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Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

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Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#271

Post by ninetyninenine »

Johnny555 wrote: post #259
ninetyninenine wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can't force developers to build what they can't sell at a profit. I'm sure San Francisco would love to have more billion dollar high density buildings, but can a developer sell enough million dollar condos to pay for them? Is there any evidence that it's zoning that's keeping more residentials towers from being built in downtown SF? >Bro, that catastrophic disaster is called global warming It's not a catastrophic…

> It's not a catastrophic disaster yet -- nearly all Americans sat at home in comfort watching the LA fires. People don't see a disaster if it doesn't affect them, then it's just a tragedy.

LA is your front doorstep and I lived in LA about two miles from the border of the fire.

Yeah watch from the comfort of your own home. Give it some more time and one day people will be watching you from the comfort of their own home.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#272

Post by ninetyninenine »

Johnny555 wrote: post #262
ninetyninenine wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in the bay area my entire life. You don't have to go to walnut creek to see suburbia. That ugly shit is everywhere. Public transit in Tokyo is largely underground. Density is irrelevant. If you have high density or low density above ground, this factor is completely orthogonal to whatever you build Underground. Understand? >I don't think I'm overstating when I say that American style suburbs with large lots a…

You seem to be arguing that it's physically possible to build transit that serves low density housing, I agree with that. My argument is that it's economically infeasible, especially in the USA. Extending Caltrain to downtown SF is estimated at $3B/mile, BART to San Jose is $780M/mile. You can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars building transit to a neighborhood with 100 homes. It's already hard to serve those n…

Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t.

It’s economically feasible. We have the most powerful military in the world we have the highest gdp per capita in the world.

It’s economically feasible. When I say we are incapable of building mass transit I’m referring to every single type of incompetency in existence except for economic incompetency.

You change the zoning laws it will be utilized.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#273

Post by jeffbee »

londons_explore wrote: post #244
Dylan16807 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You probably know more about this than me, but it looks like some lines do I'm confused. Your phrasing suggests that you're adding in new and potentially conflicting information, but "many don't" and "some do" mean the same thing.

The missing piece of info here is that while most of the trains have the capability to do regen braking, it is generally ineffective because it can only be used if another train on the same section of track happens to also be accelerating at the same time . That happens rarely enough that most of the trains, most of the time, do not effectively regen, and instead use mechanical or resistive braking.

There was chatter 20-30 years ago about using flywheels to bank the energy until needed.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#274

Post by rangestransform »

tinyrichard wrote: post #168
throwaway7783 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the last one in your list, the others are quality of life problems. I have no problem if police interfere with either. Even the last one, is at best borderline. If there is a weirdo making machine guns in my neighborhood and I have kids, I sure as hell want police to interfere.

That works in theory, until the police are overrun with things they don't specialize in and don't have the officers to handle the day to day plus illegal arms dealers.

The US is underpoliced per capita

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#275

Post by rangestransform »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #65
astrange wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you copy Japan policies you can get something much closer to Japan, it's not magic. (Transit oriented upzoning, no parking minimums, and businesses in the station building.)

If it's not magic why isn't it being done? That's the point. This news is rather pathetic strictly because a better scenario is NOT magic.

Too many voters vote to preserve their way of life in amber (see: prop 13, nimbyism in general) instead of evolving with society’s needs

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#276

Post by HolySE »

justinzollars wrote: post #47

> With the agency expecting approximately $6 million annually in energy credits from the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program the first year of electric service will have lower fuel costs than the previous diesel service Thats the key. Without the subsidy its more expensive and less efficient than carbon based fuel. In the long run we are worse off, because the subsidy can't last forever.

> Without the subsidy its more expensive and less efficient than carbon based fuel. In the long run we are worse off, because the subsidy can't last forever.

That doesn't seem to be the full picture.

1) The most recent FY 2025 budget (https://www.caltrain.com/media/30699/) has fuel and lubricant expenditures expected to be $5 million. With electricity expenditure estimates dropping to $16.5 million, that puts total expenditures at $21.5 million. The diesel expenditures remain because the long San Jose Gilroy corridor isn't electrified and requires diesel locomotive service. Contrast this against FY 2023 expenditures of $17.5 million. That's almost a 25% increase in movement power expenditures.

2) There is increased service now. About ~120 trains run on the latest weekday service timetable (https://www.caltrain.com/media/34716), and 8 of them are diesel service between San Jose and Gilroy. Compare this to ~90 trains for weekday service in 2023 (https://www.caltrain.com/media/30027/download?inline), of which 6 are diesel service between San Jose and Gilroy. Conservatively, we have a 25% increase in service.

3) The new trains are faster. Hitting every stop between San Jose and San Francisco is 101 minutes on diesel and 83 minutes on electric.

So we get an increase in movement power costs proportional to the increase in service, all while having faster trains. I think it's a fair trade.

The subsidies are just gravy on top for a job well done.

EDIT: fixed 2023 weekday service link

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#277

Post by potato3732842 »

rangestransform wrote: post #274
tinyrichard wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works in theory, until the police are overrun with things they don't specialize in and don't have the officers to handle the day to day plus illegal arms dealers.

The US is underpoliced per capita

By what standard? The US is more policed per capita than Europe.

I hate Reddit but having both in one image is really convenient.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/x2d7v7/num...

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#278

Post by jacobjjacob »

jajko wrote: post #233
jacobjjacob wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want infrastructure and then when it gets built, they say it’s too expensive and takes too long. Valid criticisms but many throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Rail for people is hard to get profitable without pretty high cost (or permanent subsidies). Look at Switzerland - this is the land of trains, all reachable cities and villages have main train station at their heart, use is frequent, and its part of national pride (precision, coverage, cleanliness etc.). Yet prices are brutal, sure if you live here you can often afford it but it still hurts. The price keeps rising. A…

I meant that it takes a long time to build and costs too much to build. But like another commenter said, externalities and the implicit subsidies that other modes of transportation get make it a difficult comparison.

Cleaner forms of transportation should be subsidized. The fact that it costs me $8 to cross the Bay Bridge into SF but costs $10+ round trip on BART is a shame. Especially when you have two or three people in the car.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#279

Post by macbr »

aetherspawn wrote: post #86
s0rce wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Just build more trains any train infrastructure is so much better than cars, they barely need improvement, they just need to be built

But for example if they used PMM squirrel cage motors etc, they would be nice and smooth, cheaper to build, more energy efficient. On the battery front, using car-style or truck-style EV battery modules would be more robust and would reduce cost by somewhere in the order of 50%. Instead, most trains still use induction motors (this is the high pitch whine you hear) and many train battery designs use industrial style…

Developing a new train platform takes a lot of time but Siemen’s Velaro Novo platform (in development since 2013 and presented 2018) uses PMM motors[1]. Siemens has been trialing PMM motors since at least 2003[2].

[1] https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/velaro-evolution/

[2] https://www.ew.tu-darmstadt.de/media/ew/rd/ew_vortraege/0305...

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#280

Post by crocal »

skrap wrote: post #245
crocal wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahoi! Participated to the development of a simulation tool for that purpose. Many factors need to be taken into account: - The gradients of the track - How agressively you want to drive at different time of the day - How many trains - The timing of the trains. When one train brakes, it can power another one that accelerates at the same moment - The efficiency of the power chain - The resistance model of the train Wit…

Interesting! Thanks for the great info. Do you know if anyone will have the opportunity to integrate observations into the model so it can continue to improve?

We did use actual data from existing lines to measure the gap between our models and reality. We were +/- 5% accurate.
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