All railroads that will be deploying Positive Train Control (PTC, read all about it here) before the mandated deadline of 2015 were required by federal law (49 CFR Part 236 Subpart I) to submit a PTC Implementation Plan by April 16th, 2010. This plan, subject to FRA approval, is where each railroad explains how it plans to deploy PTC.Caltrain's PTC Implementation Plan (4.5 MB PDF) was submitted in late March, and is available to the public under docket FRA-2010-0051.
Not surprisingly, the centerpiece of Caltrain's PTCIP is the Communications-Based Overlay Signal System (CBOSS), a new PTC system that Caltrain is developing. CBOSS, described in a Caltrain fact sheet, is about to go out for bid. The importance of this system cannot be overstated, since the additional safety it confers on Caltrain's operations are a prerequisite for the transition to a new fleet of electric trains as well as the extensive reconstruction of the peninsula corridor to accommodate high-speed rail. PTC is a necessary step on the path to reinventing the peninsula corridor, and lies squarely in the schedule's critical path--never mind any federal deadlines. There remains a significant amount of doubt about whether Caltrain can actually pull it off.
Planning For Interoperability
By law, a PTCIP is supposed to describe in some detail how the proposed PTC system will provide interoperability between the "host railroad" and all "tenant railroads" that use the host railroad's tracks. Accordingly, Caltrain lists the following tenant railroads: Union Pacific Railroad, which operates a few freight trains on the peninsula; Amtrak, which operates the Coast Starlight along 6.7 miles of Caltrain's tracks through San Jose and Santa Clara; the Capitol Corridor JPA, which operates Amtrak California trains along 2.6 miles of Caltrain's tracks; and the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission, which operates the Altamont Commuter Express trains along 2.6 miles of Caltrain's tracks. According to the PTCIP, the entire volume of traffic from all tenant railroads is currently 24 trains per day.
The stunning omission from Caltrain's PTCIP is any mention of high-speed rail. HSR is not mentioned even a single time anywhere in this 123-page document.
While HSR will not be anywhere near entering service by the PTC deadline of December 31st, 2015, the technical interoperability issues with high-speed rail are of paramount importance. HSR is the ultimate "tenant railroad" since it plans to operate on the order of 200 trains per day along the entire length of the peninsula, as opposed to 24 trains per day, most for only 2.6 miles between San Jose and Santa Clara, for all other tenant railroads combined. The ratio of train-miles operated on Caltrain territory for HSR vs. all other tenant railroads will be nearly two orders of magnitude as shown in the chart at left!Looking at the chart might elicit an important question: with which "tenant railroad" will it be most important to interoperate? The Caltrain PTCIP provides the answer, point blank: the Union Pacific Railroad (see section 5.2), shown in yellow on the chart. That's right, because of an assumption that UPRR cannot be bothered to fit additional PTC equipment on the handful of its locomotives that operate on the peninsula, or an assumption that HSR may never come to fruition, CBOSS must be designed to be 100% compatible with whatever technology UPRR comes up with by 2015. There are two possible outcomes to this approach:
- The entire statewide fleet of high-speed trains will need to be fitted and certified with a separate set of CBOSS train-borne equipment for operation on Caltrain's tracks because the HSR PTC system will be inoperable in "CBOSS Territory", or
- The peninsula corridor will be segregated into technically incompatible HSR tracks and Caltrain + freight tracks, each with its own PTC system.
One would think that enough time has passed since November 2008, when the high-speed rail bond was approved by California voters, to develop at least an inkling of a plan for how HSR will mesh with Caltrain in the area of PTC. One would further expect that Caltrain's insistence that the peninsula corridor will be a fully-shared four-track system would cause it to pay special attention to questions of future interoperability with HSR. One would even further expect that the California High-Speed Rail Authority's apparent plan to use ERTMS (an existing European PTC standard that has similar functionality, but is different from CBOSS) would at least be acknowledged in Caltrain's PTCIP.
