Re: Caltrain should be more like Transperth

["David Bennetts" <davibenn@pcug.org.au>]

Andy

Many thanks for your corrections - good to see that BART is now constructing
an extension to the Airport.
A bit disappointing to hear that Caltrain are ordering more gallery cars,
they are nowhere near as good a design as the Toronto GO cars, which design
has been adopted by LA Metrolink.  I agree with Richard Mlynarik about the
design of the gallery cars, refer
www.rail2000.org/winter98/railcarlttr12-97.html

I see also that use of electric locos will speed up the service by about 9
minutes through better acceleration and deceleration performance, whilst
this is worthwhile slower boarding times necessitated by the car design will
not be overcome.  Also this type of car is fairly rough riding, and I doubt
that the better loco performance and higher speeds attained will improve
passenger comfort.

I still think that multiple unit trains would have been a better
proposition, with well designed cars and improved loading times you probably
could have cut the journey time from San Francisco to San Jose from 90
minutes to around 60.

regards
David Bennetts