Thanks to vocal passengers speaking up for the young and old, for people taking long trips and people enjoying Giants games, it seems likely that electric Caltrain service will include bathrooms on the trains.  In the material for tomorrow’s board meeting covering the Request for Proposals for electric trains,  Caltrain staff is recommending one disability-access bathroom for each 6-car electric train set.
Thanks to everyone who spoke up!
Giants fans – and people sharing trains with Giants fans will appreciate bathrooms
Likely victory in bathroom battle http://t.co/zaiUV47YLO
“one bathroom for each 6-car electric train set” How about bathroom for 3-car train? Caltrian has option of coupling two 3-car train for peak period and one 3-car train for midday and weekend.
Well, one per 3-car set is ideal, but if we got them to move away from 0, it’s definitely a victory. Zero would have just been a mess sometimes.
One bathroom per 6-car train might not be enough, especially after every Giants games. The current ratio on Gallery sets of 1 bathroom for about 300 people might better, so the new 6-car EMU should have 2 bathrooms, otherwise Caltrain might run into situation that the single bathroom overflows.
The correct ratio in the CIVILIZED world is one bathroom for every 150 seats. Here is a summary of the letter addressed to the board:
– Apparent disregard for off-the-shelf solutions for mixed platform heights with the potential to save $65M in EMU Procurement Consultant fees.
– No mention of DMU hybrids (EDMUs) resulting in the requirement to store new trains for 2-3 years while waiting for the completion of the Caltrain electrification (here is what happened to the VTA 4 hours after the letter was sent to Caltrain: http://kron4.com/2015/07/01/separate-power-problems-causing-massive-delays-on-vta-light-rail-in-san-jose/)
– No specification for density requirement for seats, wheelchairs, bicycles etc. (e.g. 900 seats & 100 bicycles within a 700-foot platform).
– Despicable number of bathrooms.
– Inadequate funding plan and lack of request for financing proposals in the RFP.
Link to the letter: http://tinyurl.com/oz7uyb6
Link to the Bombardier Omneo train configuration: http://tinyurl.com/ntlg62x
Please review and comment on the train configuration.
[…] Caltrain to Keep Restrooms in New Car Design, No Plan for More Bike Space (Socketsite, Green Caltrain) […]
@Roland, the more specialized a train design is, the more expensive it would be due to less competition. The fact you can only cite Omneo as an example cries “vender lock”. Moreover, Omneo doesn’t have any inherent advantage over the more regular tri-level arrangement, all the perceived advantage Omneo over the more “regular” trains can also be included in the regular 85-foot package. Also, your seating figure for a given length gives a very uncomfortable of < 20inch pitch.
Again, it is a given that Caltrain's ROW loading gauge will be able to accommodate CHSRA's requirement of a maximum 3.4m wide trains. CHSRA already agreed to fund Caltrain Electrification.
[…] Caltrain board rejected a proposal from its staff to include one bathroom on every six-car train while maintaining the same seat-to-bike […]
@William again your info is outdated:
1) The Omneo (unlike the “phantom door” Tripousis/LTK Engineering Frankentrain special) is available OFF THE SHELF.
2) Unlike “the regular 85-foot package”, the Omneo is capable of cramming 5 passengers per meter with an 825mm pitch.
3) With regards to “it is a given that Caltrain’s ROW loading gauge will be able to accommodate CHSRA’s requirement of a maximum 3.4m wide trains”, I would recommend reading http://www.caltrain.com/assets/_engineering/engineering-standards-2/criteria/CHAPTER3.pdf Section 1.1 on Page 3-13 and then putting a call to your CHSRA friends and kindly point out that there are a couple of minor errors in http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/programs/eir_memos/Proj_Guidelines_TM2_2_4R01.pdf Table 3.2-1 on page 12 whereby the distance between a Caltrain platform edge and the Track Center Line (TCL) is 5’4″ (not 5’6″) which converts to 1.6256 meters (not 1.72) which means that the static (let alone dynamic) envelope of a 3.4M wide train will NOT be able to fit within the existing Caltrain infrastructure without extensive metal bashing (ooops?)
@Roland: there is nothing that prohibits the new trains from overhanging the existing platforms. At 8 inches ATOR there is no metal bashing involved.
As to your Frankentrain comment: your proposed Omneo solution still has only two doors every 25 meters, like a conventional train. There are two possibilities: either one door has stairs for 8″ platforms and the other has a level floor at 51″ (making only one door usable per 25 m, with stairs for the foreseeable future–similar to gallery cars), or the other possibility is that both doors have traps. Both of those solutions suck from the standpoint of passenger flow.
So please enlighten us about how the Omneo solution solves the platform height transition problem? The so-called Frankentrain (two sets of doors) makes far more sense during the transition period, which may take one or two decades to complete.
@Clem:
1) http://tinyurl.com/oz7uyb6
2) http://tinyurl.com/nnwpfdu
So, one door per 25 m during the transition and how many tens of million to remove and replace the single-level modules? What a technically and financially ineffective proposal !
1) I think that we have it figured out, thank you.
2) SpaceX is looking for a technically and financially effective proposal: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/07/spacex-working-falcon-9-diagnosis-treatment/