Yesterday, I took my kids on a train-and-ferry trip around the San Francisco Bay (well, around the southern half of it really). This is quite a fun afternoon trip if your children (or maybe just you yourself) like trains and boats. Here’s the schedule that worked out for us - for our timing and place of origin (Mountain View), a counter-clockwise routing worked better…
Schedule:
| Mountain View |
dp |
11:37a |
Caltrain #240 |
| San Jose |
ar |
12:00n |
|
| San Jose |
dp |
12:30p |
Amtrak #534 |
| Oakland - Jack London Square |
ar |
1:43p |
Walk to Ferry Terminal |
| Oakland - Ferry Terminal |
dp |
2:30p |
Oakland / Alameda Ferry |
| San Francisco - Ferry Building |
ar |
3:00p |
take Muni N line to Caltrain Depot |
| San Francisco - Caltrain |
dp |
4:09p |
Caltrain #362 |
| Mountain View |
ar |
4:51p |
|
Notes:
- you’ll have to buy a separate ticket for every leg of the trip
- this schedule only works on weekdays
This schedule should be adaptable for any location between San Francisco and SanJose - just board the #240 train at whatever station you start. Note that #362is a baby bullet, but you can always take a different train on the last leg -there are plenty of options there.
Oh, hereare some pictures from the trip.
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 20, 2006 4:54 pm | Comments: (0)
This coach was in a Capitol Corridor trainset waiting at San Jose Diridon station when I saw it on January 19 around noon. Anybody have an idea what happened to it?
Posted in: Uncategorized | 1:03 pm | Comments: (0)
This is a very interesting article/site, explaining some of the reasons why Amtrak trains run as “slowly” as they do …
http://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/04example.html
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 17, 2006 11:05 am | Comments: (0)
The government should be encouraging the use of mass transit, a sentiment increasingly shared by a public reeling from an increase in gas prices of approximately 70 cents in just one year. And there is no end in sight for those increases and even more. Pundits ask why Europeans are happy taking trains and Americans seem opposed. In a word, service and on-time records, both of which the new plans address.
[The Record - News - 01/09/2006 - Time for people to get on board this rapid transit idea ]
Yes, service and on-time performance are the big issues. Europeans also wouldn’t like trains if there was only one train per day and that train would regularly be delayed at least a couple of hours. How can you possibly want to take the train in a situation like that? If your train is delayed by 28 hours as recently happened on the east coast, it’s not even fun anymore… So what this country needs is frequent, on-time rail service. And it wouldn’t hurt if it was fast and convenient, too. Then - as certain examples show - even Americans will take the train.
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 11, 2006 11:23 pm | Comments: (6)
Hello, Arnold, are you listening?
Mexico reviving travel by train
High-speed bullet trains whooshing across the Mexican countryside. Electric commuter trains slicing through Mexico City. Gleaming new train stations and state-of-the-art switching systems. It’s all part of an ambitious, multibillion-dollar plan to revive train travel in Mexico, a business that was mostly abandoned in 2001 after decades of mismanagement and long, uncomfortable journeys in aging rail cars.
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 9, 2006 11:42 pm | Comments: (0)
Amtrak 122 is on the point of train #14, the northbound “Coast Starlight” as it is pulling into the San Luis Obispo, CA station.
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 8, 2006 8:17 pm | Comments: (0)
This is what the Los Angeles Times has to say about Governor Schwarzeneggers bond proposal:
Building more roads and freeways while starving mass transit is a vision from California’s past, not for its future.
[ latimes.com ]
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 7, 2006 10:30 pm | Comments: (0)
NARP has posted a list of Citizen Rail Groups all over the United States - so if you’d like to help promote passenger rail in the U.S., this is probably a good place to start looking for an organization near you. And I definitely encourage everybody to do so …
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 4, 2006 2:59 pm | Comments: (0)
This won’t really enhance Amtrak’s service reputation - ok, so it clearly wasn’t their fault that the freight train derailed and their trains were stuck, but couldn’t they at least have given these people some water? Is that too much to ask?
By the time the freight cars were cleared from the rails, about 2,000 passengers on six trains – three headed north, and three south - were affected, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black in stories in The New York Times and the Long Island, N.Y.-based newspaper Newsday. The trains were the Silver Meteor, the Silver Star operating between New York and Miami and the Auto Train, operating between Lorton, Va. and Sanford, Fla. Black said the CSX freight train’s derailment occurred at a “choke point” and that the Amtrak trains were unable to pass around it. Passengers aboard at least one of the trains, Amtrak train 98, the northbound Silver Meteor, sat in Jacksonville, Fla. for 12 hours Thursday before it finally started moving again. But only two hours later, at 6 a.m. in the middle of a forest south of Savannah, Ga., it stopped again because of heavy freight train traffic also bottled up from the derailment. The second delay lasted about eight hours. During the wait, the toilets on the Silver Meteor clogged. The crew offered no food or water, passengers said, except what was available in the dining and cafe cars, for a price. Those who could not pay were told they could charge their food, but only if they presented ticket stubs with their credit cards, said passenger Nancy Johnson of Washington.
(TRAINS News Wire for January 3, 2006)
amtrak
Posted in: Uncategorized | January 3, 2006 4:58 pm | Comments: (0)
Mr. Lacôte of Alstom said three conditions had to be fulfilled for a country to turn to high-speed rail: the political will, large population concentrations, and a level of economic prosperity adequate to pay for a rail system. “In the United States you have the second two,” he said. “I am not sure that you have the first.”
(Overseas, the Trains and the Market for Them Accelerate - New York Times)
Yes, indeed - I think Mr. Lacote is totally right here: it’s the political will that seems to be missing. In fact, the current administration doesn’t even seem to think of railways as a real means of transportation - at least not for passengers. But you can’t just blame the current administration either - it’s been like that ever since Amtrak was created. One might wonder - why did they even bother back then?
amtrak | highspeedrail
Posted in: Uncategorized | 2:17 pm | Comments: (0)
