Update: We talked to Ben Tripousis, head of California High Speed Rail’s Northern California program, who added more context about the workshop held in January where a panel of experts talked about how High Speed Rail would “compete” with Caltrain on the corridor from San Francisco through San Jose.
Tripousis explained that the panelists are academic experts on ridership modelling who are giving technical advice on how to estimate the number of riders who will take the High Speed Trains.  The reason to compare with Caltrain service is to make predictions about the number of riders who will be attracted by services of different speeds and types.
Their goal, said Tripousis, was “not to create strategies to compete for market share” on the SF-SJ corridor. “Our goal was never to compete with Caltrain service,” said Tripousis. Â “That choice of words [in the memo] was unfortunate. It was not talking about competition between the services.”
Tripousis reports that the High Speed Rail Authority plans to start outreach on the Peninsula corridor for the next phase of planning with the first meetings expected in September. One of the objectives of that planning process will to discuss schedule options “in order to create a complementary blended service.”
Hopefully as part of the planning process, Caltrain corridor commuters, city and employer stakeholders will speak up as part of that process, seeking a schedule pattern that provides the most commuter convenience, meets cities’ economic development goals, and takes the most cars off the road.
Update: High Speed Rail says “competition†is ridership forecasting, not market share;… http://t.co/3rZGudcGIi http://t.co/Oq8qtMzEkO
Nevertheless, if the new 2016 business plan enshrines a new “split” IOS where the Gilroy – SF segment is operated standalone, then the HSR operator (unlike typical HSR operators around the world) will no longer have the usual incentive to set fares for short trips very high to deter the loss of seating for higher-yielding long-distance trips– because there will be no long-distance HSR trips. In practice, the HSR operator will be a short-haul commuter operator, making the argument that HSR wouldn’t compete with Caltrain somewhat hollow.
This should be of some concern for Caltrain.
To maximize yield for HSR and to operate with as small a subsidy as feasible (perhaps even zero subsidy “on paper” to comply with the requirements of the HSR bond measure), the HSR operator will apply strong political pressure to obtain market exclusivity on certain services. If Caltrain is forced out of those markets, presumably the most profitable ones, then Caltrain will, for all intents and purposes, provide a hidden subsidy to the HSR operator. That’s because the loss to Caltrain’s balance sheet is a gain to HSR’s balance sheet, potentially allowing the latter to operate “without subsidy” at Caltrain’s expense.
The real problem here is that an SF – Gilroy IOS isn’t high-speed rail. You wouldn’t even need high-speed trains, since Caltrain’s new EMUs will be on an equal performance footing with HSR if speeds are restricted to 110 mph (as they will be between SF and SJ). The only differentiator would be the level of comfort, which could equally well be provided by converting one car in each Caltrain EMU to first class.
HSR that doesn’t link the Bay Area to anywhere other than itself seems like a solution in search of a problem.
Clem is entirely correct. If a HSR service is established with exactly the same start/end points as the existing Caltrain service, there’s no way it will not compete with Caltrain for ridership. Each rider will make a choice whether to take Caltrain or HSR based on their own personal sensitivities regarding price, speed, and comfort. This is a perfectly reasonable way to provide service on the corridor, but Caltrain should expect their farebox recovery to decrease as a result; and when this does happen, it’s important that it is not interpreted as evidence of a failing agency and used as an excuse to defund the railroad.
CAHSR is spit-balling with regard to San Jose to SF.Although Clem points out that they won’t have to price the ride high to reserve seats for longer distance passengers, they will have to price it high to cover _all_ the operational costs since they won’t have long distance passengers to help cover those.
Also, equipment-wise, I think they’d be stretching pretty far to justify use of non-high speed units. Besides, they’ll want to show off their shiny new trains 🙂
Finally, the corridor is kind of far from being able to handle 110 service (let alone to Gilroy).
I think maybe someone at the Authority had the bright idea to see about starting service San Jose to SF because of visibility (see, there’s your HSR). As to whether they can politically force Caltrain to give up some service to make room for them, I kind of doubt it. (Maybe they could just ask, pretty please, we gave you electrification, how about giving us something back?) Besides, there are so many other prerequisites for service, it seems like putting the cart before the horse to worry about that now.
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Ben Tripousis: “Competition is ridership forecasting, not market share”
Alison Smith: http://tinyurl.com/qayvu7o