Supplemental AA Supplement: The CHSRA posts the latest round of tweaks to the peninsula alternatives analysis. The updated report is due in November. (Note: this briefing was abridged by the CHSRA, shortly after being posted. The link is to the original slides that were removed from the CHSRA website.)
The Money Goes Poof: since the Feds have specifically ear-marked $715 million in HSIPR funding for the Central Valley, the winner-take-all, four-way horse race between Merced - Fresno, Fresno - Bakersfield, Los Angeles - Anaheim, and San Francisco - San Jose is for all intents and purposes decided before the CHSRA board even gets to vote. Bottom line: SF - SJ is out of the running and will not receive any of the $2.25 billion in ARRA stimulus funds. That has huge implications on process: the rush to beat a 2012 shovels-in-the-dirt deadline is gone.
Ray Writes Anna: the Secretary of Transportation writes a letter to assure Congresswoman Eshoo and concerned peninsula residents that "no final decision has been made regarding the design of this segment, and DOT must approve any final alternative in order for it to receive Federal funds. As long as this process is underway, we cannot prejudge the final outcome." In short, he claims there is adult supervision and the mad rush (now moot--see above) for early federal funding will not preempt due environmental process.
Anna Writes Ray: the Congresswoman replies, profusely thanking the Feds for their oversight and the few crumbs thrown our way (a paltry $16 million, nominally ear-marked for re-arranging the platforms at San Francisco's 4th & King station) ...
... and asks for CBOSS Pork: Eshoo asks that the $16 million be re-allocated to the CBOSS project. She pointedly states "We can assure you that the PTC project is not a "throwaway" that would benefit only Caltrain and require replacement or costly upgrade when HSR is built."
If only that were true.
If only the secretary could hear from people who didn't drink the CBOSS Kool-Aid... for example, by reading Caltrain's own crystal-clear statements that the design of CBOSS will not take HSR into account. Or simply typing "CBOSS Caltrain" into Google. Recall that CBOSS is (a) an overlay system (that's what the 'O' stands for) that cannot function on its own as a stand-alone HSR-capable signaling system, (b) is designed primarily for freight trains, not HSR, and (c) is currently vaporware. For the $230 million they are trying to marshall for this science project (a massive sum with an elastic upper bound, to be exercised via contractual engineering change orders) they could simply install ERTMS, the emerging worldwide HSR standard, at very little cost or schedule risk.
Message to LaHood and Eshoo: now that wouldn't be a throwaway.
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The link is broken. Did they take the document down again?
ReplyDeleteLooks like they moved it.
ReplyDeleteit's here
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=9348
So, in other words, the best way for a city to get the analysis and alternatives it wants is for it to work together with the Authority and compromise. PCC/PAMPA take note.
ReplyDeleteRedwood City trench is back!
ReplyDeleteRedwood City is working with the Authority, they want a trench so they restrict their own rules to get it. Now the trench is back on the table. Good for them, I hope they get what they want!
ReplyDeleteIf only all the other cities worked the same way!
The presentation at the link posted by anonymous contains only 4 of the 8 slides in the presentation at the original link, so now the only actual information is on the Redwood City trench. I have the original cached, the missing slides are:
ReplyDeleteSan Francisco
• City has asked for additional study of design options
at 16th Street and Mission Bay Drive.
• Staff is working with the city on refining alignment
options.
Maintenance Facility
• Reconsideration of the San Francisco International
Airport (SFO) site as possible maintenance facility
site.
– According to SFO, sites at airport could be available for
use as HST maintenance and storage facilities. SFO
offers land use compatibility and good potential long-term
job creation and retention.
– Brisbane has concerns that the maintenance facility would
have land use compatibility and physical site (seismic and
remediation) issues.
City of Santa Clara
• Initial design option resulted in high aerial structure
(over 50’ total height) over existing roadway bridges.
• Upon further analysis, the city relaxed certain
roadway restrictions. Based on these changes a
lower aerial and partially at grade option could be
feasible through the city.
City of San Mateo
• Corrected tables to reflect city policies on preferred
design options in the tables of the document.
As I detailed earlier ... Brisbane is just pissed HSRA wants to put a maintenance yard on the vacant, trackless and long-defunct SP Bayshore Yard -- right where Brisbane is dreaming a developer will plop their huge and unfunded "Brisbane Baylands" mega-development (between Caltrain's SF Bayshore station and Brisbane's "downtown").
