Aren’t the restrooms on Caltrain a security risk? Someone could stash explosives in there and get off at the next stop. Yet Caltrain keeps them open and also keeps the restroom at the very busy 4th & King station open. On the other hand, many Caltrain stations have absolutely no restroom facilities. Many stations are just two platforms with ticket machines and a parking lot.

I have been watching the Bay Rail Alliance, which supports a Caltrain like extension to cover the gap in BART service between Fremont and San Jose and provide some rail service to the 237/North San Jose area. It is much cheaper than BART.

BART is a politician’s ribbon-cutting dream, but would consume way too many tax dollars.

As for the comment about the comfort of commuter trains versus BART, this is just one of the the many reasons why people in the Bay Area — everyone from the very top of the political establishment down to the masses of daily-grind commuters — need to get over their obsession with bank-busting multi-billion-dollar BART extensions and seriously consider the benefits of filling those transit needs through expanded and improved commuter rail.

Technologically, BART is a heavy metro . . . and a relatively inefficient and expensive one at that. If it makes sense to expand the system at all, it should only be within the densest urban cores, not in relatively sparsely populated areas like Tracy or even much of San Jose.

Conventional rail commuter trains like Caltrain hold much more potential for far less cost. Expansions can start out cheaply with diesel-powered vehicles running on existing tracks and can be later upgraded with electrification and tunneling into urban core areas. The Paris RER (Réseau Express Régional, “Regional Express Network”) is an excellent example of a fully electrified system with service linking far-flung suburbs directly to underground stations in the urban core. I don’t recall whether the trains have on-board restrooms, but the cars I rode were similar to Caltrain’s double-deckers (except that the ride was considerably quieter and smoother), so there would definitely be space for such amenities if there was a desire to provide them.

For an in-depth exploration of what could be possible if we dared to think beyond BART, please read the San Jose/South Bay Rail Expansion Alternatives page on the San Francisco Cityscape Web site. In short, such a system would be faster, more useful, more comfortable, and much, much less expensive than BART.

I would not attribute the “Transit Record ridership could be attributed to aging baby boomers driving less” as mentioned in your sub-title but the simple fact in what you also quoted of my friend Pisarski that car ownership is increasing. Meaning more cars are in use and congestion is rising. Also our economy is improving and along with congestion, they both have a greater bearing on transit use than on miles driven.

Roy Nakadegawa P.E.
Fromer BART & AC Transit Board Member of 32 years
And worked with Pisarski on a review Board overseeing a Transit Reseach Report