The future of Bay Area transit and what it can do for real estate.

In August of this year, Caltrain launched its high-performance electric train, which expedites commuters from San Francisco to San Jose in under an hour. There are 16 train stations along that route that can each offer a train coming in every 15 minutes, so the trains are running fast and frequently. The electric train helps meet regional green house gas reduction goals by cutting 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. That’s the equivalent of taking 55,000 cars off 101 south every year. 

Truly, that drive super sucks all week long for a massive number of commuters. Silicon Valley is a big, significant, job industry in the Bay Area. It’s a huge reason why so many people move here. It’s a huge reason so many people drive here. 

It’s also a major factor in why so many home buyers’ foot the bill with really high home prices. And the reality is, when people do move away from the Bay Area, bad traffic is a top 5 reason people site for wanting to leave. Stand still traffic lowers people’s overall satisfaction with their daily quality of life. It’s taxing, it’s frustrating, and it’s time consuming. 

Traffic and commute times are important to Bay Area home buying hopefuls. It’s certainly something people have to heavily factor and consider while shopping in certain neighborhoods and towns. Can you ever expect to make school pick up for your kid? Will you get home after dark and just be ships passing in the night with your spouse? Traffic and the amount of time stuck in it, is really impactful in the lives of the Bay Areas commuting workforce. 

So, innovations like this electric passenger train becoming an option for folks who have been suffering through that drive is a net positive in really important ways. The environmental footprint is relevant, traffic not only is terrible to exist in it’s also terrible for the planet we exist on. 

Having a fast and efficient option to get where you need to go without sitting in bumper to bumper does great things for the home values in the region. 

While we are on the subject of fast, efficient trains helping take cars off our packed California highways and freeways, there’s more! 

California is going hard with its planning process for a high-speed railway linking Los Angeles to San Francisco. It’s a big project, that is still seeking federal funding to be fully realized. It’s benefits mimic the train we just touched on between SF and San Jose, but on a much larger scale. 

When we think about the future of transportation in the state of California, we are looking at addressing a handful of commuter needs and design necessities that are very specific to our big, long, state. Connecting hubs like San Francisco and LA, opens options, frees up highly congested highways, and lessons a gap that’s a really big distance between Californians. Obviously, this is a huge project, they’re building 220 miles of track in phases. Right now they’re physically laying down track in the area of the Central Valley they’re calling the backbone of the entire shebang. While it’s an excellent sign things are up and moving, the build in its entirety doesn’t have an official date that it will be completed and up and running. It’s just something to look forward to! 

California’s had a huge increase in numbers of people driving electric vehicles, and while this lowers the states carbon emissions footprint, it doesn’t lower the number of cars on the road. 

For the future of local and statewide transportation, going green is top of the list. Electric transportation options are at the forefront of how experts and engineers are envisioning and implementing the future of commuter trains in the golden state. 

There’s a lot more in the works than the couple of things we touched on here. There’s a lot of cool new options to come, that will get folks to and from work quickly and safely. We can also visit other parts of the state, friends and family, explore new places, all without ever having to turn a key and start an engine.