Dear Menlo Park Council -

I really appreciated Mayor Fergusson's recent editorial piece about
Caltrain schedule changes in the Palo Alto Weekly. As a long-time user
of Caltrain, I have definitely observed a decrease in service from my
local station, California Avenue in Palo Alto.

For 16 years (while working at Amdahl, 3Com, and Cisco Systems) I was a
"reverse" commuter, commuting from California Avenue to the Lawrence
station. At one time, I had a choice of 10 morning (before 9:30 a.m)
and 7 evening (between 4:00 and 6:30) trains between California Ave and
Lawrence. Now the morning trains have been cut in half and there are
only TWO evening commute trains, an hour apart! The commute I did for
all those years would not be practical today. Although I no longer
commute, I still use the train on a frequent basis for trips to San
Francisco and other Peninsula destinations. When I recently had a
mid-morning flight from SFO, I suddenly realized that my choices for
trains to Millbrae were exactly two: 7:31 a.m. and 8:31 a.m.! That's
woefully inadequate for the height of the morning rush.

It certainly appears as if management is trying to create a
self-fulfilling prophecy which will allow them to close California
Avenue and other non-bullet stations: the ridership is declining
(never mind the fact that it's due to drastically reduced service!) so
we cut service, so it declines further so we close the station. In
fact, I fear that the underlying management philosophy is to convert
the system to something like BART - large regional stations with huge
parking lots to which commuters drive. As Mayor Fergusson observed,
this will destroy the liveability of our communities which have grown
up around the train system over the past 150 years.

I hope you will adopt the resolution proposed by Mayor Fergusson and
will demand a reversal of this service cut philosophy in San Mateo and
Santa Clare Counties! Without local stops in all three counties, the
entire system will fail to function. I will continue to lobby the Palo
Alto Council for support of similar measures. I also attach my letter
raising similar concerns which I submitted to Santa Clara Supervisor
Don Gage following a meeting with him in his capacity as representative
to the JPB. The letter contains some details about the cuts I
mentioned above.

Thank you for your attention. I regret that I cannot attend your
meeting in person: I will be in San Francisco attending Al Gore's talk
on global warming!

Pria Graves
2130 Yale Street
Palo Alto, CA 94306
650.493.2153