From: jordan@IMSI.COM (Jordan Hayes)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: San Mateo County BART/SFO Resolution
Date: 12 Aug 92 13:41:40 GMT
Organization: Investment Management Services Inc., NYC

Vaughn Wolffe <vaughnw@asia.fai.com> writes:

	Outside of the Bay Area BART is seen as an drastically
	expensive mistake in engineering.

... as well as *inside* the Bay Area.  What's your point?  My reading
of that British guy's book is that it was not carried out correctly,
and that it costs way too much.  Ok.  Great.  So where does that leave
us?  Should we rip it all up?  His biggest point about the "failure" of
BART was the way it produced growth along the corridor without jobs to
support them, thus burdening the corridor with *more* people who wanted
to go to San Francisco instead of serving an existing population that
needed traffic relief.  Since BART went into the San Francisco ->
Concord corridor, places like Lafayette and Orinda have seen growth
that has required 24 and 680 to be expanded, because people who moved
there work in San Francisco.  Oops.

I know you're against BART cheerleaders, but there's a system there
today, and it serves a quarter of a million riders per day, and we need
more coverage.

Another of that guy's examples (the book is called something like
"Great Planning Disasters") is the Concorde.  The R&D money spent by GB
& France will never be recovered.  BUT THEY WENT FORWARD FROM THERE ...
they wrote off the expense as research and the Concorde today is one of
the most profitable routes in the world, serving a unique purpose.  The
New York -> London route is one of the highest passenger load routes in
the world.  20 years later it still fulfils a role that nothing else
comes close to.  It's an amazing aircraft, able to do things that no
other aircraft can (like *cruise* at Mach 2 ... your garden variety
$30M Air Force Fighter can only achieve Mach 2 with full afterburner,
and then only for a little while until they run out of fuel).

Expensive?  Yes.  Purposeful despite its cost?  Yes.

	If this area is to have a cost effective and effective rail
	service it simply must grow beyond the BART perception.

And I think that CalTrain is doing everything it can to help people
stay in their BART mode of thinking.

	The only reason you [fuzzface] belive this way is because it is
	your only experience as you stated above.

Ok, so maybe "fuzzface" (memo to fuzzface: get a real login name ;-)
has only seen a few other transit systems, but I've seen a great deal,
and used many systems all over the world.  CalTrain is *the worst*
"commuter railroad" I've ever seen and used.  It's outrageous how
pitiful this service is.  People in this society are not fundamentally
against paying for services, and perhaps we pay too much for BART, but
it *does* provide service.  If it doesn't provide the service (like I
believe that CalTrain hasn't), then it doesn't matter if it's *free* --
we're spending too much on it!

Before you think I'm just hating CalTrain because it's "not BART" let
me tell you that I'm all for increasing CalTrain's role and product.
If I were in charge of funds for transportation, CalTrain certainly
would get more money to become a "real" commuter railroad, since I
believe the demand is there.  But really, maybe it's just that people
must grow "beyond the CalTrain perception" which is that it's not
useful at all.  I am not a "railfan" though I do enjoy *riding*
CalTrain (and other commuter railroads).

I just don't enjoy "using" CalTrain.

/jordan