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If they are going to invest in another tunnel, I think they should make it for HSR to Oakland or Berkeley. That track could also be used by Caltrain to link the East Bay with the Peninsula and South Bay. HSR/Caltrain use/will use standard tech and is cheaper to build vs BART and it's non-standard tech. Caltrain has passing tracks so you could get from Oakland/Berkeley to Palo Alto in maybe 40 minutes on an electrified baby bullet train. And you could hop on a high speed train to LA without first taking BART to SF. A fast direct connection from the inner East Bay to Silicon Valley seems a lot more valuable than a direct connection to Ocean Beach.
If they are going to invest in another tunnel, I think they should make it for HSR to Oakland or Berkeley. That track could also be used by Caltrain to link the East Bay with the Peninsula and South Bay. HSR/Caltrain use/will use standard tech and is cheaper to build vs BART and it's non-standard tech. Caltrain has passing tracks so you could get from Oakland/Berkeley to Palo Alto in maybe 40 minutes on an electrified baby bullet train. And you could hop on a high speed train to LA without first taking BART to SF. A fast direct connection from the inner East Bay to Silicon Valley seems a lot more valuable than a direct connection to Ocean Beach.
For Cal-train why even bother? It could just go from the South Bay up on Union Pacific's tracks to serve the East Bay. With the tech industry located in the South Bay and many of those employees living in the East Bay, this might be feasible. Only problem is, Cal-Train is notoriously unreliable.
Location: Baghdad by the Bay (San Francisco, California)
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Originally Posted by calicoastal
If they are going to invest in another tunnel, I think they should make it for HSR to Oakland or Berkeley. That track could also be used by Caltrain to link the East Bay with the Peninsula and South Bay. HSR/Caltrain use/will use standard tech and is cheaper to build vs BART and it's non-standard tech. Caltrain has passing tracks so you could get from Oakland/Berkeley to Palo Alto in maybe 40 minutes on an electrified baby bullet train. And you could hop on a high speed train to LA without first taking BART to SF. A fast direct connection from the inner East Bay to Silicon Valley seems a lot more valuable than a direct connection to Ocean Beach.
Yes, using the second tunnel as a double-duty BART/HSR tunnel is part of the plan. I really like your Caltrain idea, too. once Caltrain is electrified for the Transbay Terminal, extending it into the East Bay with the tunnel is a no brainier. Turning SFO into an actual intermodal (BART/Caltrain/air) also seems like it could be worth a look if this were to come to fruition. I have never liked the clumsy transfer overlap of the systems at the airport and the BART platform at SFO has always seemed underutilized to me.
For Cal-train why even bother? It could just go from the South Bay up on Union Pacific's tracks to serve the East Bay. With the tech industry located in the South Bay and many of those employees living in the East Bay, this might be feasible. Only problem is, Cal-Train is notoriously unreliable.
A tube/tunnel would put Sacramento, Oakland, SF, Silicon Valley, and San Jose down to SoCal along the same line for HSR (and Caltrain) - much cheaper and much more efficient. Transit times would be much faster and more direct from the East Bay to the Peninsula and Silicon Valley without having to travel around the southern tip of the Bay. Most of the big employers are not in San Jose, they are further north.
Also, you could travel from Sacramento to SF on HSR without going down to San Jose first then back up. And you wouldn't need to build HSR tracks from San Jose to Oakland, which would be a third set of rails in that corridor beside Union Pacific and BART.
I don't see Union Pacific being upgraded and electrified the way Caltrain is. You'd either build new HSR tracks or you'd build a tunnel from SF to Oakland. Caltrain makes sense to upgrade because it will serve double duty for commuters and HSR, but commuters in the East Bay use BART and not Union Pacific.
If only BART had been built using standards, it could have been integrated much more easily with existing railways.
Even if BART had been built with standard gauge tracks, it still wouldn't be compatible with regular trains. BART would still be powered by a third rail and only be designed for single level trains. Caltrain and Amtrak on the other hand use Bi-level cars that wouldn't be able to fit through the existing Transbay Tube. the DC Metro or NYC subways aren't integrated with local trains. Meaning only NYC subway and PATH trains use their own systems.
