[raldi]

> Much of the explosion of building in the Bay Area has been recent and during a period that no one wanted public transportation, they wanted a car.

You're saying that the region's transit was built up during a time when people didn't care about public transit. I think that's mostly true, and it led to a milquetoast "well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone" plan that, today, serves the region a lot less well than New York's strategy of "let's cut-and-cover tracks right down all our major avenues".

> Consider this: how late in the history of New York were those grand stations built? Compare that to how far in to San Francisco's history

If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?

[BashiBazouk]

"well, let's just sort of put some train stations around the edge but not do anything that might upset anyone"

And this is the crux of my point. Those CalTrain stations, when they were built, were EXACTLY where people wanted to go. The center of each down town. Look on a map. Caltrain is a very direct route to San Jose. The opposite of your argument that it is in any way "milquetoast". Even BART served where people wanted to commute to when it was planned out. The Bay Area has exploded with building since then.

"If you think you can't build good transit late in a city's history, how do you explain London or Paris?"

Uh...train technology not existing for most of those two cities histories?