Busy Trains

Busy Trains by Peter Lippman

The cover for this book wandered away right before we read it. The inside is not quite as nice. The book is an overview of trains. The pictures are intricately drawn. There was a discussion of repair trains after a section of track collapsed. The kids wanted to know if this was a true story. The book is a step above the "train" books of today.

Chinese Infrastructure

In China, I can walk down to the train station and take the $30 train from Nanjing to Shanghai. It cruises around at a measly 180 miles per hour and takes a "lengthy" 67 minutes to travel the approximately 200 miles. Compare this to the much more expensive and slower Acela trains on the east coast. The California high speed rail has cost billions of dollars, yet doesn't even aspire to these speeds. And in Shanghai, this high speed line isn't even the fastest. The Maglev that goes to Shanghai's Pudong airport travels around 300 miles per hour.

I wonder if China is taking the place of the US from a century or two ago. Back then, the United States was the scrappy little country that just got stuff done. Want a railroad across the country? We'll get it done. Factories that can outproduce Europe? Check. Sure there is some corruption and questionable business practices, but things got done. Today, however, the United States is stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire. Things are planned and planned and planned.

I can see things happen in the local case of the Steven's Creek Trail. Mountain View has built a trail along the Creek. Cupertino has built another portion. There is a two mile gap between the two. However, for a good chunk of that gap, there are houses along the creek. There is also a freeway that needs to be crossed. The simple solution would be to simply sign a route down the street and build a bridge over the freeway. This would connect the trails, and provide a nice ride down quiet residential streets next to the creek. However, the city of Sunnyvale instead is spending oodles of dollars on community outreach. The people on the logical streets yell the loudest. (It doesn't matter that their yelling is nonsensical.) So after many meetings, the current plan is to add in a couple mile detour down streets far from the trail, require a double crossing of another freeway, and potentially add a two-way bike path down a road adjacent to a freeway. And who would use this new trail? Obviously not anyone walking down the trail. Commuters would also be out since it poses a significant detour. Families on a leisurely bike ride are probably also out due to the sketchy freeway crossings. I guess a few people in the local neighborhoods could use it for local bike traffic. But, they are generally fine using the low-traffic roads already.

China on the other hand would just say "we need a bike path" and build it.

The Chinese way also has development in clusters - which happen to be the clusters where mass transit is focussed. A city like Nanjing has millions of people. Despite this amount, it is very walkable without being hugely overcrowded. There is also a huge amount of green space. China apparently has learned something from US-style suburban sprawl. Yes there are issues in China. Cars are becoming popular (but the crowded streets can be easier on pedestrians). Sidewalks can be blocked by construction (but there are enough pedestrians walking on the street to keep it from being a safety hazard). And there is the nasty issue of factory pollution. These are big issues, but they are fixable. China is rapidly building metro lines that are being used - often because stops are near the high density developments. Even with all this crazy development, it is still easy to walk around. The communistic capitalism does seem to be working - for now.

Nanjing Metro

The Railway Technology site has some information about the Nanjing Metro. Though, I'm not sure how much of it you can trust. They obviously didn't fact check the Nanjing city information. (Second largest city in China? Hmmm, does that mean that only one of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong is bigger than it? I don't think so. And it also says that it is 1 kilometre away from Beijing... Hmmm. Maybe a kilo-kilometre. But this is major digression.)

Yesterday, on going up towards the Yangtze River, we saw plenty of construction on this new 3rd line. It goes through an area that is fairly run down. We saw some places where walls had been knocked down, and nothing put up. However, there are some new construction towers replacing some single-story dwellings, so things may be prepping for the new line. (Nearby, there is also one neighborhood that looks like a "Chinatown". Imagine that, a chinatown in China.

The existing metro line is pretty well done. They have a lot of the "little" features that make subways nice. The stations has displays of the next few oncoming trains. The inside of the train has little signs showing the current stop and the next one. The stations also have maps of the local area with all the exists shown. I find the numbering of the exists especially useful. At some stations, the numbering goes past 20. It is nice to be able to say. "Go to stop X, exit Y" and be able to find the exact location you want. The platforms have floor-to-ceiling "gates", making it impossible to end up on the platform if there is no train there. The escalators slow down to a crawl if nobody is there, but then speed up when you step on. (this saves energy, but still lets you know what direction it is going.) All in all, it is a well designed subway. It will be nice to see if they complete the entire metro blueprint.

