Port Scores Pork

The Port of San Francisco recently received $3 million from the FRA to upgrade the 1-mile Quint Street lead track that connects the port to the peninsula rail corridor.  The government's press release states (with emphasis added) :

Port of San Francisco, California – Quint Street Yard Track and Signal Improvements – $2,970,000 to improve an approximately one mile-long spur connecting a Caltrain mainline track to the San Francisco Rail Yard. The mainline is under consideration for use as part of the California high-speed rail project, and the current condition of the spur track limits the frequency, weight and length of trains that can use the track, causing delays. The improvements will allow freight trains to operate at higher speeds and clear the mainline more quickly, significantly reducing delays to Caltrain commuter trains and future high-speed rail trains.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Caltrain has been granted a waiver of compliance from certain FRA crashworthiness regulations that enables the operation of lightweight electric rolling stock from European manufacturers.  The same waiver would presumably be extended to any high-speed trains that might use the peninsula rail corridor.  The FRA's waiver decision letter states (with emphasis added) :

JPB additionally explains that the Caltrain 2025 program will temporally separate freight and passenger operations between San Francisco and Santa Clara, CA (Mileposts 0.2 to 44.6).  Temporal separation between these mileposts will be achieved by limiting freight movements to the exclusive freight period hours of midnight - 5 a.m.

That's right, temporal separation means that freight trains will not operate in the same hours as passenger trains, making the need to "clear the mainline more quickly, significantly reducing delays to Caltrain commuter trains and future high-speed rail trains" nothing more than a specious pretext.  Nice play for $3 million, nonetheless!

Temporal separation, by the way, is the best way to avoid the expenditure of millions upon millions of dollars to make Caltrain's positive train control system compatible with Union Pacific freight PTC (and thus, incompatible with the HSR train control system).

Development Oriented Transit, Again

Protecting the peninsula rail corridor right of way from crowding or outright encroachment, whether by private developers or other agencies, has evidently not been a high priority for Caltrain.  Examples abound: a movie theater built right next to the tracks in San Mateo, a "Transit Village" planned right next to the corridor in San Carlos, a Millbrae station that constricts the number of tracks.  All of these examples complicate the task of outfitting the corridor for high-speed rail service, and may add tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of doing so.

Here we go again!

Depot Circle, a large residential/commercial development authorized by Redwood City's recently updated Downtown Precise Plan, threatens to encroach on a vital piece of station real estate in Redwood City.  The city recently released a Request for Qualifications that outlines the project and describes its role as a future focal point for Redwood City's downtown.

Here's the problem: the railroad right of way is only 60 feet wide in this area, but the station is nearly certain to be expanded to four tracks with two island platforms to accommodate the following likely operational scenarios:

• the mid-peninsula high-speed rail stop, since neither Palo Alto nor Mountain View seem likely to welcome a station, and also because Redwood City has the best freeway access of all three corridor locations under consideration;
• Dumbarton commuter service, long planned but unlikely to be left with sufficient track capacity to continue beyond Redwood City under a constrained "blended" Caltrain + HSR plan--thus forcing passengers to transfer at Redwood City, hopefully across a common platform;
• a mid-line overtake location, where Caltrain express trains could exchange passengers with Caltrain local trains, across a common platform.  One of the most promising mid-line overtake scenarios now being considered under Caltrain's corridor capacity analysis assumes that four tracks would be built right through the Redwood City station.

The Depot Circle RFQ asks prospective developers to address the rail corridor issue only tangentially, without offering specific design constraints: "Describe your strategy for dealing with the potential widening of the Caltrain railroad to accommodate High Speed Rail. In particular, explain how far, if at all, would you set the project structures from the current railroad, and any other site design strategies that might be employed to minimize effects of a potential future widening of the railroad."  What are developers supposed to know about railroads?

