From: editor@wet.UUCP (Eric Swanson)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation,ba.politics
Subject: Re: (B)ART & (C)alTrain to stay on SMCo. ballot
Summary: Haven't we been through this before?
Keywords: bart caltrain performance cost rehash
Date: 7 Oct 92 19:07:53 GMT
Followup-To: ba.transportation
Distribution: ba
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco

Haven't we been through this?

adrian@ntmtv.UUCP (Adrian Brandt) writes:
|Many transit advocates (myself included) are very nervous about B
|& C being on the ballot ....
|...  So what we wind up with is a touchy-feely popularity poll that
|is based more on impressions and image than substance...

lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) replies:
>	That may well be the case, but BART outperforms CalTrain very
>handily.

That depends, of course, on how you define "outperform" --
the only support for this in your message is the number of
trains BART runs -- not at all a function of BART-ness, just
a matter of how many trains BART has and the better
signaling that allows them to run closer together.

>          And a BART-level CalTrain will probably have BART-level
>costs, such as big parking lots and garages, a _completely_ separated
>right-of-way, new rolling stock, and so forth.

Although the _total_ cost of a BART-ified CalTrain might
approach the total cost of BART itself, remember that much
of this money has ALREADY BEEN SPENT on CalTrain -- many
grade separations have been done, track has been laid, and
so on.  To install BART is to start from scratch, and throw
out the investments we've already made.  Remember, SP still
has freight rights on that track, so we can't just run BART
in the current ROW -- BART would need new ROW and/or
elevated track to share ROW.

And -- as has been pointed out many times in this group, an
upgraded CalTrain doesn't require "a _completely_ separated
right-of-way" -- if we're going to run trains every 15
minutes in both directions we'll need a lot more grade
separations than we have now, but people drive, walk, and
bicycle across conventional overhead-catenary rail lines all
the time.

|                                 Based on the BART to the airport
|time-frames, BART to Menlo Park ("throughout the county") could 
|easily take another 10 years or more for a completion date of around
|2012 or later... 

>	Well, it depends on when they start work on it. A BART line is
>scheduled to be in SFO by 2000, not 2002; and if they start work on a
>line through the Peninsula in the late 1990's, then it could all be
>done in 2005 or so.

  a. How many times have you seen a government make a
     decision that fast?
  b. It's not soon enough anyway.

>                    Simply check on the timetables and expected for
>the extensions now under construction. I suspect that the cost will be
>about $50-$100 m/mi, including stations.

What makes you suspect this?  You agree later in your
posting that BART costs $100 to $200 million per mile "in
heavily urbanized areas" -- so what is the Peninsula if not
urban?  My understanding is that the $100 to $200 million
figures come from projections for the SFO extension -- are
you saying that the rest of the peninsula is less heavily
urbanized than Colma, San Bruno, and Millbrae?  I suspect
you'll find land costs and density similar throughout San
Mateo County.

>	A major part of extension costs is new BART stations; they are
>designed for high capacity, and a similar-capacity CalTrain would have
>similarly expensive stations. If you don't believe me, visit the
>Tamien LR/CalTrain station, or the southern part of the SC LR lines.
>
>	I know that $130 million for the Colma BART station may seem
>excessive to some, but a similar CalTrain station would cost a similar
>amount.
....
>	You might want to visit it sometime and cry, because Tamien
>looks suspiciously BARTified.

Well, how much did the Tamien CalTrain station cost?
Anybody know?  I'll lay diamonds to donuts it was a _lot_
less than $130 mil.

|* we need rail transit upgrades soon, not in 20 years or more!

>	15 years or so more likely, but one has to start somewhere :-)

Right.  And we've already started, about a hundred years
ago.  There's no reason to throw away the perfectly good
start the JPB counties have provided.

>                               ... a BART-level CalTrain will require
>BART-level expenses. Why not swallow the bitter financial pill all at
>once?

Because it means 15 to 20 years of pill-swallowing before we
have the system we need _now_.

|* the 75-mile CalTrain line can be electrified for the cost of one or
|  two miles of BART

>	I agree that _that_ improvement is cheap, but others will not
>be. For instance, _all_ the locos will have to be replaced.

The fairly well-documented numbers I saw posted here
included new locos.  Wasn't it something like $180 mil to
electrify the line and replace the current loco fleet?

|* for the $32.5 million cost of the BART airport studies, CalTrain
|  could run train every 15 minutes all day, every day for three years.

>	How did you calculate _that_???

I believe this is based on the operating (i.e., non-capital)
costs on a per-train basis.

>	I recall from somewhere that BART is _less_ expensive per
>passenger than CalTrain is: total budget is perhaps 8 times bigger,
>but the total ridership is over 10 times bigger. I'll have to hunt
>down precise figures sometime.

I believe BART is slightly less expensive per passenger,
because most BART passengers don't travel as far as most
CalTrain passengers.  CalTrain is definitely less expensive
per passenger-mile.

All that said, I'd like to see BART go down the peninsula
too, although I think it should supplement rather than
replace CalTrain -- I think a lot more money should be spent
on transit, and redundancy can be a good thing, but don't
bite off more than you can chew.  For about a billion
dollars, we could make CalTrain bring Peninsula commuters
into the heart of the SF Financial District in speed and
comfort within a few years, or we can wait twenty years and
spend three or four times that amount for a similarly
capable system that goes south only to Menlo Park.

San Mateo County Voters:  Be careful what you ask for.

E.
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