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As of April 7, the N Judah will no longer be the MUNI metro train that will take you to the Caltrain station and the ballpark. That will now the J-Church and the new T-Third line.
The advantages, according to the Examiner (who talked to frequent SFist commenter Greg Dewar of the N-Judah Chronicles)? Service to Caltrain will no longer be the domain of the most popular line MUNI offers. Also, as two trains will now be servicing it, that'll mean more trains will be sent to the Caltrain. The bad news? All those people who live near the N Judah line partly because it took you directly to Caltrain now have to transfer. The other disadvantage is that the J Church is not known for it's timeliness as it has the worst on-time percentage of all the other MUNI trains as well as being one of the top five finalists in our Worst MUNI Line poll.
We never understood why the N Judah was chosen as the special bus that would take people to Caltrain. It might have been the most popular bus, but if you combined all the riders of the other trains, that would be more than the N. There wasn't really any excuse all the other trains didn't go that way, or at least more lines than just the N. That meant that most people had to transfer twice before they even transferred to CalTrain and that always seemed a bit much. Shouldn't public transportation be, you know, convenient?
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Doesn't it make more sense for one of the busiest lines to go all the way to the Caltrain than for the least busy lines?
Anyone who says they don't need two car trains to Caltrain hasn't been there when the Baby Bullet pulls in at 7:45 am on a weekday. The platform for the N packs with people.
The problem with the 'new, improved' J and T service is that they stop on two different platforms. At least there is a NextMuni display so you can figure out which one is coming first, but what a pain.
They should put more bike racks on Caltrain to take up the slack.
Paved streets would be nice too.
You have to toss out complaints that switching lines means loosing a transfer free service, because one line's riders will be upset and another's will be happy.
The N-Judah has problems with timeliness, frequency as the only Caltrain line it becomes a single point of failure. When the N-Judah is delayed, it's not just N riders who end up missing their connecting Caltrain. It ends up delaying JKLM riders as well. As was pointed out in the story two one-car trains provide more frequent service than one two-car train, but it also means that we aren't dependent on just one line. If (maybe I should just say "when") the J-Church is delayed, there is still redundancy so KLMN&T riders won't be stuck like today.
And for as many people as Caltrain's Baby Bullets bring into the City, it's still not enough to require a two-car train. The service planner told me they counted passengers to make sure a one-car train would be enough before making this decision. More people will have to stand, but they are probably still better off than a crushload train during rush hour in the Market Street tunnel. They are also going to be doing ongoing checks to see if recurring problems develop and make any needed service changes. There's RM-2 money set aside and dedicated for that.
By the way, the plan I heard for game service is instead of running the N out there, they will run two-car Ballpark shuttles from Castro to Caltrain adding even more outbound service to Castro during those afternoon games. We all score with that one, even if you go past Castro it is fewer Castro riders crowding up your train.
You have to toss out complaints that switching lines means loosing a transfer free service, because one line's riders will be upset and another's will be happy.
The N-Judah has problems with timeliness, frequency as the only Caltrain line it becomes a single point of failure. When the N-Judah is delayed, it's not just N riders who end up missing their connecting Caltrain. It ends up delaying JKLM riders as well. As was pointed out in the story two one-car trains provide more frequent service than one two-car train, but it also means that we aren't dependent on just one line. If (maybe I should just say "when") the J-Church is delayed, there is still redundancy so KLMN&T riders won't be stuck like today.
And for as many people as Caltrain's Baby Bullets bring into the City, it's still not enough to require a two-car train. The service planner told me they counted passengers to make sure a one-car train would be enough before making this decision. More people will have to stand, but they are probably still better off than a crushload train during rush hour in the Market Street tunnel. They are also going to be doing ongoing checks to see if recurring problems develop and make any needed service changes. There's RM-2 money set aside and dedicated for that.
By the way, the plan I heard for game service is instead of running the N out there, they will run two-car Ballpark shuttles from Castro to Caltrain adding even more outbound service to Castro during those afternoon games. We all score with that one, even if you go past Castro it is fewer Castro riders crowding up your train.
Jamison, thanks for that information. I hope it does work out that the two different lines ends up being more reliable in the long run.