I know you might not want to include them because they are affiliated with Amtrak, but the Capitol Corridor (15 times per day) and the Amtrak San Joaquins are both important parts of our network. Really enjoy your videos!
I’ll third that; they are effectively part of our local transit system, even if they’re controlled by the state (unlike everywhere else in the Bay Area)
They're particularly relevant to this video because they also connect to Stockton, and down to San José. It would be worth mentioning the coach connection from Emeryville across the Bay Bridge into the City.
I agree the Capitol Corridor should have been included. A friend of mine used to commute from the Richmond Station to Sacramento daily for several years in the 1990's. I hope if and when Zack does a segment on BART, Muni, and VTA he discusses the cable cars.
@@LuckyFlanker13 they're not controlled by the State anymore. Rather, both are under control of local JPAs for several years now and San Joaquins is actually controlled by the same agency that controls ACE.
Just an interesting fact: Caltrain is the longest-running passenger rail line west of Chicago. It began service in 1863 as the Peninsula Commute, a passenger service run by Southern Pacific from SF to SJ. In 1977, Southern Pacific announced that they would be discontinuing Peninsula Commute due to a lack of funding, but the state stepped in and continued funding it. In 1980, they rebranded it as Caltrain, and transferred the operating rights from Southern Pacific to Amtrak, and it's been that way to this day.
It actually wasn't built by SP, it was build by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad. The majority of the funding came from three counties it ran through.
I feel like not including the Capitol Corridor and to a lesser extent San Joaquins is a mistake, as both routes are state funded, use commuter style trains, and run a lot daily.
I would say the main reason to not include them is they aren't meant to be commuter trains, but intercity trains. Pretty much every commuter line is under 100 miles, the Capitol is 180 miles and the other two Amtrak "California" lines are longer.
Capitol Corridor is very much meant to a be commuter train. The portion in the Bay Area proper is the East Bay equivalent of the peninsula line and even the majority of the riders between the bay and Sacramento are commuters.
@@thetrainhopper8992 The Capitol Corridor absolutely is a commuter rail servive. It uses commuter train rolling stock, some of it identical to Caltrain's trainsets. It travels a relatively short distance and is extremely frequent. Now they even have contactless payment like Caltrain. The vast majority of the CC's ridership comes from commuters. The CC is basically Caltrain ten years ago in almost every way. The San Joaquins is indeed more of an intercity. A lot of people use it to commute too, believe it or not, but it's definitely less commuter than Caltrain and the Capitol Corridor.
Commuter rail on this route began over a century ago with the Southern Pacific railroad. I was really hoping that you would include information on that very long and important segment of the route's history.
@@VanishingUnderground As a SJ resident, I can confidently say that (at least the southern portion) of the system is hot garbage, or at least poorly planned. Of course, this could just be the disappointed local transit fan in me speaking.
@@LuckyFlanker13 Unfortunately the SF Bay Area as a whole is a hot mess. We have too many separate local transit agencies (27 official) that offer poor interconnectivity. Although they are working together through MTC, I think there should be greater consolidation. www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/transitagencieslist
@@gensao other than a few billion bucks to tunnel or take two lanes off the golden gate bridge, hitting sfo before going across the San Mateo bridge, the systems do take you where you want to go, just takes forever to get there.
It would be great if they would take the SMART trains and bring it on the Richmond bridge allowing the trains to access/merge into the BART tracks allowing service all the way from Sonoma to San Francisco's new transbay terminal. It's great to see that Caltrain will start service to Salinas and while they're at it maybe we could see an extension from San Francisco to Santa Cruz with Monterey and Carmel included either with Caltrain and/or BART.
SMART trains are totally incompatible with BART tracks. They're diesel, they're mainline trains, they're the wrong track gauge, the wrong loading gauge and don't have the required signaling systems.
A extension to Santa Cruz would be notoriously hard to build not because of the environment issues in that area, but the San Andreas runs right on through the mountains there. However! They are talking about building a small little light rail line that will go north to south from Monterey to Santa Cruz and also connect with Salinas to allow passengers to connect to the commuter trains and or buses.
