Yeah you're correct that most places don't allow hourly workers to pull more than 50 hours a week regularly.  I do work at one where upwards of a dozen guys regularly work 55-65 hours per week.  The big problem is that when somebody is sick or goes on vacation you essentially lose 1.5 workers instead of just one.  In the case of this BART employee, were he to call in sick, the agency is losing the equivalent of two 8-hour shifts, not just one.  That's why it's a bad idea to let guys get used to working extreme overtime. 

 

That said, companies can save on health and other benefits when they have people working overtime.  Rarely does an employee earn more paid vacation by working overtime and their health premiums don't change. 

Entire BART train robbed...like an old fashioned train robbery on the great plains:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-50-to-60-teens-swarm-11094745.php

^Biazrre

Idea to help solve the housing crisis in the bay area:

 

The San Jose international airport is in right in the middle of everything, less than 2 miles from downtown San Jose.  Why not move the airport east across the mountains and connect it with a long high speed rail tunnel?  You could then build a larger airport and have highway connectivity to other parts of the bay area and other communities in the Central Valley.

 

Then you could redevelop the San Jose airport with high density housing (skyscrapers) and perhaps just as importantly remove the building height restrictions in the surrounding area that were in place to accommodate the airport flight paths.    

 

 

 

Edited March 12, 20205 yr by thebillshark

Interesting idea, but I suspect it isn't worth the high cost of building an entirely new airport and rail tunnel, given the fact that so much of the South Bay is low-density and could be upzoned significantly and allow for a huge amount of growth without any major infrastructure expense. You would have to deal with a lot of NIMBYs who don't want development in their neighborhoods, and decide how much you care about preserving existing historic homes, but besides that...with the stroke of a pen, you could upzone neighborhoods near downtown and add tens of thousands of new residential units.

You have a good point. I was also thinking redeveloping the airport and perhaps some surrounding warehouse type buildings would draw less NIMBY ire than normal. 

 

Moving the airport to the Central Valley would be a distance of about 35 miles from Downtown San Jose which would be like putting Cincinnati airport around Springboro. Denver airport is about 18 miles outside the city. But it still might make sense for a rich worldwide hub of technology region like the Bay Area? Don’t know how San Jose airport ranks compared to San Francisco and Oakland airports

VTA, BART mark opening of San Jose-Milpitas rail extension
 

https://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/VTA-BART-mark-opening-of-San-Jose-Milpitas-rail-extension--60744

 

“Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), Bay Area Rapid Transit District(BART) and California officials late last week celebrated the opening of a 10-mile BART rail extension into Santa Clara County.

 

“The officials gave congratulatory remarks at the Berryessa Transit Center in San Jose and performed two ribbon-cuttings before the inaugural northbound and southbound trip between the station and Milpitas Station.

 

“On June 13, the first train with local riders departed from the Berryessa Transit Center to the Milpitas Station on the BART Orange Line.”

 

Of course the article features no map, argh, so I went digging and found one.  If I understand it correctly, “Phase 1” on the map is the part that was just completed. 
 

 

36 minutes ago, Boomerang_Brian said:

 If I understand it correctly, “Phase 1” on the map is the part that was just completed. 

 

Correct.  Phase 2 doesn't start construction until 2022 and won't open for revenue service until 2030.  

 

The process to build this extension began in...1984.  "Environmental Clearance" alone stretched from 2004 until 2018.  

It should've had a station at Mineta.

3 hours ago, ColDayMan said:

It should've had a station at Mineta.

 

My guess - I definitely have not read a definitive reason for the decision - is that stub tracks could not be built economically near the terminal.  Remember, BART's trains are super-duper long, so a stub track plus crossover on the non-revenue side of a terminal station = 900~ feet if not longer.  Part of the reason why the Second Ave. subway to 96th St. was so expensive to build was because of the non-revenue track north of the current terminal station. 

Makes sense, but America is cheap and dumb.

I have no idea whether they're thinking about expansion beyond this Phase 2. After Santa Clara station, BART could travel in a subway under El Camino Real through the heart of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. These cities already have dense residential areas which would give it some immediate ridership, but El Camino itself is nothing but strip malls and auto-oriented development that would an opportunity to build massive amounts of TOD overtime. Since California HSR will also meet up with BART at San Jose Diridon station, this would also give Silicon Valley residents a convenient way to get to the HSR.

I always though BART would simply terminate to where Caltrain would in San Jose to complete that circle line (Caltrain being the "BART" for the peninsula).  Unless they have a plan to extend BART from San Jose to Millbrae, which would make Caltrain useless.

6 hours ago, ColDayMan said:

Unless they have a plan to extend BART from San Jose to Millbrae, which would make Caltrain useless.

 

No, they don't, since Caltrain is being electrified as we speak.  That said, there will be a slight deterioration of service over what was otherwise possible thanks to the currently funded 3-track configuration as opposed to the preferred 4-track configuration from the 2000s.  The problem isn't so much day-to-day service but a big pullback when one of the three tracks is temporarily disabled or closed for planned maintenance. 

 

With current diesel service on two tracks they do 5 trains per hour, peak, per direction.  With electrification, they get a sixth train per hour on that same 2-track railroad. The third track enables 4 CAHSR trains per hour, per direction, in addition to the additional Caltrain train.  They will operate on a very tight schedule that sees CAHSR mostly operate in the center track but it will occasionally divert to either side track to allow an opposite CAHSR train to proceed.  The situation gets really sticky near DTSF since the trains will have to crawl into Transbay.   

