[bkjelden]

Caltrain is just two parallel railroad tracks.

What this means is that they have absolutely no way to mitigate minor problems - every problem becomes a major problem. It is not uncommon for them to have a train stall leaving a station, and that leads to half the trains in the system being 20 minutes late. If they have a pedestrian or vehicle collision, things get much worse.

They also only run one train per hour that stops at every station, so your commute is limited to a few train options every day if you're not going between two of the 5-6 most popular stations.

In addition, if you're not working within walking distance of a station, you'll have to take a shuttle, which could easily add 20 minutes to your commute, and have it's own schedule that you need to mesh with caltrain's schedule.