Wednesday, December 9, 2015
SF Warriors Arena would be better served by BART Around the Bay than by keeping deadly, outdated Caltrain.
It is time to start planning to extend BART down the Peninsula to future Santa Clara station to complete the BART Around The Bay dual (two-way) loop to be able to collect and distribute riders to the new arena, University, downtowns, shopping (Hillsdale, Newpark, Stanford, Southland, SF Market-Union, etc) travel facility and other Bay Area venues with the most efficient, safer, frequent, Zero-congestion heavy rail system that has proven its worth, 70% farebox recovery--highest of any transit system in the Bay Area. To save big $, BART should replace outdated, Deadly Caltrain (18 killed by Caltrain this year, twice BART deaths (suicides) and no car-train accidents. By replacing the Caltrain Killtrain, and keeping a separate freight single track, Caltrain excess land is freed up for sale in SF (Mission Bay) and elsewhere to help pay for BART extension down the Peninsula.BART's average ridership exceeds 435,000/day vs deadly Caltrain's (Democrats placeholder for future HSR) meager 60,000/day and that requires transfer delays at each end, unlike BART's homogeneous, integrated,unified system. Last year's Warrior celebration had BART carrying over 550,000 riders--without even the Peninsula extension. 775 new BART cars are coming starting in 2017, too.
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Hate to break it to you but BART is the outdated system. Caltrain is in the process of electrification and will be far more advanced than BART when completed. Grade separations are also in progress which will address your "deadly" remark. Caltrain will also be extended to the Financial District. This will all be done for a tiny fraction of the cost of extending BART, with far lower operating expenses.
ReplyDeleteCaltrain is FASTER to downtown SF than BART even today with "outdated" diesel trains. BART has no skip station service and takes a circuitous route to Daly City versus Caltrain's direct line to downtown.
BART down the Peninsula is dead.