Is this a lack of attention to detail? Evidently not: Caltrain's PTCIP goes into considerable detail on how individual PTC hardware components will be mounted on its locomotive fleet, as evidenced by the photo at right. The photo, included in an Appendix of the PTCIP, shows an early prototype of a CBOSS Central Display Unit (at the same stage of development as the CBOSS software) being fitted to the cab of a Caltrain locomotive. What is most visible in this photo is attention to the wrong details, details that are trivial, while other enormously important issues are seemingly entirely overlooked.If one requirement of a PTCIP is to describe how a PTC system will provide interoperability of the system between the "host railroad" (Caltrain) and the ultimate "tenant railroad" in the form of high-speed rail, Caltrain's PTCIP has fallen woefully short.
What is the plan?
Posts
If Union Pacific were to have CBOSS enabling equipment on their trains, and those same trains would be expected to traverse the rest of the West Coaast, should we expect that other railroads adopt the same or complimentary standards and equipment?
ReplyDeleteWell, it *is* only 50 or so miles of trackage, so it can't be *that* much more expensive to simply equip the tracks with both systems, CBOSS and, say, ERTMS ... - that is if Caltrain really has to invent their own wheels...
ReplyDeleteThe photo, included in an Appendix of the PTCIP, shows an early prototype of a CBOSS Central Display Unit
ReplyDeleteThat photo is fucking hilarious!
After they get the PTC thing figured out, Caltrain staff can get to work on their time machine and duplicator prototypes.
My spin on this is that staff and consultant friends are either:
ReplyDelete1) Being proactive and getting out ahead of things so there is no waiting for something that my never show up or;
2) Being mischievous and trying to cash in by pioneering something that may work and be sold to other operators of 1940's Chicago Northwestern commuter rail technology.
My guess is number 2 could be the driving factor here. Note all the letters sent back and forth to 30th Street Amtrak HQ...hmmm. You really need to spend that much time fretting over 6 miles or so of Coast Starlight service. Caltrain CBOSS = Amtrak Positive Train Control R&D.
The risk is that they don't deliver and they need a lifeboat from UP or the remnants of the CHSRA. Only time will tell. I hear Radio Shack has a special on Pennsy cab signals and NYC Transit Automatic Stop Enforcement.
If HSR is on not operating on the same tracks as Caltrain, then it is not a tenant. It may occupy the same right-of-way, but my understanding is that the trains will never be on the same tracks.
ReplyDeleteAmtrak already has a PTC system in the form of ACSES, a compatible version of which is being implemented on NJ Transit as well. But that's not what Caltrain wants, and neither is ETCS. Both of those systems rely on the existing train-detection hardware (in Caltrain's case, track circuits), which as far as I can tell, Caltrain wants to keep as-is for the freights and whatnot, and use the CBOSS on top of that to provide more capacity without installing lots of wayside equipment. ETCS (and ACSES) would require either re-doing all the track circuits and wayside signals or keeping the same block boundaries, which means no increase in capacity. None of this really makes sense to me though: electrification will require replacing all the track circuits anyway, and you might as well use the opportunity to optimize the signal system.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous suggested:
ReplyDelete"My spin on this is that staff and consultant friends are either:
1) ... proactive ...
2) ... mischievous ... "
but left out:
3) Irredeemably delusional.
Regarding equipping UP locomotives with CBOSS or PTC. Are the locomotives for the two trains that UP runs every night sent out to other states, or do they mainly keep running the same route on the caltrain corridor?
ReplyDeleteIf they do, how far away do they go from South SF?
In the past, UP has said equipment on the Peninsula may go (or come from) anywhere on their system -- it's not "captive" to the Peninsula or Bay Area or even California.
ReplyDelete@ arcady -
ReplyDelete"ETCS (and ACSES) would require either re-doing all the track circuits and wayside signals [...]"
For crissakes, they're fully grade separating the entire corridor, which will mean a large fraction of existing Caltrain tracks will need to be moved laterally and/or vertically.
