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--- transportation:train [2025/05/09 21:35] – [Bart] timb
+++ transportation:train [2026/01/11 20:37] (current) – [Caltrain] timb
@@ Line 148: / Line 148: @@
 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/how-to-speed-up-us-passenger-rail-without-bullet-trains
+== A short post on short trains ==
+The lesser urbanism hack
+Shaked Koplewitz - Jul 28, 2025
+Small Train is Good Train
+A while ago, I wrote about how elevated trains are the greatest urbanism cheat code, increasing the amount of track miles you can build per dollar (or per year) by a factor of 2-4. And while I don’t have anything else on that order of magnitude, I do have one more easy 20-50% gain1: Run shorter trains.
+The basic idea is simple: The single biggest cost of any metro system is the stations, whose cost scales with size. Therefore, if we run a system for smaller trains, we can build smaller stations for these trains, saving a huge amount on station costs. This costs us in reduced total capacity, but this can easily be made up for by increasing train frequency.
+https://shakeddown.substack.com/p/a-short-post-on-short-trains
@@ Line 177: / Line 194: @@
 https://trains.fyi/
+===== Model =====
+== 'I was shocked': Melbourne man's 'unbelievable' find after buying house ==
+Daniel Xu has loved trains since he was a child. In a surprising twist of fate, he now lives above an extensive hobby train network set.
+Aleisha Orr, Asha Abdi - 29 June 2025 1:28pm / Updated 30 June 2025 1:59pm
+As any new homeowner will know, there are always unknown things to be found in a new place.
+From a kitchen cupboard that never seems to close properly, a curiously painted over area or the real performance of an air-conditioning unit, discoveries abound.
+But after Daniel Xu and his wife finalised the purchase of their house in Melbourne's northern suburbs, he found what can only be described as a train enthusiast's dream beneath their feet.
+https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/i-was-shocked-melbourne-mans-unbelievable-find-after-buying-house/m4sksfer8
@@ Line 405: / Line 439: @@
 https://amtrakexplorer.com/
+==  Amtrak's New 160mph Acela Trains Take Just As Long As the Old Ones ==
+Posted by BeauHD on Thursday August 28, 2025 07:02PM
+Amtrak's new 160 mph tilting Acela trains have debuted on the Northeast Corridor, offering smoother rides, upgraded interiors, faster Wi-Fi, and 27% more seating capacity. However, "they don't complete the journey any faster than the old trains," reports The Independent. From the report:
+<blockquote>
+Acela runs from Washington, DC's Union Station to Boston via Philadelphia, New York Penn Station, New Haven, and Providence. It's a total distance of 457 miles, with the fastest next-gen Acela journey being six hours and 43 minutes, five minutes slower than the quickest end-to-end time offered by the old Acela trains, introduced in 2000. However, this may be because, as is common practice with new trains the world over, Amtrak is scheduling longer dwell times at stations so staff and passengers can adjust to them. The next-gen sets have a top service speed that's 10mph faster -- though this can only be achieved on certain sections of the mostly 110mph route -- and an enhanced "anticipative" tilting system that allows for higher speeds through curves.
+</blockquote>
+https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/28/2128257/amtraks-new-160mph-acela-trains-take-just-as-long-as-the-old-ones
@@ Line 473: / Line 518: @@
 https://www.kqed.org/news/12039472/bart-shuts-down-entire-train-service-due-to-computer-networking-problem
+== Realtime BART Arrival Display ==
+Nov 9, 2025 - Filip Grace
+I have a love-hate relationship with BART. I’m grateful for it, but let’s just say it’s not always the most reliable so it’s nice to see before hand when the train you need is due to arrive. There are plenty of projects out there that show real-time BART arrival information. This one does that too, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but I wanted to build my own version that captures the vintage BART platform sign vibe I associate with commuting between the East Bay and my job in the city.