ReplyDeleteWait. What exactly does "overlay" mean? I thought it meant that there are two signal systems running in parallel, and trains capable of using the fancy one will use it, while those not capable of doing so will have to follow the little colored lights, generally with some penalty to line capacity. Or possibly that it uses the existing signal system in some way, for example for train detection. But ETCS actually does that too: it relies on track circuits or axle counters for train detection, and those can generally be re-used from any existing installation, and it ought to be possible with Caltrain if the track layout isn't changed too drastically. But if it is changed, then you'd still need a full resignalling for CBOSS anyway. So I'm a bit confused.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to see some evidence that ETCS works well for heavy freight trains. After all, sometimes european signalling just doesn't work in American conditions, like the Swiss axle counters that don't allow for trains longer than 64 cars, since the count only goes up to 255.
whoo hoo! Redwood City gets a trench and a massive subterranean station. Will Gilroy be next?
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know what the new aerial design for Santa Clara might look like? Where might it be at grade and where might it transition to aerial?
ReplyDelete@Arcady: China, which has heavy freight trains just like the US, uses something very similar to ETCS, appropriately named CTCS.
ReplyDeleteDoes China actually use it, or has it merely been proposed, and possibly a standard written? And if it's used, is it used only on the high speed lines that are exclusively for passenger trains, or is it also used on lines with heavy freight?
ReplyDeletewhoo hoo! Redwood City gets a trench and a massive subterranean station. Will Gilroy be next?
ReplyDeleteHuh? They don't "get a trench." They get to have a trench studied. Big difference!
@Arcady: China uses it on the HSR lines. I'm not sure about the legacy lines - of the only two links about it on Wikipedia, one is dead and the other is behind a paywall. (Die, academic copyright, die.)
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to see some evidence that ETCS works well for heavy freight trains.
ReplyDeleteThat's like wanting to see evidence that a hammer works well as a screwdriver. Or that a Porsche can haul a boat trailer. You can view these things as shortcomings of the hammer or the Porsche, or you can accept that different jobs demand different tools.
I'd also like to see some evidence that ETCS works well for heavy freight trains.
ReplyDeleteThat's like wanting to see evidence that a hammer works well as a screwdriver. Or that a Porsche can haul a boat trailer. You can view these things as shortcomings of the hammer or the Porsche, or you can accept that different jobs demand different tools.
I doubt any iteration of ETCS cares much about how much the train weighs or even accounts for it directly. Isn't ETCS supposed to be the 84 bladed Leahtherman tool of railroad signals able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.......
As of noon Nov. 4, Caltrain has been left high and dry since the feds have mandated that ALL of the $4.3 billion allocated for CA HSR be spent in the Central Valley. Kopp and Diridon and the rest have been summarily slapped down big-time.
ReplyDeleteCaltrain's board, insisting on developing CBOSS, has become its own worst enemy.
ReplyDeleteThe Caltrain board's staff experts are the problem. To bad the lay Caltrain Joint Powers Board members evidently don't know (or read this blog) enough to know it's waay past time for them to either crack some skulls at 1250 San Carlos Ave. or fire their CEO and his crack (addled?) staff.
ReplyDeleteThe former Caltrain/SamTrans/SMCTA CFO Ian McAvoy seemed like a good guy. That's probably why he left a couple years ago, privately confiding to some advocates that things had reached a certain point where the outlook was not looking good financially or otherwise for the agency.
ReplyDeletearcady: ETCS itself doesn't need track circuits - it's station interlocking machines and stuff like automatic block signalling that need it. ETCS is another layer, built on top of them. For example, the simplest application of ETCS is LEU that reads current aspect of nearby signal and translates it to equivalent movement authority. This is read by On Board Unit and it subsequently enforces speed profile so train moves within movement authority limits.
ReplyDeleteClem: what exactly makes ETCS unsuitable for American freight rail system in addition to high price of OBU?
ETCS itself doesn't need track circuits
ReplyDeleteThe part that says "stop the train because the track is broken" needs track circuits.
ETCS needs some pre-existing train detection mechanism. How else could it derive movement authorities? But yeah, basically ETCS Level 2 is equivalent to cutting off the signal lights and replacing them with GSM-R transmitters. As for freight, I think the problem is on the train control end, because handling a heavy freight is a non-trivial task. For example, I think freights have direct release brakes, which means you can apply the brake in increments if you want, but you can only release it all the way. And because of the way air brakes work, until the air pressure in all the brakes reservoirs along the train recharges, you have less braking effectiveness and you can make fewer further applications. If you apply and release the air several times, it's possible to just not have any air left to stop the train, which tends to happen on long downgrades, and is especially dangerous there.
ReplyDeleteThe part that says "stop the train because the track is broken" needs track circuits.
