High-speed rail will add Merced and Bakersfield to initial service to San Jose

San Jose scored another win when high-speed rail comes to our city in 2025. The initial operating segment will now likely include both Merced and Bakersfield, two cities originally omitted from the first phase. Merced would require a spur track from the main operating line that will eventually go from San Jose to Los Angeles (and perhaps San Diego). Bringing Bakersfield into the network would involve choosing a different terminus station with connections to Amtrak services.

This would give even more people easy access to Downtown San Jose and further stimulate the demand to locate more jobs in or near Downtown. The main risk in adding more cities into the initial segment would be the potential for delays and funding issues. If this ends up happening in 2025, it will give us a substantial economic boost and can perhaps help to correct our jobs and housing imbalances.

Source: SVBJ

Envision Silicon Valley - preliminary VTA project evaluations

The VTA has started doing very early research on a variety of potential future transit projects. It would almost definitely take an increase in sales taxes for any of these to become reality, but it is interesting to see the ideas that are being tossed around.

There were several projects in the study that are already well into planning-mode. These include BART to Downtown San Jose, a Light Rail extension to Eastridge Mall, a Light Rail extension to Los Gatos, and expanding the Express Lane system on our freeways. However, there were also brand new projects that I have never heard even mentioned before. This include a billion dollar Downtown San Jose Subway (nice!) that would significantly speed up the whole Light Rail system, a $1.5 billion Light Rail line that would go from Downtown San Jose to Santana Row/Valley Fair and eventually De Anza College, a new Light Rail line that would go from that NASA/Bayshore station to North Bayshore in Mountain View, and a ton of highway interchange improvements.

You can find some of the project "evaluation cards" below, but I recommend going through the whole list over here.

Source: Robertee from the San Jose Development Forum

San Jose will be first major California city to get High Speed Rail!

San Jose has just scored a major infrastructure win that should provide a nice economic boost next decade. California High Speed Rail officials have decided to build the first segment of its 220 mph rail line between the Central Valley and San Jose.

The original plan going back to 2012 was to initiate high-speed service between the Central Valley and Burbank. However, that southern segment requires expensive tunneling through mountains and drew major opposition from a small number of NIMBY cattle farmers. LA's loss is our gain, as the plan is now to bring High Speed Rail to Downtown San Jose by 2025.

The new service will put some serious pressure on increasing jobs in Downtown San Jose as it will dramatically open up our job market. Madera will now only be 40 minutes away by train from Downtown, previously a two to three hour drive. That is a feasible commute to the tech job capital of the world, while not clogging up our freeways. A home in Madera costs about $250k, which also opens up new affordable housing options for those that want to work in San Jose but can't afford to live here. This is a big win for local companies that are hungry for talent and contribute more to the local economy (financially) than most residents. Considering it is much more likely that people will be commuting in for jobs than the other way around, this will help correct the jobs and housing imbalance that San Jose currently faces and negatively impacts the city's financial position.

BART is also scheduled to come Downtown around 2025, making Diridon in Downtown San Jose the most connected transit station on the West Coast. Over 600 trains could be stopping at the station each day after all of these projects are completed.

Construction has already started on California High Speed Rail last summer in Fresno. Ridership is expected to be between 2.2 million and 4.1 million riders when the San Jose service begins in 2025.

Source: SVBJ

San Jose Bike Share is Planning a Huge Expansion!

Two years ago, Bay Area Bike Share officially launched in San Jose. The program allows residents and visitors to rent bikes 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Membership is inexpensive, costing only $88/year or $9 for a 24-hour rental. The bikes are pretty nice and feature LED lights, a 7-speed grip shift, and drum brakes. You can pick up a bike at any station and drop that same bike off at any station, you do not have to return it to the original destination.

The program has been quite successful, especially in Downtown San Jose where there are 14 stations. There is also a station in Japantown and another near the Civic Center on First Street. Now the Bay Area Bike Share program is growing ten-fold and San Jose will have well over 100 stations by the end of 2017! Combined with dozens of miles of new bike lanes that are currently being planned, this will make San Jose one of the most bike-friendly cities in the nation.

Bay Area Bike Share is looking for suggestions on where to locate their new San Jose stations and bikes. To suggest a new station, just head over here. To learn more about the program or become a member, head over to the Bay Area Bike Share website.

