The Valley Metro Rail Board of Directors approved a base five-year contract with Boston-based Alternate Concepts Inc. (ACI) to provide rail transportation services for the 26-mile system in Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa. With this contract, ACI continues to manage, coordinate, and control all activities related to the operations of the service.

ACI began service operations for Valley Metro Rail prior to the opening in December 2008 and has expanded from the original 20 miles to include six new miles of extensions in 2015 and 2016.

Rail service is provided 365 days per year operating up to 22 hours per day. There were 15.6 million rail passengers served in Fiscal Year 2016 with an on-time performance of 93.4%.