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Caltrain Shows How Poorly Prepared They Are, Again

Mark Twain once wrote “A classic is something everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read.” Mass Transit is much like this. Everyone wants to have it, but most people don’t want to have to ride it. So I sympathize with Caltrain, and the inherent problems they face.

That said, Caltrain is perhaps one of the worst-run public transit agencies I’ve ever seen. I want it to work, I do, but that doesn’t mean we should continue to turn a blind eye to its problems just because we want it to be there.

Sunday was a huge example of their problems. Two things happened after Sunday’s baseball game.

1.) Caltrain usually has two ‘specials’ waiting after the game. One skips to San Carlos, and leaves first, while the other makes all local stops. On Sunday, however, when you went to the train station, the local train was loading. The San Carlos train was not. Why? Because it hadn’t even arrived.

The train didn’t even arrive at the station until after the express was supposed to leave. Meanwhile, eight other trains (including the local which was ready to be used) sat on the other platforms, for some reason apparently not able to be used.

Now, I won’t ask for justifications on why they weren’t ready to use. I’m sure there are legitimate reasons why they couldn’t switch them at a moment’s notice. My question is, why are they counting on an arriving train to turn around fast rather than being prepared in advanced with a train waiting in the station in the first place? With all the things that can delay a train or shorten a game already in place, why is this transit agency apparently planning for the best possible scenario rather than the many reasonable problems that could occur?

2.) Both when arriving and waiting for this ‘special’ train, the doors to the platform were effectively blocked in by scores of people waiting for the train. Offloading people in both cases were a torturously slow process with a lot of shoving.

So, Caltrain, why is it in your decades of operation, you haven’t mastered use of a line?

Seriously, in all the time I’ve ridden Caltrain, the only time I’ve seen a line is when the riders make it themselves. Despite many days where riders are left waiting in crowds, both on gamedays and for regular riders, they’ve never had anyone out to help with crowd control. When the doors finally open, it becomes a mad rush to the two sets of doors. Seeing my father and his girlfriend, both over the age of 70, caught in this shoving rush of humanity scares me. A lot.

And Caltrain literally seems to be ignoring it. Not only were there no stanchions to create lines, there were no Caltrain employees around for crowd control, despite nearly a dozen people standing around doing literally nothing on the other side of the glass while waiting for the ‘special’ train to arrive. I didn’t even see anyone in the customer service booths. The only Caltrain employee I saw on our side of the glass doors was one who had to be begged over to help a wheelchair-bound rider to the doors to get on the train.

Now, Sunday was no normal day. I’m sure some might say I shouldn’t judge Caltrain on a day that had both a Giants game and Bay to Breakers. I say that I should judge it more on these days than any other. These are not things that happened on a moment’s notice. Caltrain knew both were occurring on this day months in advance. This is a day many non-regular riders get a rare exposure to Caltrain. They should be prepared and putting their best foot forward to get more riders, not treating it like any other day.

Look, I want Caltrain to work. Whenever I go to a sporting event in Oakland, I insist on taking BART if it is possible (take note, San Jose stadium advocates). But the lack of preparedness and customer service is ridiculous. And for the Giants, it’s more important than ever that Caltrain work. At a time the Giants are trying to strengthen their link with San Jose, the most obvious physical link for Giants fans in the south bay to AT&T Park is failing them, and now threatening to cut weeknight and weekend service. If the Giants want their claim on San Jose to stick, Caltrain is giving their critics a very real sticking point.

At this point, I’m afraid the best hope is for Caltrain to go bankrupt completely, and have someone (the state? High-speed rail?) come in and take it over. I’ve been hearing promises for years with nothing. Hopefully a new management team could start running it with at least some level of intelligence and preparedness. I’m to the point where I’m rooting for that to happen.

In the meantime, unless I have to, I’m driving to games. It’s about the same price as a train for two, it’s faster, it’s more convenient, and it’s just better.

Prove me wrong, Caltrain.

This FanPost is reader-generated, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of McCovey Chronicles. If the author uses filler to achieve the minimum word requirement, a moderator may edit the FanPost for his or her own amusement.

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