Altamont Corridor Express

But if you look very carefully, the OMF is suspiciously juxtaposed with another railroad track, part of the Union Pacific Tracy subdivision.

That actually does kind of continue in the direction that the DMU is looking to go, and if you zoom out a little bit further, it actually goes for quite a distance further beyond the highway through a few other communities that are not currently served by rail service, all the way to possibly even Tracy, which is served by rail service, specifically the Altamont Corridor Express between San Jose and Stockton.

And so we finally have the secret reason why EBART exists in the first place.

It was exceptionally weird to build a two-station subway extension with a separate operations and maintenance facility, separate mode of power, and even different gauge from the mainline subways, such that there is no way that you can convert it in the future to a subway line of its own.

But you also have the very large Muni light rail system running all throughout San Francisco itself, San Jose has a light rail system of its own, the much more bland and highly suburbanized VTA light rail.

There's the Altamont Corridor Express, which goes from San Jose all the way into Stockton and may actually be part of a future expansion of service, the Valley Link, I believe.

You have Amtrak's Capital Corridor, which runs from mostly Oakland to Sacramento and actually kind of provides some local connectivity of its own in the Berkeley area.

VinBart itself also has a weird little extension, which spoilers, we'll be talking about next time.