Take the MTC's Transportation/Development Planning Poll

It's at http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/2035_plan.

You can vote for personal priorities of the region's problems and possible solutions.

A glaring omission, in my opinion, is that no mention is made at all of encouraging employers to put workplaces near transit. We can vote to raise the gas tax, put future housing by train stations, etc, all we want--but until we start paying attention to making the work end of our commutes transit friendly, it's not going to do much good.

Still, it doesn't take long, so make yourself heard.

At least they give you the option to vote for a few good ideas that are currently "beyond the pale", making planning a regional effort, instead of leaving it in the hands of cities, which generally are controlled by NIBMY jerks.

CA High Speed Rail--End of the Line? First, Some Facts

California High Speed Rail project has been on my mind lately--first, because my family and I just made another round trip to LA, by both car and plane, and both sucked--and because of the CAHSRA's recently announced decision to route trains over the Pacheco Pass rather than the Altamont.

I've got a lot to say on this, so I'm going to break it up into chunks. First--what is this choice about, and what's all the fuss?

The question is how to route trains from the Bay Area over the Coastal Range to the Central Valley. The choice is between an Altamont Pass route (where the ACE train and 580 go, via Livermore, and skirting Stockton), vs the Pacheco Pass (following the 152 from Gilroy to Los Baños).

There are plusses and minusses to both routes. Both involve engineering challenges, and treading carefully around wilderness areas. From both of these perspectives, I think it's a wash.

The biggest real advantage (I will mention some perceived ones later...) of the Pacheco Pass route is a slight faster overall travel time, especially from San Jose to Southern California. At bullet train speeds, it comes out to 5-10 minutes difference.

The biggest advantage of the Altamont is that this route is that it serves way more people. First of all, there are a lot of people commuting to the Bay Area from Livermore, Stockton, Tracy, etc, who could really use it on a daily basis. It would also serve the East Bay much better--a branch to Oakland seems logical. Second, it's a much more logical way to add a branch to Sacramento. Going to Sac and back via Stockton makes sense. Going all the way around through Los Banños is just stupid--it's such a long way around, that just running moderately fast conventional trains on a more direct route (just speed up Capitol Corridor a bit and get the UP out of the way) would be quicker.

And as a corollary--while an Altamont routing would serve established cities, a Pacheco routing would encourage a brand new swath of sprawl, as people moved to now-dinky Los Baños in search of cheap and now convenient housing (this could admittedly be seen as an upside--I'll return to the question of housing in a later post).

To me, the choice is clear--the Altamont Route is a more useful overall system, and the tradeoff in speed is worth it.

Despite the Altamont's clear advantage, or perhaps because of it, the CAHSRA has consistently waged a devious campaign to subvert it, and boos the Pacheco route. First, they simply refused to study it--it was in early drafts of the plan, but conveniently omitted from the initial EIR. That was a bit too heavy-handed to get away with, and they've become more subtle, for example in skewing ridership estimates.

If you follow this debate, you will hear a lot of reasons (excuses?) why the Altamont route is impractical. None of them really stand up. Here's a few I've heard, and rebuttals.

• Environmental impact to South Bay wetlands. First, trains already run there. Second, as I (and the Sierra club) have pointed out--the environmental impacts of the Pacheco route are probably worse.
• It will require a long, high, and expensive bridge across the south Bay. Does anything bigger than a yacht ever go farther south than the Dumbarton bridge? Maybe a rehab of the existing Dumbarton Rail bridge, with a drawbridge opened a few times a day, is all that's needed. Anyway, the Pacheco route requires more tunnels than the Altamont, so it probably balances out.
• Livermore and Fremont residents don't want bullet trains running through town. Try to build anything anywhere, and somebody will complain. I betcha a lot of people who live in these cities are sick of driving to San Jose, though--maybe you should talk to them instead of listening to pissy NIMBY's, and concluding that the only place to build a railroad is where nobody lives (to either complain about noise, or ride it, either!).

So what is so great about the Pacheco pass route? I really don't think it's about saving a couple of minutes. I'll save that for next time.

Bernal Heights, Neighborhood Nostalgia, Urban Taxidermy

For Christmas my parents gave me a new Arcadia Publishing book about my old SF neighborhood, where they still live.

