Caltrain's switch to electric is already paying off

Caltrain's electric trains are a hit with riders. The electrification project involved swapping out Caltrain's Diesel trains for brand new electric units that are quieter, accelerate faster, and are more comfortable.

In October 753,000 passengers took Caltrain, a 54% year-over-year increase. Saturday and Sunday ridership have risen even more dramatically. Saturday ridership is up 169% and Sunday is up 142% year-over year. That finally brings Caltrain ridership above pre-COVID19 levels.

While their top speed is the same, the acceleration allows for more frequent stops while simultaneously reducing route times. The train can now go between San Jose and San Francisco in less than an hour. Unlike BART it also has restrooms and 2nd floor with a nice view.

If you haven't tried out the new service yet, now's a great time to see the latest and greatest in Bay Area public transit.

Source: SFGATE

Caltrain is officially running electric trains from San Jose to SF

Caltrain hosted a launch party at the Palo Alto station over the weekend for their new electrified trains. The trains are much fasters, allowing for more stops while still cutting travel times significantly. They are also much smoother and quieter and it seems like the interiors are quite a bit of an upgrade as well. You can experience this for yourself immediately on Caltrain stations between San Jose and San Francisco. Only South County stations (Morgan Hill and Gilroy) will stay on diesel.

Source: homebucket from Skyscraper City

More details on greatly enhanced electrified Caltrain schedules

Electrified trains have already been added to the Caltrain network, but they have been hamstrung by the old Diesel schedule. On September 21st, the system will change over to the fully electrified schedule and it is nothing but good news. Not only are the trains quieter and cleaner, but they are also much faster.

The slowest option from San Jose to San Francisco with 23 stops will go from 115 minutes to 83 minutes, shaving more than half an hour off the route. The 401 train goes from Diridon to SF and the route will go from 14 stops to 16 stops and STILL reduce the time from 76 minutes to 69 minutes. That Express (Baby Bullet) route from San Jose Diridon to SF will go from just 7 stops to 10 stops and reduce the time from 66 minutes to 59 minutes.

It's good news all around for transit enthusiasts, as well as traditional commuters along 101 and 280. More people taking Caltrain equals fewer cars clogging up roads and freeways. Caltrain is also the nicest transit options we have in the Bay Area outside of a few limited-stop AMTRAK routes.

Source: Trains.com

VTA will get $5 billion from Federal Government to extend BART to Downtown San Jose and Santa Clara

Yesterday a huge step was just taken to secure BART's subway and four station extension to Little Portugal, Downtown San Jose, Diridon (Downtown West), and Santa Clara. The Federal Transit Administration has made a commitment of $5 billion towards the BART SV Phase II project. This was the second largest financial commitment of all time to a single transit project.

The total cost is still $12.7 billion. Nearly $5 billion will be funded by taxes and the state will also chip in nearly a couple billion. The VTA believes they have now secured nearly all of the required funds and closing the remaining gap is within reach.

The estimated completion of the long-awaited project is now 2037. During construction, the project is expected to support 75,000 jobs.

Source: VTA

San Jose's Archer Aviation is partnering with Southwest Airlines to build air taxi network

Archer Aviation is making a number of headlines lately. They just announced plans to build a network of five different air taxi locations across the Bay Area. Now they are announcing a partnership with Southwest Airlines to collaborate on integrating air taxis into California airports.

Southwest is California's largest airline and has operations at 14 different airports across the state. They are the largest operator at San Jose International Airport, which appears to be one of the five air taxi locations that Archer is planning.

The vision is that Southwest customers could do door-to-door trips between places like Napa or Santa Monica that do not have commercial airports within a few hours. You'd go from your Southwest flight to an air taxi that would take you to your destination in 10-15min.

Archer Aviation is headquartered at 190 W. Tasman Drive in North San Jose.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

San Jose to be part of five Bay Area air-taxi locations

How would you like to quickly hop between San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Livermore in just 10-15 minutes? How about Napa for an additional 15-30 minutes? That is exactly what Archer Aviation is planning in the Bay Area.

Archer is planning to build air mobility hubs, with the main one being at Kilroy's Oyster Point in South San Francisco. The San Jose location appears to be the private aviation facility at San Jose International Airport.

Archer is building electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) that seat the pilot and up to four passengers and their carry-on luggage. The aircraft go up to 150 mph and skip all ground traffic. A 90 minute drive can become a 10 minute flight.

Timing is not available nor is pricing, but this will be a hot industry to watch as several companies are entering this space. I'm all for any alternatives that will help people bypass highway traffic.

Source: Businesswire

BART to Silicon Valley Phase 2 construction officially begins

After decades of planning, the 2nd phase of BART's extension into San Jose (and Santa Clara) is underway. Construction has started in Brokaw Road in Santa Clara and is expected to create 75,000 jobs.

