From: fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu (Aaron Priven)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re:  East Bay -> Silicon Valley commute
Date: 24 Jul 1992 08:18:47 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz (College Eight)
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


In article <4485@bacon.IMSI.COM> jordan@IMSI.COM (Jordan Hayes) writes:
>Aaron Priven <fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu> writes:
>
>>I can really see great advantage in using existing rail lines
>>on the outer fringes of the metropolis that can connect
>>directly to the "real" transit system.  I think it is a real
>>shame that BART can't do this.
>
>Doesn't the Capitol -> Richmond BART connection count?
 
A "direct" connection, to my mind anyway, is one that actually 
connects without the need to transfer.  I can imagine a 
connection on existing track that would connect *directly* to the 
BART track, so that one would simply hop on a Fairfield-bound 
train in Oakland or San Francisco, take the train on BART tracks 
to Richmond, and the same train would continue on SP tracks to 
Fairfield.
 
I think that in the *long* term this is not such a good idea.  
For example, the route between Oakland and Livermore on existing 
rail is a lot longer than the one on I-580, because for some 
reason long ago when the tracks were being built, they used Niles 
Canyon and not Dublin Canyon for the railroads.  I think in the 
long term new track will have to be laid.  Moreover, existing 
track and cheapie stations are really undesirable, for reasons 
that have been given here before.  But to provide service in the 
short-term, this would be a lot better than nothing.
 
And, of course, it can't be done, because BART is incompatible 
with everything else.
 
Easy transfers, such as the Richmond Amtrak-BART, are better 
than hard ones, but transferring takes time and turns off riders.
   
>     By the way,
>there's a good example of a real connection that's useful.  Shouldn't
>CalTrain -> BART/MUNI do the same in San Francisco?  
 
Ideally.  It would be quite expensive to dig up the area.  I 
think it would be cheaper and almost as desirable to terminate 
CalTrain in the Transbay Terminal, which I understand is quite 
capable of it, and put in a people-mover between it and 
Embarcadero BART/Muni Station (and ideally the Ferry Terminal). 
 
>>Both CalTrain and BART are primarily commuter railroads.
>
>I disagree.  BART is much more like one of the old IND/BMT/IRT systems
>in NYC.  That is, it's primarily an interurban subway.  Because of its
>hours, BART is very useful outside of "commuter" times.  Because of
>where it goes, there's lots of traffic in both directions.
 
I don't want to argue about academic classifications and I 
certainly don't care which New York railway BART and CalTrain 
correspond to.  Whether BART is "primarily" a commuter railway or 
not, there is no question that there is *some* reverse-commute 
traffic on BART and that this is more important than the reverse-
commute on CalTrain.  But there is *some* reverse commute on 
CalTrain.  This is the chicken-and-egg problem -- there's not 
enough trains on CalTrain to make reverse-commuting convenient, 
but nobody will put the trains on if there is no ridership.  I 
believe that "if you run them, they will come," to some extent.  
Sure, Berkeley and Oakland are better places to run subways than 
San Francisco, but the old downtowns on the Peninsula and the 
complexes in Silicon Valley near the line have some promise.  I 
think it's important to *encourage* development near the lines.
 
>Final note: it's been quite a number of years since the various NYC
>systems were put together under one organization, and people transfer
>between them without even thinking about which one is which anymore.
>People joked earlier about putting a BART sticker on CalTrain,
 
I didn't think people *were* joking.  I think a new BARTD, 
composed of all the relevant counties, (at *least* San Mateo, SF, 
Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Marin; probably Sonoma, 
Solano, Napa, I wish Santa Cruz) makes sense.  I think people in 
the Bay Area are mobile enough, and more importantly the Bay Area 
is interdependent enough that the "Alameda County voters have 
been paying for years, San Mateo County should buy in" are pretty 
meaningless.  Who wrote that the chief beneficiaries of the SFO 
BART extension were Alameda County residents? 
 
I'd like to see the New BARTD in charge of all major interurban 
services -- Santa Clara LightRail, SamTrans mainline routes, 
Muni Metro, AC Express and Transbay routes, and the like -- but 
local agencies (or branches, or something) in charge of feeder 
routes with a good deal of community involvement at this level.
 
In my dreams, eh?
 
 =Aaron=
 
 
-- 
Aaron Priven, aaronrp@ucscb.ucsc.edu or fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu
        "Men make history, but they do not do so under 
         conditions of their own choosing." -- Karl Marx