Here are some specific constraints, which are based on detailed HSR technical requirements and Caltrain engineering standards:

• A four-track elevated station with two island platforms will be at least 125 feet wide (if built as narrow as possible), more than 200 feet wide (if built to the CHSRA's elephantine station design standards), and over a quarter mile long.
• A four-track underground station, however unlikely to be built because of the astronomical price tag, would need even more space to accommodate temporary shoo-fly tracks during construction (30 feet), space outboard of the trench walls for construction equipment movement (15-20 feet each side), as well as clearance for trench wall tie-backs that can't interfere with nearby building foundations.
• Even if the station were moved north or south from its current location, away from Depot Circle, the tracks would still need to spread apart gradually (in conformance with the track alignment standards) and would occupy a wide swath well before and after the station itself.

The upshot of all this: including reasonable building setback clearances, a prospective developer should make an allowance of at least 150 feet for the future expansion of the rail corridor.  A 150-foot corridor is shown overlaid on the Depot Circle parcel map in the graphic at left (see also overlay on original map, 1.1 MB PDF), and takes a significant bite out of the parcels now offered for development--including the project's namesake traffic circle.

If Redwood City wants to become what Palo Alto could have been, it's time for the city, Caltrain, and developers to make the station itself the focus of downtown, provide it with enough land, and build it to be as architecturally striking as the elevated Amsterdam Bijlmer Arena station.  If there isn't enough vision to do that, please just avoid hemming in the rail corridor.

CBOSS vs. Metrolink PTC

UPDATE 8/22 - There are a couple of additional points that require clarification.

(1) It is claimed that Caltrain's CBOSS budget is so high because it is a turn-key system provided entirely by the vendor, whereas Metrolink's PTC is being done partly in-house. But Metrolink's in-house PTC costs are included in the $202 million estimate (see page 7: $77M Metrolink, $90M vendor, $30M contingency). This does not make the comparison any more favorable to Caltrain.

(2) It is claimed that the standards for high-speed rail PTC are immature. Not so; the requirements are found in pages 723 to 825 of the HSR system requirements report (as of August 2010) as well as in HSR technical memoranda TM-3.3.1 ATC System Concept and others in the 3.3.x series. The kicker (as far as Caltrain is concerned) is that those documents clearly state that "the technology must already exist as part of an operating system with proven experience worldwide on at least one high speed passenger railway"... in other words, CBOSS need not apply, and ERTMS (now being installed by sensible commuter rail operators in places like Rio de Janeiro and Auckland) is most welcome.

ORIGINAL POST - The FRA's push to impose positive train control on all U.S. passenger railroads was triggered by the 2008 Chatsworth collision on Metrolink, in which 25 people died and 135 were injured. Not surprisingly, Metrolink's effort to meet the FRA's December 2015 deadline for PTC implementation is in the national spotlight. If a PTC success story was ever needed, it would surely have to be in Los Angeles.

Metrolink is very much like Caltrain, in that it operates diesel-powered double-decker commuter trains that occasionally intermingle with freight trains. Weekday ridership is similar at about 40,000 trips. Being in the same state, Metrolink's regulatory environment is the same as Caltrain's. One struggles to think of "unique local conditions" that might make Caltrain materially different from Metrolink.

According to Metrolink's funding plan for the project, the total budget for Metrolink's PTC system is $202 million, an amount now fully funded. Not to be outdone, Metrolink plans to complete the system a year before the federal deadline.

Here is a summary comparison table of Caltrain and Metrolink.

	Metrolink	Caltrain
System Route Miles	512	77
Fleet Size (Locomotives + Cab Cars)	112	65
Weekday Ridership	~41,000	~41,000
PTC Total Budget	$202 million	$250 million
PTC Planned Completion	end 2014	end 2015
PTC Funding Status	$202M (100%)	<$100M (<40%)
PTC Interoperable with Freight	yes	yes

You might think that for the quarter-billion dollar price tag of CBOSS (Caltrain's PTC project), one would get something extra, like future-proof compatibility with high-speed rail. But alas, no. At a recent Friends of Caltrain meeting, deputy CEO Chuck Harvey confirmed that due to schedule pressure, CBOSS development would forge ahead without any regard to high-speed rail, and that HSR would have to "pay to play," with a possible requirement of "dual fitment," i.e. two separate PTC installations on-board each high-speed train in all of California. Never mind that the statewide HSR fleet would dwarf Caltrain's.

