Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "capitol corridor"

City supports high speed rail for the north state

2011-12-07T04:49:30Z

The city of Sacramento responded to the recently released California High Speed Rail Authority business plan with a letter of support – and a couple of suggestions for the authority to consider as the project develops.

City Councilman Steve Cohn said Tuesday that the city is in support of the project overall, but Cohn and the council want to emphasize two points: recognition that the high-speed rail project must be phased in, and funding should also upgrade existing connecting infrastructure.

“It can’t all be built at once,” Cohn said at the Law and Legislation Committee meeting at City Hall Tuesday. “The revised business plan does a more realistic job of explaining this phasing process (than the initial plan).”

The new business plan, released Nov. 1 to update the 2009 plan, outlines a “building block” approach to connecting the state’s major northern and southern California population centers with high-speed trains.

By building the project incrementally, the plan states, it allows for completion in stages as additional funding is identified.

Cohn said that, from the city of Sacramento’s standpoint, the 20-year project will need to connect well to local and regional transit services as it unfolds.

Some inter-city connectors will need to be upgraded and expanded – and that will not be cheap, Cohn said.

“So far, only $950 million of the original (Proposition 1A) initiative has been set aside for inter-city connections,” Cohn said. “We think that roughly 10 percent of total spending on high speed rail should go into these inter-city connections.”

With an estimated total cost of nearly $98 billion, that means $10 billion over the life of the project directed at essential infrastructure, Cohn said.

Cohn said that upgrades to inter-city connectors and existing rail lines will go a long way to increasing the overall efficiency of rail travel even before high-speed rail is fully realized in the state.

“If we invest money in the tracks and signal equipment between here and the Bay Area,” Cohn said, “We can reach the Bay Area in less than an hour with the exact trains we already have. Those trains are capable of going over 100 miles per hour. The problem isn’t the train, it’s in the track and signaling equipment.”

Cohn said the infrastructure work needs to be completed alongside the high-speed rail project so that, when everything is connected, it will create a smooth transition.

California voters approved $9 billion of public funding for the proposed high-speed rail project with Proposition 1A in 2008. Additional funding for the project will come from both federal and private dollars, according to the California High Speed Rail Authority.

The rail project is planned to ultimately connect Sacramento to San Diego via 800 miles of track, allowing upwards of 44 million riders annually to travel quickly from place to place.

The initial 130-mile stretch is slated to be built in the Central Valley at a cost of approximately $6 billion – including $3.3 billion in federal funds and $2.7 from state funds.

The estimated total cost of the first phase of the high-speed rail project, which would connect the Los Angeles basin to the San Francisco Bay Area, is $98.1 billion.

According to Lance Simmens, deputy director of communications for the high speed rail authority, construction on the initial segment – the “backbone” of the rail line – should start in late 2012.

The first segment of the rail project will extend from just north of Fresno to North of Bakersfield, and construction is expected to take approximately five years to complete. Work to connect to Sacramento would begin in 2026.

“The backbone (segment of the project) will be available for Amtrak San Joaquin (passenger rail) service,” Simmens said, “but it will not be high-speed rail yet.”

Trains on the initial segment will travel at normal speeds – typically between 80 to 100 miles per hour, Simmens said. True high speed rail is capable of speeds up to 220 miles per hour.

Simmens said that further construction will allow for faster speeds.

“We appreciate that the high speed rail authority business plan acknowledges the need for inter-city upgrades,” Cohn said. “Sacramento shouldn’t have to wait until 2040 to benefit from high-speed rail. We should be benefiting all along the way.”

The letter of support from the city of Sacramento will be sent to the high speed rail authority within the next week.

Read the California High Speed Rail Authority draft business plan HERE.

Explore an interactive map of the proposed high speed rail routes HERE.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Amtrak now offers free Wi-Fi on Capitol Corridor trains

2011-11-30T00:38:46Z

Travelers on Amtrak riding through the Capitol Corridor will now have Wi-Fi access on board the trains – and it’s free.

Amtrak launched the new service Monday to coincide with “Cyber Monday,” the busiest Internet holiday shopping day of the year, according to a press release from Amtrak.

The Capitol Corridor is an intercity passenger train system that provides rail service along a 170-mile rail corridor to 16 stations in eight counties, including Placer, Sacramento and Yolo.

The route extends from Auburn to San Jose, and includes stops in Rocklin, Roseville, Davis, Richmond and Berkeley and other cities.

Passengers can connect to the Wi-Fi service onboard the trains through any laptop or other portable device that is Wi-Fi enabled.

For commuters, such as Sacramento lobbyist Jack Bean, the new service will make working while traveling more convenient.

“I commute every day from the Bay Area so this will definitely benefit me,” Bean, 53, said Tuesday.

Bean said he’s looking forward to having a single, reliable network connection while on the train.

“There are alternate (wireless) connections (available),” Bean said, “but you lose it, and you get it, and you lose it in each area – so this will be nice.”

