Trains and transit in Costa Rica

[Metra Electric Rider]

I seem to remember a Tico telling me that they didn't use, as in didn't have, street addresses in Costa Rica....

 

[Matthew H Fish]

tI seem to remember a Tico telling me that they didn't use, as in didn't have, street addresses in Costa Rica....

It is true. And not a joke or an exaggeration. And not just like, they aren't easily visible, or they aren't used in further out neighborhoods. Even in the middle of the capital, with prominent public buildings, there are no addresses.
When I signed up for my school, they gave me an ID card, and it just listed its location as "100 meters west of the entrance to the mall"

And as some of the pictures and videos show, its not that things here are necessarily ramshackle. Sometimes technology is incredibly easy to access. it is just some things...are not. And especially with transit and transportation, it is confusing to me.

 

[cirdan]

Reminds me of a friend of mine who moved to a little village in Ireland. It's a real picture-postcard type of place with whitewashed and thatched cottages and most people still burning peat. When he arrived he discovered the houses didn't have numbers affixed and the streets didn't have names and he wasn't even sure what the correct name of the village was as the road signs used one spelling and the documents he signed used another. Well, on the first day he was there the doorbell rang and he opened. It was the mailman. The mailman walked in as if it was the most normal thing to do, sat down at the kitchen table and accepted a tea or two and washed them down with a whiskey. They had a log and jovial chat, at the end of which my friend asked, seeing the guy was the mailman, could he kindly tell him the number of the house and the name of the street, you know, so that he could inform people who might need to write to him. The postman said, don't worry about that. Now I know who you are I will make sure you get your mail.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

After some time here, I finally get out of the city! I departed from the bus station pictured above, and after 2 hours, got to the coast!
Puntarenas is a nice town. I mean, obviously, its a beach town where it is always 80F. And at this time of year, always with a light breeze and clear skies.
But from a transit point of view, a couple of things to mention: taking this route made me realize how many challenges Costa Rica faces. The mountain ranges aren't towering, but they are very up and down, and are prone to erosion and slides. In fact, from what I have read, the Pacific train route that used to go to Puntarenas was damaged in road construction some years ago. That route is visible from the highway I was riding the bus on, although not in the video.
As is shown in the video, the Puntarenas area still has its train infrastructure, and the current bus station is located a few blocks from the historical site of the train station. Along with that station, there are several more in the area. I passed by one of them, and it was a literal husk.
It is a bit tantalizing, because much of the infrastructure is already there, and somehow, 100 years ago, they could make it work regularly, but now it is not usable. But I guess the same is true across much of the United States.
And again, I am surprised at how much stuff here does work, despite the constraints the country has to infrastructure.
And I am also surprised that some very basic stuff that should work doesn't---and stuff that isn't expensive or difficult. For example, coordinating local transit (bus and train) with long distance service seems like a no-brainer, but here it is difficult. And, for that matter, things like having signs outside of bus terminals seems like it should be easy, but you just have to know where the bus terminals are! Fixing the long distance railroad tracks across the mountains and rebuilding stations is a challenge, but some things could be improved cheaply. If the Cinnabons in the mall can have flat screen displays, why can't the bus terminals?

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Two more updates to my recent activity:

First, last Friday I took a short trip to Tres Rios.


For context, this is just a 20 minute train ride from where I live. It does highlight a point I have made a few times, which is that the layout of towns and cities is sometimes hard to understand. Especially here, the train lines were built to carry agricultural commodities when the country looked much different. But also, there are still active coffee plantations mixed in with what is also (in US terms) a commuter suburb.
Also, as shown in the video after I actually get on the train, the narrow gauge rail travels quite close to some buildings. It looks charming, like its some type of Mister Rogers Trolley or something, but I do wonder about the safety and noise issues. Across the train route, (which is only a few miles), you can see the same mixture of dense urban housing, institutions (it passes several universities) and just...open spaces. It is a bit hard for me to understand the land use/settlement pattern here.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Looks like I am behind on my updates: this is one from a week ago. This doesn't involve a rail journey, but I include it because it is rail adjacent.