So, if HSR compatibility is not on the agenda, then what makes Caltrain any different than Metrolink? Why is CBOSS going to cost millions more than a PTC system for six times the route length and nearly twice the fleet size, to be delivered a year earlier? Why not realize economies of scale and pattern Caltrain's PTC project after Metrolink's, which has far more stakeholders in a successful outcome?

That is a quarter-billion dollar question.

Corridor Capacity Study, Free Edition

You may have heard that Caltrain is working on a corridor capacity study, to see how much high-speed rail traffic could be accommodated on the corridor without adding too many passing tracks or destroying commuter service quality.

While we wait for the outcome of this study, below is a decomposition of the problem into a range of possible solutions.


Some solutions have very little downside for HSR or Caltrain service:

• Get HSR off the peninsula corridor as much as possible, by using an Altamont alignment that joins the corridor in Redwood City (see Example 3 for details)
• Electrify the corridor
• Implement level boarding (not even on Caltrain's radar!)
• Put commuter platforms in the middle, with express passing tracks on the outside
• Put in a modern shared signaling system

Other solutions require compromise between the needs of high-speed rail passengers, the needs of commuter passengers, and the needs of surrounding communities.

• Slow down HSR, with lower top speed and all stops (Millbrae and Redwood City) made by all trains
• Close low-traffic Caltrain stations such as Atherton and Hayward Park
• Make peak-hour trains skip more stops-- which unfortunately denies frequent commuter service to communities precisely at the times when it is most needed
• Build additional grade separations wherever four tracks are required
  

Before we make any of these painful compromises, however, the most effective measures that do not require compromising service quality should be prioritized and vigorously pursued.

If one had to bet a six-pack of one's favorite microbrew (worth several orders of magnitude less than LTK Engineering's consulting contract), the outcome of the capacity study is likely to be:

• With 6 Caltrains per hour during the rush, spare capacity available for HSR is minimal on the existing tracks
  
• Capacity can be increased most effectively by matching train average speeds, i.e. slowing down HSR and/or speeding up Caltrain
• HSR trains will probably average no more than 60 mph between SF and SJ
• A mid-line overtake facility between Whipple @ Redwood City and 9th Ave @ San Mateo (requiring minimal new grade separations) would improve peak corridor capacity from 6 to 8 tph

We shall soon find out if we got our money's worth.

The Truth About CBOSS

$16 million was recently awarded by the FRA for the CBOSS project, Caltrain's Communications-Based Overlay Signal System. Caltrain CEO Michael Scanlon states in a Caltrain press release: "This initial federal investment will enable Caltrain to take an important step forward in our efforts to provide Bay Area communities with a modernized, sustainable commuter rail system that is fully compatible with future high-speed rail service". His counterpart at the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Roelof van Ark, intones in a CHSRA press release: "This latest step forward in federal support for California’s project means that we’ll be able to improve safety and service in the near term and integrate our project with local systems in the long term."

Fully compatible with high-speed rail service? Integrate HSR with local systems? Really?

Let's take a closer look. As regular readers know, CBOSS has often been criticized on this blog. Rather than rehash extensive previous commentary on CBOSS, let's rely on cold, hard facts obtained solely from primary source documents. You get to decide!

The Evidence

Exhibit A: Caltrain CBOSS Request For Proposal Package, Questions Received and Answers No. 3, dated 6 October 2010. Question #20 from a prospective bidder: "What assumptions should me made in terms of HSR? (Interoperability, Operations, sharing track, etc.)" The answer from Caltrain: "Under current RFP Scope of work, HSR Operations is not considered for this phase of PTC implementation."

