
Growing Caltrain into an 8-Lane Freeway (2018) - jseliger
http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2018/09/growing-caltrain-into-8-lane-freeway.html
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marcinzm
For those interested in what Caltrain itself thinks here's their latest
presentation on plans and expectations for 2040 (which was put out after the
linked blog post): [https://www.caltrain2040.org/wp-
content/uploads/CBP_November...](https://www.caltrain2040.org/wp-
content/uploads/CBP_November_LPMG_Presentation.pdf)

Caltrain thinks on the high end they can get ~243k daily riders by 2040 up
from the current 62k. That's actually a bigger capacity growth (3.9x versus
2.9x) than the blog is talking about although the blog only goes up to 2035.

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mc32
I’d love to see the Bay Area agencies take the bitter pill and do a cut-and-
cover for BaRT all the way down the El Camino from SF/DC to SJ. Alas, I know
it isn’t going to happen, but it could and it’d be great. It’d serve more
people and would be more convenient than Caltrain's right-of-way.

~~~
raz32dust
If we are talking of things that might not happen, won't it be much cheaper
for BaRT and Caltrain to unify, providing seamless transfer between them, and
increasing Caltrain frequency? This competition between Caltrain and Bart is
doing more harm than good.

~~~
cameldrv
Caltrain and BART don't compete except for the Milbrae->SF segment. I don't
think that the Caltrain ridership would be supportive of what would
essentially be a BART takeover of the system, because Caltrain is so much more
pleasant to ride. There are a lot of reasons for this -- different
demographics of the areas served, commuter oriented schedule, and the
different configuration of the trains themselves. One of the biggest though is
the positioning and attitude of the employees towards troublemaking riders. If
you're making a nuisance of yourself on Caltrain, the conductor will come
through and throw you off the train. There is no conductor on BART, and the
station attendants generally don't leave their booths. It's to the point where
you can literally shoot heroin on a BART train and nothing will happen to you.
Try that on Caltrain, and you will be thrown off and the police will be
called. The net result is that on roughly the same segment, Milbrae->SF, if I
can get a seat, I have no concerns pulling out my laptop on Caltrain. I
wouldn't even consider this on BART, and I am even cautious pulling out my
phone.

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masonic
You have to drill down into the tiny About link at bottom right to find that
this is not an official Caltrain site at all:

"I do not work in the rail transport industry. I have no relationship with the
CHSRA or any of its engineering consultants, whether personal, professional or
financial."

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gumby
FWIW it's a blogspot post and doesn't look like an official Caltrain post in
any way to me.

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jessriedel
Yea, it would have been nice to have more author information up top so I knew
who I was listening to, but I never was put under the impression it was an
official Caltrain blog.

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crushcrashcrush
I find public transportation in the bay area to quite literally be an
intractable problem. I've lived here for 31 years and there's been zero, and I
mean zero real progress. BART received a warm springs extension and a couple
(non-connected) airport trams. The highways are largely unchanged (excluding
highway 237, maybe)

NIMBYs in Palo Alto, Atherton, Menlo Park, etc will block any true expansion
or creation of public transit on the peninsula.

Reminder: we don't have electrified Caltrain because of Atherton.

Hence, I've made a decision - move elsewhere. Literally anywhere else has
better public transportation. NYC/Chicago/Los
Angeles/Portland/Seattle/Austin/Miami

I wish it would change, but your best bet is to simply move closer to work
here, if that means leaving your single family home in Fremont to a townhome
in Sunnyvale.

Another example: There's already rail infrastructure in place parallel to the
Dumbarton bridge from Fremont to East Palo Alto / Palo Alto.

Plans were in place - see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbarton_Rail_Corridor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbarton_Rail_Corridor)

We can't seem to get anything done.

