Electrifying the West America’s biggest project in 20 years
Caltrain looks to the future to better serve the Bay Area
AMID A CRISIS that took away 95% of Caltrain’s regular riders, the San Francisco Bay Area commuter railroad is forging ahead with the largest mainline electrification project in the nation since Amtrak wired the New Haven-to-Boston segment of the Northeast Corridor more than 20 years ago. Even as riders slowly come back, the COVID-19 pandemic leaves an economic earthquake for Caltrain that will require years of recovery.
“We’ve seen a shift in our business environment,” says Sebastian Petty, deputy chief for Caltrain planning. “It’s really much bigger than anything that’s happened in the last few decades, so I think we can’t take our future for granted.” Ridership quickly collapsed in 2020 amid the pandemic, plummeting to a low of just 1,500 riders a day from a 2019 weekday average of more than 63,000. More than most commuter railroads or transit agencies, Caltrain relied on the farebox for 72% of its income. As of April 2021, ridership remained below 8%, cutting deeply into operating revenue.
Still, Petty tells Trains he remains positive. The decision to electrify 51 miles of Caltrain-owned track and replace most diesel-powered trains with new electric multiple-unit trainsets “makes sense for the world we’re coming into.” Petty is referring to a world changed by the pandemic, a situation playing out in cities across the country where rail transit will have to serve more than traditional 9-to-5 commuters. Caltrain’s 19 new, seven-car Stadler EMU trainsets will enable frequent, faster, bidirectional service throughout the day, making the railroad more convenient to more riders.
Officially known as the Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project, preliminary work began 20 years ago with the start of required state and federal environmental review procedures. After initial approval by the Federal Transit Administration in 2009 and minor changes to the final plan in 2013, key contracts were issued in 2016. That year, the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, which owns and operates Caltrain, entered into a design-build contract with Balfour Beatty Infrastructure, Inc. for the electrification work. Caltrain tapped Stadler for its EMU trainsets.
The $2.3 billion project requires 138 miles of overhead catenary wire and nearly 2,600 catenary poles to deliver 25 kilovolt, 60-Hertz A.C. power along 51 miles of railroad from King Street Station in San Francisco to Tamien Station in San Jose. Construction started in August 2017, and as of this writing, more than 2,000 pole foundations and 1,500 poles have been placed. About 40% of the wire has been installed. Caltrain anticipates all the poles will be erected by July 2022.
Construction is underway on two traction power substations and eight additional substations. Four tunnels in San Francisco require modification to accommodate the overhead catenary system. The signal system is also being modernized. “Our current signal system and our gradecrossing activation system is not compatible with an electrified system, so we need to upgrade all of the 41 crossings,” says Brent Tietjen, government and community relations officer at San Mateo County Transit District, known as SamTrans. Two of the crossings have been completed and cut over to the new system, and six signal systems were due to be cut over by the end of June.
When the infrastructure work is completed and all trainsets are in service, threequarters of Caltrain operations will be electrified. Trains that run south of Tamien, where Caltrain operates over Union Pacific right-of-way, require diesel power. Tietjen says there are discussions at the state level to enable electrification of that segment at some point in the future.
The project has fallen behind schedule over the past year, both for construction and for delivery of the EMUs. Delays in the signal and communications system work are the subject of dispute between Caltrain and Balfour Beatty. “The Achilles’ heel of the program is the delay in design and installation of the signal system,” says John Funghi, chief officer of Caltrain’s Modernization Program, speaking at a June 2021 board of directors meeting. He reported that the two parties have been negotiating for more than a year with little progress. Caltrain may give the work to another contractor, but delays already have added more than two years to the completion of the project. A May 2021 FTA review now puts the start of revenue service in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Delivery of the Stadler EMUs is also behind schedule, but that’s due to the pandemic. Car shells are manufactured in Switzerland and final assembly takes place at Stadler’s plant in Salt Lake City. In November 2020, a Utah radio station reported that 30 Stadler employees had tested positive for COVID-19. Both locations saw worker cases in the double digits. Stadler also encountered supply chain disruptions, parts shortages, and bankruptcies of suppliers, the worst of which affected the supplier of interior panels and luggage racks. Funghi says this is hampering Stadler’s ability to complete the trainsets.
Additionally, supplier representatives were at times unable to travel to Salt Lake City to take part in on-site testing of the first trainset. Altogether, these issues will delay delivery of trainset No. 1 to Caltrain by more than eight months. Stadler is bringing 23 specialized technicians from Europe to help boost production at its Salt Lake City plant.
When Trains spoke with Caltrain, 55 car shells were on hand in Salt Lake City, with 15 more in transit from Switzerland. On-site testing of the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system was underway on trainset No. 2, with trains Nos. 3 through 13 in various stages of production.
THAT NEW TRAIN SMELL
In March 2021, the first trainset began test runs at the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colo. Caltrain executives, including most of the operations team, traveled to TTCI to ride the train, which reached a speed of 115 mph. Tietjen says they found “no problems” and the train accelerated from zero to 60 mph within a minute. He added that Caltrain also brought a couple of train operators to Pueblo. “They were very impressed with the layout of the cab car, the smoothness
PRELIMINARY WORK BEGAN 20 YEARS AGO WITH THE START OF REQUIRED STATE AND FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW PROCEDURES.
of the ride, and how quickly it started up and stopped,” he says. The test session in Pueblo is due to be completed by the end of September 2021.