 

The 3-track reality versus the 4-track possibility on the Peninsula is forcing the hand of the second transbay tube + Alameda HSR corridor.  It'll take at least 20 years to see it underway, but I believe that we will see two full CAHSR approaches built to DTSF - one on the Peninsula and another from Alameda and the East Bay.  

 

We're talking $100+ billion plus to build the Geary Subway, build the 4-track second Transbay Tube, merge Caltrain and the Capitol Corridor into a single electrified service, and build a second CAHSR entrance into Transbay via Altamont, but then again the Feds just printed $3 trillion in April.      

Here's a photo of one of the new Stadler KISS trainsets being built for CalTrain here in Salt Lake City. Once our local commuter rail system gets the funding for double-tracking and electrification, I wouldn't be surprised to see these rolling along here in Utah. 

The BART extension into Downtown San Jose is being built by the VTA, not BART, since Santa Clara County is outside of the BART counties.  They produced a great video illustrating the subway project and terminal yard.  For whatever reason you can't link directly to it, so please follow this link:

https://www.vta.org/projects/bart-sv/phase-ii

 

The Santa Clara station will be the terminus of two of the longest rapid transit lines in the United States.   The Richmond-Santa Clara route will be approximately 55 miles long (110-mile round trip) and the Milbrae-Santa Clara route will be almost 70 miles long (140 mile round trip). 

 

An interesting technical feature of this project is that they will use a single large-bore tunnel boring machine (like Bertha in Seattle) and stack the two tracks on two levels so that the station platforms can be built within the bored tunnel.  This approach was pioneered in Barcelona about ten years ago.  It avoids the need to build a station box structure. 

 

Here is the planned single-bore tunnel in Downtown San Jose:

 

Here is the downtown station - you can see here how the main station structure will be on private property and then the station platforms will be accessed by short mined connections.  This method avoids the need to rebuild street utilities:

 

Another two-level station near the high speed rail station:

 

This station will have a traditional side-by-side track configuration and side platforms:

 

Look at the huge traditional station box structure:

 

 

Here is the terminal surface station right next to the San Jose Airport.  The station will offer a quick pedestrian connection to Caltrains commuter rail, which is in the process of being electrified and having its top speed increased to 110mph (significantly faster than BART):

 

A large train storage yard will be built at the terminal Santa Clara station.  The current temporary terminus has storage for seven of BART's gigantic 710-foot trains, but this one obviously will have more space. 

 

Huge transit-oriented developments are planned for each station area. 

 

 

 

 

Ridership on the two new BART stations in Santa Clara County is horrible:

 

The multi-billion extension was anticipated to attract 20,000 new riders but is only getting about 2,000 daily riders. 

 

Obviously, ridership will grow much higher with the u/c extension into downtown San Jose, but that is more than 10 years away. 

 

1 hour ago, Lazarus said:

Ridership on the two new BART stations in Santa Clara County is horrible:

The multi-billion extension was anticipated to attract 20,000 new riders but is only getting about 2,000 daily riders. 

 

Obviously, ridership will grow much higher with the u/c extension into downtown San Jose, but that is more than 10 years away. 

 

Here's a view of one of those stations, Union City.  Note all the T.O.D.!

 

And here's the other, at Berryessa:

 

1 hour ago, Foraker said:

Here's a view of one of those stations, Union City.  Note all the T.O.D.!

 

And here's the other, at Berryessa:

 

 

 

Yeah that is the problem that plagues the entire BART system.  It's like MARTA but on a grander scale - perfectly located stationsin DT SF, DT Oakland, and arguably Berkeley, but then completely horrible park & ride stations in outer San Francisco and then pretty much all of the east bay stations have no TOD.  The worst of all is that surface station serving all four lines between the Transbay Tube and DT Oakland.  There is somehow almost nothing around it. 

 

 

BART tries too hard to be both a commuter rail network for the entire Bay Area and a local subway for San Francisco and it isn't really great at being either. Its distance-based fares don't help either (something that also annoys me with the DC subway). Everything is laid out with San Francisco as the hub, which it really isn't in such a decentralized metro area, especially now with their current office crisis. 

If San Francisco wanted an actual functioning subway network, they would have built additional tunnels under Geary and 19th when they were constructing BART, but again that network was too preoccupied with pretending to be a commuter network rather than rapid transit for the peninsula. 

I suppose both systems expect streetcars to make up for that difference.

On 11/14/2023 at 8:18 PM, GCrites said:

I suppose both systems expect streetcars to make up for that difference.

 

 

They do and they share the Market St. Subway with BART.  My sense is that SF people are so used to this magical setup that they take it for granted. 

 

The new MUNI "central subway" is not getting very good ridership because it is a short project and they aren't running enough trains on it.  People aren't tolerating a 20-minute wait for a streetcar. 

 

Like anywhere else in the United States, BART and MUNI subway construction phases tend to be very short and so can't usher in a transformational improvement, i.e. the very short new Second Ave. line in NYC.  The new Wilshire Blvd subway in Los Angeles will be a very big deal, and luckily they are building three phases at once, meaning the whole thing out to UCLA will open by 2028 or so.  But that's literally the only example of a 10+ mile new subway line since BART and the Washington Metro.  So 50+ years.