
Late night shuttle service that makes Caltrain 24/7 - shauryasaluja
http://www.takefleet.com/night
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mikeknoop
Two things:

1\. This is great for before 7AM flights out of SFO / SJC, where public
transit is not an option.

2\. I showed this to my fiancée (who does the south bay / city commute every
day). She said: "This would be a lot more useful to me if they came in between
Caltrains, which can be an hour apart."

~~~
frossie
_This is great for before 7AM flights out of SFO / SJC, where public transit
is not an option._

So how does one get from Millbrae to SFO if the BART is not running? (asks the
occasional visitor)

~~~
texuf
Super shuttle is a popular and econimical option. Or you just call a cab. At
that hour it's $35 before tip.

~~~
terinjokes
I used to live down El Camino Real from the Millbrae station. It should be
closer to $15-20.

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wasd
Public transit in the Bay Area isn't ideal and I appreciate every effort
attempting making to make it better. Would you guys consider connecting with
the East Bay? Going from EB -> PA takes a very long time between BART and
Caltrain.

If you find this exciting you might also enjoying Night School:
[http://www.night.sc/](http://www.night.sc/)

~~~
diafygi
I second east bay. 19th St BART stop in Oakland is a great hub.

~~~
rdl
It is pretty amazing. Especially at off-peak times, Sunnyvale to Oakland can
take 3+ hours by transit, vs. 45 minutes by car.

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supernova87a
I may be showing a bias against buses here, but the ride will be infuriatingly
tortuous.

Bus routes attempting to operate along train stations are always convoluted
routes forced to go back and forth between main roads and the stations, trying
to drop passengers off at the same transfer points as the train.

It would better just drop people off along El Camino, instead of looping round
and round through those stations.

Not that it's dramatically worse than having no option, of course. Just that
it would drive me crazy as a mode of transport, if you're expecting it to
behave like a train...

~~~
skybrian
Perhaps they're expecting people to have parked at the train station?

~~~
cema
Precisely.

And that, of course, is also how buses operate that replace portions of the
subways that are temporarily out of service. For example, I sometimes
encounter it when I come home late at night on Boston Orange line, which has a
lot of construction (they are trying to insert a new station inside an
operating segment) and an occasional late-night or weekend replacement of
subway service with a shuttle service. I never remember that tonight it is
going to be a bus and, in any case, I have to park in a parking garage next to
a [redacted] subway station where I have a monthly parking ticket.

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dang
Ok, you're on. I missed the last Caltrain last night.

Edit: Never heard back. I guess this isn't live.

Edit: Just got an email. Running to Caltrain now. :)

~~~
randall
The $60 uber of shame.

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keehun
Do they have Passenger Carrier permits and are they insured? This is a great
idea, but should something go wrong (and it looks like it very well could in
dead middle of the night), these things are pretty essential.

[http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/transportation/passengers/](http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/transportation/passengers/)

~~~
ed
Probably essential some day, but not yet. These guys could just hire a bus and
eat the loss if it turns out there's significant demand.

~~~
keehun
I guess that's true. They should at least warn the early adopters that there's
no insurance on their end.

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w1ntermute
This reminds me of a recent article on NYC's dollar vans:
[http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/projects/nyc-dollar-
vans/](http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/projects/nyc-dollar-vans/)

~~~
prawn
Of which this appears to be a slightly more modern take:
[https://kutsuplus.fi/home](https://kutsuplus.fi/home)

Sounds like a great idea to me.

In Morocco, they have something in between public transport and private taxi
where these beat-up old Mercedes ("grands taxis") wait to drive popular routes
- when the car fills, you leave and all split the fare. Or you can pay a
higher price to leave sooner. During one ride inland, I wanted to wind down
the window and the driver passed back the sole hand-carved window-winder he
had resting on the dash. All the existing winders had been lost or long-since
removed!

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gwintrob
Great idea. I'd only be interested if I could buy a ticket at the last
possible minute instead of scheduling in advance.

~~~
RaphiePS
Seconded. Most of my late-night travel is completely unplanned -- I can't
imagine scheduling a 4:00 AM trip the day before.

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neilsharma
I'd really like a BART one. Connecting, Downtown Berkeley, one of the main
four SF stops, and Fremont.

And perhaps more importantly, connecting Fremont Bart to Caltrain in south
bay.

As a side, I'd really like an entire loop around the bay. No public
transportation does that, and it'd be great for drunk people at night.

~~~
hc5
Also, 680/880 is severely underserved by public transit. Every day it's
bumper-to-bumper traffic from Walnut Creek->San Jose.

BART will eventually connect this, but you would still need to transfer in
Oakland, which is roughly 20-30 minute detour. Walnut Creek -> Fremont
currently takes over 1 hour on BART, to cover a distance of roughly 30 miles.

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dmourati
Great idea and pretty decent initial offering. The price is _low_. Consider
doubling it right away. (Sorry, but I want this to succeed).

