Comment by Hansenq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hansenq | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for doing this analysis!

After riding other transit in the US (NJ Transit, LIRR, Amtrak, BART, misc Subways), high speed rail in China and Japan, and trains in Europe; Caltrain stands out to me as the most jerky train I've been on. Often times high speed rail in East Asian countries are so smooth that you can balance a coin on its edge without falling. Comparing apples to apples, even NJ Transit and LIRR are noticeably smoother than Caltrain. It would be interesting to see what the difference is between systems.

> Looking at data from a few different trips, Caltrain does a good job subjecting passengers to no more than 1g of roughness in any direction.

This at first to me seemed like a low bar (relative to other trains out there), but then I forgot about the sudden jerks and direction changes the SF Muni and NY Subway often subject passengers. 1g in any direction I suppose is good for subways, but still poor for trains overall.

Unfortunately I doubt Caltrain's current Electrification project won't solve any of these issues, given that it seems like more issues with the track, not with the power source. Perhaps the new trains might help?

Much of the side-to-side jerking is a combination of the poor suspension on the trucks (bogies) of the older Gallery train cars and fast running over track switches. The Gallery cars are the ones that look like steel toasters.

If you take a ride in one of the "newer" Bombardier cars (the octagonal ones) the ride is much smoother and the bumps are almost imperceptible with little swaying. I'd imagine the new trains post-electrification will also be much better on the suspension front.

> I'd imagine the new trains post-electrification will also be much better on the suspension front.

So right now this is still Diesel?

Yes. It’ll be a couple years before Caltrain has electric trains.

Yep. Towns along the peninsula (looking at you Atherton) are fighting electrification (as well as grade separation) tooth and nail.

Why? What's the disadvantage for them?

Just the installation cost?

Mostly they don't want to mingle with the hoi polloi.

Atherton (not Belmont – all those shitty little peninsula towns blend together in my mind) sued because they didn't want trees removed to make way for overhead wires (the claim was that "cleaner" diesel would be better than electric)[0]. Then they sued because the poles were going to be 10 ft higher than promised[1]. Another Atherton resident[2] sued because he wanted Union Pacific to explicitly approve everything beforehand. More dreck[3].

Caltrain's getting sued left and right over the electrification, starved for money by BART, and generally ignored by politicians. If you're ever curious about why Bay Area transit is as bad as it is, Caltrain is a great case study.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification_of_Caltrain#La...

1: https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2017/12/21/atherton-battlin...

2: http://www.cahsrblog.com/2009/08/another-peninsula-nimby-law...

3: https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/08/atherton-et-al-law...

Not hard to see what their real intent was.

When some have the freedom of protecting their private land, others end up with the freedom of riding diesel only, underfunded trains. The liberty of some seems greater than others’.

I wonder a bit though as advocating for diesels service seems a bit like they're shooting themselves in the foot, at least in terms of air quality.

Belmont at least has some density and Main Street. Atherton’s density is 1/4 of Belmont’s and it occupied the very center of SV.

Atherton 1,438.97/sq mi (555.53/km2)

Belmont 5,843.98/sq mi (2,256.45/km2)

San Mateo 8,570.40/sq mi (3,309.14/km2)

To make matters even more frustrating, Atherton starved their Caltrain station to death:

https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2020/01/17/atherton-signs-o...

Much of the side-to-side jerking is a combination of the poor suspension on the trucks (bogies) of the older Gallery train cars and fast running over track switches. The Gallery cars are the ones that look like steel toasters.

I imagine there's also quite a bit of hunting / side-to-side movement as well. BART tried to solve this with flat wheels, and after forty years of complaints came to the conclusion that flat wheels wear the track down more and cause significant noise. They've since cut a conical profile (like most rail operators) into the wheels under the guise of reducing noise. I can't hear much difference but the side-to-side motion is quite a bit more dramatic than I remember.

If you take a ride in one of the "newer" Bombardier cars (the octagonal ones) the ride is much smoother and the bumps are almost imperceptible with little swaying. I'd imagine the new trains post-electrification will also be much better on the suspension front.

It's been almost a decade since I've ridden Caltrain with any regularity but I don't remember being particularly enamored with how the Bombardier cars rode. If anything they rode firmer than the Nippon Sharyo cars over the bumps but had less lateral movement as a consequence.

I remember there being quite a bit of variation (there are three distinct batches of them after all) – something you used to see with Muni buses. The German ones (Neoplan) touted their complex (independent) front suspension, and there was a huge variation in ride comfort with some being downright scary. The Hungarian (Ikarus) ones with their simpler solid axle up front seemed more consistently comfortable.

Electrification will involve entirely new train sets, so it’ll go a very long ways towards fixing things. Electrified engines aren’t going to be pulling the older cars.

Not as hot in the summer for east coast commuter rail.

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