The passage of California Proposition 1A (2008) set in motion a complete reconstruction of the railroad between San Jose and San Francisco. This blog exists to discuss compatibility between HSR and Caltrain, integration issues, and the impact on adjoining communities.
Caltrain is working on their level boarding roadmap. If their recent work on grade separations is anything to go by, the capture of the agency by the layers of consultants belonging to the transit industrial complex is likely to result in a gold-plated mega-project approach to delivering level boarding in the late 2030s, where each station platform must be reconstructed from the ground up using…
Components of trip time. Electrification only improved time in motion. Photos by Mliu92, Evan0512, SaarPro. Marco Chitti recently penned a great piece about Why Speed Matters , a critique of Toronto's recently opened and glacially slow Finch West light rail. It echoes some of the themes that have infused discussions about how best to improve Caltrain, and what to focus on next. Electrification had…
Here is a punch list that Caltrain could address to improve the passenger experience. Some of these items have been discussed before, but they are gathered here as an attractive display of low-hanging fruit. 1. Eliminate step deploy/retract delays The timetable is the product . Why spend billions on saving time in motion only to waste a portion of that at rest? The EMU step mechanism wastes…
The comment section from the last post has overflowed, so here is an open thread to keep the discussions going. Some noteworthy developments fished out of the previous comments: Caltrain ridership is rising quickly, with June total ridership up a stunning +75% from one year ago; stay tuned to their ridership dashboard for upcoming July numbers. This steep increase is likely driven by a combination…
Today, Caltrain is hardly recognizable with regular and punctual half-hour service all day, every day, using swift and comfortable trains that are the envy of any North American regional rail system. This unequivocal success sets the agency on the best possible trajectory out of the pandemic doldrums. Unfortunately, that won't be enough. Most of what is still wrong with Caltrain is concentrated in…
The comment section from the last post is about to overflow, so here is an open thread to keep the discussions going. Some noteworthy developments fished out of the previous comments: Caltrain's corridor-wide grade separation strategy continues to evolve towards its final form, with a prioritized list of grade separations due for adoption this summer. Of note, grade separations are now allowed 2%…
Some good news: Caltrain is working on a level boarding plan, as documents requested under the Public Records Act attest. Their " Level Boarding Roadmap: Technical Task Force Platform Report " dated April 2024 is a reasonably well-written document that discusses how the system might be converted to level boarding using the European 550 mm platform standard. After reading it, three questions arise:…
A complication in Caltrain's coming transition to level boarding is found in the train's bathroom, an amenity that requires equal access for passengers with reduced mobility under ADA regulations. During the procurement and design phase of the EMUs, the original plan was to fit in-vehicle wheelchair lifts to enable passengers with reduced mobility to move between the lower level and mid-level, for…
Cars turning off from a grade crossing onto the tracks are a perennial problem for Caltrain, often resulting in multi-hour cascading delays or worse, dangerous collisions. The statistics are shocking: from 2020 through 2023, there were 183 recorded incidents of "vehicle track incursions," of which more than half occurred at just five crossings as shown in the Caltrain bar chart at right. Caltrain…
Electric service starts this weekend. The blog comment system stopped working on the August open thread, so let's try this instead?
