Caltrain long-deferred dream of electrified tracks could finally become reality under a proposal between the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and several Bay Area transportation groups.
The agreement, which the MTC publicized this week and which the various parties are scheduled to take up in the next two months, is one component of what rail authority officials referred to as the "new vision" for high-speed rail. That vision calls for the new rail system to share tracks with Caltrain on the Peninsula and for "early investment" of high-speed rail funds in the northern and southern segments of the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles rail line.
The proposed "memorandum of understanding," which the MTC board is scheduled to discuss on March 28, allocates $1.5 billion in funding for electrification and advance-signal-system elements of the blended system, MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger wrote in a memo to the board.
"The sustained level of support for the electrification project reflects the critical nature of this project as it will usher in modern passenger rail service on the Peninsula that will lead to cost savings, faster service, operational efficiencies, quieter trains and fewer emissions," Heminger wrote. "Electrification of the corridor will also pave the way for a future when California's high-speed trains can operate from downtown San Francisco to the greater Los Angeles basin."
About half of the funding for electrification would come from Proposition 1A, a $9.95 billion bond measure state voters approved in 2008 for the high-speed-rail system. The proposed funding plan calls for about $700 million to come from state funds. Caltrain would be expected to contribute close to $200 million and two regional agencies, including the MTC and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, would chip in another $31 million. The rest of the funding, roughly $500 million, is expected to come from federal sources.
Caltrain has long promoted electrification as a critical component to increasing ridership and becoming financially sustainable. The agency is facing structural budget deficits and has been relying on one-time funding sources over the past two years to avoid having to dramatically cut services. Mike Scanlon, executive director of Caltrain, called electrification an "essential improvement that is critical to the future of the system."
"This is an enormous step forward that prioritizes these improvements and delivers early benefits to the Caltrain system, its riders and surrounding communities," Scanlon said in a statement.
But even under the best-case scenario, Caltrain's long-awaited electrification project wouldn't be implemented until at least 2018. Seamus Murphy, Caltrain's manager of government affairs, told the Weekly that once the funds for the project come in, it would take about six years to complete the electrification. He also noted that future investments would be required to make the Caltrain corridor compatible with the high-speed rail system.
Before anything happens, however, the State Legislature would have to approve the rail authority's and the transportation agencies' request for bond funding, which is far from a sure thing. The project has been heavily criticized in Sacramento, with Republicans in the state Capitol overwhelmingly opposing it.
Some cities on the Peninsula have also been viewing the new agreement with skepticism. Members of the Palo Alto City Council, which last year officially adopted a position calling for termination of the high-speed rail project, discussed the proposed document Thursday morning and expressed concern about the speed with which the agencies are proceeding with the agreement.
Murphy said Caltrain strongly supports the Memorandum of Understanding and its proposal to electrify the corridor.
"This is a huge opportunity for Caltrain to leverage the resources we have at the local and regional level for significant statewide resources that would help make this project happen," Murphy said.
The proposed agreement involves the rail authority, the MTC, the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (which operates Caltrain), the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, San Francisco, San Jose and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. It specifies that the high-speed rail system will rely on the "blended approach" -- using the existing Caltrain right-of-way along the Peninsula -- as opposed to the rail authority's original but controversial four-track design.
The "blended approach" was first proposed a year ago by three Peninsula legislators, state Sen. Joe Simitian, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto and Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park. Though the rail authority had initially resisted the proposal to run high-speed rail and Caltrain on the same tracks, the agency has since embraced the proposal. At a public hearing in Mountain View last week, the rail authority's board Chair Dan Richard and board member Jim Hartnett said the agency's soon-to-be-released business plan will focus on the blended approach, which Richard said would bring down the cost of the $98.5 billion project.
Gordon and Eshoo both released statements Thursday applauding the rail authority and the various transportation agencies for reaching an agreement to electrify Caltrain.
"The $1.5 billion investment detailed in the MOU will drastically improve service time for the hundreds of thousands of Caltrain commuters, reduce emissions from existing diesel engines, and put in place a plan ensuring the use of the existing Caltrain right-of-way for the potential future of high-speed rail operations," Gordon said in a statement.
Eshoo also expressed enthusiasm about the new proposal and said that modernizing Caltrain "has and will continue to be one of my highest priorities for our region."
