While the high-speed rail Authority seems all for it, the response (page 1, page 2) from Larry McCallon, Chair of the Metrolink Board of Directors, pours scorn on electrification in general and on Caltrain's project in particular. Some highlights:
Cost. Chair McCallon: "Caltrain's 51-mile electrification modernization project is currently projected to be between $1.45 and $1.5 billion (infrastructure and equipment). Metrolink operates on over 500 miles of track which would make this option very cost-prohibitive."
Zing! He does have a strong point, in that Caltrain's electrification project is probably the world's most expensive electrification program, per route-mile. Caltrain can evidently afford pre-construction cost blowouts that Metrolink can't.
Schedule. Chair McCallon: "Caltrain's experience shows them to be behind schedule in their 24th year of planning the electrification of their 51 mile segment between San Francisco and San Jose."
Double Zing! He is of course referring to old studies of Caltrain electrification dating all the way back to the early 1990s, and pointing out that Caltrain's planning process is just now coming to fruition. In Caltrain's favor, this is largely due to a lack of money and political will, and not to any technical obstacles.
Shared Corridors. Chair McCallon: "Caltrain, even with very limited freight service on the San Jose to San Francisco line is struggling with electrification compatibility with freight trains. Metrolink, on the other hand, operates on shared corridors with much more frequent Amtrak passenger and freight trains that carry some double stack cars. The electrification vs. freight issues would only be compounded in these rail corridors. Between Los Angeles and Fullerton our trains also operate on BNSF Railway owned lines."
This point is spot on. The freight railroads are adamantly opposed to electrifying any tracks where they operate, even if they are not the owners of such track. The last time that Caltrain tried to kick off a CPUC rule-making process to cover 25 kV electrification, in 2007 under CPUC docket P0706028, the process was promptly shut down by the freight railroads. The CHSRA's effort to clear HSR electrification ran into similar opposition, and survives only because it explicitly sidesteps the issue of electrification over tracks used by freight trains. While the contracting process for Caltrain electrification is well underway, on the regulatory front, we have... crickets.
Electrification versus freight is going to be a messy fight, one in which Caltrain appears to have no friends, least of all Metrolink.
Chair McCallon's lack of vision should be taken with a grain of salt: Metrolink is a struggling organization with sagging ridership, dodgy finances and a governance structure that makes Caltrain look like a well-run corporation. Nevertheless, the underlying issue of compatibility with high-speed rail is at least as important down south as it is here on the peninsula. Let us hope that Caltrain's blended system will blaze a good path for Electrolink to follow.
Why freight RR's are so afraid of electrification?
ReplyDeleteThree things:
Delete1. Anything Foreign is Bad. (Works the same for non-freight RRs. Look at Caltrain's "Commuter Railroading" mindset. 90 minute headways. Conductors. Concrete first, operations last. Employees and contractors first, customers last last last last last never even considered.)
2. Derailments are an accepted cost of doing business. Derailments into passenger trains are more expensive than derailments into other UPRR trains and/or UPRR employees. Derailments into lineside stanchions pulling down a mile of copper are more expensive than derailments into a ditch.
2. It's fundamentally another negotiating tactic. Say no to everything, demand over-the-top top dollar for every time little concession. (Works the same for non-freight RRs. Look at Caltrain's "Commuter Railroading" mindset. ... Employees first, customers last.) It's another route to get the public to pay for new, maintained, freight-only facilities under the pretense of "safety" and or "capacity". (Works the same as for highways. Trucks rip up everything, general public pays for HOV lanes, pavement repair, bridge repair.)
Basically, there's no reason at all for them to every agree to anything, and they never will. Want to install a crossover in Suisun or Santa Clara or whatever? That will take ten years and tens of millions and you'll have to relay all our track and pay for us to do it with our people when we want. Want to install some wires over our tracks? That will take centuries and billions and you'll have to give us everything, forever.
Repost from an earlier comment...
DeleteThe remaining controversial issues, which were avoided by HSR by narrowing the scope of their rulemaking, are described by a UPRR witness in this brief. If you fast forward to Exhibit 3, Question 6 (PDF page 42), you will see UPRR's objections summarized to the following major headings:
1) employee safety
2) grade crossings
3) physical clearances
Here is the summary verbatim from Mr. Prososki's testimony:
The technical, safety, and engineering issues related to a blended corridor are completely different than those for a dedicated corridor, none of which have been studied, discussed, or agreed to during the Technical Panel Workshops.
