September 21, 2024. The highrises of San Francisco gleamed as the September sun rose over the west coast. Streets bustled as morning passengers made their way to commuter rail stations up and down the peninsula. Everywhere they gathered: Santa Clara. Redwood City. Morgan Hill. Palo Alto. They steadily trickled onto the platforms, patiently waiting for their regular trains to arrive.
But they weren’t alone. Joining them was a myriad of reporters, elected officials, community leaders and local residents. A palpable excitement hung in the air as news crews set up their cameras and staff prepared to give remarks. All weekend long, crowds gathered. Banners were unfurled. Balloons were inflated. After years of planning and construction, the first electric mainline trains were ready to serve the Bay Area.
Special events popped up between San Francisco and San Jose, extending as far south as Gilroy. Several stations commemorated the launch of Caltrain’s all-electric fleet with speeches, public works displays and project information. Some featured photo booths, magicians and an “electric slide flash dance.” If that’s not enough to get you excited about the future of passenger rail, I don’t know what is. All along the corridor, residents and local businesses ushered in a new era of sustainable transportation with games, art, food trucks and street performances. Finally, this yearslong project had come to fruition, and the community was in a mood to celebrate.
Caltrain serves one of the oldest legacy commuter corridors in the country. One-hundred and sixty years ago, the peninsula was traversed by steam engines belonging to the San Francisco & San Jose Railroad. Diesels were introduced some decades after the Southern Pacific Railroad acquired the line. Following a midcentury decline in ridership, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) negotiated operating rights on the corridor, and the vintage name “CalTrain” was born. By 1985, Caltrans introduced their own rolling stock — the same diesel units that were in use until just a few months ago.
Electrification had been a long-sought solution for the corridor, especially in light of California’s ambitious climate goals. Some proposals date as far back as the 1990s when the first feasibility study was conducted, but a lack of funding delayed any further action until the late 2010s.
The project finally broke ground in 2017, with shiny new electric trains delivered in spring 2022. The final price tag was $2.7 billion, the bulk of it funded by the state and federal governments, with contributions from counties, tolls and local ballot measures. In September 2024, Caltrain commenced fully electric passenger operations.
Apart from upgrading commuter service on this corridor, the electrification project laid crucial groundwork for the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) project, as trains coming from Los Angeles and the Central Valley will share Caltrain’s right-of-way along the peninsula corridor, finally terminating at San Francisco’s future Salesforce Transit Center.
The integration with California’s ambitious megaproject is ultimately what allowed Caltrain’s upgrades to receive funding. High-speed trains require fully-electrified right-of-way, meaning the tracks they run on must have overhead wire (catenary) to supply electricity. This allows them to travel at high speeds without carrying their own source of power (such as a heavy battery), drastically improving operational efficiency.
Originally, CAHSR intended to build a new high-speed corridor south of San Francisco. Now that the current plan has their trains running alongside Caltrain, electrification is a must. Although high-speed trains are still a long way from reaching the Bay Area, Caltrain is able to reap the benefits of fully-electric service on the peninsula.
As the project was completed, Caltrain replaced all of its aging diesel trains with state-of-the-art KISS models from the Swiss rail manufacturer Stadler. These were promoted as an eco-friendly upgrade, eliminating the noise and pollution caused by their diesel predecessors. Caltrain noted that electrification would cut down the amount of vehicular traffic along the corridor, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2.09 million tons and improving air quality in those communities. Long-term, the corridor’s improved infrastructure and integration with California High-Speed Rail will add capacity equivalent to five and a half extra freeway lanes on US-101, as stated by Caltrain’s project factsheet last January.
Setting aside the environmental benefits and improved efficiency, the sleek KISS trains give an impression of modernity and a higher quality of service. In other parts of the world, where electrification is more ubiquitous, riders are accustomed to this. However, in the U.S., less than 1% of railroads are capable of supporting electric multiple units, meaning that Caltrain’s new vehicles are many riders’ first taste of twenty-first century passenger rail. No longer do commuters have to travel in decades-old rickety trains; now, they are accustomed to a smooth ride, complete with Wi-Fi, accessible bathrooms and outlets at every seat.
Caltrain’s electrification did not change the overall service pattern; the new trains make identical stops and still top out at 79 miles per hour. However, the value of an electric train isn’t its speed; it’s the acceleration. Push/pull diesel units are notoriously sluggish in speeding up and slowing down, limiting how many stations can be served on a given line. Electric trains, by contrast, do this much more quickly, allowing them to spend more time cruising at their top speed.
“…the diesel Caltrain was too weak to even reach its 79 mph top speed between closely spaced stops…That means a trip from Palo Alto to San Francisco drops to below 40 minutes on the express train. Additionally, the local train from San Jose to San Francisco decreases from 100 to 75 minutes.”
Rohan Bhatia (The Campanile)
On a diesel-powered commuter service, stations are often located miles apart to compensate for the poor acceleration. On an electrified line, they can be spaced much more closely, serving more riders and creating opportunities for transit-oriented development. This allows commuter rail to act as a hybrid service by running like an express metro in the urban core while stopping less frequently in the suburbs.
