Northern California

By 2033. Bay Area riders will be able to take the Amtrak Gold Runner from Oakland or the Altamont Corridor Express service from San Jose and other East Bay locations to connect to Merced, where California’s High-Speed Rail initial operating segment begins. Extensive partnerships are in place to ensure these future connections provide seamlessly timed rail-to-rail transfers. The Authority has proposed extending rail operations from the San Francisco Bay Area to Southern California by 2038 and identified the strategies and funding that will make those operations possible. Like most large projects, the California High-Speed Rail system is being built in phases.

The project has created more than 16,000 labor jobs since construction began in 2015. In the Northern California region, 345 certified small businesses are working on the project, the most of any region in the state. In Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, the project has spurred $2.5 billion of economic output and logged $1.1 billion of labor income between July 2006-June 2024.

Please refer to the 2026 Business Plan for the latest plans for the region.

In addition to connecting the major regions of California, the Authority seeks to connect to existing rail and transit services so that the system can be accessible from many different places. View the NorCal Rail Connectivity Map.

Caltrain and the Authority have electrified the Bay Area corridor, which will allow for both operators to share tracks in a blended system. The service will ultimately run to the Salesforce Transit Center once it is connected to the existing rail corridor, replacing Caltrain’s 4th and King Station as the northern terminus for high-speed rail trains. Successful implementation of the Gilroy to Southern California scenarios will depend on a coordinated state solution to access and improve the Union Pacific rail line between Gilroy and San Jose.

The Authority’s goal is to limit, where feasible, the extent to which high-speed rail presents an additional barrier to an animal’s natural movement and improve movement where barriers currently exist. Wildlife movement areas such as Coyote Valley, Soap Lake Floodplain, Pacheco Pass, and the Grasslands Ecological Area are located along the Northern California alignment between San Francisco and Merced. In the Bay Area, the Authority is coordinating with four stakeholder groups to advance the design and building of wildlife crossings to ensure safe wildlife passages: The Nature Conservancy, the Peninsula Open Space Trust, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, and the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Agency.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority is committed to small, disabled, disadvantaged, and diverse businesses playing a major role in building the statewide high-speed rail project. This commitment will inspire business growth, job creation, and workforce development opportunities while building the vitality of California’s high-speed rail program. View more on our Small Business Program page.