Phase 1 opened about four years ago with the Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose station. Phase 2 will be much more complicated as it requires a subway to be built for three of the stations and will utilize a tunneling method that has been done in the United States. Impact to Downtown San Jose and local businesses should be much less using this method over traditional "cut and cover" subway construction.

The 2nd phase is expected to cost $13 billion and be ready for use in 12 years. The initial estimate was a price tag of $4.4 billion and an opening in 2026. Hopefully there will be some ways to reduce cost and expedite the timeline in the near future.

Source: The Mercury News

More details on proposed Diridon Station improvements in Downtown San Jose

Diridon Station is planning a major transformation in the coming years (and perhaps decades) as it become the Grand Central Station of the West Coast and boy is there a lot to unpack here. First let's start with the good news. Service will be expanded across the board. Caltrain will triple their service from 4 trains an hour during peak times to 12 in each direction. Capitol Corridor will go from 6 trains a day to 11. ACE is planning one extra train. VTA Light Rail will increase service by 50% and buses by 12%. TAMC will add 4 trains a day to/from Salinas. Last but very much not least, High Speed Rail will have 4 trains per hour in both directions.

So far so good. There are three proposed alignments for the future station improvements. Elevated tracks, at-grade, and stacked. Below are some of the key comparisons and a few renders.

And now the bad news... the cost. Transportation transformation does not come cheap. These improvements are estimated to cost between $2.5 and $13 BILLION dollars. Those are today's dollars, not 2040 dollars factoring for inflation. Also, this doesn't even include BART which is a separate project.

To put the ridiculousness of those costs into perspective, the entire cost of San Jose Mineta International Airport's Terminal B is $1.8 billion in 2023 dollars. The cheapest proposal is more expensive than half of our airport!

The most expensive proposal for one station would build an airport two times the size of SJC. That one station would cost more than the entire four-station BART subway from Berryessa to Santa Clara. It is a completely stunning cost, and not in a good way.

Source: Diridon Join Policy Advisory Board

San Jose connection improvements to the Central Coast

Decades in the making, rail options are expanding between Monterrey County to San Jose. This includes two new stations in Monterrey County. $1M has been secured in the last bipartisan rail bill. That is million with a M and not a B like many of the other projects that have been discussed here. Seems like low-hanging fruit to expand service.

The two new stations will be in Pajaro close to Watsonville and another in downtown King City. Both will have the potential of taking large numbers of cars off of 101 during peak commute times being used by supercommuters driving an hour or more.

It's nice to some new rail projects moving forward quickly. The Pajaro station will begin construction in early 2027 while King City station will start in 2026.

Source: KSBW8

Estimated BART costs go up again

If you thought $12.2 billion was astronomical for a 6-mile, 4-station extension... I don't have good news. The Federal Transit Administration now thinks the project will cost $12.8 billion and the timeline will be extended to 2037. Reasons behind the cost increase are primarily the volatility of labor and supply costs.

13 years is a long time. We might be living in a post-AGI word (artificial general intelligence) where costs for design and construction could be significantly lower than expected or perhaps new transit options will arise that were not feasible in the past. While I have voted for the BART extension every single time, the consistent increase of cost estimates and timeline adjustments is concerning.

Source: SVBJ

Tunneling in San Jose could be much cheaper in the near future

Most people don't see disruptive technology coming. It's often met with a lot of skepticism. There are plenty of famous quotes about computers or the internet. In 1943 The president of IBM said "I think there is a world market for about five computers." In 1995 Newsweek published an article that said, “The internet is just a fad.” However, even today in markets that have been stagnant for decades or even a century we're seeing disruption.

People laughed when Elon wanted to build electric cars. Tesla is now worth more every other car company combined. They laughed again when he wanted to start a rocket company. Today there are 7,702 active satellites in space--5,000 of them belong to SpaceX. By the end of next year, SpaceX will have launched more satellites than every government entity around the world combined over the past 66 years. So now... of course, there had to be much skepticism in the San Jose development community about the Boring Company. Tunnels have been built almost the same way for 100 years, what could the company possibly do differently?

Apparently a lot. The Boring Company already has a functioning tunnel network in Las Vegas with 4 active stations and capacity for 5,000 people/hour. It took one year to build. That will expand to 69 stations and capacity for over 100,000 people/hour over the next few years (not decades). They have managed to get to a cost of $10 million/mile for 14-ft wide tunnels with 2nd generation tunneling machines using EV motors and batteries. Now it looks like they might be able to triple tunnel construction speed with hexagonal wall tiles.

