The comment section from the last post is about to overflow, so here is an open thread to keep the discussions going. Some noteworthy developments fished out of the previous comments:
- Caltrain's corridor-wide grade separation strategy continues to evolve towards its final form, with a prioritized list of grade separations due for adoption this summer. Of note, grade separations are now allowed 2% grades without a design exception, which removes the need to design an entire 1% project before seeking the exception. Steeper grades are a good start for shorter grade separations, but we also need to reduce freight train speeds to 45 mph throughout the corridor to tighten up vertical curve radii. A freight train requires the same vertical curve radius at 45 mph as a passenger train at 110 mph, such that freight speed limits any higher than 45 mph result in freight-driven designs that are longer and more expensive to build. An important but neglected part of the grade separation strategy should be to reduce the freight train speed limit from 50 mph to 45 mph.
- Speaking of grade separations, costs continue to rise out of control, with the Broadway project in Burlingame (see agenda item 11 of the March 3rd city council meeting) flirting with $900 million. It's not just inflation. A grade separation cost model discussed a few years ago predicted that, after adjusting for inflation, the Broadway project should cost $120M all-up, including the "soft cost" category that today forms a metastasizing cancer on these projects. The city is now considering deleting the Broadway station (not a bad decision, due to proximity to Bvrlingame) to bring costs down to the still eye-watering sum of $600M. This is a prime example of the transportation industrial complex's capture of a project designated as safety-critical, where cost becomes no object because you just can't put a price on safety. In this abject fleecing, the city and Caltrain are just along for the ride.
- Development of the BEMU continues, in spite of the looming "fiscal cliff" where one of the most logical cost cutting moves will be to suspend Gilroy service and dispose of the diesel fleet and its attendant operating & maintenance expenses. The BEMU has fewer seats (280) and more batteries (2.3 megawatt-hours) than previously understood, making it even more of a turkey for the $80M pricetag.
- On the bright side: Caltrain's EMU service is holding up nicely! Well done to all involved. Ridership should continue to increase as the freeways rapidly return to pre-pandemic levels of congestion misery. The way this works: 101 overflows onto 280, which overflows onto Caltrain. 280 is starting to get congested again, which augurs well for Caltrain.
Posts
Re: BEMU scam:
ReplyDelete$9.64 million "Project management and administration costs".
Ten million dollars of the purest fattiest lard for contractors and agency do-nothings heaped on top of the $60.98 + $7.47 (because "contingency" on a fraudulent porkfest always means "spend it all") $68.5 million dollars on one single 280-seat train designed to make one round trip a day carrying, optimistically, one hundred humans on one 60 mile round trip on five days per week.
Oh, and another cool million dollars of public cash for unspecifiable "wayside". Maybe they're constructing a marble viewing pavilion in Morgan Hill from which to observe the gold-plated once-daily regal procession as it glides by?
Meanwhile, a normal fully-functional, zero-million-dollar "Project management and administration costs" 200+ seat Stadler FLIRT (like the ones running in Dallas) costs about $15 million, all in, including "Buy American" ~40% overhead. (Not that Gilroy service can possibly justuify any new trains, ever. Or any trains at all.)
Meanwhile, a normal fully-functional zero-million-dollar "project management and administration costs" over the road bus costs under a million dollars. Go ahead, splurge a bit in case ridership shatters expectations ... buy two buses! So indulgent.
TEN MILLION DOLLARS of overhead. SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS of "contingency" (against what? Bank robbery? Inside job!)
You see why these things have a life of their own.
You see why the country and the planet are doomed.
It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars?
Criminals. Fucking criminals.
Redwood City’s Jefferson Avenue grade separation (fully-depressed street underpass built using a shoofly) only cost around $10m in 1999/2000.
ReplyDeleteThe preferred Broadway grade separation design that fully elevates the tracks over the street and includes a new center-boarding station is clearly inherently more costly … but (admittedly unfairly ignoring inflation) $889m is like 89 Jefferson grade seps and well over one-third the $2.44b cost of the entire 7-year systemwide electrification and fleet replacement.
All planned grade seps and bike/ped underpasses (e.g. Menlo Park @ Middle, Sunnyvale @ Bernardo, and the deferred-due-to-insanely-5-story-high-over-catenary-design-and-hence-cost NFO overpass) are being hit & hobbled by similar cost increases.
Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
You're right, these things are insane. I suspect a lot of this has to do with nonstandard designs, and varying levels of competence among governments up and down the corridor. On top of that, there's an over reliance on consultants because there's no in-house competency which just increases costs 20%+ at each and every stage. See Alon Levy's project on construction costs for best practices that align with this.
DeleteI think there are two solutions, one short term and one long term that need to happen:
1. Short term: We need a project authority that is backed by counties, state gov, Caltrain, and transit agencies that is dedicated solely to grade separations. This authority should have a standardized design kit and stable of engineers that can do the design work, the environmental work, permitting, etc. They also can do oversight, meaning that the only things that would go out to contract would be the construction aspect of the grade separations. From there, this authority expertise and staffing can be folded into MTC or even the state level.
