High-Speed Rail DEIR

The first thing to notice about the new high-speed rail San Francisco - San Jose Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) is that it sets up a straw-man alternative B, which is set to be dropped in favor of alternative A because it is less effective and more expensive. So we'll focus on the preferred alternative A, and ignore alternative B entirely.

Caltrain In The Hole

Caltrain's Moderate Growth Scenario, in direct
conflict with the HSR DEIR assumptions

The DEIR assumes, in direct contradiction with Caltrain's official board-adopted service vision with eight trains per peak hour per direction (tphpd), that Caltrain will only be able to operate an inadequate six tphpd during the morning and evening peaks. By sub-optimizing the Caltrain timetable to be sparse and irregular, the high-speed rail authority is able to cheap out on new infrastructure by building almost no new overtaking tracks for alternative A. Where HSR needs to overtake, Caltrain is switched into a station siding ("in the hole") to wait five minutes, at Bayshore or Lawrence.

Meanwhile, the dense, regular and fast timetable envisioned under Caltrain's service vision also requires no new passing tracks, except at a new and expanded Redwood City station. Only when HSR is added to the traffic mix does the need for numerous new passing tracks arise; every single Caltrain overtake will still take place at the Redwood City station and nowhere else.

The Caltrain timetable scores highlight the enormous service quality difference:

• HSR DEIR Appendix 2-C pp. 50-54, 6 Caltrain + 4 HSR: Score 133
• Caltrain Moderate Growth Scenario, 8 Caltrain + 4 HSR: Score 240
  

What scenario do we subscribe to? Do we allow HSR to displace and cripple Caltrain? Does the arrival of HSR force Caltrain to build new passing tracks to continue operating its own service efficiently? Who pays for that, and to whom does the benefit accrue? Whatever happens, it is clear that the operational plans advanced by Caltrain and HSR are in direct conflict, with each agency laying separate claim to the valuable latent capacity of the rail corridor. Whatever the DEIR might say, both operators won't fit without significant new passing track infrastructure.

Section 3.2 of the HSR DEIR incorrectly states that Impact TR#14 (Continuous Permanent Impacts on Passenger Rail Capacity) would be less than significant, with the following dubious arguments:

• A regular interval schedule could be maintained (You call Appendix 2-C regular!?)
  
• The project would not decrease the performance of passenger rail services (Wrong!)
• Operation of the project would not conflict with adopted policies, plans or programs regarding public transit (Also wrong!)
• Operation of the project would not decrease the performance of transit systems (On the contrary!)
  

The HSR DEIR does not adequately discuss the transportation impacts of permanently crippling future Caltrain service, and alternative A stands in direct conflict with Caltrain's officially adopted service vision. Appendix 2-J fails to address the policy consistency of the DEIR with Caltrain's business plan and service vision board resolution-- indeed it fails to even acknowledge the very existence of the Caltrain business plan, one of the most important policy documents relating to the peninsula rail corridor.

Safety

Section 3.11 examines numerous safety and security implications of the HSR project, but inexplicably fails to mention the safety issues of operating trains at 110 mph past platforms crowded with waiting passengers. Many Caltrain stations have narrow (15-foot wide) side platforms that are cluttered with obstacles such as shelters, wheelchair lifts, and mini-high platform blocks, leaving little clearance from the yellow safety stripe behind which passengers are expected to wait, 9 feet from the track center line. Existing conditions are already borderline unsafe, such as when a 79-mph express blasts by the packed northbound platform at Mountain View. Increasing train speeds to 110 mph will likely require the yellow safety stripe to move further than 9 feet from track center, potentially resulting in incompatible and unsafe station platform configurations. The DEIR should include mitigation measures to maintain an adequate level of safety for Caltrain passengers waiting on station platforms.

 

Curve Straightening

Remember the Top Ten Worst Curves post from a decade ago? The DEIR describes how many of them will be flattened to enable higher speeds. Here's how they fare, in order of impact to trip times:

Rank	Curve ID	Location	Current Speed	Future Speed
#1	C123	San Bruno	65 mph  (was 60)	100 mph
#2	C111	Bayshore	65 mph	65 mph (unchanged)
#3	C159	Palo Alto (SB)	79 mph	110 mph
#4	C130	Millbrae	75 mph	105 mph
#5	C135	Hayward Park	79 mph	110 mph
#6	C183	Lawrence	79 mph	110 mph

The most expensive one to fix will be San Bruno, due to Caltrain's lazy and inexcusable lack of foresight when their new grade separation design baked in a 65 mph speed limit. San Bruno was the subject of much yammering on this blog, but is now cast in concrete that will have to be demolished at great additional taxpayer expense. In the DEIR, the rebuilt northbound platform is inexplicably shortened to an operationally inadequate length of 627 feet; this should be increased to a minimum of 750 feet per Caltrain standards. The wholesale reconstruction of the station probably also rates a discussion of impacts elsewhere than under curve straightening; as described it's sort of a stealth project.

The curves previously ranked #7 through #10 were already good for 110 mph, so they will not be modified. However, there are some other extraneous curves that were not in the Top Ten list that will result in speed restrictions lower than 110 mph. These are:

Curve ID	Location	Current Speed	Future Speed
C117	Sierra Point	79 mph	85 mph
C118-C121	South SF	79 mph	100 mph
C127	Near SFO	79 mph	100 mph
C132	N. San Mateo	79 mph	100 mph
C133-C134	San Mateo	79 mph	79 mph
C171	San Antonio	79 mph	90 mph

Curves C133/C134, at the north end of San Mateo station, are particularly odd and ill-placed.

