I support James Kempf's informed praise of Caltrain, one of the more effective of the Bay Area crazy-quilt of major public-transit systems. But I tripped on the obviously well-meaning sentence "It's about time transportation policymakers wake up and realize how valuable [Caltrain] could be if there was only some decent investment in it."

Of course the spirit of that wish is undeniable. But unlike Germany and Sweden (or Austria, France, Hong Kong, or many other places with strong comprehensive public-transit facilities and planning), the Bay Area really has no substantive, region-wide "transportation policymakers" and never did. Instead, there's a patchwork of Balkan-style fiefdoms, each focused inward, jealously using or abusing whatever funding it can scrounge. There are celebrations and press releases when a new ticketing scheme arrives that actually works across multiple transit agencies -- as if that were some marvelous innovation, rather than tardy retrofit of capabilities that would have been built in from the start, elsewhere.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BARTD) of the 1950s was promoted as a regional rail planning agency on the European model, but unlike international counterparts it lacked real (fund-raising) authority, and had to approach counties and even cities separately for money. When San Mateo County refused to buy in, BART down the Peninsula was quashed; instead of a five- or six-county bay-ringing system, we got a tire-iron of perpendicular routes crossing in Oakland. Thankfully the rail line now called Caltrain had long been in place, and has partly made up for the Bay Area's non-regional transport planning.

Real regional transit planning would mean radical, politically difficult changes, like ending VTA's domination by San José's political machine and its conspicuously non-"regional" pet-project agendas. I'd class such a prospect as an aspiration, rather than a measurable probability.

To quote this bizarrely ignorant article: "Build the [heavy rail] stations like BART stations with large parking garages, but terminate the [highway 85] line at the North Bayshore industrial park, and run a branch from the San Jose to San Francisco line there too."

This argument is riddled with incredibly ignorant conceptual, political, and practical disasters. It is just simplistic, delusional thinking.

1.Caltrain's heavy rail commuter line, which is shared with economically vital freight trains at night, works quite effectively from San Jose to San Francisco. It does not need to be duplicated because that would be wasted money and because there is no available land on the Peninsula!!! DUH! Caltrain will continue to work just fine as long as it is electrified and cities and counties build grade separations (hopefully PAID FOR by the useless bureaucrats running Caltrain) at all road/rail traffic intersections to allow for increased commuter train volume. As for High Speed Rail? Forget about this political debacle. It will never run up the Peninsula disaster? No land, no political will, no economic or environmental mandates.

2. Does anyone along the Highway 85 corridor want heavy trains, with all of their noise, whistles, and pollution, running through their residential neighborhoods? NO. Politically dead. End of subject.

3. Exactly along the 85 corridor will cities "Build the stations like BART stations with LARGE parking garages"??? First, most BART (and also most Caltrain) stations are much too small for riders' automobile parking, so it spills over into adjacent residential 'hoods. Second, where will anyone find the land for these parking lot disasters in hostile and wealthy residential cities along Hwy 85? NIMBY is extremely powerful (for good reasons) for wealthy landowners.

As for BART? That was a practical disaster from Day 1 when they chose to use non-standard rail gauges to prevent non-BART commuter and freight trains from using their tracks. That was a hugely expensive political disaster, and BART suffers to it to this day because they lack funding from external, shared users.