Joy was coming back from Sacramento on Caltrain, arriving at the Great America station in Santa Clara. I was to pick her up.
Well, OK. Ought to be rather less than a 10-minute drive.
Check Google Maps for details, and directions. Directions are for mass transit, taking... 43 minutes? Hello?
OK, so I figure out how to get driving directions, on a route that I like, with a more reasonable time to get there. There's a funny maneuver to get turned around off Tasman and onto Lafayette, and the station's right there.
Well, it is. But there's no place to park for the station on Lafayette, which makes the directions rather less than useful.
And so I get myself turned back around, and coming the other way on Lafayette, and back onto Tasman, and eventually onto that Stars and Stripes thing that actually connects to the station. If I look very closely, there's even a small sign for the train station.
Now, the only actual train-station parking is two handicapped spaces, but there is a modest amount of parking along the road, away from the station. Not a totally unreasonable walking distance for me, but I expect there are plenty of people who don't qualify for the handicapped spaces (which in any case were both full) who'd have trouble, especially if they were carrying luggage. Yeah, I know: you're not supposed to park there. You're supposed to transfer to a bus, which runs on a completely unrelated schedule.
Guys? Trotsky's vision of mass transportation was meant to be liberating. Not cumbersome and constraining.
Oh, and while I was waiting, I looked at the signs. Including the fares. Costs less to drive the Prius, which doubles as local transportation.
But the train did arrive exactly on time, which I guess means Jerry Brown is Mussolini.
The tricky part is that Mussolini didn't actually make the trains run on time. He just made it a bad idea to point it out.
Posted by: Jeff Bell | Wednesday, 08 January 2014 at 13:28
Well, yes, if you're going to insist on historical accuracy... but that makes ranting less fun.
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Wednesday, 08 January 2014 at 13:44