Transbay Terminal
2021 attempt at disaster salvage: DTX via Seventh Street and Howard Street
Transbay Terminal (extant) to Seventh and Bryant, via Howard
Street, passing under Moscone Center and under Muni
Central Subway, to Seventh and Mariposa, via existing
Caltrain rights of way.
The World Renowed Caltrain timetable generating "Taktulator"
Over 80% accurate, for the low, low price of $0.
Non-superficial Internals of code (PHP!) unchanged since 2011.
That's how radidly progress happens on anything related to Caltrain!
Still over 80% accurate-ish, still $0, still ignored after more
a decade and a half of accurate-ish-ness.
(Meanwhere there has been only negative service
improvement at Caltrain in the the two decades
from 2004 and 2024!
America's Finest Transportation Planning Progessionals™!
World Class!)
So set the wayback machine to the first Obama presidential term
and give it a whirl!
Caltrain-HSR Blog introduction to the Taktulator
from May 2011
Caltrain-HSR Blog articles tagged "Timetables":
14 years, and counting, of despair and hopelessness. Fun times!
... old old old old sad stupid stuff from the 2010s, 2000s, and
1990s below ...
(Pre-2010 pre-TJPA/PTG "design" catastrophe would-have could-have hypotheticals ...)
The only possible remaining (limited by
castastophically
incompetent past
decision-making by the TJPA and SF government),
operable (based on first world standards and practices),
constructible (based on lack of criminally-permitted
conflicting real estate sell-offs) rail alignment into the
Transbay Terminal is this.
(640kb PDF.)
70kmh design speed; DB/OeBB-standard turnout geometry;
minimum 250m radius on running lines (300m no longer feasible
due to real estate scams);
190m radius absolute minimum;
gap-free 1000m minimum radius platform curvature;
over-generous 4.5m track spacing;
maximally conflict-free interlockings enable maximum
possible throughput;
maximally free passenger flow to minimize journey times (not
shown in track sketch, but obvious);
etc.
In other words, about what your average
non-English-as-a-first-language (ie potentially competent) railway
engineer with basic skills (ie certainly not American) would toss
off in his or her sleep.
Yes, explanatory text and a nice narrative should be added
sometime.
Much more detail available on request ... though why bother?
-
The official site of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority
(TJPA) is
www.transbayproject.org
... uh, no, this week it's
www.transbaycenter.org.
A big thank you goes out to TJPA's rent-seeking contractors
for a new domain name,
for a new agency logo,
for breaking all web links,
and for zero progress on the informational front and,
far, far, far worse, for negative progress on the civil
and transportation engineering fronts.
Can any of these people have ever visited a
train station?
We're doomed.
- A selection of
news stories.
-
The information-light web site of the MTC/Caltrain/BART/CHSRA(ugh!)
sponsored Regional
Rail Plan for the Bay Area study, funded by Regional
Measure 2.
-
Michael Kiesling's
Regional
Rail Plan, the competence and rationality of which
demonstrate that all the Bay Area needs is somebody with a
quarter of a brain to be put in charge -- a quality sorely
lacking at MTC and all of the local CMAs.
- Regional
Measure 2 ($3 state bridge tolls) was approved on 2
March 2004 and will provide $150 million for capital costs of
the Transbay Terminal project and $3 million/year (escalating
at 3.5% annually) for operational costs of the terminal, among
many other projects (many truly awful, some good.)
(See also the legislative history of Senator Don Perata's
Senate Bill 916 (2003-4).)
-
The Final Program
EIS/EIR of the California High Speed Rail
Authority. (Draft January 2004; Final August 2005.)
This final EIR, unlike the sleaze-ridden Draft EIR rammed through by
corrupt board member Rod Diridon and his dim-witted and
self-interest-defeating San Jose cronies, does not totally
exclude even considering the superior Altamont Pass alignment
from the Central Valley into the San Francisco Bay Area.
(Far more competent and more honest and higher quality and
$5 billion less expensive analysis of the Altamont route can
be found at
arch21.org.)
