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  #1541  
Old Posted Mar 17, 2016, 8:05 AM
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Originally Posted by ChargerCarl View Post
Is this a joke? The "buy XXX" crap is one of the reasons public transit is so shitty in the US.

BART should purchase whatever vehicles it thinks will work best for it's system. It's task is to provide quality transportation, not subsidized jobs.
No Carl it's not joke and I don't get how you can think that requiring or preferring publicly-funded projects use local labor as much as possible is in anyway a subsidy. The communities paying for the damn thing should benefit as much as possible. Nor do I think that the reason public transit is "so shitty in the US" has anything remotely to do with where the train cars are made. It's more like the 70+ years of auto-centric development, a suburban/car culture, and lack of public funding.

Anyway, I also wish the new cars had more the original look. They made BART unique. But I guess I'm just happy that there will be new ones. It's been long overdue.
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  #1542  
Old Posted Mar 17, 2016, 1:28 PM
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Originally Posted by ozone View Post
No Carl it's not joke and I don't get how you can think that requiring or preferring publicly-funded projects use local labor as much as possible is in anyway a subsidy. The communities paying for the damn thing should benefit as much as possible.
I'll agree up to a point where the local produced product costs far more than a remote product. Whether that point is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, 75, or 100% more - a number set and published prior to releasing the RFP, all other factors being equal. That's assuming the entire costs of the project is funded locally. But as soon as one penny of federal funding is included, that local scope turns into a national scope.

Never-the-less, I would dislike to see an inferior product purchased over a superior product just because it's produced locally. Quality is just as important as origin and costs.
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  #1543  
Old Posted Mar 17, 2016, 1:33 PM
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Originally Posted by Busy Bee View Post
I won't bring up all the ubiquitous euro examples but show one that is actually much more applicable to us. This is a Bombardier DMU for the V/Line service in Victoria, NSW, Australia — a culture, mentality and geography very similar to the one SMART will operate in:


http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/9...1df84bde44d737

I mean come on.
The undercarriage and doors look better, but the front isn't sloped enough. And the colors look corny. Just a matter of taste I guess.

I really like the Sprinter train in Oceanside, but it isn't FRA-compliant of course.
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  #1544  
Old Posted Mar 17, 2016, 3:49 PM
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Speaking of SMART, here's some recent testing:

Video Link
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  #1545  
Old Posted Mar 27, 2016, 12:56 PM
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Has BART's cutting-edge 1972 technology design come back to haunt it?
By Matthias Gafni, mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED: 03/25/2016 11:26:54 PM PDT | UPDATED: A DAY AGO


Quote:
In 1972, President Richard Nixon sat in a brand-new BART car and took a quick trip from San Leandro to Lake Merritt. He commented on how the train reminded him of NASA.

He wasn't far off. The consultants who designed the gleaming new rapid transit system did, in fact, use principles developed for the aerospace industry rather than tried-and-true rail standards.

Cars were lighter, more aerodynamic and controlled almost entirely by an automated computer system. As Fortune magazine put it, the move was like going straight from a DC-3 to the 747 aircraft.

But did BART's ingenuity decades ago doom it for shutdowns such as the ones that have crippled the system in recent weeks? Or is the agency's problem typical of a 44-year-old system with infrastructure nearing or exceeding its life expectancy?

Experts say it's likely a bit of both. The Space Age innovations have made it more challenging for the transit agency to maintain the BART system from the beginning. Plus, the aging system was designed to move 100,000 people per week and now carries 430,000 a day, so the loss of even a single car gets magnified with crowded commutes, delays and bus bridges.
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  #1546  
Old Posted Mar 27, 2016, 9:01 PM
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"Plus, the aging system was designed to move 100,000 people per week and now carries 430,000 a day, so the loss of even a single car gets magnified with crowded commutes, delays and bus bridges."

A former forumer now makes a living analyzing BART ridership statistics in their headquarters. I asked him about these particular numbers after they were first tweeted a couple weeks back. They are incorrect. Yes, BART now carries more people than it was designed to, but no--it was never intended only to provide 100,000 trips per week.
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  #1547  
Old Posted Mar 27, 2016, 9:03 PM
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100,000 per week is awfully low , are sure they didn't mean 100,000 per day...?
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  #1548  
Old Posted Mar 30, 2016, 6:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ozone View Post
No Carl it's not joke and I don't get how you can think that requiring or preferring publicly-funded projects use local labor as much as possible is in anyway a subsidy. The communities paying for the damn thing should benefit as much as possible. Nor do I think that the reason public transit is "so shitty in the US" has anything remotely to do with where the train cars are made. It's more like the 70+ years of auto-centric development, a suburban/car culture, and lack of public funding.

