Rail lines between Union City and San Jose

ACE and Capitol Corridor follow a direct route between the East Bay and Silicon Valley job sites. High tech industry is concentrated in north San Jose, Santa Clara (around the Great America Amtrak/ACE station), and Sunnyvale north of the Caltrain line and west of highway 880. The proposed San Jose BART extension, like BART's SFO-Millbrae line, would be slower due to its roundabout routing and several extra stops.

Amtrak's Capitol Corridor already offers service of comparable speed to Caltrain's Baby Bullet. Trains between Oakland and Santa Clara/Great America make the 41-mile trip on schedules ranging from 54 to 61 minutes. The Capitol trains follow a direct route to the heart of Silicon Valley. To make the same trip via BART, commuters would have to endure several additional stops and transfer to light rail in Milpitas. The BART line would pass east of where most job sites are located, and then loop around through downtown San Jose on its way to Santa Clara.

See the previous verion of this map, from 1999.

Last updated: January 17, 2005