The trains are based on Stadler’s KISS160 regional train, which has operated in Europe since 2000. Stadler describes it as lightweight and energy-efficient, built with a torsion-resistant aluminum carbody. The cab features a single center seat, digitalcontrol console, and wide-vision windows.
Bilevel cars seat 85 to 100 in a 2+2 configuration with foldable inward facing seats at the car ends, creating space for wheelchair users. Some seats offer 120-volt power outlets, and there is storage space beneath the seats and in overhead racks. White interior walls, wide windows, and thin, dark-gray seats create a bright, contemporary passenger environment. Digital screens on the end walls display current train location and upcoming station information. Two bike cars on each train hold up to 72 bicycles. The trains are equipped with passenger and bike counters enabling real-time monitoring of rider volumes.
Tietjen explains the benefits of the new EMUs over diesel-powered trains: faster service, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and a significant reduction in diesel emissions and noise. The first trainset is expected to arrive on Caltrain property later this year or early next year, when it will begin testing. “There is a specific part of the track south of Santa Clara Station where they break in the trains for a certain number of hours that are required by [the Federal Railroad Administration],” Tietjen says.
POST-PANDEMIC SERVICE
But will new, sleek, fast electric trains lure back Caltrain commuters?
The railroad is operating 70 trains a day versus 92 before the pandemic. With ridership still scraping the bottom even as California relaxes restrictions, the question is whether some of last year’s life and work adaptations will become permanent. “We don’t really know exactly what the future is going to look like,” Petty says. He points out that their core commuter was a professional in the many high-tech companies in the Bay Area, where working from home quickly became the norm in 2020. Many of those companies say partial telework arrangements will continue.
To get an outside perspective, Trains spoke with Patricia Mokhtarian, an expert in travel behavior at Georgia Tech. “I believe that many people will return back to work at least most of the time,” she says. “There will be this gradual refreshment back to something closer to pre-pandemic conditions, even among office workers.”
But knowing when to increase service, which Petty thinks may begin at the end of summer, will be more guesswork than anything. “We’re trying to stay closely coordinated with other transit operators, but we’re all kind of looking at each other and thinking about how we make decisions going forward,” he says. “There’s always that worry that you’re going to make the wrong choice or put the wrong service out there.”
No matter what happens, things will be different in Caltrain’s future. Pre-pandemic, the railroad oriented itself around twice-aday peak commuting times, focusing on serving affluent office workers from the Bay Area to Silicon Valley. In 2019, a survey found the average household income of Caltrain riders was $158,000. By fall 2020, that had dropped to $95,000 as the proportion of lower-income riders grew. “There have been a significant number of essential workers and folks who really depend on the train to make regional trips who have continued using it throughout COVID,” Petty says.
Caltrain’s 2019 timetable listed three classes of service: local, which made almost all stops; limited, which made fewer stops; and “baby bullet” express trains that made just a handful of stops from San Francisco to San Jose. In response to changing rider needs in 2020, Caltrain flattened its schedule, adding more midday and weekend trains. Weekday limited and local trains now run every 30 minutes; every hour on the weekend. There are no express trains on the current timetable.
The railroad is also looking to better
coordinate schedules with Bay Area Rapid Transit and improve connections with other transit providers, including bus operators. “It’s critical that we provide a service that’s useful to a broad range of riders, which, frankly, we weren’t quite doing before COVID,” Petty says. For riders, it will mean less worrying about timetables and train numbers. They’ll know that a train will be there at a predictable time, a trend gaining in rail transit circles and known as clock-face scheduling.
These changes won’t be temporary. They’re necessary to attract a wider customer base, restore ridership, and become part of a larger regional rail network.
BART and the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority unveiled a plan earlier this year to integrate commuter, intercity, and high speed rail into a broad network across 21 Northern California counties. Called Link21, the program envisions building a second passenger rail tunnel across San Francisco Bay.
“We are plugging into the state’s vision of what the passenger rail network should be like,” says Camille Tsao, Capitol Corridor project manager for Link21. It’s very much in the early stages of planning, “just trying to figure out what’s in the program.”
The Transbay Crossing could enable a one-seat ride for Capitol Corridor passengers into downtown San Francisco, which now requires a bus transfer from Emeryville. The added tunnels also would permit more trains on BART to relieve overcrowding. But it, too, is at a beginning phase. “Where we are at this point would be in-between program definition and program identification,” says BART spokesman Jim Allison. The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission puts the cost of the Transbay Crossing at $29 billion.
Also on the wish list is the Downtown Rail Extension project that would take Caltrain, and one day California high speed trains, to the Salesforce Transit Center in the heart of San Francisco. The $3.9 billion project adds 1.3 miles of right-of-way from the current Caltrain terminus at 4th Street and King Street. Awaiting major funding, the hope is to have the extension completed in the early 2030s.
Marc Joffe, a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, questions whether these multibillion dollar projects are needed. “I think that the Bay Area commute was already maxing out and now, with the pandemic, you’ve got the two patterns of people moving away, and then you have the work-from-home thing,” he says. “Let’s look holistically at the transit system that we have and think about minor, more costeffective changes that could make commuting on the train easier.”
Making it easier to use Caltrain for all riders is gaining importance. “The new value proposition of transit is serving a lot of different markets with a technology that’s flexible and can do that in a more effective and nimble way,” Caltrain planner Petty says. It also means fare structures that are affordable for riders who depend on public transportation and may not have other options. Last year, Caltrain began offering half-price fares to low-income riders. “I expect for the next several years we may