Transbay Terminal

• The official site of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) is www.transbayproject.org ... uh, no, this week it's www.transbaycenter.org.
  A big thank you goes out to TJPA's rent-seeking contractors for a new domain name, for a new agency logo, for breaking all web links, and for zero progress on the informational front and, far, far, far worse, for negative progress on the civil and transportation engineering fronts.
  
  Can any of these people have ever visited a train station?
  We're doomed.
  
  
• A selection of news stories.
  
  
• The information-light web site of the MTC/Caltrain/BART/CHSRA(ugh!) sponsored Regional Rail Plan for the Bay Area study, funded by Regional Measure 2.
  
  
• Michael Kiesling's Regional Rail Plan, the competence and rationality of which demonstrate that all the Bay Area needs is somebody with a quarter of a brain to be put in charge -- a quality sorely lacking at MTC and all of the local CMAs.
  
  
• Regional Measure 2 ($3 state bridge tolls) was approved on 2 March 2004 and will provide $150 million for capital costs of the Transbay Terminal project and $3 million/year (escalating at 3.5% annually) for operational costs of the terminal, among many other projects (many truly awful, some good.)
  (See also the legislative history of Senator Don Perata's Senate Bill 916 (2003-4).)
  
  
• The Final Program EIS/EIR of the California High Speed Rail Authority. (Draft January 2004; Final August 2005.)
  This final EIR, unlike the sleaze-ridden Draft EIR rammed through by corrupt board member Rod Diridon and his dim-witted and self-interest-defeating San Jose cronies, does not totally exclude even considering the superior Altamont Pass alignment from the Central Valley into the San Francisco Bay Area.
  (Far more competent and more honest and higher quality and $5 billion less expensive analysis of the Altamont route can be found at arch21.org.)
  
  
• The approved San Francisco Transportation Sales Tax 0.5% renewal, Proposition K of November 2003, includes $270 million for the Transbay Terminal project.
  Unfortunately, the self aggrandizing, grossly unethical, and manifestly incompetent SFCTA executive director has unilaterally chosen to defund the program, as it does not lie 100% within his personal fiefdom.
  
  See! The process does work as intended!
  
  
• The San Francisco Redevelopment Authority's "Transbay Design for Development Vision", August 2003 (90mb of PDF files) is a generally encouraging piece of work.
  
  More the pity, then, that the egregious actions of the grossly corrupt SF Mayor's Office and SF County Transportation Office staff have effectively doomed the project.
  
  
• Text of the Cooperative Agreement finally reach between grossly un-co-operative Caltrans and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority.
  (Links broken by moronic TJPA "web site relaunch")
  (See also exhibit Map 1, Map 2, Map 3, Map 4, Map 5 and Map 6.) July 2003.
  
  
• Transbay Terminal/Caltrain Downtown Extension/Redevelopment Final Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report, March 2004.
  Approved 22 April 2004.
  
  
• The TJPA's generally regrettable, technically ignorant, unresponsive, and now unrectifiable Locally Preferred Alternative Report (March 2003) has finally appeared on the web, 11 months after it was produced. (2.6mb PDF)
  None of the substantial and glaringly amateurish engineering problems of the draft EIR were address in any way.
  We'll be living with the consequences of contractor and staff hubris and ignorance for decades to come.
  
  See, the process does work as intended!
  Fail to file a lawsuit, fail to buy the cheap-and-easy mayor, and you're guaranteed to be ignored!
  
  
• Transbay Terminal/Caltrain Downtown Extension/Redevelopment Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report, October 2002.
  (Links broken by moronic TJPA "web site relaunch")
  
  
• Official Transbay Terminal project Newsletter No. 2, October 2002. (2mb PDF)
  (Links broken by moronic TJPA "web site relaunch")
  (Issue No. 1 has never been made available online.)
  (Issue No. 3 has never been made available online.)
  
  
• The San Francisco County Transportation Authority's official TTT/DTX proposal to Evil MTC in HTML format (hand-converted by Yours Truly) or in its originally-published PDF (ugh!) incarnation. October 2001.
  
  
• San Francisco Planning Department Notice of Preparation that an EIR is required an Francisco Transbay Terminal / Caltrain Downtown Extension Project, March 2001.
  
  
• Evil MTC's surprisingly competent Transbay Terminal Improvement Project, March 2001.
  
  
• San Francisco 1999 Proposition H set (corrected) city policy to support of extension of Caltrain to a rebuilt Transbay Terminal.
  The full text of the appproved city ordinance can be found here. November 1999.
  
  

Historial Transbay Terminal rail alignment development

• Scores of additional refinements developed in the period 2000-2004 not online.
  They should be, I guess -- that way one can say "I told you so" with just a single URL.
  
