Re: Evelyn Station - Please consider showing a map to help identify where the station is. This would be helpful for many of your stories.

Thanks

Mr. PC, let me introduce you to Mrs. Google Maps. She helps in lots of ways.

Mr.PC's right, include map to show the location in question would help ease conversation. sure, we can all Google but a little step on the side of the author would save a lot more readers efforts and make it easier to participate.

Why didn't they do the necessary upgrade in conjunction with the building of Levi Stadium? It's going to be a cluster-you-know-what now!

Wouldn't closing this station just overload the end of the line even more, which is downtown MV, where fear of overwhelming crowds is already prompting parking time limits and charges?

Does anyone know why Light Rail was single-tracked into downtown in the first place?

Evelyn Station may be close to Whisman by tram, but how close is it by other means: walking, bike, car, bus? For starters, how are we expected to get across the Caltrain tracks and Central Expressway?

Here's Google's way: Web Link

@Linda Curtis - "Wouldn't closing this station just overload the end of the line even more, which is downtown MV, where fear of overwhelming crowds is already prompting parking time limits and charges?"

That may be somewhat true on Levi's Stadium event days - although from Google Maps it looks like the Evelyn station parking lot only holds maybe 150 or 175 cars, which wouldn't do much to ease the crunch downtown. But keep in mind that big events that will fill up Levi's stadium will only occur maybe 20 or 25 days a year. The other 340 days, light rail will be doing its usual thing and Evelyn will be a ghost town. If you kept Evelyn open and couldn't add the extra track, on those other 340 days people would continue to be inconvenienced by slow or unreliable trains.

If you've ever been on light rail heading into MV to catch Caltrain and had to wait while a train in the opposite direction came through, you know how much this is needed. The question comes down to: should we keep Evelyn open for the 25 days at the expense of the 340? Light rail may be slow now, but I think VTA is doing the right thing here in trying to improve it.

Simple - put a bike share kiosk at the Evelyn lot. It's probably faster to ride from the parking lot to downtown than it is to walk from the lot to the Evelyn station, let alone wait for the train, take the train, and exit from the MV station.

I work near MIddlefield station and I get caught by the light rail single track bottleneck regularly. Reliability has been TERRIBLE lately. Sometimes I miss my Caltrain connection while we sit at Whisman waiting for the Winchester train to clear the single track.

However, it is not easy to walk from Whisman to downtown Mountain View. For those who live near there, it is going to be a hit. Ridership numbers are pretty low, though. Sometimes you have to inconvenience 100 people to make the system work better for the others.

Bike share is an interesting idea. I would bike share a lot if there were one near my office.

@John Murphy -

There is a bike share kiosk at the Evelyn parking lot right now. See the map of Bay Area Bike Share locations here: Web Link

That would be the station between 85 and Whisman rd., right? Well, access is very poor for that station. If you want it to get used more, then put a tunnel starting at the end of ADA avenue that runs under the expressway and tracks so folks can get to it, just as one does at the San Antonio Caltrain station. The other side of Central Expressway, directly across from the Evelyn station, is where all the people are.!

One more thing...the though of Central Expressway traffic being blocked every 7 minutes by slow-moving electic trains instead of every 15 really disturbs me. Traffic gets heavy enough in that area as it is during commute hours If trains are going to cross it that often, then I hope a tunnel under said roadway for the train is in the plans.

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