
Silicon Valley’s Economic Indicator: Caltrain Ridership - pm24601
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/09/18/silicon-valleys-economic-indicator-caltrain-ridership/?hn=dedup
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jedberg
As someone who commuted on Caltrain daily from 2007 to 2011, I got to witness
the rise and fall and rise again of the ridership. It is definitely a lagging
indicator.

Other good indicators are traffic on 101 and and Dim Sum wait times on
weekends.

~~~
cjensen
Bridge traffic is also useful[1]. I wish they would break out the Dumbarton
Traffic since that is an amplified value due to the fact that once the Valley
is fully occupied, additional employees must come from somewhere _else_.

[1]
[http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/tolls/historic.htm](http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/tolls/historic.htm)

~~~
twentythree
If you want to spend the time to dig into it, Caltrans has a more detailed
dataset of historical traffic [1]. I used to research traffic in the Bay Area,
and it was fascinating to see the way in which it responded to different
events.

[1] [http://pems.dot.ca.gov/](http://pems.dot.ca.gov/)

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kposehn
So, one of the interesting ways Caltrain can expand is to simply add
additional rolling stock (cars) to handle capacity. However, there's a problem
with that: each additional car reduces acceleration and directly effects the
timetable.

For example, currently caltrain consists are 1 locomotive + 5 cars.
Locomotives range from 2,500 usable horsepower (after HEP) to 3,600.

The highest horsepower locomotives, the MP36PH-3C's, are pretty much reserved
for the baby bullet service. This means that to add an additional car to a
train would increase weight on average by 20% - a big addition to a train that
has is running flat out at nearly all times.

The problem that caltrain faces is pretty simple: they can't expand capacity
without significant investment of capital into additional locomotives and
rolling stock.

~~~
SilasX
I thought the bottleneck was station size, since they already have enough cars
to fill them up? Do they have room to add more cars?

~~~
samengland
How about selective door opening? That's used widely in the UK and Europe.

~~~
SilasX
I figured that would be the next step, but there's still a lot of inertia:
some stations are bookended by perpendicular streets and would require the
train to the parked on the road while loading, which may raise legal or
political issues.

I hear they're trying to move all the stations to grade separated ones though,
which should alleviate that.

Also, you'd have to get the public accustomed to "want to get out here, have
to be in these cars", which, knowing the public, will take a big information
campaign and still end up with people frantically charging through cars and
screaming at conductors to open the doors...

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samcheng
One key insight that they're missing is that the 'trendy' office location has
shifted from Silicon Valley to San Francisco over the past few years.

The result is that people who may have settled in the valley now find
themselves commuting to the city. It's much more comfortable to spend that
commuting time on the train than in rush-hour traffic!

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was also surprised by how many people live in SF and commute by Caltrain to
offices in the south bay. Sort of "maximize my housing cost AND my commute
time."

As someone who rides from the fourth most popular station (Sunnyvale) I find
that even if it takes a bit longer on CalTrain to get to work, the fact that
I'm not fearing for my life on 101 makes all the difference in the world.

~~~
trhway
>I was also surprised by how many people live in SF and commute by Caltrain to
offices in the south bay.

man, when i came 15 years ago here (after living for years in a real city -
St. Petersburg Russia), i was staggered that people choose to live in the
"backwater villages" like PA, MV, SV, etc... instead of living in a nice
vibrant city SF. Well, today i own in a "backwater village" and SF is too
young and vibrant for me, and the once in a year or two ride in CalTrain
reminds me about my youth and all the time spent in the public transport back
then :)

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nugget
The future is here it's just not evenly distributed, as they say. Besides a
bubble either bursting or continuing to inflate it seems likely that mature
tech companies like Yelp, Twitter, Salesforce, and others will realize they
can't afford to keep paying their average developer $250,000/year and relocate
people to cheaper second tier cities. Yes, you need superstars wherever they
are but instead of treating everyone like a superstar can you differentiate
between mission-critical and non-mission-critical roles and locate them
appropriately? I haven't seen this happen yet but it makes sense that at some
point it would, due to the diminishing quality of life in the bay area. Or do
they wait for the capital markets to turn on them before doing this?

~~~
johnrob
I think about this quite often. Perhaps a more effective argument for this
effort is social impact (rather than financial savings). The tech industry is
reeking havoc upon lower income earners by rapidly increasing the cost of
living. Ironically, many of these companies are social minded and have
programs to assist those in need from a day-to-day perspective (i.e. free
meal, cleanup projects, etc etc). However, the elephant in the room is that
they've done far more damage than is possible to rectify via charity.

Which comes back to the social argument: if tech companies proactively migrate
these highly paid tech workers to other municipalities, it could significantly
reduce the pressure on rent and home prices. The initiative could be sold as a
massive goodwill effort to the local community. And, of course, the employees
who willingly move away would get rewarded with a much lower cost of living.

~~~
mahyarm
I would say the havok is caused by NIMBYs + rapid economic expansion. For
example, there are no height minimums for new construction in the bay area,
but constant height maximums.

Would this havok occur in a building friendly city, such as Dallas? They have
encountered a recent economic boom due to oil, but you don't hear many
complaints of rapid price increases.

~~~
seiji
height minimums would be great.

It's almost disgusting walking around ~8th st soma and seeing single story car
maintenance places or strip malls take up entire blocks. Tear them down and
build rows and rows of 5 story to 20 story apartments.

As for Dallas (err... _THE METROPLEX_ ), it isn't a peninsula with restricted
growth, crappy highways, and old money refusing anything new that doesn't look
like a quaint bombed out city from the old country. I still don't understand
why south san francisco looks like a 3rd world country. Eminent domain the
whole area and build neotokyo on top of the existing shanty town.

