SAN FRANCISCO — Bay Area Rapid Transit and Amtrak are joining forces to study the possibility of a second San Francisco Bay rail crossing, creating the possibility of one-seat Amtrak rides between Sacramento and downtown San Francisco. The San …
Smart move from a marketing and boosting ridership perspective both.
I have a hard time accepting that a national carrier should subsidize BARTs new bridge, when the sole benefit to the national carrier is to serve their Sacremento-San Franciso business.
And $50 miilion just for a feasibility study to evaluate a business model promising only 750,000 trips per year? Where do I sign up to get on the bidding list? LOL
This has got to be a smoke screen for a way to get more federal dollars just to build a new trans bay crossing.
Why not just extend BART to Sacremento?[ip]
Actually, it goes far beyond just evaluating a business model. I believe this feasibility study looks at engineering aspects as well. The $50 million which I read is being paid for entirely by a recent BART bond issue, Amtrak is only asking for a seat at the table and indicating it is interested. The $50 million is going in include some engineering tests to see which option is better and thats probably going to involve drilling for core samples at the projected tunnel site.
It’s projected right now to cost $10 Billion for the tunnel option alone so $50 million is not a lot compared to total project costs. Also, another prospective partner would be the California HSR system so that is a third partner to split the costs. If they include additional freeway or road capacity…fourth partner.
I guess that my sarcasm was a bit too subtle?
Amtrak: Sacramento to San Fran 750,000 trips per year
Even if all the proceeds from those trips was funneled dirctly toward ammortizing Amtrak’s share of the cost of the bridge/tunnel, how long will it be to reach breakeven? Would the useful lifespan of the structure be sufficiently long to reach breakeven?
So this is not a feasible project…Thankyou very much I’ll take my $50 million now [oX)]
My point really is that this is a public works project, let California pay for it, they deserve it.
Would the useful lifespan of the structure be sufficiently long to reach breakeven?
The article specifies that BART and Amtrak would each have one track dedicated to their operations, so preliminarily that would suggest a 50-50 split on cost.
$5 billion each.
Now If Amtraks ridership forecast is 750K patrons/year, and just pulling a fare of $100 per trip out of thin air, that’s going to be an annual revnue stream of $75 million.
How many years would it take to break even on an investment of $5 billion (that’s 5 thousand million) with a payback of $75 million per year…forget about the cost of money just to keep it simple.
I really don’t think it makes sense. I was joking in my first post when I proposed extending BART to Sacremento, but I actually believe now that it would make more sense .
It’s going to be hard to measure the Economic impact to be sure the more players there are but I think with BART, Amtrak and HSR all using the structure the improvement in quality of life of them all terminating in SFO vs Oakland is probably worth the $10 Billion. If they add more roadway access, even more so. I would favor a bridge over a tunnel though as it is probably less expensive than the $10 billion quoted.
Also, I think extending BART to Sacremento would wear out those subway cars a whole lot faster than now with adding that kind of mileage. Sacremento is still a 2 hour trip from SFO…isn’t it? Also, thought the top speed of BART was only 70-80 mph tops so it would not be the most efficient means to travel that distance.
I think that two round trips per day could satisfy need, plus think of all the grass roots support they would get from the communities served in between.
I’m not here to fight, so I’ll just leave it at that. But I do think this entire consideration is just a ruse by BART trying to find a way to spread their costs over a wider base.
It’ll be interesting to see how an Amtrak that believes that serving decent food is an unaffordable extravagance, will justify spending $5 billion to serve 750,000 trips per year
Sacremento to San Fran is a short corridor anyway, isn’t it? Let the state support that even if Amtrak is involved!!
Just for discussion, where would you build such a bridge? Equadistant from the Bay bridge and San Mateo bridge? Perhaps an extension of the 238? Somewhere else?
Would the bridge be over channels that Navy vessels use to access the Pacific Ocean?
Good question! it’s been ages since I lived there. I think most of the bases have been closed now, particularly south of the Bay Bridge. Might be a coast guard station down there. Might be something significant still left up above the Carquinez straight, but I’d be surprised if they bridged the bay from that direction.
I remember walking across the Golden Gate though, and seeing submarines passing directly below…makes me wonder if all that netting they are putting in is really geared toward “public safety”
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in the Norfolk area has it’s tunnels because the US Navy did not want the fleet to be captive in base account of a bridge being downed blocking the exit to the Atlantic Ocean.
Makes good sense.
Since your earlier post I’ve done some research, and yeah, other than a couple coast guard stations and the ordnance depot North of Concord, theres not much left around San Francisco. Just a few scattered air bases and that’s about it.
I have no clue, have to see what they propose after they do the feasibility study.
Your kidding right? When has California charged Amtrak full cost for anything? Why do you think the equipment says “Amtrak California” on it? Amtrak paid for very, very little in California. California foots the bill and uses the Amtrak brand and Amtrak crews. California will foot the bill. Amtrak might get charged maybe a few million or token amount. Hence why I indicated it’s a good move on Amtraks part in the first post. California will of course be Amtrak’s Sugar Daddy on the project as in the past. So of course I am for it, California taxpayers foot almost the entire bill…why not? Complete net benefit for Amtrak and the Amtrak brand at minimal cost.
Well, it could be quite a chore corraling railroad, transit, and highway onto one bridge, complete with safe approaches on both sides of the bay for all. Quite a bit of dirt is going to have to be repurposed. You might get away with calling it “urban renewal” on the east side of the bay, but on the west side I’d expect significant opposition.
Well. Let me consider:
You could get off at Emeryville and catch an Uber over the Bay Bridge. Or you could stay on the train, take longer and pay more.
Gee. It’s a tough decision.
Thank God someone built a super cool new bridge to give us all such an option.
Ed
You might want to review your sources on that. Even if the California HSR connection to San Francisco is eventually built, it is slated to be built up through Gilroy, San Jose, Milbrae, and into San Francisco from the south side.
Not really comptible with a direct route to Sacramento
You do realize that 750,000 a year that currently ride Amtrak between Sacramento and San Francisco is a miniscule amount compared to the number of people that drive between the two cities don’t you? I80 carries about 150K vehicles a day between the two areas, just take 10% of that traffic and put it on a train between Sacramento and San Francisco and it will pay for itself very shortly.
That’s 15k a day times 365 days comes out to 5.5M a year, and that’s a relatively conservative amount…so $10B for new pair of tunnels under the Bay, no brainer.
Well,… at least we agree about that.