The loads presented by the locomotives and passenger cars are simply too much for the Richmond - San Rafael Bridge to safely bear. It will be necessary to build a brand new bridge or tunnel to accommodate the SMART trains. Extending BART out Geary Street, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and up to Larkspur to interface with SMART is much more doable and can be built during or immediately after building a second BART / Caltrain transbay tube.
@@TheCloakedTiger There's actually an existing rail right of way between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz but much of it was demolished in the early 20th century to prevent it from being rebuilt. Most of it is still inact though and the bridges could be rebuilt and the dynamited tunnels (yes they really blew up perfectly good tunnels) could be rebored. It's a bit roundabout but you could also do service to Santa Cruz via Castroville. While a don't think anyone would use it to get to/from San Jose, it could be part of the Caltrain network expansion between Gilroy, Salinas and Monterey. It would be a great way to get to Santa Cruz from all those places. Much of the old right of way has already been purchased by Santa Cruz, but of course there are the normal arguments about whether it should just be a bike path or light rail or something else.
I'm from the SF Bay Area so I enjoyed the video. The upcoming electrification is exciting. But I wonder if, post-pandemic, ridership will return. A lot of people want to continue teleworking. Could you either reduce the volume of the new background music or go back to the old music? Thank you.
You missed the northern extension of Caltrain to the Salesforce transit center in downtown San Francisco. it happened along with construction of CAHSR!
He only includes funded stations. The Salesforce extension currently has no funding and not even confirmed routing. Wouldn’t surprise me if CalTrain doesn’t get there until the next transit center is built.
@@peteralbert1485 It's already connected to Muni Metro @ 4th and King. T and N lines connect at a horribly designed intersection. I'm hoping when they finally get to tunneling and replacing 4th and King with an underground station, they reconfigure that freeway on/off ramp. It's a nightmare watching dozens of people cross a busy 4-way intersection with some cars going speeds up to 60mph. It's also easy to miss your connection waiting for the signals to turn. I've had that happen many times.
1 wish you mentioned the evolution of both the Baby Bullet and skip-stop Rush hour services on CalTrain. 2. Also in CalTrain, Broadway and Atherton saw service only on weekends, and College Park only saw one train per day each way.
With the electrification of Caltrain, new rail cars will be introduced. They'll be modern looking to go with the new electric locomotives. Hopefully the ride will also improve. Riding Caltrain now can be a bumpy and noisy experience.
IIRC, Caltrain will be using stadler KISS EMUs, not locomotives. They will retire the F40PHs and nippon sharyo gallery cars, but keep the MP36PHs and Bombardier bilevels because the tracks from Tamien to Gilroy/Salinas are not electrified, since few trains extend south of Tamien.
Agreed. Especially since the author included Sacramento and Stockton as part of the plan. I would overlay BART at the end and provide a link to their video on BART.
True. Growing up in the Bay Area in the '60s and '70s, I often made that remark to others. Although significant progress has occurred over the last 50 years, the overall quality of public transport in the Bay Area is far behind that of the Netherlands where I live.
Amtrak Pacific Surfliner Extension North To San Jose and San Francisco Stops:San Luis Obispo,Paso Robles,King City/Soledad,Salinas Castroville,Pajaro Dunes,Gilroy,Morgan Hill,Tamien San Jose Diridon,Santa Clara,Sunnyvale,Mountain View,Palo Alto,Redwood City,San Mateo Hillsdale,Downtown San Mateo, Millbrae and San Francisco, San Francisco Transit Center.
The map scale is REALLY off between Fremont and Pleasanton and stops east -- Stockton is in the Central Valley. Atherton closed because the area is mostly rich people who would never be caught dead on public transit. They drive to work in their Teslas and Bentleys and Lambos.
When I lived in San Francisco from 2004 to 2006, Caltrain sucked big time due to the cramped seating and harsh ride, especially those Baby Bullet trains. I never forgot the shocking response from the conductor while the wagon was shaking and heaving at 70-75 mph: "it's because of deferred maintenance to the tracks. We simply don't have enough money for the upkeeping."
great video! i take caltrain to work most days-I remember when Atherton station closed a few months ago but I didn't realize it was part of a longer trend of pruning the least-used stops from the line-interesting! thank you for this video, keep up the great work!
