OPINION: Caltrain Screw Up Almost Causes Giants' Fans to Riot

Dear Caltrain and Giants Franchise Directors and Media Gurus:

Please read my rant. Caltrain was seriously screwed up (I am no longer using the expletive deleted that comes naturally to me when I am REALLY angry) last night (June17, 2013).

They made us wait TO BOARD TWO (not one, but two) EMPTY TRAINS for an hour and a half out in the cold, until the Giants game ended in the 13th inning! (This is inconsistent with the experience my boyfriend and I had a couple of months ago one night when we were freezing to death so we left the game early, boarded the train and waited in the warmth of the train car for the game to end.)

There were thousands of us waiting in the blasting foggy wind (lines queued up longer than both trains down both King and 4th Streets). I had taken my 87-year-old stepfather to the game.  (He was all bent over. I wanted to die for him.) All we could do was try to stay positive energy.

I commend the kind people of the Peninsula for not rioting. However, up at the front (I heard) folks were screaming at the Caltrain employees.

Don't give me the excuse that trains won't leave the station until 25 minutes after the game has ended or until the train is full. That argument doesn't apply here. I'm saying they wouldn't let us BOARD the train. And it doesn't take a mathematician to determine that we HAD TWO TRAINFULS of people waiting to board lined up with many more coming by 11 p.m.

I didn't actually enter the car until Midnight exactly. And don't give me the excuse that there had been police action at the 22nd Street stop earlier in the evening. (BTW we were taken off the train in Millbrae and diverted to BART because of that, but that's another story.)

I happen to know that that incident was closed and trains were running out of King Street again by about 8 pm. This was an inexcusable screw up, or abuse of power by underpaid and overzealous Caltrain gatekeepers, or something, that can't ever happen again. Caltrain has a monopoly on mass transit on the Peninsula.

This is a primary reason (OK, maybe the serious demand for masses of people who want to travel using mass transit vs car is more important), but nonetheless an important reason, for breaking up the stranglehold this failing train system has on us, and getting a competitor, maybe via an experienced European train company, to waltz in here and start doing something REAL to move the masses of functional tax payers and tourists here in the wonderful Bay Area to their desired destinations.

You think???

Yours only in a more functional world,
Melanie Kimbel
Mountain View Resident