ACE train lets Californians move around more easily

As the ACE pulls into the Santa Clara station, the conductor begins apologizing for his train.

“I’m sorry, but this is not the Amtrak!” he bellows across the platform “And this is not Caltrain! If you want the Caltrain to San Francisco, do not board this train!”

This warning is useful: The ACE uses some of the same tracks but doesn’t go the same places as Amtrak and Caltrain. It’s also fitting: ACE is important to California because of what it is not.

It doesn’t operate around the clock, like Los Angeles’ Metro. It’s not touristfriendly, like San Diego’s trolley, and it doesn’t connect our fanciest precincts, like BART. It’s not expensive to construct, like the high-speed rail project. And it’s not losing riders, like so much transit these days.

Here’s what the ACE is: a real and unappreciated story of successful transportation in California. And it is expanding in ways that — if Californians can move past the brain-dead populist politics surrounding the gas tax — point to a future in which Californians move around more easily.

The ACE — for Altamont Corridor Express — is modest. Its service consists of just four round-trips each weekday — four trains from Stockton to San Jose, via the East Bay, in the morning, and four trains back at the end of the day. The ACE train is pure commuter rail, bridging the mismatch between where the jobs are in the Bay Area — Silicon Valley — and where people can afford homes — the East Bay and northern San Joaquin Valley.

ACE started 20 years ago with just two daily round trips. But the past six years have seen the ACE train double its ridership to more than 5,000 people per day and 1.3 million people annually. At a time when transit use has been flat, ACE is one of the fastest-growing train lines in the country.

ACE’s success suggests that regional commuter rail lines — like Metrolink in Southern California, or Caltrain in the Bay Area — might be enhanced and connected more efficiently to other transit and to high-speed rail in the future.

In the years ahead, ACE will expand in two different directions at once. In the 2020s, one new branch of the service will head up to Sacramento. The other branch will extend south to Modesto and eventually Merced.

This initiative will link the Bay Area, the Capital Region, and the San Joaquin Valley while putting ACE at the two most important new transportation hubs of 21st century California.

The first is San Jose’s Diridon Station, which links together Caltrain, Amtrak, and Santa Clara’s VTA light-rail system. High-speed rail’s first phase would end there, and the station is next door to the site of Google’s future “village.” The second hub is downtown Merced, a future high-speed rail stop that is growing with the expansion of UC Merced.

Unfortunately, this second extension — to Merced — is endangered because it is funded by the controversial gas tax increase that Proposition 6, on November’s ballot, would repeal.

One recent afternoon, I boarded the train at its origin, Diridon in San Jose, and marveled at the crowds that embarked at the next two stations. The first, Santa Clara station, has a shuttle bus to the terminals at San Jose’s airport, while the second, Great America, was mobbed with employees of tech firms that run buses between their offices and the ACE.

Their entry left the train completely full. At the Pleasanton station, new riders, who connect there with BART by shuttle bus, squeezed on.

The train emptied out over four stops — at Livermore, Vasco Road, Tracy, and Lathrop/Manteca. ACE riders told me that the traffic jams getting into station parking lots are the most difficult part of the trip. Another complaint I heard was the cost of tickets (monthly passes exceed $300). But ACE is still cheaper than driving and parking in Silicon Valley.

My train was mostly empty on the last leg to Stockton’s downtown. From there, I would walk to dinner at Angelina’s Spaghetti House. And I didn’t have to hurry — ACE had arrived five minutes early.

Let’s hope California’s rail future has similar timing.

Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle 2005 ACE trains run from Stockton to San Jose via the East Bay and bridge the mismatch between where the jobs are in the Bay Area — Silicon Valley — and where people can afford homes — the East Bay and northern San Joaquin Valley.