[Update 9/10] The city of San Bruno has now coughed up $350k to grease the rails for this project.[Original Post] There are new signs that Caltrain's San Bruno grade separation project is now on the fast track to construction. The project appeared in the MTC's recent Peninsula Corridor Investment Strategy as a top candidate for a slice of federal high speed rail stimulus funding, and is now also slated to receive $30 million in Proposition 1B state funding. Like the stimulus money, this new source of construction funds comes with strings attached: Caltrain and the city of San Bruno must award the construction contract by July 2010, effectively in the blink of an eye for such a big construction project.
A recent presentation to the San Bruno city council reveals that the project is the same old design that Caltrain engineered with BkF nearly a decade ago, a design that wasn't half bad for commuter rail. That was then; with high speed rail in the mix, the requirements have now changed--but the design (since taken over by HNTB) has not. As proposed, the San Bruno grade separation is fundamentally ill-suited to high speed rail and mixed corridor operations. Evidently, nobody sees anything wrong with this.
"It is very hard to get a man to see the truth of a proposition when his salary depends on it being false." -- Mark TwainThe proposition, in this case, is that the San Bruno grade separation project is a poorly conceived design that will significantly set back HSR and Caltrain service, and is therefore a tragic waste of taxpayer money. Because of the millions of dollars involved, this proposition is likely to fall on deaf ears in our local transportation industrial complex.
Ready, Fire, Aim!
In the headlong rush to shovel readiness, key shortcomings are being ignored.
- The San Bruno grade separation fails to straighten the worst curve on the entire peninsula corridor. This is low-hanging fruit, which if not picked will cripple high speed rail trip times for generations to come. If there is only one place on the entire peninsula corridor where a small amount of eminent domain taking makes sense, this is it.
- The San Bruno grade separation is designed with outside platforms, which means that Caltrain is essentially shooting itself in the foot with regard to operational flexibility. As far as commuter service concerned, an island platform would be far superior when HSR is added to the corridor.
- The San Bruno grade separation is being built in two phases, first as a commuter-only two-track station, with later demolition required to build the second pair of tracks for HSR. That's doing it twice, rather than doing it right.
$30 million (a small portion of which is featured in the opening photo by Tracy O) may sound like a lot, especially to a cash-starved public transit agency, but in the context of rebuilding the peninsula corridor for mixed Caltrain / HSR operations, it is but a drop in the bucket. The overall budget for the peninsula is well over $5,000 million, or nearly 200 times as much. Caltrain's outdated vision for San Bruno is not worth compromising the key corridor design decisions (curve speeds, express track configuration, station layout) that must be carefully weighed against the respective needs of Caltrain commuter service and long-distance high speed rail service.
Unless the key design decisions that impact service are not being weighed at all?
Caltrain, San Bruno and the CHSRA should slow down, take a deep breath, and DO IT RIGHT, even if that means turning down some funding. San Bruno can wait a few years, now that its dangerous rail crossings have received interim safety improvements.
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First Rule of Caltrain:
ReplyDeleteIf Caltrain does it, it will be done wrongly.
Not a single exception is known to this rule.
Not once in 30 years.
The agency needs to be put out of our misery ASAP.
Shut it down, terminate everybody connected with it with extreme prejudice, and then use the billions of dollars saved to do something environmentally POSITIVE -- like buy each of the 15000 (drop in the bucket) daily riders a new car.
Seriously, abandoning the system is a less bad alternative than building the WRONG THING.
Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless.
$300 million down the crapper. For no purpse. The wrong thing, known to be wrong, undertaken knowingly, because nobody gives a shit and nobody there has the intelligence of a slime mold.
"a design that wasn't half bad for commuter rail."
ReplyDeleteI was pessimistic before, but after the recent PR firm debacle, I seriously do not think HSR is going to happen in California, so they might as well proceed as if it won't.
Personally, I don't see what you find so appealing in continuing to comment on this mess. They obviously aren't doing anything right and have no interest in hearing what you or others have to say. Clem, do you have a family? Need a leg up in your career? I'd pour whatever effort you are putting into HSR analysis into those things.
I honestly think that people like anon at 16:04 should seriously stop reading about HSR stuff and move to another country or something where they do in fact do it right. I'm thinking about doing the same.
I totally agree that lack of curve straightening is a mistake.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't think the island platform should NOT be listed as mistake for San Bruno grade separation. An island platform needs to be a system-wide decision and this issue was already analyzed in another post. Listing it here implies that should San Bruno somehow get an island platform, but other stations do not, then we should all be happy.
As for the two phase approach, isn't it necessary to build tracks two at a time so that there's enough room for the shoe-fly tracks?
Scratch that "NOT" from my last comment. :) I didn't mean it to be a double-negative.
ReplyDelete@anon03:54, the island platform thing was already analyzed on this blog, but that's meaningless.
ReplyDeleteWhat matters is that HNTB, PB and the CHSRA analyze it, and all indications are that this may NOT happen, since it falls outside their prescribed framework of building the Northeast Corridor "West".
Sadly, San Bruno will probably end up like Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Sadly, San Bruno will probably end up like Elizabeth, New Jersey.
