SamTrans Dumbarton Rail Corridor Bridge - from Redwood City to Facebook (Menlo Park) to East Bay

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2020/05/26/d ... ned-again/

The dream of running Caltrain directly between the mid-peninsula and the East Bay is in danger of getting shelved again.

The Palo Alto Daily Post had the latest disappointing headline over the weekend: ‘Facebook is rethinking its commitment to help fund Dumbarton Rail Corridor study.’ It quotes Facebook spokesperson Juan Salazar saying the social media giant is “reassessing this long-term commitment.” Streetsblog covered the original deal with Facebook back in 2016, when the company announced that it would provide $1 million and partner with SamTrans to launch a “Dumbarton Corridor Study” looking into restoring the on-again, off-again project.

The new rail service would stop at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park.
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“Dumbarton is clearly an important regional link that should be brought back and incorporated into an integrated rail network. Because it falls between the jurisdictions of counties and transit agencies, it’s never been appropriately prioritized by our region,” wrote Ian Griffiths of Seamless Bay Area, a group dedicated to the integration of the Bay Area’s disparate transit systems. “Whether the project moves forward shouldn’t have anything to do with Facebook’s willingness to fund it – it should be prioritized by our region due to its potential to generate ridership, improve access, and reduce driving and climate emissions.”

For those not familiar with the long-awaited project, there’s a twenty-mile stretch of old railway tracks (marked in green in the map above) that runs from Caltrain’s mainline in Redwood City, continues past Facebook’s Menlo Park campus, and then runs across the Dumbarton Rail Bridge to the East Bay. Long ago it carried passengers, and freight continued to use the corridor up until the 1980s. SamTrans purchased the tracks for a possible expansion of Caltrain to the East Bay in 1995. But the bridge was seriously damaged in a suspicious fire in 1998. Since then, calls to restore the line for passenger service have been repeatedly started and abandoned.
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Wiki page on bridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbarton_Rail_Bridge

and project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbarton_Rail_Corridor

Study: https://www.samtrans.com/Planning/Plann ... Study.html and https://www.samtrans.com/Planning/Plann ... ridor.html and
https://www.samtrans.com/Assets/Dumbart ... b+2020.pdf

makes sense…if in this COVID environment they are going to allow everyone to work from home, why invest money in a service that they have no use for?

lensovet wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 7:02 pm makes sense…if in this COVID environment they are going to allow everyone to work from home, why invest money in a service that they have no use for?

For Facebook's perspective, yes. This is so since Facebook ordered all of their employees to work from home until January 2021. But then again, rail service is intended for other commuters and travelers to use, rather than just facebook employees.

It would be great someday to have a rail route running across Dumbarton Rail Bridge as this would enable for train travel from the Caltrain suburbs across to the Fremont Area. This could count as a suburb to suburb rail route. Just imagine living in Fremont or Newark and you work in Redwood City. This route doesn't have to be part of Caltrain. It could be some sort of diesel commuter rail route that uses DMUs like what Arrow will be. The existing Caltrain route will probably be at capacity once it's built to handle electric operation.

Pensyfan19 wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 7:10 pm

lensovet wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 7:02 pm makes sense…if in this COVID environment they are going to allow everyone to work from home, why invest money in a service that they have no use for?

For Facebook's perspective, yes. This is so since Facebook ordered all of their employees to work from home until January 2021. But then again, rail service is intended for other commuters and travelers to use, rather than just facebook employees.

facebook paid for the studies, so i presume they get to call whether to continue those studies.

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/202 ... ton-bridge

Preliminary forecasts reveal proposed system could serve tens of thousands a day but would come with a hefty, $3B price tag

Among residents and transportation professionals on both sides of the San Francisco Bay, interest is picking up in the Dumbarton Rail Corridor project, a potential 18-mile public transit route that would connect Union City to Redwood City, with stops along the way in cities including East Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

Viewed as a "game changer" by some, the new transit system could ease the maddening daily traffic gridlock on the Dumbarton Bridge — and roads leading to and from it — as well as provide residents easier access to Caltrain on the Peninsula and BART in the east bay.

At a virtual meeting on Monday night, project staff and consultants presented the progress made to date on the project, which would use the defunct, century-old Dumbarton rail bridge south of the Dumbarton road bridge as the basis for the cross-bay route. So far, the project team has documented the current infrastructure conditions along the route, forecasted ridership numbers for various proposed stations and developed a range of transit alternatives. It's also estimated costs of the project, which would require a complete rebuild of the Dumbarton rail bridge.
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Is Facebook still funding this? If so…wonder if they will decide that it's cheaper for them to allow their employees to continue working remotely indefinitely.

lensovet wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:27 pm Is Facebook still funding this? If so…wonder if they will decide that it's cheaper for them to allow their employees to continue working remotely indefinitely.

Facebook has announced it will starting bringing people back to it's main headquarters. This will start at 10 percent and ramp up to 50 percent by September.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/03/2 ... ces-in-may

50% is still not 100%…

As of June this year, Facebook is allowing all employees to work remotely: https://www.facebook.com/careers/life/w ... t-facebook

I suspect this project is now dead.

lensovet wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:22 am As of June this year, Facebook is allowing all employees to work remotely:
I suspect this project is now dead.

Infrastructure projects rarely die forever, they just get put on the shelf to collect dust just to have the dust blown off at a later time and like a Phoenix arise again.

There may be other reasons to still keep the project on the table. For example, maybe there are plenty of companies that require their people to come into work putting in hours on varied days. I don't know the corridor very well from Redwood City to the East Bay but I'm sure that there are tons of retail, hospitality, and medical facilities that have employees, customers, and patients who would need to use the train if it was offered. Plus, it would provide a connection to the Capitol Corridor for those people wanting to go from Redwood City and Menlo Park to Sacramento.

I don't know the corridor very well from Redwood City to the East Bay

I live here. Redwood City is affluent, East Bay is not. There are certainly no patients that would be using this corridor to go anywhere. I'm also hard-pressed to find anyone who would want to go from Menlo Park to Sacramento.

This project was dead for years and the only reason it was brought back was because Facebook was going to pay for it. If Facebook isn't paying, there's no project. Sorry.

Health care is the largest private employer is most places in the U.S.A. That why Portland has a gondola! You can take your bike on it, of course, Portland, but it terminates inside a hospital up on the hill. But... you can roll your bike a hundred yards or two through the hospital out to the street! It's mainly for hospital workers though, to connect to a riverside parking lot.

Here's a possible justification for restoring the Dumbarton rail connection: a freight bypass.

The towns between RWC and Santa Clara make CAHSR difficult: the ROW is narrow, the towns are affluent/NIMBY, grade crossings are problematic. The best solution would be an elevated viaduct. This viaduct could be lighter, more aesthetic, and have steeper grades if it didn't carry freight trains. And there are no more rail freight customers between RWC and Santa Clara. Solution: send RWC-SF freight over the Dumbarton -- it is actually a shortcut to Milpitas where the UP runs them anyway.