Grade separations exist to make drivers lives modestly easier.

Caltrain should spend its money on making riders lives much better.

For example,

$8Billion could be used to buy enough trainsets to offer service every 10 minutes.

$8Billion would be money enough to connect Caltrain to Bart in Fremont.

$8Billion would be enough to electrify caltrain down to gilroy and maybe even to Monterey.

Grade separations dhould be paid with highway money which is easy to get -- not rail or transit money which is much, much harder.

I'm skeptical about the calculations for expected ridership - they seem way to high. Perhaps we could use light rail as an example of failed projections for ridership.

Dumping more money into archaic technology like rail seems like a bad idea. Autonomous vehicles and remote working will likely change the needs for rail in the next 5-10 years.

Beware of Palo Alto pushing the impacts off to Mountain View
At best the impacts of all kinds physical, visual, and funding should each be equally shared.

I agree with the above comment that work from home will dramatically cut the needs for most commutes.

I also think High Speed Rail up the the peninsula will never happen.

The Federal Government is talking about dropping its support of CA High Speed Rail (probably because we are Democrats, not for any objection to the idea), so I agree with Rodger that HSR is unlikely.

As for the chances that "[a]utonomous vehicles and remote working will likely change the needs for rail in the next 5-10 years", I'm not sure I agree; but they are up-coming alternatives.

Electrification of the system will not only allow for more frequent train service, it will also mean faster train service, any maybe more cars per train. Even if the "'baseline' scenario" ridership estimate (161,000 daily riders) is high, the cost of electrification and new train systems may still be justified, even without HSR.

Light rail projections vs light rail actual daily riders, however, show that predicting transportation usage has a poor track record. (Sorry, I could not resist the pun.)