Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

[F-Line to Dudley]

Caltrain's electrified service is now in operation. Among other things, it looks like this will reduce travel time by 5 minutes on the express service and by 25 minutes (!) on local service. Setting aside the "inside baseball" around how the thing came to fruition, hopefully from a PR perspective this will provide an easy-to-understand case study when making the pitch for electrification to the public here.

Example of local coverage: https://abc7news.com/post/caltrain-...ervice-san-francisco-silicon-valley/15333842/

The time savings depend a lot on the number of stops. A Caltrain local has 22 (!) stops due to the length of the trip between San Fran and San Jose, so that's a whole lot of time spent in acceleration that the EMU's can help with a lot. The Baby Bullet expresses with 8 stops, much less so. On the T there wouldn't be nearly such incredibly dense stop rosters on any given line, so most of the time savings would be on the order of 15-20% rather than the 25% Caltrain achieves on its locals. The NEC Commission, for example, estimated an 18% reduction on Providence Line schedules and a 16% reduction on Wickford Jct. schedules using EMU's of similar class to what Caltrain is using. And that's on a line with not a lot of stops. So the average T line would probably do a little better.

 

[as02143]

Wonder if the feds would ramp up a rail electrification program with a 90 (or 80) fed - 10 (20) state/local split in the vein of the interstate highway program given how promising this works for such a corridor?

 

[RandomWalk]

The smaller lift would be permitting funding shifts. Permitting states to do what MA did with the Inner Belt funds would permit states to rethink transportation, but the highway lobby would scream bloody murder.

 

[aquaticko]

Caltrain's electrified service is now in operation. Among other things, it looks like this will reduce travel time by 5 minutes on the express service and by 25 minutes (!) on local service. Setting aside the "inside baseball" around how the thing came to fruition, hopefully from a PR perspective this will provide an easy-to-understand case study when making the pitch for electrification to the public here.

Example of local coverage: https://abc7news.com/post/caltrain-...ervice-san-francisco-silicon-valley/15333842/

I dunno, there's a good chance they (meaning anti-transit people) will seize the high cost of Caltrain's electrification as a reason not to do it, rather than a lesson on how to do it better. Why learn to do the project right when you can try to persuade people not to do it at all? That was, after all, mostly the reason that NSRL was pitched as "too expensive" by very selective pricing estimates for construction.

The time/money-wasting by the MBTA on BEMUs is itself not a good sign.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I dunno, there's a good chance they (meaning anti-transit people) will seize the high cost of Caltrain's electrification as a reason not to do it, rather than a lesson on how to do it better. Why learn to do the project right when you can try to persuade people not to do it at all? That was, after all, mostly the reason that NSRL was pitched as "too expensive" by very selective pricing estimates for construction.

The time/money-wasting by the MBTA on BEMUs is itself not a good sign.

Hell, the pro-transit people seize on it. Caltrain-HSR Compatibility Blog, the transpo blogosphere standard-bearer for all things Caltrain, pretty much has a hive mind to want to bustitute the Gilroy tail they hate BEMU's so much.