SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA: Transit/Transportation News

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by fflint

Yeah, we're clearly not going to get that particular car.

Count your blessings. That's got to be one of the ugliest things rolling in the western hemisphere.

[fflint]

Muni expects service disruptions during evening commute

Michael Cabanatuan, Henry K. Lee and Evan Sernoffsky
sfgate.com
Monday, June 2, 2014


The turnaround for the Powell Street cable car line was strangely quiet Monday June 2, 2014. Massive delays on the MUNI system in San Francisco, Calif. resulted when many drivers called in sick to protest a labor contract problem. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Muni plans to concentrate most of its service downtown Monday evening, directing transit traffic out to the city's western residential neighborhoods and regional transit connections, a spokesman for the Municipal Transportation Agency said.

'We're focusing on getting people out of downtown," said Paul Rose, an MTA spokesman.

A sickout by Muni workers over a labor contract caused major service disruptions Monday morning, with cable car service canceled, express buses converted to locals and about two-thirds of coaches, trolleys and trains not making it onto the streets.

Muni expects the same level of disruption as it experienced during Monday morning's commute.
....
Paul Rose, a Muni spokesman, said 400 of the 600 Muni vehicles that are normally on the streets were not in service. Some riders reported waiting more than an hour for a bus to show up.

All express and limited buses are stopping at every stop. There is no cable car service, but those lines are being supplemented by limited shuttle-bus service, the agency said.

BART is honoring Muni fare in San Francisco and Daly City, Muni officials said. Several taxi companies reported being inundated with calls.

The sickout comes amid displeasure over a proposed labor agreement that was the subject of a vote Friday by Muni operators.
....
Muni workers, like all San Francisco city employees, are prohibited from striking. Under a law approved by voters in 2010, if the union rejects the contract, the two sides go before an arbitrator who cannot rule against Muni management's proposals unless the union proves its interests outweigh "the public interest in efficient and reliable transit."
....
Commuters expressed frustrations over the disruption Monday.

"I've been here an hour, and I'm getting cold out here," Layla Mohammed, 49, said as she waited for a 14-Mission bus at Mission and Sixth streets. "I just want to go home."
....

[CharlesCO]

Random, likely ill-informed thought of the day: Why aren't there Richmond-San Francisco/Daly City/Millbrae trains at nights and weekends? Whenever I take a Pittsburg Baypoint train from SF on any night of the week after 8pm or whenever the Richmond trains end or on weekends, the train is completely stuffed from Powell to 19th Street, where half the train gets off and transfers to what is probably an even more stuffed Richmond train. I'm not sure if Fremont-bound passengers have the same experience, but from my casual, completely non-quantitative observation, it seems like there's enough night and weekend traffic between SF and Richmond to warrant more service than what already exists.

[rawocd]

I'm not sure the current rationale, but I know that originally the Richmond - Daly City line didn't exist when BART opened. It wasn't until 4 years later in 1976 that direct trains ran from the city to Richmond, and even then it seems like it was a rush hour only service. In 1980, it expanded to 43 trains a day. (See BART CHRONOLOGY, available at: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15358523...7---March-2009 )

With the recent extension of one more hour of direct service, it looks like BART is slowly increasing service as funding becomes available. I'd guess the reason we don't have direct trains now is more inertia and funding than demand and logic.

Edit: Just found this: http://511contracosta.org/expanding-...millbrae-line/ It seems that a rolling stock shortage is preventing further service. I'm not quite sure how maintenance needs prevent further service, unless BART is currently using trains during rush hour that otherwise wouldn't be in service, and needs to have a certain number of them back in the yard for maintenance with enough time to keep the whole fleet up to repair.

[CharlesCO]

Thanks for that. That makes a lot of sense. I suppose staffing might also be a concern considering how much those train operators are paid. I would speculate that staffing could be just as much of a factor, if not more so, than maintenance. It's a similar rationale for why there isn't overnight service at least on weekends.

With that said, I also hope that when the new fleet comes, there will be enough new trains and/or they keep some of the old trains in better condition to expand service on the Richmond-Peninsula line, or more turn back trains to Concord/Montgomery/24th Street.