Compare and contrast connectivity of the DFW consolidated metro are to the Baltimore -Washington consolidated metro area the San Francisco- Oakland -San Jose consolidated metro areas.
I often used CalTrain when I would go to Menlo Park. Thank you for this video. I am glad my options have increased to include not just San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland airports but now also Sonoma County.
Sadly SMART is an oxymoron: while its Larkspur Terminus is a short walk to the ferry, the trains are not timed to connect to the ferry, sometimes arriving 5 minutes after the ferry departs, and the north bound trains depart just before the ferry arrives. For commuting between Sonoma and SF, Golden Gate buses has been doing a decent job for decades, and remains more practical than SMART.
@@RipCityBassWorks Metrolink, in the Los Angeles area, is more extensive. Unfortunately much of the system doesn't have frequent service, and I know of no plans to electrify any of it. The current passenger cars, though, are fairly nice. Maybe not the best, but better than nothing.
After all the lines were covered, my first thought was 'wait, that's it?'. It's interesting that even though Los Angeles is the definition of a car-centric metro area, they have a better commuter network than San Francisco
this doesn't include BART, which is more like an S-Bahn than "commuter" rail, nor does it include the light rail systems (2 of them) or the Amtrak service, which is 2 lines serving Sacramento and the nearby San Joaquin valley. This is only a fraction of the Bay Area system, which is much larger than LA.
@@randomcontentgenerator2331 I find that questionable. While San Francisco proper has some decent transit, compared to the bay area the LA area as a whole has much more extensive coverage backed up by a solid bus network (in normal times). If they could update the frequency of Metrolink via electrification and added tracks, it would put BART to shame. As far as core area service goes, the LA metro does a fine job. Not as dense as Muni but LA has a lot more ground to cover. It DEFINITELY puts VTA light rail to shame, which suffers from abysmal speeds and terrible alignments. VTA light rail is arguably the worst light rail system of its size in the country.
It’s a compelling study in contrasts of land use and passenger demand. Metro LA has such a huge and dispersed area to serve, so the extensive network of commuter rail (infrequent, rush-hour-oriented service with long distances between stops) makes sense for covering LA, Orange, Riverside and Ventura Counties. This network is far more extensive than commuter rail in the Bay Area. However, LA’s commuter rail is not as intensely used as the Bay Area’s. Caltrain ridership alone on its one line exceeds the ridership on all LA commuter rail lines put together (at least pre-COVID), indicating how much more intensely used Caltrain is. In contrast, LA has a farther-reaching but less heavily-used network. A similar observation about the ridership contrasts of the heavy-rail systems (pre COVID): LA MTA’s red and purple lines compared with BART. Or the Muni Metro light rail/streetcar lines compared with LA’s light rail. In the end, LA’s land use and street patterns is still evolving to adapt to pedestrian-scaled, transit orientation such that it is more than a commuter system and becomes a round-the-clock lifestyle system, used weekends, midday and evening as well as during rush hour. Whereas in San Francisco (and Oakland and Berkeley) the land uses and streets have historically been oriented for pedestrians and transit, and some lines are just as crowded on weekends as during rush hour. That might also explain the higher proportion of transit riders, the higher number of households without cars, and the lower parking requirements for development in those core Bay Area cities than in the core cities (LA, Long Beach, Santa Monica, etc) of the LA Area. To me, that’s the crux of LA’s identity as a “car centric” city, especially compared to SF or Boston or DC or Chicago. Nevertheless, LA is certainly more transit-dependent and less car-centric, say, than Houston, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis, San Diego, Detroit and Phoenix...and San Jose. LA is indeed more transit-centric than many large American cities, and as the metro and light rail evolution and expansions continue, the remarkable progress LA has made in linking its expanding transit network to its land use will pay off in ridership gains and lifestyle adaptation.
Well for some stupid reason he left off the entire big BART system.im sure those riders would find it hilarious to be told they aren't 'commuters' in the Bay area.
And so it begins... the Bay Area here. Two different, separate subway lines... so weird. That's BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and Muni (San Francisco Municipal Rail), but surely I'm speaking to the choir here, you guys know what's up.
It not really that weird, the New York area has two. PATH and the New York City subway that perform similar functions as Muni's light rail lines and BART.
