Riding the VTA

Now that I'm in Silicon Valley, and temporarily bikeless, my main form of transportation is the VTA. While the buses and light rail are nice, and there's at least some service in most of the area, the system as a whole is just too slow, infrequent, and doesn't go where you want it to. For example, there is no bus that goes from downtown Mountain View to Google. Likewise, there's no bus that goes from where I am to downtown Sunnyvale: I have to take the light rail two stops and then transfer, waiting another 10 minutes in the process, and making a 3.5 mile trip take over half an hour in the best case. Another example: my friend wanted to go to a rollerskating rink in southern San Jose from Mountain View. This rink is conveniently not far from a light rail station, and Mountain View has light rail too, so one might naively think that this is one of those rare trips that is well served by transit. But no, it takes 1h40 from station to station, versus about 40 minutes by car. Taking Caltrain from Mountain View to Tamien and transferring there is generally much better, taking 53 minutes station to station, but that means you have to catch one of the few Caltrains that actually stop at both Mountain View and Tamien, and on the way back, Caltrain is no longer an option, as the last one leaves Tamien at 9:23, and the last train from San Jose is at 10:30 pm. It's just not practical: you can do it, but you'll feel like you're fighting the system the whole way. But I think there's some hope for the VTA, and maybe one day I'll explain what I think needs to be done.