2. Long term: At the state level, we need a good rail department like the highway department that has standardized design kits, standardized contracts, a group of engineers and professionals that do the design, clearance, and management work in-house up and down the state. Ideally, a lot of CAHSR staff with their expertise can go to this department and serve not just CAHSR but the entire state in managing, designing, and delivering these rail projects like the highway department already does today, IMO.
@Anonymous-S,
DeletePoint #1, that's needed for grade separations on arterial roadways, too, not only to separate rail and road (bike-pedestrian) traffic.
Point #2, it's a reminder that rather than thinking of the high-speed project by itself, what's really needed for the state is a system, which would include Bay Area-Sacramento regional service through an improved Altamont Pass, with connections to Central Valley and L.A. service, and the same type of service along the Central Valley as Bay Area-Sacramento regional, serving the smaller cities, with high-speed trains, if they ever materialized, serving only the largest cities between the Bay Area or Sacramento and Los Angeles, with a common, and transfer, station in the vicinity of Manteca. It's a shame the thinking of so many is poor, but what may be needed to induce some to think more systematically about rail service in the state is to have a seriously dedicated rail transportation department under Caltrans with highways a separate department under it, same with aviation, etc.
The RWC Jefferson grade sep cost $14.2M in YOE, and was completed in 1999. If you take 1998 as the mid-year of construction, then inflate to today's dollars, you get $28M.
DeleteThe Broadway project is an interesting test for the question "does money grow on trees near the edge of a fiscal cliff?" We're about to find out!
RE: Anon from 20:38
DeleteAgreed, and good point about arterials, highways, etc. The construction and design standards are very similar for roads and for rail.
I saw a recent draft of the CAHSR plan that outlines as such for point 2 to what you are saying - see this link for more: https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2025-project-update-report/. Page 27 of the PDF or Page 14 on the document shows an interesting map of a broader southwest HSR network, that also breaks the system down into additional segments. For example we see Segment D, which is Gilroy - Merced; or Bakersfield - Palmdale as Segment F, and the High Desert Corridor as Segment G. I think it's a lot more realistic to break it down into these pieces as funding comes online, and encourages third parties like Metrolink/LA Metro and Caltrain to invest in their segments over time.
RE: Clem, fair point. I do think that is why a lot of this design/permitting/contracting/etc need to be taken from cities and standardized across the state. If cities want a fancier alternative, they can pay for it, but creating standardized approaches and design help deflate these costs completely, IMO. One option, while less palatable, would be simply to build viaducts directly over the existing tracks and electric catenary. Once the viaducts are complete, close the lower tracks, and use that space as parks, trails, and station space. While this may be more expensive in some areas, it may also be logistically easier and more straightforward, especially if you standardize the design and construction like you do for highways.
@Clem: Does the $600 million no-station option still include 1% maximum grade, no vertical curvature on bridges, and other unwarranted, megadollar-adding design rules?
DeleteDo you have any estimates of (Caltrain-style) costs after fixing those ... stupid ... new design constraints? Deliberately not including U-shaped bridges, as that would require the transport-industrial mafiosi to think outside their box, rather than just going back to design constraints broadly similar to, oh, maybe San Carlos or Belmont grade separations? (Without sinking the overpassed road.) Not holding those up as a good example; just less horrifically expensive than current Broadway plans.
@Clem: thanks for the corrected ($14.2m YOE) Jefferson grade separation cost. I regret my error.
DeleteWatch beginning at the 2:54:26 mark of last night’s meeting video as Caltrain staffers get berated by Burlingame’s city council members after a detailed presentation of the recent Broadway grade separation project’s fraught history and the pros & cons of the latest round of “value engineering” options it seeks council guidance on, and more millions just to proceed to finish designing — none of which anybody has any realistic idea how to possibly fund before the presented costs spiral even further into the stratosphere.
ReplyDeleteYes, as Caltrain’s chief if construction Robert Barnard explains, they’ve used the newly-allowed steeper grades of up to 2%, and have even figured out ways to shift stuff toward parallel Carolan Ave. to avoid building a double-track shoofly and to minimize impacts on the claimed seven!? creeks, eliminated the nice bike/ped passages punched through the berm, etc., etc.
In their supposedly extensive value engineering exercise, I will bet you very good money that they still have not:
Delete1) allowed an uninterrupted vertical curve over the bridge deck
2) reduced freight speed limit to 45 mph to tighten vertical radius (no impact to HSR, still at 110 mph)
3) aggressively minimized structure depth, using a through girder or similar with minimal span lengths
4) reduced track center spacing to 15 feet (if no station)
5) reduced vertical clearance under the bridge from a luxurious 16'6" to a merely comfortable 16' with the requirement that paving must be ground down before future replacement
They can't and won't explain why in the "good old days" (the San Bruno grade separation completed in 2014) they could buy 0.8 miles of elevated track, 3 bridges, 2 pedestrian tunnels and an elevated station for $165M in YOE (equivalent to $225M today). Costs have not tripled after adjusting for inflation.
All this "post-pandemic" "fragile supply chain" "geotechnical risk" yammering is worthy of the world's tiniest violin playing a sad tune to lament the fact that in ten short years, Caltrain has utterly and completely lost the ability to plan and manage a grade separation project.
Wait, what? 3x in 10 years is ~12% year-on-year (real) cost growth. That is damn impressive, actually, in a way.
Delete