Caltrain Electrification Starting to Slip Behind

For some reason, the SF Examiner lands in B'game driveways on Sundays.  Maybe that is when the progressive rag makes most of its money off of real estate ads so they need to bump up the print run.  This Sunday's edition highlighted that "Monitor warns of two-year Caltrain project delay" and then describes the back and forth between a federal monitor" and Caltrain about what constitutes a delay.  The project arrived in B'game about a year ago as noted here.  Here is a taste of the warning

“The overall progress of work is far behind the original schedule,” that oversight monitor warned. Foundation placement and the installation of the overhead electrical contact system are “far behind” initial projections, they wrote.  But the federal oversight monitor wrote in a June report, “The Electrification contractor’s most recent Schedule Update Narrative for May 2019 shows a Substantial Completion date of March 3, 2022, compared to the contractual date of August 10, 2020, which represents a further slippage.”

Caltrain, for its part, said it is firm that construction is on schedule for 2021, with trains expected to be running by 2022. That date is also a change — Caltrain’s program plan initially showed the electrification project’s “substantial completion” marked for August 2020, but Caltrain acknowledged in its own project report that this date has slipped to September 2021.  That project report is also not publicly available on Caltrain’s website, a break in common practice with other transit agencies, leading to concern from Caltrain officials. It is a public document.  Instead, the report was provided to the San Francisco Examiner by a source under the condition of anonymity and became the heated subject of discussion at the Caltrain board’s meeting Thursday.

My least favorite part of the piece was the opening teaser line:

Caltrain’s soon-to-come electrified trains may one day whisk commuters from the South Bay to San Francisco with BART-like frequency, easing congestion on freeways and bolstering the local economy.

I'll get into this more later, but suffice it to say the ONLY two ways we will ever see BART-like frequency from Caltrain is if high-speed rail never reaches the Peninsula or if the budget and land-takings go up dramatically to add "passing tracks".  There are some nice graphics from Caltrain-HSR reports that illustrate that.  Once I find them I will share them, but intuitively we know this to be true.  Imagine adding a local bus route around the Indy 500 brickyard track.  But Caltrain is stuck--the money for electrification comes from high-cost rail so they have to button-up and press on.  Here is the new wall in San Mateo at 25th Ave.-- no room for a passing track there.

Comments

[Joe]

Perhaps the unblending of the "blended" solution is closer than we think.

http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2019/08/derailing-the-bullet-train/

“Assembly Democrats see greater public value in improving passenger rail from Burbank to Anaheim, relieving congestion on the busy Interstate 5 corridor before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and putting additional money into San Francisco commuter rail.”

Improving transit in the state’s most congested urban areas, advocates of the new scheme contend, is more important than the patched-together system that Newsom has proposed.

“I like the concept,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon told The Times. “Any project that doesn’t have a significant amount of service to the largest areas in the state doesn’t make much sense.”

The plan now gaining traction in the Legislature would acknowledge reality and could hasten an end for the ill-conceived, mismanaged bullet train, even Newsom’s much-abbreviated version.

[Joe]

Oooops

Construction of a new South San Francisco Caltrain station is a year and a half behind schedule and $16.6 million over budget.

The project, which will build a new 700-foot center platform and pedestrian underpass, is delayed because it took longer than expected to secure required Caltrans permits and because of challenges relocating utilities. Originally set for completion in June of this year, the project is now expected to wrap up in November 2020.

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/delays-for-new-south-san-francisco-caltrain-station/article_8fb33d7e-02a9-11ea-8b35-b30cb6e24850.html#utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1573311615&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

[Joe]

Headline in yesterday's Daily Post: Caltrain costs will rise with electrification.

Once Caltrain electrifies its tracks, transit officials estimate it could cost at least $208 million a year to operate the commuter railroad--a 33% increase over last year's operating budget of $155.7 million.
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The piece mixes up the proposed increase in the number of trains based on the now vastly outdated ridership projections from pre-Covid with some operating costs. Here's the confusing bit:

"Petty said the increased operating costs with electrification is driven by running more trains. Electrified trains are more efficient (no metric given on this) than the current diesel trains, BUT THEY REQUIRE A BIGGER SYSTEM FINANCIALLY, he said".
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Meaning you need a lot more miles delivered to cover much higher fixed costs? Not sure.

[Libertarian]

The words "more efficient" have no meaningful context in today's government speak.

How sad these constant lies from our inefficient government (apologies for the redundancy) have become.