I chose San Ramon because it uses the same terminal as the bus to Puntarenas, so I already knew where it was. I also chose it because it was a very typical medium sized city out of the immediate San Jose area. It took 75 minutes to get there, which is reasonable.
On a map, it is 27 linear miles between the bus terminal and this town. Before I got here, and looking on a map, the cities looked pretty close together, almost walking distance. But the hills here, while not extremely tall, are extremely up and down. The road rises and falls and goes through a lot of twists and turns to get there.
There is a lot to recommend the buses here: they run regularly and on time, they are comfortable, and they are cheap. (I paid under $4 for this trip). On the other hand, the routes are long and twisty, and you have to know which station/bus to take, there is no central bus terminal.
From a transit point of view, this continues to make me think that transit here has opposite problems than in the US. In the US, there are so many places that have the infrastructure for trains, but the demand isn't there because there are cultural attitudes against it, or it is just not something that would occur to people.
Here, the problem is the opposite: there is already an audience of people who are willing to take public transportation, and even a medium-sized city of 10,000 or so people can fill up a touring bus with 50 people every hour. The demand is there, but the physical layout of the country, and the ability to raise capital for construction, is not.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

And finally, before I forget, here is one from Friday! And this one involves an actual train!



There are three lines on the Costa Rica Incofer system, and so far, all of my rides have been on the busiest one, the San Jose-Cartago line. This is my first trip on the Belen-San Jose line. I walk to the western district of Pavas, which starts west of Parque Sabana, which is the western edge of "Downtown" San Jose, more or less. I then take a train back to University of Costa Rica.
Although there are three separate lines, some of them basically interline. It is hard to understand, and you have to study the schedule for a while to get it. The line I took was one of two from Belen that passes Estacion Pacifico, and then continues past Estacion Atlantico, to become a Cartago line. I had to time my walk to catch this particular train.
There are a few things about the train travel that might jump out and seem odd in this video. The platform that I finally boarded on, in Pavas, had no signs marking where it was! You basically had to know it was there. And notice the men working on their car just a few feet from where the train goes by--from a US perspective, it is hard to imagine that not being a safety or legal issue, that there are so few barriers between the train infrastructure and people's homes. The hodgepodge nature of the city is also evident in this video. Earlier, when I passed the US Embassy, I mention that it is usually in an affluent part of the city. And that is kind of the case here---but it is also a few blocks from the snack chip factory, and some of the lavish malls along here border much more modest residential areas. I am guessing this makes the train a little bit harder to find a regular audience. Is this a commuting train? And if so, where are the workers commuting from, and to?

And also, finally---I passed out on this train! Now, I think it was becoming down with something, but I also walked a long way without eating enough, and while supporting myself standing upright on the train, I started feeling very tired, and ended up collapsing to the ground. The train attendants and passengers were very kind, and I got home safe. But that is certainly a train adventure I don't want to repeat.

 

[Maglev]

I just realized that I had a comment pertinent to trains in Costa Rica.

When we moved to Maui in 1967, the Kahului Railroad had just shut down its last stretch of track. Two diesel locomotives (I think they were Plymouths) were sitting by the Harbor. (The Kahului Railroad was the only railroad in Hawaii to dieselize, and the last to shut down). They were later shipped to Costa Rica.

My parents visited Costa Rica around 1990. They rode some trains, and my father asked an engineer about the locomotives from Hawaii. The engineer responded with a menacing, toothless expression that he hated those locomotives and that one was responsible for his losing his teeth. Apparently, they were not well suited for mountainous terrain, and the "magnetos" on one overheated, causing the train to derail.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Apparently, they were not well suited for mountainous terrain, and the "magnetos" on one overheated, causing the train to derail.

As someone who has lived in some pretty mountainous areas, including Montana, the Pacific Northwest and Chile, I have been surprised by the mountains here! They are a few thousand feet tall, but they seem to be several times that based on how treacherous they are. I can certainly imagine them chewing up and spitting out infrastructure.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

After two weeks of being sick (after I fainted on the train in that trip, I ended up with a difficult ear infection), I went on a trip again yesterday, to Heredia, which is a suburb just outside of San Jose. It is not that far from San Jose, only a few miles, but because of the roughness of the terrain in places (such as the canyon of the Rio Virilla, shown a minute or so in), it feels like a different city.
Like a lot of cities here, and elsewhere, it is a mixture. There is a part right at the entrance of the city where there is a McDonalds, KFC, Burger King and Taco Bell, but right past there is a university, and residential streets. Also, despite Costa Rica's extensive natural parks, cities here have much less greenspace than I am used to.
When I had finished walking around, I went to the train station. This is one of three lines, and the one I haven't ridden yet. It goes from Alajuela, near the airport, to here, and on to San Jose. But most of the rides start here, at this station. From here, it is a very reasonable 20-25 minutes to Estacion Atlantico.
Unfortunately, on this day, due to it being the week between Christmas and New Years...the trains weren't running! So I had to take a bus back. Not that difficult, but I of course always want a chance to ride a train. But hopefully this view of the train station is fun, at least, for now.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

New year, new adventures!