ReplyDeleteSan Bruno should be so lucky.
Nothing against the fine city of Elizabeth. I was talking about this.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, it won't matter whether they take more time or not. You still won't get that curve straightened.
ReplyDeleteNIMBY paranoia notwithstanding, CHSRA has made it clear that they absolutely, positively wish to avoid eminent domain takings whenever and wherever possible. I agree that spending an extra $5-10 million to buy those properties just south of 380 and save 40 seconds would be a good investment. And it's hard to imagine that most people living directly adjacent to an 8-lane highway and the diesel Caltrain ROW wouldn't like to be bought out at above-market prices. But CHSRA clearly wants to avoid eminent domain.
I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I don't think I will be.
I don't know what all the freak-out about eminent domain is about, and I sure hope it isn't shared by the CHSRA. I was told Samtrans did $180M of eminent domain to clear the way for BART to Millbrae. What's another $10M (if that!) in San Bruno? Probably no big deal.
ReplyDeleteSo why aren't they doing it?
What can we do to ensure it gets built correctly? Getting hot and bothered in the comments doesn't do much.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you can attend a board meeting and make a public comment. Not sure how effective that is.
ReplyDeleteOr just sue.
Clem, one reason to avoid eminent domain is that it stokes NIMBY fears. In fact scaremongering of NIMBYs both on the Peninsula and in Long Island involves "They'll use eminent domain against us" attacks. Even if the authority only uses eminent domain in areas where it's politically easy, it causes more opposition in areas where people don't want to be eminent domained.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying CHSRA should rule out eminent domain in San Bruno, but the decision whether to exercise it or not is a political one and is not clear cut.
Nothing against the fine city of Elizabeth. I was talking about this
ReplyDeleteYou mean the historic Pennsylvania RR viaduct over the Central of NJ RR's mainline? Both of them 6 tracks wide there? Nah, San Bruno is never gonna get anything like that. :-)
To the first Anonymous, and to everyone here as a whole: Caltrain does do one thing that HSR does not. It actually runs actual trains. I can, if I so choose, walk to the station right now, and get on a train, and it will take me to places like Palo Alto and San Francisco. It might be a bit slow, but it's there, it runs, and it's certainly better than the alternatives. You know what else Caltrain has done that HSRA hasn't? Caltrain has actually built things. To the best of my knowledge, HSRA has supervised exactly ZERO actual construction to date, while Caltrain keeps making small improvements every year, Burlingame and California Avenue stations being two of the most recent examples. As for NEC West: if only you folks were so lucky. Having lived on the NEC, I can attest that it's wonderful to have electric trains that run at 125 mph, not in the imagination or 20 years in the future, but here and now. Us Northeasterners call that "normal speed rail", and wish you Californians would give it a try.
ReplyDeleteYou know what else Caltrain has done that HSRA hasn't? Caltrain has actually built things.
ReplyDeleteYes, Caltrain builds things. But the problem is that few (if any) of their capital projects have provided tangible benefit to its customers.
Really, the only project I can think of is Baby Bullet -- and that was mainly about un-doing a lot of damage done 10 years prior.
"Caltrain builds things"
ReplyDeleteNope. Caltrain pisses away public money down insanely mis-conceived money pits. The projects are over-priced, of dubious utility, and show no sign of any sort of coordinated planning of any type.
Just to be unrealistically (and counter-factually) charitable, let's pretend that all the current CEO of SamTrans/Caltrain/SMCTA and his staff had no control over or say over the criminal actions that occurred at the agency in the previous BART-only, destroy-Caltrain, destory-buses decade.
(This is counter factual because there was a window of several years available post-1999 in which the "design" of the two-track Belmont-San Carlos grade separation -- the biggest operational impediment to Caltrain anywhere on the line -- could have been corrected. And the new regime at SamTrans/Caltrain/CEO freely and willingly committed itself to paying for and operating the BART Millbrae extension, in spite of an explicitly available contractual out that they chose not to exercise. So in reality, it's just the same old story of grossly unprofessional engineering and unethical financial misappropriation of public funds as ever, but we'll pretend for the sake of argument that that was All Somebody Else's fault.)
OK, so what has Caltrain built in the last nine years, and what of any of it of any utility and could any part of it possibly be placed into of any short-, medium- or long-term strategic plan to create a post-19th-century, attractive, high-ridership, cost-effective public transportation system?
Well, we have CEMOF. $150 million gone, an appallingly, worse-than-amateurishly mis-located site, an ongoing impediment to service (40mph reverse crves ont he mainline!), and obsolete two decades before it opened. Everybody involved should be put up against a wall and shot. And best of all, largely unnecessary.
We have the platforms at nearly every station freshly rebuilt, at a cost in the hundreds of millions, at what is ***known*** to be a useless height for every possible purpose. Instead of doing the minimal state (not even FRA!) lobbying effort to Caltrain to rebuild its stations in a way that even possibly might have some relation to existing, let alone future, service needs, the Old Tyme Railroad Engineering department and the Rent Seeking Full Time Assigned Old Tyme Railroad Engineering Company Consultants at the agency just cranked out drawing after drawing on their CAD systems with platforms at 8 inches above the rail.
