Extending CZ to Oakland/ San Jose?

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Just guessing here, but I imagine there is far more support for (and therefore benefit from) beefing up Capitol Corridor service, so that there are approximately the same number of trains SJC-OKJ as there are OKJ-SAC than there is for using one of those slots for the California Zephyr instead.

And that still doesn't solve the issue of the train being serviced in Oakland.
I totally understand that the service yard is in Oakland and I get it. I just wanted to point out I have a feeling people think San Jose is a suburb of San Fran and Oakland when in fact it is a city of over 1 million people. Historically San Fran and Oakland were the big cities in the Bay Area but the South Bay/Silicon Valley is pretty big now. It's probably like Baltimore to Washington (40 miles on Silver Star/Meteor routes). You may think that San Fran and Oakland are close enough to San Jose but San Jose and Santa Clara may disagree with you.

In a related topic, does anyone ever complain Amtrak should serve Phoenix? Well Maricopa is closer to Phoenix than San Jose is to Emeryville.

(https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Phoenix,+AZ/Maricopa+Amtrak,+Maricopa,+AZ+85139/@33.2525392,-112.1523286,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x872b12ed50a179cb:0x8c69c7f8354a1bac!2m2!1d-112.0740373!2d33.4483771!1m5!1m1!1s0x872afad2d62707d3:0x58723f3934f8517!2m2!1d-112.047137!2d33.056284)

Do you feel Maricopa is good enough for Phoenix? So maybe Emeryville/Oakland isn't good enough for Silicon Valley. I'll admit the solution is difficult and expensive but I think if you just dismiss it as not being a problem you then are saying San Jose doesn't matter.
 
But San Jose will soon be connected to Oakland and Richmond by BART. That will never happen between Maricopa and Phoenix.

Anyway, until some significant additional doubling work is done between Oakland and San Jose I don't see any significant growth in CC frequency there. And once BART is completed the business case becomes shakier. Perhaps it would just be better to put in a pair of travellators between Oakland Coliseum and BART.

BTW Philly you did not say anything about going from Oakland to San Fran via San Jose. Seaboard did, and that is what I was responding to.
 
I suggested it because SFO is a really big market and I was thinking of the long haul traffic more so then local traffic. Then I worked on fixing the equipment deadhead problem by suggesting making it a short corridor train back to Oakland revenue train. I've always found it odd that no long hauls have gone to SFO
 
Even back in the heyday of passenger trains San Francisco proper didn't have much in the way of long distance trains. The California Zephyr and other trains off the Western Pacific terminated at Oakland, as did trains from the north and east off the Southern Pacific, and the Santa Fe's trains from the south ended in Richmond.
 
Amtrak didn't operate out of Jack London Square until 1995. The origin was the 16th Street Station, which was damaged by the Loma Prieta Earthquake. Are you sure it was JLS. I looked at old Amtrak timetables, and the only reference is to the "Oakland Station".
Well, there was no doubt in my mind, but I can hardly remember that I have senile dementia. If Amtrak didn't use Jack London Square until 1995, then it's likely that my memory is faulty. I am more sure that it was 1984 when I rode the Zephyr.

Also, that would explain why nothing looked familiar in Jack London Square when I finally got back to Oakland many years after 1984.
16th street station closed due to earthquake damage from the Loma Prieta 6.9 quake in October 1989. I suppose it is possible that the CZ used the Jack London Square Oakland station as a short-term substitute after the earthquake, but I don't think it was published in a formal timetable. Having lived in the Bay Area since the mid-70s -- and living through Loma Prieta -- I don't remember any news about the CZ moving into Jack London Square station at that time.
 
Even back in the heyday of passenger trains San Francisco proper didn't have much in the way of long distance trains. The California Zephyr and other trains off the Western Pacific terminated at Oakland, as did trains from the north and east off the Southern Pacific, and the Santa Fe's trains from the south ended in Richmond.
Basically the Coast Daylight. There was just a huge impracticality of trying to get a train across that much water. I suppose the Key System ran on the Bay Bridge, but it only connected to the Transbay Terminal. It would have been interesting if anyone proposed using their rails, although the catenary might have been an issue along with whether they had rails that could support heavy rail.

