Lived in California (SoCal and Bay Area) my entire 42 years.
No, we don't.
There was a short, planned outage in my neighborhood (San Diego suburbs) last summer - we got a few days notice (can't recall if it was a letter or an email). Didn't have one the summer before that. I don't recall any power outages when I lived in the Bay Area.
If the power goes out there will be no signalling on the tracks, no barriers or traffic lights at level crossings, no lights or announcements at train stations, etc.
Even though a diesel locomotive technically could run with no external power, no regular train will be operating during a general power outage.
Same goes for an EMP, even though that would likely fry the diesel locos control systems anyways
Till 2019, <1 % of total rail in US was electrified according to Wikipedia? Is this true; considering that US was a world leader in terms of rail transport upto WW II, why the abysmally low numbers? I know that privatisation of rail networks and car centred cities makes life tough for rails, but 1 % is abysmally low for a developed nation.
In contrast, China is at 75% and India is at 93% respectively and both of them also have giant railway networks.
The WW II US rail network is loonnnnggggg gone and doesn't really have any effect on the modern day. What remains is mostly freight rail run by a few oversized rail corporations... and they're surely in no hurry to abandon their diesel engines.
There's also not huge political pressure because rail is already a very efficient way to transport goods. Spreading rail would have better effects than electrifying rail.
They’re probably not counting subways. It may even be just intercity rail, which mostly supports freight. You have thousands of miles of freight rail crossing the entire country, and only the Acela passenger track in the northeast is electrified
The two new trains are operated by Caltrain... The trains were put into regular service the following day, running along the route between San Jose and San Francisco.