Separate Platforms Forever

Sadly, the DEIR enshrines the plan for separate station platforms for Caltrain and HSR, with not the slightest attempt to make the two systems operationally compatible. Neither agency seems inclined to solve the thorny technical and regulatory problems: Caltrain has gone so far as to procure dual boarding height trains, but then shrank back from the plan after metal had been cut, abandoning in-vehicle lifts that would allow boarding and alighting at different platform heights. This is not an easy problem to solve, but it is well worth the effort to create the operational flexibility that is taken for granted in other busy rail corridors around the world.

Ultimately, the whole high-speed rail EIR process feels like theater: by the time the funding materializes to make it worth expanding the system to the peninsula rail corridor, the proposed project will have been overcome by events. The environment of the project is a moving target, and right out of the gate, the draft EIR is already oblivious to its changed context.

The Overtake That Won't Be

In its renewed environmental review process for the San Francisco to San Jose project, the high-speed rail authority is considering the alternatives for the peninsula rail corridor. The outlines of the new draft EIR are emerging, and this is where politics meets engineering.

Interested stakeholders keep asking about how the blended system will actually work, with Caltrain and high-speed rail sharing the scarce resource that is track capacity. The issue is being studied in some detail behind closed doors by an entity known as the Joint Scheduling Working Group (JSWG), consisting of experts from HSR and Caltrain aided by their respective consultants. As of the end of 2016, the JSWG had produced a first report on its work, which was shaken loose by a public records request from CARRD. Before digging into this, let's take a look back at how we got here.

2012 Blended Operations Analysis (Caltrain/LTK)

While the original four-tracks-all-the-way HSR plan was collapsing in a firestorm of community opposition, Caltrain commissioned a study of blended system operations (8 MB PDF) from consultant LTK Engineering Services, to see if blending Caltrain and HSR primarily on the two existing tracks was viable. The 2012 study concluded that without any additional tracks, the corridor could support up to 6 Caltrain + 2 HSR trains per hour per direction, increasing to 6 Caltrain + 4 HSR with overtake tracks.  Key results were:

• With speeds limited to 79 mph, the most reasonable option with 6 Caltrain + 4 HSR was a "short middle overtake" between Hayward Park (San Mateo) and Whipple Ave (Redwood City).
• A "long middle overtake" all the way through Redwood City provided only marginal performance improvements.

This study legitimized the blended system, which has ever since been the favored approach to bringing HSR to the peninsula rail corridor. The study contained numerous disclaimers to the effect that no official decisions had been made regarding future service levels, programmed overtakes, stopping patterns or scheduled trip times... all the important considerations that feed into a railroad's product, namely its timetable.

2013 Additional Blended Operations Analysis (Caltrain/LTK)

A short while later, LTK published another report (2MB PDF + 14MB Appendices) that can best be characterized as an expansion and refinement of the 2012 analysis, considering additional options. Key results were:

• Unlike the 2012 study, the "long middle overtake" performed significantly better than the "short middle overtake."
• A new option, the "middle 3-track overtake" (between San Mateo and Palo Alto) performed almost as well in simulation, although it assumed all HSR trains entered the corridor on time, unlikely in practice.
• Other overtake track options did not fare as well.

The disclaimers continued, with the conclusions of the study being described as "educational."

2016 Joint Schedule Working Group Report (HSR/SMA)

The key chart in the SMA study
(PDF page 62 / slide 48)

The JSWG was established in April 2016, a while after HSR had engaged the services of Swiss rail consultancy SMA. To avoid a standoff between dueling agencies and consultants, Caltrain/LTK and HSR/SMA are now comparing notes on their respective plans for the blended system. The JSWG's 2016 draft year end report (10 MB PDF) provides important context to the decisions now being made to select a "preferred alternative" for the HSR blended system EIR. This study is interesting for three reasons: it is the first blended system study led by HSR, it offers insight into the evolving ideas of the JSWG, and it is not sugarcoated because it wasn't intended for wide public distribution. Key results were:

• The "no additional passing tracks" case is shown to support 6 Caltrain + 4 HSR per hour per direction, unlike in the LTK studies, provided that headways are tightened and Caltrain passengers don't mind sitting in a siding for 6 or 7 minutes during these overtakes.
• The "short middle 4-track overtake" degrades Caltrain trip times, since overtakes don't naturally tend to occur there.
• The "middle 3-track overtake" performs better than any other option, thanks to allowing bidirectional operation through almost its entire length, unlike in the LTK study where half the length of the overtake track was dedicated to each direction.

Tea Leaf Reading

The grotesque station-in-the-sky
proposed for San Carlos under
the short middle 4-track option

The constant refrain that nothing has been decided yet continues to this day, but the tea leaves are becoming quite readable. Here is some informed speculation:

1. The HSR team really, really doesn't want to build the "short middle 4-track overtake," generally because they have no money and specifically because the SMA analysis has shown this scenario to be a poor performer operationally.
    
2. However, the HSR team is reluctant to withdraw any alternative this late in the preparation of an EIR, after it was carefully introduced to the public through countless outreach meetings, workshops and open houses. Sudden change scares people.
    
3. In order not to build the "short middle 4-track overtake," the HSR team has engineered it into a straw man alternative, using the prospect of grotesquely massive concrete viaducts towering fifty feet over San Carlos and Belmont to strategically elicit vigorous public opposition. It's working, but unbeknownst to them, San Carlos and Belmont have little to worry about.
    
4. Due to having no money, the HSR team strongly favors the "no additional passing tracks" alternative. The mediocrity of the resulting Caltrain timetable, and the amount of time spent by Caltrain passengers waiting to be overtaken, is of little concern to them. But that's okay, since San Carlos and Belmont made them do it.
    
5. The HSR team probably dreads resistance from Caltrain stakeholders who don't want the peninsula rail corridor being taken over to Caltrain's detriment. Strong resistance could force the HSR team to revive the "middle three-track" alternative that had previously been eliminated from the EIR process (see slide 15 in this outreach presentation), setting back the environmental review schedule.
    
