According to the Friends of Caltrain post-holiday survey, the most popular recommendations to improve transit to San Francisco International Airport: bring back the Millbrae Shuttle, and save the KX! Both of these are SamTrans services. SamTrans is currenty wrapping up its plans to revamp its services. The deadline is April 15 to give them comments – share your feedback before it’s too late.
After the winter holiday season, we asked Friends of Caltrain participants how they get to SFO when they travel. Among our network of supporters and users of public transit, the most common answer to the survey was “driven.â€
The main reason by far to not to take transit is that it takes too much time, followed by other risks and inconveniences, including complicated payment with the Caltrain to BART transfer, luggage limits on the bus, long waits to connect to Caltrain, especially evenings and weekends, and risking missing the flight due to delays.
So, what can be done to improve transit to SFO?
The top two suggestions were:
Bring back the shuttle bus from Millbrae Caltrain! People who don’t remember it re-invent it, and people who remember the old shuttle wish it could be brought back.
Save the KX! Make it even more of an express route, run it more frequently, and market it better! One rider suggests calling it the SFO Express.
If these solutions would help you, click here to tell SamTrans while they are still reviewing their service plan until April 15.
Other recommendations from fellow riders to improve airport service include:
* seamless payment transfers. The Caltrain+BART payment confuses people who go to the airport occasionally, and is perceived as costly
* earlier and later service to serve more flights, and more frequent service
* eliminate the bus luggage restrictions to and from San Francisco
* shelter for Caltrain users at the cold, windy, damp Millbrae station
Riders strongly dislike the two-step BART connection to the airport – click here for the full list of comments, including colorful rants and pained laments from people who want to take transit to the airport.
SFO (whether or not the name of the airport changes) is one of the top 10 busiest airports in the US. The region deserves good airport transit service. Thanks for sharing your feedback – hopefully this can motivate the transit services to do a better job serving the airport.
The current Caltrain connection is pathetic. Given that BART runs every 15-20mins, and Caltrain every 60mins on weekend, it could easily take close to 2 hours from the time you land before you board Caltrain. And even then, it’s about an hour ride to San Jose.
All BART needs to do is dedicate one train to shuttling back and forth between Millbrae and SFO, and the transfer problem is mostly solved without requiring any additional infrastructure. As a bonus, make the transfer reduced or free for passengers transferring from Caltrain, just as you get a discount when transferring between BART and Muni in SF.
[…] Friends of Caltrain Survey Shows SFO Bound Drivers Want SFO Express Bus From Millbrae BART […]
In my opinion the only (partial) remedy for the disaster that is BART to SFO requires two steps. The first is to run the “red” Richmond line whenever BART is running which takes care of the obscene issue of making riders to Millbrae go through the airport at off hours. The second step is to rip out the BART tracks on the SFO/Millbrae spur and replace them with the Airtrain shuttle – which is what should have been built in the first place since unless you’re going to the International Terminal you’ve got to get on the Airtrain anyhow.
Adina, as the excellent comments from the surveys show, there is a lot that needs fixing that should be taken care of BEFORE we compound the situation with the post electrification issues that seem be the major pre-occupation of our friends in San Carlos. Ripping out BART from Milbrae to SFO and replacing it with an AirTrain extension, timed intermodal transfers, luggage accomodation, level boarding, AirPort Express service (and how about doing that between SF, SFO, SJC and SJ Diridon on Caltrain) and MORE trains.
Where do I sign to get our elected representative to understand that the SF Bay area is way behind the rest of the civilised world in taking care of such things?
Michael, you are right, and these things fit together. For example, in order to have good timed transfers with BART, Caltrain needs more frequent service. BART trains leave every 20 minutes like clockwork, and Caltrain can’t match up with that. Level boarding would also help a lot, since it will reduce the schedule unreliability caused by the stairs.
One person in a wheelchair adds 4 minutes to Caltrain’s schedule. Level boarding would serve people with mobility issues without affecting the train schedule and transfers.
For our elected officials, we need broad support for a bigger vision. The current vision for Caltrain electrification is a commute service that has somewhat more frequent service at rush hour. What we could have is a transit service with more frequent trains and better connections to the airport and other destinations.