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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

> Caltrain does run down there. We could have beefed up that system and had a tremendously efficient train system, with trains leaving every 15 minutes or so for the peninsula

The problem is that Caltrain (and BART outside SF proper) has its stations along the periphery instead of the heart of town. You can't jump on Caltrain in the Mission or Noe Valley or even Market St, and on the southern end, it's not going to drop you off anywhere near anything.

This is because California, and the Bay Area in particular, follows a policy of "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many", and when previous generations were deciding where to put stations, they didn't use eminent domain like most municipalities would; instead, they built them either in the few parcels of vacant land off on the periphery, or along the freeway land they already owned, which is perhaps the most pedestrian-hostile arrangement possible.

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Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain? Outside of SF, Caltrain stops in the very heart of each down town. San Bruno, Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood city, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain view, San Jose all have stations that border the historical main down town (I think Sunnyvale and Santa Clara as well). In SF proper, it's probably more to do with geography than land purchases. Trains really don't like hills and tunneling is expensive.

The problem is really, that the train tracks were built in the 1860's when all these places were little towns linked by farms and fields. Then the automobile took over and there was just not seen the need for branch lines. Now it's solid industrial/suburbia all the way up and eminent domain would be way too expensive both in terms of money and politics.

Ironically, most of the larger tech companies based out of the valley are closer to the highways than they are to the Caltrain stations; the shuttle shitshow at MTV/PA is testament to that.

Nothing ironic about it. When these plots were being sold off the car was king (and really still is) and passenger train service was almost discontinued due to lack of ridership. Putting tech centers next to freeways was quite sensible at the time.

> Uh...have you actually ridden Caltrain?

No, and that's sort of my point. I've lived in SF since the summer of 2008, and not once in all that time has Caltrain ever been useful to me. It doesn't pick up anywhere near anything, and it doesn't run to any place I want to go.

Meanwhile, when I lived in New York, I rode the subway, the LIRR, the PATH train, Metro North, and even Amtrak all over the place, in no small part because Penn Station and Grand Central are located right in the middle of everything and thoroughly connected to local transit.

But your argument as to why has little to do with the actual reasons to two public transportation systems differ and you make assumptions about the history of California that are flatly just wrong. Not to mention ignore the differences in geography. California has a certain flavor of liberal politics but remember that this is recent and has not always been so, and to this day varies quite a bit depending where you are in the state. Hell, it varies depending on where you are in the bay area...

During the time New York was building some of it's latter public transportation infrastructure, my father and his brother, as teenagers, were wandering around what is now Xerox Parc and surrounding tech campuses and what would become 280 with their 30-06 rifles shooting anything they pleased. No one cared because there was no one around. It was just unused hill country. Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car. New York built up much of it's rail infrastructure before the car became commonplace and people really wanted to use it.

Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history they are building the Transbay Transit Center...

> Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car.

You're saying that the region's transit was built up during a time when people didn't care about public transit. I think that's mostly true, and it led to a milquetoast "well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone" plan that, today, serves the region a lot less well than New York's strategy of "let's cut-and-cover tracks right down all our major avenues".

> Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history

If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?

"well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone"

And this is the crux of my point. Those CalTrain stations, when they were built, were EXACTLY where people wanted to go. The center of each down town. Look on a map. Caltrain is a very direct route to San Jose. The opposite of your argument that it is in any way "milquetoast". Even BART served where people wanted to commute to when it was planned out. The Bay Area has exploded with building since then.

"If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?"

Uh...train technology not existing for most of those two cities histories?

FWIW, I live in Mountain View, have a car, and still frequently use Caltrain to get up to friends or events in the city. I'm within walking distance of the station, and during rush hour traffic Caltrain will often get me there faster than 101 will.

It's somewhat ironic (and telling about SF) that as a suburban commuter I've made better use of public transit than you have in the city, but it really is pretty convenient if you're going to any of the downtowns on the Peninsula, anything BART-accessible, or Candlestick Park.

> It's somewhat ironic (and telling about SF) that as a suburban commuter I've made better use of public transit than you have in the city

Who said I don't take transit? My wife and I both take trains to work, and ride transit whenever possible. The primary factor in choosing our home was to be within walking distance of transit.

It's just Caltrain that I've found totally useless.

This sentiment has its roots in the Freeway Revolts of the 60s and 70s. Caltrans had massive plans to wrap the entire Bay Area in freeways (plans which were only partially implemented) and the backlash put the brakes on not just new highway construction, but any kind of major infrastructure improvement. The high number of land takings is part of the reason why high speed rail is drawing a lot of criticism. In fact, peninsula residents more likely oppose the aerial grade-separation structures that would improve Caltrain service as well, not HSR itself.

Outside of SF proper, Oakland, Berkeley and at least a few other stations...

That's true, but just take a look at this BART map:

http://ctchouston.org/blogs/christof/wp-content/bart_row.jpg

The purple lines are the tunnels. The yellow lines are the stations built along freeways. Only the tiny non-purple, non-yellow fragments were built where the actual demand is.

(Source: http://www.ctchouston.org/intermodality/2006/05/06/tale-of-t...)

> The yellow lines are the stations built along freeways.

Per the legend, that's "existing right-of-ways" which include freeways and existing railways.

> Only the tiny non-purple, non-yellow fragments were built where the actual demand is.

Well, except for much of the East Bay (certainly the two northern lines, which I'm most familiar with), where the freeways BART follows (including the tunnels that follow them) also run right through the heart of the main cities.

Just because they had existing right of way of leverage doesn't mean that it wasn't where the actual demand is.

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