It is interesting to see the area develop from farmland into a working class neighborhood, and then slowly into a kind of bohemian area. Finally, though you can't really tell it from the pictures, it's evolved further, as housing prices have turned it into essentially a wealthy suburb (I have colleagues who live there for the atmosphere--even more over on Portrero--and reverse commute to our office in Mountain View) with an urban vibe.

I have mixed feelings about the neighborhood's, and the city's evolution--and lack of it. I'm glad that the top of the hill was kept undeveloped, and I enjoy the Victorian/Edwardian/typically-San-Franciscan houses, and I'm sad to see how the Eastern side of the hill, once downright backwoods-y and bucolic, was bulldozed for the 101. On the other hand, is an obsessive conservatism for the physical form of a city really right?--Especially when the result is an artificial shortage of housing, and an affordability crisis that makes it out of reach to many who'd like to live there? If a few blocks of painted ladies were torn down for four-or-five story apartments or condos, it would be an aesthetic loss, but a boon to the city's health. What do we say about a city that has preserved Victorians but exiled the working class, and is quickly shoving the middle out the door?

I am writing this on a visit to southern California. Today, in Torrance, in the middle of a suburban wasteland, I saw a new development--of rowhouses! If Densification can occur in the suburbs (and despite the screams of NIMBY's it is creeping into the Bay Area in such unlikely places as Sunnyvale and Dublin), maybe even San Francisco can escape the paralyzing notion that its neighborhoods achieved a state of physical perfection a half century ago which must be inviolate forever.

CalTrain on Twitter: Get/Report Train Status via SMS

I am trying out a new rider-maintained CalTrain service status update system run on Twitter. Here is a homepage for it, and here is where you can see updates.

You can also create a Twitter account, link it to your phone, and get an SMS whenever someone reports that trains are late.

To subscribe for updates, make an account, link it to your phone, and then on the Twitter main page, look for a box marked "people", on the Twitter Caltrain page, click the "follow" button underneath the "user" name.

I'm just doing this now, and will see how well it works next time something goes wrong. I could have used it this morning.

And if this thing works, I'll work on figuring out how to make updates myself.

Servers Down, Boss is Out... Why Not Circumnavigate the Bay by Transit?

This was my situation on Friday. Since I all the work I could do would be entirely on my laptop, which has good batteries, and there was nobody around to see me at my desk (I'm just using "Boss is out" as a literary convention here--in fact, mine is far from persnickety about these things anyway), and there was nobody at home except a sleeping cat (her active times of day are first thing in the morning, evening, and if she's in an ornery mood in the middle of the night--in between that it's all zzzzz) it occurred to me--why not work mobile--really mobile?

So I bought a CalTrain zone upgrade ticket and headed from Mountain View to San Jose Diridon Station. It's time to go get a new monthly pass anyway (my employer is kind enough to subsidize my transit commute, which is awesome, but until I get my act together and subscribe to Tickets by Mail, taking advantage of this requires a monthly trip to SF or SJ where I can find a human to take my vouchers). In twenty minutes, I ran from the platform to the ticket office, bought my pass, bought another ticket for AmTrak, and boarded a northbound Capitol Corridor train.

The ghost town of Drawbridge, and the mountains of salt at the Leslie plant, and the cuteness of Niles all made a nice rolling backdrop while I did, in fact, fire up the laptop and do some work.

About half way to Oakland, the crew requested that all passengers for Jack London Square station head to the front car of the train. This was a bit more work for me than other passengers, because I was in the 4th car, with my bike! Encouraged by a crewmember, I went ahead and brought my bike up to the second level (the one which connects from car to car on AmTrak trains) and rolled it the length of the train, and back down the steps to the first level.

The trouble, it turned out, was that there was a fatal accident somewhere farther down the line. A crewmember told me "I know you're mad at us for making you move your bike, but feel sorry for us because we're going to be stuck here for four hours!".

Quite a few trains were stuck at Jack London Square. The reason for moving us to the front turned out to be this: there were no free platforms left, so we pulled up alongside another train, a door was opened on each, and we stepped across and went through the other train to get to a platform.

At least we were on time, which left me with plenty of time to reach the Oakland Ferry terminal. It's across the length of Jack London Square--I had over 20 minutes, which would probably be enough time to walk it, and no trouble at all on a bike. (Still, given AmTrak, if you wanted to do this trip recreationally without a bike, I'd recommend planning a longer break here, stopping for a snack or shopping if they're on time, and huffing it if they're not!).