That timeline is also quite a resource. There are a lot of interesting nuggets of information in there. Thanks for sharing.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by CharlesCO

Thanks for that. That makes a lot of sense. I suppose staffing might also be a concern considering how much those train operators are paid. I would speculate that staffing could be just as much of a factor, if not more so, than maintenance. It's a similar rationale for why there isn't overnight service at least on weekends.

With that said, I also hope that when the new fleet comes, there will be enough new trains and/or they keep some of the old trains in better condition to expand service on the Richmond-Peninsula line, or more turn back trains to Concord/Montgomery/24th Street.

That timeline is also quite a resource. There are a lot of interesting nuggets of information in there. Thanks for sharing.

BART has indicated it will indeed keep some of the older trains even as the new stock is rolled out. This is very good news.

Turnbacks are not currently possible at Montgomery or 24th. On the west side of the Bay, you've got turnback capability at Daly City, SFO, and Millbrae. Anywhere else will completely mess up regular service. In the future they might be change that, but it would be extremely difficult and costly to install switching tracks in the tunnels.

[CharlesCO]

That is excellent news.

Perhaps I didn't use the correct term. What I meant was more of the extra peak hour trains on the Pittsburg/SFO/Millbrae line that start only at Concord (or sometimes Pleasant Hill) and go to Montgomery or Daly City in the morning, as well as the evening ones that only go to 24th Street and back. It must be possible because they already exist. I'd just like to see more of them — trains that boost frequency and concentrate on serving primarily the core network.

[fflint]

If any trains only go to Montgomery and then turn around, then I don't know about it. There are switching tracks at Balboa, Daily City and Milbrae and the Airport station is front in, back out.

[CharlesCO]

Yes, there are four early trains on weekday mornings that only go to Montgomery. They're in the schedule (as well as the additional Daly City-bound and 24th Street-bound trains):

http://www.bart.gov/schedules/byline...ate=06/09/2014

I've always seen them listed, though I've never taken one and wait for a Daly City or SFO train instead because I usually have to go farther than Montgomery. I have taken the 24th Street trains before, though never all the way to 24th to see what they actually do in order to turn around. There seem to be quite a few BART employees who upload train arrival videos onto YouTube; one of them gave this explanation w/r/t a 24th Street train:

It turns around at 24th St. Mission's Platform 1, the same side where Daly City, San Francisco Airport and Millbrae trains arrive. The 24th Street train stays there for a couple minutes, then switches tracks upon departure from the station back toward the four Downtown San Francisco stops.

I don't see how that would be any different for the Montgomery trains. So I guess the train just sits at the platform for a while, the train operator must move to the cab at the other end, and the train then departs from platform 1 and switches track in time to arrive on platform 2 at the next station. I suppose it's not as nice and clean as having an extra switching track or platform, but it gets the job done. It adds more frequency, and it's probably a better use of rolling stock to serve the core stations rather than wasting time going to Pittsburg or SFO/Millbrae where the ridership is light anyway.

[fflint]

Well, I stand corrected.

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by rawocd

I'm not sure the current rationale, but I know that originally the Richmond - Daly City line didn't exist when BART opened. It wasn't until 4 years later in 1976 that direct trains ran from the city to Richmond, and even then it seems like it was a rush hour only service. In 1980, it expanded to 43 trains a day. (See BART CHRONOLOGY, available at: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15358523...7---March-2009 )

With the recent extension of one more hour of direct service, it looks like BART is slowly increasing service as funding becomes available. I'd guess the reason we don't have direct trains now is more inertia and funding than demand and logic.

Edit: Just found this: http://511contracosta.org/expanding-...millbrae-line/ It seems that a rolling stock shortage is preventing further service. I'm not quite sure how maintenance needs prevent further service, unless BART is currently using trains during rush hour that otherwise wouldn't be in service, and needs to have a certain number of them back in the yard for maintenance with enough time to keep the whole fleet up to repair.

Other nations with even less transportation dollars to spare, such as Argentina, have developed a vibrant cottage industry rebuilding old passenger rail cars.

While this is a significant step up in complexity from in house abilities, working to develop a local network of machining, and electrical component assembly companies is a good idea.

Most of the older equipment needs to be rebuilt, and, there are US companies that are capable of doing rebuilds right now, but, granted, the companies are small.

