Gavin Cans Film Commission Head Stephanie Coyote
Evan Low to Become Country's Youngest Gay Asian-American Mayor
San Francisco Society Tips: How to End a Party
NY Times Singles Out Vallejo As Battleground Between Gays & Christians
Redheads Unite!
After yesterday's excellent debate about express MUNI busses (seriously, good stuff there), we bring you news from Caltrains about something similar.
You know those "baby bullet" trains Caltrains implemented that everybody loves and increased ridership? Not everyone is feeling the love. See, the express trains have been so popular that more people are riding them, which means that more and more trains have been added to the service. Which is great if you use one of the stations included on the express line but not so great if you're not. As a result, ridership is dwindling at those stations.
So what, right? Well, dwindling ridership at those stations isn't good and not in a "Guardianistas" kind of way. It's just that if people aren't going to those stations, what are those people who used to ride those trains go? Are they going to other stations or hopping in cars? The problem is an even bigger deal when you consider that transit-oriented development is the new hotness. Lack of riders means lack of development and lack of development means lack of tax revenues, which means lack of everything. To try and figure out a way around it, officials in cities in the neglected stations have bounded together to organize a group called the "Coalition to Expand Train Service" to lobby for more service to their stations.
We have to say that while we love the idea of baby bullet trains, our limited experience in using Caltrains lately turned us off on a lot of it. We missed our stop (took the wrong express train) and got off at the next stop we could so we could get on a train going the other way. It took us about half-an-hour to get one as it neither the stop we wanted to get off of nor the stop we did get off was fully serviced by Caltrains. All told, missing the stop cost us an hour out of our lives. Not that we really had anything else to do then, but still we were not amused.
Oh, and you know, of course, that Caltrains is thinking of raising fares again?
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Tip: Taking your own bicycle on the train makes Caltrain rather more useful.
Many of these smaller stations make no sense. When you get out at Belmont, you are in an exurban development in walking distance of nothing. It's not like the Palo Alto or 4th & King stations where you could reasonably get off the train and walk to something of interest. And Atherton? Give me a break. That station is like 300 yards from Menlo Park, and the only reason the Atherton people can give for it is that they don't want their kids to have to walk to Menlo Park where there are "gangs", by which I assume they mean more than one Black or Latino person. Seriously.
I do sympathize with those who don't use one of the major stations served by Baby Bullets. However, the Baby Bullet has saved my sanity. I am very lucky in that I ride from SF to Mountain View, so I have 5 baby bullets each direction plus 2 express trains that are almost as fast as the Baby Bullets to get me to and from work.
Unfortunately for those not near a Baby Bullet station, SamTrans or VTA rarely provides a fast method of getting to where you need to go. Bicycling can certainly give one more options as to which stations to use, but it is not a solution for everyone.
As one example, I know people who work for Intel have a shuttle available at Lawrence station, but very few trains stop there now and there is essentially no way to take Caltrian to Sunnyvale or Santa Clara and get back to Lawrence or to the Intel campus in a reasonable amount of time. Many Intel people have returned to driving.
I actually think Caltrain was built with too many stations in the first place. (3 stations in San Mateo alone?) When the trains stop everywhere it takes 96 minutes to get from San Francisco to San Jose, and that is without any wheelchairs, signaling problems, etc. Add in the lovely Muni ride to the "conveniently" located Caltrain station and you are at 2 hours plus each way. Baby Bullet service has that down to a little over 90 minutes...significant savings of an hour a day round trip for people like me.
I don't think the answer is to make Caltrain go back to mostly local service. Perhaps with some restructuring, SamTrans and VTA could provide reasonable ways of getting from the Bullet stations to the major employment centers. Maybe some of the shuttles need to serve other stations instead of the closest one.
I'm surprised they didn't put up a fight when the express service was introduced. It's obvious that Mountain View is going to prosper while Sunnyvale languishes -- the shopping mall there is closed, the downtown is dead, etc.
What Mike said! Seriously. The final destination is not a trains station, and those massive commuter trains are not the ideal way to provide local bus service.
Local bus service is the oblivious way. Having them run as circulators between stations or to and from, whatever the ridership need is.
Jamison - I assume its a typo and you meant "obvious" - this is a 10 on the unintentional comedy scale: "Local bus service is the oblivious way."
And yes, some of those stations seem unnecesary if they are located in exurban areas that are not close to anything. I assume most of the riders at those stations are driving to those stations, parking their cars and commuting to SF??? In which case, they can just drive to another station.
What about high-speed intercity rail, like they have in Japan or Europe? Why do we have a train that takes an hour from SF to San Jose - why can't we have a real bullet train that makes that run in half an hour?
P.S. Hope I didn't offend with my "Guardianistas" crack. Its just how I roll.
Being dyslexic, I heavily depend on spell check. I often make these kind of mistakes because when it gives me the correction options I pick the one that looks right instead of spending the time to sound out every option (the only way I could real catch it). It's sometimes embarasing but at least it was good for a laugh.
Back to Caltrain...
Last year a coworker tried to get me to sign a petition to keep Atherton station open. When I told her no, she got upset and started on a little rant that baby bullet riders should have to pay more for faster service (yes, the riders who are cheaper to cart around and save money should have to pay to local service to a station that had only something like 100 daily boardings)
A few weeks later she had changed her view when she found out driving to Redwood City meant she'd be in the next fare zone and save money.
The California High Speed Rail project would bring European style intercity rail to the Bay Area, and extend Caltrain to downtown SF as a bonus, but support in the legislature is shakey at best.
Can you fix the link for "Yesterday's debate?" It seems to be linking ot another article, and I am curious what you're talking about