Moreover, CHSRA will be installing ERTMS in the SF peninsula whatever Caltrain decides to do. Of course Caltrain could very easily leverage this investment, all it needs to do is buy off-the-shelf rolling stock that's already compatible anyhow.
As for UPRR, it's extremely unlikely that they would adopt CBOSS throughout their vast network. Therefore, they will have to install additional in-cab equipment in a small fraction of their total locomotive fleet anyhow. Might as well be ETCS transponders.
IMHO, this is nothing more than a desperate attempt by a number of Caltrain consultants to keep their pet project alive. Why Caltrain management and PCJPB continue to pursue the fools' errand that is CBOSS, rather than work with CHSRA to get ERTMS infrastructure (e.g. GSM-R base stations) implemented sooner is beyond me - especially when they're pleading poverty on electrification at the same time.
Point of clarification: CBOSS interoperability with UPRR means that any UPRR locomotive will be able to operate unmodified in CBOSS territory, using its native UPRR PTC. Caltrain hopes to realize economies of scale for CBOSS by reusing hardware and software components from the freight PTC solution.
ReplyDeleteAs acknowledged by the PTCIP, the technical standards to achieve this interoperability are yet to be fully defined. This provides a golden opportunity for the CBOSS vendor to charge $$$ for engineering change orders that will necessarily occur well after contract award. Engineering changes for vital safety systems (where people can die if there is a system failure) are extremely expensive because they require rigorous and fully traceable regression testing and certification.
@Matt: Caltrain has stated that they would be capable of using all four tracks. That means CBOSS on all four tracks, for all intents and purposes the same thing as a tenant railroad.
Assuming that they manage to figure out how to implement track sharing in Socal along LOSSAN and elsewhere, what type of train control would be used there? I'm guessing they'd implement freight PTC, compatible with CBOSS.
ReplyDeleteIf they implement a version of freight PTC that is compatible with CBOSS, then, as HSR would be required to have a second train control system for operation in Socal anyway, what is the harm to HSR in installing CBOSS-compatible equipment?
what is the harm to HSR in installing CBOSS-compatible equipment?
ReplyDeleteBecause it costs money, lots of money to do that while there is no overriding technical need to do so.
Not that I want to be defending UPRR, but why would we expect them to install ERTMS equipment on their locomotives in order to use the Caltrain corridor if CHSRA is imposing that burden on them and when UPRR has been using the Caltrain corridor for years and will have a system compatible with CBOSS? All you're doing is shifting the burden of payment from CHSRA to UPRR, then.
ReplyDeleteThat seems like something of a double-standard to me...
Why should UPRR be sharing any track with Caltrain at all?
ReplyDelete(Hint to "Peter: if you unilaterally define that to be a "requirement", well, by golly, you and your friends are set for extremely lucrative employment until retirement, and as far beyond as you choose. Nice work if you can get it!
As any of us who have worked in any sort of engineering project management field can attest: controlling and manipulating the scope definition is 90% of ensuring that it is somebody else who gets taken to the cleaners. Whoo hoo!!)
All you're doing is shifting the burden of payment from CHSRA to UPRR, then.
ReplyDeleteNo, in either case the taxpayer pays.
If CBOSS equipment needs to be fitted to ~100 high-speed trains, about the expected size of the California fleet, you have 200 on-board units to pay for (one on each end of each train)... I might add that's several times the number of on-board units that will be required for the entire Caltrain fleet. That's right, most CBOSS units would be in non-Caltrain vehicles--because the tenant railroad will be larger than the host railroad. Tail wagging the dog and all that.
If ERTMS equipment needs to be fitted to ~10 UPRR locomotives that ply the peninsula corridor (and yes, they are always the same rusty old locomotives, regardless of UPRR's preference for being able to substitute any locomotive nationwide), you have 10 on-board units to pay for.
10 < 200. How's that for burden?
It will be interesting to see if the CHSRA allows even one dime of HSR stimulus money to be spent on CBOSS.