For example, in a blended corridor, there is significantly increased risk to freight employees, specifically those in the Maintenance-of-Way (“MOW”) or Train-Engine-Yard (“TEY”) departments performing work near or immediately next to a 25 kV electrified propulsion system, including an overhead catenary. The Proposed General Order (specifically, Sections 5 (Clearances and Protection), 6 (Grounding and Bonding), and 8 (Safe Working Practices)) does not address the needed safety measures to protect freight railroad employees. Again, this is because the parties intend the scope of the General Order to be limited to dedicated corridors.
As an additional example, there could be significant public safety risks resulting from impacts from a 25 kV electrified high-speed rail project on freight signal systems. I have reviewed the California High-Speed Train Project EIR/EIS Merced to Fresno Section. In Chapter 3.5: Electromagnetic Fields and Electromagnetic Interference, CHSRA acknowledges that its train system could cause EMI that could result in false activations of railroad crossing warning systems. Right now, CHSRA has provided Union Pacific with maps of points from Merced to Fresno, and Fresno to Bakersfield, where CHSRA anticipates its right-of-way will be adjacent or near Union Pacific’s right-of-way. In these specific segments, CHSRA has shared with Union Pacific its proposals relating to road and at-grade crossing closures, and that its intent is to “seal” its corridor so that there are no at-grade crossings. Again, because the parties intend the scope of these proceedings to be limited to a high-speed rail train operating in a dedicated corridor, none of the parties at the Technical Workshops studied, discussed, or agreed to any proposed safety rules governing EMI risks on a shared corridor. To protect the public, employees, and safety equipment, the final General Order must reflect that scope.
Finally, in a blended service corridor, freight and commuter railroads will operate within the same railroad right-of-way. There will need to be enough physical space within that right-of- way for both an electrified commuter system and a conventional freight system to maintain clearances as currently required by Union Pacific standards and General Order 26-D. If this General Order could be interpreted to apply to blended service corridors, Union Pacific has concerns that it would not be able to maintain safe side and vertical clearances due to the placement of catenary poles and wires in a blended corridor. Minimum clearances are necessary to ensure employee safety and the safe movement of trains.
If Caltrain staff had any brains, they'd append this Exhibit C to a letter informing UPRR that Caltrain is changing the implementation of passenger rail service on their corridor in a way which is not compatible with UPRR's FRA-compatible freight operation; and therefore Caltrain is exercising their right to force UPRR to an abandonment of UPRR's trackage rights.
DeleteGame over. Game, set and match to Caltrain.
There may be a public interest in preserving freight service -- to keep all those trains full of rocks on the track, instead of trucks full of rocks on 101. If so, the tricky bit would be getting UPRR to agree to a *partial* abandonment which allows FRA Plate F traffic during the planned freight-only hours.-- *under wire*.
I think this is a slight misreading of the interests of the various stakeholders. I think it is safe to assume that UPRR wants to abandon the unprofitable peninsula freight service, but the peninsula freight customers (including the ports of SF and RWC) won't agree to that and will have plenty of legal recourse (STB) to collect damages from whomever does initiate an abandonment. I think UPRR would love nothing better than to get that letter from Caltrain, who would be left holding the bag.
DeleteFreight under wire is no big deal; there's just that little matter of California precedent... if Caltrain gets away with it, Electrolink could too?
Look at the way it works.
ReplyDeleteThe rewards for failure to deliver projects that deliver service are:
* Person-decades or person-centuries of additional agency in-house employment.
* Hundreds of thousands of hours of additional billable consultant hours.
* LARGER EARMARKS
There you have just about all you need to know about all of your "stakeholder interests", right there.
LAMTA/Metrolink, not uncoincidently, has the same reward structure as PCJPB (or Muni, or BART, or NYMTA, or anybody else in the country). They're just pursuing the same ends (expensive non-delivery of service) via a different set of ineffective but similarly stupidly expensive similarly unjustifiable projects.
Metro actually has some useful and reasonably priced projects in the pipeline right now - Expo Phase 2, the Regional Connector, and the Purple Line extension. The latter two are mostly tunneled. I wouldn't count the Foothill Extension as being particularly useful but at least it's not exorbitantly expensive.
