DowneasterPassenger
Lead Service Attendant
I've been dying to find an excuse to ride the ACE train since moving to the Central Valley 4 years ago.
It seems like every time I thought about trying it for fun, it was on a weekend, and the train only runs M-F. Finally this week I got a meeting in Mountain View that gave me an excuse to ride this train, and check out the VTA light rail as well!
The other downside is that even the last AM train has a 6:40 AM departure from Stockton, so you gotta get up early to catch this one.
The morning westbound train got quite full by the time we departed Tracy. It seemed like a lot of regular commuters and people who knew each other.
The views of the Altamont pass were spectacular. It's a great advertisement for commuter rail when you see all the traffic jammed on Interstate 580 over the pass. The rail route snakes around and is quite different than the path of I-580. As this is one of the proposed routes for the eventual California HSR, the ACE train gives you a bit of a feeling for what the future might be like.
I disembarked at Great America station. I overheard two people separately asking in conversations, "Is Great America a city?" The signage to the VTA light rail was lacking. A helpful gentleman told me to walk up the stairs (no ADA accesss?) to the overpass and then down to the Lick Mill VTA station.
The VTA light rail to Mountain View takes about half an hour and 14 stops. You pass by a lot of Silicon Valley companies like Motorola, Yahoo, Lockheed-Martin. There are some cool views of NASA Ames and the giant airship hangars there. The VTA goes into a trench for a while, I suppose to avoid being in the path of airplanes landing.
As my destination was Mountain View Caltrain station, I could have taken the ACE train all the way to San Jose and then Caltrain two stops to Mountain View, or the alternative I chose of Great America to Mountain View on the VTA light rail.
I got to Mountain View two hours before my lunch appointment. Walked around downtown, checked out a couple of coffee shops for the wifi. Downtown is accessible from the station by walking. My host took me to lunch at a fairly nice place right by the station called Xanh and sat outside.
After the meeting he gave me a ride back to Great America ("is it a city?") and I slept a little bit on the ACE train home.
It seems like every time I thought about trying it for fun, it was on a weekend, and the train only runs M-F. Finally this week I got a meeting in Mountain View that gave me an excuse to ride this train, and check out the VTA light rail as well!
The other downside is that even the last AM train has a 6:40 AM departure from Stockton, so you gotta get up early to catch this one.
The morning westbound train got quite full by the time we departed Tracy. It seemed like a lot of regular commuters and people who knew each other.
The views of the Altamont pass were spectacular. It's a great advertisement for commuter rail when you see all the traffic jammed on Interstate 580 over the pass. The rail route snakes around and is quite different than the path of I-580. As this is one of the proposed routes for the eventual California HSR, the ACE train gives you a bit of a feeling for what the future might be like.
I disembarked at Great America station. I overheard two people separately asking in conversations, "Is Great America a city?" The signage to the VTA light rail was lacking. A helpful gentleman told me to walk up the stairs (no ADA accesss?) to the overpass and then down to the Lick Mill VTA station.
The VTA light rail to Mountain View takes about half an hour and 14 stops. You pass by a lot of Silicon Valley companies like Motorola, Yahoo, Lockheed-Martin. There are some cool views of NASA Ames and the giant airship hangars there. The VTA goes into a trench for a while, I suppose to avoid being in the path of airplanes landing.
As my destination was Mountain View Caltrain station, I could have taken the ACE train all the way to San Jose and then Caltrain two stops to Mountain View, or the alternative I chose of Great America to Mountain View on the VTA light rail.
I got to Mountain View two hours before my lunch appointment. Walked around downtown, checked out a couple of coffee shops for the wifi. Downtown is accessible from the station by walking. My host took me to lunch at a fairly nice place right by the station called Xanh and sat outside.
After the meeting he gave me a ride back to Great America ("is it a city?") and I slept a little bit on the ACE train home.