6. If the assumptions in the SMA analysis stand up to closer scrutiny, the "middle three-track" scenario could actually be a viable compromise for the blended system. It would no doubt be expensive due to the number of new grade separations, but the result (if one believes SMA) would be fast and robust service for both HSR and Caltrain, with reasonably-sized grade separations in every town from San Mateo to Palo Alto. In the last year, the winds of public opinion have turned more favorable to grade separations in Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

One thing is sure: the "middle three-track" alternative should be added to the HSR EIR and studied in detail, with an eye towards designing the future blended system timetable. The timetable is the product, and it will soon be time to decide on one.

San Jose Done Right

Map of VTA's BART extension

San Jose is the tenth largest city in the U.S. (by population), with more people than San Francisco; the city achieves this statistical feat by encompassing 180 square miles.  Such a large and populous city surely deserves top-notch rail transit.  BART is widely viewed as top-notch rail transit, which is why the city and VTA (Santa Clara County's transportation authority) have made extending BART through San Jose their very top priority.

Actual expenditures from VTA
Measure A (2000) sales tax, 2015

So overwhelming is the priority for BART that VTA re-programmed the revenue from a half-cent transit sales tax (Measure A) passed back in 2000 primarily to the BART extension, breaking a promise made to voters that a significant portion would fund Caltrain electrification.  The actual expenditures through 2015 are shown in the diagram at left; money spent on the BART extension is shown in blue, and money spent on Caltrain in red.

As can be readily observed, the Measure A money is nearly gone, and the BART tunnel through San Jose is not even started.  That's why another half-cent transportation sales tax Measure B was passed in Santa Clara County in November 2016 to raise a further $6 billion through the year 2047.  Exactly like 2000 Measure A, 2016 Measure B promises lots of funding for Caltrain, an ample 16% slice that includes grade separations ($700M) and capacity improvements ($314M).  The small print, however, allows the VTA board to re-program the funding as it sees fit, adapting spending to "unforeseen" circumstances such as, perish the thought, an over-budget BART extension.

With San Jose and VTA suffering from a severe case of BART tunnel vision, it's important to take a more holistic view of what it means to provide the residents and workers of San Jose with a top-notch rail transit network.

San Jose Pan-Galactic Inter-Dimensional Station

San Jose planners will insist that creating a network is their highest priority, and to that effect, their Diridon Station Area Plan seeks to establish a new "Grand Central of the West," as described in Section 2.5 of the plan:

San José Diridon Station will be the best connected transportation hub on the West Coast with the convergence of virtually every mode of public transportation. Activity will increase dramatically with the addition of high speed rail and the extension of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to Diridon station, combined with significant growth by current intercity rail, commuter rail, light rail and bus operators. These new services and growth in demand will create the need for a significant expansion of the existing station. 

This ambitious station development plan rests on two fundamental but unstated assumptions:

1. Caltrain, ACE and Amtrak will continue to operate Diridon station as a terminus, where out of service trains are parked for extended layover periods, wasting valuable platform space as train storage.
    
2. As a result, high-speed rail will not fit within the ground-level footprint of the station, and will most likely require an entirely new elevated facility built over the existing station.

Ridership assumptions for Diridon

These two assumptions are firmly rooted in the ambitious plans of numerous rail transit agencies that prefer to avoid stepping on each other's toes.  Each agency specifies its future needs, San Jose consultants unquestioningly tally up the numbers (see figure at right), and end up prescribing a framework that demands a massive station complex to support a nearly ten-fold increase in ridership over the next twenty years.

Caltrain and high-speed rail consultants have conducted a sophisticated simulation study known as an "operational conflict analysis" that predicted an intolerable traffic jam, with peak-hour delays of nearly an hour.

The Diridon Station Area Plan and the Caltrain / HSR operational analyses are flawed for having failed to examine and question the assumptions on which they are built.  Yes, the station has enormous potential to become a thriving transportation hub, but that is precisely what makes it a very bad place to park out of service trains. Parking or laying over trains at a station platform is the railroad equivalent of parking an empty truck in the middle of a bustling loading zone, and then concluding that the loading zone fails to function adequately and must be expanded.

Trains need to hustle in and hustle out without occupying enormously valuable platform tracks. As will become clear, the simple practice of not parking trains in the worst place to park trains enables a far more efficient and affordable at-grade station configuration for San Jose that provides the same great network effect and transportation benefits for the heart of Silicon Valley, saving enormous sums that can be re-invested to achieve a much better outcome for riders and taxpayers.

Here's San Jose done right:

1) Extend Caltrain through San Jose

Falling short: census data for the Caltrain corridor in San Jose,
overlaid with Caltrain service levels for April 2017.

Viewed as a line on a map, Caltrain already runs through San Jose and beyond, with Gilroy service having started back in 1992. San Jose Diridon station (served by 92 trains/weekday) isn't a natural terminus; south of it, there are three additional stops located within San Jose city limits: Tamien (dropping from 40 to 34 trains/weekday in April 2017), Capitol (6 trains/weekday) and Blossom Hill (6 trains/weekday). Service between Diridon and Tamien is timetabled at 7 minutes, which makes for an average speed of 15 mph, and average speeds south of there hover around 30 mph. The abysmal service south of Diridon station lacks two important attributes of top-notch rail transit: speed and frequency. That's why it's fair to say that despite that line on the map, Caltrain has yet to be extended through San Jose. It's time to do it properly.

One challenge is jurisdictional, with Union Pacific owning the tracks south of milepost 52 and VTA currently holding the rights for only ten daily round trips. However, UPRR does not make intensive use of these tracks, and as a profit-making enterprise would likely be receptive to an outright transfer of ownership while retaining trackage rights to continue operating its Coast Subdivision freight service as before. This would simply extend the existing arrangement between CP Coast (milepost 44.7) and CP Lick (milepost 51.6), where the Caltrain owns the right of way and dispatches the track, southwards to CP Coyote (milepost 59.9).