ReplyDeleteYep. But if some line could operate without it up to this date, they can continue so with ETCS.
ETCS needs some pre-existing train detection mechanism.
19th- and early 20th century interlocking machines use dispatcher's eyes for this purpose. If dispatcher makes sure that track is clear, he can set up train path there and when that happens, interlocking machine grants movement authority. Note that such electro-mechanical interlockings use track circuit only for switch position detection and cancelling of train path, not for train detection itself.
Sure, such arrangement makes little sense because it protects only from train driver errors, but it proves that ETCS L1 and L2 can theoretically work without train detection, if underlying interlocking doesn't feature it. BTW even then it would be enough to prevent Chatsworth, because the OBU wouldn't allow the train to leave it's station track.
BTW, American railroads could start implementing ETCS L3 right now because they already solved it's biggest obstacle in European conditions - they are already monitoring train integrity via FREDs and Wilmas. The train integrity monitoring is a matter of a single wire from Wilma to ETCS OBU that would mean that train is complete and brakes properly.
For example, I think freights have direct release brakes, which means you can apply the brake in increments if you want, but you can only release it all the way. And because of the way air brakes work, until the air pressure in all the brakes reservoirs along the train recharges, you have less braking effectiveness and you can make fewer further applications. If you apply and release the air several times, it's possible to just not have any air left to stop the train, which tends to happen on long downgrades, and is especially dangerous there.
This is job of OBU software. The track part of ETCS sends movement authority, track profile and track speed profile to OBU, OBU then calculates safe speed profile of actual train based on it's length, weight and braking abilities and oversees driver so he can't take actions that would compromise ability of train to stay within movement authority, like e.g. early release of brakes that would exhaust them.
But if some line could operate without it up to this date,
ReplyDeleteHow are they going to assure the track is still there without track circuits?
When the track circuit fails the sophisticated train signal and control system better be set up to stop the trains. Then someone goes out on the track and determines if the track has failed or the sensors have failed. Unless you think the occasional derailment is is acceptable....
Broken rail detection is a strange US cultural obsession, enshrined in law.
ReplyDeleteMany places with better safety records than ours can and have done away with this, based upon controlled track laying, controlled monitoring, controlled maintenance, and objective risk measurement and evaluation.
It's a lot like the FRA crush standards. If you lay the track at lowest cost and maintain it only when derailment is immanent or after the rivers are filled with pesticides and the ruptured chlorine tanks have BLEVEd out entire neighborhoods, then a state or federal regulator coming in and mandating detection of broken rails has the all important Look and Feel of Doing Something About Safety while allowing what is most important, namely Business As Usuai.
No broken rail detection!? That's crazy talk, just like having two kinds of trains stop at the same station platforms. Get out of here, and our experts do what's best (for themselves..)
Most of NYC Transit's system uses single-rail track circuits with a common return rail for track circuits, so there's only broken rail detection on one rail. Seems to have worked fine for the past century. And the Europeans are big fans of axle counters, but the FRA seems to insist on broken rail detection.
ReplyDeleteAs for "it's the job of OBU software", well, yeah. Of course it is. But I'm conjecturing that nobody's written this software yet for ETCS, and it might be a very nontrivial effort to write it and test it to the level of assurance necessary. People think software is easy, but the ETCS Level 2 spec has been around for like half a decade now, and it's not until the past year or two that they've even managed to get two implementations that work right together (assuming they resolved the issues at the Belgium-Netherlands border).
Adirondacker:
ReplyDeleteas others said, broken rail detection isn't the only means to make sure that rails are OK. For example, Germans don't use track circuits on their HSLs, they do instead regular inspection of rails by defectoscopic car. It's actually safer than track circuits because they find fatigue cracks before they start to influence track circuit current.
arcady:
border crossing is pretty demanding operation, that can involves OBU interfacing with track part of ATC in both countries, either of them can be ETCS or legacy ATC. That leaves a lot of room for error. OTOH, check for sufficient air pressure in brake reservoirs needs only flow meter at drivers brake valve and another wire :) from Wilma to OBU, so OBU can monitor volume of air in brake system.
What does freight have to do with any of this?
ReplyDeleteRecall that Caltrain is seeking (and has preliminary FRA approval for, and has UP assent to) time separation of freight from all passenger operations Santa Clara to San Francisco.
What's Caltrain's deliberately fraud-abetting staff have chosen not to do -- repeat CHOSEN not to do -- is to separate FRA and non-FRA equipment in the couple miles between Tamien and Santa Clara.