~~~
Reedx
Indeed. Unfortunately there is a lot of pushback on anything that increases
building height. I've received notices in the mail urging residents to oppose
new constructions that could set a "dangerous precedent" in this regard.

Argh.

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dnautics
"The ridership growth follows the trajectory of the Nasdaq."

If you look carefully at the graphs, it's actually a lagging indicator.

Which makes the hook, "Wondering if the Silicon Valley’s tech boom is waning?"
meaningless.

~~~
wlesieutre
Wondering if the Silicon Valley’s tech boom was waning a year ago? Check
Caltrain ridership!

~~~
dnautics
I retract my claim of meaninglessness!

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philsnow
> SurveyMonkey is planning to move its headquarters to within blocks of the
> Hillsdale stop

Right now there's a huge SurveyMonkey building across the street from Palo
Alto caltrain, is that the current headquarters?

Palo Alto is a great stop because so many of the bullet and limited trains
stop there. Hillsdale in comparison isn't served as well (only half of the
bullets have a stop there in the morning).

If they're moving from 50 feet away from a great caltrain stop to "a few
blocks from" a good-but-not-great stop, that doesn't support the article's
argument very well. I guess as opposed to moving far away from any caltrain
stop it's a good point.

~~~
dave5104
They just moved into that office less than a year ago. I can't see why they'd
be moving again so soon.

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dwynings
I was shocked to see they were moving out of Palo Alto so soon – but it
appears to be true:
[http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/08/17/surveymonkey-p...](http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/08/17/surveymonkey-
prepares-to-leave-palo-alto)

~~~
astrange
Could they not fit all the surveys in there?

~~~
rconti
The typewriters were the issue

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deathanatos
I commute daily into SF.

\- The evening train I take (the 5:14 out of SF) is habitually late; we run
into (not literally) the train ahead of us between Palo Alto and Mountain
View; _that_ train is habitually late too (it's the cause of the 5:14's
problems; we usually hit PA on time, but the train in front of us is still in
Mountain View when we should be arriving. i.e., the train ahead is arriving at
our arrival time)

\- it has definitely gotten worse since I started riding. I recently asked a
conductor what the load was: that particular train was 100% oversubscribed:
for every butt in a seat, there was another standing. Frankly, the car's AC
doesn't seem to be able to keep pace with the summer heat, either. If there's
a Giants game … well, it's worse. When the Giants parade happened, the line
was out the station, snaked through a ton of stanchions, and then stretched
more than a block down the road.

\- rarely, I've seen passengers denied boarding due to load; but I see this
much more regularly with bikers. I don't know if CalTrain takes this into
account in its statistics. (I don't think I've ever seen some of those folks
counted, especially outside SF.)

\- they got some additional cars, but half-ish of them seem to still be
sitting in SF. No idea if they're just not ready yet, or what… (also, the cars
feel like a blast from the past when you walk into it, compared to the
CalTrain ones. They look the same, but yellower… it's surreal.)

I've wondered if they wouldn't fair better if they had an additional (third)
track all the way from SF to SJ. Trains could then pass, which I think might
let you add more trains to the system. (Given how we're always stuck behind a
train, I feel like the two-tracks are at capacity, train-wise, and you can
only add so many cars before you exceed the platform length.) Not sure there's
enough room all the way for an additional track, though, so this is probably a
crazy idea. I wonder if it wouldn't _really_ help with accidents though. (The
first quarter of this year, for example, was hell… it was heartbreaking.)

Also,

> _The annual Caltrain passes cost companies either $15,120 or $180 per
> user—whichever is greater._

Is that $180 figure correct? CalTrain charges my route $2,148 annually for a
pass, and I'm not even going the full SF to SJ distance. (Granted, that's the
low figure, so you need the ridership to get it… but still! It's a 91%
quantity discount, if you get enough people.) (SF to SJ is $2,784 annually.)

~~~
azylman
> Is that $180 figure correct? CalTrain charges my route $2,148 annually for a
> pass, and I'm not even going the full SF to SJ distance. (Granted, that's
> the low figure, so you need the ridership to get it… but still! It's a 91%
> quantity discount, if you get enough people.)

Yup, when I still commuted via Caltrain I was pretty jealous of my friends who
had this sweet deal:
[http://www.caltrain.com/Fares/tickettypes/GO_Pass.html](http://www.caltrain.com/Fares/tickettypes/GO_Pass.html)

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sgustard
WSJ didn't drill into the financial side of the story. Remember five years
ago?

"Caltrain has gone broke and will likely need to wipe out half its service —
including weekend, nighttime and midday trains."

[http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14803959](http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14803959)

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asab
Why is WSJ comparing ridership stats to Nasdaq? Correlation is not causation
and this is a stretch.

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codecamper
Is Caltrain still powered by diesel?

~~~
chrisseaton
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?

~~~
malchow
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?

~~~
Animats
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.

[1]
[http://www.njtransit.com/sf/sf_servlet.srv?hdnPageAction=Tra...](http://www.njtransit.com/sf/sf_servlet.srv?hdnPageAction=TrainTo)

~~~
pm24601
> 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