It was a quick and enjoyable voyage across the bay to the ferry building. From here I biked to CalTrain, which is an easy ride, though it got a bit tricky dodging crowds around AT&T park (it's not baseball season, what's up?). Still I made it quickly enough, and caught a bullet back to Redwood City.

The CalTrain zone upgrade ticket I used to start my trip (to use my zone 2-3 pass to reach San Jose, in zone 4) was still valid, and when you buy an upgrade you don't have to specify which way you're upgrading, so I figured it should be good for zone 1 (San Francisco to San Bruno) too. Hah! Stickin' it to the man!

According to google maps, I covered something like 100 miles on this trip--and I managed to get work done at the same time!

Back in the Third World

Yesterday morning I dropped off my family at SFO--I'll be joining them down south in a few days, after bach'ing it with the cat for a bit. I ostensibly should have gone to work, but servers are down that I need to do my job (honestly!) and my boss is out anyway, so I decided to go up to the City. My main objective was resume my quest for The King in Yellow, and visit McDonald's books, which advertises itself as a "Dirty Poorly Lit Place for Books", and seems likely to have it if anyone, and whose location straddling the respectability of touristy/upscale Market and the Tenderloin (Yelp reviewers caution, "just make sure to turn left when you leave"), makes it more appropriate as a solo transit adventure than a family outing.

After I finally found my car in the SFO garage (a fact that is tangental this blog, and really nobody's fault but mine--though they could mark areas with labels that are specific to the level--so that if you for example find your way back to area G36, you won't wander around for twenty minutes before realizing that there might be another area G36 above or below you... I just wanted to vent) I popped over to Millbrae to take advantage of the combined BART/CalTrain station's copious and free parking (here I always park on the 4th floor, because that's the level of the station mezzanine, and then you don't have to worry about what floor you parked on...). A few minutes later I was heading north on CalTrain. At 4th and King, I faced the eternal (apparently) dilemma of transit-enabled visitors to the City arriving by train from the peninsula--how to get to any part of town I might actually want to see? First, since no Muni vehicle or ticket machine takes credit cards, and I had no actual currency left, I went to the Safeway across the street, bought an Odwalla, and got some cash--in the strategic amount of $42.00, which left me a handy $2 in small bills to ride a bus or streetcar.

Next I returned to the corner of 4th & King, where the SF Muni has thoughtfully provided not one, but two places where you might board a streetcar to Market St. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any way to know which stop will get a car first short of either walking up to look at the NextBus signs on each platform, or else just walking out into traffic to look down the respective streets that streetcars might be coming from. I first tried the T stop on third street, but couldn't find a ticket machine. I went to the N stop on King (or rather, in the middle of the freeway offramp that dumps into King St). Here I could buy a ticket, but there was clearly no streetcar coming any time soon, so I went back to the T. NextBus informed me that the next T was in 17 minutes...

I decided to walk around the Safeway to Townsend, where you can catch a 30 or 45 trolleybus. There were several, all apparently getting in each other's way or something. After some delay.... well, I think I'm running the risk of loosing my readers here. Suffice it to say that eventually I reached McDonald's books, and they were closed.

Being denied the pleasures of a musty second hand bookshop, I decided I would visit a respectable one. I had never been to City Lights Books, and figured I might as well... the fact is, my mother has gone so far as to suggest that I'm remiss as a San Franciscan if I've never been to City Lights, and perhaps it's true. I ended up walking most of the way. It's faster than riding a 30 through Chinatown anyway. I saw the Beat Poetry Room, found a postcard and a book, and kept walking to Fisherman's Wharf where I caught an F line PCC (Boston Elevated Ry) to the ferry building.

At this point it seems natural to walk down into Embarcadero Station and catch and N or T--at least going this way, they're no guessing game--you can stand on the same platform to catch either. But long experience has taught me that riding a Muni train either into our out of the subway is often a slow and painful ordeal. Something about switching between computer control and manual puts them through fitful starts and stops. I decided to walk a couple of blocks and catch a train that had already been through all this, out in the open, at the stop next to the Cupid's Arrow statue.

NextBus said the next Muni train wouldn't be for 20 minutes. I was just about resigned to more walking, when one appeared out of the tunnel. Did NextBus think this train had already passed by? Or perhaps it looses track of trains when they transition from the subway (where it probably finds out their location from the automatic train control system) to the surface (where it tracks them by getting updates from onboard GPS). Whatever.

