you can't get there from here

[calimac]

I've been thinking about going up to the City on Saturday morning for the first iteration of Lisa Bielawa's Crissy Broadcast, a mass outdoor musical event on Crissy Field, the former airstrip that most of the iconic photos of people standing with the Golden Gate Bridge behind them are taken from. The rareness of such a musical event intrigues me. It sounds like it'll be something like Stockhausen without the toxic politics. It would be something to be able to say, I was there.

The problem is, getting there. I'm dubious about driving. I don't know much about parking in the area, I'm doubtful about the feasibility of what I do know, and I might not be the only person trying it. Not to mention that I have no idea how the hundreds of performers are getting there, or how much parking they might take up.

It's when I checked the project's own "directions and parking" web page that I got nervous, and wonder if anyone organizing this has any idea what they're doing. I'd be taking CalTrain, and they recommend, as they do from several other directions, transferring to the PresidiGo shuttle.

A little checking established a few problems with this idea:
1) The PresidiGo shuttle doesn't run on weekends;
2) Even if it did, it requires a pass for morning runs;
3) You can't transfer to it directly from CalTrain, as it doesn't go anywhere near the station.

Also, for further transit planning information, you need to go, not to www.511.com as they instruct, but www.511.org.

So if I take the first CalTrain run of the day, which leaves here at 7:14 AM, that will get me up in time to catch a 37-minute bus ride through some of the City's more colorful and congested neighborhoods which will dump me out in the Marina, at what it says here is a 20-minute walk away, with 34 minutes to walk there before the starting time. So assuming that's not packed, and I just have to hope it isn't, it's doable, and the sole remaining question is, will I get up early enough?

Because if not, I'm going two miles from home to see the Met broadcast of The Nose instead.

(Why not go to one of the other performances of Crissy Broadcast? Time conflicts, and the probability that, being at more reasonable hours, they'll be more crowded.)

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, you do. The Tube is an amazing thing that goes almost everywhere, at least that a tourist needs to. Only occasionally have I had to resort to surface street buses, for places like Chelsea and the Regents Park Zoo, or Hampton Court, and I wish there were a diagram of the bus lines emblazoned on everything as there is of the Tube system.

We have our own light rail equivalent, and its system map (closer to a scale map than the Tube schematic is) looks like this:

As you can see, it's very primitive in its coverage by comparison. Unfortunately, I live as far south of Millbrae as the big line junction is north of it (someday the two south lines will loop around the Bay and connect, but I don't expect to live that long), and the place I need to get to is on the shoreline half an inch north of the "R" in "Embarcadero". So it's not going to do me much good on this occasion.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I love metro and tramway systems so it's always intriguing to see another one.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

BART is actually a heavy rail metro like the Tube, not a light rail system like Muni's Metro rail or the San Jose system. While I'm no huge fan of it (there are numerous flaws, among them being that it's non-standard in just about every way it possibly could be), but one remarkable thing about it is how huge the system's reach is. Have a look at Subway Systems at the same scale; BART actually covers more territory at its edges than the London Underground, although of course it only covers a tiny bit of that area, and connectivity is awful, given that there's something like 23 separate Bay Area transit agencies, every one of them engaging in "Your children must die so that mine may thrive" politics.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

London attempts to integrate its bus, suburban train, tram, light railway and tube services and doesn't do it badly.

My personal favourites are the Budapest metro and the Glasgow metro (really an undergound light railway) which is known with typical Glasgow wit as the 'clockwork orange' as the rolling stock is bright orange :o)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"Integrate?" says California. "What is this 'integrate' thing? You mean, coordinating the arrival and departure times of vehicles on different systems? And organizing the routes so that riders can get to likely destinations without having to backtrack awkwardly? Goodness gracious sakes alive, we can't have that!"

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Snerk :o)

That's the general idea. Even down to being able to buy a ticket that covers the whole system- damn good value that!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

A ticket that covers the whole system (well, much of it) - that, we've got. It's a smart card called the Clipper Card, and all I hear about it is how baffling it is to use. It's really only cost-effective if you use the transit regularly, which I don't - all we have in this area is bus lines a mile apart that run twice an hour, at best - so I've avoided it with trembling fear.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It's the oyster card here although there are all inclusive day tickets available at a good price for those not using it regularly enough to make that worthwhile, so generally it's only tourists not in the know who get ripped off, but that's the same on RT systems the world over.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

Clipper is free if you are willing to let them tie it to a credit card for auto-refills. The web site at least used to be a bit hard to navigate to do that, but you only have to do it once. After that it's dead easy to tag on/off Caltrain and BART or tag on to Muni (supposed to work on VTA and SamTrans but I've never tried.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The difference isn't in the overall reach of the distant ends of the system - the Tube's far ends are about 40 miles apart, BART's about 50, not that much of a difference at that scale, especially if you have no need to get to the ends, and my need to get to Pittsburg is minimal - but in coverage in between. As well say that the SFO-LAX shuttle is better than either because it stretches about 350 miles. But can you get anywhere in between? BART is extremely selective on that, the Tube much less so, and there lies the difference.