From: jyc@leo.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis)
Subject: Re: CalTrain Article
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Distribution: ba
Date:  8 Jan 93 20:37:29 GMT



mikel@dosbears.UUCP (Mike Lipsie) writes:

>It is Jon's contention (or, at least, that's how I read him)
>that travel time for commuters in the North of Market Financial
>District would be shorter if you include the travel time from
>4th & Townsend.


   No, I think the attributions were confused, since that wasn't my
point.  SInce my comments have attracted some interest, maybe I should
clarify why I don't want to see Caltrain stop in San Bruno.  There are
three basic reasons:

   1)  Currently even with the dumb location of the 4th and Townsend
depot there are still fairly good connections between Caltrain and the
parts of the city which are the destination of most commuters and
visitors.  For instance, you can board frequent buses (the 30, 15, and
others) right at the depot which without transferring will get you to or
within a short walk of downtown, the Financial District, Chinatown,
North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, and the Marina.   Plus if you're in a
hurry and willing to spend a few bucks, there are usually cabs at the
depot and it's also fairly easy to find a cab on the street in many of
the aforementioned neighborhoods.  If Caltrain connected with Bart short
of the city, you'd then have make the cumbersome extra step of taking
BART into SF and then in many cases transferring to the Muni.  It's true
that for other trips -- going to the Mission or the East Bay -- it would
be more convenient to be able to transfer to a BART stop, but my own
feeling is that that would be a poor trade off for losing the
convenience of the current connections to the more popular SF areas.

   2)  There are currently a number of special connections to the
present depot, and the option of having even more of them ought to be
kept open.  For example the Muni runs commuter specials during rush hour
to the depot from as far away as Levi Plaza, and I assume (though I
don't know for sure) that some Financial District companies have their
own shuttles -- if not, they should be encouraged to.  Also, there are,
or at least used to be, free-lance jitneys serving rush-hour commuters
to the depot.  (Does anyone know if these are still around?  I have fond
memories of being able to go into the House Of Shields and timing my
martini so that I could walk out across the street, get into a jitney,
and immediately be whisked to the train.)  All these connections, and
the chance to add more such, would be lost if the train didn't go
anywhere near downtown.

   3)  But the above reasons are not the major ones.  The biggest reason
by far why we don't want to have Caltrain stop at a peninsula BART
station is that this would be fobbing us off with a phony solution to a
problem that never should have existed.  It it *idiotic* that Caltrain
doesn't go into central San Francisco.  The obstacles to doing this are
not economic or technical but political, and have to do with the
recalcitrance of current vested interests and the stubborn refusal of
the public to support anything which even hints at complicating the role
of the personal automobile.  Eventually these obstacles will have to be
overcome.  In the mean time, I don't want to see the issue closed with a
pseudosolution.

   And I'll add a fourth personal reason.  In all my years living in the
Bay Area I've never once set foot in San Bruno, and I see no reason why
I should be required to start doing such a thing at this time of life. 
Newsgroups: ba.transportation