[Bikemike]

Is there any talk about implementing quadruple-tracking at select BART stations so that express/limited service can be offered on more long-distance commute corridors?

I find BART unusable for commutes beyond 30 minutes from the city (which is NOT far), due to all the added time you have to tack on for transfers and prohibitive first/last-mile trips.
For instance, a commute from Walnut Creek into say, Caltrain in SOMA is ~35 mins on BART alone, but realistically door-to-door time takes a whopping 1hr 15 minutes, accounting for transfers and first/last mile connections due to horrible transit on the suburban side of BART, which essentially makes driving to the station unavoidable. Then there's the issue of fighting for station parking, which defeats the whole purpose of transit to begin with.

Everyone seems to focus on transit in the City, but the major environmental and quality of life problems have to be addressed on a regional scale, which seems to be ignored. BART is already a great backbone, in theory. But service frequency and speed is a huge impediment to its practical utility anywhere outside of the SF/Berkeley/Oak cluster, which lets face it, is a small part of the Bay Area. And second transbay tube will take another 15-20 years in reality - why can't quad-tracking at stations be considered in addition to more ambitious service improvements like the second tube - are their improvements not additive?

Fare integration is a no-brainer, but it can only achieve so much when commutes are routinely 1.5 hrs from car-centric suburbia. Why is Vancouver so much better pound-for-pound? It's suburban areas are not built any differently than ours.