Valley Link train aims to connect San Joaquin County to Bay Area, town hall discusses project
With San Joaquin County experiencing growth, there are plans in the works to connect the county to the Bay Area with a new train: the Valley Link.
A town hall in Tracy on Wednesday evening aimed to inform the public about recent developments with the project and to seek input, including conducting live surveys to see how far people's commutes are and which cities in San Joaquin County they live in.
Robert Rickman, San Joaquin County supervisor and Valley Link chairman, said the project can bring more jobs and help with air quality.
Rickman said the aspect of this whole project is to help give families more time together and less time commuting.
"San Joaquin County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state," Rickman said. "Our population keeps rising. As that does, so does our traffic. It takes folks sometimes hours to get to work each morning and (that) even can be more time if there's a traffic accident, and so on."
Rickman said when he was born in Tracy more than 50 years ago, it had 15,000 people. Now, it's close to 100,000. He said the county is "very close" to 800,000 people and that reports indicate by 2050, the countywide population will be closing in on around 900,000 to a million people.
It's why the Valley Link, a new 42-mile train project, is all-aboard with officials planning on connecting all eight San Joaquin cities through the ACE Rail over the Altamont Pass to Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), allowing commuters and families to get anywhere in the Bay Area without the traffic.
"The community wants this," Rickman said. "The community, our residents, want to spend less time on the road and more time with their family."
That includes Lathrop resident Suresh Govindaraj, who lives at the massive River Islands community.
"I hope we get to see this train in the next few years," Govindaraj said.
Govindaraj went to Wednesday's town hall excited to learn more about the project.
"I don't commute daily, but sometimes, when I have some doctor appointment or something in Livermore or Dublin, it takes a long time to go there. It's almost like two times the actual time it would take," Govindaraj said.
Govindaraj said this train will be "very useful" for his family.
Assemblymember Rhodesia Ranson, serving California's 13th Assembly District, told CBS Sacramento that over the last 20 years, at least 30,000 more people have moved to San Joaquin County.
"There are so many houses in construction right now, not just in Tracy, not just in Lathrop, but throughout the Central Valley, and they're all going to be coming through this corridor. It's only going to get worse if we don't do something about it," Ranson said.
Ranson said Senate Bill 125, passed in 2023, allocates funding to the project, and they want to ensure the Council of Governments uses the funds in a way that supports the project.
"As people continue to move to the Central Valley for housing affordability, a lot of their lives are in the Bay Area. Their jobs are there, their health care is there," Ranson said. "It's where they go back to visit family and get things done. So, we want to make sure they can connect faster."
Rickman said the project could begin construction in 2028 with hopes to have it completed by 2030.