Getting from Shanghai Pudong to Nanjing

Nanjing is a big city in China - just not big enough to get direct flights to the US. (Though there are flights to Frankfort Germany.) A typical option is to connect through another Asian hub. You may be at the whim of the schedules. (Right now, you can theoretically connect on Asiana in Seoul to go from Nanjing to San Francisco - as long as you want to spend a day in the airport.)

Beijing offers frequent connections to Nanjing. However, the Air China and United planes from the US to Beijing do not provide the greatest flight experience. (They are old!) Cancellations seems to be frequent on Beijing-Nanjing route. (However, you can take a 4 hour high speed rail ride from Beijing to Nanjing.) Also, the two terminals in the airport are a long bus ride away. I thought I might have boarded the wrong bus, as we seemed to go through a neighborhood before we got to the other terminal. Air China and United are in one terminal, while China Eastern is in another. China Eastern has lots of flights to Nanjing, while the other two have many flights to the US. (Air china also has some flights to Nanjing, but they tend to be the most cancel-happy.)

I prefer to fly in to Shanghai. United flies more modern planes on the route with better timings. There are also multiple options for getting to Nanjing.

The options:

1) Plane. You can book one-way from China Eastern for as low as 100 RMB. If you book from major travel sites (like Expedia) it will probably be greater than $150 one way. Unless you are traveling on a SkyTeam Airline (like Delta), you will probably be transferring from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 for this flight.
There is only one flight per day, currently leaving at 9:30pm and arriving Nanjing at 10:30pm. It is a small plane, so larger carry-ons will probably need to be checked. (Though, they do occasionally "buckle" the carry-ons in to empty seats.)
The Nanjing airport is a ways outside of the city. If you take a car into the city, you can probably expect to arrive a little before midnight. There is also a bus, but it may be a close call to catch it from this flight.

The return flight from Nanjing to PVG currently leaves at 8:00AM.

2) Train
There are frequent high speed trains from Shanghai to Nanjing. At times there can be a high speed "G" train leaving every few minutes. However, you have to be careful when looking at schedules. There are two main high speed stations in Shanghai and two main high speed stations in Nanjing. Some of the high speed trains run nonstop, while others make a number of stops (nearly doubling the travel time.)
In Nanjing, Nanjing station is on the old station on north side of town. It is closer to the city center. Nanjing South is big gleaming new station on the south side of town. In Shanghai, the Shanghai station is the crowded old station in the center of town, while Hongqiou is the big new station next to the domestic airport. All stations in Shanghai and Nanjing are on metro lines. While there are trains between all the stations, most trains from Hongqiou go to Nanjing South, while most from Shanghai go to Nanjing. The fastest G trains take just over an hour, while the ones with the most stops are almost 2 hours. There are also slower trains and "overnight" trains that are even cheaper. High speed trains tend to run around 6am~9pm. You do have to watch the internet because there seem to be a lot of "bogus" or outdated schedules out there.

Once you decide on the station, you need to get there. There are numerous discussions explaining how to get there.
Here are a few that I have used or seen:
From PVG, you can go down to the Airport bus level and get a bus to Shanghai Station of Hongqiou airport/train station. 30 RMB ~ 1 hour. The airport has well-labeled signs directing you to the airport buses. Then you can stand in an island next to the bus number. (There is also a chart in the airport explaining where the buses go.)

The cheapest way is to take the metro from the airport. <10 RMB 2 hours to Hongqiou. You just take line two all the way. (Though you have to transfer from a smaller train to a larger one at one stop.) To Shanghai station, it is a little shorter, but requires an extra connection. (It can be confusing to figure out which way to go on the loop line.)
For the true "Shanghai" experience, you can take the Maglev, and transfer to the metro. This shaves some time off the trip, but it does make the 180MPH of the high speed trains seem slow.

You can buy train tickets at the ticket counter. If you don't speak Chinese, you can probably still get them to show you a list of trains just by saying "Nanjing".

In Nanjing, if you arrive before 11:00pm, you can take the metro. It is about 2 RMB to most destinations (it is a little more if you go further)

Caltrain cuts - less is more?

Caltrain has a Proposed schedule that would slash a number of trains and raise fares and parking costs.
With my current job, caltrain doesn't come in the picture (I usually bike, though I have walked, and plan on one day starting to jog there - at least after I find a good place to shower.)

However, in my previous position, I took the train on a semi-regular basis. However, the schedule had something to be desired. During rush hour, there were three trains per hour. Unfortunately, they were all in the first 20 minutes of the hour. The "cutback" plan increases the trains to 4 per hour, with the longest gap being about 19 minutes. They do make a couple more stops, but all the trains skip at least one station, making the time to Palo Alto 15 minutes on each train.