Far worse than useless.
And all the station renovations? Almost without exception, they maximize pedestrian access time to and from the stations, placing fences (and far worse -- see California Avenue) where humans getting on and off trains want to go. There's not been the slightest attention paid to users of the trains anywhere. Caltrain in contrast does what every morons at every moronic piddling city councils wants to inflate costs by millions for Community Design Elements, of course. And bus-train transfers? Forget it. Look at Palo Alto! Nobody concerned with architecture for humans has ever been ionvolved, and passenger accessibility has been systematically obstructed.
CTC signalling? Hooray! Welcome to 1930.
"Baby Bullet"? I'll go on.
"North Terminal Improvement". A huge waste. I'll go on.
Coming "South Terminal Improvement". Completely Unclear on the Concept. I'll go on.
Caltrain in fact has a worse than dismal capital construction record, even over the last decade when everybody has desperately been trying to cut the (once-new, now just entrenched and non-achieving) regime as much slack as possible.
The only thing that agency has done it to raise the utterly scandalous level of crew "productivity" (hours in revenue service compared to hours paid) from "abysmal" up to "laughably bad". (An achievement, indeed. But not a dollar of "building thigs involved! And that's all we have to show, and has nothing to do with a decade of wasted capital expense.)
CTC signalling? Hooray! Welcome to 1930.
ReplyDeleteOut of curiosity, what is wrong with upgrading to CTC signaling? Are you just upset that they didn't jump all the way to PTC? Or is there something else?
What's wrong with the Baby Bullet service?
ReplyDeleteAir brakes and safety couplers, welcome to 1893.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Safety_Appliance_Act
General question: Does risk increase or decrease with time? Do we trade new risk for old?
"What's wrong with the Baby Bullet service?"
ReplyDeleteFundamentally there was never any sort of service plan associated with unprincipled and random capital spending.
Caltrain was in a hurry to spend some money (fun fact to know: that same pot of TCRP slush included Dumbarton Bridge cash for ACE Livermore-Fremont-Redwood City-SF service, but VTA's highly ethical staff and democratic representatives actively and successfully lobbied to DEFUND Caltrain!!!!!!!!!) and the Caltrain Chief Engineer had (and has) simply no idea about running trains.
(Even funner fact: highly ethical and professional democratic representative Jim Lawson went through the revolving door and now sucks directly from the VTA wage teat, working pretty much full-time to maximize the profits for BART contractors.)
So the result is that random crap was strewn up and down the peninsula, with pretty much no plan of how it might be used, and no attention paid to what might be useful.
The single worst problem is that the quadrupled track sections are bad both for running overtakes (of a slowly moving local by a non-stop express) and for stationary overtakes (in which a local and express simultaneously stop and exchange passengers at a station.)
Running overtakes don't work properly because there is but a single station in the multi-track (Bayshore, Lawrence), which means that the local train has to stop and wait for an extended period of time to be overtaken. A waste of crew time, equipment, and passenger time.
You'll find today to a good extent that many Caltrain express overtakes are stunts -- by a bit of timetable rejiggering many could go away, but that would look bad in terms of "baby bullet" "investment". In fact, Caltrain started running a hell of a lot more limited stop service (with the August 2005 "96 train" timetable) which didn't use the poorly-designed and poorly-located quadruple track sections much, but relied more on skipping lots of stops (and on completely decimating local service in the peaks -- a trade-off which wouldn't be necessary if there had been non-stupid capital spending!)
Beyond the overtakes -- which are located where they are of the very least utility, right at the ends of the line, rather than where they'd be fantastically valuable, namely half-way up the peninsula, in the Redwood City-San Carlos-Belmont-San Mateo stretch -- the "baby bullet" capital spend put in the ground a bunch of useless but expensive junk.
Consider the wonderful third platform at Millbrae. What is the service plan for using that? What exact value do the two parallel extra tracks between Redwood City and Redwood Junction bring to the table? What the hell use to anybody in the universe is CP Geneva (a pair of crossovers between the inner fast tracks only, located south of Bayshore)?
Several of the random interlockings and crossovers built by the program were so dumb that the subsequent "North Terminal Improvement Plan" was more about redoing crossovers than any meaningful improvement of Fourth&Townsend operation.
In short, Caltrain construction is a matter of throwing some darts at a map, bulding some random junk where they hit, and then doing it all over a couple years later. None of it has much to do with running reliable and customer-attractive train service.
Nowhere in any public Caltrain document does one find something saying "we will run this pattern of service this often after spending this amount of money on this infrastructure".
It's not how things are done.
Basically nobody really cares or understands about contemporary rail operations, especially not in a context of targeted and strategic and cost effective capital investment, and because capital spending is an opportunistic matter of build something, anything, right now, because somebody pulled some strings, even if it completely screws over the business of, you know, like, running trains. (Ralston-Holly-Harbor grade seps; CEMOF; Millbrae; *SAN BRUNO*; many others.)
Is anything properly designed and constructed?