"It is the spine of our transportation system and it must be brought into the 21st century," Eshoo said in a statement. "Now the regional agreement to fully fund the electrification of Caltrain and positive train control will make this a reality."
Comments
Adobe-Meadow
on Mar 22, 2012 at 5:03 pm
on Mar 22, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Bay Area politicians spend billions of dollars on highway projects without a second thought. Most of this money comes from sales taxes and property taxes; only a small portion comes from auto taxes.
Why is funding public transit so difficult? Why can't public transit just get a fixed percentage of the general transportation budget? Public transit is just as important as highways; even more important in this era of soaring gasoline prices.
Midtown
on Mar 22, 2012 at 6:11 pm
on Mar 22, 2012 at 6:11 pm
@transportation money: The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency budget in 2011 was $363 million. That works out to $200 for each person in Santa Clara County - every man, woman, child & baby. Of that $363 million, only $38 million was from fares. Most of the rest are from sales tax. The average weekday ridership for light rail is 31,000, and the average bus weekday ridership is 102,000. So the VTA spends about $2,700 per year per rider.
Around 93% of the population of Santa Clara is subsidizing 7% of the population.
The percent of population subsidizing the Caltrain ridership is even high, because Caltrain ridership is lower, and the population across the 3 counties (San Francisco, San Mateo & Santa Clara) is bigger.
Menlo Park
on Mar 22, 2012 at 6:12 pm
on Mar 22, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Even if true, "Mr. transportation money," how much money is too much? Is there no upper limit to costs for improved transit? We are approaching the gold-plated, diamond studded version of transit with high-speed rail. When talking about a project that will cost in the neighborhood of $200 billion, a "second thought" is highly appropriate, don't you think? After all, it's your money.
We need to distinguish between a regional commuter rail, like Caltrain, and high-speed inter-city rail, like the project in front of us. Would you justify a $200 billion fancy luxury train for the affluent in order to electrify the regional commuter rail? That's a very bad business decision.
Public funding has become very difficult indeed, as you point out. There's a reason. It's called "waste, fraud and abuse" by the government that is responsible for such waste, fraud and abuse. There are no projects any longer that don't see their original budget estimates triple and quadruple. And they invariably predict the project will be used by zillions of us, until it is actually built, and then, we see hardly any use. Good example of this: The Airport Connector which more than doubled in cost and carries merely a fraction of what was promised.
Public transit is, by and large, a good thing. But, we the public being screwed by our government is not a good thing. Don't you agree? Please note that there are no safeguards, no accountability, no oversight for Caltrain. And HSR is in the hands of the Legislature, which is Democratic and wants the train at any cost.
And that's a terrible thing to do to the citizens of California.
Community Center
on Mar 22, 2012 at 8:46 pm
on Mar 22, 2012 at 8:46 pm
I believe that like and grand political announcement that sounds almost too good to be true, the devil is in the details. One aspect of electrifying the Caltrain corridor that seems to be consistently ignored is the need for grade separations at every street/rail crossing.
Unless every rail/street crossing along the Caltrain corridor is fully separated (perhaps some crossings simply closed permanently) as a part of this plan, it should be rejected outright. I believe the arrogant HSR Authority has previously declared that if cities along the rail line want separated crossings, then they should pay for it themselves. To the best of my knowledge, none of our local politicians has addressed this important aspect of electrifying Caltrain. If they have, or would like to, now would be a good time to chime in (hint to: Hill, Simitian, Gordon, Eshoo, Boxer, Feinstein, etc.). Silence from these politicians can be inferred to mean more interest in the dollars, than the safety of affected communities and constituents.
Adding more, and faster trains to the Caltrain corridor, regardless of whether they are HSR or Caltrain trains, without the complete separation of rail and vehicle and pedestrian traffic should not be tolerated. The safety issues of not separating crossings are obvious, and the deleterious affects of increased traffic congestion and related noise at un-separated crossings can not be ignored.
Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Mar 22, 2012 at 8:49 pm
on Mar 22, 2012 at 8:49 pm
I believe that spending HSR bond dollars for this is probably against the law. Not that anyone in Sacramento cares much about that.