Since I usually had child responsibilities, the AM "commute" trains were rarely an option anyway. However, with the new schedule, the 8:44 and 8:55 trains would be distinct possibilities - with both skipping a stop (and thus arriving faster.) Those are followed by a couple all-stop trains every half hour (which were my normal trains.) Those were moved ten minutes earlier - meaning with a bike I could get to work earlier. By the bus, however, they now leave a couple minutes before the bus arrives. D'oh!

PM trains also look good, with 4 trains per hour, fairly evenly spaced.

For bus service, there are AM rush hour trains that leave 9 minutes after the 54 bus arrives. This is a fairly reasonable gap to allow catching the train without fear, while not having an excessive wait. For PM trains, there is a train that arrives 7 minutes before each bus leaves. Again, great timing. (The off peak trains, alas are timed almost perfectly to miss the buses.)

Weekend trains also see a big improvement, with the shuttering of many of the train stations. The last time we took a weekend trains, it took forever, with the train stopping at stations like Atherton for perhaps one passenger. (Though the person I saw walking away was with a dog, so he may have just been crossing the tracks.) The shuttering of some of the weekend stations will make the trips much faster and more reasonable.

Adventures in Transit and the 54 bus

Spending a little time on public transit helps me to really appreciate my bicycle.

On Friday, I happened to leave work shortly before a caltrain 'baby bullet' would leave. Perfect. I thought I'd just go to the station, hop on the train, and get home super fast without breaking a sweat. Small problem. It was a 'new' train with a smaller bike car that was already partially full. The next train didn't come for another 26 minutes - and that was a local train. So I popped over and saw the 522 bus had just left. They time the two to leave at the exact same time (not bothering to think that this does happen to be the bus/train transfer station, where people coming from the north would find it useful to transfer to the El Camino bus.) So I just rode down the path on one side of the street, then crossed the train tracks to Alma. Alma is a pretty miserable street for cycling - horrible pavement condition, with no shoulder. However, there is a long stretch with no intersections, thus allowing for some quick travel times. Then there are a few jammed up intersections (with not even room to squeeze by), then it turns in to Central Expressway with a nice wide shoulder. I got to Sunnyvale long before a train appeared. I even saw the good 'ol 522 on El Camino right as I got there.

At least I was lucky. I get a Caltrain pass from work. Most people have to pay for their tickets. And Caltrain is proof-of-payment. This means you have to buy a ticket first, and then hope to get on a train. If you get bumped, you still have the time-stamped ticket that you have to use in 4 hours. You either wait it out, or you have just made a donation to caltrain. This can make 'bumping' even worse. Some people may have ridden - but now that they have paid for a ticket, they are somewhat obligated to wait for the next train. (If it were 'pay or stamp onboard' they could see it as a discount for not riding.) Or perhaps conductors could simply hand out "bump vouchers". A bump voucher could then be 'validated' as 10 ride tickets are validated and be used for a free ride at another time. (Though to prevent abuse a valid ticket should be required to receive one.)

An even easier approach to improving public transportation usefulness would be to synchronize bus and train schedules. Samtrans and Caltrain even operate from the same office. VTA is in its own little world - however, it doesn't even bother to sync its own trains with its buses. The 54 bus is a great example of this. Sunnyvale's caltrain station is overwhelmingly 'northbound commuter'. There just aren't many trains taking people to San Jose in the morning. And there are not a whole lot of people getting on in the afternoon to go back to San Jose. So, it would make a whole lot of sense to have AM buses arrive shortly before northbound trains leave and PM buses leave shortly after trains arrive. During the middle of the day, the schedule is not too bad. The bus arrives about 10 minutes before the train leaves. This is a little much, but makes it easy to catch the train, even with a slow bus.
During rush hours, however, its a disaster. Trains depart at :00, :13, and :18. The :13 train is a baby bullet, while :18 is a local. So, it seems pretty easy. Have the bus arrive a little before the bullet, perhaps :10. Even if there is a big delay, there is a chance to catch the local. It also allows passengers from San Jose to catch the bus going north. Instead, the schedule is timed to be about as bad as it possible can. The bus runs every half hour, yet the closest it gets is 24 minutes before the bullet train. Catching any train could be a challenge. The timepoints on the schedule are for the Sunnyvale transit center. Getting to the train requires crossing Evelyn at a light, and crossing to the boarding platform at the other side of the tracks. If all goes well, there is a slim chance that you can catch a train after arriving at 8:17, but everything must fall perfectly in place.
54 arrivals at caltrain station.
6:20a - 53 minutes before bullet (40 minutes before next train)
6:49a - 24 minutes before bullet (11 before next train)
7:18a - 55 minutes before bullet (0-42 minutes before next train)
7:47a - 26 minutes before bullet (13 before next train)
8:17a - 56 minutes before bullet (1-43 minutes before next train)

