From: mludwig@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Michael Scott Ludwig)
Subject: Re: Long Commutes (was Jumping the Good Ship California)
Newsgroups: ca.general
Reply-To: mludwig@ics.uci.edu (Michael Scott Ludwig)
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Irvine, Info. & Computer Sci. Dept.
Date: 5 Sep 92 11:55:50 GMT
Distribution: ca

Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to reply to both of these related
articles without sending out two messages.

wallich@iti.org (Kenneth Wallich) writes:
=mludwig@bonnie.ics.uci.edu (Michael Scott Ludwig) writes:
=  Businesses
=that rise up by the thousands and require people to drive in to work
=every day instead of letting them work at home 3-5 days a week is the
=problem.  Public transit systems that are little more than a joke and
=bike/pedestrian hostile planning commisions are the problem.

Mostly true.  These are problems that need to be fixed.  Although I don't
have as negative a view of the public transit systems as you do.

=>For those people who work in the valley and live on the other side of the
=>hill, not only are there carpools and vanpools, but since a few days after
=>the '89 quake, the Hwy. 17 Express bus has run between the Scotts Valley
=>Park & Ride Lot and San Jose, approximately every 15 minutes
=>peak-hours/peak-direction.  It's another reason why I have to wonder about
=>the people that drive alone and complain about the peak-hour traffic on that
=>four-lane highway.
=
=I live *in* the mountains, not near one of the 'Express busses', and I
=work in Sunnyvale.  If I drove the 15 miles *to* the Hwy 17 Express
=(AWAY from the valley), and then took one of the "several
=mass-transit" options to get from where it drops me off to work, it
=would take 2-3 hours a day ONE WAY to get to work.  And this assumes
=that I can then only work a few hours, then start my commute home.
=I'd also never have the option of visiting a friend after work, since
=none of these "options" run often or late enough to allow you to
=devitate from the schedule.  Give me something flexible, and at least
=as good as what I would have if I lived in Boston, and then I'll
=consider feeling guilty.

Do you live just a short ways south of Summit Road/Skyline Blvd., or is the
picture that I've drawn in my head from the above info wrong?

Sounds like a Hwy. 17 Express # 2 is needed (or whatever they want to call
it) that is the same as the current line, except it goes directly to the
businesses in northern Sunnyvale/Santa Clara - from what I've noticed, it
looks like lots of people have a commute that would be well-served by such a
line.

Also, I pretty much agree with your comments on evening service (Santa Clara
County Transit runs several lines well into the night, but only in the
valley, not into or over the hills), although I don't see how that would
stop people from using bus service on days that they won't be working late
or visiting friends around work.

=I rode both MUNI, and BART for years.  Both of these systems went from
=where I was to where I wanted to go.  I refuse to feel guilt when our
=public transit systems are designed, built, and managed by a bunch of
=self-serving morons.  If we had BART circling the bay with a
=reasonable system (instead of this butt-ugly raised wire light rail
=fiasco) connecting the two sides of the bay accross 237, and 84, and
=92.  Oh sorry, I'm describing most of Europe, and a lot of the East
=Coast.  We can do it much better here.  Eventually.  When everyone
=else moves away.

In general, mass transit is better where there are more people.  If people
move away, that means less people to ride the bus and rail lines, which
means a lower level of service.  For example, Sonoma County has a much lower
population density than Santa Clara County (although you may need to exclude
Santa Rosa to make this true).  And it shows in the level of bus service - I
think Santa Clara County Transit is a good system, but I also think that
Sonoma County Transit is definitely a hard system to use (this sentence is
based on experience riding these systems).

By the way, I have to sadly agree that a majority of the transit systems are
managed by people who, unfortunately, don't care about the public as much as
they should.

I think most of the mass transit systems in the Bay Area are good, but also
that most of them are not great - i.e. that they could use some improvement.

=So, I've waited 12 years now for companies to change their ways of
=doing business to make commuting less of a problem, and to
=decentralize.  I've even tried encouraging it from the inside,
=generally to little avail.

Sad how slow the companies are (many of them now seem to be starting to help
solve the commuting problem, unless I have the wrong picture).  And I'm
quite pleased that you were (at least somewhat) active in trying to make
this change.

=I could bitch about all this [deleted stuff], but as I said, I won't.

I probably shouldn't say this, but you almost did (not that I disagree with
you)....

rcarter@gaudi.nas.nasa.gov (Russell L. Carter) writes:
=Have yall who are so helpful with the addresses and such
=of the veritable dozens of mass transit agencies sprinkled
=like so many cow pies on the trail ever tried to *use* these
=ah services?

Yes.  In fact, I've done Cupertino to Cloverdale and back in a day (with
about 1.5 hours in Cloverdale).  Or maybe I should list all of the places
that I've gone to from my family's Cupertino home using just Santa Clara
County Transit (if I can remember them all - it's pretty long, even without
cheating [i.e. using places that were only transfer points]).

Although I have recognized for a while that if a trip involves starting and
ending points within two different bus agencies' service areas, it can often
be hard if neither (a) nor (b) is true, where (a) is "neither BART nor
CalTrain is convenient for the trip" and (b) is "the two agencies connect in
San Francisco."

=I commuted 40 miles each way on Caltrain for 6 months, and I chose
=my apartment based on easy accessibility to it.  I now drive.
=I *hate* driving.  I *despised* the connections I had to put
=up with.

Where was work?  What connection(s) was/is (were/are) bad?

=  Here's an interesting mass transit experiment:
=
=Start anywhere you like on the perimeter of the bay, and
=circumnavigate the bay in less than one day, while visiting
=Oakland, SF, and San Jose airports, and no fair hitchiking.

Well, if you have to go around the *whole* bay, i.e. include Vallejo to Napa
to Petaluma, then I have to say it can't be done, because (a) the
Sonoma-Petaluma service isn't very good, and (b) there's nothing but
Greyhound between Sonoma and Napa.

But I'd bet I could do the following trip in under one day using nothing but
busses and trains (unfortunately I don't have the schedules with me to prove
it, but I can list which routes to use if someone wants that) :  from the
S.F. Airport, go down the peninsula and to the S.J. Airport, then go up the
East Bay (with a short stop at the Oakland Airport) to the Richmond BART
Station, then take a bus across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, then come
down though Marin County and S.F. and return to SFO.


"We have not inherited the earth    |    Michael Ludwig
from our ancestors, but are         |
borrowing it from our children."    |    mludwig@bonnie.ics.uci.edu
                                    |
 - David Brower, conservationist    |    UCI and I don't agree on anything.