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Originally Posted by Wizened Variations
I took this from skyscrapercity due to it's importance. J
I think his write up is brilliant.
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I don't. Why do people from New Zealand quote people from Japan about a transit system in San Francisco Bay area that they have never seen or ridden? From what I can reason, the guy from Japan recommends skipping stations because they had less than 10,000 daily riders, to provide express services. That's being exclusively a bean counter, there's no consideration at all about the politics why those stations were included into the system at all. It's entirely possible everyone getting on at those smaller ridership stations are heading for San Francisco, and everyone getting on at the higher ridership stations aren't, although I'll admit that probability is very small. But I strongly suggest some sort of ridership study should be finished discovering what the ridership history and patterns are for every station before committing to bypassing it for express services - something better than some bean point based on daily ridership boardings and a lightings.
In other words, how about studying the commuting patterns of the Bay Area before making recommendations on how to improve the service? Something that can't be found from afar after solely reading daily ridership data. The grand idea, providing express services, might be a grand idea, but try to provide some data supporting it first. Local administrators and politicians would certainly look at such recommendations more seriously if the proposals were more seriously based on facts.
Additionally, every change the administrators might suggest have to go through a public process, and I guarantee every rider and politician associated with any bypass station would certainly voice their disapproval; on the streets, in the media, and in their ballot boxes. Blood might flow in the streets over such radical changes - you better have the facts well documented to justify these proposed changes.
Skipping three stations is only going to save 90 seconds (30 seconds per station) over a train ride an hour long. Even 5 minutes savings, 10 stations skipped, isn't worth the political upheaval to establish express services.