At its upcoming October 4 board meeting, Caltrain will kick off  a process to update its strategic plan, last updated nearly a decade ago.  Rail Transportation Director Michelle Bouchard mentioned the upcoming update at last Wednesday’s Citizen Advisory Committee meeting.  The updated strategic plan will include a long term vision, including future capital and operating funding.  The process is expected to take about nine months and will involve community feedback.
The guiding principles of the 2004 strategic plan were:
1) Satisfy passengers and build ridership
2) Invest wisely in system improvements
3) Promote regional connectivity and cooperation with other transportation providers
4) Partner with communities and broaden communications with the public
5) Develop a solid financial foundation that ensures long-term sustainability
Ridership has doubled over the last decade, so Caltrain has done well on the first goal (though Caltrain is not doing as well keeping its aging diesels running reliably. Â But Caltrain still does not have stable funding, and overall regional fare and schedule connectivity leaves a lot to be desired.
Now that electrification is moving forward (and assuming that the funds remain available), there is a need for a more focused capital plan, including eliminating the remaining 25% of diesel trains to run between San Jose and San Francisco (initial electrification plans to replace 75% of the diesels); ideally moving toward level boarding; eliminating more at-grade crossings; and completing the downtown extension to Transbay Terminal. A focused medium-to-longterm capital plan would help bring support and funding to these goals.
What would you like to see in Caltrain’s updated strategic plan?
1) From the two prototype timetables for electrification and blended HSR, the trip times for baby bullets got much longer. If Caltrain is spending $1 billion+ on improvements, it needs to ensure that trip times improve.
2) Same height level boarding as HSR.
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Caltrain and Samtrans both need to allow animals on board. An animal policy similar to MUNI’s would work (animals pay same fare as humans and must be muzzled or contained while on board). The majority of households on the peninsula have animals which need to travel to the vet, parks, etc. This simple, no cost change in policy would make life so much easier for those of us with animals.
It would be nice to have Caltrain speed up its trains and maybe travel at an average speed of 100mph or so.
So, we have a major update to a strategic plan which is currently failing to deliver an acceptable quality of service. Consider this; the planned arrival of HSR is more than 15 years away i.e past the window when another revision of a strategic plan would be warranted. My point? This cycle should focus on improving the quality of service during the 5-yr period (approximately) when there is no electrification in place (to 2019), but in anticipation of the next 10-yr period when there will be. So we have a fifteen year period when there will be NO HSR and a dire need for a well-funded and more efficient system that gets more people to work, school and play and out of their automobiles. So we start with some goals for the next 10-year iteration of the strategic plan: improve capacity (better schedule), improve reliability and frequency (level boarding), implement zero-MPH (cross-platform)overtakes for more Baby-Bullets (better trip times) and SB turn backs at RWC (or thereabouts), all electric dual-level boarding rolling-stock ( there will be mixed platform heights for some time to come). Oh, and totally outlaw (forever please) skip-stop schedules. What about the 3/4 track overtakes? What’s the hurry, with HSR more than 15 years away and a couple of zero-MPH overtakes now? What about eliminating at-grade crossings? Apart from local safety issues and disruption from gate down time on major thoroughfares (which city needs alone should drive), there’s no rush (15 years). In other words, it’s all very well having Caltrain management fret about issues supposedly driven by HSR, but what are they going to do in the meantime?
I would like to see simplified stop pattern, so passenger don`t have to look for train number. For example, Baby Bullet, Regional express and local train. It is good if each of them runs 20 or 15 min frequency.
Turn back at Red Wood City or Palo Alto also provide efficiency and customer convenience. Not all train have to go all the way to San Jose, since the traffic density is 1/3~1/4 of San Francisco side.