This is a proven model in many European and Asian cities, where the emphasis on heavy rail is large-scale regional mobility, as opposed to commuters getting in and out of the city center. Now, we’re beginning to see a shift. In the age of remote work, many of North America’s suburban rail systems are looking to international best practices, transforming their commuter-centric service patterns into the likes of a German S-bahn or a French RER. Caltrain’s electrification was a major step in that direction.
By now, this project has proven an outstanding success. Trains are faster, commutes are shorter, capacity is higher, and the system is experiencing a surge in ridership.
“Comparing August 2024’s ‘primarily diesel service’ to October 2024’s all-electric service, the trains saw an overall 17% increase in ridership. Rather than its typical post-August decline in monthly ridership, the service has seen more than 100,000 additional riders.”
Olivia Harden (sfgate.com)
It’s no surprise that Caltrain has turned the heads of other cities in North America, particularly those running diesel commuter trains like the Bay Area mere months ago. This leaves onlookers to ask the obvious and most pertinent question: Why isn’t this being immediately replicated everywhere? If these electric trains are vastly superior by all performance metrics, how hard can it be to put up catenary poles on every commuter line in the U.S.?
The answer is complicated. It involves a combination of resistance from private freight railroads and a frustrating amount of legal red tape. Even in California, an environmentally progressive state actively spearheading major rail projects, legislation is often weaponized against initiatives similar to Caltrain’s. The High Speed Rail Alliance featured a guest post by Adriana Rizzo commenting on how environmental review processes and similar protection measures stand in the way of projects that are an obvious net benefit for the climate and local ecosystems.
“While the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), California’s version of NEPA, provide critical protections against many environmentally damaging projects, over time their scope has been expanded by the courts, enabling abuse by wealthy interests. In particular, the inclusion of subjective ‘Visual Impacts’ analysis alongside more objective harms to public health is a recipe for abuse.”
Adriana Rizzo (Californians for Electric Rail)
This continues to affect regions like Southern California, where proposals to electrify Metrolink’s commuter lines were scrapped in favor of operationally inferior hydrogen trains (which, despite being zero-emission, carry their own source of power, unlike an electric multiple unit). Even Caltrain wasn’t spared the litigation, as Rizzo noted wealthy homeowners filed an environmental lawsuit on the grounds that the catenary wire was visually unappealing.
“The lawsuit was thrown out by a judge, but the 19-month delay created by the process caused serious problems for Caltrain. The delay pushed project funding release into the Trump administration, who withheld federal funds for a year. Meanwhile Caltrain still had to pay contractors, and costs increased due to inflation.”
Adriana Rizzo (Californians for Electric Rail)
Caltrain also benefitted from public ownership of the corridor. In the US, it’s rare for a state or regional entity to exclusively own the right-of-way used for heavy rail passenger service. Most commuter trains run on private freight railroads, and the managing companies are resistant to do necessary track maintenance or electrification. The Association of American Railroads collectively opposes overhead catenary, advocating instead for internal power systems like biofuels and hydrogen. Although other countries commonly run freight trains under wire, Class I railroads claim it’s too logistically challenging.
These examples are just a few obstacles that make it politically difficult to approve and fund a project as impactful as Caltrain’s, but it’s never impossible.
In Toronto, GO Transit is receiving a monumental upgrade. Canada’s largest commuter network is in the midst of a transformative expansion project, adding much-needed capacity to its busiest corridors and electrifying the core network. This will allow trains to run with massively improved bidirectional headways as opposed to a constrained rush hour schedule, as is the case with some GO lines today. When complete, the Greater Toronto Area will boast 160 miles of electrified rail with ridership projected to grow 142% by 2029.
Chicago is already home to some electric regional rail; the South Shore Line is considered America’s last true interurban, running between Millennium Station downtown and South Bend airport in Northwest Indiana. As for Metra, Chicago’s commuter rail system, there is only one electrified line. It runs more frequently than any other Metra service and has the best on-time performance. The other ten lines are diesel-only, but Metra recently ordered a handful of battery-electric trains from Stadler to be delivered between 2027 and 2028. While these aren’t as efficient as traditional electric multiple units (using catenary for power), they can serve as a stopgap, allowing high-performance electric trains to run on existing commuter corridors and replace the outdated diesel fleet. In the future, if the tracks are retrofit with catenary, the battery-electric trainsets can be modified and upgraded to EMUs with no internal batteries.
This past July, Boston’s MBTA approved a similar plan to introduce flagship battery-electric trains on the Fairmount commuter line. Operation will begin in early 2028 and serve as a first step toward their long-range vision of electrifying the entire network. The new trainsets are predicted to speed up service while reducing emissions, noise pollution, fuel consumption, operating expenses, and maintenance costs.
