San Jose station and 24x7 service. Not having either of these makes BART nearly worthless to me. If they had these things, I would use BART probably a few times a week to go to SF from SJ. Right now, I drive instead (1x on average every other week) to night clubs / bars / dinner in SF / Berkeley. I can park at Millbrae and take BART into the city, but doing so is only useful if I'm going to be back before ~midnight.
Caltrain is not an option because the service isn't 24x7, it's terribly slow, the train doesn't come often enough, and the station isn't close to where I live. The last 2 are just personal annoyances, but I think the first 2 are enough to make it a much-less-desirable option vs driving for people who would otherwise take it. That the cars are ridiculously over-built because they technically share tracks with freight trains (from what I've read, this is also what makes them so horribly loud and inefficient [which also makes the system much more expensive to run]) and do lots of PR damage by having very loud horns (my speculation: is that also related to the shares-tracks-with-freight-trains thing?) are just rotten cherries on top.
Public transit isn't easy, but it's also not impossible. I know that even the Bay Area doesn't have the population density of places with their public transit
An express caltrain is faster than driving (unless you encounter no traffic, in which case the drive would be 9 mins faster) and you don't have to worry about parking. It's not quite as bad as you say. No 24/7 service is really annoying though.
The loud horn thing is a federal requirement because the tracks are at the same level (the same "grade") as roads and paths. One reason to support grade separation for Caltrain.
Caltrain is not an option because the service isn't 24x7, it's terribly slow, the train doesn't come often enough, and the station isn't close to where I live. The last 2 are just personal annoyances, but I think the first 2 are enough to make it a much-less-desirable option vs driving for people who would otherwise take it. That the cars are ridiculously over-built because they technically share tracks with freight trains (from what I've read, this is also what makes them so horribly loud and inefficient [which also makes the system much more expensive to run]) and do lots of PR damage by having very loud horns (my speculation: is that also related to the shares-tracks-with-freight-trains thing?) are just rotten cherries on top.
Public transit isn't easy, but it's also not impossible. I know that even the Bay Area doesn't have the population density of places with their public transit