DeleteIt's amazing how completely Caltrain's incompetence has poisoned the well of all Olde Tyme Commuter Railroading modernization anywhere in the country.
ReplyDeleteConsider the astonishing way in which the "Peninsula Rail Project" started out with FRA operation and FRA regulation and freight-before-everything, and never moved an inch.
Consider how the "stakeholders" of two effectively dead and economically useless local self-perpetuating ports not only vetoed all rail modernization, but did so in a way that was never a matter of any open discussion or open analysis. The costs to Caltrain (well to the idiot suckers taxpayers who pay for Caltrain) of keeping freight going to the Mighty Port of San Francisco alone must be measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but this has never been and never will be evaluated as a matter of public policy.
Consider how level boarding, which clearly has an operational value of at least 50% of (and, my reckoning, greater that Caltrian's consultant-fuelling FRA-shit electrification boondoggle) has been ignored, denigrated, cast aside, for 20 years. This is a multi-hundred-billion dollar disaster not just for Caltrian but for every passenger rail operation outside the North East Corridor.
Consider the castastophe of "Berlin Walls", whereby Caltrain's ace Peninsula Rail Program staff and consultants singlehandedly took cost-effective, neighbour-friendly, construction-friendly, operations-friendly grade separation off the table, completely.
Consider that way in which the Caltrain-approved insistence on complete separation of HS and regional rail (at first tracks, now and forever stations) so pissed off every city along the line that "blended service" is a pure disaster which screws Caltrain, forever, in favour of a few HS trains, instead of the wonderful cost-effective service-promoting passenger-friendly mechanism it could have been and would have been outside the USA. Service last!
Caltrain staff haven't just fucked Caltrain service and Caltrain passengers and all taxpayers. They've fucked passenger rail around the country. Well played!
Not quite the entire country:
DeleteThe total cost of the rail car fleet is $300 million.
The vehicles are unique because they are heavier and travel faster than light rail vehicles but still operate in similar ways, using overhead electric lines. Yet the cars will travel up to 79 mph, go longer distances and make fewer stops than a typical light rail system. The vehicles have large seats with headrests, overhead storage, luggage and bicycle racks.
Aaron Epstein executive project director and CEO of Denver Transit Partners — which is combining with RTD on the bulk of the FasTracks transit project — said the bicycle racks were a needed addition.
"We know how important bicycle racks and facilities are to Denver riders," Epstein said.
Passengers will be able to walk directly from the station platform onto the vehicles without climbing stairs, because each door offers level board.
This means each vehicle entrance is accessible to wheelchairs, rolling luggage, bicycles, strollers and other large items, officials said.
RTD's SEPTA-tastic vehicles are pretty good ... for 1965.
DeleteHigh floor + FRA. Perhaps a fine thing for New Jersey, as I'm sure we'll hear.
But for a brownfield passenger-only project in Colorado? WTF + WTF? WTF????!?!!!
Especially since Denver's system isn't going anywhere any other passenger systems with a preexisting platform height, with the exception of Amtrak LD trains, which barely count anyway and are also low-floor.
DeleteThe FRA thing IIRC was to appease UPRR - definitely not good decision making but probably not inherently malevolent. I'm sure they could have won if they staged a fight with UP over the issue. At the very least FRA compliance can be changed in future train orders, whereas the high platforms are probably baked in for the next century...
It's just awful the way New Jerseyans have all those electric trains that go into Manhattan and the way Pennsylvanians have trains that go all the way into Philadelphia and have had them for over a century. With level boarding. It's just awful the way Denver decided that it wasn't worth the effort to figure out which of the gazillion different kinds of trains used in Europe they would go with and instead picked something that won't have any regulatory problems and will be off the shelf for as long as there are trains. Just awful.
DeleteOh look. Pavlov! Ding ding ding!
DeleteRe "Electrolink":
ReplyDeleteAs I've said for a decade, there's no need to take on the entire dysfunctional Metrolink "network".
