A Railfan / Busfan in the Sacramento area.


SacTransitFan

Jul 28 [Pics 1 & 2]
Today's bus bridge on the gold line is brought to you by: Trucks at Marketplace Ln. AGAIN. It seems the signal wasn't fully knocked down but was damaged enough to fully disrupt service. Wasn't able to get a good shot on the bus but hopefully tommorow morning I can get a better look at it.

[Pic 3]
Vandals have infiltrated SacRT's Swanston Light Rail Yard yet again. They've vandalized 116 which has been sidelined for over a year now. They previously vandalized parts car 207 back in November of last year.

1 day ago (edited) | [YT] | 7

SacTransitFan

A bit of an interesting update, SacRT moved 217 back to the graveyard and tucked it away so you can barely tell its there lol. In fact, the reason they moved it is because SacRT is scrapping 3 more UTDCs soon: 320, 314, and 312. I walked down Academy Way which is how I saw the numbers. I wasn't able to get the numbers of the cars that were scrapped back in October because I had school and didn't think they would scrap them at the time. I thought 217 was scrapped and those UTDC cars were put in its place lol. I also saw 134 tucked in the graveyard which has been out of service since 2016 possibly due to internal decay from a technician accident a couple years beforehand. All I could see is that a driver's window was taken out. New Swanston vid coming soon.

FYI - If you do decide to pass the yard, DO NOT ENTER IT. That is trespassing and is illegal. What you see on the train and on Academy Way are public views of the yard and any other angles are likely trespassing unless given permission. Some months back, vandals trespassed the yard and vandalized 207 (the first dead CAF car).

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 5

SacTransitFan

SACRT 414 has been involved in an accident at approximately 2pm today. Driver reportedly drove around the gates. Currently only 1 person was injured. These drivers man...

3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 2

SacTransitFan

6/5 Transit Talk Part 2 [It's finally here!]
SacRT hosted their Transit Talk for June 2026, with their next one occuring on August 7th. Let's get into the highlights, starting with construction timelines:

[Pic 1]
Watt/I-80 Bus Transit Center: Sometime this Summer, No exact date yet
7th & Railyards Station (Green Line Reopening): Projected to open in August 2026

[Pic 2]
Dos Rios Station: The station itself is done outside of a few amenities like ticket machines. SacRT projects an early September opening at the absolute latest.

[Pic 3]
SacRT projects the Blue Line stations will be ready for low-floor service in the summer of 2027. The commenter also talks about the Antelope 'Bus Desert', which I will address in a later video about my ideas for SacRT 2050, their long-term COA analysis.

[Pic 4]
A commenter asks about the executive order where state workers are to return to in-person work at least 4 days a week and additional bus service in regards to what was signed. SacRT is working with state agencies to accommodate their return, but will not add buses at this time due to insufficient funding. Speaking of bus shortages...

[Pic 5]
If you've paid attention to the Bus Trip Cancelations on SacRT's website, you'll notice that there have been a lot of trip cancelations within the past few months. This is due to driver callouts and the bus bridges related to low-floor work done on the blue line and the gold line tie project when that was going on. Route 11 is one of the routes affected as shown here. Shoutouts to that bus driver in the morning who keeps the bus under control for commuters. (This is not an advertisement, but remember SacRT is hiring bus operators!)

[Pic 6]
A commenter talks about the real-time alerts on Alert SacRT and how it is not reliable. I can attest to this, especially since these alerts are manually delivered, and as pictured here the alerts do not specify what train is late well at all. The commenter requests for the trip time and location. I'll add that the train number and car numbers should be added as well. SacRT responds saying this is actively being worked on with their IT team and vendor, but does not have a set timeline of when it would be released.

[Pic 7]
Bus Route 138 (Causeway Connection) averages 350 riders a day while the 142 (Airport Express) averages 110 riders a day. Although both are below average for SacRT bus ridership, these are intercity routes which saves cars from being on the highway. Additionally the 138 is funded entirely by UC Davis and federal CMAQ grants.

[Pic 8]
A commenter asks about the projected ridership of the West Sacramento Streetcar. SacRT projects there will be 730K annual riders in 2030 and 1.4 million in 2050. The Yolobus routes mentioned here are the 37, 40, and 41, where I'd say from my perspective the 37 (Southport) and 42A/B (Intercity) get decent ridership in the area, while the 40, 41, and 240 (West Sac Local Routes) I see fewer riders on.

[Pic 9]
A commenter asks about an 'experimental' version of the 138 where the bus would stop at the Broadway and 29th St light rail stations. Their idea is to continue on Stockton Blvd, turn left off P St to 29th St, continue on W St and enter back onto Highway 50 at W & 15th St.
As stated by SacRT, experimenting with bus routes is difficult and costly, and any ideas from riders for bus and light rail routes are analyzed by the COA team.