In the evening, trains arrive around :16, :21, and :55. The :21 is the desirable Baby Bullet. Again, they are timed almost perfectly to miss the trains. You can take a fast baby bullet - and then watch a bus pull away from the station right before the train arrives. But, at least in the evening, there are two buses that actually make reasonable train connections.
5:18 - no bullet (2 minutes after closest train)
5:48 - 27 minutes after bullet (27 after closest train)
6:19 - 58 minutes after bullet (2 after closest train)
6:48 - 27 minutes after bullet (27 after closest train)
7:16 - 55 minutes after bullet (21 after closest train)
8:16 - 55 minutes after bullet (21 after closest train)
9:16 - no bullet (33 after closest train)

Now these buses do arrive a couple of minutes before the baby bullet to San Jose. So perhaps VTA is trying to make it easy for people to get quickly to San Jose. The catch is that VTA also provides plenty of service for that. From El Camino, the 522 gets from Hollenbeck to downtown San Jose in 30 minutes. The 23 bus can take an hour. The light rail is around 35 minutes. All of these connect to various points of the 54 bus (and are some of the main points for people getting on and off the bus.) They also go to multiple destinations in central San Jose. So why exactly would anybody need to take the bullet train there? Chances are, its just an accident that they timed it so well for catching a bullet downtown - either that or they are crazy sharks fans. (But unfortunately, that would leave them no way to get home.)

Perhaps the reverse commute? Well, the northbound trains leave at :58, so yes, it would be only a 10 minute wait for somebody catching it. Or an 18 minute wait for somebody trying to get on the bus going north. Neither is that great.

Perhaps it is just an attempt to tie in to the light rail schedules. The northbound buses arrive 4-6 minutes before the southbound light rail leaves. But since the trains leave every 15 minutes, there are plenty of other opportunities to create good connections to the light rail, while also having good caltrain connections. Furthermore, the 522 provides a much faster means of travel to San Jose - and is closer to the population center of the 54s route.

In the end, there are no excuses. The 54 schedule is just bad. Just typical VTA thoughts in isolation. And that is what makes riding a bike a necessity.

And if the schedules were not enough of an issue, drivers can introduce their own variance. Some choose to adhere religiously to every timepoint on the schedule. Some only pick some to adhere to, while blowing right by others. Some try to drive as fast as possible to get to a timepoint, then wait there until it is 'time'. (This last type can actually be beneficial. I once was able to get off the bus at El Camino, cross El Camino and Olive, return some books at the library, and then go back to the bus stop on Olive to catch the bus as it came by.) And then there is the matter of what clock they are following. (One bus whizzed by a stop a mile and a half from the start only 2 minutes after the official start time. Since the speed limit is only 30 miles per hour, this bus did some serious speeding with no stops or red lights - or left a little early.) But its hard to give bus drivers a tough time. Given the system they have to work in, I'm grateful that they are willing to at least try to provide some transportation sanity. It would be nice if VTA actually required its employees and board to use transit. Ha... That would be the day.

The law of unintended consequences

When cars first came in to being they seemed great. They allowed people freedom of transportation at greater ease and distance than walking. They were much cheaper than horse carriages, and didn't produce the 'nasty' pollution of horse manure. In California, especially, they allowed people to rid themselves dependency from the ugly train monopoly. The rail barons seemed to exercise way to much control, and this was a great opportunity to get rid of the railroads influence. Building more roads was the solution to the problem. The early adopters had great mobility advantages.

However, as more people owned cars, some problems started to appear. Congestion slowed traffic. The simple solution was 'limited access roads'. However, this ability to drive greater distances on freeways was no use unless there was a place to park. So, minimum parking requirements were put in place. Things were still somewhat manageable. Kids would walk to school, and come home at play. Most households had just one worker, so one car was enough.

