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Caltrain shows why every region should be moving toward regional rail
- quotemstr 9mo agoCaltrain is functional, I guess, but it's one linear system. It doesn't even have express tracks. (It has a few four-tracked overtaking areas, but nothing pervasive.) Inside, basic electric power outlets are hard to find. Grade separation? Ridiculous fantasy. The route map hasn't expanded since 1992. Yeah, they've electrified the system. Congrats, I guess? The system is still a glorified people mover. It goes in one direction, turns around, and goes in the other direction. Given Caltrain's route map stagnation and the worse fates of other CA rail projects, it really doesn't seem, well, grounded to reality, to suggest everyone emulate California rail's success. After all, it takes two days to grab a train from Seattle to SF! If you want a half-decent model, at least look at NYC. The LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and the subway form something resembling a coherent transit grid.
- pfannkuchen 9mo ago> It goes in one direction, turns around, and goes in the other direction. To be fair, the peninsula is basically a long hallway. I’m not really sure where else it would go?
- jerlam 9mo agoI would expect a regional system to connect an entire regional area. Caltrain connects two parts of the Bay Area: San Francisco and the South Bay. BART connects the entire East Bay to San Francisco. In a functioning system, they would both just be legs and not two completely separate systems. The only place they connect appears to be in Millbrae and not near any large hubs.
- adastra22 9mo agoThey will soon connect in San Jose.
- jerlam 9mo agoI wouldn't consider "soon" to mean ten years. Six miles, 12 billion dollars, opening in 2036. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_BART_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_BART_extension
- quotemstr 9mo agoWhat's the holdup? Do they need to source more 5.25 inch floppy drives?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- amluto 9mo agoDon’t forget the SF Downtown Rail Extension, planned since the 1990s supposedly. https://www.tjpa.org/portaldtx/about-portal https://www.tjpa.org/portaldtx/about-portal https://www.caltrain.com/media/17998/download https://www.caltrain.com/media/17998/download
- jasonfarnon 9mo agoIs the argument just that the MNR and NYC subway, or Boston's T and commuter rail, are better integrated than BART and the Caltrain? Seems pretty great now but then I remember before the renovations at 4th and King.
- jerlam 9mo agoMy argument is that Caltrain mainly connects the two most largest and richest cities in the SF Bay Area, which are both population and job centers. It would be like calling the Google private shuttles a model for public buses to follow.
- Polizeiposaune 9mo agoLong Island is even more of a long hallway than the peninsula. The LIRR manages to have multiple trunks and something like 10 different branch lines. One thing that made it possible is LI is much flatter terrain than the peninsula.
- adastra22 9mo agoYour last sentence was going to be my reply. The peninsula is really linear along 101 / the historic el Camino. There really isn’t anything to connect to.
- quotemstr 9mo agoLIRR still had to do plenty of tunneling to build the East Side Access station though. Still, it opened in 2023! NYC is also still building the second avenue subway --- slowly, haltingly, and at near-ruinous expense, but it's actually a real expansion to the network is actually happening. By US standards, that's a miracle.
- jcranmer 9mo agoThe main trunk lines are in Long Island are about 3-4 miles apart. Northwest of around Cupertino or so, the mountains edge too close to the bay shoreline for you to make a second trunk line viable. Your best bet would be plonking a line around about 85, but the right-of-way doesn't exist to actually hook that line up to the existing line in any useful way. And outside of that, basically everything you'd consider plonking another path already exists with some service: BART runs up the east shore of the bay, as it does west of San Bruno Mountain. You have two mountain crossings covered by BART and one by ACE. The main missing things are curving BART back into San Jose and reactivating the Dumbarton Bridge.
- Gibbon1 9mo agoI've wondered about running BART from Fremont to East Palo Alto and Redwood City via Dumbarton. Not sure what the ridership would be though. I looked at the Dumbarton bridge traffic and it's the least of the three bridges and pales in comparison to the bay bridge. Still if you built that the gap between Millbrae and Redwood city is 12 miles.
- stevenwoo 9mo agoThere used to be a rail line that went closer to the base of the mountains but they tore that down to build Foothill Expressway and other roads.
- timothyisonline 9mo agoLIRR is embarrassing as a transit system, but sure.
- quotemstr 9mo agoBut less so. The history of US rail is that of tragic but distinguishable post-70s states.