Another challenge is institutional, with VTA having a vested interest in making commuters use the Santa Teresa branch of its light rail network. The Caltrain San Jose extension would parallel this line, possibly cannibalizing some of its ridership.

Built-up areas shown in black on a map
by the DLR Earth Observation Center
(Global Urban Footprint).  Tamien,
Capitol and Blossom Hill are shown
disconnected, as they are today.

Demographically, the southern half of San Jose is a rich but poorly tapped source of commuter ridership, with dense residential neighborhoods surrounding the corridor. More than 100,000 people live within two miles of the Tamien and Capitol stops, and 75,000 people live within two miles of the Blossom Hill stop. Census data argues strongly for locating the Caltrain terminus at Blossom Hill, with an electrified train storage yard / layover facility in this large vacant space [UPDATE: that large vacant space seems to be spoken for, so look for other unbuilt spaces in map at left], a far better place to park out of service trains than in the middle of San Jose Diridon. ACE and Amtrak trains could be turned at the existing Tamien layover facility.

Turning all Caltrain service at Blossom Hill would improve service for hundreds of thousands of San Jose residents and workers, at some increase in capital cost (to electrify) and operating cost (12 minute longer runs). On the other hand, it would greatly reduce Caltrain's requirement for tracks and platforms at Diridon station. Caltrain would operate through the San Jose Diridon station much like it does at the Palo Alto University Avenue station, using just two tracks and two platform faces. If that seems hard to imagine, remember that Palo Alto has almost 60% more ridership than San Jose Diridon; any perceived need for all those tracks and platforms at Diridon, and the profoundly mistaken notion of a "South Terminal", arises from existing jurisdictional boundaries and Caltrain's unhealthy habit of parking trains in the worst possible place to park trains.

2) Build high-speed rail at grade.

Thousands of cubic yards of concrete,
zero marginal transportation benefit

With Caltrain's San Jose footprint shrunk to just two platform faces, and with HSR's recent decision to shrink platform length to just 800 feet, it becomes feasible to operate the San Jose HSR service entirely within the existing at-grade footprint of the station, without the need for expensive new elevated or tunneled infrastructure. Two of the existing platforms are already over 1200 feet long and could be converted for HSR use. Just as in San Francisco Transbay, these platforms could be shared with Caltrain, taking advantage of Caltrain's new dual-boarding-height trains and leading to even more efficient utilization of the existing station footprint.

Operationally, HSR would have to quit the same nasty habit of parking trains in the worst possible place to park trains.  Trains would have to layover somewhere north of Diridon, or continue onto the peninsula rail corridor.  There is no operational need for longer station dwell times than two or three minutes within the Diridon complex: get in, board and/or alight passengers, and most promptly and importantly, get out. Go layover somewhere else than the bustling city center.

Building everything at-grade would save about a billion dollars (by foregoing about $250M for elevated approach tracks, $500M for the elevated Diridon station complex itself, and $500M for the "iconic" but entirely avoidable viaduct to cross the 87/280 freeway interchange to the south). An added benefit of the at-grade approach to San Jose is higher speeds and lower trip times. The extremely tight 1000-foot curve radius that connects Diridon to an "iconic" viaduct saps the 'H' out of HSR by limiting trains to just 50 mph, while the existing curve through the Gardner neighborhood could be grade separated and operated at 65 mph.

Rather than cower in the shadow of a new "iconic" bridge proclaiming loudly that they are just a flyover neighborhood, residents of San Jose's Gardner district would gain a grade separation at Virginia Street, improving neighborhood access that has been so brutally cut off by the I-280 and SR-87 freeways, and eliminating the sound of railroad horns--even freight train horns.

3) End the BART extension at Diridon/Arena

As planned by VTA, the BART to San Jose Phase II project doesn't just take BART to San Jose, but takes BART beyond the San Jose Diridon/Arena station, veering north to parallel the Caltrain / HSR corridor for a redundant 2.5 miles, ending in Santa Clara.  While this configuration might have made sense long ago when BART harbored ambitions to "ring the Bay" by linking Millbrae and Santa Clara, the present state of affairs argues for a different solution.

From a transportation perspective, it makes no sense to spend ~$1.5 billion of scarce transit dollars (pro-rated from the $6 billion cost of the entire Phase II project) on a 9000-foot tunnel leading to a huge Santa Clara station complex just to provide a third way to ride between San Jose Diridon and Santa Clara, two locations already well-linked by Caltrain and VTA's 522 express bus.

BART maintenance yard at Las Plumas
Avenue in San Jose, an alternative
that was withdrawn in EIR process

The main argument against truncating the BART extension revolves around a new 69-acre maintenance facility planned at Newhall Yard in Santa Clara. BART argues that Santa Clara and downtown San Jose are too far away from the nearest existing maintenance and storage facility, BART's main Hayward Maintenance Complex, to be operated efficiently. The HMC is about 21 miles from Santa Clara, requiring long non-revenue runs to stage trains to/from the end of the San Jose extension.  While this is admittedly an operationally inefficient arrangement, BART appears to have no qualms operating Phase I (to Berryessa) out of the HMC, over a distance of 14 miles. Cutting back the 2.5 miles from Diridon/Arena to Santa Clara would place the end of the line less than 19 miles from HMC, not so much further from the HMC than Berryessa already is. The HMC itself is undergoing a major expansion, with storage space for an additional 250 BART cars environmentally cleared based on a purpose and need statement that invokes servicing the BART to San Jose extension. Even then, if the HMC Phase II expansion were to prove insufficient and if maintenance and storage demands were truly that dire, a small portion of the $1.5 billion cost avoidance of truncating Santa Clara could be reinvested to provide a new BART maintenance shop at Las Plumas Avenue, an alternative that was considered during the environmental process. Trains could also be stored overnight at Diridon/Arena, to avoid long non-revenue runs at the start and end of the day. The bottom line: the argument that a Newhall shop is a non-negotiable, vital component of the BART to Silicon Valley project is technically unfounded and rests on a stay-the-course-at-all-costs logic that fails to appreciate the opportunity costs of blowing $1.5 billion on a train parking lot.