  
• Ancient historial paths not taken.
  What exactly was the point anyway of paying grossly ignorant and incompetent "professionals" to completely screw things?

Bay Bridge

• 2000 Bay Bridge Rail Study Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, Ove Arup & Partners, LTK Engineering Services, Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein Moris.
  A nice piece of work, sabotaged by Caltrans
  
  
• Evil MTC's doomed to fail "Bay Crossing" study
  
  
• MTC Must Be Destroyed
  
  
• Rail on the Bridge
  
  
• Rail on the Bridge
  
  
• The Bay Bridge in 1931.
  
  
• Construction Photographs of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, 1931-1936 UCB Bancroft library, California Heritage Digital Image Access Project. 3467 images.
  
  
• Bridging the Bay exhibit (now web exhibit only) at UCB.
  
  
• Caltrans' fradulent EIS
  
  

Caltrain

• Draft Environmental Assessment/Draft Environmental Impact Report (EA/DEIR)" for Caltrain electrification (April 2004)
  
  
• Caltrain July 2000 "Assessment of Electrically Powered Rolling Stock Equipment"
  
  
• 1992 M-K Caltrain Electrification Report for Caltrans, conveniently made available to you as 231 75dpi scanned images.
  
  
• FAQ on Caltrain electrification (prepared as PR2000 handouts for September 2000 public hearings.) PDF version.
  
  
• Miscellaneous Caltrain Electrification documents
  
  

BART

• Miscellaneous BART documents
  
  
• Rogers and Peck 2000: Engineering Geology of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) System, 1964-75
  
  

MUNI

• Executive Summary from the EIS/EIR for Muni's appallingly wasteful and cost-ineffective Third Street Light Rail project

  Note in particular the unbelivably, unspeakably, mind-numbingly, appallingly bad ridership numbers (predicted by the project sponsor) in Table S-3.

  This project has been Muni's highest priority for the last ten years and will consume nearly all of its projected capital funds for expansion for the next thirty years.

Gunzelling

• George Raymond's outstanding description of the operations on the Killwangen to Altstetten approach to Zürich Hauptbahnhof.
• LGV Méditerranée construction images (Sigh. Apparently dead.)
• Patrick Morandi's excellent construction images (via news://news.zoo-logique.org/images.chemin-de-fer) of Bahn2000 triplication of the line from Genève to Coppet.
  • Installation of a third track through Versoix, April 2002
  • Quadruplication just south of Versoix, through Creux-de-Genthod, October 2002
• Dutch high speed line construction images
• HSL Zuid (This was once a useful site, but has been destoyed by a Web Design Pinhead "upgrade". May they and their kind all rot in hell. Now requires Javascript to do anything, is unreadable, crashes browsers. Progress!)
  Detailed PDF alignment maps extracted from the above morass:
  • Hoofddorp to Haarlemmermeer
  • Alkemade to Leiderdorp, Rijnwoude
  • Rijnwoude to Zoetermeer
  • Zoetermeer to Rotterdam, Barendrecht
  • Barendrecht to Dordrecht
  • Dordrecht to Breda
  • Breda to Belgian border
• Christoph Schmitz's excellent record of die Ausbaustrecke Köln-Düren
• Bahnhof Löwenstrasse Zürich. Construction webcams
  • Zürcher Amt für Verkehr
  • VöV ZH
  • www.hb3d.afv.zh.ch has some Javascript-requiring CAD model images and some Micro$~1-only plugin 3D models I'm unable to view.
• Zürcher Amt für Verkehr rail strategy
• Zürcher Verkehrsverbund S-Bahn Vision 2006/2012
• Bahn2000
• Alptransit Gotthard
• Alptransit Lötschberg
• Alpetunnel Lyon-Torino
• Liège-Guillemins "Euro Liège TGV"
• Stockholm Cityspåren overview and extremely interesting project documentation
• Rotterdam Centraal to the appallingly bad Javascript-infested official site
• Antwerpen Centraal. In contrast, see the uninformative official SNCB site
• Basel SBB "Euroville". Then there's the appalling Javascript and Flash-infested SBB Passerelle site.
• Zug SBB
• Calatrava
  • Zürich Stadelhofen Mercurio. Calatrava.com. greatbuildings.com.
  • Luzern vitruvio. Mercurio.
  • Lisboa Oriente archiweb.cz. NIROV. TU Cottbus.
  • Liège-Guillemins. Calatrava.com
  • Lyon Satolas
• Madrid Atocha, etc, etc.
• Re460 lococam, Archive
• More railcams than you can stand: Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
• No trains in the blue penguin nest in Oamaru, nor in the stork nest (archive) in Vetschau.