I went back to Cartago, where I had been previously. But unlike in my first trip, where I came and left by train, this time I took a bus, and had several hours to walk around town, on a nice day.
The video mostly speaks for itself, but a few things from a transit point of view:
The bus I took to get there was a direct route, which was nice. I thought I was going to have to go to Tres Rios and then go on to Cartago, but a bus to Cartago just happened to pull up while I was waiting. The bus cost 685 colones ($1.30) and had aspects of being a city bus and a touring bus. It was hop-on/hop-off, but had padded seats and luggage racks.
Not shown in the video, but on the way into Cartago, there was a big traffic jam, and it took 20-30 minutes to move 2-3 miles. It seems like there is a freeway being built, which might alleviate things. In general, I don't think freeway are the answer, but here, the problem is that there is freeway traffic on city roads. Of course, increasing train service might also help!
As shown at the end of the video, the train service is still reduced for the first week of the year. So I was waiting at a platform with no hint of this, and walked back to the central station to learn this fact. The platform itself was charming in a way---across from a field, but with no decoration, no chairs, not even a station name. Rustic things can be fun...until you have to deal with them.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

I went back to Puntarenas, on the coast.
There are a lot of interesting things to see in this video, including lizards and me getting lost, but from a train point of view, the most relevant thing is that I show the tracks that go northwards.
This rail line, which used to go from San Jose to Puntarenas, splits in two at El Roble (which is also where I got off the bus). One line goes west, onto the Puntarenas peninsula proper, while the other continues northward. In this video, for the first few minutes, I follow the line northward, trying to find the terminal station for that line. I do find an old train platform, but I am not sure if I found the station. I then turn around, trying to walk back towards the peninsula. Apparently, as is often the case, distances are greater than they look on a map, and after walking for a few miles (on a day that turned out to be 90 degrees), I end up taking a city bus the last few miles to Puntarenas proper. But while walking towards the peninsula, I show the rail line that still exists---at least physically. As this video shows, the tracks are not currently usable.
Costa Rica is in the difficult position of a lot of middle-income countries. Rising standards of living mean a lot of people have automobile and the leisure time to travel, etc. But it doesn't have the money to pay for the infrastructure. The bus ride from San Jose to Puntarenas, a distance of around 50 miles in a straight line, takes 90 minutes on a very good day. Reopening the rail could make it a much easier trip---but it would take a lot of time and money to do that.
Which is somewhat mirrored in my own experience---where I was going took more time and money than I planned!

 

[Matthew H Fish]

A difficult shot to get, I took this out of a bus window while travelling to Puntarenas. This shows a railroad bridge parallel to the freeway. From what I can tell from looking at a map, this is over the Quebrada San Francisco, closer to San Jose than to Puntarenas. That isn't a very wide body of water it passes over, but it is a big canyon.
It is a shame that there is all this rail infrastructure that can't be used because a section of tracks was covered in a landslide.
Also, obviously, for a passenger, crossing that bridge on a train would probably be a really great view!

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Another piece of standing but unused infrastructure-- the Caldera train station. This is located about 5 miles south of El Roble and the peninsula. Based on the size of the station, and what looks like a pretty solid design, I am assuming that this must have been a pretty important, and even prestigious, station at some time. And now it looks abandoned.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

After two weeks, I return to Heredia to ride the train for real this time. (I also visited a large, modern shopping mall, but that is in a different video).
The Heredia-San Jose line also sometimes runs all the way out to Alajuela, the site of the airport, but this one had its origin in Heredia. It used different equipment, but I am not sure what the reason for that is.
This video only shows pieces of the journey, but hopefully it is useful. Two things stand out:
1. As I've said before, the land use for these trains is not what I expect. Even though Heredia is only about 5 miles from San Jose in a straight line---the train literally passes by a coffee plantation (shown in the thumbnail) on the way there. The size of the canyon over the river Rio Virilla is also impressive. These are the type of terrain features we don't usually see on commuter rail systems!
2. At one point, the train stalled out climbing up a hill. There seems to be some infrastructure issues! And again, this is the opposite of the problems we usually see in the US, where infrastructure is very shiny but drumming up demand can be the problem. The train was packed. There is a lot of demand here, but it seems not enough capital to make improvements.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Yesterday, I went to Paraiso ("Paradise"), a town to the east of San Jose. I have a video, but since it doesn't have a lot of rail content, I am not posting it here.
Paraiso is the last station to the east on the San Jose-Cartago line, but it currently has exactly three departures, and two arrivals, a day. And, as I found out, the stops are actually at Plaza Paraiso, a mall several miles to the west of town. When I saw the station in Paraiso, it didn't even have tracks. I walked a while to the the west, and as you can see here, the tracks aren't even there, and the sign is very far rusted.
This picture might look like I was trekking deep into some desolate part of the rainforest...but as is often the case in Costa Rica, I was approximately 1200 feet from the nearest Walmart. The weather can lead to things rusting and weathering very quickly.
Once again, I see that Costa Rica is trying hard with its passenger rail, but there are a lot of things that are rough around the edges, and also hard for an outsider to know about!

