March 16, 2005
Full of beans in sun-shine like this.
Aram and I hung out at the café this morning and discussed our respective vices: coffee, wine, and fixies. Of the hundred or so bicycles that rolled past the interesection of Waller and Steiner, more than a quarter were fixies, old road-bike conversions and track frames alike. Nuts. The only cyclists who came to a complete stop were two girls riding matching yellow hybrid frames.
I'm quite excited that Caltrain has proposed to cut the number of stations it serves, and accompany this with a radical shift in the local/limited train design. From the preliminary proposal, they are responding to the ridership patterns shown and to requests from passengers ("more express trains"). Furthermore, they are taking the sensible approach of reducing service where it is least cost-effective and where it will affect the fewest riders (how many trains still stop at Paul Ave., anyway?). One note of caution: they are quietly considering elimination of weekend service in order to bring the agency out of its increasing deficit.
The community meeting will be next Thursday, 23 March, at City Hall; the public hearings will follow a week later.
Caltrain is one of the few local transit agencies to responsibly deal with its ridership: it provides great facilities for cyclists on- and off- the train, offers rapid connections during peak hours, and tries really hard to keep facilities clean and functional (no, I'm not talking about the chain sandwich shop that opened in the 4th and King Station a few weeks ago).
