Passenger Trains > San Joaquin Joint Powers Board

For what it's worth, I received my subscribed San Joaquin timetable
mailing today. The San Joaquin JPB (whose appointed management
is the same as Altamont Corridor Express) has dumped Amtrak's
timetable distributor in favor of a local vendor.

They came out of Fresno, instead of Illinois.

GenePoon Wrote:
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> For what it's worth, I received my subscribed San
> Joaquin timetable
> mailing today. The San Joaquin JPB (whose
> appointed management
> is the same as Altamont Corridor Express) has
> dumped Amtrak's
> timetable distributor in favor of a local vendor.
>
> They came out of Fresno, instead of Illinois.

Keep it local can be a good thing.

And the new schedule is still a disaster for statewide connectivity, especially from Sacramento to Southern California. The locals should be paying for their own commuter service.

Sad, that the new train 718 does not offer connecting bus service to Hanford. Bus operates express Fresno to Bakersfield.

Hanford has always been a major stop and the top city pair for Hanford is Fresno !

718 is the last train from the Bay Area and deserves to have connections.

Anaheim, home of Disneyland still is not a stop on the last thruway buses from Bakersfield, being 716-704-718.

This precludes folks north of Sacramento such as Redding to have connections to Anaheim.

What are they thinking? Yes, thinking today seems to be a lost art.

mundo Wrote:
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>
> What are they thinking? Yes, thinking today seems
> to be a lost art.

Thinking is not part of the curriculum in much of what passes for school today. Memorize some data and be able to identify it on a standardized test and you're good to go.

TAW

Caltrans had its shot but essentially lost its mojo. Caltrans was also essentially ineffective politically; it's a huge bureaucracy with multiple missions. The local agencies have more pull.

The problem in the U.S. is that there is a very limited number of skilled people (probably no more than 100 in the whole country) who have the knowledge and passion for this type of work. The average person that works on rail and transit is most likely to be a general bureaucrat.

With Caltrans in charge, the Capitol Corridor today would likely consist of 5 daily roundtrips rather than 15. Even the Capitol Corridor agency seems to have bogged down in recent years (perhaps the disease is contagious). They seem to be unable to get to critical mass on funding for the Placer County service expansion. Arguably, it's a substantial capital project, and it's hard to get one's hands on several hundred million dollars all at once. But I think they need to try harder and not take no for an answer.

GenePoon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For what it's worth, I received my subscribed San
> Joaquin timetable
> mailing today. The San Joaquin JPB (whose
> appointed management
> is the same as Altamont Corridor Express) has
> dumped Amtrak's
> timetable distributor in favor of a local vendor.
>
> They came out of Fresno, instead of Illinois.


Just for the record, the organization is known as the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority a/k/a SJJPA and there is an advisory committee to the SJJPA known as the San Joaquin Valley Rail Committee a/k/a SJVRC.