I don't get why the trains running on Caltrain are so enormous and industrial. They're like something from a steam-punk comic book. Instead of a two-level leviathan with an entire car devoted to the engine, running once an hour during the day, why not do UK-style small trains with four or so carriages with engines underneath the passengers, running every 15 minutes?
When I first took the Caltrain I was worried I was accidentally boarding a long distance service that would run for hours because it was so huge and heavy, instead of a local stopping service.
How much energy does it take to get those things moving again at each stop?
Southern Pacific back in the early 1990's was looking to abandon the railroad.
San Mateo County bought the right of way and formed a 3 county partnership.
Unfortunately, there is no dedicated funding source for Caltrain. So it is entirely at the mercy of the fortunes of Santa Clara VTA, San Francisco Muni and Samtrans. Each one of those agencies have as their first priority local service busses, light rail, and BART.
Caltrain gets the scraps (especially from VTA ) which rather spend Billions on BART instead of a penny on Caltrain.
In Seattle, the old rail lines through the city are converted to bike trails, or simply left to the weeds. Light rail is done by blasting a new corridor through the city at incredible expense, often paralleling the weedy old tracks.
Like most people here, I know nothing about trains. But I do know that Caltrain trains are enormous, monstrous, loud machines that, on every departure and arrival, seem to portend the end of the universe. I grew up in New Jersey, whose train system is a hundred years older than NorCal's, and serves a denser population. And its trains are like the Concorde compared to Caltrain.
For what, exactly, are we giving California 10% of our income?
New Jersey Transit runs Bombardier two-level cars, very similar to the ones used by Caltrain.[1] PATH runs subway-type equipment through the Hudson Tubes.
Admittedly, Caltrain's power is dated. All those EMD F40PH units are a 1975 base design, built around 1985. It's a widely used, boring, reliable locomotive.
There's a plan to electrify Caltrain (25KV, 60Hz AC), but it has to mesh with both the high speed rail scheme and the Transbay Terminal scheme, which complicates it enormously. (There's heavy poltical pressure in SF from real estate interests to have the train station close to "downtown", or rather where "downtown" used to be. The Transbay Terminal is being built with the platform spaces for a rail station underneath, but without the tunnels to connect it to the tracks at 4th St. All that is in fill, below sea level, in an earthquake zone.)
Meanwhile construction has started on California's high speed rail system. Unfortunately, it only runs from Bakersfield to Palmdale, which is useless.
> Meanwhile construction has started on California's high speed rail system. Unfortunately, it only runs from Bakersfield to Palmdale, which is useless.
Correction 1: Bakersfield to Fresno
Correction 2: This is the opposite of useless because:
1. Bakersfield is ~340,000 people ; Fresno is ~509,924 people + the other cities between call it about a million now have much better rail service.
2. CAHSR needs a flat straight section to do acceptance testing for train set delivery.
3. The federal stimulus money required a fast spending this section was furthest along in planning and the least controversial
> For what, exactly, are we giving California 10% of our income?
So you can get better service than what you have today. Caltrain has no dedicated funding source and relies (too much) on handouts from Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco.
As a result, is is always short of money to really ramp up the service.
