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Light Rail to Oakridge, and more California transit thoughts
An informal mailing list I'm on gets digests of transit news from various places. An entry from early August mentions that San Jose's light rail system had a 31% year-over-year ridership increase in July 2005, with a notable increase in weekend ridership going to the Great Mall in Milpitas and Oakridge Mall "in Almaden Valley" (where I can quibble about San Jose geography, but that's not the point). The interesting thing about Oakridge is that it's a somewhat nasty walk from Ohlone-Chynoweth station, or across a moderate-sized street and the parking lot from a dedicated Oakridge station on the two-stop single-track "Almaden" spur (again, I don't think Almaden Station is in Almaden Valley, but it was walking distance from home when I lived there). This is actually more interesting because both malls have pretty good highway access (Great Mall is just off of 880; Oakridge is basically at the 85/87 interchange).
A related thought was on LA transit: I feel like public transit in Boston is an attractive choice because the road system is so bad that the T is time-competitive even if the Red Line only goes 40 mph between stops. LA has a very extensive highway system, and it's very sprawling, so your choices from what I can tell seem to be drive to transit to drive to work, or just drive straight in to work and be done with it. So too many highways makes transit a less attractive option, but destroying highways so that transit succeeds feels like it's increasing the overall commute suckiness.
The real question is, what does make the local malls in San Jose compelling enough that people are willing to take Light Rail to them? Oakridge is certainly bigger than when I lived there but it's not particularly unique. In suburban California, a shopping mall is actually an interesting strange case of commercial density. Could you move transit closer to the mall? With a fair bit of pain, but sure, but people are riding it regardless, in a sort of similar way to people taking the T to Lechmere or Kendall to get to the Galleria.
A side question is whether there are interesting directions for VTA light rail to go. I always wanted to see it extended down Almaden Expressway, but VTA shot itself in the foot allowing the development in the Almaden station parking lot. I suspect they really, really need to fix the downtown bottleneck, but this probably means a subway which is really expensive. (Do note that South San Jose and Santa Teresa to Oakridge don't cross the downtown barrier, nor does Santa Clara to Milpitas.) If they can borrow the UP right-of-way along 85, the Vasona Corridor could also be extended up to 85 and 280; maybe interesting, but a really awkward way to actually get anywhere. A line west, maybe along Stevens Creek Boulevard, or looping around on Capitol Expressway, is probably what I'd think about if I had capital dollars to spend.
A related thought was on LA transit: I feel like public transit in Boston is an attractive choice because the road system is so bad that the T is time-competitive even if the Red Line only goes 40 mph between stops. LA has a very extensive highway system, and it's very sprawling, so your choices from what I can tell seem to be drive to transit to drive to work, or just drive straight in to work and be done with it. So too many highways makes transit a less attractive option, but destroying highways so that transit succeeds feels like it's increasing the overall commute suckiness.
The real question is, what does make the local malls in San Jose compelling enough that people are willing to take Light Rail to them? Oakridge is certainly bigger than when I lived there but it's not particularly unique. In suburban California, a shopping mall is actually an interesting strange case of commercial density. Could you move transit closer to the mall? With a fair bit of pain, but sure, but people are riding it regardless, in a sort of similar way to people taking the T to Lechmere or Kendall to get to the Galleria.
A side question is whether there are interesting directions for VTA light rail to go. I always wanted to see it extended down Almaden Expressway, but VTA shot itself in the foot allowing the development in the Almaden station parking lot. I suspect they really, really need to fix the downtown bottleneck, but this probably means a subway which is really expensive. (Do note that South San Jose and Santa Teresa to Oakridge don't cross the downtown barrier, nor does Santa Clara to Milpitas.) If they can borrow the UP right-of-way along 85, the Vasona Corridor could also be extended up to 85 and 280; maybe interesting, but a really awkward way to actually get anywhere. A line west, maybe along Stevens Creek Boulevard, or looping around on Capitol Expressway, is probably what I'd think about if I had capital dollars to spend.