The big benefit is that all the pieces are exactly the same, cutting costs significantly. Fewer segments are required per mile and it enables continuous mining. There are challenges and disadvantages as well, especially around water, but if they can push through them they will very likely disrupt tunneling. It gets a bit nerdy, but there is a 15min video in the source link below that goes into exactly how this new process would work versus existing methods.

What this means for us, is perhaps there will be a future where we can bring VTA Light Rail underground or perhaps offer Personal Rapid Transit (autonomous pods) or other forms of transportation at a lower cost to San Joseans. After seeing BART costs swell to $2 billion per mile for the Downtown San Jose extension, there has to be a better solution long-term for other projects.

Full disclosure that San Jose did reach out to The Boring Company as an option to connect San Jose International Airport with Diridon in Downtown San Jose. They never responded to a RFI and things fell through. 

That doesn't mean there couldn't be other opportunities in the future to work together. A fun fact is that the original Tesla factory was supposed to be in North San Jose/Alviso. However, an opportunity to take over NUMMI presented itself in 2010 and the rest is history. Hopefully the door is still open for The Boring Company and San Jose to work together in some capacity.

Source: nextBIG Future

Robot shuttles coming to San Jose, SJC and beyond

Autonomous transportation is a lot closer than most people think. It's coming in two forms: multi-purpose where autonomous cars are sharing the road with non-autonomous vehicles (Waymo, Cruise, Tesla FSD) and via dedicated pathways (Las Vegas Loop, autonomous trains/pods). 

San Jose has been struggling with how to connect SJC to Downtown San Jose's Diridon transit center just three miles away, which is destined to become the Grand Central of the West Coast. Plans have been brewing for more than 20 years, and tax dollars have already been collected. Finally, a solution has been approved using a local startup specializing in AVs (Autonomous Vehicles) called Glydways.

These autonomous pods can go up to 31 miles per hour, so they would take about 8 minutes to go from Downtown San Jose to SJC via a dedicated and potentially grade-separated path. Today the ride takes about 30 minutes on local buses. The vehicles themselves carry up to four passengers plus their luggage and are wheelchair accessible. 

The initial route would go between Diridon and Terminal B, with plans to potentially include Terminal A, nearby parking, and other future destinations in Midtown/Uptown San Jose like Valley Fair. Phase 1 would have 200 autonomous pods.

This would be a public/private partnership with the city taking on some costs and an investment group (Plenary) taking another portion. The investors would recoup their investment by charging a fee on each ride. 

The model sounds very similar to the Las Vegas Loop, which will actually be almost entirely funded privately except for a fare-less section at the Las Vegas Convention Center. That project will eventually have over 80 stations serviced by autonomous pods larger in size than what Gyldways is planning. Unfortunately, the Boring Company never responded to San Jose's RFI.

Now for the real bad news. The Glydways project is not expected to get underway until 2028 and could take years to complete--a timeline that may render the whole system obsolete by the time it arrives given how quickly transportation solutions are changing. 

We are already pouring billions into systems that are decades old (Light Rail and BART) so it's critical that this next step is something that will be scalable and move the needle on San Jose transportation for the decades to come. Hopefully there is some way to get this project going much sooner and with flexibility to incorporate innovation as the project is in motion.

Source: SiliconValley.com

Downtown San Jose BART - SJDA Public Meeting on June 10th

If you would like to find out more about the BART subway system that will run from Berryessa to Downtown San Jose, the SJDA is hosting a public meeting at the Tabard Theater this Friday at 8:15am. 

Topics include the tunneling methods, timeline, partnerships, construction mitigation, the designs of the two Downtown Stations, transit-oriented development, and the process for community engagement.

You can watch online or attend in person (registration and proof of vaccination needed) over here.

Transportation Innovation

San Jose Spotlight has a great article discussing how we can solve for our future transportation issues. Eventually traffic will return, in fact this past week I did hit a few spots on 101 that reminded me of the good old pre-covid days. We have BART now, which is fantastic, but going forward we should be looking at faster and cheaper solutions.

In fact, there is a grade separated, point-to-point solution that exists today. The Boring Company Loop. Tunnels can be built at $10 million per mile versus $1 billion per mile for a traditional subway, and autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles can transport you from a station to any other station in the network at up to 150 miles per hour. It sounds too good to be true, but so did electric cars that are affordable and fun to drive and reusable rockets that can land themselves. Also, the Boring Company already has two projects in the works. There is a functional test track in LA that goes from SpaceX headquarters to a residential backyard (no joke) and a Loop in Las Vegas that will connect the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Strip, and the airport.

It's a killer suggestion that would help bring our transportation into the future (it is 2020 after all) while improving safety, convenience, and cost-per-mile. Check out Norman Kline's article over here.

Source: San Jose Spotlight

Berryessa BART Station

After many years of effort, BART trains are finally flowing in and out of San Jose! Gillynova from the San Jose Development Forum has captured some nice drone video shots of the new station. Check out the short video below for a sneak peak of Berryessa Station.