BART is effectively a subway system. It has the high frequency in the urban centers of any normal subway system. It should be treated as such. This means that people in the suburbs, like me, should pay for a more extensive Inner East Bay and SF subway system. If such a system existed, it would benefit suburbanites because we could get places without taking an AC Transit or Muni bus. Also, transfers from one BART train to another is just as easy as walking across a platform, usually. An changing levels in a subway is easier in Oakland than in the city.
If AC Transit actually did build a system like Muni Metro, it would make trips more costly and not any faster than riding a bus. This would be like LA Metro with their subway line, light rail line and express bus lines. There would be many transfers in the system that would cause people to pay higher fares and possibly keep people in the suburbs from riding BART in the first place. Rethinking BART as a subway system would put more of the city, Berkeley, and Oakland in reach of people in other parts of the Bay Area.
A tube/tunnel would put Sacramento, Oakland, SF, Silicon Valley, and San Jose down to SoCal along the same line for HSR (and Caltrain) - much cheaper and much more efficient. Transit times would be much faster and more direct from the East Bay to the Peninsula and Silicon Valley without having to travel around the southern tip of the Bay. Most of the big employers are not in San Jose, they are further north.
Also, you could travel from Sacramento to SF on HSR without going down to San Jose first then back up. And you wouldn't need to build HSR tracks from San Jose to Oakland, which would be a third set of rails in that corridor beside Union Pacific and BART.
I don't see Union Pacific being upgraded and electrified the way Caltrain is. You'd either build new HSR tracks or you'd build a tunnel from SF to Oakland. Caltrain makes sense to upgrade because it will serve double duty for commuters and HSR, but commuters in the East Bay use BART and not Union Pacific.
If only BART had been built using standards, it could have been integrated much more easily with existing railways.
Your post is kind of all over the place but I think you're saying that Cal-Train is a better option because it could be built all the way out to Sacramento. True it could, but most likely wound't. You mentioned it would be more like SoCal. Socal does not use the same trains everywhere. The area under LA's influence does with the Metrolink but that train ends in Oceanside. To get to San Diego, you then would need to take another commuter train, the Coaster. I would imagine Cal-Train going maybe as far as Fairfield, maybe Vacaville but not all the way to Sacramento.
Also, BART is a heavy-rail system so it does not matter which gauge rail they use as heavy-rail always has a separate right of way and does not interchange with other systems. Even Light-Rail doesn't do that. In San Diego, the trolley uses standard gauge and runs next to the Coaster but they don't "integrate" the systems as you mentioned. So it doesn't matter if BART uses wide gauge because as a heavy-rail system, it will retain a separate right of way.
Even if BART had been built with standard gauge tracks, it still wouldn't be compatible with regular trains. BART would still be powered by a third rail and only be designed for single level trains. Caltrain and Amtrak on the other hand use Bi-level cars that wouldn't be able to fit through the existing Transbay Tube. the DC Metro or NYC subways aren't integrated with local trains. Meaning only NYC subway and PATH trains use their own systems.
BART is effectively a subway system. It has the high frequency in the urban centers of any normal subway system. It should be treated as such. This means that people in the suburbs, like me, should pay for a more extensive Inner East Bay and SF subway system. If such a system existed, it would benefit suburbanites because we could get places without taking an AC Transit or Muni bus. Also, transfers from one BART train to another is just as easy as walking across a platform, usually. An changing levels in a subway is easier in Oakland than in the city.
If AC Transit actually did build a system like Muni Metro, it would make trips more costly and not any faster than riding a bus. This would be like LA Metro with their subway line, light rail line and express bus lines. There would be many transfers in the system that would cause people to pay higher fares and possibly keep people in the suburbs from riding BART in the first place. Rethinking BART as a subway system would put more of the city, Berkeley, and Oakland in reach of people in other parts of the Bay Area.
