ELECTRIFICATION & MODERNIZATION
By the Numbers: CalMod Program Cost
Electrification: $1.98 billion
Advanced Signal System: $231 million
Total: $2.21 billion
Th e contract for the EMUs is
a design-build contract. Hartnett
said, “It was a process in terms of
here’s what we need in terms of
characteristics; it’s up to them to
design it and then build it.”
Th ey’re currently going
through the design process. Th ey
did a strong wave of outreach to
get feedback from riders on the
design elements, gathering more
than 15,000 comments over the
last couple years.
While the board was making
decisions on larger aspects of the
18 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | JUNE 2018
trains, there was rider involvement
for many of the design elements.
“It takes time for these projects
to come to full fruition. It’s our job
to bring them along,” Fromson said.
Th e public role of the design
is largely complete. Catering to
the high-tech riders in the Silicon
Valley, later this year Caltrain will
role out a virtual reality simulation
of what the trains are going
to look like.
“We’ll be at stations with cardboard
virtual reality headsets,”
explained Fromson. “People will
be able to ‘walk’ through the train
and get the experience that way.
“Frankly, it’s a cost-effi cient way
to getting to a broad group of people
and let them experience it, without
necessarily spending all the resources
on a physical structure.” She added,
“We thought it was an exciting
way to give people a feel of what the
new trains are going to look like.”
Dedicated funding
Caltrain does not have its own
taxing authority or any dedicated
taxes that went into it, so since that
time, Hartnett said it has had to be
innovative in terms of how it has
funded itself. “Over time we have
had to have contributions to subsidize
the service from each of the
three counties as required under
the joint powers agreement, and
to seek grants … for capital and
other needs.”
Over the years, he said the
counties have been constrained
on what they can contribute on an
annual basis, so it’s been diffi cult to
keep up on the state of good repair
side of things.
Hartnett said, “We haven’t dramatically
changed the number of
trains we run, we’re just able to fi ll
people’s needs by how we structure
our service … it’s a service people
fi nd reliable, generally speaking
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