What can and should have been done (exactly what can and should have been done with Caltrain) is to take the Santa Clarita—Sylmar—Burbank—Glendale—LAUS—Fullerton—Anaheim—Orange line out of the FRA, out of Metroilnk (operationally, not necessarily ticketing) and into UIC/HSR/ETCS/low-floor-level-boarding/25kVAC land, just as San Jose—Redwood City—SF and Tracy—Livermore—Fremont—Redwood City—SF should have been.
A "blended corridor" – meaning service-oriented, cost-effective, rider-focussed sharing of infrastructure – in which inter-regional HS trains from the north (and San Diego-wards in the future) share stations and tracks and platforms with a high-quality, high-frequency, modern LA-local regional line is something that is almost exactly the same as what Caltrain modernization should have and could have (but will not) be. The only difference is that with so few stations, so little ridership, and such trivial timetabling challenges it would have been an even easier undertaking.
There's no need to bite off all of Metrolink at once. (Just as fixing Caltrain needn't have involved ACE or Amtrak or ano other dino-trains. There's no need to get involved with the FRA or with UPRR or the other freight railroads. (Just as there ought to have been an overriding priority to get Caltrain the fuck away from FRA ASAP for the last 20 years.) There's no need to get involved with FRA PTC and freight PTC. (Just as what should have happened with Caltrain.) There's no need to be screwed by CPUC freight platform regulations. (Just as with Caltrain.)
Given that CHSR planned ("planned") to build entirely segregated, entirely non-FRA, entirely non-CBOSS (like everything else in the universe, non-CBOSS), electrified mainline passenger rail infrastructure in that corridor, there is absolutely no way to justify any any course other than to operate non-FRA Metroink service on those same tracks serving those same platforms at those same stations. Just as with Caltrain in the HSR-shared Redwood City—SF corridor (and the non-HSR but HSR-compatible Redwood City—SJ Caltrain section.)
In the SoCal case, there's a ready answer for freight and Amtrak: they operate on separate FRA tracks in the same corridor, just as CHSRA proposed. The difference being that non-HSR "Metrolink"-branded Metrolink-ticketed non-FRA regional passenger trains would operate on the "HSR" tracks, not exclusively on the backwards freight tracks.
I mean, it would be insane to do anything else, wouldn't it?
It would be insane to require that the entire mish-mash of Metrolink routes (LAMTA-owned, freight-owned, passenger-exclusive, freight-shared) be required to use the same equipment and be brought into the 21st century in one step, instead of going for a simple incremental upgrade step on the shared route, wouldn't it be? That has to be some sort of straw-man to kick down, doesn't it?
It's almost as reality estranged as seriously proposing a $250 million globally unique signal system for one infrequent 50 mile shuttle line, is it not?
In short, for the negative cost of sharing platforms with HSR, and the small cost of a small Caltrain-compatible HSR-compatible captive EMU fleet, Metrolink could one modernized line. What it does with the rest of its under-performing and chronically mis-managed routes is something for Metrolink's staff to discuss with their spiritual advisors.
into UIC/HSR/ETCS/low-floor-level-boarding/25kVAC land
DeleteAnd a utopia that must be! Here in California, HSR land = FRA land.
It's not about good or bad technical decisions: it's all about a Transportation Industrial Complex that is inescapable, a logical byproduct of our system of government and our societal values (the things we value and especially those we do not). It's an entrenched system where stakeholders such as the taxpaying public and the transit riding public are not at the top of the totem pole as they would be in Switzerland or Germany or France or Spain or Japan. "Negative" cost is negative indeed to the stakeholders whose interests are being served here.
Richard M: even at this late hour I am trying to accomplish more or less what you advocate, i.e. the "core" N L.A. County to South Orange County HSR/Electrified regional rail trunk line. As you see from the correspondence the idea is not on SCRRA's radar at all, which perhaps makes it easier than if they had a "modernization" plan that was as bad as Caltrain's. What else do I have to do with my time?
DeletePaul, I know nothing about LA Basin rail beyond casual tourism, so any actual facts you can provide would be wonderful to hear.
DeleteAt one stage I at least had an OK conception of ROW ownership in the relevant corridors (Santa Clarita—Burbank; Burbank—LAUS; LAUS—Santa Fe Springs; Santa Fe Springs—Fullerton; Fullterton—Anaheim; Anaheim—Orange; Orange—San Clemente; San Clemente—Oceanside) but that's evaporated.
