I was in the Bay Area recently, faced with day-tripping into San Francisco proper on a holiday weekend. A rental car seemed the easiest mobility mode after years of living in the asphalt-friendly Atlanta metro.
Yet, the Mrs. and the teen-agers accompanying us were still weary after an earlier, grindingly slow rush-hour freeway slog to Berkeley and back.
Still, the car was seductively familiar. Freedom to maneuver and all that.
Then I recalled the signs pointing toward the Caltrain commuter rail station in suburban Mountain View.
That’s how we ended up in the big parking lot by the railroad tracks. By the time we’d parked, the teens had scanned the timetable using their smartphones. Trains ran every hour on the weekend.
It was worth a try, came the consensus. So we swiped a credit card and punched a ticket machine’s touch-screen. Day passes in hand, we joined a good-sized crowd on the platform. More riders joined us as the minutes passed. Millennials and AARP-agers alike stood watching for the flash of a headlight down the line.
When the northbound 1:19 p.m. train halted, we clambered up a railcar’s steps as other riders disembarked. We found seats on the top deck of the bi-level coach. The train was nearly full, with some standees at points. An adjacent coach was filled with bicycles and their owners. Some riders took advantage of lenient rules to crack bottles of wine and craft beer.
Meanwhile, tightly packed suburbs flashed by. Menlo Park. Redwood City. San Mateo. Affluent-home swimming pools and guest houses swapped places with working-class neighborhoods. The 1970s-era logos of BART rapid-transit trains appeared at Millbrae, a transfer point for service to San Francisco International Airport and beyond.
In exactly 79 minutes, we covered the 36 miles to the San Francisco terminal. That didn’t seem fast until I recalled the shoehorn-tight freeways we’d encountered earlier. Or the 45-minute, 12-mile commute I face many days in Atlanta.
And arrival in the city confirmed we’d made the right choice. Downtown was more hectic than usual on account of a trifecta of events: President Barack Obama was in the city, the Blue Angels were hurling their F/A-18 fighter jets above downtown that weekend and Fleet Week saw uniformed sailors and many other visitors packing the streets. Driving would have been a costly, miserably frustrating experience.
Instead, we spent an enjoyable day exploring on foot, on trolley and bus. As midnight approached, we were back at the Caltrain station, queued up with a throng awaiting the last train south.
Onboard the midnight special, I thought about metro Atlanta’s future as towns flashed past at up to 79 mph. As Georgia and its capital rethink what around-town transportation looks like in the 21st century, I found myself hoping we make choices that help keep and attract productive folks like the busload of Millennials who exited at Palo Alto after 1 a.m., with many boarding a waiting bus bound for Stanford University.
This simple trip further convinced me that our future’s unlikely to look much like the past.
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