111–120 of 305 posts
The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before. Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!
The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before. Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!
Agreed largely, though IMO BART is holding the bay area back. Unlike Caltrain and Muni, BART management is completely incompetent and more focused on spending their money on random things than actually running their transit system. Fun fact: BART police has a large fleet of SUVs, with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area (if only there were some other way for them to get around!) Fun exercise: compare…
BART and Muni were great. My only complaint was that BART from downtown to SFO was almost painfully loud.
They claim that "Caltrain is running its service on 100% renewable energy", but they are connected to the same grid as everyone else. It doesn't really make sense to say, half of our electricity is green, so customer X is renewable, but customer Y is not renewable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed largely, though IMO BART is holding the bay area back. Unlike Caltrain and Muni, BART management is completely incompetent and more focused on spending their money on random things than actually running their transit system. Fun fact: BART police has a large fleet of SUVs, with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area (if only there were some other way for them to get around!) Fun exercise: compare…
I think BART struggles with who it's meant to serve now, since it was clearly designed for ultra-peak weekday commute traffic. Recovery for weekend ridership is way better than weekday. I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Ba…
Another cool thing in the article that I didn't know personally: Caltrain runs on 100% renewable power!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed largely, though IMO BART is holding the bay area back. Unlike Caltrain and Muni, BART management is completely incompetent and more focused on spending their money on random things than actually running their transit system. Fun fact: BART police has a large fleet of SUVs, with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area (if only there were some other way for them to get around!) Fun exercise: compare…
> BART police why does a transit system need its own police force? Aren't municipal and county police enough?
An example of how it goes wrong is NYC. NYPD absorbed the transit police years ago and the role basically degraded to an overtime sink.
Also, with normal railways rails generate property taxes and towns often make deals where slivers of tracks get annexed to nearby towns or cities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way to help yourselves in the future would be to learn the meta-lesson that actually things that work in other countries mostly work the same way in the US too.
Some people take your word for it, but some people just have to touch the stove to learn that it is hot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think BART struggles with who it's meant to serve now, since it was clearly designed for ultra-peak weekday commute traffic. Recovery for weekend ridership is way better than weekday. I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Ba…
Wait, BART director is an elected position? Why don't I get to vote on it? (Also, while I am biased towards Caltrain, the new trains beat traffic on 101/280 San Francisco↔San Jose during rush hour).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Just build more trains any train infrastructure is so much better than cars, they barely need improvement, they just need to be built
But for example if they used PMM squirrel cage motors etc, they would be nice and smooth, cheaper to build, more energy efficient. On the battery front, using car-style or truck-style EV battery modules would be more robust and would reduce cost by somewhere in the order of 50%. Instead, most trains still use induction motors (this is the high pitch whine you hear) and many train battery designs use industrial style…
The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before. Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!
Agreed largely, though IMO BART is holding the bay area back. Unlike Caltrain and Muni, BART management is completely incompetent and more focused on spending their money on random things than actually running their transit system. Fun fact: BART police has a large fleet of SUVs, with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area (if only there were some other way for them to get around!) Fun exercise: compare…
There are 30% more violent assaults on BART vs Muni.
> if only there were some other way for them to get around!
Do you want them to respond rapidly or eventually?