The T-train's progress was reasonable, until about when we hit Giants Stadium. The last couple blocks from there to CalTrain took about 15 minutes. In fact, most of that time was spent at a dead stop just before crossing the 4th & King intersection to get to my stop. I had nothing to stare at but a flyer announcing pulbic meetings about the planned Central Subway.

It seems to me like a public agency really ought to try improving service through cheap and simple means, like getting traffic laws enforced so that busses and streetcars can flow better through traffic, and trying to stop inflicting delays on passengers through one's own bungling before it has the nerve to ask the public to pony up a few billion dollars to improve service through new infrastructure. Fix the easy stuff first!

Muni could be so awesome if San Francisco just cared enough to run it well :(

At least on CalTrain I got an express, and zipped to Millbrae nonstop in much less time than it had taken to cover a mile or so on the Embarcadero.

Meanwhile, here's how my wife and daughter's journey went: We left the house at 11:15, allowing an hour to reach the airport, and the recommended two hours to check in and get through security, to catch a flight at 2:15. Sometimes allowing that whole two hours seems a little paranoid, but in this case, since they were flying with United, it was just about right. Or would have been, except that the flight was pushed out to 3:45. They reached my in-law's house in Redondo Beach about 6:00.

This is the kind of scenario that the corrupt and incompetent, but in this case correct, folks at the California High Speed Railway Authority like to point to as an illustration of the fact that high speed rail could provide shorter door-to-door travel times than flying, because train stations are just inherently more convenient to get to and get through than airports. Of course, you could have beat yesterday's travel time (6 hrs, 45 mins) driving if you didn't hit traffic. Theoretically, you could also get to LA in that time with conventional, non-bullet trains like the ones AmTrak already runs, if they were run reliably, and someone had the guts to make the UP and BNSF keep their freight trains out of the way. Again, try the cheap solutions first!

Well, I'm back! It's good to be home, but I do miss Swiss transit!

Double Decker in San Francisco

The Muni is experimenting with a double decker bus. We were up in the city shopping on Christmas Eve Eve (and picked up some excellent cheese at Cowgirl Creamery, in the Ferry Building, that made for an extremely yummy Christmas fondue), when it happened to pull up in front of us on Market Street, running on the 38L.

It will be interesting to see how this works out.

The general opinion in the transit field seems to be that double deckers are slower to load and unload than articulated busses. Even London has been migrating to artics. But maybe in a crowded city, a smaller (in terms of its footprint) and more nimble vehicle would have an easier time getting through traffic.

I will be posting my evaluation of transit in Switzerland, and what can be learned from it, in this blog soon--meanwhile, if you're curious, you can read about my trip from a more purely tramfannic perspective over at nkncat.blogspot.com.

Visiting the Land of Punctual Trains

I'll be travelling the next two weeks--watch for me here!

Sausalito/Mill Valley Trolley

This has recently been proposed by a new group. Here's some articles:

North Bay Business Journal, Oct 29th, "Marin Group Exploring Trolley System".

Marin Independent Journal, Nov 12th, "Trolley Proposal Intriguing".

Here's a proposal of my own: bundle this project with SMART; that way, the trolley will get funded, and SMART will pick up some much-needed votes in Marin.

Walking to School, Riding the Bus

The other day I left my bike at work--my family met me with the van, and it was too full of Girl Scouts Fall Sales stuff to fit a bike.

So the next day, I walked with my daughter to school. Along the way, we've gotten to know a couple of cats that come out at the right time for kids walking by. We petted "Athena", a fluffy calico.

I caught the 295--keepin' it real! This route wanders through posh parts of RWC and Menlo. Most of the other passengers looked to be domestic help on the way to work. I was definitely the only rider using a laptop.

CalTrain/SamTrans connections are not terribly well timed. It actually got me to work quicker to take a long ride to Menlo Park than a short ride to Sequoia Station, since at Sequoia, I would just miss making a train. Might as well be moving as sitting on a bench.

Puddles were Stomped

For an upcoming trip to Switzerland, we are buying presents for a couple nephews and some other little ones we'll be visiting. It occurred to me--how about some cute, touristy, San Francisco F line shirts? The Market Street Railway has a nice little Museum/Gift-shop at the foot of Market. So my daughter and I decided to pay them a visit.

