Capitol Corridor
Nice article in the SF Chronicle about the intrepid souls who commute by train from SF to Sacramento each day:
The Capitol Corridor is a line made possible by the voters, who in 1990 approved Prop. 116 to provide state funding for intercity passenger rail service. Until 1998, there were only four trains each direction per day and the morning commute was essentially westbound only. Now there are 16 roundtrips. The State of California owns the rolling stock, Union Pacific owns the tracks, BART supplies administration, Amtrak staffs the trains and stations and a joint powers authority oversees it. The Capitol Corridor is like Caltrain with more layers of agencies.
Between four morning trains, 1,000 passengers ride from the Bay Area to Sacramento daily. Emeryville is by far the busiest station, with 135 daily commuters. They may be unhappy about spending four hours a day on a train, but they are less unhappy than they would be spending three hours a day in a car. By either mode of transit they are less unhappy than they would be living in the great Central Valley.
Read the whole piece for the stories of SF denizens who take the Muni bus to the Transbay terminal, then the Amtrak bus to the East Bay, and only then begin their journey. It reminds you how small the Puget Sound region really is. I'm sure there are people with 4-hour commutes here, but one has to really want to live or work far out there to have one.
- Frank's blog
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I looked into this a bit further. Just from Sacramento to the first BART station is $19 per way. Ouch.
When I lived near SF my wife tried about every means possible to get into the city from the north. The ferries would always fill up, requiring waiting in line for over an hour to board (and still sometimes not get on), taking a bus to BART took far too long, riding a motorcycle helped but required too much gear (plus cost of parking)... The casual carpool* worked out best, getting her to work in just over an hour.
SF is a great argument for making rapid transit work well here as soon as possible. We're both water-constrained, which means there are bottlenecks that are impassible once there are enough cars on the road. "Rush hour" anywhere near a bridge lasts all day and well into the night. SF is a very tough place to commute for those that don't live near BART.
* You wait at designated areas for a SOV to pick you up, so that they could use the carpool lane. I could see this system working well here.
Good point... I think we are getting closer and closer to SF, and we need to get started now.
I recently found out that casual carpooling is called slugging. It's huge in DC. I've done it myself coming home from Redmond once or twice.