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Comment by bowenli | Hacker News Reader

Caltrain is often behind schedule. Trains have break down or hit cars. It's a huge pain for daily Caltrain commuters. See: https://twitter.com/Caltrainstatus

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This is just the exceptional delays. People have given up reporting the "normal" delays we are now seeing every day due to overcrowding of the trains. The overcrowding slows down the onboarding/offboarding of trains by a lot.

Another crowdsourced caltrain twitter account is https://twitter.com/caltrain You can see some of the more granular delays there. All these crowdsourced status accounts should be proof that caltrain SHOULD publish the raw data for us to use.

Even aside from major issues like hitting cars or people, delays are not "exceptional" when it comes to Caltrain -- it is the norm. An exception is Caltrain arriving on time.

Among the things Caltrain has to contend with (aside from old equipment prone to breaking) are several dozen at grade crossings and freight train traffic on the same line (!)

Fortunately the freight traffic is mostly after commute hours. Imagine what will happen with those so-called "high-speed" trains coming through!

Aren't you supposed to have separate high-speed track for high-speed trains?

While I feel for the grade crossings, freight traffic does not necessarily prevent good service. To give one example, North London Line of the London Overground has freight trains in between every-15-minutes service outside peak hours.

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