That's why pretty much all the services used a bus or ferry to get to San Francisco.

Heck - the rail bridge across the Carquinez Strait took a lot of work. I didn't even realize that Southern Pacific used a couple of (paddlewheel driven) rail ferries before the rail bridge was completed. Must have taken a while to disassemble and reassemble the consist if it was long.

W3797.CP_ferry_Solano_d_SH.JPG


http://cprr.org/Museum/Solano/

The following claims that the California Zephyr was inaugurated in San Francisco near the Ferry Building, but doesn't clarify how it got across the Bay. I suppose it could have gone south, but the San Francisco Belt Railroad apparently had a train ferry at Pier 43. I've been there so many times, but I never really thought too much of why there were rails that seemed to end at the edge. I do remember seeing a lot of rails that seemed to go everywhere over streets in San Francisco, but now they've been removed and paved over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Belt_Railroad

http://sanfranciscotrains.org/SBRR-Visitors.html

cz_ferry_bldg.jpg


5267128.jpg
 
16th street station closed due to earthquake damage from the Loma Prieta 6.9 quake in October 1989. I suppose it is possible that the CZ used the Jack London Square Oakland station as a short-term substitute after the earthquake, but I don't think it was published in a formal timetable. Having lived in the Bay Area since the mid-70s -- and living through Loma Prieta -- I don't remember any news about the CZ moving into Jack London Square station at that time.
I could have sworn my cousin said that he took an Amtrak trip (a field trip) to Jack London Square back when we were kids, but now that I think of it, that trip was probably to the 16th Street station. I'm not even sure what route swould have gone from Richmond to 16th Street on a schedule convenient for a school field trip in the late 70s.

All the history I can find about the 16th Street Station and the Jack London Station is that the latter opened in 1994 and basically replaced the former. Apparently after the earthquake damage closed the 16th Street station building, they used a nearby building (former SP superintendent's building) as a waiting room until the JLS station was ready. Emeryville opened in 1993 but apparently the 16th Street Station remained the terminus of the CZ until OKJ was ready. That must have been when the CZ terminus was changed to Emeryville.

http://www.greatamericanstations.com/Stations/OKJ
 
Just guessing here, but I imagine there is far more support for (and therefore benefit from) beefing up Capitol Corridor service, so that there are approximately the same number of trains SJC-OKJ as there are OKJ-SAC than there is for using one of those slots for the California Zephyr instead.

And that still doesn't solve the issue of the train being serviced in Oakland.
I totally understand that the service yard is in Oakland and I get it. I just wanted to point out I have a feeling people think San Jose is a suburb of San Fran and Oakland when in fact it is a city of over 1 million people. Historically San Fran and Oakland were the big cities in the Bay Area but the South Bay/Silicon Valley is pretty big now. It's probably like Baltimore to Washington (40 miles on Silver Star/Meteor routes). You may think that San Fran and Oakland are close enough to San Jose but San Jose and Santa Clara may disagree with you.

In a related topic, does anyone ever complain Amtrak should serve Phoenix? Well Maricopa is closer to Phoenix than San Jose is to Emeryville.

(https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Phoenix,+AZ/Maricopa+Amtrak,+Maricopa,+AZ+85139/@33.2525392,-112.1523286,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x872b12ed50a179cb:0x8c69c7f8354a1bac!2m2!1d-112.0740373!2d33.4483771!1m5!1m1!1s0x872afad2d62707d3:0x58723f3934f8517!2m2!1d-112.047137!2d33.056284)

Do you feel Maricopa is good enough for Phoenix? So maybe Emeryville/Oakland isn't good enough for Silicon Valley. I'll admit the solution is difficult and expensive but I think if you just dismiss it as not being a problem you then are saying San Jose doesn't matter.
Want to discuss Phoenix/Maricopa? Feel free to start another topic, but I'm not touching that one here.

Not every LD train needs to serve every major city in a metropolitan area/region. LD trains are such a minor part of passenger rail service in the Bay Area anyway that it's bizarre this is even a "problem" to anyone. The cost of extending the California Zephyr from Emeryville to San Jose far exceeds any benefits of such an extension.