Bart Subway Extension From Milbrae To San Mateo Redwood City Palo Alto and Santa Clara via Peninsula and To Richmond and Sunset District and Ocean Beach via Fulton and Geary and Great Highway
Why? BART costs $800 million per mile to construct, and even the SFO extension carries so few people that it costs BART nearly $100 per passenger brought to/from SFO.
I know you might not want to include them because they are affiliated with Amtrak, but the Capitol Corridor (15 times per day) and the Amtrak San Joaquins are both important parts of our network. Really enjoy your videos!
Yeah, I would consider them commuter trains as well
I’ll third that; they are effectively part of our local transit system, even if they’re controlled by the state (unlike everywhere else in the Bay Area)
They're particularly relevant to this video because they also connect to Stockton, and down to San José. It would be worth mentioning the coach connection from Emeryville across the Bay Bridge into the City.
I agree the Capitol Corridor should have been included. A friend of mine used to commute from the Richmond Station to Sacramento daily for several years in the 1990's. I hope if and when Zack does a segment on BART, Muni, and VTA he discusses the cable cars.
@@LuckyFlanker13 they're not controlled by the State anymore. Rather, both are under control of local JPAs for several years now and San Joaquins is actually controlled by the same agency that controls ACE.
Just an interesting fact: Caltrain is the longest-running passenger rail line west of Chicago. It began service in 1863 as the Peninsula Commute, a passenger service run by Southern Pacific from SF to SJ. In 1977, Southern Pacific announced that they would be discontinuing Peninsula Commute due to a lack of funding, but the state stepped in and continued funding it. In 1980, they rebranded it as Caltrain, and transferred the operating rights from Southern Pacific to Amtrak, and it's been that way to this day.
it's not under Amtrak anymore, it's controlled by a local JPA.
It actually wasn't built by SP, it was build by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad. The majority of the funding came from three counties it ran through.
I feel like not including the Capitol Corridor and to a lesser extent San Joaquins is a mistake, as both routes are state funded, use commuter style trains, and run a lot daily.
I would say the main reason to not include them is they aren't meant to be commuter trains, but intercity trains. Pretty much every commuter line is under 100 miles, the Capitol is 180 miles and the other two Amtrak "California" lines are longer.
Capitol Corridor is very much meant to a be commuter train. The portion in the Bay Area proper is the East Bay equivalent of the peninsula line and even the majority of the riders between the bay and Sacramento are commuters.
@@thetrainhopper8992 The Capitol Corridor absolutely is a commuter rail servive. It uses commuter train rolling stock, some of it identical to Caltrain's trainsets. It travels a relatively short distance and is extremely frequent. Now they even have contactless payment like Caltrain. The vast majority of the CC's ridership comes from commuters. The CC is basically Caltrain ten years ago in almost every way.
The San Joaquins is indeed more of an intercity. A lot of people use it to commute too, believe it or not, but it's definitely less commuter than Caltrain and the Capitol Corridor.
5:30 When Caltrain extends to Salinas, they also plan to add a station at Watsonville.
Commuter rail on this route began over a century ago with the Southern Pacific railroad. I was really hoping that you would include information on that very long and important segment of the route's history.
I live in the Bay Area and I didn’t even know ACE was adding a new line
No VTA light rail? It connects to a lot of the commuter rail stations in the San Jose area
Separate video, coming later this month
@@VanishingUnderground As a SJ resident, I can confidently say that (at least the southern portion) of the system is hot garbage, or at least poorly planned. Of course, this could just be the disappointed local transit fan in me speaking.
@@LuckyFlanker13 Unfortunately the SF Bay Area as a whole is a hot mess. We have too many separate local transit agencies (27 official) that offer poor interconnectivity. Although they are working together through MTC, I think there should be greater consolidation.
www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/transitagencieslist
@@gensao other than a few billion bucks to tunnel or take two lanes off the golden gate bridge, hitting sfo before going across the San Mateo bridge, the systems do take you where you want to go, just takes forever to get there.