Another argument against truncating the BART extension concerns a planned airport people mover that would link Santa Clara to the SJC terminals, tunneling under the runways. Using a small portion of the $1.5 billion savings of ending BART at Diridon/Arena, the people mover could run straight to Diridon station, without the need for tunneling under the runways, and connect not just with Caltrain and BART but directly with high-speed rail--seamlessly merging the airport and the train station.

4) Use Newhall Yard for HSR

As it turns out, there is a better use for Newhall Yard than BART storage and maintenance, namely, HSR storage and maintenance.

As previously mentioned, long non-revenue runs to stage trains to/from their terminus are operationally inefficient, but BART can get by because nobody else uses their tracks. If the HSR storage and maintenance yard were to be located in Brisbane, these non-revenue runs would consume scarce and valuable operating slots on the extremely constrained peninsula corridor "blended system," further compromising service quality for all rail passengers.

A better plan is to have only a small storage / layover yard in Brisbane, with a larger facility perfectly located just north of San Jose Diridon at Newhall Yard, which would allow a portion of the HSR service to originate / terminate in San Jose without gumming up the peninsula rail corridor. Recall the blended system will be limited to 4 trains per hour per direction unless long stretches of the peninsula corridor are expanded to four tracks, an idea that faces twin obstacles of funding and community opposition.

Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton

In Germanic countries, there is a guiding principle in rail system design known as Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton, or roughly, organization before systems before concrete. It gives the order of priorities for quickly and affordably increasing train traffic: first you re-plan your operations, and if that doesn't cut it you improve your technology, for example by using shorter signal blocks, and only as a last resort do you pour concrete.

What is about to happen in San Jose is the exact opposite: legions of consultants primarily from a civil engineering background are (surprise!) recommending a concrete-intensive solution to a problem that is ill-posed because it hasn't first been attacked from the standpoint of re-planning train operations. The entire edifice is built on the nasty habit of parking trains in the worst possible place you could think of to park trains.

The planners and engineers working on the future of the Diridon Station area need to be sent back to the drawing board with new operating assumptions:

1. Turn all Caltrains at Blossom Hill, operating San Jose Diridon as just another intermediate stop
2. Turn all legacy diesel trains (ACE, Amtrak) at Tamien, away from the bustle
3. Turn all high-speed trains originating or terminating in San Jose at Newhall Yard

Thinking of San Jose as a terminal is misleading. The litmus test is really simple: if your timetable, operating plan or simulation has any train spending more than two minutes dwelling at a platform in the San Jose Diridon station, then it is probably flawed. Don't turn trains at the choke point of your system, so that we don't spend billions on fancy train parking with zero value to the traveling public and negative value to the taxpayer.

The Bay Area can ill afford transit mega-projects of low utility, such as the redundant BART segment beyond Diridon/Arena to Santa Clara, the giant HSR station in the sky, or more downtown train parking. The cost is outrageous, and the opportunity cost is shameful.

Caltrain Has a Dwell Time Problem

Actually, Caltrain has two dwell time problems. The first is that station dwell times are too long, and the second is that station dwell times are too unpredictable.  Both of these problems will prove fatal to the blending of Caltrain and HSR services on "primarily two tracks."

To help visualize why, let's use position-versus-time string diagrams, often discussed on this blog.  Imagine trains following each other on a single track that runs from San Jose to San Francisco (ignore the other direction for now).  This red line is a local train making a lot of stops.  It leaves San Jose, and a while later arrives in San Francisco.  If you looked really closely you might see the individual station dwells, small horizontal kinks that occur whenever the train is stationary and time passes, but when you squint, it looks pretty much like this:

Every once in a while, this local train comes to a station where Jane, a wheelchair user bound for San Francisco, would like to board.  Because we don't have level boarding, getting Jane on board the train involves manually deploying lifts or ramps to ascend the several steps from the platform into the train.  Conductors must help Jane through the mechanics of the boarding process, which can easily take several minutes but feels like an eternity, even for Jane.  Timetable planners allow for riders like Jane by making sure that no other trains are scheduled right behind each other, to absorb these randomly occurring super long dwells without causing a train traffic jam.  They call it padding.  Here's what padding looks like, in pink:

This being a blended system on "primarily two tracks," we've got express trains and even high-speed trains using the same track as Jane's local.  A faster train looks like this blue line:

The blue line is steeper because the express train can cover the same distance from San Jose to San Francisco in much less time.  Here comes the express behind the local:

The timetable planners don't want the express to be delayed.  That's why they left a big gap between the trains, giving the local a good head start out of San Jose so that the express won't catch up to it before San Francisco.  Alternately, here is the local departing San Jose right behind the express:

Once again, a big gap opens up behind the express because the local is so much slower to arrive in San Francisco.  Now it's rush hour, and this is what "blending" soon looks like (not to scale):

In one hour, six trains can arrive in San Francisco.  Our string diagram is full of gaps, which means we are making very poor use of the capacity of our single track.  How do you fix this?

First, you electrify Caltrain.  While this isn't cheap, one of the main advantages of electrification is that EMUs start and stop much more quickly, so that on average, a local can get to San Francisco several minutes sooner while still making the same station stops.  The local will have a higher average speed than it did before.  Compare:

See how the new EMU local train shows up as a steeper line?  That's because it spends less time moving between stations.  (Note to Atherton: electrification is not just an emissions thing.  Tier IV diesel trains can't pull off this neat trick like an EMU can.)  Now this is what the "blended" rush hour looks like:

If you compare it carefully to what we had before, we can now fit eight trains in the span of one hour, instead of six, because those dreaded gaps are shorter.  By increasing the average speed of the locals, we were able to squeeze in more trains (and more passenger capacity).  Caltrain seems content to declare victory and live like this happily ever after.  This is what they envision as the "blended system".  Whenever Jane decides to ride the train, the pink padding still ensures that following trains aren't delayed too badly.