BART is finally coming to San Jose!

June 13th. That's the date when BART will officially open in both San Jose (Berryessa) and Milpitas! It took 14 years since we first voted for the extension, but it is finally happening.

The first train will leave the station at 7:56am from San Jose, stop at Milpitas at 7:59am, and then head to Richmond in the North Bay.

The next phase of the BART extension will be a subway that will add three more stations in the Downtown San Jose area and one in Santa Clara. Currently that is slated for completion in 2028.

Source: SVBJ

BART Phase 2 Updates

A video was released a few weeks ago that provides an excellent visualization of how BART Phase 2 will extend from San Jose's Berryessa Station to Little Portugal, Downtown San Jose, Diridon, and finally Santa Clara. I was surprised at how detailed the 3D renders were throughout the entire video.

I was also shocked to see how deep the stations actually were in San Jose. The Downtown and Diridon stations will both have high speed elevators to help get passengers in and out of the stations as quickly as possible.

Source: aphelion2100 from the San Jose Development Forum

Latest concept plans for Diridon Station

In order to mitigate the traffic nightmare in the Bay Area, we have to locate jobs and homes close to transit. There is no better transit location in the South Bay than Diridon Station. Millions of square feet of office space, residential units, retail, and hotels are destined to be built near or next to the station. Needless to say, there is a lot of pressure to make the station live up to the attention it is getting. The centerpiece of Downtown San Jose's next phase of urbanization needs to be world class.

Below are some of the latest drawings from Dutch planning firms that are working on the next big redesign of the station. These need to incorporate BART and potentially High Speed Rail, as well as easier access from every direction.

Part of the concept is elevating the tracks for all lines except for Light Rail and BART, which will both meet the station underground. There will also be two main concourses beneath the rail lines with multiple entrances on both Santa Clara Street and San Fernando Street.

The drawings are quite impressive compared to the current layout of the station. I'm optimistic the final product will do the Capital of Silicon Valley justice.

Source: SVBJ

Downtown BART subway alterations

After the huge debate between whether to use a double or single bore subway systems for BART's expansion to Downtown San Jose, it appears there is still some controversy with the design. It was decided that the expansion would use a single bore, which would make it the first system of it's kind in the United States. The key benefit of the design is that we would not have to dig up all of Santa Clara Street and disrupt businesses and residents for years. It would actually be less expensive to build. The downside is that this segment of the BART system would be completely different than the rest of the network, and that would require extensive retraining of staff.

Now it appears that there is a compromise solution, and that is to increase the size of the tunnel from 45 feet to a massive 55 feet. By volume, that is about a 50% increase in size. This would allow the trains to run side by side like the rest of the network, but would increase cost and complexity.

It is actually an interesting proposal for me because the extra space above and below the trains could perhaps be utilized for another mode of transportation. It looks large enough for electric buses or even Light Rail. Perhaps, we could see a next generation Loop or Hyperloop system utilize those spaces. While it is clear San Jose needs to be fully connect to BART, we should also think about how we can leverage this project to support the future generation of mobility.

Source: SVBJ

VTA calling for innovative transit ideas to connect SJC

The VTA as well as the cities of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino are looking for ideas on how to quickly move people between SJC and various parts of Silicon Valley. They want these ideas by September 30th.

Specifically, this consortium is looking for grade-separated mass transit at a significantly lower cost than traditional projects in two segments. The first is integrating SJC and Diridon such that they are viewed as a single facility--which would be amazing! I remember being completely shocked when visiting Hong Kong and realizing there was a special Airport train line where you can check your suitcases at the train station, hop on the train, and walk straight to security. Something that well integrated might not be part of the plan, but there are many airports in the US with people movers between terminals. How cool would it be if Diridon felt like it was just a quick terminal transfer away from the airport?

The second route would link the airport to three urban villages along Steven's Creek (I'm sure Santana Row is one of them), Santa Clara, Cupertino, and DeAnza College. This is a high-traffic route and extending BART or Light Rail down this way would cost billions of dollars.

It sounds like this RFI (request for ideas) is a way to legally satisfy the common government requirement of getting multiple bidders for each project. There is literally only one company right now that might be able to pull off something like this at a low cost, and it is The Boring Company. They are already designing an underground loop for the new Las Vegas Convention Center Expansion at a cost of about $10 million a mile. For less than the cost of the two-stop Eastridge light rail extension, we could connect SJC, Downtown San Jose, Santana Row, Santa Clara, and Cupertino with a fast and direct point-to-point transit system.

This could be the beginning of a whole new era in transportation that blends public and personal transportation together. San Jose should be leading the charge, innovation is our middle name!

Source: SVBJ