It would be great if they would take the SMART trains and bring it on the Richmond bridge allowing the trains to access/merge into the BART tracks allowing service all the way from Sonoma to San Francisco's new transbay terminal. It's great to see that Caltrain will start service to Salinas and while they're at it maybe we could see an extension from San Francisco to Santa Cruz with Monterey and Carmel included either with Caltrain and/or BART.
SMART trains are totally incompatible with BART tracks. They're diesel, they're mainline trains, they're the wrong track gauge, the wrong loading gauge and don't have the required signaling systems.
A extension to Santa Cruz would be notoriously hard to build not because of the environment issues in that area, but the San Andreas runs right on through the mountains there. However! They are talking about building a small little light rail line that will go north to south from Monterey to Santa Cruz and also connect with Salinas to allow passengers to connect to the commuter trains and or buses.
The loads presented by the locomotives and passenger cars are simply too much for the Richmond - San Rafael Bridge to safely bear. It will be necessary to build a brand new bridge or tunnel to accommodate the SMART trains.
Extending BART out Geary Street, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and up to Larkspur to interface with SMART is much more doable and can be built during or immediately after building a second BART / Caltrain transbay tube.
@@TheCloakedTiger There's actually an existing rail right of way between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz but much of it was demolished in the early 20th century to prevent it from being rebuilt. Most of it is still inact though and the bridges could be rebuilt and the dynamited tunnels (yes they really blew up perfectly good tunnels) could be rebored.
It's a bit roundabout but you could also do service to Santa Cruz via Castroville. While a don't think anyone would use it to get to/from San Jose, it could be part of the Caltrain network expansion between Gilroy, Salinas and Monterey. It would be a great way to get to Santa Cruz from all those places. Much of the old right of way has already been purchased by Santa Cruz, but of course there are the normal arguments about whether it should just be a bike path or light rail or something else.
@@TheCloakedTiger There's actually a right-of-way into Santa Cruz, and they had a SF-Santa Cruz train operating in 1907.
hope fully the Dumbarton rail bridge gets rebuilt & trains use it again
I'm from the SF Bay Area so I enjoyed the video. The upcoming electrification is exciting. But I wonder if, post-pandemic, ridership will return. A lot of people want to continue teleworking. Could you either reduce the volume of the new background music or go back to the old music? Thank you.
You missed the northern extension of Caltrain to the Salesforce transit center in downtown San Francisco. it happened along with construction of CAHSR!
Yeah, that’s key to the future connection to BART and Muni Metro. I believe it’s still slated for 2026.
He only includes funded stations. The Salesforce extension currently has no funding and not even confirmed routing. Wouldn’t surprise me if CalTrain doesn’t get there until the next transit center is built.
@@peteralbert1485 It's already connected to Muni Metro @ 4th and King. T and N lines connect at a horribly designed intersection. I'm hoping when they finally get to tunneling and replacing 4th and King with an underground station, they reconfigure that freeway on/off ramp. It's a nightmare watching dozens of people cross a busy 4-way intersection with some cars going speeds up to 60mph. It's also easy to miss your connection waiting for the signals to turn. I've had that happen many times.
0:23
UP EXPRESS: there is an imposter among us
1 wish you mentioned the evolution of both the Baby Bullet and skip-stop Rush hour services on CalTrain.
2. Also in CalTrain, Broadway and Atherton saw service only on weekends, and College Park only saw one train per day each way.
I love and enjoy your videos. I can't get enough of them. Please promise you'll continue.
Can't wait for the newly electrified Caltrain service! I'll get to try it next time i visit the area in November.
With the electrification of Caltrain, new rail cars will be introduced. They'll be modern looking to go with the new electric locomotives. Hopefully the ride will also improve. Riding Caltrain now can be a bumpy and noisy experience.
IIRC, Caltrain will be using stadler KISS EMUs, not locomotives. They will retire the F40PHs and nippon sharyo gallery cars, but keep the MP36PHs and Bombardier bilevels because the tracks from Tamien to Gilroy/Salinas are not electrified, since few trains extend south of Tamien.
My understanding is that CalTrain owns the tracks north of Diridon, and Union Pacific south of Diridon, so CalTrain can only electrify to Diridon
@@fatviscount6562 not diridon, but tamien station
Please do the DFW Metroplex soon.
I would say Amtrak Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin are both commuter rail lines.
