While this sounds like good news it's very odd to me that a project the size of Caltrain would completely forget about regenerative breaking when calculating the electricity usage.
Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
191–200 of 305 posts
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree! The hard parts seems to be figuring out (1) how to cut red tape for only certain projects and (2) figuring out what red tape to keep. Chesterton's fence and all that.
I’m getting more and more convinced that this is a main problem all over the West. In Germany, a business owner called Marco Scheel is becoming more and more popular by being very outspoken about how bureaucracy is hindering him. His company is called Nordwolle by the way. They make clothing out of sheep wool. They spend a lot of effort finding the right type of wool so they don’t need chemicals to paint it. One majo…
> One major example which Marco first became popular with was that he owned a barn but wasn’t allowed to use it for the factory since it was a farm on paper. The government told him to move to a designated factory area. He argued that it made no sense since he was living in a very remote area, and the barn was of high quality. What else should he do with the barn? Why would he need to build something new somewhere else? The barn was there already and stood already for hundreds of years.
Of course it makes sense. Farmland is dedicated to farming and producing food/related things. It lacks connectivity, has fertile soil, prices are cheaper. If anyone can just build a factory there, they will have a negative ecological impact (interrupt animal flows, pollute in areas that are supposed to be cleaner, etc). It's the same reason why you can't farm in an industrial zone, nor can you set up a factory in the middle of the city.
Yes, it can be taken too far and abused, but absolutely 100% makes sense and must exist.
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but do enough people want it to make it worth building? The reason we don't build more density isn't lack of demand (see: the price of rent), it is entirely political.
I'd like to see some evidence for that -- sure, there are a lot of people in big cities that are happy with high density (but even many of them move out to the suburbs when they decide to settle down and have kids), but there are many people in the USA that won't give up their 2000 sq ft house with 3 car garage that fits their F150 pickup. Much of my midwest family is that way - they couldn't believe how tiny my "cit…
you're severely out of touch. Only around 15% of Californians can afford to buy a home. Why can't they buy a home? LACK of Inventory. You can see this on the news, you can quote experts everywhere saying this. There's not enough houses and that raises prices. So how do you lower prices? Build more homes. How do you build more homes? Increase density. Yeah if you're in the 15% sure, buy a big home. If you're in the 85%, well you want to buy a smaller home. You can safely assume 85% of the people who can't afford a home, want cheaper homes and therefore want higher density.
>It's going to take decades (or some catastrophic disaster) to get Americans to change that mindset and give up low density living.
Bro, that catastrophic disaster is called global warming. And you can see the effects of global warming in the weather in the US. There have already been entire cultures and peoples uprooted from where they live because of rising sea levels. The luxuries we enjoyed living in cities designed for cars is bought and paid for with our future.
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of the 25GW being generated right now only 3GW are renewable. There is a corner where there is more demand from "100% renewable" customers than there actually is available renewable energy. There is no point at which this gets made up.
I’m not sure where your figures are coming from, did you mean at the moment of posting your comment? If you look at the integral over the year, California does decently well[1] on renewables, and the people paying for it help blunt the competitive edge of the tremendous federal subsidies enjoyed by fossil fuels. [1] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
> did you mean at the moment of posting your comment?
Yes, right this moment. You can see this here: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
> does decently well[1] on renewables
Technically it does decently well on combined "non greenhouse gas + renewables." This is a rather self serving categorization of generation sources and might not be what people buying "100% renewable" energy think they're actually getting.
In any case, subtracting Nuclear and Hydro, if more than half the kWh purchased in the state are purchased as "100% renewable", they cannot all be possibly served by renewables even in the aggregate.
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think BART struggles with who it's meant to serve now, since it was clearly designed for ultra-peak weekday commute traffic. Recovery for weekend ridership is way better than weekday. I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Ba…
It’s kind of sad that BART’s first mover advantage means it’ll forever be a second-class railway. They’ll never do the “correct” thing and shut it down long enough to replace everything with standard equipment and gauge.
Being a first mover didn't prevent them from adopting standard gauge which already had existed for 100 years.