Want to improve Oakland-San Jose service? Let's beef up Capitol Corridor service between the two cities (as is planned). Let's speed up the BART extension to downtown San Jose (as is planned and partially under construction).
 
The only way downtown San Fran will ever get LD service is one of three ways.

1. A coast daylight train LAX to downtown.

2. California HSR service is complete LAX - SFO.

3. The proposed second set of BART tubes under the bay are built with a tube(s) for Caltrain from the new Transbay terminal to connect somewhere on the Oakland side to Capitol corridor tracks. Then the Coast starlight could route thru down town San Fran.
 
You occasionally see it mentioned by transit advocacy groups that any future Transbay tube should include mainline rail. I'm not sure it's ever made into any formal planning studies, but IMO it's worthy of consideration. However, the reason to consider it is to run CAHSR through San Francisco to the East Bay and wherever beyond that and/or to link Caltrain and Capitol Corridor (and ACE and Dumbarton Rail) into a coordinated S-Bahn/RER type system. The California Zephyr and Coast Starlight should be just about at the bottom of the considerations though.

And, with Caltrain moving to high level platforms as part of the electrification/EMU/CAHSR projects, traditional Amtrak service into San Francisco becomes even less likely.
 
It would be ideal to have a second Transbay Tube for high-speed rail which connects to Caltrain in San Francisco, runs from San Francisco to Oakland, and then onward to Martinez directly in tunnel, before rejoining the surface lines to Sacramento and Stockton. (The Capitol Corridor is pretty fast northeast of Martinez, but very slow southwest of there.) For some reason this never makes it out of study phase.

If this happened (I wish) the CZ might well be terminated in Sacramento with connections there to the express to San Francisco.
 
Please read my post more carefully. Propose a separate tube for Caltrain / HSR / Amtrak not to share with BART. BART needs the capacity of two more tubes and standard rail needs a couple tubes ( not to confuse tubes definition with tunnel.)
 
Dual gauge track in second set of BART tubes after BART choosing a different gauge so it never has to deal with a mainline railroad? That will be the day!
Regardless of the track gauge, I think most here recognize that BART as a rapid transit system would never share tracks with a HSR and intercity passenger train system. So a comprehensive new Transbay tube/tunnel project would be 2 tunnels/tubes/tracks for BART and 1 or 2 tracks for HSR and intercity passenger trains. But if it were a joint project, a new Transbay BART line would have different objectives on where the route should go on the SF side than a intercity passenger rail line which presumably would connect to the CalTrain corridor.

But either as a BART only 2 tunnel project or a joint BART and HSR 4 tunnel giga-project, the price tag has to be substantial, in the multiple of billions of dollars. Something that big would take 10 to 15 years just for the studies, public debate, and lining up the money. WAY beyond the scope of, hey, why not extend the California Zephyr to San Jose?
 
On the other hand, carrying on to LA, or even just to SLO to connect to the Surfliner, would add something useful to the system.
Extending the CZ over slow tracks to end its route at a small community well away from the major markets? Not really a viable idea. Service over that route is best provided by a Coast Daylight service along with the Coast Starlight. However, given the mid to late afternoon arrival of the westbound CS at Emeryville, unlikely to ever have a same day connection via BART or Capitol Corridor to a Coast Daylight. In 15 years, CA HSR may transform SF to LA connections and trips, with some spillover effects on the LD trains. With regards to the prospects for the Coast Daylight, I saw that the FRA posted the Final EIS and a Record of Decision for the Coast Corridor study several weeks ago, so the Coast Daylight plans have cleared one hurdle. But that is a bit off-topic for this thread.
 
