What If Reno Had a Real Commuter Train to USA Parkway? Not a Trolly.
Reno has a transportation problem. I-80 is backed up from Reno to US-Parkway, and people are complaining. Politicians talk about solutions, but do they understand the situation?
Dec 29, 2025
Every weekday morning and evening, thousands of people drive from Reno, Sparks, and the North Valleys out to the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC). That commute runs through a single fragile corridor — I-80 and Truckee Canyon — that regularly becomes a bottleneck due to accidents, snow, wind, construction, or simple volume. When it breaks, it doesn’t just slow down; it stops.
So what do politicians do? Some propose more highway lanes on I-80. Some suggest a light rail. Both of these ideas are $1 billion-plus in cost and would take a decade to implement, if at all. Light rail is not feasible because it requires new track, and there is nowhere to build it between Reno and USA Parkway, and it is designed for in-town use, not regional commuting.
But there is another model — one that already exists, works, and happens to match Reno’s situation almost perfectly. It’s called commuter rail.
This is the ACE Train. It is a commuter train. It is designed for 25-mile nonstop commuter routes, such as Reno to the USA Parkway. I rode it for years from Pleasanton to North San Jose. Its entire route is Stockton to San Jose.
The ACE Train: A Working Example
In the Bay Area and Central Valley, there is a commuter train called the Altamont Corridor Express, or ACE. It runs from Stockton to downtown San Jose — about 86 miles — serving people who live in one region and work in another.
It’s not light rail. It’s not high-speed rail. It’s not a downtown streetcar. It’s a commuter train that can run on the existing Union Pacific tracks.
When I rode it, ACE ran three trains in the morning and three in the afternoon. Each train was four to six cars long, using Bombardier bi-level commuter coaches, pulled by a standard diesel locomotive. The trip from Pleasanton, where I lived, to North San Jose, where I worked, was 25 miles and took about 45 minutes. That is the same distance as Reno to the USA Parkway.
ACE uses existing Union Pacific freight rail corridors. The public agencies didn’t build a brand-new rail line, which is not possible from Reno to the USA Parkway. They negotiated access, paid for sidings and signaling, bought trains, built modest stations, and ran a service that targeted one particular problem: long-distance regional commuting.
Reno’s Commute Is Structurally the same.
Reno’s situation has the same ingredients that ACE had:
• A concentrated employment center (TRIC).
• A long, linear commute corridor.
• A fragile highway route prone to disruption.
• Existing freight rail infrastructure.
• Peak-direction demand.
What Reno does not have is a governance structure willing to treat transportation as a regional system instead of a collection of disconnected projects. We have politicians who like to trot out vague ideas that have not been thought out.
Rail already runs here. Freight trains run through Reno and Sparks, past USA Parkway, and on to Fernley and beyond every day. The physical infrastructure exists.
The corridor exists. The demand exists. What doesn’t exist is the institutional will or understanding of what can work.
Why Commuter Rail Is Not Light Rail
A lot of people talk about “light rail” when they mean “a train that carries people.” Alexis Hill likes to talk about building a light rail. That’s a category mistake.
Light rail is designed for short urban trips with many stops — downtown to Midtown, campus to stadium, neighborhood to neighborhood. It is slow by design and expensive to build in new corridors.
The Reno–TRIC problem is not an urban circulation problem. It’s a regional commute problem.
The correct tool is commuter rail — exactly like ACE, Metrolink, Sounder, or Caltrain — running on existing freight corridors, with limited stops and schedules tuned to work shifts.
Trying to solve a regional commute with urban transit tools is how you end up with billion-dollar projects that don’t move the people who need moving.
This is theVTA light rail. I used to get off the ACE train and ride VTA the rest of the way to work. It works well in San Jose and the surrounding area. It is not designed for high-speed commuting on a 25-mile non-stop route like Reno to TRIC.
What It Would Take
An ACE-style Reno–TRIC commuter service would not require:
• New rail corridors
• Tunneling through the canyon
• Massive land acquisition
• Or futuristic technology
It would require:
• Negotiating track rights with Union Pacific
• Adding passing sidings where needed
• Building two or three simple stations
• Buying a small fleet of standard commuter trains
• Setting up a regional authority to operate it
That’s not trivial. But it is possible.
The estimated capital cost for something like this is likely in the low hundreds of millions of dollars — not billions — and annual operating costs are low compared to alternatives.
If Reno wanted an ACE-style ‘3 trains in / 3 trains out’ Reno-to-USA Parkway service using UP track, a plausible cost range is $175M–$350M in startup capital and $8M–$15M/year to operate, with Union Pacific’s required capacity upgrades and access terms being the most significant swing factor.
The Real Obstacle Is Political, Not Technical
Union Pacific controls the corridor. That means that local government has to either pay, negotiate, or legislate to gain access. It requires coordination between Washoe County, Storey County, Lyon County, RTC, NDOT, and the state.
Why This Matters
Every additional lane of I-80 induces more driving, more sprawl, more fragility, and more dependence on a single corridor that keeps failing. Widening the freeway could cost $1 billion and take a decade.
A commuter rail line would give the region what it currently lacks —an alternative way to move people that is less expensive and faster to get done.
It would make commuting more predictable, not just faster. It would reduce the region’s dependence on an endlessly widening highway that will never be wide enough.
The Question Is Not “Can We Do This?”
We know we can. Other regions with the same density, the same politics, and the same freight rail constraints have done it.
The question is whether Reno is willing to try a model that fits the problem it has. The ACE train exists. It runs every day. It carries thousands of people who would otherwise be on clogged highways.
Reno doesn’t need to invent anything. It just needs to decide to build what already works and stop chasing trolley dreams. Next time that your favorite politician suggests some great idea to fix the transportation problem, ask them for details.