I have a meeting at 10AM today and so I hopped on SB232 which would place me in Mountain View with time to spare.  This would be true if a train wasn’t disabled near Belmont.  Now I’m not a train engineer or know what it takes to route trains around incidents in a safe way, but it seems absolutely ridiculous h0w poorly Caltrain has been communicating the delays.

What is even more ridiculous is the back to back issues Caltrain has had.  The constant breakdowns of trains conjures an image of maintenance workers whose voices sound like they have gravel in their throats chewing a stub of a unlit cigar covered in grease.  I can imagine them looking at each other as a new repair is pushed into the depot and they dig into what is nothing short of a junk pile of miscellaneous parts and combined with some chewing gum and duct tape mend the poor dilapidated train into a condition where it can leave on its own power only later to gasp its last burst of power.

This can’t possibly be the case, right?  I say this because Caltrain spent $140 million dollars on “repair and maintenance buildings, a state-of-the-art control center to direct and monitor train traffic, and storage yards for Caltrain’s fleet of locomotives and passenger cars.”

Actually the same page (which now returns a 404) also says “Caltrain will have on-site fuel storage, which will reduce fuel expenses” yet with the last fare increases they cite rising gas prices.  And of a personal annoyance is the announcement of a “new train washer that will allow trains to get a thorough cleaning every day. Currently, crews are only able to give trains a thorough washing and scrubbing twice a year.”  This would be great if they utilized this new ability, but just about every train I am on has windows so filthy I can barely see out the window.  I even wrote feedback to Caltrain about it and they couldn’t bother to send a reply that they even got the feedback let alone what, if anything, they would do to address my issue.

Well, I’ve gotten to the point of rant fueled by rage and to make matters worse I’m on a conference call I want nothing to do with.  And SB332 will end up about 45m behind schedule when all things are done.

What is the lesson learned here?  Stop going into the office.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 10:18 am and is filed under @caltrain, Commentary, Fail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.