Since we were getting a late start, my plan was to drive (quickly!) to Millbrae, take CalTrain to the City and BART back. We've done this plenty of times before. The itinerary has the advantage that for the trip in you get the speed and scenery advantages of CalTrain's bayshore line (plus with my monthly pass, it's a free ride for me), but on the way out you can just go to BART at your convenience--the unpredictability of Muni combined with CalTrain's hourly service on weekends makes getting home on CalTrain sketchy.

It was not to be this time--an accident (it just started raining, so no surprise) shut down the 101. Stuck in traffic, I mused that having been let down by CalTrain last week, and now unable to get anywhere by car, I am probably up for a flat tire on my bike next. Eventually we got to Millbrae and took BART.

I'm still annoyed that the Peninsula BART Extension was built as a subway, underneath a perfectly serviceable inherited railway right-of-way. Mostly, it was a colossal waste of money. It also deprives passengers of scenery--some one it bucolic. Apparently, in what may be the most ridiculous case of NIMBYism ever, BART was undergrounded through Colma to avoid disturbing residents--of cemeteries, that is! Mostly, it's just annoying because riding BART trains through tunnels is loud (can't they spray something on the walls to dampen sound?). We invented a new game--cover your ears, mouth words, and try to lipread!

The Market Street Ry's museum is small, but nice. My daughter got expert instruction in operation of vintage streetcars:

And was soon ready to start work as a Motorette:

There are also some nice large scale models of various vintages of streetcars and cable cars, and we peered at a collection of transit tokens under a magnifying glass.

With T shirts bought, we ventured out into the rain. The Bay Bridge and downtown buildings were spookily disappearing into the clouds. What to do? It was a little bit too soon to head back, but I didn't want to take on any really big adventures (Pier 39 was suggested) at the end of a rainy day. We decided to cross the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building, to pick up coffee and hot chocolate a Peets (a cinnamon twist was added to our order). More practically, we bought some produce from one of the organic vendors in the Ferry Building Market. Along the way, puddles were stomped.

Then we headed home.

Using BART TVM's--an important skill for every Bay Area kid to learn!

A Bit of a Long Commute, Both Ways

Wednesday we went out for fondue at Crepes Cafe in Menlo Park. It was fully of cheesy goodness!

The next morning, I was determined to work that off. I biked to work, with a bit of a detour. I went up Alpine Road a bit, realized it wasn't really heading the right direction for me, and turned back, and ended up on a poorly marked bike trail that leads to here:

To be clear--it started out as a bike trail, labeled as such, but apparently you're not supposed to bike up to the dish. Or so I was told by the Stanford campus security. I'm pretty sure there was no sign at the entrance I used.

Well, I enjoyed my one and only ride to the dish.

After that, I felt entitled to an easy, conventional, ride home on the train after work. It was not to be. I noticed that the express, which leaves Mountain View just ahead of my local, kind of limped away from the station. My own train arrived on time, but poked along, until after leaving Cal Ave, they announced that the train ahead had broken down, and that we'd be pushing it.

After a few minutes, we proceded, crew got off, we carefully nudged up, and pretty soon there was that big clanking sound of couplers.

Not what you normally expect to see out of the front window.

So far, OK. But apparently the recovery plan went awry at this point. I think they had mechanical problems making all the electrical and brake-hose connections that need to be made for a bunch of cars and engines to actually function as a train. It appeared they even brought in some guys from the shops in San Jose to figure it out.

I think we were stuck there for about 90 mins, with the lights out a lot of that time. One door was open, and a conductor took a "don't ask don't tell" approach to letting passengers escape via a hole in a fence that lead to Alma (a dark stretch with no sidewalk and lots of traffic).

Plenty of trains went by in both directions on the SB track. So our two stuck trains did not bring the system to a halt--it was just us stuck out there.

Their original plan seemed to be to get the broken train to Palo Alto and leave it there, operating single track all night, I supposed. The pusher train I was on was supposed to back up to get around it. Passengers were advised to get off and cross over to the SB platform where another NB train would probably arrive sooner than the one we were on would be able to make that move.

By the time we reached PA, the plans had changed--the whole double-length train would run express to SF, anyone wanting to get to a destination closer than that needed to get off and wait for a following train.

Probably the best thing to do, really--just get the disabled the train off of the line.

A few suggestions to CalTrain:

• Trains shouldn't break down!
• If they're going to, maybe you should stash an extra engine somewhere at the middle of the line, like Redwood Junction.
• Creative solutions like coupling up trains are fine, but maybe need to be rehearsed a bit more!
• It a train's going to be stuck for an hour or more, why not stop another one next to it, and let passengers walk over (carefully!).