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tntn
> The highways are largely unchanged (excluding highway 237, maybe)

And excluding ~20 miles of CA-85 built in the late 80s and early 90s.

~~~
crushcrashcrush
Which is an objectively terrible freeway.

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addcn
I spend a lot of time in all the major cities and what strikes me about the
Bay Area is how geographically constrained the suburbs are. You basically get
degrees of freedom to the South and North (and some in the East Bay) but
unlike NYC you can’t spread out in all directions.

I’ve never formally studied this in detail but my intuition says geography led
to many of the Bay’s housing and transportation problem.

When viewed through that lens this superhighway of Caltrain makes sense.

Not rocket science but thought I’d share.

~~~
filesystemdude
Constrained geography _is_ an important part of shaping cities, but it's
generally considered by geographers and urban planners to be an enormous
positive.

~~~
marcinzm
I'm curious why that's the case and under what conditions it applies.

Constrained geography means that, physically, you can fit fewer people within
the same commuting time which means prices should go up faster given demand
than otherwise. Given an external source of demand (ie: hot area for whatever
reason) that seems a bad combination for a healthy city.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _I 'm curious why that's the case and under what conditions it applies._

Hong Kong is a small, mountainous archipelago. Tokyo-Yokohama surrounds a bay
on a mountainous archipelago. Manhattan is an island. Yet these places have
the most skyscrapers in the world and are amongst the richest places in
history on any measure.

Urban density has nonlinear effects. It relies in part on the pressure to
build vertically and the ability to move many people horizontally.

~~~
marcinzm
>Manhattan is an island

Surrounded by a giant empty plain which people commute in from (as in it's
population doubles during the day). And there's constant issues with wealth
inequality, homelessness, living conditions for the poor, etc. Money is not
the only measure by which a healthy city is defined.

~~~
jacques_chester
I don't know if I'd describe NYC as surrounded by plains. It has the Atlantic
on one side. Long Island is, you may have guessed, an island. Westchester and
Suffolk are also pinched by the same rivers that constrain Manhattan. The
densest parts of New Jersey that people commute from are variously constrained
by the Atlantic, rivers and ports.

I cannot imagine that Manhattan would be anywhere near as dense without the
Hudson and East rivers cutting it off from the New York mainland, Long Island
and New Jersey.

> _And there 's constant issues with wealth inequality, homelessness, living
> conditions for the poor, etc. Money is not the only measure by which a
> healthy city is defined._

What's your definition of a healthy city, and why does massive sprawl satisfy
it so well?

~~~
marcinzm
>What's your definition of a healthy city, and why does massive sprawl satisfy
it so well?

Now you're putting words in my mouth, just because I don't agree with your
extreme must mean I hold the other end of the extreme?

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andr
Beyond the morning and evening commutes, when there is standing room for the
middle part of the commute, CalTrain is usually about 1/5th full during the
day time, even when it only runs one train per hour. Something tells me
"freeway lane" capacity is not limiting factor. The train is slow (San Jose -
San Francisco takes over 90 minutes, or a little over 30mph). It is also
infrequent with trains running 1-2 times an hour on the minor stops, meaning
that unless you can schedule your day entirely around the CalTrain schedule,
you'll be stuck waiting for it a lot. Fixing this will require more than
electrification and CalTrain projects achieving 110mph speeds in 2040
(realistically 2050-2060).

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Tempest1981
We should shut down the HSR project (train from SF to LA), and redirect the
funds ($77 billion) to improve regional transit.

When CHSR (California High Speed Rail) was approved by 52.6% of voters in
2008, the estimated price was around $40 billion.

Now that cost estimates are at $77 billion (and on track for $100 billion),
voters should be allowed a "vote of no confidence".

Imagine what we could do with $100 billion.

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melling
San Francisco to San Jose is about 50 miles.

I’d say somewhere around 2060 that becomes a 20 minute commute. The future
will eventually get here.

~~~
joejerryronnie
Or, once companies embrace remote work like they should, it becomes a 10 step
commute from my bedroom to my office.

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cududa
Has this person every y’know looked out the window while riding on a Caltrain?
The cost alone to acquire the properties adjacent to the tracks would be
astronomical

~~~
jcranmer
You do realize that this is talking about only using the current two-track
rail geometry and not about ballooning the size of the track to that of a
large highway?