 

[Matthew H Fish]

On my trip on Wednesday to Paraiso, I saw a bus go by with a sign that said "Turrialba", and that got me thinking...
Paraiso is the last city in the San Jose metro area, more or less. Past that, you climb into the mountains, and eventually get to Turrialba. On a map, it is 24 linear miles, and 40 road miles, between San Jose and Turrialba. It seems like a nice little town that would be perfect for a day trip!
It took me two hours to reach Turrialba, by bus. All of which is compressed into the first 2 minutes or so of the video, but even that brief synopsis probably explains why.
Although, there are two reasons why: in the San Jose area, the roads are very crowded, and traffic can be very stop-and-go. Past Cartago/Paraiso, the terrain becomes very steep and very twisty, and a large touring bus is travelling over what amounts to a two-lane country road. Despite the fact that it is a long-distance, touring bus, it also is dropping off and picking up passengers along the way. I have one clip near the beginning showing the door closing as we go through the hills---because someone had gotten off at a farmhouse in the mountains.
Turrialba, itself, was nice, although I only spent about two hours there. One of the things I did was to search for the old railroad station. Turrialba was an important stop on the San Jose-Limon (Atlantic) line. I eventually do find the old railroad station, which has been converted into a fashionable cafe area. I actually found it after searching further east along the line---where the tracks have literally been ripped up.
One of my key takeaways from this is that while advocacy of train travel in the US is usually based on concerns like fossil fuel dependency, urban design, and sometimes just aesthetics, here I can see just how much better a train line could be in terms of sheer numbers of people transported. Since there is a bus with at least 50 people leaving every hour from San Jose, it seems they could fill a train. But I don't know if the population density of the cities involves would quite justify the cost of repairing the railroad through the difficult terrain.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

And just to put everything into perspective, I thought I would include this map, from Compare Countries With This Simple Tool
This shows Costa Rica compared to the Washington DC region. So, for example, my trip to Turrialba isn't that much different rom going from Washington, DC to Annapolis...except for the fact that the road between those two cities doesn't have to go round any volcanoes!

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Here is another one where I take a train---even though I didn't plan to.
Even after several months here, I still find myself getting myself in trouble by underestimating the distances between places. In this video, I go from Heredia to Alajuela, both suburbs to the NW of San Jose. It is 6 miles between them, but as I show, I end up taking a touring bus to go the distance. As also mentioned, the difference between a touring bus and a city bus is sometimes hard to know here.
When I was planning this trip, I didn't think I was going to be taking the train--but by a stroke of luck, I reached the Alajuela train platform 5 minutes before the train left. There are only 5 trains between Alajuela and Heredia a day, and only two in the afternoon, so I got it by luck.
Alajuela is also the site of the main international airport, and this video shows the traffic jam around the airport. It would be nice if the train was scheduled in such a way to provide service to and from the airport, but obviously, with only 5 trains a day, it can't do much to help in this regard.
Once again, we are in a situation that is not common in the US---the demand is clearly there, but the ability to provide service involves a lot of capital that isn't there.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

This is a short video that is just about a walk around my neighborhood, but I visit a park that lies along both sides of the railroad tracks, and where it is easy to see trains coming in (and going out)



There are two main things to see from a train infrastructure point of view.
The first is the casual way that crossing the tracks is dealt with. Early on in the video, you can see a stair case leading down to the railroad tracks, with no barriers or guards. I can't imagine this being the case in a park in the US!
The second point is that this park, and the nearby CFIA/Freses train station, is in an affluent and developing area---as evidenced by the three towers right next to the park. In many places in the US, the integration would be clear, and a selling point, as this allows quick and easy commuting (it is a 9 minute commute between here and central San Jose by train)--- but here, there isn't even an official pathway or signs to the station. Even when the development is there in Costa Rica, it is usually disorganized.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

And here is another one, even further off the subject of train travel, but indirectly related:


