Caltrain shows why every region should be moving toward regional rail
hsrail.org
hsrail.org
On the flip side, I find it shocking that ridership is still only 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
Anecdotally, the increased service is a game-changer. Speed matters, too, a lot, but the frequency is what matters to me. A transit system that only arrives once an hour off-peak is not particularly useful. The increased frequency, to a minimum of once every 30mins means missing a train is merely annoying. It's still infrequent enough that you want to check a schedule to avoid waiting around for too long, but not a deal-breaker, IMO.
My understand is that it's been true of commuter rail everywhere - e.g. a Twin Cities commuter railroad has shut down as well due to declining ridership.
https://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/M...
Here's a relatively rigorous report from the GAO synthesizing cross-US experiences:
https://www.gao.gov/blog/most-commuter-rail-systems-are-stil...
My understanding is that there's a decline in transit use in general, but I would hazard to guess that the emphasis on commuters has hit commuter rail the hardest.
Do we know how much of this 47% is due to electrification vs just post-pandemic trend?
Yet, astoundingly, many transit system budgets are higher than ever.
It makes a lot of sense. Many companies went full remote during the pandemic and stayed that way, or if they went in person, it's only 60% of the time or less. And a lot of people left the area during the pandemic, and those that are returning are coming back to SF, not the suburbs.
I used to take the train every day for years, but I've only been on it once or twice since the pandemic.
To put it in startup terms, the TAM for ridership shrank considerably. They may very well be capturing a greater amount of the TAM than before the pandemic.
The Bay Area also needs way better last-mile transportation. I looked into taking Caltrain to work; it'd take 22 minutes to Caltrain the ~15 miles to the nearest Caltrain station, and then another 22 minutes to shuttle the 2.5 miles to work.
Unfortunately for railroad companies commuters are the lifeblood.
Light rail is stupid. It’s a bus that can’t change lanes. A train that gets stuck in traffic.
And, as you said, they visibly disrupt drivers which generates class animosity.
It’s still at grade. Priority is meaningless if there is a car in the way when the guards come down. And those guards, in interrupting traffic, are annoying to drivers. (I’d also point out that the line between trams, street cars and light rail is ambiguous. It’s an American term describing principally European infrastructure.)
This possibility is so far outside my experience I can only think your perspective has more to do with emotion than logic. Maybe it happens more often in your city than mine.
It's still more reliable than the busses. I think it's pretty fun.
Either way personally priority bus lanes feel significantly more flexible and cheaper to implement than LR/trams...but that's just a personal opinion.
People in Europe take trains because it's a better alternative than driving!
Make subways land right in the train station in SF, then make the train faster, then you have something useful.
On the other hand I agree with the premise of the article. If you have high mobility in a state, the state will become reacher. Doesn't make sense to wait for national trains to be a thing, make sure people can easily move across your state without having to rely on having a car.
My main issues with Caltrain are the cost (public transit shouldn’t be more expensive than driving) and the schedule: depending on the station, missing a train can mean waiting 30-60 minutes.
also the Peninsula isn’t really built around trains. I still have to drive 5-10 minutes just to get to the station, then wait, then ride at that point it’s easier to just drive the whole way. If I lived within walking distance, I might use the train way more.
Yeah, they've electrified the system. Congrats, I guess? The system is still a glorified people mover. It goes in one direction, turns around, and goes in the other direction.
Given Caltrain's route map stagnation and the worse fates of other CA rail projects, it really doesn't seem, well, grounded to reality, to suggest everyone emulate California rail's success. After all, it takes two days to grab a train from Seattle to SF!
If you want a half-decent model, at least look at NYC. The LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and the subway form something resembling a coherent transit grid.
To be fair, the peninsula is basically a long hallway. I’m not really sure where else it would go?
Caltrain connects two parts of the Bay Area: San Francisco and the South Bay. BART connects the entire East Bay to San Francisco. In a functioning system, they would both just be legs and not two completely separate systems.
The only place they connect appears to be in Millbrae and not near any large hubs.
Six miles, 12 billion dollars, opening in 2036.
It would be like calling the Google private shuttles a model for public buses to follow.
And outside of that, basically everything you'd consider plonking another path already exists with some service: BART runs up the east shore of the bay, as it does west of San Bruno Mountain. You have two mountain crossings covered by BART and one by ACE. The main missing things are curving BART back into San Jose and reactivating the Dumbarton Bridge.
Still if you built that the gap between Millbrae and Redwood city is 12 miles.
The history of US rail is that of tragic but distinguishable post-70s states.
Its one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, a testament to inefficient bureaucracy. I'm not sure anyone uses it.
https://www.capmetro.org/plan/schedmap?route=550
But much of the length is, in fact, single-track, making scheduling hard and meaning if a train is late or breaks down it disrupts the whole system.
And it's honestly pretty silly to see a train with the form factor of light rail but diesel-powered.
Voters did approve a proper light rail system in 2020 but it's gonna take a while to build and has already been scaled back twice, sigh...
I'm describing the red line which goes from downtown to Leander. (The one I linked to.) If you're describing some other line then sorry for the confusion, I didn't actually know there was another rail line. There are plans to build a green line to Elgin but AFAIK that's still under construction.
The red line is mostly single-track, but there are several specific segments of dual-track allowing trains to pass each other, which is why they're able to support multiple trains in both directions.
It's still a crappy schedule -- even during rush hour it's still no more than two trains an hour. Supposedly they intend to start running it every 15 minutes once they add some more dual-track segments.
Maybe it was worse when you lived here?
The main issue then would be what to do about Gilroy --they can keep Caltrain for that like the ACE does for the East SF Bay.
what are you talking about, literally every single seat has outlets except the 9 in the bottom of the bike car
I don't have the data, honestly, but isn't NYC (and it's surrounding cities/suburbs) more dense than the Bay Area?
In SF (the city) transpiration is quite decent because it's dense; single family houses and public transpiration together is a very very tricky to pull; you have to choose one or the other and most people would rather live in a family house than an apartment/condo with good transpiration
Totally disingenuous to say, "Hey! Look at the richest region in the US! They have electric trains. Why can't we?"
Well, make my state the fourth largest economy in the world and we'd have electric trains too.
If we could use other parts of the world as an example - my region is richer than them and could afford it. But those places somehow are never used as the example
The upper limit for comfortable commutes is 30 minutes one way. Even assuming that you synchronize your schedule with Caltrain departures, the map of locations within this timeframe would look like a string of rather small beads along the Caltrain route.
As a simpler example, try playing with routes from the Salesforce Tower. You start blowing past that 30-minute mark by the time the train is still passing Brisbane.
Estimates to complete the original plan call for another $100B and at least another 12 years. I don't think it's ever going to be completed given the massive state budget deficit (reliable figures are difficult to find). Even if it ever got completed, it would never pay for itself.
https://www.hsrail.org/california-is-building-high-speed-rai...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-drops-lawsuit-ch...