I also don’t see the point in ripping out infrastructure that works and replacing it with more expensive (BART) infrastructure. There must be a better way.

I am a case-in-point that the bullet service works. I never took the train until the baby bullet service went into effect. Once that happened, I could relax on the train going to and from work instead of stressing out in the car. More than 90% of the time, I could predict my arrival at the office to within 2-3 minutes. You definitely cannot do that in a car.

After trying the baby bullet, I drove less and less and finally went carless 2 years ago. I ride the local trains at night and on weekends quite often. Yes, they take forever, but I make use of the time by answering emails, reading, snoozing, etc. I do wish there were occasional express trains on weekends, but anything is better than a complete service cut.

Thanks for posting this rebuttal to the many ignorant arguments against Caltrain. Most people have been blasting Caltrain with out much or any supporting evidence. Everyone just loves to blame administrative pay, mismanagement, etc. for any problem. The fact is, Caltrain’s big problem is clear: lack of stable funding.

A few things: electrifying Caltrain would be WAY less expensive than running BART down the peninsula and would take much less time. BART is a system with many fatal flaws, such as its 3rd rail and 5’6″ wide gauge track. Caltrain is much more easily upgraded, since it runs standard gauge track. Also, people need to keep in mind that the CA-HSR is going to run up the peninsula, and will be sharing the Caltrain corridor. Let’s just say building a wide gauge 3rd rail system when a standard gauge overhead electric high speed rail is coming in time would be *beyond stupid*.

Caltrain understands the importance of electrifying its system and it plans to do so as part of the HSR project. Caltrain still wants to electrify by 2015, but typical peninsula NIMBYs are threatening lawsuits. Caltrain would save a lot of money by electrifying, and the EMUs would accelerate/decelerate much quicker than the existing diesels. They could also go faster. This way, Caltrain could restore the bullets to full-stop service and still make it to SF in around an hour. They’d run more trains and I suspect they’d get a lot more riders.

The fact is, considering the outdated technology they’ve been stuck with, Caltrain has not done badly, especially since the baby bullets. I think they’d do quite well with the electric system, and it would go hand in hand with the CA-HSR.

What an utterly foolish move it would be to not help out this system right now. Provide them the stable funding they deserve, allow them to electrify, and within years, we’ll see electric Caltrain EMUs zooming up and down the peninsula. SB and peninsula residents deserve quality public transit, but the same old brain dead NIMBY groups have come out once again… along with the uninformed general public.

I take Caltrain every day from Tamien to Sunnyvale and I will continue to do so as long as I can. I love the fact that the system allows me to relax in the morning and watch traffic from afar, rather than in its midst. We need to prepare for the future… oil prices will not be this low forever. Just once, let’s not shoot ourselves in our collective foot, please!

I understand what this post is getting at, but I think that the entire set of points that it’s getting at really miss the forest for the trees.

When people make anti-Caltrain arguments, they make these arguments because Caltrain service displeases them in some way. I used to commute daily on Caltrain, and I found myself profoundly disappointed by Caltrain service which did not run frequently enough, would frequently run late (I would say that 50% of trains ran >3 minutes late), and had confusing schedules. I also think that Caltrain is laughably ancient. The fact that you can only get information about train status at http://www.twitter.com/caltrain, which are updates posted by commuters is pathetic, and the fact that the signs at platforms aren’t used effectively for communicating delays (or just plain train status at all) is pathetic.

Beyond this, the arguments against having BART take over Caltrain or against having BART circle the bay don’t stand up to reason. Combining BART and Caltrain would improve transit for people who are heading into San Francisco or over to the other side of the bay by removing the need to transit at Millbrae, which can add 15 minutes to the commute into SF northbound, and up to 2 hours southbound. (Caveat to my numbers here: they are worst case numbers, especially southbound, so they do not paint the picture fairly, and I’ll admit that, but I’ve been stuck in both cases, so they do happen). Additionally, having BART take over Caltrain would solve the entire electrification problem, which would allow for more frequent trains.

In response to Kris’ comment, yes, BART does suck, but Caltrain is arguably worse. BART may have the 5’6″ track pitch, but how is the 3rd rail a large problem? It’s used internationally in most rapid transit systems. As a safety problem, it’s arguably much better than the at-grade crossings that Caltrain has, which lead to tens of fatalities per year and hundreds of hours of train delays, while fatalities due to a person touching the third rail are rare. With regards to the 5’6″ track pitch, yes, that would be a problem, but at the point that high speed rail comes through the Valley, extensive infrastructure modifications will have to be made anyways. The only problem that BART would add over Caltrain, is that BART’s train cars smell like urine, but that’s survivable.

In any case, the main argument posited for Caltrain not being taken over by BART was:

“No thank you. Caltrain is doing just fine if the funding is available.”

But wait! The funding is NOT available, whereas BART has comparatively fewer funding problems. This argument went on to say that Caltrain and Samtrans have great synergy that allows for monetary savings. This argument is illogical. BART is much larger than Caltrain and Samtrans combined (which would allow for theoretically improved synergies), has established funding sources that aren’t going to disappear, and would provide unified Bay Area rapid transit service.

While the problem with Caltrain is a lack of funding, and not decreasing ridership, you can’t look at problems, and just ignore them. That’s illogical.

With Peninsula High Speed Rail construction near term electification and entire route grade separation appears to be not only feasible but probable. Learning from the experience of running urban transit without on-board operating personnel for over two decades in France and Canada it appears a grade separated electrified automatically operated Caltrain could be built at moderate additional capital cost. Note that Vancouer’s automatically operated Skytrain operating costs are completely covered with passenger fares.
There are several important additional advantages for automatic operation. Twenty four BART weight single car trains per hour in both direction could be operated with the same total rolling stock weight as two current Caltrain trains per hour in each direction. If 75% of these trains were operated as expresses and most fuel and maintainace were proportional to train weight and stopping frequency there would be a reduction in fuel and maintenance costs jn addition operating personnel expense reductions. If the local service tracks and island stations were at the center of the right of way excess rolling could be stored on center tracks between stations. A nearby gap train could be rolling in less than a second after a decision to cover a service delay has been made.
Consider the remarkable improvement in speed and convenience with 18 express trains per hour. With 110 mph express train running times could be cut in half for most riders. Companies looking for high quality personnel would quickly try to move to locations near a Peninsula rail station.
Is the foregoing traffic density realistic? If a “moving block” train system locates train ends within two feet and BART train seperation safety standards are applied and station close-up times and platform passenger flow gates are used at critical stations 48 700 foot trains per track per hour should be feasible. Way capacity: extending BART separation standards to 110 mph would allow 80 tph with 1320 foot maximum lengths and a 180 foot minimum safety distance. These figures can be quickly verified if you know that the maximum acceleration and braking rates are 4.4 ft/sec/sec, the safety braking rate is 2.2 ft/sec/sec and you have a 38 sec maximum average dwell time.