I live right off of El Camino Real, otherwise known as CA State RT 82. For those that don't know, this road is Silicon Valley's equivalent to the Main Line of Philadelphia or 57th street in NYC. The only way to travel it via transit is either taking CalTrain or the VTA 22 bus. Caltrain could definitely use work being it only runs every half hour at the best. VTA is an unmitigated disaster. If the bus even shows up at all it certainly won't be on time, and when they get to a stop early they absolutely won't wait for the scheduled time to depart.
If you want to be green out here you have two options, learn to LOVE biking or be prepared to leave hours ahead of when you need to in order to get anywhere at all.
I think ECR equates better to Northern Boulevard (rt 25?) the E. Queens part and all of Nassau much better than 57th st. Not sure which one is more depressing.
They're both arteries which connect disparate towns and villages and are interspersed with strip malls, gas stations and supermarkets and they both could make use of better transit systems. Altho, to be fair Nother Blvd has LIRR running kind of parallel for most of it.
Claiming that there's only one caltrain every half hour is a bit misleading.
The frequency of trains depends on the time of day and the station you depart from / want to arrive at.
For example, Mountain View and Palo Alto both have trains as many as four times an hour in the mornings (7-9am) and afternoon/early evening (4-7pm).
Just looking at the MV -> PA schedule; during off-peak hours there may only be one an hour (4-5am, 10am-2pm, 8-11pm) or one every half-hour. If I was to complain about anything, it's the times they only have one every hour.
I think this is the first time anyone has tried to equate ECR to 57th St. There are more points of interest on one block of 57th then there are on 30 miles of ECR. Unless you think drive-thru Arbys are points of interest.
I lived in New York for most of my life, I know nothing is comparable to it directly. Assuming we aren't considering San Francisco as part of the valley, what other road comes even close to being such a vital thoroughfare in the bay? And back to the topic of conversation, wouldn't it be more important for a road spread over 30 miles to have public transportation than a New York City block that spans only 2? Last time I checked there's an east-west bus on 57th every 4 minutes.
Downtown Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Stanford University, and Stanford Shopping Center along El Camino Real aren't points of interest? What about Redwood City, San Carlos, or Hillsdale?
[I stayed there for a week or so once, and as best I could tell, it consisted entirely of office parks and strip malls connected to housing developments by enormous roads, everything well lathered with parking lots. We walked around as best we could, but there seemed nothing beautiful or nice there... just endless vistas of office parks and pavement...]
If you want to be green out here you have two options, learn to LOVE biking or be prepared to leave hours ahead of when you need to in order to get anywhere at all.