WI: BART went to San Jose

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?
 
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.
 
Should be what if America had real mass transit.. Great Bart goes to Los altos and Santa Clara and San Jose.. Doesn't matter with out supporting infrastructure that lots of that lacks
 

thorr97

Banned
It'd still be overpriced for what it does and still require massive government subsidies. But, it'd be kinda nice to "take the subway" down from SF to SJ instead of driving it.
 

Marc

Donor
A better world.
Ah, to the comment that it would require massive subsidies. True, but that is one of the functions of a modern state. At least the adult ones.
 
TBH BART is overpriced less because of anything in it's own technology (yes, there's a premium for a unique system, but it's a long way from the only place in such a situation) than because of how overpriced building anything is in North America.

As far as the question itself, the end result is really about the same as Caltrain, at yes, higher cost... At the same time Caltrain probably still exists as some kind of express service (although I very much doubt it will have operated continuously). BART Around the Bay sounds and looks good, but really doesn't achieve much when compared to just using the rail corridors. My actual impression is that Caltrain should have been branded as a BART service years ago, and still should be.
 
The mystery is how long it took Caltrain to connect up with the BART system.

Anyway driving around the Bay Area gets a bit easier. And any improvement of passenger rail access to downtown San Jose leads to more development of downtown San Jose, which will be the biggest effect.
 
Top