How many miles of that project have been completed?..................
CalTrans Electrification, or High-Speed Rail?
CalTrans: A lot of infrastructure is done, causing traffic disruption for the last decade, as they elevated track or lowered streets underneath, and rebuilt train station platforms. In my town, SSF, they just started on building a new train station. New stuff running parallel to the old for now, old trains still running and no new electric trains yet. San Bruno had it's whole downtown ripped up for the new rail, completed now. They needed to minimize rail and auto interaction, hence the elevated rail or lowered streets - primarily for when high-speed rail goes through. As it is, there are numerous crashes of autos and trains each year. SF is building a new TransBay Bus Terminal around 1st Street & Mission, with the intention that the trains will be extended more than a half mile from current CalTrans terminal at Fourth Street near the ballpark. Problem is, the money earmarked for the TransBay train terminal extension was diverted to pay for completing the Bus Terminal due to wild cost overruns. So they have a big empty pit where the train terminal is supposed to go, with no sources of money to get the trains there.
The High-Speed Rail is a disaster, they still haven't figured out how to get it up the Peninsula let alone how to pay for it. My guess is that it will terminate outside the Peninsula somewhere and people will transfer to CalTrans or BART, maybe in two decades. So much for fast high-speed rail!
I kept writing CalTrans when I meant CalTrain! So close in spelling, but so different entities.
One last item about the CalTrain stupidity (thread is supposed to be about cars). The CalTrain Electrification will run from San Francisco to San Jose. But... CalTrain currently runs from San Francisco to Gilroy. Folks can take electric trains to San Jose, but will need to transfer to the current hybrid diesel trains to continue on to Gilroy. That’s because CalTrain is not permitted to run electric trains on those tracks owned by Union Pacific. What a mess, they’ll be maintaining two types of trains!