In 1958 when the plans for BART were being made, Santa Clara County refused to join in because it wanted to focus on freeways. What if it went the other way? Would BART service be faster or more convenient than Caltrain?
Well, BART is using electric EMUs on grade-separated trackage, so it's pretty likely that it would work out to be faster, if only because BART trains can accelerate away from stations and slow areas faster and don't have to worry about inconvenient traffic. Convenient...well, that depends on the time-tabling and station locations, so it's a little bit harder to predict. Probably any route to San Jose would be an extension of one through the Transbay, so that's still going to be the limiting bottleneck in the system.Would BART service be faster or more convenient than Caltrain?