It's better, but still kind of mediocre.  Especially for Jane.

What if the local train could spend less time standing still at each station?  Dwell time can be reduced by level boarding, a step-free and gap-free configuration where you simply walk on or walk off the train, just like when you ride BART.  For a given number of passengers getting on and off the train, level boarding shaves off about 1/3 of the station dwell time since they can all shuffle on and off more quickly and seamlessly.  The magic of reducing dwell times is that while the train's actual speed is no higher, it still gets to San Francisco sooner, because it saved a few seconds during each station stop.  A few seconds here, a few seconds there, and pretty soon you're talking several minutes.  The average speed went up without the actual speed increasing!  The string for an EMU local with level boarding now looks like this:

If the local arrived in San Francisco ten minutes earlier thanks to electrifying Caltrain, it can arrive another five minutes earlier than that by having level boarding at all stations.  Electrification saves time between station stops, and level boarding saves time during station stops.  The two work together as perfect complements to each other.

The diagram above is actually wrong, and here's the second amazing thing about level boarding: Jane can get on and off the train like everybody else.  Not only does this give Jane the dignity and equal treatment that she deserves, but it saves everybody else the grief of those randomly occurring Jane delays.  Because dwell times are now predictable, timetable planners can get rid of the padding they applied in case Jane wanted to ride before.  Like this:

If you like probability distributions, here is the effect of level boarding on the probability distribution of dwell time:

Caltrain commissioned a study of station dwell times, which found that across a sample of 5149 station dwell observations, the median duration from wheel stop to wheel start was 49 seconds.  The median excludes abnormally long dwells, such as those occurring when Jane wants to ride.  The average dwell time does account for Jane and is 58 seconds, practically an eternity.  That was back in 2010.  Today, with the system bursting at the seams, average dwells are getting so long that the timetable was recently adjusted to make chronically late trains into slower on-time trains.  With level boarding, typical dwell times could easily be cut to 30 seconds.

Level boarding really improves the situation for rush hour:

We're really cooking now.  We can squeeze 12 trains through in one hour on the same track.  That represents a massive capacity increase, with the combined effect of reduced and predictable dwell times providing a similar benefit as electrification alone did.

Caltrain staff just doesn't seem to get this, and they are certainly not helping their board of directors understand the issue. They think of level boarding as primarily an optional comfort feature. Here is their view of level boarding, from a recent board meeting quarterly update:

First of all, they don't even call it level boarding. Dual doors!  What a pain!  Requested by interloping stakeholders, or imposed by those annoying HSR people!  Ew, it's so complicated!  It costs $30 million to equip the new fleet!  It's almost as if they are disowning the very idea of level boarding, and reluctantly trying "not to preclude" some unspecified future decision because this stuff is just too hard to think about.  Presented this way, you couldn't blame the board or the public for thinking this is a stupid idea.  Where's the upside?

The upside is this: dual doors are the only realistic path for Caltrain to achieve level boarding, and level boarding is the only way that the blended system can work on "primarily two tracks."

This issue cannot be taken lightly, because the next opportunity to start a Caltrain conversion to level boarding will not occur until 2050, when the new fleet reaches the end of its useful life.  That's because the new fleet, as about to be ordered, cannot provide level boarding at a platform height of 25 inches.  The entire system would have to be shut down for the trains to be modified and all platforms to be rebuilt at that height.  So, doing nothing today and blindly kicking the can down the road until 2050 is not an option.  A prudent and strategic $0.03 billion down payment for a gradual transition to level boarding is minuscule as a fraction of the $2.2 billion modernization budget, and unlocks great potential for quicker and more punctual commutes as soon as the next decade.

Dual doors are a customization that amounts to less than 5% of the price tag for new trains ($30 million out of $648 million bid price).  They can hardly be used as an excuse for the massive increase in the cost of Caltrain modernization.  They will help to address Caltrain's dwell time problem.

Caltrain has a dwell time problem.  The first step is for everyone (staff, board and public) to understand it.

Optimizing the Midline Overtake

The most important piece of infrastructure required for "blending" HSR with Caltrain on the peninsula rail corridor is an overtake facility, basically a several-mile long stretch of up to four tracks that will enable faster trains to overtake slower trains.  Caltrain studies have shown that the best performance (measured by robustness to cascading delays) can be achieved with a midline overtake  from San Mateo all the way through Redwood City.  Preliminary engineering and environmental clearance for this infrastructure is now resuming, with the recent award of a $36 million contract by the CHSRA to engineering firm HNTB.

The baseline configuration for this overtake is described in Caltrain's blended operations analysis, and assumes rebuilt stations at Hayward Park, Hillsdale, Belmont, San Carlos and Redwood City with four tracks and outside platforms in the tried and true style of the 1930s Pennsylvania Railroad. High-speed trains would use the center pair of tracks to overtake slower trains on the outside pair of tracks, as shown below (click figure to enlarge):

For comparison, the figure also shows a better solution that ensures the highest level of punctuality for all trains using the corridor.  This optimized overtake configuration differs from the baseline configuration as follows:

• The slow trains run in the middle, so that disruptions to local commuter service (for example, when an incident blocks a track for hours) do not disrupt high-speed service when commuter trains are re-routed around the incident location.  This track configuration is known as Fast-Slow-Slow-Fast (FSSF) as opposed to the traditional SFFS.  Real world examples of FSSF can be seen in train cab videos from Sweden and Australia.
   
