With respect to "extraordinary cost" I direct your attention to the new, $600 million, less than one mile 6th Street Viaduct that L.A. just built, which just opened but they had to immediately close. That is a boondoggle.

I also direct your attention to the east span of the Bay Bridge, which came in 800% over budget and 25 years late.

But oddly the yammering nerd army never discusses the monumental failures of car infrastructure.

The United States is uniquely incompetent at developing all manner of infrastructure.

Even electric trains will be horny - it’s required by federal law.

But with work you can convert a crossing to no horn.

https://railroads.dot.gov/highway-rail-crossing-and-trespass...

Of course the easy solution is to raise the rails or lower the road

You're right, but: Caltrain is being electrified in order to make the track compatible with HSR. HSR precludes at grade crossing where you'd need to use a horn. Ergo Caltrain is eliminating the at grade crossings as part of electrification and the electric trains will be quieter than the diesels service of yore.

In the North Bay, SMART (which is anything but) applied for and got an exemption for quiet crossings in some spots. HSR is a good idea that's messy and complex because everyone wants a say. SMART is a great example of America proving that Americans don't want rail transit. It's the Pontiac Fiero of transit.

Caltrain electrification project is independent/notdependent on CAHSR and also not dependent on grade separation projects, which seem to be tackled individually/ad-hoc in partnership with the city it's in. Everything I've seen suggests Caltrain will still have at grade crossings for the foreseeable future due to the high cost of grade separations (hundreds of millions each), while overhead electrification is slowly approaching completion including over existing at-grade crossings. Nothing prevents a high speed train from using an at grade crossing, albeit at appropriate speeds.

While it would be nice for CalTrain (and most rail crossings) to be fully grade separated, it's incredibly expensive, doesn't add much value for rail users as the train already has the right of way, and it primarily benefits auto traffic. It only makes sense if road money pays for it, rather than more limited rail money.

  Nothing prevents a high speed train from using an at grade crossing

Well…

  albeit at appropriate speeds.

Then you've just removed the "high speed" from "high speed rail". That's why HSR funds are paying for some of the cost of grade separation. Grade separation is hugely important (and hugely important to get right -- look at the consequences of the shit design of BART's Oakland Wye).

  While it would be nice for CalTrain (and most rail crossings) to be fully grade separated, it's incredibly expensive, doesn't add much value for rail users as the train already has the right of way, and it primarily benefits auto traffic. 

There's significant value in not hitting pedestrians or automobiles. There are also ways to reduce the cost of grade separation.

https://www.caltrain.com/media/1033/download?inline

https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-exploding-cost...

I'm well aware of (and have personally suffered) all of that: BART's Oakland Wye delaying trains, suicide-by-train, the value of grade separations, and of Clem's Caltrain-HSR blog that I've been reading since the beginning and have learned a lot about railway engineering from it and technically informed commenters.

I would love for Caltrain to be fully grade separated (and electrified and modern Signaling and Train Control with Automatic Train Operation), but this costs a lot of money and there's an opportunity cost with that. Even with cost optimizations that Clem's blog discusses we are still talking billions of dollars and many years to grade separate the dozens of remaining crossings in the Caltrain corridor. Not to mention the ~210000 road-rail grade crossings across the USA, ~100000 in Europe, [0][1] and however many else exist in the rest of the world.

That is the scale of the problem. It is not affordable or realistic to eliminate all of them, we have finite resources and have to pick and choose our spots based on an objective analysis. And the benefit of that primarily goes to road users who should be the ones to pay for it or taxpayers at large, rather than rail users and more limited rail funds.

While loss of life is obviously tragic, in almost all case these are the result of illegal actions of people trespassing or committing suicide-by-train. I dislike characterization of "trains hitting people," as if it were the fault or malicious of the train. Trains operate on rail tracks which are fixed to the ground. Trains don't go anywhere all willy nilly like cars can, including right into people's houses (which has happened to a relative and a neighbor). It is not reasonable to compel a rail organization to spend billions to "fix" this problem, if it even can be. I've even endured a more than hour long Caltrain delay, because someone drove a truck into a structural support column of a Caltrain grade separated overpass, and we were not cleared to cross until structural engineer could come out, inspect it, and give the OK. So let's not act like this is some panacea.

HSTs are never going to operating at 200+ mph on the Caltrain corridor. It's going to be limited to "standard speeds," which can still be 100+ mph. Last I checked the US Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) allows up to 110 mph with grade crossings, and up to 125 mph with specialized upgraded crossings. This is plenty fast, and common in urbanized areas in other developed countries like Germany and Switzerland.