ReplyDelete"Is anything properly designed and constructed?"
ReplyDeleteNothing connected with public transportation that I've ever seen in the US.
We're talking Special Olympics here.
It's frustrating because doing the right thing is easy and cheap -- all you have to do is COPY what people who know what they're doing (and who have the measurable results and the track record) do.
It's EASY to do the right thing.
Locally we explicitly CHOOSE NOT TO.
Clem isn't the top railway engineer in the world, but nearly everything he writes makes here sense and is in basic accordance with what successful railway engineering teams have implemented. No rocket science -- just see who has a record of success, who has a record of failure, and prefer the former to the latter.
But ... Not Invented Here! Exceptional Local Conditions! Full employment for the unqualified and otherwise unemployable. Failure breeds further failure.
Quick question: who's more likely to deliver a working, fail-safe, life safety critical, reliable Positive Train Control System anywhere near on time or on budget or to specification: a single consultant working for Caltrain in San Carlos who gets to define everything done anywhere else in the world as inapplicable or inadequate to Special Local Conditions -- thus expanding the local consultant scope of work out to infinity and beyond --, or, say, the signalling division of the Swiss Federal Railways?
One guess as to Caltrain's choice.
I wonder if this problem is a symptom of the overall underinvestment in mass transit in this country. It may be easy for key figures to hijack transportation projects because relatively few people care about transit here. The vast majority of people are driving.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Swiss residents ever complain about their transit networks and what their complaints might consist of.
Well... I kinda agree that the decision makers of medium to small operator's... are not particularly knowledgable about what is an improvment to public transit... or if it were, that advancing another purpose using public transit funds had more merit.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this problem is a symptom of the overall underinvestment in mass transit in this country.
ReplyDeleteThe entire transit-contractor-industrial-complex is corrupt -- and you are proposing to solve this by throwing _more_ money at it?
Vote no on Measure R.
ReplyDeleteRichard, I think you're out of touch with reality when it comes to some of your criticisms. You're complaining that all platforms are of a useless heights and that Caltrain wasted millions on refurbishing more of them. We all know the reality of FRA and CPUC rules which are same all around united states except where grandfathered on the east coast. How do you figure that removing holdout rule in California and Burlingame was a waste of money? yes, Burlingame asked for a fancier fence, but it's not like that request blew that project 10x over budget. While on the matter of budget, we keep hearing how all BART/VTA projects go under budget, but very few Caltrain projects are over budget.
ReplyDeleteAs for your criticism of the baby bullet service that added CTC is so 1939. You do understand that the Caltrain line purchased from SP 20-30 years ago didn't even have CTC. Why are you critical of progress? Did you watch Caltrain to jump straight to PTC? As for complaining about the useless locations for the passing tracks... Well, if you look closely as to where those were added, you'll notice that they're in places where there are ZERO grade seperations. This means that Caltrain only had to lay down new track. They didn't need to add any new bridges, they didn't need create any 4-track at-grade crossings. They didn't need to fight with UP or anyone over extra right of way. I'd call that very WISE use of limited funds.
Additionally, the operational reality at those stations is not as bad as you think. I'm frequently on the baby bullet that starts to catch up to the local train that's about to enter a 4-track section. The local train does not wait there as long as you think when the baby bullet is right on its tail. Additionally, when the local is running ahead of schedule or baby bullet is behind, the local train does NOT wait for the baby bullet to pass. It moves on to the next station. Again, I see that as an attempt at operational efficiency.
I'll agree that 3rd track at Milbrae is stupid, but I'd blame that on the BART-to-SFO extension rather than Caltrain.
Also, the midpoint passing track in Redwood City gets FREQUENT use when local trains get severely delayed by midpoint of their run. I've been on countless baby bullets that passed a local or disabled train in Redwood City. While at it, do you know why that quad-track stretch is so short??? It's because it's buffered by grade separations and RWC station. Expanding either of those would quickly eat up most of the funds that original created the baby bullet service.
Caltrain is one of the few commuter trains in the US that provides 50+mph service (between SF<->MV) during commute hour. For fun, I looked up the Peak schedule for LIRR from Ronkonkoma (I have friend there, so that's why I picked it). The distance to Penn Station is about 45 miles as crow flies. The fastest train takes 1hr 21mins for an average speed of: 33.75mph. Yes, electrified EMU railroad with level boarding is actually MUCH MUCH slower than Caltrain.
Anyway, Richard... you're right at some level, Caltrain wastes a lot of money on non-level boarding, and poorly placed passing tracks. I'd much rather take a 50+mph AVERAGE speed baby bullet than LIRR any day. The reality is hardly as bad as you make it out to be.
This is getting off-topic, but one of the cooler operational 'stunts' that I've seen Caltrain do when it's trying to recover from a major 'incident' is to dispatch a limited and baby bullet simultanously from SF.
ReplyDeleteOn two occasions, I've been on a BB running alongside a limited from SF, stopping side-by-side at 22nd, and then running side-by-side non-stop to Milbrea. Yea, this was possible back in 1900's, but I still get a kick out of it when that happens.
