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Electric Timetable Contest
The coveted Takt CupTimetable planning has long been a staple of this blog, with the support of rapid prototyping tools like Richard Mlynarik's excellent Taktulator, a calculator for "Taktverkehr," the...
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Pandemic Open Thread
These are challenging times. We can ponder ideas that are significantly outside the mainstream, taking an existing concept and extrapolating it, Black Mirror style, to its extreme conclusion. Here are...
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The Unbearable Cost of Conductors
[Programming note: while the current pandemic may appear to make the discussion below irrelevant, consider that by 1920, there were few memories of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Jammed peninsula...
View ArticlePCEP: Farce Majeure
This post serves as a place to track monthly status updates of the Peninsula Corridor Electrification Program, peeling back the rosy pronouncements put forth by the managers of this deeply troubled...
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High-Speed Rail DEIR
The first thing to notice about the new high-speed rail San Francisco - San Jose Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) is that it sets up a straw-man alternative B, which is set to be dropped in...
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Vote Yes on Measure RR
For all the criticism of Caltrain that you might have read on this blog over the last decade, you might think that my support for the upcoming Measure RR 1/8th cent sales tax measure in the three...
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Redwood City Grade Seps: We Must Do Better
The first preliminary engineering plans for the downtown Redwood City grade separations are out. This isn't your average grade separation: it underpins the most important new piece of rail corridor...
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The Exploding Cost of Grade Separations
Recently, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority prepared a grade separation program update, discussing past and future projects. What immediately jumps out of this document, and others...
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August 2021 Timetable Review
Caltrain was recently returned to more or less full service, with a timetable that is supposedly simpler (with a claim of just five stopping patterns) and features 104 trains per weekday, the most...
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Down the Tubes with DTX!
DTX overviewSan Francisco's Downtown Rail Extension project (DTX), officially known as the Transbay Transit Center Program Phase 2, is a two-mile tunneling project to extend the peninsula rail corridor...
View ArticleNews Roundup, March 2022
It's been a while since the last post, but fear not this blog is still alive.Caltrain's First Major Accident: on Thursday 10 March 2022, a southbound train was unable to stop before ramming into at...
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Capital Spending for Better Service
Wouldn't it be great if you could quantify the service benefit of capital improvements, to compare and prioritize them by how much better train service results? We can, and using our handy Taktulator,...
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HSR Lays an Egg in Caltrain's Nest
California's high-speed rail project has finally reached a milestone 14 years after the passage of Proposition A in 2008 with the board's certification of the Final Environmental Impact Report for the...
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News Roundup, October 2022
CBOSS Dumpster Fire Update: the CBOSS case is still making its way through San Mateo County Superior Court (under case file 17CIV00786). The trial was held in April through June of this year, and...
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Leaping Off the Fiscal Cliff
One phrase we're going to hear a lot in the next couple of years is "fiscal cliff," a sudden disequilibrium between Caltrain's revenues and expenses caused by the withdrawal of the temporary federal...
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Deadly Caltrain Underpasses
The recent storms demonstrate once again that Caltrain underpass flooding is a clear and present danger to the public. Deadly is no understatement: while only harrowing water rescues occurred in the 31...
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The False Choice of Link21
Link21, the nascent megaproject to beef up the Bay Area's passenger rail network, features at its core a new underground transbay passenger rail crossing between Oakland and San Francisco. One of the...
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BEMU Obsession
Barry the BEMU,Caltrain's new mascot"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget—and I'll tell you what you value."There's a new obsession gripping Caltrain: the Battery EMU, an electric train...
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Level Boarding: Still Not Getting It
The good news: Caltrain has initiated a small study effort to develop a level boarding roadmap, as part of its portfolio of capital projects.The bad news: in the summary of this study, Caltrain shows...
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First Look at Electric Service
Caltrain's proposed weekday peak serviceCaltrain has started to pull back the curtain on their fall 2024 service pattern, when the electric fleet will (finally!) enter service.The peak service pattern...
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