Quote:
Originally Posted by SFBruin
I feel like there's some fatigue about public works, though.
BART was a pretty massive undertaking, in a metro area that is more populous than Seattle. I'm all for transit, but a BART-style system is unnecessary when a Caltrain-style one will do.
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When BART was planned around 1960, the Bay Area only had 3.6 million people - less than the current population of the Seattle MSA.
Caltrain is successful because it has two major cities at each end with strong cores, and many walkable towns clustered along the line in between (not to mention a major university). It really is a sort of East Coast development pattern that doesn't usually exist in the West to the same extent. Sounder has Kent, Auburn, Sumner and Puyallup so it's not like there's no town centers, but Caltrain has far more of them and closer-spaced together.