Ronkonkoma (I have friend there, so that's why I picked it). The distance to Penn Station is about 45 miles as crow flies. The fastest train takes 1hr 21mins for an average speed of: 33.75mph. Yes, electrified EMU railroad with level boarding is actually MUCH MUCH slower than Caltrain.
ReplyDeleteExcept for the rush hour expresses which are faster. The 6:24 makes it to Penn Station in 1 hour 6 minutes. That comes out to 40.9 MPH. Probably faster than that because the LIRR doesn't go in straight lines. The alternates, the Long Island Expressway - the world's longest parking lot - and the Southern State, take much longer during rush hours.
The commuter rail along the Northeast Corridor does better than that. Expresses to/from Trenton or New Haven get close to the 50 MPH average speed... when there isn't construction on the NEC, which there always seems to be...
"I think you're out of touch with reality when it comes to some of your criticisms."
ReplyDeleteThis is the fallacy:
1. Something must be done.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore this must be done.
I'm not saying that Caltrain today is worse than Caltrain in 1999. (Though just in terms of the dollar cost of doing things correctly from fallen-apart rather than from mucked-about-with it may be a close call.)
I am saying that a criminal amount of money has ben wasted on nearly useless, poorly-conceived, un-co-ordinated, technically obsolete, economically foolish, and under performing make-work.
In other words that with the application of the most rudimentary, reptilian-hind-brain-level of foresight, that far more could have been achieved at the same (or lower cost), and that we'd be in a much better position today to achieve further incremental progress towards defined, strategic goals.
But what's happened has been a complete mess and waste from any sort of strategic point of view.
Yes, the tracks and civil structures aren't literally falling apart they way they were. (And they were!) Yes, a newly installed signalling system to a 1930s state of the art design is better than a falling apart signalling system to a 1930s low tech design. Yes, randomly located passing tracks and sidings and crossovers can be used under some circumstances if one tries hard enough.
But no, this wasn't the best -- or even a hint of a sketch of an approximation of the best -- that could have been done with the same amount of fiscal and political capital, engineering resources, and service disruption.
"You're complaining that all platforms are of a useless heights and that Caltrain wasted millions on refurbishing more of them. We all know the reality of FRA and CPUC rules which are same all around united states except where grandfathered on the east coast."
OK. Explain why the limitlessly incompetent Caltrain staff have still not initiated any sort of CPUC waiver process as of today? There's only been 20 years to do it!
There's simply no excuse.
None.
They've taken hundreds of millions of public money and burned it.
Stupidity, ignorance, laziness, whatever: it amounts to the same thing in the end.
And the FRA isn't involved -- this is purely historical state regulatory idiocy, no freight RRs either. There are FRA trains, massive freight trains, and passenger platforms higher than 8 inches in Utah. Utah, for God's sake! Utah! Mormons! Homophobes! Inbreds! Utah!!!
I mean, Caltrain went all the way to put up signs saying that trainmen may not ride on the sides of cars north of 22nd Street but somehow the massive mental stretch of considering putting those signs up in San Jose didn't occur to anybody.
"How do you figure that removing holdout rule in California and Burlingame was a waste of money?"
If you can't see that spending $10 million of public money on something that is known to be wrong and known to be obsolete is fundamentally wrong, well, what can I say?
It's not that Burlingame station isn't prettier or marginally safer now than it was 2 years ago, it's that millions of dollar have been wasted on something that is guaranteed and known in advance to be wrong and to have a really short life time.
"While on the matter of budget, we keep hearing how all BART/VTA projects go under budget, but very few Caltrain projects are over budget."
You haven't been paying attention recently, then.
These days they're talking $300 million to completely fuck up San Bruno. Maybe they'll screw up for less than $300.5 million once the bids are in, but this is a sophist's use of "budget", relying on selective amnesia of earlier budgets and of disregard of alternatives. It's the same as saying the BART Dublin extension was built "on budget" while ignoring that they used a number a third as large when killing off alternatives.
"Why are you critical of progress? Did you watch Caltrain to jump straight to PTC?"
ReplyDeleteThat would have been the wise and fairly straight forward choice, in fact. It was obvious to anybody (I have the mail archived!) that an inevitable fatal SPAD on some commuter railroad sometime would result in ill-conceived, knee-jerk, incompetent FRA fiat and ill-conceived, incompetent, ignorant, freight-centric, defense-contractor-porked, not-invented-here, unique, single-vendor-captive, consultant-fest, non-working, over-budget, home-brew PTC system fiascos.
Caltrain could have been a decade ahead of the curve and the entire country would be in a much better state.
But even short of that, Caltrain's "new" signalling and interlocking systems are like something out of a museum and were specified to exclude anything contemporary (read: non-olde tyme US railroading, good enough for my grand-daddy.) Relays for God's sake! (Another fun fact: their train dispatching "system" vendor recently went out of business. The replacement system specs were for something unique and 30 years out of date.)
"As for complaining about the useless locations for the passing tracks... Well, if you look closely as to where those were added, you'll notice that they're in places where there are ZERO grade seperations."
Gee, thanks. I'd never have noticed. What an insight!
