Commenter Wrote:
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Caught up with these, and what's there to say about this one?

The concept up increased interregional/intercity rail passenger service on the 101 Coastline corridor is a good one. Always has been, and the growth of congestion delays, over the years, on all segments of the 101 are the proof.

The service levels being proposed (two round trips) do suck (which is why the Gilroy numbers tend to also suck now) but there would be capacity to expand this to a more proper level, that is better able to better penetrate the trip demand market.

The costs are not unreasonable (about a month of CHSRA's cost overruns, or maybe a half a mile of unnecessary costly gold plated CAHSRA bridging).

The Coastline rural/intercity congestion now sucks on all of this segment of 101, for many hours of the day and on weekends, and the cost per passenger mile of a rail system alternative (at the optimal investment/operational level) is now likely to be much cheaper than the marginal cost of widening the 101 to accommodate that same future growth in passenger miles of travel demand.

This is also another sad commentary on how these things are planned in a vacuum, as after thoughts, in a half-baked way (project by project and not on a "system" level needs-based approach to planning or in prioritizing projects and funding), this failure is not looking at rail as a "real' modal alternative when dealing with the totality of longer-term corridor-long travel demands.

At one time this was looked into for additional service by the Capitol corridor trains being extended, which I didn't hear much of in this. If that were the case, then some of the service level issues might be improved.