Bay Area Transportation Tidbits
 

Post here your interesting snippets of information about the region's transportation infrastructure and services that don't quite deserve their own threads.


--
Oakland-San Jose line adds trains each way

Michael Cabanatuan
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle

The Capitol Corridor rail service has added three trains in each direction between Oakland and San Jose, making it more convenient for commuters between the East Bay and Silicon Valley.

Seven trains now travel in each direction between the two cities, including three southbound trains during the morning commute and three northbound during the evening commute.

The Capitol Corridor was able to increase the service after paying about $60 million for Union Pacific Railroad to add tracks and signals on the congested stretches.

Four trains in each direction were added between Oakland and Sacramento after the Capitol Corridor paid about $12 million for track improvements between Davis and Sacramento.

The intercity rail service, funded by the state but operated by Amtrak, runs 16 daily trains in each direction. One train starts in Auburn and another concludes its run there; all 16 make the trip between Sacramento and Oakland. Last year, Capitol Corridor trains carried 1.3 million passengers.

Housecleaning today, are we?

Interesting tidbit about this from a Sac Bee editorial (calling for improvements to the downtown station: http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinio...15207516c.html) ... there apparently are now as many daily trains between Sacramento and Oakland as between Boston and New York.

Make of that what you will.

Can you post the article? I can't access it without registering, and I don't want to do that.

Oh, sure--sorry. I'd have just posted except it's not exactly "Bay Area" (with the focus on the Sacto depot and all).

Editorial: Tracks of jeers
Sacramento needs a depot fit for a capital
Published 12:01 am PDT Monday, August 28, 2006

Starting today, there will be as many Amtrak commuter trains between Sacramento and Oakland as there are between New York and Boston.

The Capitol Corridor service is launching a dramatic expansion to 32 trains every weekday between the two regions, and 14 trains (seven each way) that will travel as far south as San Jose. Ours is one of the most successful urban train systems going in the country.

One wonders how much more popular the service would be if Sacramento didn't have a station that exudes all the warmth and welcome of a war zone.

It is an embarrassment. The city that has one of the best railroad museums on the planet has one of the most uninviting railroad stations. Go figure.

The Capitol Corridor service, meanwhile, is one of the great success stories of government in Northern California. In its eight years of operation, its trains' travel times have decreased. Fare box recovery (how much passengers pay to run the trains) has increased. And the on-board service is trying to keep up with the times. Plans are afoot to offer wireless Internet access on all the trains. And with 16 trains running each way every weekday between Sacramento and Oakland, the frequency is high enough to allow commuters to stop fretting about the schedule. If they miss one train, another isn't far behind. (To take a peak at the schedule, see www.capitolcorridor.org)

While everything on board is humming right along, the scene changes once the train stops in Sacramento. The parking lot is among the most expensive and maddening in town, requiring a Ph.D. in computer science to decipher how to exchange one bar-coded parking ticket for another to finally open the gate. The walk from the depot to the train is now a gantlet of fences and jackhammers, where crews are extending the light-rail line. And the once stately depot is in a state of arrested decay as local leaders and the Union Pacific Railroad mull, ever so slowly, its future.

The plan is to lift the depot from its foundation and move it north, along with the tracks, to open the land for development and to create a new multimodal station for buses, trains and light rail. But that has been the plan for years. The train service improves, while the train station does not.

The train service, however, is now an indispensable part of Northern California's transportation system. Pressure will only increase to improve the service, particularly into Roseville and Placer County to capture a largely untapped source of passengers. (Please, UP, cooperate.) Sacramento needs a transportation hub worthy of this region to rise from the wreckage of the depot's current home.

Am I reading this correctly, they are literally going to move the existing historic station?

Believe so, yeah. Are any of the Sac peeps reading this thread?