Dual gauge track in second set of BART tubes after BART choosing a different gauge so it never has to deal with a mainline railroad? That will be the day!
Regardless of the track gauge, I think most here recognize that BART as a rapid transit system would never share tracks with a HSR and intercity passenger train system. So a comprehensive new Transbay tube/tunnel project would be 2 tunnels/tubes/tracks for BART and 1 or 2 tracks for HSR and intercity passenger trains. But if it were a joint project, a new Transbay BART line would have different objectives on where the route should go on the SF side than a intercity passenger rail line which presumably would connect to the CalTrain corridor.
But either as a BART only 2 tunnel project or a joint BART and HSR 4 tunnel giga-project, the price tag has to be substantial, in the multiple of billions of dollars. Something that big would take 10 to 15 years just for the studies, public debate, and lining up the money. WAY beyond the scope of, hey, why not extend the California Zephyr to San Jose?
Besides the gauge issue, BART also uses a third rail. Not sure if it would interfere.

And again, it's the infrastructure reason for why the CZ doesn't make it to San Jose. I've heard a suggestion to maybe extend it to Los Angeles. That would make it the longest route for Amtrak.
 
Didn't Amtrak build the Emeryville station specifically as the terminus for the California Zephyr?
Technically the city of Emeryville built the station. I suppose having it as an endpoint was a prime consideration. However, I don't recall if a retrofit of the 16th Street Station was proposed.
 
BART absolutely does not need a second pair of tracks under the Bay -- and frankly BART should never be extended again, since BART projects routinely cost several times more than otherwise-identical standard-gauge projects. If electrified Caltrain had a pair of tracks under the Bay, that would be quite sufficient for the local cross-bay capacity needs.
 
I suggested it because SFO is a really big market and I was thinking of the long haul traffic more so then local traffic. Then I worked on fixing the equipment deadhead problem by suggesting making it a short corridor train back to Oakland revenue train. I've always found it odd that no long hauls have gone to SFO
That issue is already solved with a bus. Using a bus or ferry goes back to before Amtrak.

It's not really odd when you look at San Francisco on a map. The bridges and tubes were huge undertaking.
 
Yeah. If you consider the likelihood of things happening .... Caltrain tunnel under the bay 2%, BART second tube pair under the bay more like 98%. Also BART will get extended in several directions irrespective of what a few here might feel. ;) The politics of it is highly favored towards BART in the bay area, since it was conceived as the primary body for providing transit service for the entire region. And frankly, there is no reason to change that at all.. Indeed, it took a bit of work to keep Caltrain in existence while the BART juggernaut rattled along. It is almost like really it is Caltrain that is the odd one in the big picture.
 
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BART does seem to be a bit of a money-wasting juggernaut. Burns money faster than any transit system outside New York City, and for less benefit.

In New York, there are quite a lot of advocates trying to get some prioritization and cost control into the system. Are there any in San Francisco? Maybe it'll just keep setting fire to money. It would probably be more efficient and useful to just pile up the money and burn it as an entertainment, though. Certainly more useful than the Warm Springs extension.

The primary problem is extremely bad planning, trying to be an extreme suburban line and an urban subway at the same time. (If BART wants to be an urban line, Caltrain should go under the Bay. If BART really wants to be a suburban line, Muni should go under the bay.) But the cost issues arise from a bunch of unutterably stupid design decisions made early on, from the stupid track gauge to the stupid wheel profile... This is stuff which they could actually fix if they cared to (regauging has been done many times throughout history).
 
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A big cost item for BART is earthquake protection. When you have to plan for the big one costs go up very fast. Other systems other than LA do not have to do the same although maybe some should do more. But in BART's defense you will note that much infrastructure has not needed as much repair work as other systems of the same size.

Look at how much work and cost is going into the Transbay terminal under construction.
 
The primary problem is extremely bad planning, trying to be an extreme suburban line and an urban subway at the same time. (If BART wants to be an urban line, Caltrain should go under the Bay. If BART really wants to be a suburban line, Muni should go under the bay.) But the cost issues arise from a bunch of unutterably stupid design decisions made early on, from the stupid track gauge to the stupid wheel profile... This is stuff which they could actually fix if they cared to (regauging has been done many times throughout history).
It's a matter of political boundaries. MUNI serves the needs of San Francisco. BART serves the needs of the Bay Area.

MUNI is already blowing what they can on the Central Subway.
 
There is something rotten in San Fransisco transit planning. It's not earthquake protection which is driving the costs up.
 
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