Sacramento Transportation

[wburg]

80 between Fairfield and Sacramento is a stop-and-go mess every holiday weekend for the past 20-30 years.

To get 150 MPH speeds, you'd need an entirely new rail alignment between Oakland and Sacramento--Union Pacific owns the track, and they're in the freight business. Amtrak Northeast Corridor can only manage 150 MPH tracks because they own the right of way and freight trains don't run on it. That's a large chunk of change, for track that would be just short of high-speed-rail alignment. The inexpensive part runs through swamps and floodplain, the expensive part through Contra Costa County and Alameda County runs through mountains and some of the most expensive real estate in the state (and if you think Sacramento's neighborhoods can make noise when a project comes through, you never saw the East Bay in action.) And then there's that whole "build another bridge" issue. Considering that Amtrak's east coast plan for Acella service from Boston-Washington is estimated to cost about $124 billion, a trip four times as long, figure around $30-40 billion for a comparably structured Sacramento-East Bay alignment.

There are plans underway to expand Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin service, adding a third track to Roseville and increasing the total number of trains. Capitol Corridor isn't fast, but it's not that slow--and with Wi-Fi on the train, a business commuter can get a lot of work done to and from their destination. And it's already less expensive than driving to San Francisco solo, including gas, tolls, and parking. Adding more trains helps some of that throughput. Maybe not the level of improvement you're hoping for, but an incremental step that will facilitate more commuter traffic.

In the long run, it might be simpler to facilitate stronger data communication links between Sacramento and the Bay Area--making it easier to telecommute from Sacramento to San Francisco and save some of that transit time entirely.