BART Expansion to San Jose Getting Some Help from Obama

In Obama's proposed budget, $1 billion is earmarked for California transit. San Jose gets a nice shout out, since $165 million of that is to continue the BART expansion in Silicon Valley. Have a look at the source link for more details on the transit plans for California.

Source: LA Times, Hatip to Barclay Livker for sending this in!

New BART to Downtown San Jose Proposal

The largest public transit project in the Bay Area is rapidly moving forward, but there is one major hiccup for Phase II of BART's extension to the South Bay. Phase I is fully funded and should be completed no later than 2018, running BART mass transit trains to both Milpitas and Berryessa. Phase II--which includes stations at Alum Rock, Downtown San Jose, Diridon, and Santa Clara--is now at risk of losing a huge chunk of Federal Funding. Timing is absolutely critical here. The project needs to enter the Federal New Starts Program by the end of 2014, or $1.1 billion of funding could be cut from the project, putting the whole phase at risk.

A four station Phase II BART extension will cost $4.7 billion. That breaks down into $1.1 billion from the Federal New Starts Program, $1.4 billion from Measure A, and a whopping $3 billion is unaccounted for. This puts the project at a high risk of being rejected by the Federal New Starts Program and we would likely need new substantial taxes to fund the $3 billion gap.

So here is the new proposal to get things off the ground and secure most of the funding within the next two months. Let's only build two station in Phase II: Downtown San Jose and Diridon. These will be by far the most utilized stations in the South Bay extension and would result in substantially reducing the cost of Phase II. The total cost would now become $3.4 billion, $1.1 billion from the Federal New Starts Program, $1.4 billion from Measure A, and a $1.7 billion gap. Since more than 50% of the project would be funded, it would greatly improve our chances of getting federal funding.

Personally, while I would love to have the full four stations now... I would gladly take these two over no extension at all (or one delayed to 2030). The Alum Rock and Santa Clara stations could be built in a future Phase III. In fact, my dream scenario for Phase III would be these two stations plus a further extension up north to Levi's Stadium/Great America, Mountain View, and Palo Alto.

We have to start somewhere. What do you guys think about dropping two stations temporarily in order to ensure BART connects with Silicon Valley's urban core?

Wednesday Wishlist: Mass Transit Upgrades From London

While it was just recently that I posted about the planned upgrades to BART that will come just in time for BART's expansion to San Jose, there are already some other great ideas out there that would be nice to have in our mass transit system. London is going to start getting next generation trains for several of its lines in 2022, and there are three great ideas that I would love to see incorporated into BART.

1.) Autonomous Trains - Improved safety, reliability, and a permanent end to BART strikes.
2.) Continuous Trains - Instead of having a series of connected cars, the new tube trains will be one single super-long cabin that can bend. This substantially increases capacity and access.
3.) Safety Doors - There will be no chance of falling onto the tracks since there will be a second set of door that are synced with the trains and only open when there is a train parked at the station.

See the video below for a sneak peak at what is coming next decade to London. Note several elements of the new London trains are incorporated into the new BART trains like more doors and digital signage.

New BART Trains Will Come Just In Time for San Jose Opening

Now that BART is just a few years away from coming to San Jose, we can talk about some of the improvements that you can expect to the system in addition to just the new stations. BART is spending well over $2 billion to replace its aging fleet of 669 train cars and add 300 extra train cars to support increased ridership and future expansion.

The new trains will be quieter, cooler, more comfortable, bike-friendly, and have digital signage on the inside (which you can see in the video down at the bottom). They will also have 3 doors per car instead of 2 in order to make it easier and faster to get in and out of the train. This is especially important since BART functions not only as a commuter train but as a Metro system in dense areas (SF, Oakland, and eventually Downtown San Jose).

I really hope this will be a system we can be proud of since we will be living with these trains for the next 30 or so years. So far, the plan looks pretty solid. The first 10 "pilot cars" will be delivered in 2015, the first batch of new train cars will do into service in 2017, and the rest of the cars will be delivered over the next four years. .

Sources: BART, SVBJ

Future of Caltrain Video

Here is a quick look at some of the benefits that electrified Caltrain will bring. In addition to obviously polluting less, service would be faster and more trains would be able to be deployed each hour. Check out the three minute video below to get the details.