Take a peek at page 8-1 (20 in the pdf) of their implementation plan
ReplyDeleteThey plan on installing CBOSS equipment on all of their present-day locos and cab units, yet they also plan to replace the entire rolling-stock fleet to coincide with electrification & signal upgrades?
Is there any coherent thought in San Carlos at Caltrain HQ?
What little confidence I had in Caltrain is being destroyed by this CBOSS business.
Seriously, replacing the entire fleet but making sure to gold-plate the old smelly cars that are about to be sold / scrapped?
They plan on installing CBOSS equipment on all of their present-day locos and cab units, yet they also plan to replace the entire rolling-stock fleet to coincide with electrification & signal upgrades?
ReplyDeleteDoing the whole fleet may not make sense but while the new system, whatever the new system is, is being installed, you need equipment that goes out on the track and tests the new system. Even purportedly off-the-shelf signals will have problems that need to be corrected. ... can have the shiny new trains show up without having tested the signals.
@Adirondacker12800
ReplyDeleteSome units, of course, but the entire fleet?
It just seems to indicate a lack of communication and central planning, two qualities you generally want the group overseeing a massive project to possess
Rafael: be careful of whom you're referring to when you say "they", because there's at least three groups with different ideas about what's happening in the Caltrain corridor: the Caltrain Board, Caltrain staff, and the HSRA. In the words of Sir Humphrey, "Government is not a team. It is a loose confederation of warring tribes." And in this case, these three tribes are all fighting over the future of the Caltrain ROW. Also, even if you're grade separating, there's no reason not to just move the old track circuit equipment to the new tracks.
ReplyDelete@ anon @ Jun 1 23:06, Clem -
ReplyDelete"Caltrain CBOSS = Amtrak Positive Train Control R&D."
Nope!
"CBOSS interoperability with UPRR means that any UPRR locomotive will be able to operate unmodified in CBOSS territory, using its native UPRR PTC."
"~10 UPRR locomotives [...] ply the peninsula corridor (and yes, they are always the same rusty old locomotives, regardless of UPRR's preference for being able to substitute any locomotive nationwide)"
Ergo:
Caltrain CBOSS = UPRR Positive Train Control R&D.
Corporate welfare at its finest.
News: Caltrain declares fiscal emergency to implement service cuts and fare hikes without environmental review.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.greencaltrain.com/2010/06/resolving-the-caltrain-budget-crisis/
SJ-Gilroy an obvious target, operations to be put out to tender this year. Reduced crew complements and reining in salary growth would help as well, though it would mean confronting powerful public sector unions.
There's little Caltrain can do about fuel costs until it meets the preconditions for the waiver, one of which is implementing PTC. The CBOSS project entails the risk of massive delays as well as cost overruns, so implementing off-the-shelf technology that will be shared with and paid for by CHSRA isn't just common sense. It may in fact be vital to keeping Caltrain operations afloat during the corridor remodeling project, when ridership is likely to be down from today's levels.
More on Caltrain's upcoming reductions in service:
ReplyDeletehttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/45403
It's not clear if Caltrain will be operating longer consists to compensate for reduced train frequency. Fewer trains per hour would also make remodeling the corridor easier, perhaps a smidgeon cheaper.
Final one from the San Mateo County Times:
ReplyDeletehttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/45401
Caltrain mulling shutdown in 2012, presumably with a view to restoring service after the corridor is remodeled. It's unclear if all of the existing Caltrain station would be brought back into service - a narrow focus on just those served by baby bullet trains today might eliminate the need for quad tracking the entire peninsula.
Note that it would be possible to speed up that work dramatically while reducing width requirements if UPRR service were suspended as well.
Unfortunately, even a temporary suspension of these two services would have a massive impact on road traffic and possibly force some peninsula business into bankruptcy.
UPRR service in particular might never recover at all, though that prospect would permit the PRP to get more creative wrt vertical gradients for the grade separation project and cut costs at the same time.