Anyway, I also wish the new cars had more the original look. They made BART unique. But I guess I'm just happy that there will be new ones. It's been long overdue.
Insulating domestic producers from foreign competition just leads to worse outcomes for consumers, i.e. metro agencies and the people they serve:

https://pedestrianobservations.wordp...ica-is-a-scam/
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  #1549  
Old Posted Apr 8, 2016, 11:58 PM
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  #1550  
Old Posted Apr 30, 2016, 6:45 PM
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Fremont: Warm Springs BART Station Rumbles Toward Finish Line

Julian J. Ramos
The Fremont Argus
4/19/2016



An aerial view of the Warm Springs/South Fremont BART Station taken in March. The facility is expected to go into service in late summer. Photo courtesy of BART

From Warm Springs Boulevard, the BART station that has been slowly rising and taking form over the past few years might finally look completed and ready for business.

Inside, however, there's still a frenzy of activity as workers scramble to wrap up the last tasks so the station can open by late summer.

After two decades of planning, the finish line on the Warm Springs/South Fremont station is fast approaching, said Bay Area Rapid Transit board member Tom Blalock, who represents Fremont.
....
The $890 million Warm Springs extension, which began in 2009, will add 5.4-miles of tracks from the Fremont BART Station south to the new station. The line includes a 1.2-mile subway tunnel under Lake Elizabeth and Fremont Central Park.

The Warm Springs station will feature an at-grade island platform with an overhead concourse and connections to Valley Transit Authority and AC Transit buses, plus taxi and passenger dropoff areas.
....
Situated to the east of the Tesla Motors plant and Thermo Fisher Scientific, the station is viewed as a catalyst for the city's 880-acre Innovation District. City leaders envision 4,000 dwelling units and more than 20,000 jobs in that district, as well as up to 11.6 million square feet of commercial and office floor space.
----
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  #1551  
Old Posted May 10, 2016, 5:09 PM
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SF Transit Riders Union Launches Ambitious '30X30' Muni Campaign

Read More: http://hoodline.com/2016/05/sf-trans...-muni-campaign

Website: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/m...nsit-awesome#/

Quote:
.....

30X30's primary argument is that any part of San Francisco should be accessible via Muni in 30 minutes or less by the year 2030. According to the project's preliminary website, "Muni is the slowest major urban transit system in the nation," running at an average of 8.1 miles per hour.

- "While it’s a lofty goal, for riders, it’s entirely reasonable. The city simply isn’t that large," said Reed Martin, a board member of the SFTRU. "Paris’s Line 14 subway, which runs about the same length as Geary Street, takes 12 minutes end-to-end, with a train every 60-120 seconds, all day. That’s 400 percent faster than the 38-Geary." --- Martin, who's also been in the news of late for his side project Revolutionize Haight, explained that 30X30 is still in its early stages—fundraising, doing community outreach to build traction, and getting feedback. But he claims that the recipe for faster service is actually simple.

- "Fundamentally, the three cornerstones of how we get to 30X30 are increasing speed, frequency, and reliability," he said. That "means different approaches for different lines—everything from red carpet lanes, allowing buses to cruise past traffic, to subway expansion, enabling truly high-speed trains just below the surface." --- Martin said that his hope for 30X30 is to gain enough traction with citizens to affect change at the city level, holding the city accountable for a real, substantive goal instead of the inch-by-inch incremental changes it's pushed forward in the past.

- "San Francisco is the only major city in America without a full-time professional watchdog advocating for better public transit," said Andy Bosselman, SFTRU spokesperson and volunteer. "And that’s what we’ve set out to change." --- To make that happen, the SFTRU is currently fundraising with a goal of $100,000, which they'll use to help hire permanent, full-time support for the organization. Right now, "we’re not a consistent voice of transit riders, because we have no paid staff," said Bosselman.

.....



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  #1552  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2016, 8:42 PM
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I guess they'll be charging a little more than Caltrain to travel a similar distance. Currently it's $7.75 to travel about 43 miles from Sunnyvale to San Francisco (less using Clipper) while on SMART it will cost $9.50 to travel about 43 miles from Santa Rosa to San Rafael.

Santa Rosa to San Rafael round-trip on SMART train? $19
CLARK MASON | THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | June 1, 2016, 9:19PM

Quote:
Struggling to find a “sweet spot” for ticket prices that will attract riders but also produce sufficient revenue to keep trains rolling, directors of Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit on Wednesday approved a fare structure that was still too steep for some Sonoma County officials.

The fares will include a $9.50 one-way, or $19 round-trip ticket from downtown Santa Rosa to San Rafael when the commuter trains debut at the end of the year. SMART directors approved them on a 9-2 vote.

SMART board member and Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane said the fares are too high. “A lot of people cannot afford a train for $20 to their work site,” she said. “The initial goal is to generate ridership, not maximize income.”