I do know how many passenger trains are scheduled today (by looking at Metrolink and Amtrak(shudder) public timetables), but freight (real freight, not hypothetical negotiation tactic freight) is a also mysterious.
I guess the first impression I have is that selling anything as a "regional trunk line" is going to be of no interest to an agency that isn't interested in any of those words!
My second is that "colouring outside the lines" of the CHSRA project sounds doomed to failure given a totally disinterested Commuter Railroad agency. To me it seems like even talking about anything beyond Anaheim (well I throw in an extra 3km to Electrolink/Metrolink transfer at Orange) seems doomed, except as a long-term mumbled aside. As godawful as CHRA=PBQD are, it seems that adding a few commuter trains a c couple extra platform faces to a standalone "HSR" line is infinitely easier than dealing with wiring Metroilnk and/or freight tracks and sinking into the morass of HSR/FRA mixed traffic and extended networks and compatibility and conversion.
(The Secret Agenda, of course, being that it isn't much of a technical or even fiscal stretch to eventually do some wiring south of Orange later, but shhhhhh.)
So as A Project — which is all that the involved, non public-responsive, earmark-obsessed parties care about — I can do toss out a few geographically and politically ignorant ideas:
* As part of building non-FRA [which nit-pickers may note I am using as "non-freight-signalled, non-freight regulated, non-freight vehicles, almost certainly non-existing-Metroilnk-vehicles", freight-segregated tracks with very limited and controlled track connections] HSR from Santa Clarita/Magic Mountain (TEJON!) to LAUS, throw in a couple extra platform faces at all the existing Metrolink station locations for joint Electrolink/HSR maybe throw in some sort of Metrolink/Electrolink transfer in Burbank.
* With a route length of ~50km, a tiny handful of stops, and ~150kmh design speeds, 60 minute Eletrolink turns would be far from ambitious, meaning a grand total of ten Electrolink trains (including spares and maintenance) would suffice to operate at 15 minute headways around HSR. The "maintenance facility" for such a minute and brand-new and non-US-designed fleet could be little more than a shed and a couple of tracks for several years.
* As part of building non-FRA LAUS—Anaheim, throw in a couple extra platform faces at all the existing intermediate Metrolink station locations for joint Electrolink/HSR use.
* LAUS Run Through Tracks are Electrolink/HSR Run Through Tracks. LAUS "HSR station" (underground, off-site, in the latest insane concept plans I've seen) are two island platforms and four Electrolink/HSR joint use platform faces at LAUS. This of course is The Big Problem, having an unacceptable negative cost of many billion dollars.
* Build non-FRA Anaheim—Orange, with some sort of Metrolink/Electrolink transfer (and a Cunning Plan that Electrolink trains might, one day, continue to Points South.)
* Buy another handful of Electrolink trains, and it might be time to consider a modest-sized Electrolink Maintenance Facility, mostly sharing the site that CHSRA has its eyes on near Anaheim.
Metrolink (well, really its member agencies) own the entire Antelope Valley Line, and Fullerton/Anaheim Canyon to the SD County line (south of which it's NCTD, also a passenger agency), as well as the East Bank and West Bank lines along the LA River, Union Station, and the San Bernardino Line as well as the Coast Line south/east of Moorpark. The problem is that a key part of the line, from Redondo Junction to Fullerton, is owned by BNSF, is part of their transcontinental line to the Port of LA, and has dozens of freight trains per day. South of Fullerton toward San Diego, there are rather fewer freights (I've heard something like 10 per day), but they're pretty big and it's currently San Diego's only functional freight rail connection, and the only one that goes through US territory.
DeleteA slight correction to arcady, UP owns 60ft on the north side of the Coast line from Burbank Jc to Moorpark, LACMTA/VCTC the 40ft on the south side. Of course UP retains freight trackage rights on the Coast, the AV and the East Bank, which makes them think they still own the whole thing of course.
DeleteRichard, the Magic Mountain idea runs into the snag of the limited clearance San Fernando Tunnel which is shared with UP double stack freights (to/from PNW).. These could be diverted via Cajon and the Palmdale cutoff but UP would probably demand half a billion to do so and of course the agencies would cave. In addition the AV hosts a local freight as far as Princessa and an occasional block of empty grain hoppers.