Two more tidbits:
ReplyDelete- ETCS OBUs are expensive (the latest estimate I'v seen: ~ $400k for one unit), so Caltrain is trying to save money by developing its own signalling system
- The nice legacy of ETCS origin are Specific Transmission Modules, that allow use track portion of non-ETCS ATC/PTC, so they can be compatible with freight PTCs even without CBOSS
Rafael sez: " ... though it would mean confronting powerful public sector unions."
ReplyDeleteThe SEIU and their ilk are, at least AFAIK, nowhere near Caltrain. Caltrain's personnel, who actually work for Amtrak, are represented by the same unions representing their crafts on the private-sector freight railroads, e.g. the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen for engineers and the United Transportation Union for conductors.
@ dejv -
ReplyDeleteonce you factor in the cost of developing an entirely new signaling system from scratch, what do you think the on-board equipment for CBOSS will cost?
This is definitely a case of buy rather than build, since CHSRA will be installing PTC signaling equipment in the corridor anyhow. Caltrain should leverage that, reducing the cost to just the on-board equipment plus some beacons in the tracks.
Assuming CHSRA goes with ETCS level 2 for safety and ERTMS for operations management, the EMUs Caltrains wants to buy will already have been certified to be compatible.
So what if cutting over to EMUs takes a few years longer, as long as funding is found to keep Caltrain's current fleet in service until then.
See here for details on how to plug the hole in Caltrain's opex budget for the next three years.
@ Kevin Hecteman -
ok, I stand corrected on the "public sector union" part. Nevertheless, Amtrak is a publicly funded service, in this case indirectly via Caltrain. The point isn't so much who represents them as who the counterparty is. Public officials often have a harder time saying no to hikes in pay and benefits than private industry does.
If UPRR truly does use the same locomotives, then I see no problem with implementing ETRMS on the Peninsula. Having Caltrain/CHSRA pay for the implementation would likely be a better option than paying God knows how much to develop CBOSS.
ReplyDeleteI hereby reverse my position.
SEIU isn't a public sector union. It's predominantly a retail union, which does things like demand that retail workers be paid $14 an hour instead of $9. Let's not start comparing it to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
ReplyDeleteThere's no reason for any UP locomotive to travel along the Caltrain line.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy (a capital project in the single hundreds of millions, ie cheaper than the cost overrruns of the CBOSS catastrophe, and moreoever one that is required anyway for service and capacity reasons) to achieve 100% separation of FRA and non-steam-age trains between Santa Clara and San Jose.
If anybody at Caltrain had any sort of notion of service planning or capital planning or if there were even the most rudimentary hint of prioritization or strategy that would have been done already. (But no. San Bruno is that agency's tippy-tippy-top priority. Die, Caltrain.)
If freight is stupidly required to be required north of Santa Clara, in contradiction of all possible economic and regulatory sense, then it is required to be piloted by one of the tiny captive fleet of ETCS-equipped surplus F40 dinosaurs owned Peninsula Short Line, Inc, which are attached at detached in a single yard track in Santa Clara. Yes, an operating expense, but dwarfed by the hundreds of millions of saved capital and operating expenses from getting out from under the FRA and escaping from the rent-seeking corrupt sleazebag hubris-bloated consultant mafioso who drive "not invented here" wheel reinvention.
Define the "requirements" and you write your own paycheck, as has been observed by another commenter here.
Richard, I'm starting to think you're right about Caltrain not having any idea of priorities. Lots of people within (and outside) the agency have their own priorities, but there's no coherent set that can be said to be Caltrain's priorities. It seems like the electrification project people don't talk to the CBOSS project people, who don't talk to whoever is responsible for the San Bruno project, and nobody talks to the operations people, and especially not to HSRA. Even though I don't wish for Caltrain's demise, I think it might be time to kill the Joint Powers Board.
ReplyDelete"There's no reason for any UP locomotive to travel along the Caltrain line."
ReplyDeleteHere's a few reasons:
Granite Rock
Cemex
Clean Harbors
Basic Chemical Solutions
Unilever
Calstone
Pine Cone Lumber
Pacific Agri-Products
Sierra Point Lumber
Dean's Trucking
Darling International
Waste Solutions Group
San Francisco Bay Railroad
Here's the source of that info. Scroll down to "South San Francisco." I have no information on the number of carloads to and from these customers.
