Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Oh for the Love of...

You can't make this up:
It would mean that the Millbrae-to-San Francisco route would have three separate electrified options for riders. Isn't that more than a bit redundant? Rail planners don't seem to be bothered one whit by the concept at this point. They are forging ahead.
How many roads go to San Francisco?

H/T BATN

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/taking-cities-in-stride/

Erik Griswold said...

And maybe SamTrans could convert 390 and 391 to Trolleybus and Muni could extend T-Third Street down Bayshore/Airport while their at it?

ian said...

too many?

i would've liked the option of BART to millbrae (without SFO), with caltrain and HSR, but then having SFO's airtrain connect millbrae to the terminals... probably much less expensive than BART going straight to SFO... oh well.

Greg said...

The BART to SFO situation has been a trail of tears for decades. Every time they try to change it to accommodate people, more people freak out.

The SMC Times columnist, however, has mis-represented the situation. Not surprising since the SMC Times is now owned by some chain, and none of the reporters there have been there long.

The Millbrae to SFO segment did not close due to "lack of ridership." That's crap. What happened was they first had the commuter line go from Millbrae, to SFO, then on in to SF/East Bay.

That proved to be a waste so now they have one train that ends at SFO, and another that ends at Millbrae (and which does not stop at SFO at all in or outbound to SF/East Bay).

Of course, it's too much to ask chain papers to say, do some homework. At one point there was a subway station space built UNDER SFO for future use, but was abandoned due to security concerns.

Likewise, it was proposed to have BART go to Millbrae, and have some little monorail take people to SFO. That was a huge fight that went on forages.

Also, Caltrain runs on a different time table and does not go through downtown like BART does. So to say the service is duplicative is not really correct - also Caltrain doesn't operate as frequently as BART if you're headed to the peninsula, and does NOT always make the same exact stops along the way.

Once again, budget chain journalism serves no one. As a native of the area, it's kinda embarassing.

PS: SamTrans does nothing to try and sync up its buses to BART or Caltrain. It takes me a lot less time to go from the western part of SF to Millbrae than it does to go from Millbrae to my mom's house in Burlingame just a mile or so away thanks to the wait for the bus (I usually just walk it instead).