^^^This! Especially the last paragraph. San Diego's MTS is a shining example of what you're talking about. It opperates, the buses, light-rail (Trolley) and express buses and generally, you do have to transfer more than on AC Transit's system and it can take a lot longer to go the same distances. It also is more expensive. Fares are slightly higher but there are no transfers! You either buy a day pass which is five dollars with a Compass Card or 7 dollars without one or you pay each time you get on another bus or to the trolley. Also, keeping people in the suburbs from using the rail system is exactly the situation in SD and the trolley doesn't serve huge areas that it should IMO. That just wouldn't be a good idea for the Bay Area.
Your post is kind of all over the place but I think you're saying that Cal-Train is a better option because it could be built all the way out to Sacramento. True it could, but most likely wound't. You mentioned it would be more like SoCal. Socal does not use the same trains everywhere. The area under LA's influence does with the Metrolink but that train ends in Oceanside. To get to San Diego, you then would need to take another commuter train, the Coaster. I would imagine Cal-Train going maybe as far as Fairfield, maybe Vacaville but not all the way to Sacramento.
Also, BART is a heavy-rail system so it does not matter which gauge rail they use as heavy-rail always has a separate right of way and does not interchange with other systems. Even Light-Rail doesn't do that. In San Diego, the trolley uses standard gauge and runs next to the Coaster but they don't "integrate" the systems as you mentioned. So it doesn't matter if BART uses wide gauge because as a heavy-rail system, it will retain a separate right of way.
I never compared anything to SoCal, I think you're getting yourself confused. To clarify, I feel we should build a tunnel from SF to Oakland for blended HSR/Caltrain instead of another tunnel for BART. Reasons are:
1) HSR stop in Oakland without laying a third set of tracks down the East Bay to San Jose
2) Potential for a direct HSR route between Sacramento and SF in the future, bypassing San Jose
3) Direct train service (Caltrain) from the East Bay to Peninsula/Silicon Valley
4) Adds a standard gauge rail tunnel to our infrastructure supporting multiple purposes instead of BART-only (e.g. Caltrain, HSR and freight)
Last edited by calicoastal; 01-25-2015 at 06:02 PM..
I never compared anything to SoCal, I think you're getting yourself confused. To clarify, I feel we should build a tunnel from SF to Oakland for blended HSR/Caltrain instead of another tunnel for BART. Reasons are:
1) HSR stop in Oakland without laying a third set of tracks down the East Bay to San Jose
2) Potential for a direct HSR route between Sacramento and SF in the future
3) Direct Caltrain service from the East Bay to Peninsula/Silicon Valley
4) Adds a standard gauge rail tunnel to our infrastructure supporting multiple track systems instead of BART-only
Sorry, I crossed referenced something.
Quote:
1) HSR stop in Oakland without laying a third set of tracks down the East Bay to San Jose
A third set of track wouldn't necessarily be needed as commuter trains frequently share tracks with other trains. I see your point though.
Quote:
2) Potential for a direct HSR route between Sacramento and SF in the future
That would be nice.
Quote:
3) Direct Caltrain service from the East Bay to Peninsula/Silicon Valley
Yeah I don't see this happening. Any future tubes traversing under the bay will be for either heavy-rail (BART) or a future light-rail but...
Quote:
4) Adds a standard gauge rail tunnel to our infrastructure supporting multiple track systems instead of BART-only
[/quote]this won't happen. You will not have a light-rail type thing sharing a track with a standard train, or a HSR etc. If this is what you mean.
Also SFMTA probably thinks it can build a new metro tunnel that will provide better service than BART could.
Doubtful. At best, that would be a sophomoric retort. The fact that SFMTA keeps pushing for this Bus Rapid Transit thing indicates they have no interest in expanding rail service to Geary. Plus, Muni doesn't have a habit of building tunnels. Remember, the Market Street subway merely piggybacked off of BART, it wasn't an innovation on Muni's part at all.
Had it not been for BART, we'd be riding Bredas on top of Market Street, with the street painted red.
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