Example: United Streetcar, a subsidiary of Oregon Iron Works, now has the capacity to integrate world sourced components in new packaging.

An industry can be built just by sourcing rebuilding locally.

This is the type of job creation that the Country needs.*

(Final note: in 1950 or even as late as 1975 highly advanced (for their time) machining and fabricating was done on a large scale in the Bay Area.)

*and a Senator who will "protect" those industries from international lobbyists.

[CharlesCO]

This might interest you then, Wizened. This was in the Examiner yesterday — in order to keep their fleet in service, BART sometimes even has to manufacture replacement parts in-house because they're not available elsewhere. Say what you will about the state of the current cars and years of deferred expenses, but it is pretty impressive that the aging fleet is utilized so highly on a daily basis (more than any other major transit agency in the US) and maintains a high reliability rate. Around 90% of BART's fleet is in service everyday — compare that to New York MTA's ~50%. Seeing that BART's in-house maintenance facility can keep even the original trains from over 40 years ago running, BART seems to have maintenance of older cars down.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancis...nt?oid=2808848

Managing an aging fleet of trains, BART has sometimes been tasked with manufacturing its own replacements for obsolete parts on trains and even occasionally resorted to buying hard-to-find components on eBay, according to transit agency officials.

BART Assistant Chief Mechanical Officer David Hardt said the agency has been forced to reverse engineer train parts that have been out of production for years, and he credits BART maintenance workers with finding innovative solutions that have made some of the old systems more reliable than when they were new. The agency recently touched on maintenance issues during a tour of the maintenance yard near the Colma BART station.

Hardt said the agency's resourcefulness is necessary because it operates the oldest fleet of its kind. The trains were built in the 1970s and '80s, and they still use onboard computers from that era to oversee their brakes, propulsion and automatic train control systems. In many cases, the chips, motherboards and related components have been abandoned by their original manufacturers, Hardt noted. On a few occasions, the agency has been forced to purchase such replacement parts on eBay, he added.

Noting that the biggest threats to components are heat, vibration and moisture, Hardt recalled how one BART employee suggested filtering the air used to cool the trains' motor control boxes. After technicians added air filters similar to those used on car engines, it provided cleaner air to the system that has allowed the equipment to work longer without needing repairs, Hardt said.

BART employees have also assisted in addressing maintenance issues by being vigilant and notifying supervisors at the first sign of mechanical trouble, Hardt said.

....

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by CharlesCO

This might interest you then, Wizened. This was in the Examiner yesterday — in order to keep their fleet in service, BART sometimes even has to manufacture replacement parts in-house because they're not available elsewhere. Say what you will about the state of the current cars and years of deferred expenses, but it is pretty impressive that the aging fleet is utilized so highly on a daily basis (more than any other major transit agency in the US) and maintains a high reliability rate. Around 90% of BART's fleet is in service everyday — compare that to New York MTA's ~50%. Seeing that BART's in-house maintenance facility can keep even the original trains from over 40 years ago running, BART seems to have maintenance of older cars down.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancis...nt?oid=2808848

This is a very good thing, and, money needs to be put into building on their skill set in private industry. Not a lot of money, but enough to get 20 or 30 of the "old timers" to split off and make their own businesses.

Many at the shop, I suspect, think with their hands. They know the equipment, and, teaching them how new parts work together would not take long (some of them would be taking systems down to component parts within a day or two of ((terribly boring)) computer based training.)

This is the type of skillset that can incubate a lot of business, IMO, in 2014.

(Besides the old BART car design still looks modern.)

[fflint]

KGO 7 is reporting the SFMTA has completed boring the tunnels for the Central Subway today. Slow but steady progress for the newest line of what is already the nation's busiest light rail system!

[k1052]

Residents cheer City Council's decision to discontinue Larkspur SMART Station Area Plan

Residents cheer City Council's decision to discontinue Larkspur SMART Station Area Plan
City Council scraps housing-business development plan near SMART station

By Megan Hansen

mhansen@marinij.com @HansenMegan on Twitter
Posted: 06/18/2014 09:34:27 PM PDT

In what members of the public called a historic move, the Larkspur City Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to discontinue a plan that would have concentrated future housing and business development near the proposed Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit station in Larkspur.