- The approved San Francisco Transportation Sales Tax 0.5% renewal,
Proposition K of November 2003, includes
$270 million
for the Transbay Terminal project.
Unfortunately, the self aggrandizing, grossly unethical, and
manifestly
incompetent
SFCTA executive director has unilaterally chosen to defund
the program, as it does not lie 100% within his personal
fiefdom.
See! The process does work as intended!
- The San Francisco Redevelopment Authority's
"Transbay
Design for Development Vision",
August 2003 (90mb of PDF files)
is a generally encouraging piece of work.
More the pity, then, that the egregious actions of the
grossly corrupt SF Mayor's Office and SF County
Transportation Office staff have effectively doomed the
project.
- Text of the Cooperative Agreement
finally reach between grossly un-co-operative Caltrans and the
Transbay Joint Powers Authority.
(Links broken by moronic TJPA "web site relaunch")
(See also exhibit
Map 1,
Map 2,
Map 3,
Map 4,
Map 5 and
Map 6.)
July 2003.
- Transbay
Terminal/Caltrain Downtown Extension/Redevelopment Final
Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact
Report,
March 2004.
Approved 22 April 2004.
- The TJPA's generally regrettable, technically ignorant,
unresponsive, and now unrectifiable
Locally Preferred Alternative
Report (March 2003) has finally appeared on the web,
11 months after it was produced. (2.6mb PDF)
None of the substantial and glaringly amateurish engineering
problems of the draft EIR were address in any way.
We'll be living with the consequences of contractor and staff hubris
and ignorance for decades to come.
See, the process does work as intended!
Fail to file a lawsuit, fail to buy the cheap-and-easy mayor,
and you're guaranteed to be ignored!
- Transbay
Terminal/Caltrain Downtown Extension/Redevelopment Draft
Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact
Report,
October 2002.
(Links broken by moronic TJPA "web site relaunch")
- Official Transbay Terminal project
Newsletter No. 2, October 2002.
(2mb PDF)
(Links broken by moronic TJPA "web site relaunch")
(Issue No. 1 has never been made available online.)
(Issue No. 3 has never been made available online.)
- The San Francisco County
Transportation Authority's official TTT/DTX proposal to Evil
MTC in HTML format (hand-converted by
Yours Truly) or in its originally-published
PDF (ugh!) incarnation.
October 2001.
- San Francisco Planning Department
Notice of Preparation
that an EIR is required an Francisco Transbay Terminal / Caltrain
Downtown Extension Project, March 2001.
- Evil MTC's surprisingly competent
Transbay Terminal Improvement Project, March 2001.
- San Francisco 1999 Proposition H
set (corrected) city policy to support of extension of Caltrain to
a rebuilt Transbay Terminal.
The full text of the appproved city ordinance can be found
here.
November 1999.
Ancient and hopelessly naive Transbay Terminal rail alignment
development from the 1990s
- The only possible remaining (limited by castastophically
incompetent past "decision" making by the TJPA and SF
government), operable (based on first world standards and
practices), constructible (based on lack of criminally-permitted
conflicting real estate sell-offs) rail alignment into the
Transbay Terminal is this. (640kb PDF.)
- Scores of additional refinements developed in the period
2000-2004 not online.
They should be, I guess -- that way one can
say "I told you so" with just a single URL.
- Ancient historial paths not taken.
What exactly was the point anyway of paying grossly ignorant
and incompetent "professionals" to completely screw things?
Bay Bridge
Caltrain
BART
MUNI
- Executive
Summary from the EIS/EIR
for Muni's appallingly wasteful and cost-ineffective
Third Street
Light Rail project
Note in particular the unbelivably, unspeakably,
mind-numbingly, appallingly bad ridership numbers (predicted
by the project sponsor) in
Table S-3.
This project has been Muni's highest priority for the last ten
years and will consume nearly all of its projected capital funds
for expansion for the next thirty years.
Gunzelling
Richard Mlynarik
