So should we expect our do nothing congress to act or is this just another good idea that goes down in flames because of petty partisan politics?

Wowwowowowow!

The electrification project is 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS!

Caltrain only services about 60,000 people on a weekday.
That comes out to be $25,000 per rider!

And what benefit will the community receive? At peak commuting times, they can run approximately one additional train per hour. Maybe two more... So all of our neighbors will be enjoying even more whistle blowing. More frequency means more accidents--added bonus!

The VTA bus and related transit projects are going to cost a lot less, service a lot more people and reduce costs. We should be prioritize our budget requests on those--not some superficial enhancement on a "good enough" service.

@What the What?

Did you deliberately ignore the part about *VASTLY* reduced emissions?

CalTrain gets the nod because they have proven themselves as a people mover that people want to take.
VTA has proven they can only make future promises about their future plans...promises that get broken "Will be..." "Going to be..."
In reality they have the longest list of concurrent big money failures of any organization. We have seen what VTA can (can't) do. Failed light rail and an inept attempt at the now failed BRT in SJ have all been well documented.

I agree it's a lot of money, but Caltrain farebox recovery is actually pretty good-- Web Link

It's also worth mentioning that a major part of this project is to remove "at-grade" crossings along the corridor. This will:
* Improve traffic at the intersections, since cars won't compete with Caltrain
* Reduce noise, since a lot of the whistleblowing is required at intersections
* Allow Caltrain to schedule more trains

Meanwhile, the VTA has allocated the vast majority of their funding towards the South Bay BART extension. If you want to see better VTA service (and I sure do) that is a good place to start raising questions.

The numbers in this article seem suspect. approx 59,000 people carried in 92 cars amounts to more that 640 people per car.

@rbf:

Each of the five- or six-car sets makes multiple trips per day. The 640 people per car is split between multiple trips.

Furthermore, people get on/off at different locations. Not everyone rides the length of the entire line. I get on a Mountain View, get off at Palo Alto. Someone else gets on at Redwood City, gets off at San Mateo. That's two passengers for the same car.

I don't like infrastructure improvements! Public transportation is too expensive! waaah!

*gets in car*

Why is there so much traffic??? waaah!

What the What said, "Caltrain only services about 60,000 people on a weekday.
That comes out to be $25,000 per rider!"

Only if you insist on all the riders that one day paying the full cost.

If you spread the cost over all the rides in 25 years (because we are talking about a capital improvement, after all), the cost per ride becomes more like $7.

Still high compared to the existing fares, and a good example of why VTA has to be subsidized.

Caltrain needs to be electrified to reduce diesel pollution in 'hoods near the tracks and to increase capacity. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown's high speed rail con men are dangling this $$$ improvement to our grossly incompetent VTA to try to get them to approve HSR thru Santa Clara County. If we can bypass Gov Brown and his HSR henchmen to get this funding, it will be far more difficult for the VTA to justify HSR in Northern California once Caltrain is electrified. I say "Go for the money" as long as absolutely NO HSR strings are attached by our "Traitor and Crook In Chief" OBama and his Socialist minions.

For those of you who disagree, remember the phrase "All politics is local." I should charge you for this lesson in real politics.

Based on the response above that called democrats, "commies", it is clear that the intelligent side of the argument is pro-VTA.

It's like arguing climate change science to these same set of, uh, citizens. Never going to convince them...

VTA is the best? The best at what? Please specify the project.
When I look at all the VTA projects that I can think of, they all have failed to do anything except waste vast amounts of our money. Oh sure, the pay level for their managers is impressive, but that does nothing for the rest of us.

What project in the past 10 years does the VTA consider a "Win" and why.

If this money will in fact cover the cost of removing all of the rail/street intersections it has my support. i do not agree that electrification solves as many problems as it brings, however. The power generated has to burn fuel somewhere - often including power purchased from a grid that includes coal burning power plants. Electric trains increase the amount of ozone locally, something we do not need. While diesel engines are dirty/noisy/smelly, the trade off isn't perfect. A "scrubbed" diesel may be better than all of those ugly wires...

Concerning the cost per rider, the total project cost is $1.76 billion.

Caltrain handles about 17 million riders per year (the Saturday and Sunday ridership is considerably smaller). If you spread the cost over one year, it would be about $100 per rider (I'm rounding).

However, if you spread that number over 25 years, that's really about $4 per rider. Of course, if ridership increases, that cost per rider would decrease over that 25 year period.

Seems like all we have are NAYSAYERS!!! TOO MUCH MONEY! OZONE ISSUES! ELECTRICAL GRID ISSUES!!! NOT ENOUGH RIDERS!!! TOO MANY RIDERS!!! ETCETERA!!!! I say electrify Caltrain as we certainly need GRADE SEPARATION...especially at Rengstorff @ Central Expressway!!! That is my most hated intersection in our fair city. And people don't want progress!!! What do these naysayers want??? To wait another 100 years or so until we get utter GRIDLOCK. And then the naysayers will want to wait another 100 years...

I'm so glad most people keep control of their caps, for the most part anyway. It's too hard to read when they don't. I got to the point of the shouting before I stopped reading the above post, but regarding naysayers,

It's not naysayers, really, it's engineering geeks who have personalities that like to point out any issue or possible issue. There are many many personalities like that, esp in this area. All you need to do is say "X" is a great idea and someone will come up and say "Oh yah, well what about ..." and begin to reference something of questionable relevance, just because they think or want people to think that they are the real thinker, the real experts, not the actual experts.

Good to see there's a least some funding for Caltrain electrification that's NOT attached to high-speed rail (HSR). Such an upgrade is needed because diesel is an outdated, high-pollution fuel for public transit. Electric trains are also smoother, quieter and thus more enjoyable than those based on diesel.

Moreover, this funding should add fuel (no pun intended) to the growing opposition to HSR, which is a shameless, senseless money-grab by a legion of unscrupulous consultants and contractors.

Viva Caltrain! Take a hike, HSR!