Nice job Larkspur...way to leverage the SMART investment. The red t-shirts are snappy though.

[northbay]

Speaking of SMART, here is the Cotati Station. Almost done, landscaping and finishing touches:

[shadowbat2]

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...ay-5576650.php

S.F. Central Subway's big dig done

....After several months of gnawing twin tunnels beneath San Francisco's densest districts, tunnel-boring machines Big Alma and Mom Chung have arrived at the former home of the Pagoda Palace Theater in North Beach. They'll be dismembered at the bottom of a giant pit and then yanked, piece by piece, from the ground and hauled away.

It's an unceremonious end to a big dig - excavating and building 8,300 linear feet of concrete-lined tunnels running from South of Market beneath Union Square and Chinatown to North Beach. But the excavation passed unnoticed by people on the surface, who didn't even feel vibrations.

Big Alma and Mom Chung, each weighing 750 tons and stretching longer than a football field, even passed 7 feet beneath the BART tracks below Market Street without requiring the transit system to stop, or even slow, its trains....

....Excavation is the biggest part of the $1.6 billion subway project, and it was completed on schedule and within its $234 million budget, Funghi said.

The 1.7-mile Muni Metro line will begin at street level outside the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets, proceed above ground to a station at Fourth and Brannan streets, and then descend into the earth beneath the Interstate 80 skyway. It will stop at underground stations at Moscone Center, Union Square and Chinatown, with the tunnel extending to North Beach for the machines' extraction.
Underground journey

The tunneling machines, which followed a construction industry tradition of being named for women, began their journeys at a work site off Fourth Street beneath I-80, with Mom Chung starting the digging in July. Big Alma started months later, in November, but made better time. Mom Chung arrived in North Beach on June 2; Big Alma pulled into the extraction site nine days later.

Mom Chung is named for Dr. Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the nation's first female Chinese American physician, who practiced in Chinatown. Big Alma was the nickname of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (1881-1968), a wealthy San Francisco socialite who was also the model for the woman atop the Dewey Monument in Union Square.

Last Friday, construction crews prepared to pull the cutter heads - the rotating front ends of the tunnel-boring machines that chew through rocks and dirt - into the extraction pit so they could be cut free with welding torches. The first cutter head was expected to be lifted from the pit Tuesday night, using two towering cranes. The rest of the machines will be cut into 20-foot sections and removed over the next three to four months. At that point, crews will put a concrete cap over the extraction shaft, which is 48 feet by 48 feet and 50 feet deep....

....The machines will be sold back to their manufacturer, the Robbins Co. It will refurbish them and sell them to another project, possibly in Los Angeles, which has big plans to expand its rail transit network, Leong said.

While the subway officially ends at Stockton and Washington streets in Chinatown, the tunnels were extended to North Beach because it was the closest spot with room to pull the machines from the ground....

....The arrival of the tunnel-boring machines in North Beach has split the community into those who want the machines to remain buried and those who want the subway extended to Fisherman's Wharf. At a ceremony celebrating the machines' arrival, the only visible protesters on site were those urging construction of a North Beach station or an extension to the bay.
Officials willing

Either of those options would require finding more funding, winning environmental approvals and overcoming the inevitable public opposition that faces any major San Francisco project. But city officials have made it clear they'd be happy to extend the Central Subway to a populous area of the city that's not served by rail.

"We'd love to keep going," Funghi said.

Next up for the subway is the stations' construction, which is already under way, and the installation of the tracks, overhead wires and assorted electronic systems needed to turn a concrete tube into a working subway. That's scheduled to be done by 2018, leaving Muni several months to test the Central Subway before service starts in 2019....

....
Central Subway by the numbers

1.7 miles Length

$1.58 billion Cost

3 Underground stations

1 Above-ground station

2019 Scheduled opening

35,100 Projected daily ridership (2030)

$1.76 million Estimated annual operating costs (2019)

$6.89 million Estimated annual operating costs (2030)

Source: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

[Perklol]

[tech12]

Nice...now lets stop screwing around and actually build a station in North Beach, and extend this thing to fisherman's wharf.

[ltsmotorsport]

Absolutely. It's almost criminal the time/effort/expense being used to extract the TBMs, which should just be left there for future needs.