DeleteRedondo Jc to Fullerton should be quad tracked, which the former chief of Division of Rail agreed should have been done instead of the current triple track project.
Richard, the Magic Mountain idea runs into the snag of the limited clearance San Fernando Tunnel which is shared with UP double stack freights (to/from PNW).
DeleteA new tunnel would have to be built between Valencia and Fillmore. HSR would ideally follow I-5 anyway, so the old tunnel wouldn't be suitable. Also, UP has obtained an agreement guaranteeing at least one non-HSR, non-electrified track between Palmdale and LA, but most of the San Fernando Valley ROW is wide enough that it hardly matters.
Fillmore? I think you mean Sylmar. My original proposal is predicated on the current HSR route via Palmdale. I don't see that changing, and I'm not judging whether that's good or bad, just playing the hand I'm dealt.
DeleteYes, Sylmar. But that tunnel is useless for HSR in either case.
DeleteQuite so but the HSR alignment from Palmdale provides a bypass and leaves the tunnel for UP to enjoy (and maybe a residual stub end Metrolink to Princessa).
DeleteWhat difference does it make? The tunnel is useless for HSR under any scenario.
DeleteUP got a non-binding memorandum of understanding, not a binding guarantee.
DeleteNo, but it hardly matters. The part of the Palmdale-LA Metrolink route that is useful for HSR (Sylmar-LA), is wide enough for more tracks anyway.
DeleteAgreed Joey except that current plans call for 6 tracks at Burbank Station in a 100ft RoW.
DeletePaul, Magic Mountain stop/turnback assumes, as any remotely rational plan assumes, Tejon and dedicated non-"FRA" ("FRA" in the colloquial sense of dino-trains) passenger tracks LAUS—Burbank—Santa Clarita—(possible future Hwy 138 eastward junction)—Bakersfield.
DeleteNothing I outlined involved any track sharing, let alone tunnel sharing, with freight RRs or with FRA-style freight-style Metrolink.
I'm not in charge Richard, just trying to make something edible of what others are serving up.
DeleteThanks for the breaking info and reality adjustment, Paul. Much appreciated.
DeleteThat aside, my point was that attempting to colour outside the HSR lines (whether they run straight and past Magic Mountain or take a nonsensical Magical Mystery Tour) in any initial phase, ie to take on electrifying freight or shared tracks, seems institutionally doomed. Rather, piggyback a mere handful of platforms and a mere handful of trains on the new stuff on one limited corridor, and then later maybe figure out what, if anything, to do with the rest of LA Basin Olde Tyme Commuter Rail. Get non-"FRA" Burbank—LAUS running before evening mentioning San Bernadino.
Not that anything matters, because as we see with PBQD=CHSRA, Transbay and Caltrain, America's Finest Transprotation Planning Professionals will always, without fail, without exception, choose to do exactly the most wrong and most expensive and most inutile thing, and choose so with no extenuating circumstances. Just check out the "Corridor To Do List" at the top of the right-hand column of this blog. Shit from gold alchemy.
We'll see whether the SCRRA uses the appointment of a new CEO as an opportunity or if it's business as usual.
ReplyDeleteOf interest:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-adv-bullet-metrolink-20141214-story.html#page=1
Excellent article, and good of you to raise awareness of the compatibility issue!
DeleteRedondo Jc to Fullerton should be quad tracked, which the former chief of Division of Rail agreed should have been done instead of the current triple track project.
ReplyDeleteLast plans I saw HSR was a separate parellel double track line between Redondo Jc and Fullerton, has this been superseded? It would seem that triple track would be good enough in that case, especially if some metrolink and amtrak traffic were diverted to HSR. I have my doubts that even with quad tracking HSR would ever be practical on this line - there are over 70 freights per day, and a number of regular cross plant moves where trains have to cross the entire line.
Lines on the HSR maps change frequently. I believe that 4 tracks, 2 freight and 2 passenger would work, with a freight drill track added in some locations. This would assume electrified Metrolink and probably less frequent Surfliners. HS trains would run at 125 max. Let's face it, in HSR terms LAUS to Anaheim is an appendage, a branch line. Let's hope that in fact it goes at least to Irvine. The main line will go to San Diego.
DeleteOf course the development of Alameda Corridor East as an open access freight line would help but that is at least as far out there as HSR.