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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

#281

Post by fsckboy »

Groxx wrote: post #150
fsckboy wrote: post #131

> 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…

"rolling very far unpowered" is like the entire point of rail systems

I would say that's not precisely true. the point of rail systems started out as "big power plant pulls lots of load". Once that was in place, yes, rolling very far unpowered becomes a compelling improvement.

a good comparison would be the invention of the travois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travois which benefitted from the addition of wheels.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#282

Post by 9283409232 »

basementcat wrote: post #242
jlmorton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be, though. There is way too much democracy in California localities. There should be no elected school board, transit districts, utility boards, assessors, sheriff, and so much more. No one is properly informed about candidates for these positions. For that matter, the Board of Supervisors should have no power other than oversight and impeachment. The Mayor should basically be a local dictator, with the…

What terrifies me the most are elections for judges. I am not a legal scholar and I rely upon local bar associations for qualification ratings (and I’m not convinced I made the right call all the time); to my horror I’ve had educated colleagues tell me they just pick cool sounding names.

I do research on all judges before I vote and while I might not know what a good judge is, a bad judge sticks out like a sore thumb.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#283

Post by [deleted] »

jlmorton wrote: post #171
saagarjha wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, BART director is an elected position? Why don't I get to vote on it? (Also, while I am biased towards Caltrain, the new trains beat traffic on 101/280 San Francisco↔San Jose during rush hour).

It shouldn't be, though. There is way too much democracy in California localities. There should be no elected school board, transit districts, utility boards, assessors, sheriff, and so much more. No one is properly informed about candidates for these positions. For that matter, the Board of Supervisors should have no power other than oversight and impeachment. The Mayor should basically be a local dictator, with the…

[deleted]

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#284

Post by winrid »

rsanek wrote: post #184
winrid wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it's a win for air quality for the people that live near the tracks. You could smell and taste the old diesels, was pretty annoying.

really? how close were you living? i lived for years just 3 houses over from the tracks and never even smelled the trains. definitely heard them tho

I lived across the street. Just walking around you smell it when they go by. Not a huge deal but definitely an improvement!

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#285

Post by astrange »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #177
ninetyninenine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because our politicians patrons are rentier capitalists who think the government spending money on things is a waste of their money. So yeah they really hate spending money on transit projects. Doesn't help that we're at the end stages of a debt driven real estate/rent price spiral. That means acquiring land for mass transit is twice as expensive as it should be. Ditto labor costs.

There's no "they" here. You're describing like five different groups that aren't aligned with each other, and most of them aren't capitalists. Japan is capitalist, more so than California.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#286

Post by quantified »

Dalewyn wrote: post #197
quantified wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I didn't ask about ID check. You make it sound like the process involves just walking in and asking for a ballot. I actually don't recall the detail from this cycle as to whether I was asked for ID. They did check out whether I was on the list and had already checked in. So they did look whether my name and address was registered to vote.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#287

Post by quantified »

Dalewyn wrote: post #238
saagarjha wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely they can just check your ballot and see if you are registered to vote when counting it?

That's the theory and in most other states I would agree, but this is California. The priority is in getting votes period, not getting voters. Once a ballot gets past the initial verification stage, ballots are separated from the voter and it becomes impossible to link them back again (ballots have no identifiers on them). Given California's priorities, I have no confidence in the integrity of their ballot verificati…

As I noted in a separate comment, they do check whether your name and address is registered to vote.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#288

Post by timewizard »

NewJazz wrote: post #254
timewizard wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area There are 30% more violent assaults on BART vs Muni. > if only there were some other way for them to get around! Do you want them to respond rapidly or eventually?

Are you saying that they need vehicles to get to the crime locations faster? Are vehicles really faster than them being at the BART station on foot? If anything that statistic you cited shows that their existing policies are not a deterrent. Perhaps because they are in their vehicles instead of on train cars where the crimes are happening.

> Are vehicles really faster than them being at the BART station on foot?

So you're sure you can create a deployment plan that will have the correct amount of officers on station at all times? What if they need backup? What if two incidents happen at once?

> their existing policies are not a deterrent.

I'm sure their vehicle strategy has little to do with deterrence. Or are you suggesting this is the _reason_ why there is more crime?

> instead of on train cars where the crimes are happening.

Crimes also happen on the platform, the turnstiles, and the curtilage. I get that people want to be "mad the vehicles exist" but this is not sensible.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#289

Post by ianburrell »

fsckboy wrote: post #281
Groxx wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rolling very far unpowered" is like the entire point of rail systems

I would say that's not precisely true. the point of rail systems started out as "big power plant pulls lots of load". Once that was in place, yes, rolling very far unpowered becomes a compelling improvement. a good comparison would be the invention of the travois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travois which benefitted from the addition of wheels.

Rails were invented for horse drawn carts. The low rolling resistance was the point. First steam locomotives were pretty weak and needed the efficiency. They were also used on existing tramways that had to be upgraded as trains got bigger.

Re: Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected

#290

Post by roenxi »

sofixa wrote: post #253
roenxi wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to end up in a position where you're telling a farmer how to manage & value farmland. That'll lead to more misses than hits.

> You're going to end up in a position where you're telling a farmer how to manage Funny you say that. Not only does that actually happen in pretty much all developed country, it's actually needed for a variety of reasons. There are subsidies to incentivise the "correct" crops (you don't want all farmers only doing cash crops for export, rendering your country very vulnerable to import markets to sustain itself), the…

> Not only does that actually happen in pretty much all developed country...

"Everyone does it" isn't much of an argument when it comes to economics, the field is littered with a long history of group-think episodes where most people do things in a way that was, in hindsight, a mistake. And being steamrollered by more economically productive societies that don't ban progress. The modern policies developed countries adopted have resulted in vast investments in China (and Asia more broadly) to dodge the regulatory states that were built.

And the rest of your comment is straightforwardly telling farmers how to farm. On average, I bet they know all that stuff better than the legislators. They're farmers! If we can't trust them to farm then putting regulators in charge isn't going to save us. That attitude of mother knowing best is still going to result in more misses than hits, even if confidently repeated a few times.

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