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ChineseBay Area Diaries — Prologue
A 10-part miniseries!
Featuring a cast of thousands!
OK, there is no cast of thousands. It’s more like a cast of millions, but for the most part all of them are extras. The 10 part miniseries is the real deal, though.
MetroRiderLA closes out this January with the passenger’s-eye view of a Los Angeles transit rider who makes a passage to the great rainbow north for a half week and returns to the home county with an experience that could fill a duffel bag — and did.
In the 1270s Marco Polo set off for China and the Near East, inspiring Europeans’ interest in the exotic Orient. In the 1830s Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville visited a breakaway English colony operating under an innovative method of governance to see what all the fuss was about. In 2008 veteran transportation navel-gazer Wad has the gall to walk a mile in the shoes of these two historic figures and wildly overplay the import of a brief sojourn to the metropolis encircling the Bay of St. Francis of Assisi.
Such florid prose befits the exotic land best known to the world as the San Francisco Bay Area. The City — this is actually how it is referred to in local newspapers — is more than just sourdough bread, stratospheric housing prices and assless chaps coordinated to match the colors of the season. Most relevant to the audience on this blog, besides assless chaps, is what keeps The City moving within and outside of its borders. San Francisco and other cities all around the Bay Area have an awesome array of mobility options. Rubber wheels. Steel wheels. Even vessels that navigate waterways. And for those of the airborne persuasion, this area has three international airports forming a triangle over the lower bay.
In the Bay Area, the journey is as fun, if not more so, than the destination. In the Bay Area Diaries, the writing is as fun, if not more so, than having to read it all.
Therefore, the Bay Area Diaries will be broken up into 10 parts. This, the Prologue, is Part I. The itinerary is mode-oriented. Readers can choose to read any or all parts of the series. The tentative schedule is as follows:
- Today: Prologue
- Tuesday, January 22: Megabus
- Wednesday, January 23: Golden Gate Bridge, rubber tire division
- Thursday, January 24: Santa Rosa and Sonoma County
- Friday, January 25: Golden Gate Bridge, watercraft division
- Saturday, January 26: San Francisco Municipal Railway, steel wheel division
- Sunday, January 27: San Francisco Municipal Railway, rubber tire division
- Monday, January 28: CalTrain
- Tuesday, January 29: Bay Area Rapid Transit
- Thursday, January 31: Epilogue
This 10-part series contains two rest days, one after the prologue and one before the epilogue. Just as public transit is notorious for not adhering strictly to schedules, this public transit blog may also be subject to delays or change without notice.
This blog would also like to acknowledge the assistance of San Mateo County’s own Nick Kibre, 295bus blogger and known MetroReader. He recently visited Southern California, which he mentions in his January 9 and January 10 entries. And L.A. returns a missive in kind.
Remember, return to the same MetroRider time, same MetroRider URL in two days for getting to San Francisco and back with Megabus, the Southwest Airlines of the highways.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Can’t wait to see what you say about the Bay. Hope you got a little AC Transit or VTA in there too.
Alas, I did not get to use those agencies on this trip. It was just Muni, BART, Golden Gate and Santa Rosa.
San Francisco is not “The City.”
Everyone knows that New York City is “The City.”
At least everyone that grew up within 100 miles of New York City.
Anyway, I took a similar trip to Wad’s back in October 2007. I’ll add my own two cents on my experiences, as appropriate. Looking forward to the tale.
oh man… wad is back! and lolz ahead of time at megabus.
San Francisco Bay Area is fascinating. I love it there. There are three main cities: San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. There is commuter rail, heavy rail and light rail. I love the electronic buses with the overhead tracks.
There are a couple of major transit projects: Finishing the transbay terminal so that Cal Train can go all the way into downtown. Hooking up BART and Cal Train in San Jose. There are also extensions of BART in the East Bay which are desired. Marin County opted out of BART and I am sure they wonder now if that was smart. The Golden Gate Bridge can sustain rail traks and I wouldn’t be suprised to sometime in the future seeing rail heading northward.
One important note: During the 1989 quate, BART was a safe place to be. When the San Francisco Bay Bridge collapsed, BART continued safely on. So much for the theory that subways are unsafe during an earthquake, especially the several-minute section underneath the bay between San Francisco and Oakland. Also, the collapse of the double decker freway is why we won’t ever see double decking here. Thank goodness.
As a former resident of both The City and The City, I can assure you (ScottMercer) that you are wrong on that count.
But some of us who have spent time in Oakland affectionately refer to San Francisco as the West Bay!