Best way to make it to SF from Santa Clara
 

Ok, I'm venting ... just slightly here.

Saturday, I realize the easiest way to get to the Oddball ride is to ride to Caltrain, and take Caltrain to the end. It's only 1 block from AT&T park. So I took Caltrain from Lawrence with a final destination of 4th and King St in SF. The far was $7.50. So round trip is $13.

Today, I did Pete's ride, but this time, I took Bart for two reasons ... First, the ride start is 1 block from the Embarcadero stop on Bart. Second, I had some money left on my Bart ticket (~ $10.50), so I might as well use it.

After I completed my roundtrip on Bart, I had enough on my Bart ticket. I do have to mention that I took Bart from the Millbrae station, so it does require me to drive from Santa Clara to Millbrae. I guess that's cheating a little bit.

Another reason for taking Bart ... it has more frequent departure times.

BART departs more frequently, but not as reliably. You can set your watch by Caltrain. Unfortunately for you you are taking it on the weekend, on weekdays Caltrain has 5 departures an hour during rush hour and service on the half hour off peak, and most of the trains are some form of bullet train. I can get from Mountain View to downtown SF in 44 minutes, BART from *Millbrae* to Embarcadero takes 35.

Join the chorus asking Caltrain to expand weekend service, by using Caltrain on the weekend. BART can't really expand service any more without huge outlays, Caltrain can.

And you can save time by eating your breakfast on Caltrain, snack on a powerbar on BART and you risk a $250 ticket.

Your monetary comparison is completely skewed. $8 Round trip Millbrae to Embarcadero, plus $10 in gas round trip, at least. If you were driving to Lawrence for Caltrain you could have just driven to Sunnyvale, had one less zone, and the day pass would have been $11.50.

A lot of people complain that we need more capacity for bikes on Caltrain, I agree, but Caltrain has done pretty well by bikers. BART on the other hand definitely treats us as a pain in the ass they sort of deal with.

I'd be nice if all cars got 50mpg like your Prius.

I still have a clunky '94 Pathfinder, best case 19-20mpg so for me, 4 gallons round trip from Santa Clara (if I lived there) at $4.00/gal = Caltrain is still better $$-wise and carbon-footprint-wise.

I just saw a show that had a car from Volvo called the "Recharge", a plug-in hybrid with a 60-mile range before the gas engine runs to recharge the batteries only. I'm going to get a car like that when it becomes available and affordable.

I was being conservative in my analysis - I find it best for the argument to win worst case.

My car gets zero miles per zero gallons. I suppose that's infinite miles per gallon.

I had the same choice this weekend, BART vs. Caltrain. I had a different motivation for choosing BART though, it is 20 miles round trip from Foster City riding to BART and about 1 mile round trip to Caltrain. Figured I could get in some extra riding that way.

It would be a lot different if I were going from Santa Clara though!

I might be losing my second pad up in SF if my mother moves to Reno to be closer to my sister. If that happens well... Ron we can get in our century a week challenge riding up to the city to get to the start of rides.