- citizenpaul 9mo agoYou should check Austin TX where they tried to do the same thing, but only built one rail.... So yea you have to wait like over an hour just for arrival if the train is at the other end. For what should be a 15 min ride because literally only one train can go back and forth. The train drivers sometime stop the train to get food at in-n-out burger too, seriously. Its one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, a testament to inefficient bureaucracy. I'm not sure anyone uses it.
- kentonv 9mo agoThat's a bit of an exaggeration. A quick look at the schedule shows they do have multiple trains running in each direction during peak hours: https://www.capmetro.org/plan/schedmap?route=550 https://www.capmetro.org/plan/schedmap?route=550 But much of the length is, in fact, single-track, making scheduling hard and meaning if a train is late or breaks down it disrupts the whole system. And it's honestly pretty silly to see a train with the form factor of light rail but diesel-powered. Voters did approve a proper light rail system in 2020 but it's gonna take a while to build and has already been scaled back twice, sigh...
- citizenpaul 9mo agoWhat I wrote is accurate. You are referring to a line that goes out of the city to elgin, a tiny town, that is the only part with two tracks. The part that serves the Austin area has only one line and is as I described. Hey what do I know I just lived next to it for 4 years, and drove to work even though I could walk to the train because of how terrible it is and would add 1-2hrs to my commmute.
- kentonv 9mo agoErr... well... I live in Austin currently. I'm describing the red line which goes from downtown to Leander. (The one I linked to.) If you're describing some other line then sorry for the confusion, I didn't actually know there was another rail line. There are plans to build a green line to Elgin but AFAIK that's still under construction. The red line is mostly single-track, but there are several specific segments of dual-track allowing trains to pass each other, which is why they're able to support multiple trains in both directions. It's still a crappy schedule -- even during rush hour it's still no more than two trains an hour. Supposedly they intend to start running it every 15 minutes once they add some more dual-track segments. Maybe it was worse when you lived here?
- guelo 9mo agoIt's insane that it's not connected to Bart. Or that it isn't Bart. Bart goes SF to San Jose in the East Bay but we have a separate system on the West Bay? It's all a sign of how dysfunctional California governments have been at all levels for a long time. A big part of the dysfunction in the Bay Area is because there are 100 separate tiny governments. If it were one big government, like NYC, we could have sensibly coordinated regional projects.
- idreyn 9mo agoNYC here, our three disconnected commuter rail systems would all like a word :)
- mc32 9mo agoIf the ABAG had power, I would have them replace Caltrain with BaRT to make a it a loop around the SF/SP Bay Area and tear out CalTrain. Caltrain remains because the tracks are used by UP --if it were not UP's right-of-way, BaRT could have that corridor. BaRT could still work if they did cut-and-cover to build a parallel line under the Camino Real. Granted that'd be a lot of money today --they should have bought in back in the 60s. I know, hindsight and all. The main issue then would be what to do about Gilroy --they can keep Caltrain for that like the ACE does for the East SF Bay.
- thot_experiment 9mo ago> Inside, basic electric power outlets are hard to find. what are you talking about, literally every single seat has outlets except the 9 in the bottom of the bike car
- SamDc73 9mo ago> If you want a half-decent model, at least look at NYC I don't have the data, honestly, but isn't NYC (and it's surrounding cities/suburbs) more dense than the Bay Area? In SF (the city) transpiration is quite decent because it's dense; single family houses and public transpiration together is a very very tricky to pull; you have to choose one or the other and most people would rather live in a family house than an apartment/condo with good transpiration
- rconti 9mo agoIt's notable that the annual ridership is up 47% in the FY ending June 2025 vs the FY ending June 2024, when electrification was only complete in September 2024-- in other words, it's not even a full year's worth of ridership increase. On the flip side, I find it shocking that ridership is still only 60% of pre-pandemic levels. Anecdotally, the increased service is a game-changer. Speed matters, too, a lot, but the frequency is what matters to me. A transit system that only arrives once an hour off-peak is not particularly useful. The increased frequency, to a minimum of once every 30mins means missing a train is merely annoying. It's still infrequent enough that you want to check a schedule to avoid waiting around for too long, but not a deal-breaker, IMO.
- nxobject 9mo ago> On the flip side, I find it shocking that ridership is still only 60% of pre-pandemic levels. My understand is that it's been true of commuter rail everywhere - e.g. a Twin Cities commuter railroad has shut down as well due to declining ridership. https://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/Minnesotas-Northstar-Commuter-Rail-ceases-service--76076 https://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/M... Here's a relatively rigorous report from the GAO synthesizing cross-US experiences: https://www.gao.gov/blog/most-commuter-rail-systems-are-still-struggling-post-pandemic https://www.gao.gov/blog/most-commuter-rail-systems-are-stil... My understanding is that there's a decline in transit use in general, but I would hazard to guess that the emphasis on commuters has hit commuter rail the hardest.