According to the Amtrak website, the service is not password protected, and travelers only need to connect to the "AmtrakConnectStation” network on their wireless devices to use it.

California state passenger rail agencies funded the implementation of Wi-Fi by reinvesting cost savings from prior completed rail projects, according to the press release.

“This has been the number one request from passengers since about 2003,” Luna Salavar, spokeswoman for the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Agency, said Tuesday.

“We tried several different techniques (to provide the service) in the past,” Salavar said, “but this was the first one that we feel will be successful in providing free Wi-Fi to our customers.”

The biggest challenge to connectivity on trains is the limited bandwidth available through third-party cellular data networks along many routes.

Salavar said that the AmtrakConnect service is designed to take advantage of technology improvements such as faster 4G speeds, as they become available along rail routes.

Sarah Tarlano, a college student headed to San Francisco from Penn Valley Tuesday – with her laptop in tow – said she read about the new service online.

“I’ll probably be checking email, using Facebook or reading the news (on the train),” said Tarlano, 19.

Although she usually likes to download media files while she travels, Tarlano said that the limited bandwith and file size restrictions won’t stop her from using the new service.

“I’ll do other things, so that’s ok,” Tarlano said. “(Wi-Fi) will still be good to have.”

Network performance on the trains will vary as the train travels, depending on the proximity of cell towers and strength of wireless signals along the route, Salavar said Tuesday.

The Wi-Fi service also blocks access to streaming video and restricts file downloads larger than 10 MB because of limited bandwidth on board. Passengers will want to download any large files before boarding the train.

The CCJPA was able to contract with Wi-Fi vendor Nomad Digital to use their wireless network technology and cellular towers for service, according to Salavar.

Amtrak is part of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Agency which delivers transit service in coordination with the Union Pacific Railroad and Caltrans.

Wi-Fi service is already available on Amtrak high-speed express trains along 12 East Coast routes and on the Amtrak Cascades rail service in the Pacific Northwest.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Amtrak locomotive gets an eco-makeover

2009-07-23T07:20:19Z

California's air may start to look a little cleaner, thanks to the California Department of Transportation and its project partners.

Caltrans's revolutionary "green locomotive" debuted Wednesday morning at the Amtrak Sacramento Valley station.

Members of Caltrans and its project partners assembled within the train station at a press release to make statements regarding the new locomotive, considered a major step toward reducing California's carbon footprint.

It is one of the 15 F59PHI model locomotives owned by Caltrans and operated by Amtrak that is now installed with a 710ECO Repower upgrade package. The package is said to consist of the latest microprocessor-controlled locomotive engine technology for lower emissions, increased fuel economy and predictable maintenance costs.

The F59PHI models were initially built by Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc. in October 2001 to meet Tier 0 Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards, the minimum EPA requirement for fuel emissions from passenger locomotives.

James Goldstene, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, explained that in other words, the newly-installed technology in the F59PHI model makes the engine run cooler and uses fuel more efficiently, allowing the locomotive to advance from Tier 0 to Tier 2 EPA emission standards, resulting in a 50 percent reduction of operating emissions.

Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson said that the development is "an illustration of our willingness to work with anyone and everyone to clean up the air for Sacramentans." He added that climate change and global warming is an issue that must be addressed at the local level by communities, and that the newly-introduced technology makes riding the train a "smarter and better" decision than ever before.

Following the statements, the representatives of Caltrans, the EPA and other organizations descended into the tunnel beneath the Sacramento Valley rail tracks, resurfacing to stop and admire the "green locomotive."

The retrofitted model has already begun operating on the intercity passenger rail service Capitol Corridor between Sacramento and the Bay Area as of three weeks ago.

The Capitol Corridor serves the Sierra Foothills in addition to Sacramento and the Bay area, and it is operated by the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority in partnership with Caltrans and Amtrak.

Along with Amtrak California’s Pacific Surfliner and San Joaquin intercity rail line, Capitol Corridor is the third busiest rail line in the nation with a ridership of 1.7 million.

Capitol Corridor alone is responsible for eliminating 559 million miles worth of highway travel, said Eugene Skoropowski, Capitol Corridor managing director.

Caltrans is working to convert the remaining 14 Amtrak-operated locomotives to this upgraded model — which is the cleanest diesel electric passenger locomotive in the country — as quickly as possible, stated Caltrans Division of Rail chief Bill Bronte. So far there is available stimulus funding for seven of the 14, he said.

Money for the project came from the Carl Moyer Program, a partnership between the California Air Resources Board and local air boards in the state that provides grants for projects reducing pollutants from heavy-duty engines. Retrofitting the F59PHI involved both the Sacramento Metropolitan and Bay Area Air Quality Management districts.

Kevin Bahline of EMD said that the company is in the process of launching the eco-friendly technology globally.

See also: Eco train engine unveiled

Photo Credit: Images 1, 2, 4 & 5 by Ed Fogle; images 3 & 6 by Kati Garner.