On Friday I went to "Patio de Agua" (and none of the Spanish speakers I talked to could tell me what that means, either). This is where the bus service ends, in a small rural outpost at over 6000 feet of elevation (which means it is about 2000 feet above San Jose central). I walk down a rural, one lane road and see horses and farms, before finally reaching a viewpoint where I could see very far! I then walked back down (over 1500 feet) before taking bus home.
What is interesting here, from a transit point of view, is how high the demand is for transit, even in a rural area. In the US, I've seen a lot of cities of 30-100,000 people that consider themselves "too small for transit"---but here, its just taken as natural that some people in rural areas, including hard to access ones like this, will want or need bus service.
While it isn't likely that train service would go this far, the area slightly further down is one of the most active parts of the capital---but because the train tracks are 100 years old, it wasn't served when they were built, and now, extending train service to new areas, even ones with a large population, would require more capital than Costa Rica has.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Here is a trip I took on Wednesday. This video ended up being pretty long, since I was just walking around town! I walk out of central San Jose to the Canton of Tibas, passing the Grand Terminal of the Caribbean, and on to Tibas. In Tibas, I find the railroad platform and then take the short (by rail) journey back to the University of Costa Rica.
Pretty simple!
The interesting thing here from a rail standpoint, is that the rail platform seems to be where it is by coincidence. Like in other places, there is no signage or directions to the platform, it is just stuck at the end of a quiet residential neighborhood. And as I have said before, I don't know who this stop is supposed to serve. Is this a stop for workers returning to Tibas from working in Heredia, or for people who work in Tibas and are commuting to San Jose? Neither of those seem to be gigantic markets for passengers, but at least some people were getting on and off at the platform.
If nothing else, it was a nice little platform. Could have used some seats.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

One of the reasons I went for the walk by Tibas on Wednesday is so I could see the terminal, because I was planning a trip on Friday! This video shows the three hour bus journey between San Jose and Limon---or at least an encapsulated version of it.
Before starting the journey, I was a bit worried, because as I've shown before, the ride between San Jose and the Pacific Coast was quite windy and took a lot of time. Since I knew Limon was less developed, I was afraid it would be really long and tedious. But the topography saved me---the Pacific side is where the mountains are being built, and after reaching the crest of the mountains outside of San Jose, the slope down to the Atlantic is much gentler.
This route also followed, past a point, the route of the tracks that go from San Jose to Limon---the tracks that we last saw in Turrialba. In my mind, that was a different world, but when I looked at a map, I realized it was something like 15 linear miles between Turrialba and Siquirres, where we picked up the tracks coming from the south. And in fact, in linear miles, it is only 30 miles from where passenger service stops in Paraiso, to Siquirres, where, as I found out, freight service still runs. But that would be a lot more than 30 miles of track to fix! And a very hard fix indeed.
Anyway, so to get back to the bus journey---as I've said before, there are a lot of things that are very right about transit here, and a lot of things that are problems. The buses leave often (about once an hour), they are relatively comfortable, and they usually leave on time. The things that can be problems are basically that the terrain is difficult and it scales badly.
Although it is a more complicated discussion, I still think that reinstituting the nation-wide passenger rail is a possibility.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

View attachment 35532

And just to put everything into perspective, I thought I would include this map, from Compare Countries With This Simple Tool
This shows Costa Rica compared to the Washington DC region. So, for example, my trip to Turrialba isn't that much different rom going from Washington, DC to Annapolis...except for the fact that the road between those two cities doesn't have to go round any volcanoes!

I knew Costa Rica was small, but I didn't realize (that) it was that small!

 

[Matthew H Fish]

I knew Costa Rica was small, but I didn't realize (that) it was that small!

It isn't that Costa Rica is so small---it is just that the US is so big!
Costa Rica is small in terms of the US, but compared to European countries, it is larger than Slovakia, Estonia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Moldova, Belgium, Albania, North Macedonia, Slovenia or Montenegro---and just a little bit smaller than several other countries.
How big the United States is, is something that is often lost on people from other countries, even when they can see the size on paper. I actually have two good examples of that from my time here: in my language institute, my teacher asked me, quite innocently "what was the best time of the year to visit the US". Now, asking someone from Belgium that makes sense! But obviously, there are very different times of the year to visit Minneapolis and Miami. I also mentioned that it sometimes snowed at my mother's house in Montana in October...and she responded "I didn't know it snowed in the US in October". Well, it doesn't snow in the US in October, but it does snow in Montana in October!
This can be a pretty important thing in transit discussions, because for people from places like Germany, it seems odd that there "small rural towns" have regular train services, and ours don't. But the "small rural towns" in Germany are "suburban cities" in the United States.
But, to return the discussion to Costa Rica---because of the terrain, and the weather, distances that are quite small in the US get bigger here. The distance from San Jose to Limon is about the distance from NYC to New Haven---but in Costa Rica, that involves climbing up on a two lane road over a 6000 foot mountain pass through a rainforest.