But CHOOSING to mix non-Caltrain equipment with random freight and Amtrak junk in this short (and totally avoidable, by straight-forward laying of track which is GUARANTEED to be cheaper than the CBOSS fraud scam) they have deliberately created a situation that "demands" the "solution" that they have created to fill this globally "unique" mixture of regulations and traffic types.
In other words, Caltrain's staff have deliberately chosen the path that most enriches consultants and vendors of the agency, rather than even considering the most rudimentary cost/benefit (hardware/software, total-cost-of-ownership, etc, etc) analysis or even once considering the public's (their paymaster's!) interest.
Artificially created "demand" drive artificial "solutions" that just so happen to be just what the crafters of the "requirements" are able to step up and provide. Nice work if you can get it.
CBOSS is a quite a few steps down from starting a war in a third world country in order to enrich your buddies, but it's definitely on the same axis of evil.
FRA doesn't demand CBOSS. Freight train handling doesn't demand CBOSS. CHSRA doesn't demand CBOSS. CBOSS consultants demand CBOSS, end of story.
It seems pretty obvious that TCO and cost/benefit are of little importance where anything related to CAHSR is of concern.
ReplyDeleteGive me reasonably quick, reliable, frequent, and reasonably priced commuter service between SF and SJ. A service that takes 40 minutes instead of 60 minutes that costs $50/ticket instead of $15/ticket and is less frequent is going to be of no use to me. Nevermind that SJ isn't really where I need to go and I would have to backtrack. Improving caltrain/replacing caltrain with a better commuter service would benefit more people.
Also, why are we blowing billions on CAHSR when we don't even have decent (even if you call MUNI and VTA decent) final mile public transportation in just about any city in CA?
For the Tamien to Santa Clara segment, would it be possible to provide interlocking-based separation for the trains with flank protection? That is, there are derails at the entrances from the FRA side, and FRA trains are only allowed into the section if the route is cleared all the way through to an exit, and all switches are locked out such that no non-compliant train can get into the FRA train's path and vice versa. I think there's precedent for this sort of thing on the River Line in New Jersey. It would make for an annoyingly complex interlocking that has to work with two kinds of PTC and some operational constraints, but it would still be easier than developing and deploying CBOSS.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know the River Line's complex control system for temporal separation is a telephone. A control person at NJTransit telephones someone at the freight railroad and tells them all of the passenger trains are clear of the track.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the big obvious precedent of what I'm talking about is the Newark City Subway, where the NJT dispatcher could set a route for the freight train all the way through the light rail trackage. That didn't have parallel moves through an interlocking, but with proper flank protection, what difference does it make from parallel non-connected tracks?
ReplyDeleteArcady, re your suggestion: "...there are derails at the entrances from the FRA side ... ".
ReplyDeleteYes indeed the FRA PTC requirements appear to explicitly allow this, or that was what I took away when I read them back when issued. (I don't have most things to hand at present due to local hardware issues.)
But it turns out that for other reasons it is both straightforward and desirable to just do it right and 10% separate FRA and non-FRA in the entire stretch Tamien-Santa Clara.
Tamien to Cahill Street would (with a foreign thing called an optimized schedule) work just fine with a single Caltrain track and a single FRA track today. In the future it would work fine with a single FRA track and a pair of non-FRA shared (the very horrible idea!) Caltrain/HSR tracks.
Cahill to Santa Clara would work fine today with a pair of Caltrain tracks and a single FRA track. In the future it would work fine with 4 shared (the horror!) surface level (the very idea!) Caltrain/HSR tracks and 2 (one more than is really needed, but what the hell, there will be space) FRA tracks.
Cahill Street station in SJ would work more than fine with 2 FRA platform tracks and 5 non-FRA shared (shared! SHARED!!) Caltrain/HSR platform tracks, all at ground level or slightly elevated to allow convenient pedestrian access. (Like everything else, this only works for FSSF track configuration; only a total batshit idiot would propose SFFS and a two level station to deal with the straightforward issue of incoming S-track trains terminating and wanting to depart on the other S-track without having to also block both F tracks in the process.)
The only FRA/non-FRA interlocking deal would be for the entirely hypothetical, in practice never going to happen and could never in a million years be economically justified concept of switching the easternmost Caltrain track to exclusive FRA for imaginary time-separated late night freight.
BTW I suggested the same thing as you have for the "narrows" through Anaheim. Instead of the batshit insane PBQD idea of separate and unequal FRA Metrolink commuter railroad and HSR with separate platforms and lots of unshared track, make that Metrolink line (continuing to Sylmar) a non-FRA service, and deal with any Amtrak/freight though the two track narrows of Anaheim station and just to its north by allowing the easternmost (northernmost) track to be switched between exclusive-non-FRA and exclusive-FRA, all enforced by physical barriers such as the derails are allowable for such.