Agreed. Especially since the author included Sacramento and Stockton as part of the plan. I would overlay BART at the end and provide a link to their video on BART.
Can you please do Chicago’s “L” and commuter rail ( metra ) networks !!
After San Francisco please do Portland Oregon
So is Sonoma County the Staten Island of the Bay Area?
I love your videos keep up the great work
Something is off with the compression on this video. There are parts of the water edge and the line which are flickering every few seconds.
Definitely we are light years to have a better train-metro-light rail infrastructure, we are so behind compared to European or Asian cities
True. Growing up in the Bay Area in the '60s and '70s, I often made that remark to others. Although significant progress has occurred over the last 50 years, the overall quality of public transport in the Bay Area is far behind that of the Netherlands where I live.
Amtrak Pacific Surfliner Extension North To San Jose and San Francisco Stops:San Luis Obispo,Paso Robles,King City/Soledad,Salinas Castroville,Pajaro Dunes,Gilroy,Morgan Hill,Tamien San Jose Diridon,Santa Clara,Sunnyvale,Mountain View,Palo Alto,Redwood City,San Mateo Hillsdale,Downtown San Mateo, Millbrae and San Francisco, San Francisco Transit Center.
👏
The map scale is REALLY off between Fremont and Pleasanton and stops east -- Stockton is in the Central Valley.
Atherton closed because the area is mostly rich people who would never be caught dead on public transit. They drive to work in their Teslas and Bentleys and Lambos.
Will you show the on-street sections for Muni? Will eBART and the main yellow line be distinguished?
When I lived in San Francisco from 2004 to 2006, Caltrain sucked big time due to the cramped seating and harsh ride, especially those Baby Bullet trains. I never forgot the shocking response from the conductor while the wagon was shaking and heaving at 70-75 mph: "it's because of deferred maintenance to the tracks. We simply don't have enough money for the upkeeping."
great video! i take caltrain to work most days-I remember when Atherton station closed a few months ago but I didn't realize it was part of a longer trend of pruning the least-used stops from the line-interesting! thank you for this video, keep up the great work!
It was also closed because of CalMod, eventual CAHSR, and rich NIMBYs
Tbh what a joke of a system. Trains run in only one direction morning/ afternoon? Hardly conducive to increasing ridership.
Compare and contrast connectivity of the DFW consolidated metro are to the Baltimore -Washington consolidated metro area the San Francisco- Oakland -San Jose consolidated metro areas.
Can’t wait for electrification of Caltrain
Metro North
I love your videos. What software do you use to make the maps?
I thought this was Metra because of the thumbnail
Commuter rail Netwerk Evolution of Amtrak California can you do a video on That
You forgot north Petaluma station being added
There was probably no opening date.
Yep, not funded and no construction I think.
Great voice Zach.
I often used CalTrain when I would go to Menlo Park. Thank you for this video. I am glad my options have increased to include not just San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland airports but now also Sonoma County.
Sadly SMART is an oxymoron: while its Larkspur Terminus is a short walk to the ferry, the trains are not timed to connect to the ferry, sometimes arriving 5 minutes after the ferry departs, and the north bound trains depart just before the ferry arrives. For commuting between Sonoma and SF, Golden Gate buses has been doing a decent job for decades, and remains more practical than SMART.
@@fatviscount6562 talk about a grand error
Nice video as always. I guess this means you're going to do a video covering BART (if you haven't already)?
great video
salinas is an of mice and men reference
WHOA IS THAT RIGHT ✅ TO SAN MATEO
Caltrain is my favorite commuter rail in the West Coast!
Isn't Caltrain the only decent commuter rail on the west coast?
@@RipCityBassWorks Well there are other good ones!
@@RipCityBassWorks Metrolink, in the Los Angeles area, is more extensive. Unfortunately much of the system doesn't have frequent service, and I know of no plans to electrify any of it. The current passenger cars, though, are fairly nice. Maybe not the best, but better than nothing.