[0] https://railroads.dot.gov/program-areas/highway-rail-grade-c... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossing

> While it would be nice for CalTrain (and most rail crossings) to be fully grade separated, it's incredibly expensive, doesn't add much value for rail users as the train already has the right of way, and it primarily benefits auto traffic. It only makes sense if road money pays for it, rather than more limited rail money.

Devil's advocate: at-grade crossings sound like a negative externality for rail that impacts other parts of society (road users, noise pollution for local residents, etc).

Why should rail not bear some of the social costs in addition to its direct costs?

Let me be a devil’s advocate against your devil’s advocate: Pedestrian, bicycle and even bus-only crossings costs a fraction to grade separate compared to car crossings. It is much easier for cars to take a significant detours then other transport modes. It is always a much cheaper option to simply close the road for cars and force them to cross at the nearest crossing that is already grade separated, and build a ped/bike-only bridge/tunnel over the tracks.

Cars are the reason this negative externality is so expensive to mitigate. Why should funds from other modes be diverted to it?

> Why should funds from other modes be diverted to it?

If the city's been built and is already car dependent, wishing away the existing uses and the massive amounts of capital dependent on them isn't an option. That is, we have to consider costs at the margin from where we are now.

Since you answered my second order devil’s advocate, I should answer your first order devil’s advocate:

> Why should rail not bear some of the social costs in addition to its direct costs?

The social costs created by private cars dwarfs those created by train, and is seldomly actually mitigated with funds diverted from car infrastructure. Historically this has been an unpopular political choice, made without considering the local communities. Now California is prioritizing a different mode with the hope of reducing car dependency. Why shouldn’t car infrastructure now bear the defunding that other modes have historically suffered in order to accommodate cars historically, infrastructures which has historically created social costs to local communities?

I see this as a way to fix historic wrongs. Rail does not need to bear the social costs of its infrastructure because car owes us a bunch. We should collect on those debts owed by cars.

> Why shouldn’t car infrastructure now bear the defunding that other modes have historically suffered in order to accommodate cars historically, infrastructures which has historically created social costs to local communities?

Because it devalues a whole lot of land and capital that have seen substantial investment under the prior equilibrium.

Fixing historic wrongs or not, churning our transport infrastructure incurs a whole lot of external costs and can't be just considered in terms of "road costs" vs. "rail costs".

I’m confused, are you still playing the devil’s advocate, or do you actually hold this believe?

In the case of the former, then I’ve already answered why it is totally fair for car infrastructure to pay for social externalities of other modes meant to relief car traffic.

In the case of the latter, I don’t know what to tell you except that you are wrong. I didn’t mean defunding as in let existing things churn, I meant removing car lanes and forcing detours so that train infrastructure can be cheaper. The overall effect is better transport for everybody except cars (which already have it plenty good).

Also are you sure that removing car lanes actually devalues land and capital. I’m not so sure that is true. And even if it was, good. Housing in the Bay area is plenty expensive as it is, if cheaper train infrastructure means cheaper housing, then I’d say we’ve succeeded on two fronts.

I hold a pragmatic set of views. I would like us to become less road dependent, but I don't think you can ignore the degree of investment that has been built on the existing road system. Breaking and devaluing existing uses is a social cost incurred by a change in modes of transport.

here is the ongoing saga https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/2279/Train-Horn-Noise

That page is out of date — the crossing at 25th has already been rebuilt to no longer be at-grade.

According to their Noise and Vibration section of the report, their plan for horn noise is to assist cities with setting up quiet zones. A child comment mentioned this possibility. Exactly what that means is unclear.

Search for NV-MM#4 in this document:

https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Final_EIRS_FJ_...

the proposal is to use electric trains on caltrain tracks. they allegedly will run at 110mph which i bet is loud, roughly 40mph more than caltrain today.

the horns are getting better with grade separation and stations that don’t have crossings. they are very loud. you can hear them all the time. HSR will add 4 more trains per hour, which means a lot more train horns.

hopefully more grade separation is done by then. i can’t imagine any city surviving without it. there was a study done by caltrain about this and some crossings are blocked 20% of the time during peak hours today - and they want to increase train count by like 30%

Sunnyvale recently told residents that without grade separation, they expect in the future that during a peak hour, up to 24 minutes of that would be crossing gate down time. https://www.sunnyvale.ca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/3570...

page 21 here has all the crossings and how many minutes they are down per hour https://caltrain2040.org/wp-content/uploads/CBP_April_LPMG_P...

I live near a track that was converted a few years ago and runs at 125mph. It is very very quiet and barely noticeable even when you are close. There is no engine noise like you get on diesels.

I live in Kansas City, full of rail lines in many directions. Lived near rail lines most my time here. I think horns are sometimes used to warn homeless around corners.