"This means that Caltrain only had to lay down new track. They didn't need to add any new bridges"
Wrong. Creek crossings. (And not cheap -- nothing is here.)
"I'd call that very WISE use of limited funds."
1. Something must be done.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore this must be done.
Superior and manifectly feasible alternatives and strategically useful (ie part of some kind, any kind of plan) included:
* Quadrupling Hillsdale (which is THE most important civil work on the line, but instead we get an actively harmful San Bruno fuck-up as numero uno tippity-top Caltrain and HSR staff priority.)
Then we'd have had something operationally useful in place and we'd be set up to incrementally quadruple Belmont and eventually San Carlos and Redwood City and maybe even San Mateo..
And we wouldn't have wasted millions on a "new" Hillsdale station that was known to be obsolete and interim.
But no.
* Tripling or quadrupling Millbrae.
Fun fact to know: BART extension project staff offered to configure the station to allow extra Caltrain tracks, but Caltrain staff refused.
* Tripling or quadrupling Bayshore-South San Francisco
(note: no grade crossings;
note: more than one station;
enote: South SF rebuild would have been two birds with one stone)
rather than doing the isolated single-station Lawrence quadruplication.
With a few pennies saved from Lawrence and Redwood Junction it's even possible to imagine things might have stretched as far as 280 in San Bruno including Linden Ave grade separation.
Again, we'd be well ahead of where we are strategically, and we'd have had something more useful in the interim.
"Additionally, the operational reality at those stations is not as bad as you think. [...]"
You don't have a good idea of what I think, or how much time I've spent on Caltrain over the years. Please don't tell me that things are just fine because they could be worse. I'm not interested. The issue for me is whether better things are possible, not how low can we go.
"I'll agree that 3rd track at Milbrae is stupid, but I'd blame that on the BART-to-SFO extension rather than Caltrain."
Nope. Undertaken with the full connivance of Caltrain.
"Caltrain is one of the few commuter trains in the US that provides [...]
How low can you go?
Special Olympics!
@Spokker:
ReplyDelete"I wonder if this problem is a symptom of the overall underinvestment in mass transit in this country. It may be easy for key figures to hijack transportation projects because relatively few people care about transit here."
It's part of the reason, I think. Except of some commuter rail there are few serious intercity or regional passenger rail operations in the US. There is a lack of competent "anchor institutions" (Reminds me of those bad and expensive hospitals on the one side and the few good and low cost on the other side).
Maybe it's too harsh to call the FRA the "Freight Rail Administration" but what else do they spent their majority of their time on? Amtrak is the unwanted, undernourished, sick stepchild. Intercity passenger rail was tossed out the window after WW2 and further evolution of manufacturers, operators, regulators and politics rather stopped. And now some people are rediscovering the value of rail. After a long break nothing is "ready to go". Some catch-up time needs to go by before institutional knowledge is rebuilt.
Of course one can always admit a lack of skills and buy them completely from the outside if you've got the money. I hear Dubai has opened a new, expensive, air-conditioned metro. And the Saudis are getting the Chinese to build HSR for the Haj.
Richard, would you please tone it down one notch? Your vituperative delivery really detracts from the validity of your comments. People do read your words, and rightly get offended. Your frustration might be overwhelming and you might not care about this, but I do... throwing bombs does not add value to the discussion. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMirv, even in areas where people do care, such as New York, the agencies responsible have Bush-level competence. In New York the MTA is currently building a subway at 4 times the per-km cost of subway construction in Tokyo. The city is funding an equally expensive one-station subway extension that will serve developers the Mayor is friends with, but no residents. New Jersey is building a commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson with no connections to the existing one, feeding into a new train station under Penn Station with no connections to the existing station; the new train station is located right in front of a water tunnel, making it impossible to extend in the future even if someone wants to.
ReplyDelete"[Update 9/10] The city of San Bruno has now coughed up $350k to grease the rails for this project."
ReplyDeleteDid you contact them and send them a more diplomatic version of this blog post?
The city is funding an equally expensive one-station subway extension that will serve developers the Mayor is friends with, but no residents
ReplyDeleteIt's gonna be all out of towners riding to the new stop on 33rd?
New Jersey is building a commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson with no connections to the existing one, feeding into a new train station under Penn Station with no connections to the existing station.
They could have built one that connected with the existing Penn Station. They decided that tearing down the Hotel New Yorker and 5 Penn Plaza to do that wasn't worth it. Even if they had connected it to the existing Penn Station they were proposing building more platforms either deep under the existing Penn Station or under 34th Street as they are doing.
There's going to be all sorts of pedestrian connections between the two stations the subway and the street.
the new train station is located right in front of a water tunnel, making it impossible to extend in the future even if someone wants to.
See above. Once the new water tunnel, Water Tunnel 3, is in service they will be closing down the existing one, Water Tunnel 1. It's been in continuous service since it opened in 1917. They aren't sure what they will find in it. While it's closed down they can build across it and onto Grand Central.
It's gonna be all out of towners riding to the new stop on 33rd?