@@RipCityBassWorks ace is pretty good too, along with coaster, especially ace being faster than car when it comes to the congested i-580 highway
After all the lines were covered, my first thought was 'wait, that's it?'. It's interesting that even though Los Angeles is the definition of a car-centric metro area, they have a better commuter network than San Francisco
this doesn't include BART, which is more like an S-Bahn than "commuter" rail, nor does it include the light rail systems (2 of them) or the Amtrak service, which is 2 lines serving Sacramento and the nearby San Joaquin valley. This is only a fraction of the Bay Area system, which is much larger than LA.
It’s also worth noting that the Bay Area’s system is much higher quality and provides better service than that of LA
@@randomcontentgenerator2331 I find that questionable. While San Francisco proper has some decent transit, compared to the bay area the LA area as a whole has much more extensive coverage backed up by a solid bus network (in normal times). If they could update the frequency of Metrolink via electrification and added tracks, it would put BART to shame. As far as core area service goes, the LA metro does a fine job. Not as dense as Muni but LA has a lot more ground to cover. It DEFINITELY puts VTA light rail to shame, which suffers from abysmal speeds and terrible alignments. VTA light rail is arguably the worst light rail system of its size in the country.
It’s a compelling study in contrasts of land use and passenger demand. Metro LA has such a huge and dispersed area to serve, so the extensive network of commuter rail (infrequent, rush-hour-oriented service with long distances between stops) makes sense for covering LA, Orange, Riverside and Ventura Counties. This network is far more extensive than commuter rail in the Bay Area.
However, LA’s commuter rail is not as intensely used as the Bay Area’s. Caltrain ridership alone on its one line exceeds the ridership on all LA commuter rail lines put together (at least pre-COVID), indicating how much more intensely used Caltrain is. In contrast, LA has a farther-reaching but less heavily-used network.
A similar observation about the ridership contrasts of the heavy-rail systems (pre COVID): LA MTA’s red and purple lines compared with BART.
Or the Muni Metro light rail/streetcar lines compared with LA’s light rail.
In the end, LA’s land use and street patterns is still evolving to adapt to pedestrian-scaled, transit orientation such that it is more than a commuter system and becomes a round-the-clock lifestyle system, used weekends, midday and evening as well as during rush hour. Whereas in San Francisco (and Oakland and Berkeley) the land uses and streets have historically been oriented for pedestrians and transit, and some lines are just as crowded on weekends as during rush hour.
That might also explain the higher proportion of transit riders, the higher number of households without cars, and the lower parking requirements for development in those core Bay Area cities than in the core cities (LA, Long Beach, Santa Monica, etc) of the LA Area.
To me, that’s the crux of LA’s identity as a “car centric” city, especially compared to SF or Boston or DC or Chicago. Nevertheless, LA is certainly more transit-dependent and less car-centric, say, than Houston, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis, San Diego, Detroit and Phoenix...and San Jose.
LA is indeed more transit-centric than many large American cities, and as the metro and light rail evolution and expansions continue, the remarkable progress LA has made in linking its expanding transit network to its land use will pay off in ridership gains and lifestyle adaptation.
Well for some stupid reason he left off the entire big BART system.im sure those riders would find it hilarious to be told they aren't 'commuters' in the Bay area.
That is basically the commuter rail network of the Bay Area.
🚆🌁🌉🇺🇸
Huh. Caltrain to Salinas is back on the table.
Try Doing Evolution Of The Music City Star
And so it begins... the Bay Area here.
Two different, separate subway lines... so weird.
That's BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and Muni (San Francisco Municipal Rail), but surely I'm speaking to the choir here, you guys know what's up.
It not really that weird, the New York area has two. PATH and the New York City subway that perform similar functions as Muni's light rail lines and BART.
I consider ebart as commuter rail.
Hey vanishing underground can you do New York subway system evolution but keep up good work with your video’s man
That will be last
Some UA-camr called Metro Liner did that.
Yay! New video!
This is so Adorable
Bart Subway Extension From Milbrae To San Mateo Redwood City Palo Alto and Santa Clara via Peninsula and To Richmond and Sunset District and Ocean Beach via Fulton and Geary and Great Highway
Do More The Bart Subway Future Fantasy and Dream Extensions Please
Why? BART costs $800 million per mile to construct, and even the SFO extension carries so few people that it costs BART nearly $100 per passenger brought to/from SFO.
Do Chicago
Makeup video on Chicago system
There was never a vid on Chicago