Transit agencies all over North America have eyed electrification for decades. Now, they have precedent. As time goes on, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the staggering benefits. Caltrain’s upgrade was a groundbreaking project; it’s far from the first electric railroad in the U.S., but it is tangible proof of what stands to be gained by investing in our infrastructure. As we see more of these projects cut their own ribbons, this ripple effect may well extend to every region and make them ask, “Why not us?”
So, leaning into that…why not us?
To put it bluntly, regional rail in the Twin Cities leaves a lot to be desired. With only one neglected commuter line in the entire system, our greater transportation vision relies predominantly on light rail and bus rapid transit. Without a solid backbone of express heavy rail, those medium-speed and medium-capacity modes are forced to satisfy both local and regional demand. If we want to make our transit more intermodal — and learn from our peer cities across North America — we first have look at what’s already here and how we can fix it.
The Northstar is one of the worst-performing commuter rail lines in the country, and the bulk of the reason is its impractical schedule. Whereas other commuter and regional rail systems aim for headways as low as 30 or even 15 minutes, the Northstar runs only a few times a day with a single reverse commute trip and no weekend service, outside of events.
Due to concurrent freight operations, capacity on the line is limited. To this day, the section just north of Minneapolis is the most trafficked rail corridor in the Twin Cities, carrying dozens of freight trains per day with little room for added Northstar service. This is especially problematic considering future state-supported Amtrak routes are slated to share those tracks on their way to Fargo and Duluth.
Amtrak’s Northern Lights Express (NLX) will be the second state-supported route in Minnesota and the first in many years to serve Minneapolis. In addition to linking the Twin Cities and the Twin Ports, the project will include a third mainline rail on the BNSF corridor between Target Field and Foley Blvd. This will allow 22 additional passenger trains per day on the interlined section shared by the Northstar and NLX (as well as future state-supported service to Fargo).
“BNSF has made it abundantly clear that any additional passenger trains in the Coon Rapids area will require the construction of an additional track. Any of the following highly likely scenarios would trigger the need for construction of additional track:
– expansion of the current Northstar project (either extending intercity rail to St. Cloud or commuter rail to Cambridge, or additional trips each day to Big Lake), or– additional reverse commute trips, or
– development of the NLX service, or
– development of other regional or national passenger rail initiatives”
Minnesota Department of Transportation
The added capacity may give the Northstar an opportunity to consider at least partial electrification — if not by catenary, then perhaps by using battery units like Chicago and Boston. These would greatly speed up service, and the improved acceleration could allow for new infill stations such as in Northeast Minneapolis.
Installing overhead wire on an entire corridor is a big lift, and not one that seems especially likely in the near term. However, incrementally electrifying the line may be possible thanks to trains like Stadler’s FLIRT Akku, an electric multiple unit that runs on battery power but also includes a pantograph to charge under wire where it’s available. This means that constructing catenary in small sections, such as over terminal platforms, will allow trains the benefit of offloading at least some of their required power without needing to electrify a line all at once. The more catenary that gets built over time, the more it pays off.
These vehicles would be especially useful on other potential heavy rail services. Proposals like the Dan Patch line and the Red Rock corridor include multiple stations in close proximity to Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively. This would not be feasible with Northstar-style service, but an electric train could leverage its acceleration to serve as many riders as possible and ensure large population centers aren’t missed.
By now, there has been plenty of conversation about the future of commuter rail in the Twin Cities. Several unused corridors have enormous potential, but the one line we have now is underperforming, and its future is not guaranteed unless it demonstrates significant improvement. Shifting our paradigm from traditional diesel units to electric regional trains will prove that regional rail is a worthwhile investment.
Looking beyond Minneapolis and St. Paul, these proposals have implications statewide. Unlocking these corridors is a vital first step to facilitating parallel regional and intercity service. Expanding regional rail will connect outstate cities like Mankato and Owatonna, creating non-central transfer points for state-supported Amtrak routes to nearby destinations like Sioux Falls and Des Moines.
Years ago, a vision like this may have seen hopelessly far-fetched, but recent advancements have put a renewed vigor into electrification and modernization proposals all over the country. We now have a higher standard for what’s possible – Caltrain is living proof of that. Other regions have been floating similar projects for decades. It’s no coincidence that those plans are now being put into motion.
As for the rest of us — we may not be on the precipice of a project as transformative as the Bay Area’s. We may not be upgrading passenger service to the extent of Toronto. We may not be actively purchasing new trainsets like Chicago and Boston. But you can bet that every single commuter rail operator from the west coast to the east coast will be watching their progress and taking note of their accomplishments. As more and more dominos fall, the path toward electrification becomes clearer.
Projects like these are much more than a shiny new train or a better timetable. They represent a permanent, tangible investment in our communities, creating future-proof infrastructure that encourages long-term sustainable growth and enhances connectivity between regions. It’s no surprise that when an undertaking of this scale is completed, people celebrate. We saw it in the Bay Area just a few months ago, with food trucks, live performances, and street art. Maybe one day, passengers throughout the Twin Cities and beyond will enjoy their own festivities as the first electric trains arrive in the North Star State.