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Yeah, the key phrase here is “during rush hour”. For CalTrain, it’s hard to justify buying more rolling stock and employing more staff if that additional capaci

Yeah, the key phrase here is “during rush hour”. For CalTrain, it’s hard to justify buying more rolling stock and employing more staff if that additional capacity is going to sit mostly unused for 90% of the day. It’s analogous to paying for extra racks of servers to handle peak QPS that you only really need to handle on weekday mornings. This blog post has a more analytical take on what makes peak service so expensive: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-service-is-cheap-peak-train-service-is-expensive/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-ser... If the areas around the stations were denser and had a more diverse mix of destinations (offices, retail, schools, etc.) then there would be be enough all day demand to justify running trains all day on a frequent schedule, potentially even on 5-10 minute frequencies like the RER and S Bahn systems, which would also alleviate congestion at the peak.

deathanatos 7y ago
If that post is accurate… holy moly those cars are expensive. It doesn't even seem to make sense in rush hour according to those numbers? He nicely has the exact per-car figure for the newer Caltrain cars ($5.7M / car…); he puts a $2.5M car at ~$162k/yr in depreciation, and $100k/yr in maintenance. If we double the depreciation to account for CalTrain's apparently expensive purchase, that's $325k + $100k / yr per car, or $2.55M/yr for a six-car train. (But: I don't get these depreciation numbers? This figure adds up to ~$13M over the life of the train assuming the 40 yr life in the article, which seems appropriate given that the gallery equipment is nearly 50 IIRC; why would depreciation be more than 100% of the vehicle cost, or is this a "it depreciates faster in earlier years but becomes more cost effective later"? This could greatly make most of the numbers I'm getting here make no sense.) The passengers, meanwhile, assuming they pay the same price as I do for a Zone 3 pass (and Zone 3 is fairly popular, though some people will travel further to SJ which will cost more…) we get ~$1.6M/yr assuming 100% capacity (570 passengers, n.b. this is less than the current 722 per 6-car gallery, and IDK what Bombadiers have; also I kinda doubt that 100% load will happen in rush, that is, it'll still be >100%) and that they don't raise prices (I also doubt this.) Still, that's a huge funding gap, but should the passengers pay 100% of the required fees, or is some of it expected to come from taxpayers? (There's still a gap of ~$0.9M/yr … per train)
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I don't live in the area, so I have no idea what the costs are. I looked it up... A 3 zone monthly pass costs $231. With that you can go from Sunnyvale to San Francisco. That's 40 miles as the crow flies, apparently. Compare that to London. I was having trouble finding a normal commute city that's 40 miles away, but let's say from Woking to London -- and since you'll get travel within Zone 1, it's probably comparable. The monthly fare is £321.50 or just over $400 US. So the London train fare is nearly double. I live in Japan and the fares are pretty similar here as they are in the UK. As you imply, I think this is the real reason that public transit in North America never really takes off. There is an assumption that it has to be very cheap, which results in systems that are severely limited.

deathanatos 7y ago

If that post is accurate… holy moly those cars are expensive. It doesn't even seem to make sense in rush hour according to those numbers? He nicely has the exact per-car figure for the newer Caltrain cars ($5.7M / car…); he puts a $2.5M car at ~$162k/yr in depreciation, and $100k/yr in maintenance. If we double the depreciation to account for CalTrain's apparently expensive purchase, that's $325k + $100k / yr per car, or $2.55M/yr for a six-car train. (But: I don't get these depreciation numbers? This figure adds up to ~$13M over the life of the train assuming the 40 yr life in the article, which seems appropriate given that the gallery equipment is nearly 50 IIRC; why would depreciation be more than 100% of the vehicle cost, or is this a "it depreciates faster in earlier years but becomes more cost effective later"? This could greatly make most of the numbers I'm getting here make no sense.) The passengers, meanwhile, assuming they pay the same price as I do for a Zone 3 pass (and Zone 3 is fairly popular, though some people will travel further to SJ which will cost more…) we get ~$1.6M/yr assuming 100% capacity (570 passengers, n.b. this is less than the current 722 per 6-car gallery, and IDK what Bombadiers have; also I kinda doubt that 100% load will happen in rush, that is, it'll still be >100%) and that they don't raise prices (I also doubt this.) Still, that's a huge funding gap, but should the passengers pay 100% of the required fees, or is some of it expected to come from taxpayers? (There's still a gap of ~$0.9M/yr … per train)

mikekchar 7y ago
I don't live in the area, so I have no idea what the costs are. I looked it up... A 3 zone monthly pass costs $231. With that you can go from Sunnyvale to San Francisco. That's 40 miles as the crow flies, apparently. Compare that to London. I was having trouble finding a normal commute city that's 40 miles away, but let's say from Woking to London -- and since you'll get travel within Zone 1, it's probably comparable. The monthly fare is £321.50 or just over $400 US. So the London train fare is nearly double. I live in Japan and the fares are pretty similar here as they are in the UK. As you imply, I think this is the real reason that public transit in North America never really takes off. There is an assumption that it has to be very cheap, which results in systems that are severely limited.