15-year-old has bad experience on Capitol Corridor

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 28, 2006 | by Erik N. Nelson, STAFF WRITER

Funny that just as I'm about to write a story about the Capitol Corridor's triumph over our limited railway network, nearly doubling its service to San Jose and adding more trips to Sacramento, I get a call from someone who's less than pleased with the service.

In the Corridor's defense, he's not a regular rider, but this one- time experience was a doozy.

David Francis of Wooster, Ohio, was visiting his mom in Oakland in July when he agreed to send his 15-year-old daughter to see an old friend in Davis.

Like many parents putting their children on public transit, "I was worried about the other passengers," he told me.

Turns out, according to his daughter's account, it was the conductor he should have been worried about.

She told her dad that the conductor demanded to see her identification, and when she explained that she was 15 and had none, he yelled at her to "get off my train!"

He then proceeded, the story goes, to herd her off the train at Berkeley, which is unstaffed and hardly the sort of place you want your Ohio farm girl dropped off without a cell phone.

All this after paying for a ticket.

Francis said he has tried and failed to get satisfaction from Amtrak, but had no idea that Amtrak is running the line for the multicounty Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority. I gave him their number.

"What I was hoping was that I would get a letter saying, hey, we're sorry that this happened. If they said the conductor has been fired, or that the conductor has been punished in this way, then I'd be satisfied with that," Francis said.

I told him that the Capitol Corridor people have worked hard to cultivate a customer-conscious environment, and they might be more responsive than a national entity like Amtrak.

Whatever happens, Francis got his daughter after she borrowed a cell phone from a stranger and he got directions from the phone's owner.

She's OK, luckily, but if her story is accurate and I were running the railroad, I would hope that an apology and a free train ticket will be enough to set things right.

Labor Day, a time for sharing?

Aug. 23

I received an e-mail recently from City CarShare inviting me to blog about their by-the-hour, keyless and paperless car rental service -- a great way to avoid the hassles of the closure of the Bay Bridge's lower deck on the Labor Day weekend. While City CarShare can be expected to promote its product no matter what, I believe it has a valid point here.

Face it, we either just don't like public transit or we have all kinds of reasons why public transit won't work for us, especially on the weekend.

With car sharing, it's like having your own private cab, only cheaper. And while I certainly want to give City CarShare credit for exploiting Caltrans' closure plans first, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that two other car-sharing services. Flexcar and Zipcar also have their cars parked on both sides of the bridge and Transbay Tube. But you only have a week to sign up before the main vein out of the city is clamped off for three days.

Some of the services require a deposit, while others charge a higher hourly fee. They also require that you be an adult with five years of driving under your belt. Even when the bridge is open, many drivers are discovering that it's a neat safety valve if you rely on public transit for commuting. I've been out in the dark in downtown Oakland, wishing I could drive off in one of these incidental rentals.

If you've been meaning to try it, as I have, but keep putting off joining, as I have, the Bay Bridge closure may be the kick in the pants you needed.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a condensed weekly sampling of transportation writer Erik N. Nelson's Capricious Commuter blog about getting around the Bay Area. Read the rest of the blog at www.ibabuzz.com