You wrote: “BART can get someone living Concord to a job in downtown San Francisco or Oakland, but what if they want to hit the beach at Santa Cruz or visit Palo Alto? Unless they are willing to endure multiple transfers and lengthy waits the region’s congested highways are their only choice.”
The way I understand this, this suggests there is passenger-train service to and from Santa Cruz. From what I understand there’s a passenger train operating to Santa Cruz from Felton and vice versa. The railroad that operates this service is known as the Santa Cruz, Big Trees & Pacific. If there’s another operating between Watsonville (Pajaro) and Santa Cruz, I’m certainly not aware of what that is. I believe though that the rail line between those two towns is still intact, but unused. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The connection in Pajaro, meanwhile, ties into the Union Pacific Railroad main coast route line that more or less connects San Jose/Santa Clara with Los Angeles. As far as I know, the closest rail station to Santa Cruz is Salinas and that one is served by Amtrak’s “Coast Starlight” train.
A valid point. The train no longer runs to Santa Cruz, and the route was circuitous so it is probably not a good candidate for restoring service. I suggested it to illustrate the limitations of the existing system.
Where I live beaches generate substantial rail passenger traffic whether it is the Long Island Rail Road’s Cannon Ball to the Hamptons and Montauk or NYC Transit’s four subway lines to Coney Island.
Gotta wonder why they had the odd wide gauge track in the first place for the BART system, makes no sense at all except to keep anyone else from wanting to have access to the tracks and stations. No foresight at all
While it plausibly *could* carry the pre-pandemic projection of 55,000 additional daily boardings, the 6-mile, 4-station BART extension VTA will pay to build, own, and pay BART to operate in 2037 (if all goes well with closing the $1b project funding gap on the nearly $13b project & its construction) will almost certainly only carry a fraction of that … (just as with VTA’s actual paltry phase 1 BART extension ridership to Berryessa) in our new post-pandemic WFH world in which newly electrified & modernized Caltrain with free on-board WiFi now competes for transit riders between San Jose and SF.
There’s one point I’m really confused about.
You wrote: “BART can get someone living Concord to a job in downtown San Francisco or Oakland, but what if they want to hit the beach at Santa Cruz or visit Palo Alto? Unless they are willing to endure multiple transfers and lengthy waits the region’s congested highways are their only choice.”
The way I understand this, this suggests there is passenger-train service to and from Santa Cruz. From what I understand there’s a passenger train operating to Santa Cruz from Felton and vice versa. The railroad that operates this service is known as the Santa Cruz, Big Trees & Pacific. If there’s another operating between Watsonville (Pajaro) and Santa Cruz, I’m certainly not aware of what that is. I believe though that the rail line between those two towns is still intact, but unused. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The connection in Pajaro, meanwhile, ties into the Union Pacific Railroad main coast route line that more or less connects San Jose/Santa Clara with Los Angeles. As far as I know, the closest rail station to Santa Cruz is Salinas and that one is served by Amtrak’s “Coast Starlight” train.
A valid point. The train no longer runs to Santa Cruz, and the route was circuitous so it is probably not a good candidate for restoring service. I suggested it to illustrate the limitations of the existing system.
Where I live beaches generate substantial rail passenger traffic whether it is the Long Island Rail Road’s Cannon Ball to the Hamptons and Montauk or NYC Transit’s four subway lines to Coney Island.
love this, especially when I see vintage photos of early cruise lines back to the 1800s.
Gotta wonder why they had the odd wide gauge track in the first place for the BART system, makes no sense at all except to keep anyone else from wanting to have access to the tracks and stations. No foresight at all
The broad gauge was chosen to stabilize the lightweight BART trains in the event of high winds, which are common in the Bay Area. https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2022/news20220708-2
While it plausibly *could* carry the pre-pandemic projection of 55,000 additional daily boardings, the 6-mile, 4-station BART extension VTA will pay to build, own, and pay BART to operate in 2037 (if all goes well with closing the $1b project funding gap on the nearly $13b project & its construction) will almost certainly only carry a fraction of that … (just as with VTA’s actual paltry phase 1 BART extension ridership to Berryessa) in our new post-pandemic WFH world in which newly electrified & modernized Caltrain with free on-board WiFi now competes for transit riders between San Jose and SF.