The Other Side of the Tracks

Caltrain's proposal to send electrified locomotives to the East Bay via the Dumbarton Bridge still stands a chance of coming to fruition. The fate of the Dumbarton Rail project lies in the hands of a Bay Area judge who will decide Friday whether to hear a lawsuit that could inject enough money into the proposal to return it from the scrap heap of forgotten transit plans.

Where is Gil Kelley when we need him? Oh yeah - Mayor Adams eliminated (fired) the opposition to this costly project - making the Tram look like the penny arcade. The Tribune's article "First city stimulus project heads to council let us know that this costly project has reared its ugly head again. Thanks Jim Redden.

Unlike in most other Bay Area cities, residents here are more willing to pass by drug deals, robberies and other criminal activity in order to travel around town via mass transit. In places like Oakland, Berkeley and Sunnyvale, the high-crime neighborhoods tend to scare people away from using nearby transit services, the study found. Folks had a tendency to walk less in those neighborhoods, choosing to drive instead, according to a new study from the Mineta Transportation Institute.

We reported back in November that Capitol Hill could have its extension of the city's streetcar system by 2012. In December, the City Council voted to support that plan. We checked in with city project manager Ethan Melone to see how progress on the streetcar will play out.

One of the best train bloggers out there is DoDo, and over at the European Tribune he offers one of his best pieces yet - an examination of the AVE system's ridership growth and a comparison to other HSR systems around the world. He draws two key conclusions, which I'll explore in some detail below (though you need to read his full post to get the full picture), the first of which is: