The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before.<p>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!
It's great, but it took more than <i>20 years</i> to get here due to environmental reviews and shaky funding. ...and this was just re-fitting an existing, relatively short stretch of track!<p>We (as Californians) have GOT to do better than this! There are huge infrastructure projects that we need to undertake in the coming years. We have got to cut the red tape and properly fund projects.
That's good to hear. Especially since the electric trains accelerate so much faster than the Diesel ones did. Have you been next to one at takeoff? They're going about 40MPH before the train has traveled its own length. Probably limited more by standing passengers than power. Most of the energy used accelerating is recovered at the next stop, so the fast acceleration does not consume much energy.
They claim that "Caltrain is running its service on 100% renewable energy", but they are connected to the same grid as everyone else. It doesn't really make sense to say, half of our electricity is green, so customer X is renewable, but customer Y is not renewable.
This literally doesn’t matter. The energy consumption of a train is trivial compared to displacing cars. If there was a way to trade this savings for higher speed, ridership, or frequency, it would be worth it.<p>(If there’s not, this is a free win and yay - but it’s the wrong focus)
It's hilarious but sad to watch Americans learn things that agencies abroad already know. The other example of this I saw today was that in NYC the congestion pricing has "surprisingly" slashed the number of car crashes and injuries in Manhattan. Like, duh.
><i>regenerative braking on the new trains is generating and sending back to the electric grid approximately 23% of the energy consumed by the system</i><p>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 how it works, just think conceptually) but a train spends a lot of time running, and comparatively a small amount of time braking, and if you were to detach the engine from the train, one doesn't get a sense the train would roll very far unpowered, so while there's momentum to scavenge, it doesn't seem like 25% of the total<p>I'm just thinking, how do these numbers make sense?
If the renewably sourced power is purchased from big hydroelectric dams, the institutional price might depend on how full the reservoirs are. Power costs might be higher in drier years.
> 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<p>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.
I mean, this is good news, but why was the efficiency of the system so misunderstood at the design phase? I hope someone's interested enough to find out!
Train technology is so behind compared to road electric vehicles.<p>Companies that build train batteries have been trying to sell to us (car OEMs) lately, and we look at the battery specs and battery management system capabilities and go uhhhh…<p>On the motor and control fronts as well.
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.
They are using less electricity than expected. The article neglects to specify whether this is due to higher than expected efficiency, or higher than expected downtime. Not that there is necessarily a problem with the technology, but energy efficiency estimates should be expected to already be quite accurate, all the technology is super old. If the efficiency is not in fact higher, I think the article is written a little disingenuously, they should really be more specific.
19 million annually. I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze here. They should focus on making Caltrain run reliably timely, and safely for the passengers.<p>Once we get the ridership numbers up we can easily make up for the electricity efficiency.