It’s a campaign issue for some seeking a seat on the City Council, and the city is building a $12 million multimodal station with designs on moving the Altamont Commuter Express from Linne Road to the Bowtie area.
But recently a kink in the line has been found.
The Union Pacific Railway has quietly been developing plans to resurrect the mostly dormant Mococo line, which runs from Martinez to Tracy, with an estimated average of 10 to 15 freight trains a day, to their final destination in Roseville.
During slow economic periods, as few as three trains a day would use the line. But in better times, UP officials estimate running as many as 40.
Union Pacific decided to reactivate the line to transport consumer freight because goods manufacturers have been utilizing railroads as a cheaper means of transporting goods given rising fuel prices. Also other, more convenient, lines for transporting freight are locked in to carrying trains for commuter use, said Zoe Richmond, a Union Pacific spokeswoman.
In Tracy, the 2-mile long trains would render the multimodal station virtually useless for passenger trains before it is even completed, clog traffic on major thoroughfares already overburdened with cars, and create a potential disaster for emergency responders, city officials said.
Mayor Brent Ives, who also serves as chairman of the San Joaquin Council of Governments, said he directed city staff to meet with UP in an effort to determine the impacts on the city.
Ives ticked off six major arteries where the trains would potentially snarl traffic — Grant Line Road, Corral Hollow Road, 11th Street, Tracy Boulevard, Central Avenue and MacArthur Drive — where a need for a grade-separation crossing would be created at a cost of about $35 million for each over- or under-crossing.
He said it would be “terrible” if there were a dozen trains running through Tracy every day.
“We’ve laid out for them the clear impacts of going through Tracy on the Mococo line again,” Ives said. “They’ve been understanding and listened, but they say if they have to do it, they’ll do it.”
“UP doesn’t care who they impact,” Ives said. “it’s their line. The Bowtie and the tracks belong to them. People will tell you we’ve got to do something about it, and I’ve talked to a number of people about it, including Congressman Jerry McNerney.
“We haven’t heard (what UP is going to do), and they’re not obligated to tell us.”
The Mococo rail line was last used for carrying freight in the late 1970s. Since then, housing developments have sprung up along the tracks from Antioch, Oakley, Brentwood and Byron in East Contra Costa County to Mountain House and Tracy in San Joaquin County.
Despite the rampant growth, the unused railway line sat idle, retained just in case it was needed again in the future. That need resurfaced a few years ago with a resurgence in overseas companies using rail instead of trucks to ship goods from the Port of Oakland.
Plans to start up the train line are “in their infancy,” UP spokeswoman Richmond said, meaning a lot of track improvements are needed to be made, and there hasn’t been much community notice to this point.
Last year, Union Pacific executives decided to capitalize on the change in philosophy and increased volume at the port, including plans for a new terminal at the UP Oakland Railport and expansion of a terminal in Lathrop, according to documents.
But the desired route to move goods from Oakland to Sacramento had too many commuter trains on it because of the Capitol Corridor line. Federal railroad regulations say only a certain number of trains can run at one time, and the railroad couldn’t just swap out the commuter trains to run freight because of a contractual obligation with the state, an agreement made when railroads were fading as the favored way to move goods, Richmond said.
Then the decision was made to once again use the Mococo line, and UP officials recently began an inventory of the rails, trestle bridges, older utility lines and rights of way along the track to see what repairs were needed.
“It’s unfortunate to the people who live around it, but it’s a business decision that had to be made,” Richmond said.
Richmond said the trains would not only remove 300 big rigs from the roads, but they’re also more environmentally friendly, getting the equivalent of about 780 miles to the gallon.
The line travels east through Bay Point, Pittsburg and Antioch, then turns and runs southeast through Oakley, Brentwood, Byron and into Tracy — a more circuitous route than Union Pacific would prefer.
The railway technically wasn’t abandoned, Richmond said, adding the railroad could use the line if there was an emergency elsewhere. However, tracks near Mountain House were full of abandoned, graffiti-filled boxcars that were left for storage.
The San Joaquin Regional Rails Commission, which operates the Altamont Commuter Express and shares tracks owned by UP over the Altamont, doesn’t believe the increased freight volume on the Mococo line wouldn’t have an impact on ACE service, spokesman Thomas Reeves said.
“We really don’t know what’s going on with it,” Reeves said. “It’s inappropriate for us to comment on the lines because we don’t have plans to operate on them.”
Tracy was founded as a transit hub connecting three major railways in 1878, according to the Tracy Historical Society. In the 1970s, Tracy became home to thee major freeways that converge to form an easily locatable triangle on maps. The transportation hub concept was embraced recently by the Tracy City Council when it adopted the slogan “Think inside the Triangle” and by the recent relocation of several new warehouse distribution centers.
Tracy City Manager Leon Churchill has had some conversations with UP officials, but he said they haven’t been “very forthcoming” and characterized the talks as “disappointing.”
Considering Tracy’s past, Churchill said, the residents should have some appreciation for the trains, but only to a point.
“We can’t have an appreciation for something that is going to disrupt commerce, emergency services and the daily lives of residents,” Churchill said.
“One or two or three trains a day, perhaps the community has a chance to adjust. But at some point, and I don’t know exactly what that is, it would get to where the community has to dramatically change how it functions to cope, and that is not in Tracy’s best interest.”