Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
Is it time to start talking about how BART to San Mateo is actually needed and likely to be inevitable once Caltrain and HSR are in operation?
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As someone who has never lived in the area that appears redundant to me under current circumstances, but if a place like San Mateo decides to (gasp!) upzone then there might be a capacity need.
It seems to me that digging a 3-4 mile tunnel between a point southeast of the Milbrae Station and near the Hayward Park Caltrains station for HSR and Caltrains express trains could negate the need to grade separate the current tracks in San Mateo. They'd be left as-is for the local stops and freight.
The tunnel would negate the need for HSR express trains to stop at Milbrae since the existing tracks would behave like a passing siding for local Caltrains, and so trains could be cued into Transbay this way rather than forcing all trains to stop. In short, if an inbound local misses its schedule slot it would just dwell before rejoining the mainline.
The other issue is that the need to transfer to BART to get to SFO is obnoxious. If we're really throwing money around, it seems like HSR/Caltrains Express could me made to stop under the SFO terminal and therefore bypass the BART transfer.