From: adrian@ntmtv.UUCP (Adrian Brandt)
Subject: Re: CalTrain Article
Organization: Northern Telecom Inc, Mountain View, CA
Distribution: ba
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 23:48:45 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.203149.9908@s1.gov>, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
|> 
|> 	In the railfan magazine _Rail Classics_ (Jan/Feb 1993), there
|> is an article on Big Ding-Ding, er, CowTrain, er, CalTrain that some
|> of you folx might be interested in.

|> I found entertaining the description of the upper-level seats; from
|> the lower level, they look like seats mounted in the luggage racks.

I guess you're easily entertained.  Sounds like the author was being
a bit cutesy, but you, as usual, are still into juvenile name-calling.


|> 	Some of you Peninsula Rail 2000 people might take exception to
|> some of the characterization of the system, so you are hereby invited
|> to flame away.

What's there to flame about?  Just because the article's author was
(apparently) being creative in describing how the upper-level seats
appear to be in some sort of luggage rack (depending on your point of
view, they are directly behind the overhead luggage racks), you expect
flames?


|> The stations were described as "much less sophisticated affair than
|> their BART cousins"

It's true, so what.  Is the $170+ million Colma BART station something
to be proud of?  That money would electrify the whole CalTrain line and
pay for the electric locomotives to run it!  That money is over 70% of
what the whole ~50-mile CalTrain right of way purchase cost!


|> and the proposed CalTrain tunnel to Market St. was described as
|> "appear[ing] to be prohibitively expensive".

That's more or less true.  All of the officially studied alternatives
*appear* to be prohibitively expensive.  There are serious questions as
to how the costs being publicly thrown around were arrived at, however.
It seems the JPB and SamTrans staff didn't want to study a fairly
detailed proposal to loop CalTrain up and into the Transbay Terminal.

Another interesting fact regarding the downtown SF extension issue is
that at one time CalTrain was so close to running downtown that notices
were put out on trains announcing service to the Ferry Building.  In
fact, the official CalTrain schedule at that time (early eighties, I
believe) was printed up showing the Ferry Building station stop!  This
service was to run on surface streets along moderately upgraded
existing track that extended beyond the 4th and Townsend St. station
along King St. to the Embarcadero.

What happened?  There was a bunch of last minute political jockeying
and lobbying to halt it.  I've heard that there were some business and
land interests along that route that had SF oppose/kill that idea.  Oh
well, it was close!  (But no cigar.)  Instead of such a cheap, easy
extension, we can now wallow in the newer more wonderful $600+ million
plans that we are being "offered".  There are a lot of folks who will
do anything they can to torpedo the downtown extension and CalTrain in
general.  It's definitely a threat to BART's "manifest destiny", a
major thorn in BART's side.  Making sure that anything having to do
with CalTrain is gold-plated to the max and controversial as possible
serves the anti-CalTrain agenda well.  A lot of these BARTians aren't
dumb.  They know that an upgraded CalTrain can and will show up BART
in a big way.

-- 

Adrian Brandt (415) 940-2379
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