CalTrain passengers are a polite bunch, it seems. Most people took it pretty well. Only at the end did a few of the "I'm mad and I'm going to let everyone know it" types that you expect to see and hear in transit delays start to make their presence known.

I got off at Palo Alto and made the rest of my trip home by dependable, two-wheeled transportation.

Slow Sales at Sequoia Station

It's Fall Sales time for the Girl Scouts. Last spring, we tried selling cookies to commuters on CalTrain. Business was great, but eventually the transit police told us we weren't allowed to do that (though we made a last, few, whispered sales on the way to the door).

So this time, we got official permission to set up stationary shop at Redwood City's Sequoia Station. We brought folding chairs and a good supply of chocolate covered raisins, gummy berries, etc, and waited for business.

Charming and professional!

Despite jumping through the official hoops, a Securitas guard working for CalTrain was pretty sure we weren't supposed to be doing this. He called somebody in charge, and they confirmed that, despite our attempts to be on the level, Girl Scout sales are not allowed on CalTrain property--but he never actually told us to leave.

The message on the electronic sign was apparently apropos.

We had a few customers.

I really should get a high-visibility-color jacket like that.

But not as many as we hoped. I blame it on the fact that it was dark and cold (darn time change!), that we were on the the southbound platform where people were mainly getting off the train to go home (instead of waiting for trains), and that most people have been snacking on leftover Halloween candy all week.

I was hoping that our position between the CalTrain platform and the SamTrans bus circle would get us some good cross traffic, but doesn't seem to be that much transfering between systems. It's a bit like two parallel but separate transit universes.

A Ride Downtown - MiMe's Cafe

My daughter and I rode SamTrans route 271 to downtown Redwood City.

We met Mom at MiMe's cafe. It was Halloween, and a lot of the staff was in costume. We were greeted at the door by Old Scratch himself.

Mime's Cafe (we pronounce it Mimi's--though I admit we never asked about that) is run by young people in a culinary arts training program. They're very nice and it's really good (only open for breakfast and lunch).

My daughter got to help make her own pizza:

We also got free dessert--I guess somebody's learning how to make chocolate cake (and has learned pretty well, too)!

It's all very yummy. Definitely a place to add to my transit-accessible restaurants list.

BART Closes 16th/Mission for Halloween

For several years, Muni has closed Castro station on Halloween. This is part of the city's attempt to squash the somewhat "overzealous" revelry that happens in the Castro. Anyway, it's not too long a walk to Church St, which gives partiers time to cool off and sober up, and prevents dangerous crowding that used to happen on the Castro station platforms.

This year, the city has taken things a step further, and asked BART to shut down their 16th & Mission station, the closest one to the Castro (it's about 1 mile). This has nothing to do with calming people down, rather just an effort to shut the party down entirely.

BART, with apparent disregard to any regular folks in the neighborhood who might want to ride for usual reasons, such as getting home for work for example, has acquiesced.

Transit riders are always a safe constituency to give the shaft. We so need to get organized!

On a lighter note--accessorizing with a genuine SamTrans jacket (the original owner was probably not really supposed to contribute it to the thrift shop where I found it, but that's not my concern), I accompanied my daughter trick-or-treating as a bus driver.

Score One for the Internet and DIY Bike Repair

For several weeks, the chain was slipping on my bike. This would particularly happen when I was pushing hard. Since I've basically resolved to never downshift (it's for the weak!) that's quite a lot of the time. But this makes it a difficult problem to track down, since if I just turn the crank by hand while not riding it will never happen, and watching my gears while accelerating from a stopsign, instead of paying attention to traffic, is probably not a good idea.

Since I really do never downshift more than half way, I first removed the front derailleur, which a I could tell was not exactly on straight. The chain moved more smoothly, but it didn't really solve my problem.

Now if you do much searching for information on the internet, you have probably noticed that whatever you're looking for, 99% of what you'll find is just somebody trying to sell you crap. Google really ought to have a feature that lets you block commercial sites. But I'm happy to report that the subject of bicycles is an exception--you really can find sites that aren't pushing anything, and actually contain helpful information.

