California’s Real “Train to Nowhere”

The linked city-journal.org article says "... VTA will become a leader of a different sort when it closes the Almaden branch of its system at the end of this year". The preceding article passage links to a vta.org page which has been removed, making determination of which line(s) have actually closed difficult.

At first I thought this referred to the Light Rail line that runs down the center of Hwy 85, but this is called the Santa Theresa (current and historical maps show it in blue) line and according to vta.org it remains in operation.

What has closed is a 2.2 mile, 2-station branch line[1] from the "Ohlone/Chynoweth" station (on the blue line) to the Almaden station, with one intermediate station, Oakridge, also closing. This branch line is not shown on any current VTA map that I can find (I have a previous map which shows this short branch line). It has apparently been a candidate for closure multiple times over the past decade, and was finally closed 2 days ago.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohlone/Chynoweth%E2%80%93Almad...

edit: clarify magnitude of closed line