+https://filbot.com/real-time-bart-display/
@@ Line 491: / Line 544: @@
 https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/caltrain-electrification-project-paying-off-19917422.php
+== California’s High-Speed Rail Fiasco Keeps Getting Worse ==
+California's dream of building a high-speed rail system linking San Francisco and LA is a cautionary tale of ambition outpacing funding, planning, and federal support.
+Benton Graham, Grist - September 10, 2025
+Seventeen years ago, Californians bet on a grand vision of the future. They narrowly approved a $10 billion bond issue to build a high-speed rail line that would zip between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. This technological marvel would slash emissions, revitalize the state’s Central Valley, and, with some financial help from the feds and private sector, provide the fast, efficient, and convenient travel Asia and Europe have long enjoyed.
+State officials promised to deliver this transit utopia by 2020. Instead, costs have more than doubled, little track has been laid, and service isn’t expected to begin before 2030—and only between Bakersfield and Merced, two cities far from the line’s ultimate destinations.
+It’s little wonder the project finds itself in a precarious financial position, fighting political headwinds, and deemed a boondoggle by everyone from federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. “In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system,” they wrote, “China has built more than 23,000 miles of high speed rail.”
+The reasons for this vary with who’s being asked, but people with expertise often cite three fundamental missteps: creating a new agency to lead the effort, failing to secure adequate funding from the start, and choosing a route through California’s agricultural heartland. The state’s strict environmental review process hasn’t helped, either.
+https://gizmodo.com/californias-high-speed-rail-fiasco-keeps-getting-worse-2000656798
+== Caltrain Shows Why Every Region Should Be Moving Toward Regional Rail ==
+January 09, 2026
+Caltrain recently replaced diesel trains with electric, cutting 25 minutes from the trip time.
+Faster speed, increased frequency, and more reliable service are causing ridership growth on Caltrain, the San Francisco Bay Area’s passenger railway. The ridership increase and service upgrades are a direct result of the electrification of Caltrain’s entire fleet of rolling stock in September 2024. “For the first time in the railroad’s 160-year history, diesel service was replaced with electric service along the 50-mile main line between San Francisco and San Jose,” Caltrain reported.
+Caltrain’s total ridership in Fiscal Year 2025 (ending June 30, 2025) increased 47% over the previous fiscal year, from 6.2 million to 9.1 million passengers. In June 2025, Caltrain recorded more than 1 million monthly passengers for the first time since the pandemic. It passed the 1 million-passenger mark in July and August as well, which was roughly a 60% increase over ridership totals for those months in 2024, just before the fleet’s electrification.
+The results are a powerful argument for electrification and the adoption of a regional rail model of service by every commuter railway in North America — i.e., offering fast, frequent service throughout the day, including weekends, instead of catering to antiquated commuting patterns and weekday rush hours.
+https://www.hsrail.org/blog/caltrain-shows-why-every-region-should-be-moving-toward-regional-rail/
+===== Tram Train =====
+== Tram trains ==
+How to build cheap transit in smaller towns
+Benedict Springbett - Jul 23, 2025
+Many cities face the following problem. They have railway lines that go where people live. But these railway lines end at the edge of the city center, and don’t go out the other side.
+For cities with this problem, the solution is through running (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-magic-of-through-running/). Terminating a train and turning it around takes a lot of space, space that is usually unavailable in a city center. This means running a railway line through the city often doubles or triples the number of trains it can handle. As a bonus, passengers who are going from one side of the city to the other can do that much more quickly, with no change.
+Many cities, such as London, Paris, Munich and Milan, have used through running to turn some of their existing Victorian railway lines into metro-style services, by building tunnels under the city center. A few other cities, like Berlin, built viaducts (bridges that carry roads and railways over obstacles), while others, such as Cologne, have simply added platforms at their main stations to enable suburban trains to run through. But all of these are big cities, with over a million people, where the property value uplift or extra revenues from fares can cover the enormous costs (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-we-stopped-building-cut-and-cover/) of tunneling. But there is another option, affordable for smaller cities or large towns: the tram-train (https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/11/03/tram-trains/).
+https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/tram-trains