From: henry@ADS.COM (Henry Mensch)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: "The only sensible way to proceed"
Date: 22 Jul 92 19:16:20 GMT
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems; a div of Booz, Allen & Hamilton

fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu (Aaron Priven) wrote: 
->For one thing, although I am the first to agree that the connection in 
->San Francisco is quite poor, it is not entirely impossible to manage. 
->Many people make that connection each day, either through jitneys or 
->through MUNI or what have you.

as one who does this DAILY as a matter of necessity, i can tell you
that this "connection" adds about one hour to my total travel time
daily.  the best way for me to use the train is if i can get the
reverse commute express in the afternoon, because there is a 38L
scheduled to meet this train (in theory, but even this bus is
consistently late) and this bus doesn't require me to further
transfer.

those who would be casual users of the service won't be bothered with
connecting with two or three different busses to get to the caltrain.

->There must be a number of people who are not taking CalTrain because
->of reasons *other* than the poor connections between it and other
->transit systems.

nobody said there weren't.

->... I disagree strongly that "a shelter and a slab" is 
->all one needs for a station that's going to *attract* passengers.  

agreed; there still is no phone at hayward park (as far as i can see
from the train), and any shelter there is pretty negligible.

->   2) They cannot come home or do not come home at the time that 
->CalTrain can take them home.  This is true for anyone who works 
->irregular schedules, a larger and larger proportion of people 
->nowadays, and also anyone who works a regular schedule that doesn't 
->come exactly at peak times or at one of CalTrain's trips.  I mean, 
->what if you get to the CalTrain station every day five minutes after 
->the train leaves?  During peak times, of course, there will be another 
->train soon, but other times one has to wait *fifty-five* minutes for a 
->train.  Anybody who will do that regularly when s/he could take a car 
->is more of a transit-maniac than I am.  This is the old "frequency" 
->drum that I am beating again.

it used to be up to two hours.  they're working on this problem now
(the three extra trains out of sf in the early part of the day, at
0900, 1100 and 1300, help fix this ... i believe three other northbound
trains were added in the afternoon as well.

->   3) Insufficient parking. 

so?  ride the mass transit to the train station.  oh,  i forgot.  not
easy to work.  see figure #1 :)

->It bothers me *no end* that the Target people oriented the store so that
->the store building was away from the BART station and putting the
->parking lot in between the store and the station.  I mean, the parking
->lot would have been *even closer* to the freeway offramp [Potrero St.]
->if they had done that, although people would have had to turn right
->instead of going straight [it's a triangle].  Idiots.)

a mall is being built at the redwood city station, and it looks like
the same thing is going to happen there (the "inside" part of the
L-shaped structure faces away from the tracks and toward an open space
which will obviously be a parking lot).

-> ->    4) Another reason people don't take CalTrain is because they are
->confused about the system.  CalTrain's fares are simple enough, and of
->course there's only one line, but many riders get confused about skip
->stopping.

these people can't read a schedule?  they're posted at every station
(even forlorn castro station at rengstorff and central).  they can
also call the 800 number and find out what they need to know.  not
rocket science.

 -> ->    Personally I'd be just as happy if trains didn't skip-stop, no
->matter how much Vaughn says that it's a virtue.  For one thing, it's
->very confusing to riders, who don't expect trains to simply skip by
->their stop.

it's very confusing to riders who have their heads so far up their
butts that they can't read the schedule which is available at every stop.

->.  I think it would help a lot if
->if the JPB decided upon a fixed scheme for skip-stopping -- divide up
->the stops into sets that will always be used, and then educate the
->riders about which trains stop at which sets.  I have in mind big
->signs on the trains -- "This is a RED train, it stops at all RED
->stops,"  . . . 

"we've parked your car on the giraffe level of the garage.  have a
nice day."

->More importantly, it assumes that riders are always going to the
->end point of the line.  That was fine in the old days, but it's
->important to serve not just workers in San Francisco but workers all
->along the line.  When a good proportion of your riders are going from
->Menlo Park to San Mateo and all sorts of other similar pairs of
->points, skip-stopping loses much of its appeal. 

so few trains skip-stop that this is a non-issue.  quit exaggerating.

--
# henry mensch / booz, allen & hamilton, inc.  / <henry@ads.com>
Xref: sparky ba.transportation:1819 alt.activism:13648 ca.environment:764