• All commuter stations are built with central island platforms.  This allows commuter trains to use either platform face without confusing passengers, and requires only one set of station amenities (shelters, elevators, escalators, stairs, ticket vending machines, PA systems, train arrival screens, lighting, benches, etc.) because there is only one platform.
   
• A major new interchange station at Redwood City, with four platform tracks and additional train storage sidings.  This station (described below) would serve as a transfer point for HSR, Caltrain and future Dumbarton trains, as well as non-rail transportation modes.
   
• A carefully planned future-proofed high-speed rail junction where the Dumbarton rail corridor meets the peninsula rail corridor, preparing for the inevitable arrival of passenger rail service across the Bay.

Here's how it would ideally play out.

Short Term: the San Mateo Grade Separation

Preliminary rendering of new
Hillsdale station with island platform

The next step in the decadal process of grade separating the peninsula rail corridor will soon begin in San Mateo.  A new $180 million grade separation project is in the final stages of planning for 25th Avenue (currently a grade crossing) as well as 28th and 31st Avenues (currently not connected).  Concurrently with this project, the busy Hillsdale station will be moved a bit north of its current location and turned into an island platform.

This project is caught in an interesting political bind.  There is on one hand a rush to complete it by 2019 before Caltrain's electrification project, to minimize disruptions to Caltrain service.  On the other hand, due to its strategic location, this project will form a key building block of the blended system with HSR, which still needs to be environmentally cleared.  It is a near certainty that this portion of the corridor will require four tracks to enable trains to overtake each other, but any attempt to design and build it as such is likely to run afoul of HSR opponents who will accuse the CHSRA of advancing their project through CEQA piece-mealing.

The southern San Mateo grade separation design will have to be very carefully considered to preserve the ability to add two additional tracks with as little disruption as possible.  Road underpass profiles and bridge abutments should be designed for four tracks, as should the elevated structure that will support the tracks.

The choice of an island platform configuration for the new Hillsdale station is either a sneaky way to build a wide four-track embankment in preparation for yet another new station with SFFS outside platforms, or is an excellent choice for FSSF because it allows future tracks to be added without rebuilding the station for a second time.  One hopes the station access (stairs, ramps, etc.) will be designed to allow the platform height to be raised easily from 8" to 50".  An intelligently designed San Mateo grade separation would atone for the terrible failures of the San Bruno grade separation, designed with great hostility towards higher speeds or additional tracks.

Medium Term: Redwood City HSR Station

Amsterdam Bijlmer (photo by tataAnne)
could just as well be the future
Redwood City train station.

While the CHSRA's plans for a mid-peninsula stop have been shrouded with ambiguity for several years, Redwood City stands out as a more optimal location for a new HSR station than Palo Alto or Mountain View, the other two locations in the running.  Unlike its neighbors to the south, Redwood City favors strong urban growth, has a large amount of railroad land available, and is reasonably well-connected to the existing road and transit network.  Redeveloping the antiquated but popular Sequoia Station shopping center would enable the construction of an elevated four-track station with plenty of capacity to support not just HSR but also Caltrain cross-platform connections and future Dumbarton service.

The station complex would feature two shared (HSR or Caltrain) 400-meter island platforms centered between Broadway and Brewster, easily accessible from both streets.  Bus connections would be conveniently located under the station. To the north of the platforms, a pocket turnback track would allow Dumbarton trains to reverse without fouling other traffic.  Similarly, to the south of the platforms, another pocket turnback track would allow southbound Caltrain locals to terminate in Redwood City before turning northwards again to serve the densely-spaced stations of San Mateo County, allowing Caltrain to serve more passengers with fewer trains and crews.  Thanks to the FSSF configuration, all this to-and-fro by commuter trains would stay well out of the way of HSR.

This would be a large train station and quite a tight fit (if you're curious about exactly how large and how tight, download this KML file into Google Earth to view the station footprint and track layout).  It would be a big change for Redwood City, but with a huge payoff: the tracks would no longer form a barrier through town, and the Sequoia Station shopping center would be merged with the station to form a gateway and a destination in its own right that is connected to downtown.  HSR service could make the city a very desirable location for business.  The new station could become the centerpiece of the ambitious revitalization strategy described in Redwood City's downtown precise plan.  But this idea is not without pitfalls, as the size of the station could be compared to plonking a couple of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in the middle of town.  To use the tired slogan, it needs to be done right.

Medium Term: a New Fair Oaks Station

Approximate location of new Fair Oaks
station island platform, view to northeast.
Overtake would extend just beyond
platform to the right (south).

The key to reliable overtaking on a multiple-track railroad is to ensure that the average speed of the slower train being overtaken is sufficiently slower than the average speed of the faster overtaking train.  One of the ways of ensuring a good speed differential is to have the slower train make station stops that the faster train doesn't; each station stop is worth about 2.5 minutes.  Therefore, locating stations on the four-track overtake section is helpful.

This brings us to a lemon of a station immediately south of the midline overtake: Atherton.  Located in an area of very sparse population and jobs density, Atherton should be permanently closed.  This closure would come not only as a show of appreciation commensurate with the town's support of Caltrain modernization, but especially because census data shows clearly that Atherton is precisely where you would never place a train station.

To replace Atherton, a new Fair Oaks station should be built just 0.6 miles to the north, at the 5th Avenue grade separation.  The overtake section would be extended a bit southwards, just beyond the station, enabling locals to be passed while stopped at the central island platform that can be accessed from either side of 5th Avenue.  The new Fair Oaks stop would be equidistant from Redwood City and Menlo Park, and located in an area with very high population density that could support thriving ridership, in contrast to Atherton.

Longer Term: a Seamless Dumbarton Connection

Dumbarton rail has been an uncertain prospect for decades, with some political backing but insufficient funding.  While it may take another few decades for the money and the will to finally materialize, large concentrations of employment and the need for additional transbay corridor capacity make some form of passenger rail service inevitable.  The Dumbarton corridor also happens to be ideally suited for high-speed rail.

