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True, but the plan (and by plan I mean it's already happening) is to run it down East Bay because of all the peninsula NINBYs: http://www.vta.org/bart/berryessa This will likely take 90 minutes or so to get from SJ to SF, which is a <60-minute drive (when traffic is clear). The current time from Fremont to Embarcadero is 58 minutes, so it will definitely take longer than driving. Going to anywhere south of SF, e.g. The current southern-most stop Millbrae (BART stop close to SFO, actually requires taking a separate train from there into SFO) from Fremont currently takes 1 hour 35 minutes, so from Berryessa that'll be closer to 2 hours. Had they ran BART up the peninsula, which takes Caltrain 1 hour 10 mins to get from Diridon in downtown SJ to the Millbrae station, which again doesn't get you into but only close to the airport, the BART could have likely made it in less than 1 hour, making it somewhat useful if you wanted to get from SJ to SFO without taking a $150 cab ride or taking 2 hours and 3 separate fares door-to-door going Uber -> Diridon - Caltrain -> Millbrae -> BART SFO connector. By running BART down the east bay, they're also limiting the options for going useful places on the peninsula. Only Caltrain could get you from e.g. SJ to Palo Alto. If you want to go to Stanford and you start at the SJ Caltrain stop (so, best-case) you're looking at 60 minutes of travel to cover 15 miles and a 30 minute walk from Caltrain to Stanford once you get off. For as many people as the Bay Area has, and for as much money as the Bay Area has, our public transit really doesn't work for many use-cases, and we pay for that with our time spent in traffic, along with all the accidents, pollution, and stress that brings. Drunk driving deaths are also caused because people have no good way to get home after BART and Caltrain stop running at midnight. Elect me and I'll declare eminent domain on the NIMBYs in the peninsula and build 4 tracks of BART so it can run 24x7 all around the bay, from Santa Cruz up to Tiburon, from Santa Rosa down to Gilroy, with a Sacramento connector. And I'll make the billionaires and local corporations who currently off-shore corporate and capital gains taxes pay for it. |