Leland Manor/Garland Drive
on Mar 23, 2012 at 8:55 am
on Mar 23, 2012 at 8:55 am
Someone should remind Gordon about the facts. CalTrain does not have and will never have "hundreds of thousands" of riders. It actually carries around 20,000 people each day who account for 40,000 daily trips. Gordon must have used his High Speed Rail calculator which automatically increases every ridership number by a factor of 20X. Clearly that calculator was a gift from the labor unions who provide 80% plus of his campaign fund.
another community
on Mar 23, 2012 at 11:19 am
on Mar 23, 2012 at 11:19 am
@common sense: if you believe the numbers, Caltrain is one of the most efficiently operated transit agencies in the entire Bay Area. It recovers close to 50 cents on each operating dollar through fare revenue, a percentage that is 2x better than MUNI, 3x better than SamTrans and 4x better than VTA. Caltrain is nearly as efficient as BART on this metric.
And all of those beat the cost-recovery ratio of freeways by a long shot... Only about 200k people use highway 101 on any given day, but 300 million of us subsidize it. Where's your outrage?
Midtown
on Mar 23, 2012 at 12:46 pm
on Mar 23, 2012 at 12:46 pm
@anonymous - here are the numbers for Caltrain: $153 million to operate for 20,000 riders, or $7,650 per rider - it's 2.8 times more costly per rider than VTA ($2,700 per rider). Fare recovery is $52.5 million.
Total population for the 3 county Cal Train system is 3.3 million people, so 99.4% of the people are subsidizing .6% of the people who ride Caltrain
Between VTA + SamTran + Caltrain, public transportation spending just for operations is roughly $684 million/year. There are other agencies not included: SF Muni, Dumbarton express, Bart lines in SF, to SFO, to SJ.
Your estimate of the number of people who use Highway 101 is grossly underestimated.
Barron Park
on Mar 23, 2012 at 1:34 pm
on Mar 23, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Excellent points about the cost, but the most telling comment concerns grade separation.
By helping Caltrain to electrify (which may be illegal since it wasn't in the bond issue language), HSR hopes to get its "nose under the tent" and con us into supporting it.
The HSR Authority is trying every trick to justify more money from taxpayers - you and me. No private investors have put money into the system (part of bond language financing estimates) because they can't see a Return On Investment. This means the HSR line won't make a profit which means taxpayers will cover much of the operating cost. This is like HSR in other countries where the lines are subsidized.
South of Midtown
on Mar 23, 2012 at 5:21 pm
on Mar 23, 2012 at 5:21 pm
The Caltrain ridership numbers are being confused with the number of customers. Although 20,000 people use it each day, not all the users use it every day. That means that today's 20,000 people are not the same as tomorrow's 20,000 people. If most people use it twice a week, then the user base is 2.5x the daily ridership.
another community
on Mar 24, 2012 at 10:18 am
on Mar 24, 2012 at 10:18 am
@Mila: electrification most assuredly does NOT require grade separations. I know the Daily Post repeats this over and over, but that doesn't make it right.
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Mar 25, 2012 at 3:51 pm
on Mar 25, 2012 at 3:51 pm
> then the user base is 2.5x the daily ridership.
There are unique people who use the train, and their is ridership (number of one-way trips provided to users). Caltrain publishes "ridership" which is straightforward to determine. "Unique people" is a little harder to determine, although a certain amount of identity tracking is possible when people uses multiple trip passes.
Assuming that the average person makes two trips a day, then it's not hard to divide the daily ridership by two, to determine the number of unique people using the train. The ridership on the weekends is different from that during the week, so these numbers would likely have to be added, but this requires that we create a new variable, such as unique-person-trips. Without actually tracking each person by some sort of tracking number (such as an RFID pass), the exact number of unique people can not be precisely known--however it will always be somewhere near the ridership/2.
Community Center
on Mar 25, 2012 at 4:53 pm
on Mar 25, 2012 at 4:53 pm
@ Anonymous; your are right, electrification of Caltrain does not require grade separations, and I've never said that. I don't think anyone has. I'm saying that if significant work "improving" the Caltrain corridor to permit increased train traffic doesn't include grade separations at every crossing, then it's a bad deal for the Peninsula. The safety, traffic (auto and pedestrian), and noise problems associated with increased rail traffic are, to the best of my knowledge, undisputed.
What exactly are you trying to say?