Despite the furvent denials of many of our out-of-state compatriots, I don't see a need to draw an artificial metro "boundary" when discussing the transporation infrastructure we share with nearby metros, in terms of Capitol Corridor, ACE, the San Joaquins, etc. ;)

Then the name of this thread should be changed to MEGALONORCAL Transportation Tidbits. In all caps, please. Thank you, and good night.

Thought this could be relevant.

Published Sunday, August 27, 2006, by the San Jose Mercury News

Ex-industrial town seeks transformation

By Anna Tong
Mercury News

Longtime home of the Ford plant, Milpitas still looks the part. Rows
of adjacent railroad tracks that were once used to ship auto parts
in and out of the city still exist, though passing rail cars no
longer cause hourlong traffic gridlock as they did in the 1950s.
Heavy and light manufacturing plants dominate parts of the city.

Now, Milpitas is looking to radically change its look and image, by
intensely developing the area surrounding a proposed BART station,
in southern Milpitas between Interstates 680 and 880.

"We're trying to rebuild the city with a sense of destiny," said
Diana Whitecar, economic development manager for Milpitas.

The city has already approved preliminary plans in its "Milpitas
Transit Area Concept Plan," which would add 7,200 housing units,
800,000 to 1.2 million square feet of retail space, 500,000 to 1
million square feet of office, and 500 hotel rooms to Milpitas in
the next 20 to 30 years. The plan is part of the "Midtown Specific
Plan," which seeks to develop the parts of the city to keep up with
high population growth.

The future "Milpitas Transit Area" is currently as far from an urban
area as it gets -- it looks like a partly vacated blue-collar town.
One part consists of old company buildings that were almost
completely vacated when companies began outsourcing to other
countries, Whitecar said. Another section is devoted to various
types of heavy industry. The future BART station would be located
in a current truck parking lot. Almost all these areas would be
developed either into high-density apartments and condominiums or
mixed-use housing and retail.

Milpitas has no money budgeted for the development project. The
land is owned privately, and will be developed privately. But city
officials are confident that private developers will be eager to
start construction.

"Based on the level of interest we're seeing from the private
sector, I feel that it's feasible over an extended period of time,"
Whitecar said.

Much of the plan hinges on BART being extended. Then, residents
could take easily accessible public transportation to work, instead
of driving. There is currently a VTA light-rail station in the area,
but the BART extension would provide an essential connection between
the East Bay and the South Bay. For now, the plan is to gradually
develop the area as plans for the BART station are finalized.

Milpitas officials say the plan will go forward with or without the
BART station, and it looks as if the BART extension's future could
be in jeopardy: In June voters vetoed a half-cent sales-tax increase
that would have partly gone toward funding the BART extension.

Assuming the BART plans do follow through, preliminary traffic
modeling commissioned by the city showed that the traffic in the
area would increase 64 percent during morning rush hours and almost
100 percent during the evening rush hours. If the BART plans do not
follow through, the traffic in the area would increase by 13
percent, said Tom Williams, Milpitas' planning director.

"This plan is not wholly dependent on BART, but we're betting that
at some point BART will occur," Whitecar said.

This isn't as rare as you might think. I was just flipping channels a few weeks ago and caught a bit of documentary about relocating a train depot and another historic building. In San Jose, Kelly Park park has a collection of historic building (and a few trolleys) relocated from their original foundations.

I'm really happy about this. It seems a couple years ago I thought I read that the trains weren't doing so well, but apparently all that is history. With I-80 being the parking lot it is and Sacto being really too close to fly, rail service is the perfect way to get there and it's great that people are using it.

Crews start work on new Bay Bridge span
 

Progress on the Bay Bridge:

You are reading it correctly. They are going to be picking up and moving the entire station...allegedly

I say allegedly because as the article says, its been in the plans for years now.

Here is a good article from the Sac Business Journal about the process.

Plans call for old Southern Pacific depot to be shifted to accommodate transportation hub
Sometime in 2006, if all goes as expected, a work crew will pick up the Amtrak passenger depot at 5th and I streets, roll it a few hundred feet north, and drop it onto a new foundation.
All 6,750 tons of it.

