This commuter rail agency just went electric

A California commuter rail agency just started replacing its diesel trains with electric ones along a 51-mile stretch between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, in a move that is expected to immediately make the trip faster and easier for customers while paving the way for high-speed rail in the future.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—two fixtures of the Bay Area political scene—were among the dignitaries on hand Sunday in San Francisco to mark the beginning of electric service by Caltrain.

“We love to say about California, we love to say about San Francisco: The future happens here first,” Newsom said at the event. “This is the most transformative project of its type in a generation.”

Transportation experts also said Caltrain’s switch from diesel to electric power is significant, even beyond northern California.

“It’s a wonderful example for the rest of the country, quite frankly,” said Yonah Freemark, a principal research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. “The benefits of electrification are quite remarkable. It speeds services, it reduces maintenance expenses and it improves the environment. When you put those things together, it’s a win-win for travelers and the public.”

The quicker speeds are especially noteworthy, said Eric Goldwyn, a transportation and land use professor and the program director at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. On an express route, Caltrain’s diesel trains serve seven stations in 1 hour and 5 minutes. On the same route, the electric trains will serve 11 stations in 59 minutes along the same route. (Caltrain posted a video on social media showing the drastic difference in acceleration between the two kinds of trains.)

“Quicker travel times mean more passengers. We need to look at every single way to bring passengers onto intercity passenger rail, and electrification should be the first thing people should be looking at because diesel is not cutting it,” Goldwyn said. Electrifying lines between major cities could be a first step to improving service, which would have immediate benefits but wouldn’t be as costly as building entirely new high-speed rail lines, he said.

Without getting faster, Goldwyn explained, passenger rail often can’t compete with automobiles. “That’s an important goal for these intercity services: Are we competitive with the automobile? Caltrain has put its flag in the sand and said, ‘We are here to compete.’”

Caltrain introduced the first electric trains this week, but it will gradually bring a total of 19 new trains into service through September. The electric trains will allow Caltrain to increase service throughout the region. Half of the agency’s 31 stations will get trains every 15 to 20 minutes during peak hours. And all of the stations that are open on the weekends will get trains every 30 minutes instead of every hour with the diesel trains.

Once onboard, customers will have Wi-Fi access, power outlets and new digital displays on the new trains.

“Everyone told me this train was quieter. Before I rode on it, I thought, ‘Sure, it’s quieter, but it’s still a train,’” said Dan Lieberman, a spokesperson for Caltrain. “But it’s absurdly quiet. It is like riding to work on a 345-ton whisper.”

The trains draw power from 10 traction power facilities throughout the region, with the primary ones in South San Francisco and San Jose. The power supplies should be able to keep trains running even in extreme circumstances like earthquakes. Almost all of the energy supplying the trains is from renewable resources, Lieberman said. Switching to electric power is expected to cut carbon dioxide pollution by 250,000 metric tons a year, equivalent to the pollution from 55,000 cars on the road.

Construction began on the $2.4 billion project in 2017, but the project came in two years behind schedule and $462 million more expensive than originally anticipated. California state and local governments spent $1.3 billion toward the project, including more than $700 million from the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The federal government spent nearly $1.1 billion as well.

A Link to High-Speed Rail

Trains first serviced the route that Caltrain currently uses 160 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was president. But the introduction of overhead power to the San Francisco Peninsula line that fuel Caltrain’s new electric trains is one of the first tangible steps in the region to prepare it for high-speed rail service.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority is building the first section of a line that is designed to connect downtown Los Angeles with downtown San Francisco with trains traveling 220 mph. The 119-mile segment that is currently under construction is farther south of the Bay Area, in the Central Valley.

Eventually, the plan is to connect the Central Valley segment with San Jose, and from there, the high-speed rail lines would use the same right-of-way as Caltrain. Future high-speed rail trains will run among and alongside Caltrain on a “blended corridor” using the San Francisco Peninsula line tracks that exist today, according to officials from the high-speed rail authority.

The new trains won’t need new tracks, but they will need other improvements to run on the Caltrain corridor. That includes modifications of existing stations in San Jose and Millbrae, a new maintenance facility in Brisbane, and speed and safety upgrades that will allow trains to reach a maximum speed of 110 mph, instead of 79 mph. (Caltrains’ new trains are capable of reaching 110 mph.)

The high-speed rail agency also plans on electrifying the rest of the Caltrain corridor between San Jose and Gilroy, about 30 miles to the south. Caltrain did not include that portion in its electrification project because its trains run on Union Pacific tracks there. (The high-speed rail agency is in negotiations with the freight railroad to eventually electrify and modernize that segment.)

Caltrain plans to buy battery-powered trains in the coming years to service the Gilroy segment, but in the meantime, passengers heading south of San Jose will have to switch trains at the station there.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Caltrain line, the agency received a pledge of $3.4 billion from the federal government in May to extend the commuter rail line two miles into the heart of downtown San Francisco—most of that underground. That would allow trains to service the Salesforce Transit Center a few blocks from Market Street. Organizers hope the station will host high-speed rail service and become the “Grand Central Station of the West.”

Of course, electric trains make the tunneling project more feasible, because it eliminates the need for ventilation of diesel exhaust.

Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor also uses electric power, in part because that allows its trains to travel underground through Manhattan. Electric power also makes it possible for trains to travel at higher speeds because they don’t have to carry their own fuel.

This summer, though, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit have experienced several failures of their overhead power wires, although those problems appear to be related to old equipment and a system that doesn’t allow operators to change the tension of the overhead wires to adjust to temperature changes.

For Caltrain, the link to California’s high-speed rail project helped supply the money and the political will to make the switch to electric power.

But the Urban Institute’s Freemark said transit agencies in other wealthier areas with high ridership numbers such as Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles could also look for ways to make the transition to electric power. They might be able to figure out how to do it cheaper than Caltrain did, Freemark added.

But one obstacle that could hinder those efforts is the fact that almost all commuter rail lines and intercity rail services use freight rail tracks, unlike Caltrain, which owns most of the track it operates on.

It is possible to build an electric system with overhead catenaries that would still allow double-stacked freight trains to pass underneath, said NYU’s Goldwyn.

“Freight railroads don’t necessarily want to do this because it’s another thing to maintain and could cause problems, but it’s not impossible,” he said. “It’s a doable thing, and it’s exciting. Hopefully the Caltrain project will build some momentum to reimagine what our rail networks can look like, because doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result, that just doesn’t work.”