Caltrain — Blog — Healy Chen

It can be done!

This past Saturday I needed to get down to San Jose from where I am at in San Francisco. A 50 odd mile trip that would take about an hour by car. But I couldn’t do the drive. You see I was heading down to San Jose to buy a car. That meant I couldn’t arrive with a vehicle, lest I call a friend to come with. Hashtag lonely driver.

The Bay Area isn’t metropolitan Asia, but the public transportation infrastructure around here is reasonably passable. I wouldn’t rely on it to get you to work at a specific time (if you can avoid it), but for the odd getting around on the weekends at a leisurely pace, it’s quite alright.

So I hatched a plan to get down to San Jose using purely public transportation. First I took a bus to the nearest BART station (the regional subway network, for those of you unfamiliar). I then took the subway southbound to Millbrae, a transfer point to Caltrain. I took the local train for the majority of the miles down to San Jose, then transferred again to the local light rail (VTA) for the final leg to the dealership. In total, the trip took two and half hours door to door.

What do you think? I reckon that’s a decent time for a 50+ mile trip using public transportation. The fares in total for the single way trip was about $18. Compared that to hailing a ride-share: Lyft quoted me $75 for the same distance, plus tip. No thank you.

I think we are fortunate to live in a region where such a trip is even possible, sans private car. On weekends when you are not under any time pressure, it might even be more enjoyable than driving. The views on the train down to San Jose were rather interesting!

Took the midnight train

San Francisco Bay Area folks: did you attend the Taylor Swift concert at Levi’s Stadium? I sure didn’t, because who can afford the thousand dollar get-in price on the secondary market? You’d have a better chance of hitting the billion dollar Mega Millions jackpot than acquiring tickets through official channels.

Nevertheless, a friend of my friend did manage to score Taylor Swift tickets, and my friend got invited to join. The logistics of getting down to Santa Clara from San Francisco is, in a word, challenging. Nobody in their right mind would drive, unless you plan to get there super early. So public transport it is. My friend rode the BART train to Milpitas, then took the local VTA light rail to the stadium. So far, so straight forward.

Leaving the stadium, however, was apparently quite the nightmare. The concert did not end until 11:40 PM (Taylor really gives your money’s worth: a three hour plus jam-packed show). VTA trains were running after hour to ferry folks to either the Milpitas BART station, or the Mountain View Caltrain station. BART was not an option for my friend, as the special late-night train did not go all the way to San Francisco. So Caltrain it is.

Unfortunately, there’s but one special train heading northbound to San Francisco. It was scheduled to depart 75 minutes after the concert ends. That proved to be hugely optimistic. Due to the sheer number of people, my friend didn’t even get to Mountain View station until 1:45 AM - two hours after the show ended. At that point, the lone train was still there, looking less than half full, awaiting more passengers before departed. Our guess is it wouldn’t depart until after 3:00 PM at the earliest.

Lucky for my friend, I was there at the station to pick her up. What the heck did people do before the invention of cellphones? The peace of mind afforded by modern communication is really appreciated in situations like this.