Comments on: The Bay Area doesn’t deserve Caltrain

By: Piyush Ranjan

Piyush Ranjan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:08:35 +0000

Some of it sounds intentional. Are they blocked by car lobby into not running more efficient and painless system ? It seems funny that USA can give trillions of dollars to banks & car manufacturers to save themselves when they could have funded public transport and other projects. This would have given stimulus to the economy, generated employment and they would not have needed to fight another war for oil…

By: Diwaker Gupta

Diwaker Gupta — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:56:18 +0000

I have Clipper on auto-load, so getting caught without the ticket is less of a worry. Of course, Clipper in it’s infinite wisdom won’t recharge automatically unless I touch my card at one of the tagging stations, so I did get warned once since I forgot to tag.

One of my co-workers tried to get onto the citizen board for Caltrain hearings, but he was rejected!!

I’ve been on the BART, but have fortunately missed out on the steamy commute. BTW, some Caltrains also have similar fabric seats whose ability to accumulate fecal matter is probably at par with BART. Eww.

By: Bowei Du

Bowei Du — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:39:27 +0000

In Japan, I think they charge the family a huge sum when people commit suicide via the rail system…

Don’t get caught w/out a ticket (personal experience) — it’s a $345 charge, unless you fight it in traffic court. Ironic!

Hopefully Caltrain electrification will go through, along with a solution to the lack of a single managing agency that causes the perennial funding mess. Generally public transit here suffers from lack of funding (i.e. western Europe levels of funding public transit). Sign those petitions!

Aside: I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden the steamy commute on BART across the tube to east bay, but BART has its share of suicides that totally FUBAR the system, not to mention that BART trains seem to have more embedded fecal matter in the seats.