{"id":2079,"date":"2004-06-08T10:16:02","date_gmt":"2004-06-08T17:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/06\/08\/2079.html"},"modified":"2004-06-08T10:16:02","modified_gmt":"2004-06-08T17:16:02","slug":"caltrain-commuting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/06\/08\/caltrain-commuting\/","title":{"rendered":"CalTrain commuting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As of this week, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.caltrain.com\/\">CalTrain<\/a> has instituted new service: it features \"baby bullet\" trains that skip most of the stops on the route (though they don't actually go at a higher top speed than other trains), as well as new more frequent express trains that skip some of the stops.<\/p>\n<p>As one of my co-workers predicted, though, the fact that more (and shorter-travel-time) trains stop at fewer stops means that more people are coming to the few stations where the express trains and baby bullets do stop.<\/p>\n<p>So here's how my morning commute went on Monday:<\/p>\n<p>Leave house at 8:30 (half an hour earlier than I did on the old schedule) to provide a little extra time for adapting to new schedule.<\/p>\n<p>Arrive at train station around 8:45.<\/p>\n<p>Drive around parking lot looking for parking space until 8:50.  (About a third of the lot is usually empty, but on Monday there wasn't a single open space.)<\/p>\n<p>Decide to park across the street.  Discover that all on-street parking within several blocks of the station is either 2-hour parking or 5-hour parking.  Do quick calculation; determine need for 10-hour parking.<\/p>\n<p>Finally find non-time-limited space about 8:57.  Park.  Leap out of car.  Begin running.  (Train is due at 8:58.)<\/p>\n<p>Run the three blocks or so to the station.  Arrive just as train pulls out.<\/p>\n<p>Wait 25+ minutes for next train (which isn't an express).  Call CalTrain to express unhappiness about lack of parking (especially since I bought a monthly parking pass that now looks like it may be worthless).  Get no sympathy at all, and a statement that since this is the first day, of course it's extra-crowded, and that I can solve the problem by getting to the station earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Arrive work around 11:00.<\/p>\n<p>So on the first day of the extra-fast train service, it took me two and a half hours to get to work instead of the usual two.  I can't say I'm impressed so far.<\/p>\n<p>This morning (Tuesday), parking lot still full, but this time I left home earlier, and didn't waste as much time looking for parking; after I saw the lot was full, I drove straight to the nonrestricted street parking.  Of course, today the express train was late.  (But, to be fair, only about four minutes late; no surprise, second day of a new schedule.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As of this week, CalTrain has instituted new service: it features &#8220;baby bullet&#8221; trains that skip most of the stops&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}