I am of the conviction that cutting S.F. and the Peninsula off from the national rail network is shortsighted. As I said before, I believe there's room for everyone (Caltrain, HSR, freight) if it's done right.
Operative words" " ... if it's done right."
Operative words " ... if it's done right."
ReplyDeleteWell, sure. But what does that mean in your mind? Everyone has a different idea of what "done right" might be, so everyone can agree that it must be "done right". Saying it must be "done right" is basically dodging the issue and ducking the question.
I'm not picking on you, Kevin-- I'm just making a general point, because I hear that phrase all the time.
"Here's a few reasons:"
ReplyDeleteYou know, I will swear most of those customers should be using barges. Aggregates? For businesses adjacent to the Bay?!?
BTW, German shortlines sometimes do things like this (second photo) to serve their customers with lowest possible costs.
ReplyDeleteBarge... from where? The next port south along on the coast is in Oxnard. There aren't really that many navigable rivers around. And the gravel trains are coming from a quarry near Watsonville, which is not particularly near any water.
ReplyDeleteClem asked a fair question when he wrote: "Well, sure. But what does that mean in your mind? Everyone has a different idea of what "done right" might be, so everyone can agree that it must be "done right"."
ReplyDelete"Done right," to me, means optimizing the railroad for Caltrain while 1) preserving freight access and 2) allowing HSR without allowing HSR to run roughshod over Caltrain.
Given what Caltrain service levels are likely to be once the wires go up, the most practical solution I can see is limiting freight operations to the wee hours.
If Caltrain goes under, of course, then all bets are off.
(Out on the Northeast Corridor, they've figured out how freight and Acela can coexist. See "Local freight where it shouldn't be," Trains magazine, July 2007, pages 52-61. I believe the Burlingame library carries this magazine; check the back issues.)
And let's be real about the level of HSR service. I really don't see more than one HSR train per hour. If, say, HSR had one departure from each terminal from 6 a.m. to midnight, that works out to 36 HSR trains per day. (I think I saw 200+ trains per day somewhere. That couldn't have been right. Sounds like market oversaturation.)
Kevin, look, even if -- incredibly stupidly, uneconomically, anti-environmentally and pork-ridden-hidden-subsidy-ly -- it were decided to retain freight north of Santa Clara, there is no need for UP locomotives to be involved. This was about signalling, and Caltrain consultant's bloody-minded, self-enriching and self-aggrandizing schemes to invent from scratch something that will be everything to everybody, including all freight locomotives on the continent, seeking to "boil the ocean" as we say at work in their over-reach, technical hubris and managerial ineptitude, not about whether boxcars can get to to some marginal lumber yard somewhere.
ReplyDeleteLocomotives which aren't UP's and which talk te Caltrain corridor's bog stadard ETCS (alone, or in parallel with whatever goody PTC thing is dreamed up for UP in the future) can do it. Easier to dual-equip two or 3 surplus F-40s than to waste hundreds of millions of your tax dollars making some Caltrain consultant a big man in a small CBOSS pond ... and also dual-equipping every HS train in the state and every Caltrain train, all for no gain at all.
As for "Out on the Northeast Corridor, they've figured out how freight and Acela can coexist." ... well, words fail. The North East Corridor is the most expensive and worst performing and most underutilized similar stretch of should-be-but-isn't intercity high speed rail on the planet. Run away!
Here's a random question. Could Caltrain use its current diesel locomotives to haul UPRR's trains? Or are Caltrain's engines not strong enough?
ReplyDeleteBecause that way Caltrain could haul UPRR's junk up the Peninsula, without ever having to install ERTMS in any UP locomotives. They could, like Richard said, just keep a few old engines hanging out near Tamien, hook them up to the front of the freight train (would they even have to detach UP's locomotive?), and pull them up the Peninsula and back. No need for any system other than ERTMS.