To add to the idea, I would turn left on 21st St from W St, right onto Broadway, right onto 16th St, and left onto W St to enter highway 50. Additionally, going eastbound, the bus can exit at X St and 15th St, make an immediate right onto 15th St, left onto Broadway, left onto Alhambra Blvd, left onto U St which wraps around to 30th St, make a right onto Q St, left on Alhambra Blvd, and right onto Stockton Blvd, where the bus will continue the same as the current route to UC Davis Medical Center.

[Pic 10]
As we all know, since SacRT has an all S700 fleet on the gold line, the old Mini-hi ramps are not used anymore. While most riders know this, or are told by guards or transit ambassadors where they politely move to the platform level, on some occasions, as pictured here, some riders get aggressive and refuse to move off of the ramps even though they are not used. My condolences go out to the ambassadors and guards for their hard work dealing with people these days. While SacRT is not planning to outright decommission them, I do agree with the commenter that SacRT should atleast barricade the ramps that are not in use to prevent these problems from happening. The only real use they have at this point is an extra roof of protection when it is raining but that's about it.

Sorry for the week-long delay, I was recovering from my trip to LA which is why I've been posting LA Metro content recently. Same reason I slowed down on videos for a couple weeks. Also, thank you all for 300 subscribers!!!

1 month ago | [YT] | 5

SacTransitFan

6/5 Transit Talk Highlights Part 1
This is a question I decided to put in its own separate post since YouTube only allows you to put 10 pictures on a post at a time, and I have 12 pictures in total to present starting with these two. A commenter in Davis asked if SacRT would implement what is known as the 'Zacke', a designated bike rack car for the Stuttgart Stadtbahn light rail system in Stuttgart, Germany, as seen in Picture 2. Located in front of the light rail car, it's a pretty ingenious idea since these cars can fit up to 22 bikes, or 20 bikes with 1 cargo bike. For instance, the S700 cars fit up to 4 bikes in accordance with SacRT's bike policy. However, this bike car is only used for uphill transport between Marienplatz and Degerloch staions since the route (Stuttgart Rack Railway Route 10) operates on a steep curve, picture the hills the San Francisco cable car system runs on. The commenter implies that this would require the old high floor vehicles to use, which I disagree with since Stuttgart Stadtbahn uses low-floor cars with their bike cars. While I don't think SacRT will invest in these kind of bike cars, if they did I'd say it's best used on single car S700 trains with said bike car. Even then, SacRT has been running two car S700 trains even on Sundays now so these bike cars might not be worth it in the end.

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

SacTransitFan

Check out this video released on the official SacRT channel! (Here's a trivia question: Can you guess what day this was filmed?)

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

SacTransitFan

[5/1/26 Transit Talk Highlights]
[Pic 1] SacRT is currently accepting comments by May 30th on the discontinuation of bus route 33 as the Dos Rios light rail station nears completion this upcoming summer. The bus route will be discontinued sometime after August 15th assuming the light rail station is completed on time.

[Pic 2] According to SacRT, their Long-term transit plan includes a potential light rail extension to Roseville. Kinda surprised SacRT is considering this since I thought Placer County was off limits for them, but it'll be interesting to see if this comes to light.

[Pic 3] While the answer is somewhat shaky, SacRT claims to have designated trains for Golden 1 Center events after they end. SacRT has stated before they've wanted to have 15-minute late night service or aforementioned special trains for these events. Something interesting to note is that the questioner asks about trains operating more frequently at less than 15 minute headways, which sounds good, but then you remember that SacRT sometimes struggles to keep trains on time so for example 12 minute headway trains would be absolutely chaotic for them to maintain lol.

[Pic 4] SacRT was asked if they would use the abandoned tracks in Folsom and SacRT surprisingly didn't outright say no, atleast on a long-term basis. This could mean that SacRT is considering a Folsom light rail extension from Historic Folsom to atleast the Folsom Pointe shopping center along East Bidwell St/Placerville Rd between Iron Point and the Hwy 50 underpass. This would use the currently abandoned PSVRR tracks in Folsom.

[Pic 5] SacRT has been securing funding for traffic signal preemptions on their light rail and bus system. As SacRT hasn't fully planned it out, these preemption locations currently do not have a release timeline yet.

[Pic 6] SacRT is anticipating the Green Line to reopen this summer, however the actual opening date is reliant upon the completion of the surrounding street construction area.

[Pics 7 & 8] SacRT's low-floor modification plans for June/July include Broadway, 4th Ave/Wayne Hultgren, City College, and finally in July, 8th & O's westbound platform which would be completed 9 months after it was supposed to reopen. These follow the stations that are getting low-floor work this month between May 7th to 22nd, Florin and Meadowview stations.

SacRT plans to release their Short-term plan in July, with board approval following shortly after. Will be interesting to see what is included in there.

As mentioned before, the light rail extension to the airport will start off as a Bus-Rapid Transit system due to the high costs of that light rail project. A proposed new bridge along the American River is the big thing that is keeping the cost of the light rail extension at $2 billion. The BRT would use the preexisting I-5 freeway bridge.

[Pic 9] Low-floor train service is still scheduled to be released onto the blue line in late 2027. We'll see what happens as this date approaches.

2 months ago | [YT] | 11