Maria Gonzalez, a Merced resident and teacher, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018. She developed seizures that made it unsafe for her to drive. For years, her husband took her to Stanford Medical Center, nearly two hours away, for the specialized care she cannot receive in Merced. After he passed away from cancer in October 2025, Maria was left relying on friends and public transportation to make those critical medical trips.
That is why Maria believed in the promise of a downtown high-speed rail station. For her, it was never just about a train stop. It represented the possibility of regaining her independence and access to the essential healthcare she needs.
Now, that promise is in jeopardy. The California High-Speed Rail Authority is proposing to move Merced’s long-planned downtown station to a rural site near Highway 99 and East Mission Avenue. The proposal breaks from years of community planning, raises serious concerns about transparency and accountability, and would violate state law requiring the first operating segment to connect Bakersfield and downtown Merced.
Stories like Maria’s are why Merced spent years building a vision for High-Speed Rail. Merced doesn’t have a vision problem. It has a commitment problem.
Merced residents, business owners, educators, community organizations, and local governments spent over a decade shaping a future with a downtown high-speed rail station — through public meetings, planning efforts, environmental reviews, and local and state funding and legislation.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has asked our city council to support the move. And our city seems poised to make a bad deal — one that would undermine most of the benefits that a high-speed rail station could bring to Merced, from economic revitalization for our downtown, to easy access to public transportation, to increased revenue for our small businesses.
We elected our city council members to fight for our interests. There is simply no reason why the city should concede now. The High-Speed Rail Authority would need to convince lawmakers in California to change state law before it could even move the station – a process that likely wouldn’t begin until next year. A new administration will be elected at the end of the year that may bring fresh ideas or leadership to the authority. The city is jumping through hoops, responding to arbitrary deadlines, and selling out our interests with no strategic reason to do so. This is simply bad negotiating.
We appreciate the recent Merced Focus opinion piece on Merced speaking with a singular voice. However, we’d argue we already have. The question before Merced’s elected officials is not “What is our vision?” The answer to that question is already on the record. The question is whether they will defend it.
For too long, the Central Valley has been systematically excluded from the investments and priorities that reflect the real issues impacting our communities. While we are often praised as the vital workforce powering the state’s thriving economy, we are consistently left behind when it comes to the infrastructure and resources that would truly uplift us. The recent disinvestment and deprioritization of the high-speed rail stations in the Central Valley is yet another example of this trend. Countless small businesses invested heavily in our downtown, anchored by the promise of revitalization and a prosperous future tied to high-speed rail. It is a profound failure of leadership that our city and county officials appear willing to accept this abandonment, once again sacrificing the Central Valley’s future for the convenience of coastal cities. We deserve better than to be an afterthought in California’s progress.
The Merced City Council, the Merced County Board of Supervisors, our state legislators, and community leaders must stand together and defend a vision that our community spent years creating. And the California Legislature should make clear that they will not amend SB 198 to accommodate this plan. The High-Speed Rail Authority must return with a business plan that complies with the law and captures the vision that communities have been waiting for more than a decade to see. Because Maria is still waiting. And so are the community members who showed up to hearings, the small business owners who invested downtown, and the families who planned their lives around a downtown station.
Merced doesn’t need more vision statements. We need leaders who are willing to defend the vision we already have — and we need our city council to speak up for Merced.
Leticia Valencia is Director of Formation and Angela Matthews is Merced County Community Organizer at Faith in the Valley. Faith in the Valley is a multi-faith, multi-racial grassroots organization of congregations, community members and young people in eight counties across the Central Valley that builds leadership and power among historically excluded communities to act together for institutional and systemic change. Our mission is to unlock the power of people to put faith into action to advance racial and economic justice.