Exhibit B: Caltrain CBOSS Request for Proposal Package, Questions Received and Answers No. 4, dated 9 October 2010. Question #16 from a prospective bidder: "Part 2, Section 3, Exh B, Spec 21001, 1.03D requires the system to be interoperable with California HSR signaling. HSR is undefined at this stage. As this solution is not known, Contractor cannot assess any effort associated with this interoperability requirement. Please clarify how Contractor should assess." The answer from Caltrain: "Interoperability with HSR signaling is not part of the Scope of work for Caltrain PTC system RFP."

Exhibit C: Caltrain CBOSS Request for Proposal Package, Questions Received and Answers No. 6, dated 15 October 2010. Question #31 from a prospective bidder: "The RFP addresses HSR. What assumptions should the proposer make in order to address HSR requirements?" The answer from Caltrain: "Evaluation of the potential for the proposed solution to meet future HSR needs will not be part of the proposal evaluation."

Exhibit D: Caltrain's Positive Train Control Implementation Plan, a 183-page document required by law to be submitted to the FRA and detailing how Caltrain will implement its new signaling system, mentions HSR exactly once in the introduction on page 1-1. That's a slight improvement over a previous revision of the document, rejected by the FRA, which did not mention HSR at all. Section 5.1 of the document, discussing Interoperability with other railroads, does not mention or discuss HSR. Appendix D, containing letters of understanding to coordinate PTC implementation with other rail entities, does not include the CHSRA.

Exhibit E: Caltrain's Positive Train Control Notice of Product Intent, a 50-page document that describes how CBOSS will operate, explains in Appendix A section 12 the interoperability with other rail entities. Out of five paragraphs, four mention the Union Pacific, and zero mention California high-speed rail.

Exhibit F: The California High-Speed Rail Authority's extensive collection of technical memos includes Technical Memo 3.3.1, released 25 June 2010, detailing the concept of the system that will be used to control trains on the high-speed rail network. Section 1.2.4, Automatic Train Control Specification Requirements, states "The prime requirement for the CHSTP ATC system is that the technology must already exist as part of an operating system with proven experience worldwide on at least one high speed passenger railway." CBOSS clearly does not fall into this category, which means CHSRA will necessarily use another train control system than CBOSS on its own tracks.

Serious Questions

In light of all this evidence, the happy talk about CBOSS paving the way for HSR rings hollow, and raises some serious questions:

• Is the Caltrain leadership (board and CEO) even aware of the details of the program being carried out by staff and consultants? Do they know that interoperability with HSR is explicitly excluded from the CBOSS RFP?
  
  
• What is the plan for making CBOSS interoperable with HSR? Might it make sense to develop such a plan before awarding the CBOSS implementation contract, which may happen in the next couple of months?
  
  
• Does the $251 million budget for CBOSS include the cost to make CBOSS interoperable with high-speed rail, as specifically excluded in the current RFP, or will taxpayers be asked for even more money?
  
  
• Does the Caltrain and CHSRA leadership (respective CEOs and Boards) know that California HSR is slated to use a different train control system than CBOSS?
  
  
• If California high-speed trains will use another train control system than CBOSS, why is federal HSR money being spent on the development of CBOSS? Can or should Caltrain expect HSR monies to cover the remaining 90% of the CBOSS cost that is not yet funded?
  
  
• How, why and when were existing train control technologies, such as ERTMS, the standard that shows the strongest signs of being favored for HSR in California (see TM-3.1.1 section 6.1), eliminated from consideration on the peninsula corridor?
  

The local press has spent numerous column-inches, sometimes even two-page spreads, covering the Caltrain CEO's compensation package. But this is $16 million we're talking about, heading rapidly for $251 million. And not a peep from the press.