It really isn't that complicated:
* If any train is in switchable section, section may not be switched.
* If switchable section is unoccupied and a non-FRA/FRA (or v.v.) switch is requested: set all entry signals on both FRA and non-FRA entry routes to danger; set all physical barriers (crossovers with flank protection and/or derails) to prevent entry on all entry routes; perform the switch (making the section appear as occupied and hence unavailable to the switched-out interlocking, and unoccupied to the switched-in side); unlock the entry barriers on the switched-in side; allow the switched-in interlocking machinery to clear the entry signals and set routes through and out of the shared section. Done.
Or they could have ALL OF separate and unequal stations; inefficient and expensive commuter service; large amounts of extra parallelling track; and a unique SoCal version of CBOSS on top of the while steaming pile. One guess which will happen!
Like everything else, this only works for FSSF track configuration; only a total batshit idiot would propose SFFS and a two level station to deal with the straightforward issue of incoming S-track trains terminating and wanting to depart on the other S-track without having to also block both F tracks in the process.)
ReplyDeleteMight be a problem in 2060 when private automobiles are outlawed. Even then there is a relatively cheap solution, a duckunder or even a flyover, that solves the problem. Yes yes it's not as cheap as putting the local tracks in the center but it's not a horribly expensive service killing insurmountable problem.
Richard, what you suggest sounds mostly reasonable. Just one thing I'd like to take issue with: freight on the Peninsula is actually quite real, and I can go watch the train go by every night. High speed rail is, at this point, purely hypothetical, as is an electrified Caltrain and its rolling stock and operations.
ReplyDeleteFreight on the Peninsula may be "real" (ie, it exists, barely), but it is marginal and not a profitable operation for UP.
ReplyDeleteHeavy freight on the Peninsula is NOT the future.
Oh I know it's marginal and probably not very profitable. That's not my point. My point, and this is something that I think everyone needs to be reminded of once in a while, is that freight on the Peninsula is actually real, involves real trains that actually run every day, while electric Caltrain and HSR are imaginary, and have never run a single train, nor will they be able to do so in the near future, nor are they even currently building the infrastructure that will allow them to do so. Imaginary trains on imaginary tracks powered by imaginary wires should not blind us to the real trains running on real tracks, today.
ReplyDeleteSteam trains used to be very "real" on the Peninsula too, but not any more. Good thing SP had some imagination!
ReplyDeleteSP seriously considered electrifying and quadtracking its Peninsula corridor almost a century ago. This is why Caltrain has a particularly wide ROW.
This is why Caltrain has a particularly wide ROW.
ReplyDeleteIt was standard practice to get a ROW four rods wide or wider by the time the SP was building on the Peninsula. Nothing particularly extraordinary about it.
SP didn't originally build the original Peninsula line between. SF and SJ, but they did explicitly widen it,
ReplyDeleteYes, steam trains were quite real. Aren't you glad they kept them running and went for an incremental upgrade to diesel, rather than abandoning them to wait for BART to come?
ReplyDeleteSP didn't originally build the original Peninsula line between. SF and SJ, but they did explicitly widen it,
ReplyDeleteSP took over the line in 1870. When almost everything on the line was pasture or fields if it wasn't totally undeveloped. There's a difference between widening a ROW and building more tracks on a ROW that's wide enough for more tracks.
The SF-SJ line was a single track until Harriman's tenure as head of SP in the early 1900s:
ReplyDeleteWhen E. H. Harriman took control of the Southern Pacific in 1900, he began to spend heavily on capital improvements on the whole system to bring it into the twentieth century. For the Peninsula line, this meant the double tracking of the whole line from San Jose to San Francisco, right of way acquisition for four tracks the whole distance except for a short stretch in San Mateo, construction of a branch through Los Altos to Los Gatos, construction of the Dumbarton Bridge line to Newark for freight, and most importantly, the construction of the Bayshore cutoff in San Francisco.
http://archived.ggrm.org/about_the_museum/history/peninsula.htm
There's a difference between widening a ROW and building more tracks on a ROW that's wide enough for more tracks. They bought new ROW for the San Bruno cutoff. I seriously doubt they didn't own something 100 feet wide when the SF&SJRR hadn't laid a tie yet. Too bad property tax records aren't on line, we could do a title search and see when the ROW was carved out and when it became 100 feet wide. I suspect both happened at the same time.
ReplyDelete