they changed this in southern california for the surfliner and it was a huge impact. really nice to not hear the train horn. then they added speakers that play fake train sounds at grade crossings… why

Why would a train blow its horn unless there is a chance of impact?

Trains in Switzerland also have very loud horns and if they are inside the train station this can be extremely loud. However you will only ever hear them when for example some fool jumps the tracks or something that can be live threatening.

On construction sites generally they use a separate signaling System that isn't as loud but loud enough for the workers to hear. That is also temporary.

I lived in Menlo Park about .75 miles from the rails and I’d get woken up still. It’s so unbelievably dumb and annoying

The bay area already had multiple electric trains for quite some time, I think from the 1800s and at scale in the 1920s. I think the train that ran on the lower deck of the bay bridge (before it was switched to car traffic) was also electric as were many other railroads around california. But it was removed after WWII since there was such a rapid switch to personally owned cars. bart is electric, and the muni streetcars (both have been that way for a while).

Prior to the Caltrain electrification, BART existed and it's pretty much a suburban rail system. Just served a different part of the Bay Area.

It does even read like an article from the 1920s! Still, better late than never!

Los Angeles had an extensive electric train system operated by Pacific Electric in the 1920s, but eventually they were all removed to improve motor traffic, and because the owners sold all of the real estate that the Red Cars made more attractive. This article feels like experiencing the past to me.

And they still make noise like in the 1920s with their silly horns. I was once visiting a friend who lived near those housing developments that are all along the Caltrain tracks in the South Bay. I almost lost my hearing. It was insane. No way could I live like that or even try to sleep. Some things in America are truly shocking.

I wonder how many "environmental studies" they had to do to conclude that electric trains are better then diesel

Modern tech means a lot of very rich people who live in a particular city along the Caltrain route who have lost the wonder in their life that is trains. No matter, they don't have their station anymore and everyone else gets the electric trains to enjoy.

True, and for another thought: I'm here doing my part for the environment, recycling, reducing packaging, and saving emissions where I can, and people in the first world of first worlds haven't even been using electric trains this whole time?!?

San Francisco airport is pretty decent. I’ve been flying out of it for decades and it’s definitely improved over that time: access, food, wifi, other basic amenities. Even security checks are faster than most other airports I travel through.

I didn’t realize jugaad had such a strong opposite!

According to rumor the AEM-7s were fried during testing due to a misconfiguration.

I agree that it's too soon to call but the article does say that ridership is above pre-covid levels:

> The trains have also surpassed pre-COVID-19 ridership levels, with weekends becoming increasingly popular. Saturday ridership has increased 169%, and Sunday ridership has increased 142% since last October, the release said.

every mode of transit along commute routes in the bay (rail to downtown, freeways to southbay) seems to be at a 4 year high in terms of utilization

Seems also important to consider the positive impacts?

- traffic reduction - emissions reduction - quality of life / time recovery of train vs driving - socialization of society

That’s off the top of my head.

Not saying those justify anything however costs are not the only factor.

1. Before the pandemic, farebox recovery was 73%, one of the highest in the country. Electrified, it probably would have gone even higher since at least some people avoided the train because it was too crowded at rush hour. Unfortunately it could take over a decade to return to that point if ever, but it shows that Caltrain can be fairly efficient given enough ridership.

2. There have been ongoing efforts to improve equity, including Go passes for students and low-income workers. Clipper START offers 50% off for low-income riders, youths can ride for $2/day now. Side note: subsidies and programs like this decrease farebox recovery ratios, which is why transit covering its own costs is not necessarily the end goal. In fact, the decline of commuting for tech/knowledge workers (many who now work hybrid or fully remote) has meant that less-privileged workers have started making up a larger share of Caltrain ridership.

3. The new electric trains are a lot quieter. There's ongoing, long-term projects to grade separate the remaining at-grade crossings (of the 113 crossings, 41 still need to be separated).

4. Arguably, the stations were directly responsible for the land being so valuable. Many peninsula downtowns and sometimes entire cities were built around the train stations, 100-150 years ago. Pre-pandemic, some of the most expensive apartments were the ones near the train station. Sure most of them also had the benefit of being close to downtown restaurants, but there were also big developments around Lawrence station which has basically zero local services aside from the Costco and the train station.

Of course this was mostly in the past, but downtown areas continue to be congested and the only way we can keep building high-density housing is to have good public transit. In the long run, the train provide immense benefits to the cities that host them and removing it would be shortsighted.

Should roads exist at all, given that the gas tax doesn't cover the costs of building and maintaining roads?

And furthermore since Bay Area roads are not toll roads, the equivalent of farebox recovery ratio is zero, since road users don't need to pay to drive on the road.

If you are only looking at how profitable infrastructure is on the short term and only on 1st order effects you'll quickly realise you should never build it. That goes for power plants, roads, trains, subways, electrical conduits, and any other major project requiring a lot of initial investment.

It's just a stupid way to analyse infrastructure.

I just think they're neat.

It wasn't a subsidy so much as it was an exchange of electrification for state trackage rights.

Have you considered that the real estate is valuable because there's a commuter train across the street?

iirc there are Japanese railroads that recoup their costs by owning real estate that appreciates in value once a train exists. In Los Angeles the great cable car conspiracy was kind of the opposite, real estate developers built a train to make the suburbs appealing, and then once all the property was sold there was no reason to maintain the trains so they were scrapped, bait and switch really