Hugo’s blog

I have been riding the train daily between home and work for more than 6 months already, and I am amazed by how amateurish the train transportation is in the US. I am of course glad that Caltrain exists, and I still love taking public transportation (it doesn’t take longer than sitting in traffic on the highway). However, I can’t help but notice repeating hickups:

• From time to time, something happens on the line, and the whole system slows down (trains being 30 minutes late) or simply comes to a stop for a while (and you never know how long it will take to come back on); as there’s only one line and one set of rails in each direction, it’s not surprising.
• Train drivers seem not to pay too much attention to what they’re doing: they forget to stop at a train stop or brake too late, stopping in the middle of the street (e.g. ), they stop at a station where they should not have stopped, etc.
• More worrisome: the other day, as the train was leaving the station in Menlo Park, the barriers suddenly decided to go up; so the train proceeded, slowly, across the road; the may explain why about a month ago a car was smashed by a train and dragged for about a mile, and also why trains keep honking all the time, despite all the noise that the make (if you’re on a platform, you’re not going not to notice one!).

Anyway, when you compare this to the train system in Japan, or to be less extreme, to the train system in France – as in France everything is always a little chaotic –, at times, it doesn’t look like you are in a developed country.

It’s very interesting how the US is very advanced in a lot of domains (e.g. all the high tech companies are in the Bay Area), and at the same time is lagging behind in so many areas (health care, high speed internet access, public transportation, …).