291–300 of 305 posts
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Nope. It is literally illegal[1] to ask for identification in California. In fairness it was ambiguous[2] before, but in practice California has never asked for identification and this was made clear and official policy from the 2024 elections (note: I am not aware if there are any lawsuits that have blocked enforcement of this law, I no longer reside in CA and do not keep close track of their goings-on). And before…
I didn't ask about ID check. You make it sound like the process involves just walking in and asking for a ballot. I actually don't recall the detail from this cycle as to whether I was asked for ID. They did check out whether I was on the list and had already checked in. So they did look whether my name and address was registered to vote.
I actually asked them the first time I voted if they weren't going to ask me who I am because I found it bizarre, and I still remember getting a simple and quick "No.".
So I really don't know what to tell you, I can only relate what I experienced. I have no confidence that California's elections are worth a damn because I have nothing to support such an assertion.
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Honestly, I think even the old Caltrain cars were pretty clean. The only dirty parts were the bathrooms (and honestly, train bathrooms are sort of gross most places). Caltrain has always been sort of luxury, though; the median Caltrain rider has a >100k household income, which come to think of it, might be one of the highest median rider incomes for a public transit system in the world.
Apparently in 2019 the average household income of a Caltrain rider is $158,000. It dropped to $95,000 in 2020. https://www.caltrain.com/media/1537/download?inline
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Considering the bad transit options they get anti transit is the rational choice. Suburbs are dense enough for great transit but it is expensive and so nobody can afford to give it to them. Thus continuing the cycle of bad transit worth opposing as the waste of money it is.
Suburbs are absolutely not dense enough for great transit, and the per capita coverage is bad enough the expense isn’t worth it. They can get sparse bus or light rail coverage and thats it. Great transit offers coverage for stops every mile, preferably half mile. Systems like Caltrain and bart are great for regional rail, but anywhere serviced by them is generally not well enough connected that you don’t have to driv…
The above if done across the whole metro should get 30% mode share across the merto which would be world class. It would also cost about $200 per month per adult - which is a lot cheaper than a car - but still massively more than any city spends on transit.
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!
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Also makes waiting at either end, San Jose or San Francisco more pleasant with cleaner air to breathe instead of fumes if you are a little early.
San Jose unfortunately has the Gilroy commuter trains idling in the station :(
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You seem to be arguing that it's physically possible to build transit that serves low density housing, I agree with that. My argument is that it's economically infeasible, especially in the USA. Extending Caltrain to downtown SF is estimated at $3B/mile, BART to San Jose is $780M/mile. You can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars building transit to a neighborhood with 100 homes. It's already hard to serve those n…
Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t. It’s economically feasible. We have the most powerful military in the world we have the highest gdp per capita in the world. It’s economically feasible. When I say we are incapable of building mass transit I’m referring to every single type of incompetency in existence except for economic incompetency. You change the zoning laws it will be utilized.
I didn't think it was necessary to specify "under normal economic constraints and not a thought experiment where we can spend unlimited money on transit". I forgot where I was. Lesson learned.
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San Jose unfortunately has the Gilroy commuter trains idling in the station :(
I did not know that. I checked the schedule for those when I had jury duty in Morgan Hill and it was always never the right time and/or in the wrong direction, so I had to take the bus from the Diridon station to make my jury duty appointments.
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That's because they still haven't eliminated the crossing points. They need to turn every road or pedestrian crossing into an underpass or overpass, or eliminate it. They've started on this process, but it will take many years.
Trains don't honk in much of Europe when approaching a gated crossing. The lights and barriers are assumed to be sufficient. Within cities, there may well be CCTV cameras (pointing only at the crossing) so the signal controllers can check the crossing is clear. More video than you could possibly want: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hidjpkqJ0-Y (I think the honk in the first one is the train driver recognizing the pers…
It's great, but it took more than 20 years to get here due to environmental reviews and shaky funding. ...and this was just re-fitting an existing, relatively short stretch of track! We (as Californians) have GOT to do better than this! There are huge infrastructure projects that we need to undertake in the coming years. We have got to cut the red tape and properly fund projects.
How do Californians in 2025 feel about the California High-Speed Rail? A similar project [1] is underway in Canada, but I worry sometimes it'll fall prey to the same administrative bog that the CHSR did. It'll be managed by a new Crown corp, VIA HFR, and from my understanding they're still taking engineering bids. I expect it'll be a while before shovels hit the ground. A cheap, fast, and reliable rail from Toronto t…