and Union Pacific. Why are they not in the agreement? The answer is a question the rest of the signatories will not ask. Thus 2019 is a lie the rest of the signatories will not admit.

Jay Tulock, Vacaville

"Electrification will bring a faster, cleaner, quieter, more efficient train service, with more frequent service to more stations. The result would be an increase in riders and an increase in revenue"

I garantee none of these things will happen. We will end up with a slower, noisier, less efficient train service.

I have a friend who lives near a BART station. Those trains are very noisy.

And then they mix the high speed rail travesty into the mix. Anything related to that mess isn't good for the tax payers.

It is my understanding that this may be illegal. The bonds for HSR may not be diverted to Caltrain. Smart move--get voters to approve bonds for a specific project, then divert the funds. Bait and switch.

Otto, BART's high noise level is due to a poor design choice for their rolling stock (ie. cars). Caltrains vehicles don't have that problem, as you can tell by listening to a Caltrain. The bulk of the noise comes from the Diesel engine, not from track squeal. As such, electrified Caltrain will reduce noise, unless they for some reason switch to rolling stock with fixed axle flat wheels, which is unlikely.

Hopefully BART's new rolling stock will also eliminate this problem for them and BART will become nice and quiet too.

@Zoo: "The bulk of the noise comes from the Diesel engine"

Actually, from my perspective, the bulk of the noise comes from the horn. The noise from the diesel engine dissipates rapidly with distance, but the horn seems to propagate a lot further. We live 2 blocks from the Mountain View Caltrain stration. At that distance, the engine noise is a faint rumble that's easy to ignore. Not so with the horn.

I don't see the horn going away with an electrified Caltrain. It's required by regulation because the tracks cross through other rights-of-way used by other vehicles and pedestrians.

BART is notoriously bad with keeping up with track grinding, which is especially important on systems like BART with very homogeneous trains and train traffic, largely in tunnels or on viaducts, to keep the rail head smooth and passing trains quiet. The conversation-precluding howl BART suffers in many of its subway tunnels is an example of what happens when you fall way behind on rail grinding. BART has talked up purchasing one or two new rail grinders over the past years ... but it seems they're still not doing enough grinding frequently enough to keep the wheel/rail interface as quiet as it should be.

I like electrification but wish that all roads that cross trhe tracks would be overpasses or underpasses.