The key node is Dumbarton Junction, which should be reconfigured in such a way that trains can enter and leave the peninsula rail corridor swiftly and seamlessly.  This will likely involve a flyover track, enabling southbound trains to enter the Dumbarton corridor without crossing (and therefore blocking) any of the northbound tracks.  To minimize the altitude of the flyover, the Rte 84 / Woodside Road overpass would be turned into an underpass.  As for the Redwood City station, the fit would be quite tight with a 90-foot corridor width where the flyover track begins.

While the flyover may seem like an expensive solution to a problem we don't yet have, planning for it now (if not actually building it) will save money in the long run when passenger rail service grows.

Design Values

No matter how the midline overtake is ultimately configured, it must reflect design values that are clearly articulated.  One of these values should be compatibility between Caltrain and HSR.  It's not enough to talk about the "blended system" without actually taking the steps to make the two systems seamlessly interoperable, allowing any train to use any track to serve any platform.  This means no tracks can be dedicated to one operator at the exclusion of another.  Everything must be shared, including the platforms at the new mid-peninsula station.  This sharing contributes to another important value, robustness to service disruptions.  The fast-slow-slow-fast track layout is the key to ensuring that a commuter train delayed in Belmont won't create a statewide domino effect that eventually makes a train late in Los Angeles.  A third important value is future-proofing.  Infrastructure like the midline overtake will define what is possible (and not) for generations to come.  It would be short-sighted not to plan for a fast and seamless connection to the Dumbarton corridor, even if its future use isn't well-defined today.

The midline overtake is the key to an effective blended system.  When evaluating its design, ask yourself: is it compatible?  Is it robust?  Is it future-proof?

Level Boarding: It's Official

A montage of what a Caltrain EMU might
look like, before platforms are raised.
Based on a photo by Yevgeny Gromov

Caltrain just released the final Request For Proposals for their new electric train fleet.  Train manufacturers will now prepare detailed bid packages, and in early 2016 a winner will be selected to build an initial fleet of 15  electric trains that will enter into commuter service in 2021.

Several changes were made to this document after the draft RFP was circulated for industry review.  The single most remarkable change is that level boarding and platform sharing with high-speed rail is now a firm requirement, instead of an option suggested by stakeholders.  These are the words from section 2.2.1.1:

CHSRA trains will run over the same alignment and stop at some of the same stations as JPB trains. The bi-level EMU must therefore have the same interface with the infrastructure as the future High Speed Rail cars, including clearance envelope, and platform boarding height.

JPB plans to raise platform heights to approximately 50.5-50.75” ATOR (to interface with a vehicle threshold height of 51” ATOR), initially at San Francisco, Millbrae, and San Jose stations. Other station platforms on the JPB system may ultimately be raised to the same level.

This is not only an endorsement of level boarding.  It is an endorsement of complete integration with high-speed rail including not just shared tracks but also shared stations.  It is a major step forward for riders and taxpayers, because it will increase the speed, efficiency and usability of Caltrain at the same time as it makes high-speed rail more affordable.  It will help bring to California what Europeans take for granted.

The New Platform Interface

Section 3.3.3 of the RFP details Caltrain's new high platform interface:

• Platform height: 50.5 - 50.75 inches
• Platform side clearance: 72 inches from track center line
• Maximum boarding gap: < 1.5 inches horizontally, < 5/8 inches vertically

Caltrain has entirely dropped the previous plan to implement level boarding at a height of 25 inches, which would not have been compatible with high-speed rail and would have created significant complications in the station infrastructure served by both systems.

Dual Height Doors

The new EMUs will have two sets of doors, not just as an option but as a non-negotiable requirement.  The RFP describes the configuration in section 12:

Each vehicle shall have eight door openings, four on each side of the vehicle, directly across from each other. One set of four shall be located just inboard of the trucks and the other four above the trucks. The set located inboard of the trucks (the low level set) shall be compatible with JPB's existing platform height and existing mini-highs. The set located above the trucks (the high level set) shall be compatible with JPB's future high level platforms.

A large number of bikes (at an 8:1 ratio of seats to bikes) will be stored on the lower level of two cars per train.  They will access the high doors using wheel ramps built into the stairs between the lower bike level and mid level vestibule of the train.

While this is a rather unique configuration, no other train operator worldwide has had to plan for a system-wide platform height transition of more than four feet of vertical change.  For such a large height transition, it makes perfect sense to use the vehicles as a tool to enable the flexible and independent reconfiguration of each individual platform, without imposing system-wide construction schedule or funding constraints.  It is an unusual but quite logical solution to an unusual problem.

The upper set of doors, which will provide level boarding at new high platforms, will feature retractable door threshold extenders, to bridge the gap between the train and the platform.  These are described in section 12.2.12 of the RFP.

Looking Ahead to a Well-Blended System

Caltrain has come a long way on the issue of level boarding and blending with high-speed rail.  A key architectural decision has now been made that will ensure the future success of the blended system.  In the 2020s, Caltrain passengers of all abilities won't give a second thought to the seamless experience of boarding a train, and will take for granted the brevity and punctuality of station stops.  Meanwhile, a few train nerds will photograph the platform interface.

In the meantime, three cheers for compatibility!

Metrolink Scorns Electrification

Just like the peninsula corridor, the other end of California's planned high-speed rail network, in the Los Angeles basin, could also benefit from European-style "blended" service where electrified commuter trains and high-speed trains share tracks and stations.  Many of the solutions being developed by Caltrain for the peninsula corridor could also prove useful in the LA region, something that is not lost on rail supporters.  Paul Dyson, president of the advocacy group RailPac, recently wrote a letter to the relevant authorities expressing support for the idea of electrifying portions of the Metrolink commuter rail network to better integrate with high-speed rail.  His proposal is aptly named "Electrolink".

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.