The planned Ceres station for the Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) train is now in its preliminary design stage.
City Manager Tom Westbrook said he was updated recently by Dan Leavett, manager of Regional Initiatives for the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission.
“They said that they would be contacting me in the next couple of weeks to a month to sit down and talk about the preliminary design,” said Westbrook. “Once I have that I’ll probably just shoot it in front of the council so that they can see what that is going to look like.”
Talk of the ACE train line being extended to Modesto, Ceres, Turlock and ultimately Merced has been taking place since 2014. Currently the closest ACE train access to Ceres is the Manteca/Lathrop station although there are stations in Stockton and Tracy. The ACE extension to Ceres looked more promising after the passage of Measure L, the half-cent sales tax hike in Stanislaus County, and the state’s passage of SB 1. Key in passing the $52 billion transportation plan, Senate Bill 1, was then state Senator Anthony Cannella who wrestled a pledge of $400 million to the ACE project extension to Merced.
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