The Caltrain-supplied/equipped locomotive "tug boat" solution seems perfect for the Peninsula's handful of freights. I say "tug boat" because I believe most (or all?) big ships that come into the Bay are required to use the services of a specially-qualified "pilot" captain (and sometimes tugs) to help ensure the "foreign" ship captains don't run aground or hit bridges or misjudge tides, etc. (Of course, as the unfortunate Cosco Busan vs. Bay Bridge incident demonstrated, it's not quite a fool-proof system either.)
ReplyDelete@ Reality Check
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, ships don't have PTC.
More Peninsula freight? According to this article, there's a 10-year plan in the works for UP to haul 1,500 tons of SF trash per day to a landfill near Wheatland (below Yuba City north of Roseville).
ReplyDeleteThe North East Corridor is the most expensive and worst performing and most underutilized similar stretch
ReplyDeleteWave a magic wand and make everthing between Pelham Bay and Back Bay Boston 225 MPH and there's still capacity constraints into Manhattan. Wave the same magic wand and make everything between Linden and Washington DC 225 MPH there's capacity constraints into Manhattan. It's under utilized except for the fiddly bits into Manhattan where lots of the would be passengers want to go. 26 trains per hour is quite respectable considering they are using century old infrastructure to do it.
It probably would be much faster and more heavily used if Senators and Congressmen from places like California weren't perpetually whining about how much money rail costs. Though the Californians have gotten much less vocal in the past decade or so.
Everything east of New Haven uses ACSES including the freight trains operated by the Providence and Worchester. The P&W hasn't gone bankrupt.
More Peninsula freight? ....garbage...
Whenever I bring that up the reply is along the lines of "let Oakland worry about where to put the transfer station" As if the people of Oakland are just drooling at the thought of all the trucks, noise, smells etc that would bring.
UP to haul 1,500 tons of SF trash per day
ReplyDeleteI wonder if all that trash wouldn't be loaded onto railcars in Oakland. After all, 1500 tons per day is only about 100 garbage trucks per day, and sending 100 trucks back and forth across the Bay Bridge has got to be more environmentally friendly than sending all that trash on a nearly one hundred mile detour through the south bay.
Then again, it's another convenient pretext to divert billions of public dollars into corporate welfare.
Worchester
There's no 'h' in Wooster :-)
Garbage, being garbage, is the epitome of low value freight. Even if it takes a few days for the garbage gondolas to get to Oakland no one is going to be losing much sleep over the fact that it takes two days for garbage to get to Oakland.
ReplyDeleteTrucking it to Oakland on the other hand isn't cheap. Sanitation workers aren't volunteers, They are going to want to get paid for that two hour trip to the transfer station in Oakland. Just like deadheading a train costs money and may mean you need more trains sending garbage trucks on two hour long trips means you need more garbage trucks. It also means you need more garbage trucks until somebody comes up with some other means besides garbage trucks to get it from San Francisco to Oakland. I suspect that San Francisco will be generating garbage for as long as there are people in San Francisco.
The world doesn't end at the southern borders of San Francisco. People in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties also buy things that eventually become garbage. That has to be shipped somewhere. Back of the envelope calculations came up with 200 gons a day from the Peninsula going somewhere. Either mixed garbage or recyclables. And it's going to recyclables because no one is going to be opening smelters or glass furnaces on the Peninsula so that the recyclables are converted to raw materials before leaving the Peninsula. Even then the freshly recycled raw materials have to be shipped to a factory that will be using them as raw materials.
Go ahead, convince the good people of the East Bay that they should host a few hundred Peninsula garbage trucks a day.
Adirondacker12800: I suspect everything in California subtends a very narrow angle from your vantage, but rest assured that if you use the correct map projection it becomes apparent that it is five of your earth miles from San Francisco to Oakland via the most environmental and sustainable route, a small fraction of all alternatives. And if you're giving a couple hundred truck trips even a millisecond's consideration in the context of more than a quarter of a million vehicles crossing the bridge per day (most of them single occupant passenger vehicles!) then (a) I have a bridge to sell you and (b) get some perspective.
