2 ms·

> What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday? Transit begets transit. The shame in urban planning is the reactionar

> What good is a beautiful station if there is a 4-hour gap between trains on a weekday? Transit begets transit. The shame in urban planning is the reactionary cycle that engages the public process of investing in efficient and multi-mode transit. In the Bay Area, I'm continually frustrated by the lack of Caltrain service. A light rail system with the local Caltrain service density and a headway of <15m could provide the backbone of a huge number of bike commuters. In my experience, Caltrain > driving for most commutes in the SF <=> SJ corridor and having adequate last mile solutions. The challenge now is to transform the chore & appointment traffic into public transit friendly opportunities.

cbhl 10y ago
Some of Caltrain's biggest problems: - funding (some municipalities' voters don't want their towns to be bedroom communities for Mountain View and SF -- these are also the towns that vote against e.g. HOV lanes on their section of the 101, and against BART running through their town) - ground level crossings along the whole route (trains hit people and cars all the bloody time, but "grade separation" is expensive and also makes the stations harder to use -- for example, see San Bruno station) - having to sound their loud horns along the whole route for safety reasons (anyone with train tracks in their backyard opposes increased frequency) - people wanting electric trains before more service happens - did I mention funding? (Caltrain used to have people selling tickets at every station -- those jobs were cut due to a lack of funding.) I think creating a well-funded, well-managed state agency that was in charge of transit (ala Metrolinx in Ontario) could do wonders for BART and Caltrain. But the first thing that needs to happen would be to give public transit more money (which is difficult considering all the other things on municipalities' plates, like homelessness in San Francisco, and property tax rates not reflecting the rise in housing prices).

cbhl 10y ago

Some of Caltrain's biggest problems: - funding (some municipalities' voters don't want their towns to be bedroom communities for Mountain View and SF -- these are also the towns that vote against e.g. HOV lanes on their section of the 101, and against BART running through their town) - ground level crossings along the whole route (trains hit people and cars all the bloody time, but "grade separation" is expensive and also makes the stations harder to use -- for example, see San Bruno station) - having to sound their loud horns along the whole route for safety reasons (anyone with train tracks in their backyard opposes increased frequency) - people wanting electric trains before more service happens - did I mention funding? (Caltrain used to have people selling tickets at every station -- those jobs were cut due to a lack of funding.) I think creating a well-funded, well-managed state agency that was in charge of transit (ala Metrolinx in Ontario) could do wonders for BART and Caltrain. But the first thing that needs to happen would be to give public transit more money (which is difficult considering all the other things on municipalities' plates, like homelessness in San Francisco, and property tax rates not reflecting the rise in housing prices).