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Comment by harimau777 | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat off topic but: How difficult is it get get between SF and San Jose via public transportation? I ask because I'm looking at jobs and initially wasn't considering San Jose; however, I would if it was fairly easy to get to SF's amenities.

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I flew into SFO recently and got a BART to Milbrae (a few minutes, regular) and from there a Caltrain towards San Jose to Mountain View. From an outsiders perspective (living in London) if you live/work near one of the Caltrain stations I guess it's not too bad. The Caltrain feels slowish (and looks like something out of Mad Max), but does the job. You better be sure you have some way of getting from the Caltrain station to wherever you want to go on the other end though. I thought I'd walk to my hotel as it didn't look too far on the map but was actually a 1h30 walk!

Highly depends on where in SJ<>SF you'll be, but over all I'd say it's pretty difficult for a few reasons:

- Caltrain currently terminates at 4th & King, not exactly a prime spot in SF, so you'll likely want to transfer to MUNI, so add that to your commute time and expense.

- The Caltrain ride itself is over an hour between SF/SJ.

- Caltrain lead times are't great outside of rush hour.

- I live in the middle of SF and it's 2hrs door to door to Diridon (SJ).

It isn't difficult if you're looking at the occasional trip to SF, but as a daily commute I would not recommend. I know quite a few people who do it and it's not pleasant spending that much time on a commute.

For a fuller picture, I think it's also important to consider taking the BART around the East Bay to Berryessa station. It can be better depending on where you're located.

To complete the picture, it's also unreliable schedule-wise. And it's in poor condition, your car might be insanely noisy (bring ear plugs), and bone jarring (give up on that one and move to another car.) For all that, it's not cheap either.

And the last trains are extra slow (so are all weekend trains) and not very late. So going to a club and then taking the train back home is not a good proposition.

When I lived in San Carlos it worked out because my office was right next to the station in SF. That was the only way it was going to work, however.

Beijing wasn’t much different before they went crazy on subways, but you could pad your endpoints with cheap taxi rides.

Note that "this Fall", Caltrain's electrified service is finally happening:

  https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification/project-benefits/caltrain-electrified-service-plan

Most of the stations will get faster with more frequent service. I think the electric EMUs also means the ancient clunker ones will be gone.

We'll have to see about that. This claim was used before for the "baby bullet" service. What actually happened is a few trains each day skip a number of stations and so achieve quite a bit faster trip. ... When they are not delayed for other reasons which is often, or don't revert to stopping at every station.

According to the link, the local service trains will see the biggest improvements from electrification (100 minutes -> 75 minutes). This makes sense because my understanding is the the electrified system is quite a bit faster in accelerating which really helps when station stops are only a couple miles apart [0].

The difference on the express service is much less (65+ mins to "under an hour"), presumably since the trains can spend more time at or close to top speed due to longer distances between stops.

[0] You can see a list of stations and mile markers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Caltrain_stations

It depends on what you're used to. SF to San Jose, unless you live next to a station at one end and the place you're trying to go is next to a station at the other I'd expect 2 to 2.5 hrs one way.

A quick search shows SF to SJ to be 1hr to 1hr 23 mins but then you'll likely need 20-30 mins at each end to get where you're going.

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