Ready for the Digital Age

Major Upgrades Improve Caltrain Service and Operations

Approximately $115 million has been spent to upgrade tracks, add three stations and implement new technology to the 44-mi. commuter railroad between San Francisco and San Jose. The construction coordinator for the general contracting team called the project "more extensive than any other project" he has worked on. Construction will be completed this month. Express service begins this summer.

By Thomas York

Passenger trains have linked San Francisco and San Jose for more than 140 years. In fact, the 44-mi. Caltrain system is one of the oldest mass transit operations in the West.

Lawrence is the location of one of three new stations recently built for project owner Caltrain. The others are in Bayshore and Millbrae (photo by Thomas York).

The system now has been improved with a $115 million upgrade by joint-venture partners St. Joseph, Mo.-based Herzog Construction Corp. and Alameda-based Stacy and Witbeck Inc. that will improve service and allow Caltrain officials to add limited express service beginning this summer.

The two-year-long project replaces block-system train control technology with a digital central train control system. Three new stations were built-at Bayshore near San Francisco, in Millbrae (with connections to Bay Area Rapid Transit) and in Lawrence near San Jose in the Silicon Valley.

Contractors also replaced much of the existing 50-year-old track (with continuous welded rail and concrete ties) from Menlo Park south to San Jose and built 4 mi. of new track and three crossovers to allow faster trains to bypass slower ones.

A week's worth of work on the weekend
Most of the work was undertaken on weekends, when trains were halted to allow workers to swarm the tracks. What workers accomplished was just short of amazing, given the size and complexity of the project.

"It was a very, very aggressive schedule from the get-go, and we knew it would be very difficult to complete on time," said Juston Poeling, construction coordinator for Herzog/Stacey and Witbeck. "The level of planning was much more extensive than any other project that I have worked on."

He said crews from the two contractors planned a week's worth of work on Sunday for the following week, and then met again Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon to go over last minute changes and other details.

The test of their organizational abilities came at 4 a.m. on Mondays. That's when each weekend's worth of work had to be completed in compliance with all of Caltrain's operating rules and regulations, Poeling added.

"It's a very active railroad-you just don't go and build track," he said.
Paul Loukianoff, project manager for CTX South, agreed that the job took extraordinary planning and a furious work pace.

At the height of the project, CTX South crews were replacing an average of 6,000 lin. ft. of track and ties each weekend. Loukianoff estimated that $1 million was spent every weekend on this portion of the overall project, or more than $54 million in approximately 52 weeks.

"We had 150 people on the south end of the project, and the subs had another 200 people," said Loukianoff, who also worked on Santa Clara County's Vasona light-rail extension before managing the Caltrain project. "Based on my experience from other projects, that was a lot of people to have on a job."

Nesting birds took priority
Patrick Gray, project manager for CTX North, said some of his projects required close coordination with outside agencies that sponsored the upgrade. For example, while rebuilding a small bridge in South San Francisco, crews had to work around environmental restrictions set down by the California Department of Fish & Game.

The agency put his crews on a strict construction timetable to better protect fish and birds nesting nearby. The crews had to construct the bridge in "halves" from April to October 2003, shifting trains to track on one side of the crossing while working on the other side of the bridge.

"It was very tight," Gray said. "We had to get in and get out knowing that if we didn't get the bridge completed by a certain date we'd have to wait a whole new season." he added. "It looks like a simple bridge, but it wasn't simple to build."

Crews worked even while trains were in service on Thursdays and Fridays, which required added safety measures, including a flagman, to warn crews when trains approached.

The bridge construction included pouring of reinforced concrete abutments, foundations and piers, then driving support piles and laying down pre-cast beams to accommodate the track deck.

The entire project started in June 2002 and is expected to be completed this month. Meanwhile, the new central train control system, or CTC, will allow dispatchers to control trains from a centralized office. For example, controllers will be able to route faster trains around slower trains where the system has now been double-tracked.
The San Leandro office of Amelco Electric Inc. served as the electrical subcontractor for the CTC installation.

Dave Martens, project manager for Amelco, said fielding and managing two different installation crews, one for the north and one for the south, was difficult. At the height of the installation, he was managing more than 100 workers.

The crews included unionized laborers from the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, who did most of the physical installations, such as digging new trenches for cable and installing new signal boxes, and signal engineers and technicians from San Leandro-based subcontractor B&C Transit Consultants Inc., which did the installation and testing.

The CTC was installed and tested in segments. "I learned quite a lot in the process," Martens said. "It was fairly complicated, and it didn't turn out as easy as we thought it would."

Caltrain spokesperson Jayme Kunz said the project was about three months behind the original schedule, a delay in large part due to the complexities of installing and testing the new CTC system.

"The signal system is a critical safety element, and we have to make sure that the signaling service is in place and operating safely," she said.

Nevertheless, Kunz said one added advantage to the new CTC system is that it will allow Caltrain to run trains on single portions of track and bypass repair and maintenance work.

With CTC in place and operational by next month, Caltrain won't have to shut down train service like it has for the past two years.

"We'll probably never have to do this again," Kunz added.