Anxious Weekend

After an anxious weekend the BART strike, chapter 2 (chapter 1 was in July), was apparently settled. The trains will roll again tomorrow after disrupting the daily schedules of hundreds of thousands of commuters who rely on BART. However, we're not out of the tunnel entirely because the agreement must still be approved by union membership next week.

The region's vulnerability to transit strikes has given rise to calls to outlaw them by some California Democrats. (Transit strikes have been banned even in such labor-friendly bastions as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York.) The San Francisco Chronicle says that it's time:

This strike may represent the most egregious and most counterproductive overreach by the unions. They and their consultants should have recognized in July that public sentiment was not with them.

Their obliviousness has brought the issue to the fore: Why should workers in a service so essential to Bay Area life and safety even be allowed to strike?

BART is fairly quick, reliable, and cheap, and, excluding the intra-San Francisco Muni system, far more people in the Bay Area rely on it every day than all other forms of public transportation. BART is also a good example of the danger of entrusting too much power to a single supplier, public or private, for-profit or non-profit.

We who live on the Peninsula are fortunate to have several commuting options to San Francisco: SamTrans express buses, CalTrain, BART, and, of course, one's own car. Diversification is good, because it means that you have a back-up plan. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Tragedy Averted

I occasionally board Caltrain in South San Francisco and fortunately was away in LA on August 24th.

A southbound train roared through the SSF station and nearly hit northbound passengers crossing the tracks.

Caltrain says the "very serious" near-accident was the first of its kind in the modern history of the popular commuter line and has led to major safety changes and left two engineers on leave. [snip]

The station is old and, unlike most Caltrain stops, does not have a gate or crossing arms that come down to prevent passengers from crossing active tracks. Usually engineers radio each other or use headlight signals to ensure the station is clear before an express train zooms through, but that apparently didn't happen this time.

At that hour Caltrain commuters disembark to shuttles that will take them to South City biotech firms. We were lucky tragedy was averted.

Union Pacific freight cars stored at SSF.