A little reading, and I resolved that some part of my drive train must just be worn out. I have been riding this bike a lot, for more than a few years now, and I am at least the third owner. One of the ways you can wear these things out is by stretching your chain. There's an easy way to check for this; each link is supposed be exactly 1/2 inch long, so if you put up a ruler against your chain, and line up a link at zero, and don't find that another link 24 down the line aligns perfectly with the other end of the ruler, then something's not right. Indeed, the 24th link away from the zero mark on my ruler was about 12&3/8" away.

I had a slightly rusty chain salvaged from some previous bike, and put it on. Triflow helps loosen these things up nicely. Now some of these DIY bike repair sites will caution you that if you replace your chain, you may have to replace all your gears to make sure they mesh properly. Apparently they wear together, and a new chain may not work happily with worn gear teeth (one useful tip is to try reversing your gears instead of just buying new ones).

I have had to make no such drastic overhaul, thankfully.

Here's my not-so-pimp ride, complete with CalTrain tag and "fight terror, ride a bike" sticker:

Lot's of folks have fancier bikes--sitting in their garage!

On a humorous note, here's a story about how not to love your bike (thank you, Militant Angeleno, for that link)!

It's New Urbanism--NOT!

At first blush, this new building in Mountain View

looks like an example of the kind of traditional urbanism praised by Jane Jacobs, and so lacking from modern development--there's a corner store, contributing to the usefulness and liveliness of the street, with living space above.

But on closer inspection--that's not living space for people, it's for cars. On top of that Long's drugs is a 5-level parking garage. I guess you could call it faux-urbanist, or maybe vertical suburbian.

Mountain View has a ton of parking downtown. I don't know why they thought they needed more. I guess we can't really expect all those rich-ass googlers to walk or take transit...

I'm resolving to give my blog posts a more positive vibe, and in fact, there are a few good things to note about this building:

• All those folks in the dense housing across the street will actually be able to walk to a drugstore.
• There's finally a place you can use an ATM card in downtown Mountain View, without getting reamed with extra charges, if you need to pay cash for lunch.
• Biking to the top of a 5 level parking garage is my new workout. It's close to my work, a decent climb, and then you get a view at the top and a fun ride down.

A Question for CalTrain from a a Bike-Riding Passenger

Sure seems like there's room for another stack of bikes on the Bombardier cars (on which only 16 bikes are allowed).

So why not?

SPRINTER to Split Trains--So it *can* Still be Done

In the old days, it used to be common to split trains mid run. A combined train might start from A, split at B, with one half of the cars going to C and the other to D. Going the other direction, the trains from C and D would meet at B, and run jointly to A.

Modern transit systems seem to avoid this type of operation like the plague. They prefer to force riders to transfer, or else fall back on the "odd trains to X, even trains to Y" type of operation, neither of which is ideal... it's a prime example of transit providers optimizing service for their convenience, rather than passengers'.

The San Diego North County Transit District has just announced plans to to schedule a mid-line split in for their new SPRINTER trains. The SPRINTER route is purely linear, but the idea is to improve service in the early morning. The first train of the day will begin at Escondido, the eastern terminal, run westwards to the midpoint of the line and split, with one half continuing west to Oceanside and the other heading back east. This will give the eastern half of the line eastbound (countercommute, I guess) service an hour earlier than was otherwise scheduled.

So if SPRINTER can do it, why not other transit systems?

• On weekends, BART could run combined trains from Millbrae to Oakland, then split them into shorter trais to Richmond, Fremont, and Baypoint.
• CalTrain, if/when it replaces locomotive-hauled trains with EMU's, could replace it's half-local/half-express trains (trains that run local in the north/sound end and express in the other end) with trains that run local half way and then split into a local and express.
• CalTrain, if/when it extends southwards, could split trains to serve Hollister, Salinas, and Monterey.
• Dumbarton Rail, if and when it gets built, should run combined trains across the bridge, and then split them in RWC, one half heading to SF and the other to SJ.

The people who run transit agencies are very good at coming up with reasons why new ideas can't be done, but if SPRINTER sets a precedent for splitting trains, it'll be a little harder for them.

Fondue in San Mateo

It probably doesn't fit my diet, but I suppose I'll have to check this out--for transit research purposes--The Melting Pot, a fondue chain, has opened it's latest branch in the San Mateo CalTrain station tonight. Can't beat that for convenience.

It's about time they got something in there (the new station was built in 2001 and has sat empty til now). We still need to get someone to move into the Mountain View station. Note to Peets: if you set up shop here, I will buy a cup of coffee every day!