At Caltrain’s board meeting last week, General Manager Hartnett explained that the Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s decision on the funding for Caltrain electrification would be timed to coincide with the issuance of the president’s budget, which could come out as early as April and could be as late as June.   Hartnett explained that the timing does not depend on passing the budget in Congress. This time frame means that Caltrain’s extension of its contracts for electrification construction and rail cars prices through June 30 will protect the project until the decision is expected to be made.

At the board meeting, Santa Clara Supervisor Ken Yeager asked whether the extension, which could cost up to $30 million for Caltrain’s financial partners depending on how long the delay extends, was worth the cost. Hartnett explained that if Caltrain had suspended the contracts, the costs would have been even higher, and if Caltrain had cancelled the contract, it would have taken the electrification project out of the running for federal funding entirely.  

For supporters of Caltrain electrification, the timeline means we have weeks or even months to continue to show strong support for the project locally, while building connections with people across the nation who want to save federal transit funding, and quietly building supporters for Plans B, in the unwelcome event that we need to backfill for lost federal funding for Caltrain and/or future Bay Area projects (see this post about the broader risks to federal transit funding).

See this page for top actions you can take to save Caltrain electrification. 

By Kabelleger / David Gubler (http://www.bahnbilder.ch) – Own work: http://bahnbilder.ch/picture/7847, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14816326