She and Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbit both voted against the new fares, saying they should be lower.
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  #1553  
Old Posted Jun 30, 2016, 2:24 AM
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The mezzanine level of the u/c Muni Metro station at 4th and Folsom: the openings will eventually look down onto the track level.


The Central Subway directly under Geary Street:


Source: the official Central Subway flickr page.
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  #1554  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2016, 5:09 PM
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BART welcomes a new kind of train\

Steve Rubenstein
sfgate.com
June 30, 2016





BART's new train car in Antioch, California, on Thursday, June 30, 2016.


Alicia Trost of BART checks her cell phone during a tour of BART's new train car in Antioch, California, on Thursday, June 30, 2016.

....The new 10-mile line represents a big change in BART technology. The Antioch extension uses diesel-powered cars that look more like streetcars on steroids. They are lower to the ground than BART cars and operate on standard-gauge railroad track, not on BART’s wider track. That means the two lines are not compatible. As a result, the Pittsburg/Bay Point Station, where the extension meets the main line and where passengers will transfer, is undergoing a face-lift, too.

When the $525 million extension finally opens, regular BART trains will make two stops at the Pittsburg/Bay Point Station — one stop at the existing platform and another stop at “platform 3” — some 100 yards to the east — where passengers will change to and from the Antioch extension trains.
....
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  #1555  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2016, 6:29 PM
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Originally Posted by fflint View Post
It's depressing to realize that BART will reach Stockton before it reaches the intersection of Geary and Van Ness.
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  #1556  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2016, 10:08 PM
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Originally Posted by pseudolus View Post
It's depressing to realize that BART will reach Stockton before it reaches the intersection of Geary and Van Ness.
How definite are those plans? I thought the whole "BART metro" concept was supposed to come before that.
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  #1557  
Old Posted Jul 1, 2016, 11:33 PM
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there is zero plan to get bart to geary. if we started planning now at the bart board/regional board level, it would take a minimum of 15 years. and it's not even on the agenda.
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  #1558  
Old Posted Jul 2, 2016, 4:32 AM
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The farthest any planning agency has gone with a Geary BART line in the most recent decades is having BART extend out under Geary from the proposed second set of Transbay Tubes. It was only one of several conceptual routes.
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  #1559  
Old Posted Sep 28, 2016, 1:50 AM
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Judge Gives Caltrain Electrification Green Light:
Atherton loses lawsuit, claims local project was too closely tied to high-speed rail

September 27, 2016
Samantha Weigel,
San Mateo Daily Journal

In a lawsuit that could have veered Caltrain’s electrification plans off track, a judge announced Monday he is ruling in favor of the local transit agency proceeding with its $2 billion Modernization Program.

The town of Atherton filed the potentially derailing suit in February 2015, alleging Caltrain’s environmental impact report was inadequate and that its plans to share the Peninsula tracks with high-speed rail should have been vetted as part of the review.

The Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, or TRANSDEF, and Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail joined the lawsuit that was eventually moved to Contra Costa County Superior Court.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Barry Goode sided with Caltrain arguing electrifying the local tracks does not inherently pave the way for the state’s controversial bullet train.

“Petitioners are simply wrong when they say ‘[n]either project can be implemented without the other.’ … The Electrification Project can be implemented successfully even if the HSR project never takes another step forward. It is a project of independent utility that Caltrain has been seeking to implement for nearly twenty-five years,” Goode wrote in his order.

Caltrain is slated to receive $713 million from high-speed rail since the two agreed to a blended system whereby they would share the Peninsula tracks between San Jose and San Francisco.

“Indeed, at bottom [California High-Speed Rail] is providing funds to Caltrain while hoping that the rest of CHSRA’s plans work out well enough that, someday, it can bring the blended system to fruition. But if CHSRA is unable to do that, Caltrain will still have a successful project. Put another way, HSR may need to have Caltrain’s Electrification Project completed. But Caltrain does not need to have High Speed Rail completed for the Electrification Project to be a success,” Goode wrote.
....
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  #1560  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2016, 9:44 PM
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I got this email the other day. I don't live in the Bay Area anymore, but I'm tempted to make a trip up for one of these weekends.

Quote:
News from BART
Release Date: 10/03/16

Fleet of the Future Test Train Open House

Fleet of the Future

The Fleet of the Future is closer than ever to becoming a reality for BART riders. Your chance to get an up close look at a test train for the new fleet is coming. BART will hold a series of FREE open house events in October.

The Open House events will occur on a station platform at these dates and locations:

Saturday, October 15th at Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station 11 am- 4 pm
Sunday, October 16th at MacArthur Station 11 am - 4 pm
Saturday, October 29th at Dublin/Pleasanton Station 11 am - 4 pm
Sunday, October 30th at El Cerrito del Norte Station 11 am - 4 pm

The first 200 visitors each day will receive a commemorative toy train. The toys were donated to BART.

Test train open house

A San Francisco location is not possible because it would cause service delays to riders.
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