[ghshephard]

Caltrain is far from "pretty good" on the peninsula. It's passable for a few purposes only - commuter and event rail. (I.E. Getting people to the office in the morning, getting people people home at night, and likewise with sports events in AT&T stadium).

As a serviceable mass transit system, it's almost worthless. The trains come infrequently, and require really inefficient transfers in the city to BART if you want to travel from, say, Mountain View to Oakland.

I just came back from Singapore - and I was able to get almost any place in the country + a 5 minute cab ride the entire day using their MRT. I understand that Tokyo (and to some degree, New York) have similarly advanced transit systems.

I used Caltrain + Bart for about 15 years, but you really don't realize how bad Caltrain + BART are, until you travel somewhere that was a first class mass transit system.