Caltrain debuts brand new all-electric fleet in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO - Officials celebrated a big milestone for Caltrain Saturday morning and took an inaugural ride on its brand new, all-electric fleet.
Gov. Gavin Newson and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi did the honors at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Though electric trains were first proposed more than 20 years ago, the Caltrain project took eight years. The agency broke ground in 2017.
"What we love to say about California, what we love to say about San Francisco - the future happens here first. We are America's coming attraction - that's a point of pride, it's also a privilege," said Newsom.
The sustainable fleet is the first of its kind in North America. The new trains are faster, greener, and quieter. The trains are state-of-the-art, equipped with wi-fi, outlets and digital displays.
The project came out to $2.4 billion.
"This is a housing issue, it's an economic issue," said Pelosi. "It's about jobs, jobs, jobs to build it and then jobs to run it and then jobs that spring from the economic development. It's about quality of life."
Resident Robert Thomas, who lives near the station at Fourth and King Streets, said the eco-friendly trains, even in their testing phase, have already made a measurable difference in his life.
"As a resident, I was experiencing just a lot of loud noise and the hissing and just the decompression of the train and just overall the loud horns at about 5 a.m.," said Thomas. "Now with these new trains, they're much quieter, seems like they're much more efficient and they are definitely a lot less intrusive on my sleeping hours."
Officials got the chance to take the first roundtrip ride on the electric train from San Francisco to Millbrae.
Caltrain will launch 19 new trains north of San Jose, and travel times will be cut by at least 10%.
The agency will put two electric trains into regular service starting Sunday and slowly ramp up until it launches the entire fleet to the public on Sept. 21.
"These tracks we're running on were built 160 years ago, so that's the time frame we're looking at," said Caltrain spokesperson Dan Lieberman. "This is a project that's going to remake rail on the peninsula for literally decades and centuries to come."
Eventually, the tracks will be used by the state's high-speed rail system.
"I cannot wait until the Transbay Terminal Center in Salesforce and this train is connected, so that high-speed rail from around the entire state is connected and they're coming right here in downtown San Francisco," said Mayor London Breed.