Why passengers shun SFO-BART connection
I have read a number of reports, including
one on the Mercury News (Page 1, 2004 July 04),
expressing concern about the low ridership on the BART extension to
San Francisco International Airport. Based on a few personal
attempts to use it, I find this unsurprising. It reflects on BART
and Caltrain management, but not on the need or demand for public
transportation in the Bay Area.
From what I saw, the actual BART trains work well. But the details
beyond that seem to be designed to discourage ridership.
Arriving airline passengers need to buy a ticket from a machine
which gave me $3.50 in nickels in change, after finally figuring out
how to get change at all. Passengers are then made to wait for a
BART train which, in my experience, is timed to just miss the
Caltrain connection. During some popular arrival times this can be
followed by a lengthy wait for Caltrain, after buying another
ticket. And I couldn't even find the schedule posted at the airport.
I'm happy to see a BART connection to the airport. But the
unpredictable schedule and ticketing system are making the system
unusable.
Hans-J. Boehm
Palo Alto
Published Saturday, July 10, 2004, in the San Jose Mercury News
Letters to the Editor
Ref.: [BATN]
Save the Century has its own website.
Previously: Save the Century Building, part 1.
Erik Stowers, 31, the political action group's one full-time employee, who works
at its headquarters on North 11th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said that the
group's research indicates about 85 percent of its contributors have never given
to any candidate or party before.
"It backs up our suspicions that you have this huge class of people who work in
culture and information industries that are driving our economy, who are liberal
culturally, but they really weren't doing very much," Mr. Stowers said. "A lot of
people have worked on the environment or gay rights, and those things are
important. But unlike the Christian right, which tends to focus on winning
elections, liberals have tended to place their energies into issue advocacy and
have not directly engaged in elections. It's a famous quote that `the left won the
culture wars, the right won the elections.' "
-- on Downtown For Democracy
NYT.