ReplyDeleteBesides ... INTER-MODAL! Whoo hoo! Bingo!
Better yet, put all that garbage in a single barge to make the short crossing of the Bay to Oakland...
ReplyDeletePeople forget that Bay Area urbanization began with ports all around the Bay. The Bay Area was a sort of Venice before the big bridges.
Richard Mlynarik sez: " ... even if -- incredibly stupidly, uneconomically, anti-environmentally and pork-ridden-hidden-subsidy-ly -- it were decided to retain freight north of Santa Clara, there is no need for UP locomotives to be involved."
ReplyDelete(rant)
Stupidly? Uneconomically? Yada, yada, yada?
Tell that to the shippers and their employees. I'm sure Sierra Point Lumber doesn't mind being called "marginal." Why all the enthusiasm to kick them out of the way? These are legitimate enterprises, after all. Are they not high-tech enough, or something?
I've sad it before, and I'll say it again: In my view, cutting San Francisco and the Peninsula off from the national rail network is shortsighted.
(/rant)
OK, now that that's out of my system: I can go along with these two things:
1) "Freight" does not necessarily mean "Union Pacific," everyone's favorite target hereabouts. A good short line could be to Caltrain as the New York and Atlantic Railway is to the Long Island Rail Road. (You will still need an interchange with Uncle Pete; probably where Newhall Yard used to be before it was sold to VTA for a mess of BARTage.)
2) I see no need, either, for inventing a new signal system from scratch. Not when Caltrain, long the Rodney Dangerfield of Bay Area public transit, is starving for funding.
Now, as to all the trash talk about the garbage (sorry), here's something to think about:
> UP garbage train using Caltrain tracks: Privately owned vehicle using publicly funded infrastructure.
> Garbage truck on Bay Bridge: Privately owned vehicle using publicly funded infrastructure.
> Garbage barge on Bay: Privately owned vehicle using natural resource. The ILWU will even be happy.
ReplyDeleteGarbage truck on Bay Bridge: zero incremental cost. Externalized costs: a zillionth of a bajillionth of a percent of any other transportation-related environmental mitigation.
ReplyDeleteFreight along Caltrain: hundreds of millions of dollars of additional cost, decades of FRA regulatory hell, permanently higher operating costs for Caltrain (and HSR), higher procurement cost and worse energy efficiency for Caltrain.
But ... TRUCKS ARE BAD. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. TRAINS GOOD. GOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!
The thing is, freight can be done on the peninsula without escalating costs ... at all, really. Just not UP's flavor of freight...
ReplyDeleteGarbage truck on Bay Bridge: zero incremental cost.
ReplyDelete600 garbage trucks a day ( all the garbage on the Peninsula, there is life and garbage outside of San Francisco ) the 300 days a year that garbage is collected for a century or so adds up.
The East Bay may not be the Navel of the Universe that is the Peninsula. Gotta convince the people in Oakland that the stink and the noise is worth it...
Anonymous 1 sez:
ReplyDelete"> Garbage barge on Bay: Privately owned vehicle using natural resource ... "
... and publicly funded infrastructure (read: ports).
600 garbage trucks a day the 300 days a year that garbage is collected for a century or so adds up. Gotta convince the people in Oakland that the stink and the noise is worth it...
ReplyDeleteMy goodness. You really know nothing about Oakland, nor its economy.
Kevin: the New York and Atlantic Railway is in a similar position to freight on the Caltrain corridor. It's a marginal freight route, whose main function right now is to shoot down long-term plans to appropriate a freight-only right-of-way for subway service.
ReplyDeletethe New York and Atlantic Railway is in a similar position to freight on the Caltrain corridor. It's a marginal freight route
ReplyDelete7 billion dollars so the NYAR can connect Brooklyn to Jersey City, with enough freight that they believe they need two tunnels, one in each direction, doesn't sound "marginal" to me.