Open thread time! Feel free to jump into the comments below. Driving like a grandma : electric service started on August 11th. Initially and until September 21st, EMUs operate on the current diesel timetable, for which they are grossly overpowered. Therefore, trips are sedate, and the full benefits of electrification are yet to be realized. We can't wait!!! Wasted dwell time : per FRA safety…
San Jose is striving to redesign and expand its Cahill Street station, named for the (still living) former Santa Clara County board of supervisors chair Rod Diridon, to meet the needs of future rail service including BART and high-speed rail. The station's context was discussed here in 2017. The process led by the Joint Policy Advisory Board, made up of representatives from the city and relevant…
Arrow level boarding platforms at San Bernardino, CA Comments to old posts on this blog are stored in a moderation queue that your author doesn't visit often enough. Over a year ago, commenter jpk122s discovered quite a gem: an official resolution by the CPUC (California Public Utility Commission) that level boarding station platforms are not bound by General Order No. 26-D section 3.4. This means…
Caltrain recently published a strategic financial plan update , where we learn that maintaining each EMU in the new electric fleet in good working order is expected to cost $1.2 - 1.5 million per year, a significant increase from last year's estimate. This post seeks to answer the question: is that crazy? This analysis revisits and updates an older post here . Historical vehicle maintenance costs…
It's 2024, the year that Caltrain is supposed to go electric. All the wires are up and six trains are already on the property (see delivery spreadsheet ), with more on the way shortly. After years of delays, will they pull it off? Seems like a good time to review five risks facing the project. 1. PCEP schedule slips - while monthly reports of the Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project continue…
Caltrain's proposed weekday peak service Caltrain has started to pull back the curtain on their fall 2024 service pattern , when the electric fleet will (finally!) enter service. The peak service pattern is depicted at right from a Caltrain slide, and looks like this in a string diagram from our trusty taktulator . The overall score for this timetable is a lukewarm 115 points relative to the…
The good news: Caltrain has initiated a small study effort to develop a level boarding roadmap, as part of its portfolio of capital projects . The bad news: in the summary of this study, Caltrain shows no sign of grasping the purpose of level boarding. We might need to display it on a freeway billboard, like this: Caltrain does a very nice job of explaining the benefits of electrification. Faster…
Barry the BEMU, Caltrain's new mascot "Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget—and I'll tell you what you value." There's a new obsession gripping Caltrain: the Battery EMU, an electric train that can travel without overhead wires using electricity drawn from a large battery on board the train. The BEMU features prominently in Caltrain's recently approved two-year budget , which offers…
Link21 , the nascent megaproject to beef up the Bay Area's passenger rail network, features at its core a new underground transbay passenger rail crossing between Oakland and San Francisco. One of the major dilemmas facing this program is what kind of rail service to put in that new tunnel. The choice is posed between BART (understood as wide-gauge single-level rolling stock) and regional rail…
The recent storms demonstrate once again that Caltrain underpass flooding is a clear and present danger to the public. Deadly is no understatement: while only harrowing water rescues occurred in the 31 December 2022 atmospheric river, two people lost their lives in the flooded Hillcrest Boulevard underpass in Millbrae on 23 December 2021. Poor "split" grade separation designs that only marginally…
One phrase we're going to hear a lot in the next couple of years is "fiscal cliff," a sudden disequilibrium between Caltrain's revenues and expenses caused by the withdrawal of the temporary federal subsidies instituted during the pandemic. The slow recovery of ridership, which until 2019 had funded ~70% of the railroad's operating expenses, is opening a $50 million/year hole in Caltrain's budget…
CBOSS Dumpster Fire Update : the CBOSS case is still making its way through San Mateo County Superior Court (under case file 17CIV00786 ). The trial was held in April through June of this year, and closing briefs are due in December. Closing arguments are currently scheduled to be made in court on the 5th of January 2023. The latest kerfuffle is over a post-trial Caltrain/Parsons motion to seek…
California's high-speed rail project has finally reached a milestone 14 years after the passage of Proposition A in 2008 with the board's certification of the Final Environmental Impact Report for the San Francisco - San Jose project section. This voluminous document has come a long way since the early days of a four-track 125 mph rail corridor initially envisioned for our region, having been…
Wouldn't it be great if you could quantify the service benefit of capital improvements, to compare and prioritize them by how much better train service results? We can, and using our handy Taktulator, we will. This service pattern evaluation tool was formulated around time-based service quality metrics . We use it to explore future improvements to the peninsula rail corridor. Today's 2022…
It's been a while since the last post, but fear not this blog is still alive. Caltrain's First Major Accident : on Thursday 10 March 2022, a southbound train was unable to stop before ramming into at least two rail-going flatbed crane trucks being used by an electrification construction crew. 13 people were injured with five requiring hospital treatment; thankfully there was no loss of life. With…