[rconti]

San Francisco and Redwood City are roughly 30 miles apart. In the Bay Area, in particular, buses tend to work on a city or county level, which would mean to make this trip, assuming buses were conveniently located, timed, and without too many stops, it would involve using several transit systems, unfortunately. San Francisco and Redwood City not only have dozens of other cities between them, but they're also in 2 different counties (San Francisco and San Mateo county, to be specific). I don't want to say we don't have cooperation between transit agencies, but they are at least distinct entities for these services.

A better solution would be the train. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) serves many counties and cities, but does not go that far south.

Caltrain serves both San Francisco and Redwood City quite well; however, the nearest station is miles from the Marina district, and depending on destination, would require a transfer on the other end as well.

Of course, I'm sure Chariot involved multiple stops as well, but presumably most riders took it every day, so it was a route that was tailored to the riders of that van, rather than a generic public transit service that might have inconveniently timed transfers, too many stops, or other issues.

EDIT: Actually, it looks like I am incorrect. SamTrans (San Mateo County) actually does go from Redwood City to San Francisco by bus, at least on the 397 and 398 routes, but only midday and it will take almost 2 hours, as it's entirely on surface streets for those ~30 miles (and the terminus on either end is not particularly more likely to be more convenient than the much faster train) http://www.samtrans.com/schedulesandmaps/maps.html

[dabockster]

This sounds like why Sound Transit exists in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area. It basically creates an adapter pattern-like third agency that manages the long distance routes between the major cities and counties.

[cbhl]

The problem is that two municipalities (one on each side of the bay) voted down the measures that would have funded the regional transit agency.

Thus, the train lines stop at the borders of these two municipalities, and there are two other train systems that cover the missing area.

(BART, Amtrak, and Caltrain.)

[masonic]

Not "municipalities"; counties.

And they opted out because they would have had to pay in fully with no service for years, followed by inferior service forever (they were to be cash cows).

[csydas]

I was going to comment the same; I lived in Tacoma and committed to Seattle for 4 years, and it was incredibly convenient, even with the traffic on I5. The seattle-tacoma route had more frequent intervals than the local Tacoma busses did and the transit was pretty nice. Usually full but never packed (except last bus of the evening)

[foolfoolz]

this makes no sense that for someone in redwood city bart is the solution but not caltrain. redwood city doesn’t need 2 separate train lines before you can commute to sf.

Samtrans buses does the entire thing in one bus. it will get you into the city and back. and it’ll be 4+ hours a day commute. but the buses do run a lot of hours. chariot could probably do this in an hour each way, which would be faster than caltrain

this is pretty on par with other countries and cities. only a handful of (larger) cities have city wide metro coverage. smaller cities have better bus service. biking is huge in cities this size, including, san francisco for this reason. or ride one of the new hotness scooter apps.

[rconti]

I didn't say BART would be the best solution.

I merely pointed out that the train would be preferable to the bus, and outlined the 2 trains, one of which is not an option.

[sbilstein]

On the other hand, ACTransit from Oakland to SF is really quite good for commuting.

[benatkin]

It's OK. They have nice travel busses that they use most of the time but any day they can run out of them and I can unexpectedly get stuck with an uncomfortable regular bus. I stopped taking Transbay most of the time and switched back to Emery-Go-Round and BART after a few months of taking it.

This was with being one of the last stops before SF and having a good onramp to get onto the freeway. I tried taking it from the east oakland hills when I lived there and it was completely unpalatable.

[malyk]

I take AC Transit every day (for the last 5 years) and if you get on at the last stop it's standing room only and terrible where busses sometimes drive by you. But, from my house, I have a seat every single morning no question and in the evening, as long as I'm ~10 minutes early to the stop in SF I get a seat.

I ride the F, which is a "normal" bus, but it's 10x better than BART for comfort, temperature, smell, etc. The trip takes me 40-50 minutes on a normal day.