Passenger Trains > San Jose Mercury News Article on HSR Opportunities

Good article today on CA HSR and Caltrain upgrades:

http://www.mercurynews.com/localnewsheadlines/ci_11127065

"In the Bay Area, the plan calls for running trains at up to 125 mph along the existing CalTrain corridor between San Francisco's Transbay Terminal and San Jose's Diridon Station — a 30-minute ride. Two new tracks would be added alongside the two CalTrain tracks, and stations would be located in Redwood City or Palo Alto and at San Francisco International Airport."

In that case, we can call this section Acela California, or California Metroliner, which suits me just fine. Not sure how they are going to work out a direct stop to the airport. BART already goes there.

I was concerned that an intermediate stop between San Francisco and San Jose would defeat the purpose of high speed running, but at only 125 mph track speed, it probably doesn't matter. If JPB is still interested in the Dumbarton Corridor, Redwood City makes more sense, to help people in the Fremont/Newark/Union City area make the connection. Also, Redwood City is more in the middle of SFO and SJC than Palo Alto is.

cchan006 Wrote:
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> In that case, we can call this section Acela
> California, or California Metroliner, which suits
> me just fine. Not sure how they are going to work
> out a direct stop to the airport.

Millbrae.

> I was concerned that an intermediate stop between
> San Francisco and San Jose would defeat the
> purpose of high speed running, but at only 125 mph
> track speed, it probably doesn't matter.

With two tracks in each direction, the express HSR trains would stick to the express tracks and the semi-express/local HSR trains could bounce back and forth between the Caltrain local tracks and the HSR express tracks as they accelerate/decelerate. That's what would make sense, anyway.

For those particularly interested in the SF-SJ corridor, there is a great new blog that considers all the ROW and station issues for HSR implementation along the peninsula:

http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/

PSurfliner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For those particularly interested in the SF-SJ
> corridor, there is a great new blog that considers
> all the ROW and station issues for HSR
> implementation along the peninsula:
>
> http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/

As a blog, I'm impressed. No irrational or agenda-laden rantings there.

Millbrae "intermodal" station was Quentin Kopp's baby, and nearby connector freeway I-380 (between 280 and 101) bears his name, if that's relevant. So it's natural if Kopp wants HSR to stop in Millbrae to serve the airport, although the Mercury article should have been more specific and mentioned Millbrae.

The blog is critical of the shortsightedness of the Millbrae station layout, which makes good reading. Not sure if extra money should be spent to accomodate HSR there, since BART and Caltrain already serve Millbrae. One thing I'd like to see in the future is a dedicated BART train set that shuttles between SFO and Millbrae when the ridership numbers justify it, although that's off topic.

I haven't read the blog yet, but running HSR into Milbrae or even San Jose makes an amount of sense. The Real Estate deals in The City are incredible, that money could build a lot of track and hang a lot of wire. I'll try to get to the blog this weekend, lots of stories and comparisons to be made I'm sure.