~~~
blahedo
Matching the Caltrain prices exactly seems like a brilliant marketing move on
their part, actually. If they can do it sustainably for that price, that is.

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stu_k
This is a great idea. I do wonder how many people taking the southbound
shuttle on Fridays or Saturdays will be drunk!

~~~
outside1234
~104%

I hope they have a bunch of sailor songs on MP3! And a barf bucket. And
everything can be cleaned by hose.

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fillskills
Something like this, if run all day, could be a great service in Los Angeles
Metropolitan which has a severely crippled public transport system. The area
is spread out into a lot of decent sized cities with almost no public
transport connections - hence causing a driving nightmare every single day.
Just so I can avoid crazy traffic, if you come to LA, I'll make the app for
free.

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ChuckMcM
Nice, now if they would stop at the peninsula's largest city, Sunnyvale, ...
:-) Mountain View isn't that far away but Sunnyvale is definitely one of the
heavier stops on my commute. Seems like most of the train gets on or off there
when I'm riding it.

~~~
deathanatos
> the peninsula's largest city, Sunnyvale

Wouldn't Sunnyvale be at most the second largest city, behind San Francisco?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Its an inside joke, there was a lot of 'cachet' associated with being a
'peninsula city' (like Palo Alto or Menlo Park) and folks would define the
peninsula ending at Mountain View, and Sunnyvale being the start of the 'South
bay'. Generally meant about a 15% difference in home price. (Mtn
View/Sunnyvale). However since 'south bay' is associated with San Jose (which
is a nice, if rather boring city compared to San Francisco) there has been an
argument for at least 30 years as to whether or not Sunnyvale is a peninsula
city or a south bay city. Everyone agrees that the center of Silicon Valley is
somewhere inside Sunnyvale but that is about all they agree on.

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samstave
Wow, this is cool -- it needs "drunk connection" app:

"I am going out in SF, drinking. Set the app to send me SMS reminders of when
I need to head out. Connect me with an uberX to the pickup spot. Make me reply
to the SMS that I got home safe."

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sixQuarks
Glad you guys are doing this, but it infuriates me that Caltrain doesn't run
24/7 on weekends at least. For the amount of money we taxpayers pay for their
pensions and operation, that's the least we can get.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
It is fairly obvious Caltrain needs to run one more late night train on Friday
and Saturday nights. Midnight is too early, especially if you're out in the
city and need to take public transit just to get to Millbrae or 4th and King,
and get there on time.

~~~
gkoberger
They're a private company, so they unfortunately don't need to do anything.
They used to run a later train, but I can only assume they decided a train
full of drunk people wasn't worth the money.

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supernova87a
How about Caltrain allow / license a bus refitted with rail wheels to use the
tracks in the off hours? (aside from the host of legal liabilities that I'm
sure would sink the idea immediately)

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flavio87
this is really awesome. was always hoping caltrain would introduce that -
never occured to me that you could hack the system like you guys are - very
amazing and wish you best of luck!

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spullara
They are also testing regular commute service on their homepage. I'm pretty
sure that they just collecting data at this point to see if there is interest
in the service.

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olgagalchenko
They forgot to mention that they're faster than Caltrain.

~~~
whyenot
Maybe because it's not that clear cut.

A local train covers the same distance in 91 minutes (vs 81 minutes for this
shuttle) but also makes every stop. A baby bullet train that makes roughly the
same number of stops as the shuttle does the trip in 57 minutes.

Caltrain's baby bullet trains beat every other mode of transportation up and
down the peninsula in terms of speed assuming you live by one of the stops AND
the train isn't delayed due to the distressingly frequent accidents and
mechanical failures.

~~~
runamok
_Almost_ every mode. During traffic they certainly do although on my
motorcycle with the power of lane splitting I can beat even the bullet (48
minutes) from mountain view to my office by about 8 minutes. Not including the
12 or so minute walk from 4th and king to work. And of course the baby bullet
only operates at peak times.

In the middle of the night (like this service) perhaps not. I still like it
though because parking is such a nightmare.

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rpowers
This is incredibly timely. I can't wait to try it out.

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jaysonelliot
In other words, they've started a jitney service.

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gourneau
I hope this becomes reality. I would use it, I would also be happy to pay
about twice the price y'all are asking.

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zeruch
This is something I could test/validate quite readily. Challenge accepted.

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wh-uws
do you guys have any contact info? I'm working on a similar problem and would
love to chat

