There was a snippet in the Executive staff report on Clipper, about the amount of outreach Caltrain has done with the adoption of Clipper. It was not read aloud in the meeting, because they were going over their February Passenger Counts. The counts were good, in addition to the bike ridership in my last post, ridership as a whole was way up, and the weekend baby bullet had good ridership - and surprisingly did not result in reduced ridership on the adjacent non bullet trains. That's not to say that the bullet didn't "just" steal riders from the locals, because overall ridership was up, but it was still good numbers.
Anyway, I pointed out to the board that there was a snippet about the outreach, and that this was not something to be proud of and basically reiterated the points in this blog post . Director Ahmad had made some rumblings earlier in the meeting that alluded to the piece in the Merc regarding the JPB's "rubber stamp" history. I looked at him and said "This is something that you CAN do - this is broken, ask them what they are going to do about it"
I left before the copious comments on the service cuts. I had heard it all before and wanted to get a burrito and go to work. The burrito place near San Carlos Caltrain is first rate - as are the Buckwheat Banana pancakes at Mary's Depot cafe at the train station. What I did miss, was that the JPB voted to postpone a vote on the proposed reduced schedule
From the Caltrain website
4/7/11 update : The Caltrain Board of Directors at its monthly meeting voted unanimously to postpone a decision on a reducted-train schedule until April 21 and directed staff to work to identify additional funds that would make the cuts unnecessary
Kudos to Mike Rosenberg, as far as I am concerned, for putting the fire to the feet of the JPB.
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2 comments:
The one cut I very much want to see stay in place is the $250k cut to administrative costs. Scanlon's salary alone can cover that one, still keeping him well on the north side of $200k/year. As long as he's taking home the best part of a half-million per year, it is going to be very hard for people to accept an increase in taxes to subsidize the train.
Which burrito place do you speak of?
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