ReplyDeleteMostly, yes. Once some developer puts up high-priced condos there ridership will include more locals, but until then, it'll serve no neighborhood where people live or work. Remember how Bloomberg shot down the idea of a stop at 41st and 10th on the grounds that "the area is already developed"? That's the thinking there. It's real estate development, not transportation.
Even if they had connected it to the existing Penn Station they were proposing building more platforms either deep under the existing Penn Station or under 34th Street as they are doing.
Who needs those? In cities with well-thought regional rail systems, they don't need 21 tracks for a station with Penn's volume; they need about 6 - that's how many Chatelet-Les Halles has. The extra riders coming from ARC can distribute themselves among the remaining 15 tracks.
There's going to be all sorts of pedestrian connections between the two stations the subway and the street.
But the trains can't use those...
Once the new water tunnel, Water Tunnel 3, is in service they will be closing down the existing one, Water Tunnel 1. It's been in continuous service since it opened in 1917. They aren't sure what they will find in it. While it's closed down they can build across it and onto Grand Central.
That won't happen until 2017 at the earliest. And even then, the new station can connect to Grand Central but not to the East River Tunnels and the LIRR or Amtrak. One Penn Station would connect to Grand Central only, the other to the LIRR only. That's about as operationally flexible as having local and express trains use platforms of different heights. By itself it would be bad enough, but the deep-level station costs billions more than just drilling two single-track tunnels from New Jersey to Penn Station.
it'll serve no neighborhood where people live or work.
ReplyDeleteBut it will serve the neighborhood they play in. Though I suppose the people who work in the Javits Center and all the clubs bars and restaurants around it don't consider it play,. A stop on 10th would have been nice. Personally I would have much preferred they extended it to Secausus but that's because I go to New Jersey a lot. Would have made getting to Grand Central from New Jersey a lot easier. Whether the stations at TImes Square and Grand Central could handle it is a different question.
they need about 6 - that's how many Chatelet-Les Halles has.
Les Halles has a quarter or the passengers Penn Station currently has. It has four island plaforms and 7 tracks not 6. 7 times 4 is 28, one more than the Penn Station complex will have when ARC is complete.
The extra riders coming from ARC can distribute themselves among the remaining 15 tracks.
Go to Penn Station at 5:15 in the afternoon some time. After you get swept into the station by the pedestrians stand shoulder to shoulder with them while the trains are announced. Penn Station doesn't have the pedestrian capacity for NJ Transit to double it's volume. Which is why any of the alternatives that made it past the original 137 options explored, all included more platforms and additional pedestrian access. I've seen predictions that the pedestrian traffic jams will shift from the station itself out onto 6th, 7th and 8th Avenues with crosswalks as far north as 38th and 7th "failing" whatever that means.
But the trains can't use those...
Pointless to run trains into station if it's so crowded the passengers can't get off. If I want to get to Penn Station it's not all that important to me if the train can connect to Sunnyside or Grand Central or if it's stub terminal and the train is going to turn around.
That won't happen until 2017 at the earliest.
They were talking about increasing capacity at Penn Station in the late 70s. ARC is scheduled for completion in 2017. I'll believe that when they cut the ribbon. Water tunnel 3 is due for completion in 2020, Water Tunnel 3 has been more or less on schedule for decades so 2020 is probably a good estimate. They saved the trouble and expense of tearing down two skyscrapers and risking smaller buildings on 34th for a delay of a few years. Even if they hadn't made the station as deep as it is, it still would have been unwise to tunnel over Water Tunnel 1 without the redundancy provided by Water Tunnel 3.
the new station can connect to Grand Central but not to the East River Tunnels and the LIRR or Amtrak
It doesn't need to connect to Amtrak east/norh of NY or the LIRR in normal operation, there's enough people who want to get from New Jersey to Penn Station that they can keep the tunnels and 6 platforms busy. Leaves more room in the main station for Amtrak, the LIRR and Metro North. It would have been nice to have the extra track work to connect to the existing Penn Station but the geology under 34th Street didn't cooperate.
One Penn Station would connect to Grand Central only, the other to the LIRR only
A less than optimal solution but it avoids tearing down skyscrapers. The only way to avoid the geology problems under 34th Street is to go back in time and alter the way the glaciers came down the Hudson River Valley. Probably would be a good idea to go even further back and manage the way the schist down there was formed too. I suppose an alternative to that would be to convince the Pennsylvania Railroad that they really should have put the station they expected to be adequate for 50 years someplace better, so that 100 years later it would be easier to alter.comal
As a totally random anecdote, I saw an interesting example of planning for the future in Palo Alto recently. Caltrain did a bunch of station work there last summer, and I happened to notice that all the new metalwork was equipped with bonding wires, of the sort that are used to ground lineside structures along a line electrified with high voltage AC. At least they had the foresight to put those in now, rather than wait for the electrification to retrofit them.
ReplyDeleteLes Halles has a quarter or the passengers Penn Station currently has.
ReplyDeleteNo, it doesn't. Its RER operations have 493,000 riders per day; Penn's LIRR and NJT operations have 300,000 riders per day.