To read more...
http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sa...22/focus1.html

good. the current location is too restrictive as far as access.

Huzzah, more trains!

Now if they would only be on time... took one down to San Jose last weekend and we were stopped for half an hour waiting for a northbound freight.

Good Idea for a thread. We could change the name to Northern California Transportation Tidbits. The Central Valley and Sacramento both could be included.

August 26, 2006

Altamont Commuter Express train adds 4th daily run to weekday trips
Workers, families, shoppers to benefit, official says

By Sam Richards
Contra Costa Times

On Monday, Altamont Commuter Express will begin a fourth daily
weekday round-trip run between Stockton and San Jose.

It will give the Tri-Valley a late-morning westbound run and a
midday return to the east.

The new train will take the place of the daily Amtrak bus now
operating between Stockton and San Jose, just as a major widening
project on Interstate 205 in San Joaquin County gets under way. The
train, Caltrans officials say, should be substantially faster than
a bus negotiating construction delays on the freeway.

The new fourth train will leave Stockton on weekdays at 9:30 a.m.,
arriving in San Jose at 11:40 a.m.

The return trip would turn around only 25 minutes after arrival in
San Jose, ending up back in Stockton at 2:15 p.m., according to the
new schedule.

Some of the envisioned riders are day shoppers bound for Pleasanton
or San Jose; families bound for a day at the Great America amusement
park in Santa Clara; and workers at Tri-Valley or Silicon Valley
destinations.

David Bouchard, president and CEO of the Pleasanton Chamber of
Commerce, said he expects a number of people will take advantage
of the midday train to shop at Stoneridge Mall or in the downtown,
attend events at the Alameda County Fairgrounds and make connections
to shop in Dublin.

"Anytime you can provide transportation to a destination -- and I
consider Pleasanton a destination with everything we have here --
it should be a great opportunity," Bouchard said.

It is anticipated other riders will be those with Amtrak tickets,
using the midday ACE train as a link between the San Joaquin trains
in Stockton and Amtrak trains in San Jose.

Bill Bronte, Caltrans' Rail Division chief, said the 9:30 departure
can accommodate riders of a morning San Joaquin train from
Bakersfield.

The Amtrak bus, which has stops in the Tri-Valley, made its last
weekday run on Friday. Weekend runs will continue.

"With the construction coming up on I-205, and the bus having to
contend with that traffic, that could get real iffy," Bronte said.

Caltrans is providing money for this fourth train, said Brian
Schmidt, ACE's capital projects manager.

ACE now moves from 1,400 to 1,500 riders each way daily, Schmidt
said. There are no ridership projections for the new midday service,
he said. But if the experience of Los Angeles' Metrolink commuter
trains is any indication, the addition of a midday train will boost
rider numbers on the commute-time runs.

"More people rode the (Metrolink) train knowing they could go the
other way in the middle of the day if they had to," Schmidt
said. "There was a 'safety-valve' option."

Though ACE has had problems with freight trains of track owner Union
Pacific creating delays, Schmidt said the San Joaquin Regional Rail
Commission has been working with UP for several months on track-use
issues. He anticipates few delay problems with the new midday
service.

An adult round-trip ticket from Stockton to San Jose is $19.75,
a 20-ride ticket costs $153.75. An adult round-trip tickets from
Stockton to Pleasanton costs $12, a 20-ride pass is $96.

Okay, I'll change it to Northern California if nobody objects. Understand, though, that it will likely be dominated by Bay Area stuff.

A couple of bad pics of the current station:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...SAC/SAC174.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...SAC/sac121.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...SAC/sac122.jpg

Is the plan to also move the adjacent historic office building? The one that was supposedly being renovated by LPA?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...SAC/SAC176.jpg

^That renovation is complete, as far as I know, and from outside at least it looks pretty good.

Any plans in the distent works for a Express Cap like the baby bullet?
BTW way to go Caps!