Originally Posted by
Eastbay1K
We'll just agree to disagree on this one. From what station should the airtrain have connected? Millbrae? South SF? Much easier to be able to walk if desired to any point in the airport from the BART station with no connection.
You may recall, once up on a time, there was an SFO <-> Millbrae line. It just went back and forth. However, whatever set of rocket scientists decided that was a good idea failed to take the BART train operators' contract (that was in effect at that time) into account because (as I recall) there were mandatory rest periods and/or other relevant work rules which applied at the end of a line.
That's fair - I do like the walkability of SFO from BART in the current setup, so that's a plus, and does simplify things without having to wait for the AirTrain. (I suspect people's opinions on the matter may also depend on whether one uses BART to get to Milbrae or SFO more often - depending on the route pattern one of those destinations always seems harder to get to than the other!).
There's an interesting report from SJSU that looks at some of the history and alternative plans at the time -
https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/defa...-Extension.pdf. One of which was an airport intermodal transit center just west of 101 where the airport AirTrain, BART, and CalTrain would all interconnect at one point (presumably without building the Milbrae transfer station). Another option was to have a "through" BART station near the long term parking lot that was connected by AirTrain, and then BART would continue south to Milbrae for the CalTrain transfer point. And it looks like there was discussion to have an AirTrain route extend to either the Milbrae or San Bruno locations.
At the very least, these plans make for some fun "what ifs" on a weekend afternoon