A less than optimal solution but it avoids tearing down skyscrapers.
How does four-tracking the existing tunnel from Penn Station to New Jersey require knocking down buildings?
> Its RER operations have 493,000 riders per day
ReplyDeleteCompare Chatelet to Caltrain 4th & King in SF: about 8,000 riders per day, rising to 32,000 in the TJPA's optimistic expectations for the Transbay Terminal in 2030. And the relevance of the RER is... ??
> At least they had the foresight to put those in now, rather than wait for the electrification to retrofit them.
There's also a whole ground network under the platforms at University Ave and Cal Ave, with connections for the catenary pole footings. (circles in the concrete about every 50 meters.)
Not sure if Burlingame is the same.
Too bad, the whole shebang is nearly certain to be torn up.
New Jersey is building a commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson with no connections to the existing one, feeding into a new train station under Penn Station with no connections to the existing station.
ReplyDeleteThat's nothing. San Francisco is building a new central subway, with no connections to the existing one, and no connections to the planned Transbay Terminal.
Chatelet's huge ridership is due, of course, to the numerous metro and RER transfers possible. If your transit network isn't seamless, and if lines don't connect (or connect in remote locations like Millbrae or San Jose), the result is order of magnitude fewer trips.
If your transit network isn't seamless, and if lines don't connect (or connect in remote locations like Millbrae or San Jose), the result is order of magnitude fewer trips.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know more about this. Any references or studies which address these variables and their affect on ridership?
That's nothing. San Francisco is building a new central subway, with no connections to the existing one, and no connections to the planned Transbay Terminal.
ReplyDeleteAnd the problem is not just the Central Subway, but the original need for it. BART and Muni do a shoddy job of connecting neighborhoods. All they do is get you from where you live to downtown SF. Hence, no stops at North Beach and Chinatown. Hence, the need for some subway line to connect to them.
It's a pity, too, since in some ways BART is the closest thing in the US to a true RER or S-Bahn. It's just done so badly that it has commuter rail levels of ridership.
"> > If your transit network isn't seamless, and if lines don't connect (or connect in remote locations like Millbrae or San Jose), the result is order of magnitude fewer trips. [...]"
ReplyDelete"> I'd like to know more about this. Any references or studies which address these variables and their affect on ridership?"
It's made up.
The BART system works because of excellent connection in a (comparatively) remote location.
San Jose would be a fine place to transfer between a shuttle train from Gilroy and a fast, frequent electric ride to Fremont or to Mountain view or to Oakland on a Caltrain-based RER, or to a bus to Santa Cruz or to a bus to the important flea market.
The entire countries of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria -- bus, tram, commuter rail, intercity rail, funicular, cable lifts, ferries -- and, increasingly, the rail networks of even backwaters like Britain -- work entirely on the basis of transfers, many of them in "remote locations".
Just because you haven't seen local humanoids acting intelligently doesn't mean that humans in general can't master basic technical skills.
Run every 30 minutes (or 15 minutes, or 60 minutes, or 7.5 minutes, as appropriate), make connections ever 30 (15, ...) minutes, accept the same piece of printed (dumb ticket) paper on every line at the connections, get rid of connection and walking impediments such as ticket barriers, and you can triple your system ridership in a decade or so. Nothing to it. Works every time.
Millbrae's problem isn't that is "nowhere". It's that the line running to it was a useless waste of two billion dollars and should never have been built. BART contractors kiss you a thousand times, on the lips, or wherever you like, Quentin Kopp!
"Anonymous" is confusing geographically remote transfer location and circuitous transfer.
ReplyDeleteMillbrae doesn't work as a transfer because the airport PeopleMover, BART, and Caltrain don't all connect in the same place. It is also circuitous because it forces detour through Daly City(!) in order to transfer between Caltrain and BART.
Similarly, San Jose might be Ok for transfer to a Santa Cruz or Gilroy service. But it is not a sensible transfer location for trip to Sacramento if your starting location is, say, San Mateo.
@Adirondacker12800 said
ReplyDeleteExcept for the rush hour expresses which are faster. The 6:24 makes it to Penn Station in 1 hour 6 minutes. That comes out to 40.9 MPH. Probably faster than that because the LIRR doesn't go in straight lines. The alternates, the Long Island Expressway - the world's longest parking lot - and the Southern State, take much longer during rush hours.
Ok. I actually found a 1:06 runtime between those stations, but it still doesn't seem like it approaches anything close to 50mph. Do you know the exact track distance? I'd be curious to see the fastest average MPH run of an express on LIRR.
The commuter rail along the Northeast Corridor does better than that. Expresses to/from Trenton or New Haven get close to the 50 MPH average speed... when there isn't construction on the NEC, which there always seems to be...
Point taken. However, they're doing this with 100mph EMU's. We're getting 50mph with 79mph diesels.
I'm actually wondering what caltrain will do with the time savings from going EMU. Will they give the time savings to riders in form of faster runtime, or use the time savings to stuff more stops into baby bullet runs.
If you trace a line in Google Maps along the track, you get a distance of 50.3 miles. That gives 45.7 mph.
ReplyDelete