- viccis 9mo agoThe US generally doesn't build big things like this any more.
- m463 9mo agobig things seem to require a blank check.
- bilbo0s 9mo agoYep. Totally disingenuous to say, "Hey! Look at the richest region in the US! They have electric trains. Why can't we?" Well, make my state the fourth largest economy in the world and we'd have electric trains too.
- bluGill 9mo agoThose rich regions are setting examples of building transit at way too high a cost for poorer regions to afford. If we could use other parts of the world as an example - my region is richer than them and could afford it. But those places somehow are never used as the example
- esseph 9mo agoNot true, we just only do it if it's part of a DoD budget.
- cyberax 9mo agoNo, we shouldn't. Caltrain shows that even the best transit systems are not comfortable for daily commutes. The upper limit for comfortable commutes is 30 minutes one way. Even assuming that you synchronize your schedule with Caltrain departures, the map of locations within this timeframe would look like a string of rather small beads along the Caltrain route. As a simpler example, try playing with routes from the Salesforce Tower. You start blowing past that 30-minute mark by the time the train is still passing Brisbane.
- baby 9mo agoThe Caltrain sucks though because taking a car is so much more fast/practical. I must have taken it once in 5y because it's just so far out in the city and not easy to access (and then super slow). People in Europe take trains because it's a better alternative than driving! Make subways land right in the train station in SF, then make the train faster, then you have something useful. On the other hand I agree with the premise of the article. If you have high mobility in a state, the state will become reacher. Doesn't make sense to wait for national trains to be a thing, make sure people can easily move across your state without having to rely on having a car.
- SamDc73 9mo agoThe electric trains are a bit faster, but still slower than something like BART. My main issues with Caltrain are the cost (public transit shouldn’t be more expensive than driving) and the schedule: depending on the station, missing a train can mean waiting 30-60 minutes. also the Peninsula isn’t really built around trains. I still have to drive 5-10 minutes just to get to the station, then wait, then ride at that point it’s easier to just drive the whole way. If I lived within walking distance, I might use the train way more.
- thot_experiment 9mo agoYou must be riding a different Caltrain, unless I'm on my motorcycle it's always faster to get anywhere in SF via Caltrain + bike from the peninsula during commute hours, it's not even close.
- sanex 9mo agoSo RTO started happening around the same time they electrified and ridership is on its way back up to pre pandemic levels. I don't really care if Metra is diesel or electric if I need to get into the office.
- mjg59 9mo agoThe transition enabled faster and more frequent service, which is something you probably do care about if you need to get into the office and are deciding how to get there.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bickfordb 9mo agoThe US needs a model for stronger state and regional authorities that plan and implement mass transit and zoning. In California in particular, cities and counties have consistently bungled planning, locking entire communities into single family housing with low height maximums, ceded walkable downtowns to freeway strip malls dominated by a handful of national retailers, and few updates to mass transit since BART was built in the 1970s. The example of the North Bay NIMBYs blocking BART expansion sticks out to me in particular.
- anonymousiam 9mo agoI'm really surprised that nobody has yet commented on the dismal economic failure that the California High Speed Rail has been. After 11 years and $15B ($3.4B in federal grants), they've made very little progress. They just lost $4B more in federal grants because the project is a classic example of Fraud, Waste, and Abuse (FWA). California sued over the cancelled grant, but then dropped the suit. My guess is that it was dropped because it would have opened up California to discovery, which would have revealed the details of the FWA. Estimates to complete the original plan call for another $100B and at least another 12 years. I don't think it's ever going to be completed given the massive state budget deficit (reliable figures are difficult to find). Even if it ever got completed, it would never pay for itself. https://www.hsrail.org/california-is-building-high-speed-rail https://www.hsrail.org/california-is-building-high-speed-rai... https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-drops-lawsuit-challenging-trump-decision-pull-4-billion-high-speed-2025-12-27 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-drops-lawsuit-ch...
- gamblor956 9mo agoThe HSRA may be an example of waste, but there is no documented fraud or abuse. In 11 years, zealous audits and investigations haven't found any signs of either.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- jyounker 9mo agoIt's interesting that their schedule increase seems to demonstrate that (at least below a certain cap), increasing frequency directly increases ridership.