It is not clear to me what Menlo Park got for
their vote last night to support a Resolution
advocating that Caltrain hire a consulting firm
that should tell them that their scheduling is
wrong. Despite endorsing measures for increased
corridor safety (a good thing) and increased
connectivity to other modes of transit (also a
good thing), the Resolution is telling Caltrain
that they don't know how to run their business.

Well, perhaps they do and perhaps they don't.
But, as I've said before, that is not the
problem. What the resolution doesn't do is
really emphasize that all the regional transit
organizations begin to really work together. Why
isn't SamTrans being required to pick up the
local transit slack? What if SamTrans were the
functional link that connected residents of
Atherton and Menlo Park to the completely
train-serviced Redwood City and Palo Alto
Caltrain stations and they did this effectively?
Remember, the key word is "convenient."

In the Council discussions, there was a lot of
Caltrain used to do this and Caltrain used to do
that. Well, now is now! As a local service for
many stations, Caltrain is destined to become
less and less useful. As a regional service,
they could and should be a critical link in a
comprehensive, distributed network of transit
carriers. The point is, it's not that only
Caltrain is failing; it's all of them until and
unless they all start becoming a closely-coupled
system for moving us all around the Bay Area
conveniently and efficiently. I would sign a
resolution that demanded that in a flash.

Martin

===================================

San Francisco Chronicle

Get Caltrain debate back on track

Martin Engel
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
It's becoming a political train wreck: The
Council for Expanding Transit Service, a group of
various San Mateo County current and former city
council members, wants Caltrain to reopen closed
rail stations, such as Burlingame and Atherton,
and add service to several others, such as Menlo
Park. Caltrain runs from San Francisco through
San Jose to Gilroy.
CETS has mounted an aggressive PR campaign. The
group wants more trains and it wants them to stop
more frequently. Some CETS members believe that
more trains will justify building high-density,
transit-oriented housing, meeting the demands for
more moderate-cost housing from the Association
of Bay Area Governments.
Caltrain isn't buying it. It has its own
problems. Caltrain is running a permanent
deficit. It has been raising fares and tweaking
its schedule to increase "baby bullet" train
ridership, and therefore revenue. Meanwhile, the
CETS members have been meeting out of the public
eye until now and listening mostly to the sound
of their own voices.
Because CETS and Caltrain disagree about their
goals, things have gotten contentious. To its
credit, CETS has been asking Caltrain for more
safety measures and for "connectivity." However,
to demand an "independent" schedule audit (that
Caltrain should also pay for) may result in just
the opposite of what CETS hopes for. Then what?
CETS and Caltrain would have done better to sit
down together from the very beginning to
understand each other's concerns. Caltrain says
that it has gained ridership with a schedule that
includes fewer stops, which produces faster
travel times. Heavy railroads can do a better job
when they don't have to stop so often, while
buses and light rail are far more effective at
making multiple stops, running smaller vehicles
more frequently, thus serving more highly
distributed public-transit riders.
Each side wants something different.
Unfortunately, what each side wants is the wrong
thing. CETS wants more trains to stop and
Caltrain wants more bells and whistles on its
hardware and on its rail corridor:
electrification, new rolling stock, added tracks,
grade separation and accommodations for the
high-speed train.
If CETS got what it is asking for, it still
wouldn't have what we, the riding public, need:
an integrated, multi-modal, comprehensive urban
mass transit system. And, if Caltrain got its
hardware upgrades, that still would not make it
part of that mass transit system that the Bay
Area is longing for. Caltrain and CETS should
work together to achieve a mass transit system
that includes:
-- Multimodal service, which uses a variety of
people-moving technologies, including buses (with
rapid bus lanes), light rail, DMUs
(hybrid-diesel, multi-unit self-motorized train
cars), bicycles and, yes, private cars.
-- A means for anyone to go from point A to point B.
-- Very short stopover times between modes and
very frequent service so that mass transit is as
fast as or faster than driving.
-- Convenient, clean, attractive, comfortable,
safe, child-and-mom-friendly vehicles that are
easy to use.
-- All, not merely some, of the above conditions.
That is what CETS and Caltrain, together, ought
to be fighting for. Instead, CETS is now running
an anti-Caltrain campaign. Meanwhile, Caltrain,
BART and VTA (Valley Transit Authority), are
scrambling for funds and no longer speaking to
one another. They all should be working toward an
attractive, highly distributed public utility
transit system that will "pull" more people out
of their cars, not "push" them with empty
rhetoric, which leaves us all by the side of the
tracks.

Martin Engel is a Peninsula resident who follows mass transit issues.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/04/EDGA5P14OF1.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle

© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.

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Martin Engel
1621 Stone Pine Lane
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650:323-1670
martinengel@earthlink.net
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