Coast Rail Coordinating Council
Salinas, CA

April 26, 2004

Reported by Chris Flescher

This group, the Coast Rail Coordinating Council, was compared to the LOSSAN group. LOSSAN is a formal Joint Powers Association, while CRCC is only a planning group.

The group has been running computer simulations to see how much congestion might occur if certain trains were added, specifically two LA-SF trips and two Gilroy-Salinas trips, and full Caltrain Baby Bullet service. Part of the study was just SF-Salinas and part extended to Burbank.

The SF-Salinas line has segments of 1980's era technology and segments of 1960's era technology. South of Sal, a lot of the line is 1940's era, meaning (I think) no signalling besides CTC, very short sidings, and no power switches. One part that has only a little extra capacity is the single track section just south of Morgan Hill. The approximate cost of adding second main track here is $100-130 a foot, and a crossover is about $1 million.

On the Coyote-Gilroy segment, a freight train can make it through with no delays if passenger headways are more than 40 minutes. When this is reduced, UP would need to hire a second crew on the SJ-San Luis Obispo segment and they really don't want to do that. The UP has agreed to allow a second LA-SLO train, even though this will increase congestion slightly.

On SLO-SJ, there are about 8 freight trains a day. The two stretches with 40's era tech are Sal-Santa Margarita and SLO-Santa Barbara. When there's no power switches, conductors have to jump down to throw them, and after train passes, walk to back of train, which adds lots of delays. There were 3 sidings on Sal-SLO stretch, about 20 miles apart, that were removed, and restoring them is a key part of upgrade. Several different simulations were run, with the most expensive upgrades being adding 3 sidings south of Sal, adding 3 power switches in Sal, Castroville, and putting in sidings with power switches, which would be about $15-20 million. This would bring delays back down to case we have now (no upgrades, no new trains). Apparently, 1% of delay can add up to 3-4 hours on this route, requiring crew changes.

The simulation calculated several kinds of speed and delays and now the group is trying to decide which measures are most relevant, partly by figuring out what matters most to passengers.

There will be a need to study the Monterey tourist train causing delays, sometime in the future.

Some other stuff: one bus is doing very well, 300% farebox recovery. Not sure if it's Hwy 17 bus (SJ-Santa Cruz) or SJ-SLO bus. The Coast Daylight could start around Sep 1, 2004. With the new SJ-SC bus (formerly called hwy 17,) running, all trips go to downtown Santa Cruz, unlike before where 2/3 stopped in Scotts Valley (a town about 5 miles north). People who run Capitol Corridor trains would like to see one or two a day extended to Salinas. Caltrain Baby Bullet will probably start weekday service on June 7 and weekend service on June 5.