Caltrain HSR Blog

>I don't really think that was in the cards. The car was already prevalent before the interstate system was built, and the military was much more about a road solution than rail.

These are policy decisions. Other countries chose to invest in rail. The US chose to invest in other forms of transportation and created adverse policy conditions in which rail largely withered and nearly died. I made another comment [1] where I talk about the political milieu that likely contributed to this.

I would also call out the fact since WW2, the US has lost more than half its railroad route-miles (300,000+ to ~147,000 today). Other countries had to rebuild their infrastructure after the destruction of the war. No bombs were dropped on American railroads. Aside from figurative bombs of bad policy by political leaders, competitors in automotive/airlines, and the deeply ignorant idea that railroads and trains are an obsolete 19th century technology.

>As to cost, look at California trying to add high speed rail, as they have failed badly for what was a very modest set of served areas.

I am well aware of the California HSR project and its many failings. It has nothing to do with anything inherent to rail technology. I view it as symptomatic of and the inevitable result of a broken political system, poor project management, a Transportation/Construction-Industrial Complex (similar to the Military-Industrial Complex), monied special interests like construction and engineering contractors run…

The Caltrain KISSes are not really off the shelf, in many ways, good and bad and ugly.

The (arguably) good: 1) they have a boxier profile than the standard KISS, which some have complained about, but the reason the European version is less boxy is because Europe has a more restrictive loading gauge (the allowable cross-section of the vehicle), resulting in a more cramped upper level. Caltrain doesn’t have this issue, and so the upper level will not be cramped. 2) The Caltrain KISS is more powerful than the standard, which would allow for a faster top speed… if the corridor was upgraded to make use of it, which it is not. Maybe someday.

The bad/silly: two sets of doors… a higher set since HSR might allegedly someday come to this corridor and require changing the platform height, and a lower set because that ain’t happening for a long time, if ever. I think there are some other bad/silly things which I’ve willfully forgotten about (I think they fucked up the ADA lifts somehow?), which I’m sure are documented somewhere on Clem Tillier’s excellent blog.[0]

The ugly: “buy America” requirements forced Stadler to build an entire factory in the US, raising the cost by over 50% compared to the standard KISS. This is the bad kind of industrial policy which raises costs without actually building up US industrial capacity in this field (if Stadler closed the plant tomorrow, the US wouldn’t retain any expertise or capacity to build trains).

[0] https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com

That is not true for Caltrain .

Caltrain tracks and right of way was purchased in 1991 from Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board which is basically Muni, SamTrans and VTA for most of the route.

Here is a detailed map of who owns what https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-way-maps.html

While it is true that Southern Pacific owned the line for most its history it was always built as commuter line. Union Pacific is only allowed to operate 3 freight lines per day on weekdays now.

Freight does not take priority, historically freight did not fund the development of the line, Characterizing it a freight line with passengers added on to it is not a fair representation.

--

I cannot speak for Amtrack, I don't know the network personally and it is also big and very composite a network to make any general statements like for Caltrain. However in general commuter heavy lines were built as commuter lines very early one because there was economic case to do so. It is the only the long distance lines which do not have the economic viability on their own that can only run on freight lines.

Mostly they don't want to mingle with the hoi polloi.

Atherton (not Belmont – all those shitty little peninsula towns blend together in my mind) sued because they didn't want trees removed to make way for overhead wires (the claim was that "cleaner" diesel would be better than electric)[0]. Then they sued because the poles were going to be 10 ft higher than promised[1]. Another Atherton resident[2] sued because he wanted Union Pacific to explicitly approve everything beforehand. More dreck[3].

Caltrain's getting sued left and right over the electrification, starved for money by BART, and generally ignored by politicians. If you're ever curious about why Bay Area transit is as bad as it is, Caltrain is a great case study.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification_of_Caltrain#Lawsuits

1: https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2017/12/21/atherton-battling-caltrain-over-electrification-poles

2: http://www.cahsrblog.com/2009/08/another-peninsula-nimby-lawsuit/

3: https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/08/atherton-et-al-lawsuit-decided.html

No, I'm talking about the current round of work in the Central Valley that just started. Currently all the big HSR works are going on there. I can't currently find the report with the oddly high grade separation count and it is possible that my read of that was mistaken, but I am pretty sure that if you look at the recent documents they just moved on from CP1 and started on either CP2 or CP4 in the south end of the Central Valley and it includes a very large number of grade separations. That report was posted somewhere on either https://hsr.ca.gov/ or https://www.buildhsr.com a month or two ago.

Fortunately these Central Valley grade separations are merely expensive while the CalTrain corridor work on the peninsula is experiencing explosive growth of costs from the the complexity of grade separations because of the very tricky maze of rights of way especially in and around Redwood City: https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-exploding-cost-of-grade-separations.html

It's an issue of "loading gauge".

If caltrain adopted higher platforms, they would interfere with the size of freight trains passing through.

There are ways around this: If all the high platforms were on 4-tracked sections, the freight could use the express tracks only. Mixing high and low boarding might be more painful though.

Not to mention the current train stock doesn't support level boarding, so Caltrain would be restricted to use them as express trains and only have high platforms at local stations, for example.

Or the platforms could be far away from the trains and they use extending platforms: That is potentially unreliable and costly.

There is a somewhat reasonable blog about this type of issues at http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/ which is mostly reasonable though it tends to be written as if it is the only reasonable choice.