Good news on the Peninsula, where Caltrain and the California High Speed Rail Authority plan to work together for level boarding on the shared platforms:

Officials representing Caltrain and the California High-Speed Rail Authority recently announced that they’ll work closely together over the next several months to on a joint specification for train cars. The cars will allow both systems to board trains from high-level, shared platforms at the future SF Transbay Transit Center, Millbrae, and San Jose stations. The announcement was made last Monday at a meeting hosted by transit advocacy group Friends of Caltrain in Mountain View. “Level boarding,” so called because passengers will be able to walk directly from platforms onto trains without any steps, maximizes passenger capacity by speeding up boarding. It’s crucial that these three stations have platforms that work for both Caltrain and CAHSR, to maximize flexibility and to reduce redundancy.

But not everyone is convinced they are going to get it right:

And yet someone at the CHSRA didn’t get that memo. In a spec published just yesterday, the HSR trains are to have a floor height of 1295 mm (51 inches). This spec will serve as the basis for a train procurement process that has now begun. 1295mm is incompatible with Caltrain requirements. It really makes no sense — other than being compatible with the NEC. Why are they trying to maintain backwards compatibility with a rail line thousands of miles away?

Caltrain is up first in placing its train orders, which puts the onus on them to cooperate. Caltrain currently has floor levels 25 inches above the rail, but as the HSR Peer Review Group noted, the global HSR standard is 50 inches.

Caltrain could order trains with 50 inch floor levels, but their platforms are at 25 inches – which makes sense given that’s where their current vehicles are. So someone would have to pay to raise Caltrain’s platforms.

And that’s where the plan for level boarding runs into some trouble. Let’s hope it gets resolved before orders are submitted.