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#196> regenerative braking on the new trains is generating and sending back to the electric grid approximately 23% of the energy consumed by the system does this make sense? let's round that 23 up to 25%, and say brake energy regeneration is 100% efficient (it's not): one quarter of the energy put into the system comes back out? city driving in a car, you might have your foot on the brake 25% of the time (yes, that's not…
Trains have little friction on the tracks. That's one of the ways they are much more efficient than a car (with rubber tires). If the moving friction is very low, it makes sense that not that much energy is used to move the train once it's at speed. Slowing it down would return some of the energy back (with the rest dissipated as heat).
Even with a car's higher rolling resistance, most of the drag at cruising speed is aerodynamic, though.
But a commuter train, by definition, starts and stops a lot so it makes sense that a large fraction of the energy used would be for acceleration.
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Do you mean they won't at least check your professed name and address?
Nope. It is literally illegal[1] to ask for identification in California.
In fairness it was ambiguous[2] before, but in practice California has never asked for identification and this was made clear and official policy from the 2024 elections (note: I am not aware if there are any lawsuits that have blocked enforcement of this law, I no longer reside in CA and do not keep close track of their goings-on).
And before anyone says "But registering to vote requires identification!": Yes, you're correct, but remember that asking for a voter's identity is illegal. No one can confirm whether a "voter" is actually a voter, it is illegal to check. Registering to vote is irrelevant.
My personal experiences voting in California also never involved being asked for identification, that includes "name and address". Never. None. I went in and voted, nobody cared whether I could because they didn't or couldn't.
For the record: I'm an American citizen (born and raised, not that that's relevant), I am registered to vote, I am proud to vote, and I am happy to present to any law enforcement or election official my state Driver's License to prove my residency and my US Passport to prove my citizenship upon demand. I question the narrative that any part of any of this is controversial for ensuring the sanctity of the right to vote and holding free and fair elections.
[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[2]: https://perkinscoie.com/insights/update/new-california-law-p...
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m getting more and more convinced that this is a main problem all over the West. In Germany, a business owner called Marco Scheel is becoming more and more popular by being very outspoken about how bureaucracy is hindering him. His company is called Nordwolle by the way. They make clothing out of sheep wool. They spend a lot of effort finding the right type of wool so they don’t need chemicals to paint it. One majo…
> One major example which Marco first became popular with was that he owned a barn but wasn’t allowed to use it for the factory since it was a farm on paper. The government told him to move to a designated factory area. He argued that it made no sense since he was living in a very remote area, and the barn was of high quality. What else should he do with the barn? Why would he need to build something new somewhere el…
The guy's not building a gigafactory in his garden, is he?
> If anyone can just build a factory there, they will have a negative ecological impact (interrupt animal flows, pollute in areas that are supposed to be cleaner, etc).
All true of farming. FWIW as a fellow NIMBY myself, I use the excuse of 'animal flow' (in particular the flow of bats) to prevent anyone from putting anything more than a fence up within 150m of my house. It's great!
Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#199The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before. Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!
To unlock the true value of these systems the BA needs to be forced to increase density of their cities though. We need SF proper to look more like Manhattan.
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Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One major example which Marco first became popular with was that he owned a barn but wasn’t allowed to use it for the factory since it was a farm on paper. The government told him to move to a designated factory area. He argued that it made no sense since he was living in a very remote area, and the barn was of high quality. What else should he do with the barn? Why would he need to build something new somewhere el…
The guy's not building a gigafactory in his garden, is he? > If anyone can just build a factory there, they will have a negative ecological impact (interrupt animal flows, pollute in areas that are supposed to be cleaner, etc). All true of farming. FWIW as a fellow NIMBY myself, I use the excuse of 'animal flow' (in particular the flow of bats) to prevent anyone from putting anything more than a fence up within 150m…
> The guy's not building a gigafactory in his garden, is he?
How could this possibly be known without a review in your opinion?
> fellow NIMBY myself
Unless you're American, things don't have to be so binary. The choice isn't between nothing gets built or anyone can just do whatever. We need a balance.
> All true of farming
I'm pretty sure birds and bees and what not prefer having plants than factories.