However, these old neighborhoods were still a little too dense for optimal car use; and nobody wanted to live on a busy street. So, new neighborhoods were built with more space for cars, and often with 'fences' facing the busy streets. These 'fence streets' were miserable to walk on, but most everybody was expected to stay in their neighborhood. Some parents started driving their children to school. It seemed to be faster. As more households had both parents working, a daycare "drop off" on the way to work became more of a norm. Dropping off at school just seemed to be a natural extension. Since houses were further apart (and family sizes smaller), neighborhood schools began shutting down. Initially some bus service could be provided. But this was much slower than driving kids, so most parents opted to drive. Soon, driving to school became the norm. School districts then begin to offer special magnet programs at various schools. The parents are expected to drive. This all goes to create more traffic, and make it even more difficult for children to walk to school. The benefit some parents initial gained from driving kids to school, eventually became a loss to kids that actually wanted to safely walk to their neighborhood school.

These loses extended to other areas. The initial benefit of low-cost super-stores resulted in the loss of neighborhood stores. Sure, the Wal*Mart had things much cheaper than the neighborhood store. But, it required an up-front purchase of a car, and additional ongoing costs of owning and operating the vehicle, as well as taxes for the roads. (If Walmart opened with a $20000 initiation fee, and $2000 in annual dues, nobody would go there. However, by externalizing that cost in to a 'necessity', it became more palatable.) The price of low-cost also destroyed some local community institutions. Would Wal*Mart support the little league team? Would Home Depot provide the nuances of how to fix the obscure electrical outlets in your neighborhood? Probably not. But they would sell you the wrong receptacle for 20% less.

The gradual elimination of transit and scattered development seemed good at first. There was no need to funnel all traffic on trains to a central location. In theory, homes and workplaces could form a fine mesh, where nobody has to travel too far and no road is too congested. Problem is, things don't work this way. People don't want to live near retail or industrial. Businesses like to be near other similar businesses. The big-box phenomenon was affecting companies as well, through consolidation, and formation of large offices. Zoning comes in to the picture to make things even worse. So today we have a model where there are many residential, industrial, commercial and retail clusters. The clusters are large enough to cause huge traffic jams. However, they are too spread out to really enable an effective transit solution. Even the few that provide adequate clusters for transit often provide just a drop in the bucket of the overall travel demand.

And finally pollution. We have replaced horse manure with carbon monoxide, ozone, and a host of other air pollutants. Noise pollution has also become a serious problem. And, as another unintended consequence, water pollution has become a serious problems as farmers use excess chemical fertilizers on their farms. Perhaps horse manure wasn't so bad after all.

Can we finally put BART out of its misery?

With all precincts counting, Measure B has 66.3% of the vote, vs. 66.67% needed to pass. However, there are still provisional ballots and vote-by-mail ballots to vote. Hopefully that wont change much, and it can die a nice death. Measure B was a horrible idea. After the feds pretty much told VTA that their planned BART extension did not make any cost/benefit sense, VTA hitched a great plan: "We will show that the voters are so stupid that they are willing to tax themselves to oblivion just to put the 'BART' name on something." Luckily, it seems to have failed. Hopefully that will cause the powers that be to rethink this "BART or nothing" approach.

If the choice were between adding new freeways and building BART, I would surely be in the BART camp. Only its not that way. 50 years ago, Santa Clara county decided that 'expressways' were a much better choice than BART. More recently, raising taxes to build Highway 85 seemed to be the way to go. "Upgrading" 237 and 87 to freeways also appeared to be wise ideas. Only now, after building all the roadways, it is finally dawning on people that "hey, maybe some people might actually like to take transit". Problem is that most development is geared towards cars. The further south, the worse it gets (just check out South San Jose - with residential 6 lane divided streets, where you have to walk over a mile just to get to your neighbor across the street.)

In this climate, who would take BART? Primarily people that take transit already. It might save a little time. (No getting stuck in traffic on the express bus). Though it would probably cost them more. New riders? Well, a few that were afraid of buses. But VTA already has an extensive light rail system that hardly anybody rides. Why should they? The stations are set in the middle of the freeway. "Hmm. traffic's light. I guess I'll just drive in". They also go a a circuitous route to finally get to their destinations. The end result is that they almost always take much longer than driving. (Often even longer than biking!) And this to arrive at a destination that is horribly pedestrian unfriendly. And links between transit systems? Hah! the light rail passes right over an Amtrak/ACE station - but the light rail station is half a mile away! Why make it easy for people to connect between transit systems?

For $5 billion dollars, perhaps we could actually build transit systems and development in a that they would actually be used. Now that would be innovative. Transit for moving people. And VTA just thought it was for providing union jobs.