Source: SkyscraperCity

Saturday Stats: #7... Worst Traffic in the US

Okay, so this week's stat is not exactly the most uplifting. With a thriving economy comes some additional traffic, but there is a bright side. This stat can help make the case for bettering our public transit system and it could actually be worse. There are six major cities with worse traffic, including NY, LA, and San Francisco:

Top 10 Worst Cities for Traffic in America, along with total annual hours wasted in traffic:

1. Los Angeles (59 hours)
2. Honolulu (50 hours)
3. San Francisco (49 hours)
4. Austin (38 hours)
5. New York (50 hours)
6. Bridgeport (39 hours)
7. San Jose (31 hours)
8. Seattle (35 hours)
9. Washington, D.C. (41 hours)
10. Boston (31 hours)

Also, San Jose and Austin were the only two cities that saw traffic increase last year (6% and 3% respectively), every other city had a slight drop in congestion. I don't think it is a coincidence that these are also the two cities whose economies performed extremely well in 2012. I'm hoping BART, highway improvements, and building housing closer to jobs (and vice versa) will help us get out of the top 10 for this stat.

Source: SVBJ, INRIX

High Speed Rails Wins Alignment Lawsuit

A few years ago the cities of Atherton, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto filed a lawsuit to prevent California High Speed Rail trains from passing through their cities. Basically a few extremely wealthy communities are trying to block a project that will benefit millions of people. Thankfully, last week a judge dismissed the case. The high speed trains will indeed take the most efficient route in the Bay Area, which is from San Jose to San Francisco via the Penninsula (as opposed to San Jose >> Oakland >> San Francisco). Now the next step is actually funding this $40+ billion project.

Source: SJBJ

Saturday Stats: San Jose Commute Times

Do you think that your commute in Silicon Valley is pretty bad? Well, it turns out that it is probably less worse than in other major metros in California. The average commute in San Jose is 24.4 minutes. This compares to 28.8 minutes in San Francisco (the worst of ALL major metros), 28.3 minutes in Los Angeles, and 25.9 minutes in Sacramento. San Diego tied with San Jose at 24.4 minutes. As much as we complain, it is at least 18% worse up north.

Source: SVBJ

Double Carpool Lanes Coming to the South Bay

The first double carpool lanes in Northern California are going to be built in a 3 mile stretch on 101 between 85 and Embarcadero in Palo Alto. These are extremely rare (had a real hard time finding a photo) and exist on just a few freeways in SoCal.

Eventually these will become double toll lanes, which is part of a much larger project to create double toll lanes stretching from Morgan Hill through San Jose and up to San Mateo. Toll lanes allow single drivers in the carpool lane for a fee that increases with higher congestion. So far the only toll lane in San Jose proper is along 237.

Highway 85 is also going to get the double toll lane treatment as soon as 2015 and 880 is going get it's first carpool lane in each direction between 101 and 237.

Source: Marin Independent Journal

Grand Plans for the Diridon Station

Some very exciting changes are in store for the Diridon area. It's a key transit hub in the bay area that connects Caltrain, Light Rail, Ace, Capital Corridor, Amtrak, and multiple Bus lines. By the end of 2012 it will also be home to a bike sharing station and by the end of the decade it should also house BART and High Speed Rail. It very well may become one of the busiest transportation depots in the US someday. Add to that a potential ballpark across the street, and you have an area with a lot of potential.

Below are some images from the planning department showing 3 planned "zones" the Diridon area is being divided into.  The innovation zone is going to be focused around housing emerging companies, the central zone will feature retail and entertainment, and the southern zone will be primarily residential. A lot of thought has also been put into an art plan that will blanket all three zones. Have a look at some of the images below for more on the overall vision!

Great Earth Day Idea from San Mateo

Those that work in San Mateo and pledge to take public transportation during "Earth Day week" (April 19th-23rd) will be eligible to get a free $10 TransLink card. This card is essentially a unified transit ticket that works on Caltrain, BART, Muni, AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit / Ferry, and eventually buses. Hopefully VTA will take note and join the club--especially with Grand Central Station San Jose coming soon to Diridon Station (VTA Lightrail, VTA Buses, BART, Caltrain, ACE, Amtrack, and Hight Speed Rail all in a single location). 

As population and commute times continue to rise, we really need to encourage better usage of public transit. This initiative from San Mateo is exactly what we should do here to continue to get better utilization and grow our transit system. Many people don't realize that our Light Rail system is actually pretty nice. It's far from perfect, but definitely usable... especially if someone is giving you free money to ride it. For more information on what our neighbor up north is doing, click here. Also if you happen to work in San Mateo, you might as well go for your free TransLink card as well!