It doesn't matter in terms of distance walking from train to train, but it is very likely to matter in terms of time. If all goes on schedule, the Richmond train mikepa would wait for at Balboa will eventually be about 10 minutes (give or take, depending on time of day) behind the Richmond train he would connect with at 19th Street Oakland.

You are correct. I don't know why I was suffering from temporary dyslexia this AM thinking He was going FROM Berkeley.

In any event, if you have a seat for yourself and place with your luggage next to you at SFO, you might as well keep your seat all the way to Oakland. At worst even if you're standing on your connection, you won't have many stops.

Note that although 19th St. is supposed to be a timed connection, I've been noticing (as recently as Friday) that frequently, the trains aren't waiting for each other because they're more than a couple minutes off their timing.

Many thanks for the input guys.

Back from the trip and all worked as advertised. I was quite impressed by BART. But I wonder why the trains going to Milbrae don't just stop at SFO?

They do, but only after 9pm weekdays or on weekends on the Pittsburg/Bay Point line (yellow). The Richmond/Daly City (red) line doesn't, ever. Why, I don't know, but I'm willing to bet someone here does...

They used to but they stopped. It turns out that not a lot of people take BART from Milbrae to SFO (there's only local and Caltrain traffic) and they were trying to get more commuters originating around Millbrae to commute into SF using BART, so they cut SFO from the station list on the red line.

Now if you take Caltrain to SFO from the peninsula, you have to stop at Millbrae, BART on the red line to San Bruno, then BART back to SFO on the yellow line.

Fun facts:

• Before the BART SFO extension, there used to be a dedicated, timed-transfer shuttle from the Milbrae Caltrain station to SFO. This is arguably better than the current BART transfer.
• Once the shuttle was gone, there used to be a dedicated BART train (purple line) that would run between Milbrae and SFO. Hopefully this will come back once the new and larger BART fleet is procured.
• Milbrae is a future high speed rail station on the CA high speed rail project. It would be inconceivable that the shiny new $68 billion train will drop you off at Millbrae and then require two BART segments to get to SFO, so hopefully this will be fixed soon, especially with the strong possibility that CAHSRA will build the SF-Bakersfield segment first now.

I probably know more about this segment than I should (someone at Northwestern wrote a dissertation on this SFO BART segment and I read it).

I've only lived in the SF Bay Area since 1985, so perhaps my observations and experience are not as vast as others, but having seen the state of public transit in the region, it would be completely conceivable that you'll need two BART segments to get to SFO from Millbrae Station.

Makes sense, although annoying when you actually do want to go from Caltrain to SFO.

mid-90s here, and unfortunately I agree :) we can hope though...

I concur but one of the goals of California HSR is to improve the transit systems in its host cities (Caltrain electrification and extension, Metrolink improvements, etc.) so there's reason to be optimistic, especially since the plans call for an extensive remodel of the Millbrae station.

Thinking about it more, what really boggles my mind is why BART was extended to SFO rather than extending the AirTrain to Millbrae, a la the JFK AirTrain to Jamaica. AirTrain would be perfect for the low-capacity line, cheaper to build than heavy rail, and guarantee a two-seat ride to any terminal from BART/Caltrain. I guess not that many people take Caltrain to the airport . . .

Avoiding another transfer is key, and probably helps ridership. I don't speak from a lot of experience, but on a recent 2pm-ish weekday SFO arrival, my SFO originating BART train was at seated capacity at departure.

Another factor is that Caltrains run much less frequently than BART trains.

Broadly speaking, sure, but even considering only northbound trains there are 3-4 arrivals per hour at Millbrae during commute hours. Reading across the Millbrae row at http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/weekdaytimetable.html :

am:
5:35 6:10 6:26 7:01 6:47 7:19 7:26 8:01 7:47 8:19 8:26 9:01 8:50 9:19 9:47 10:20 10:53 11:20

pm:
12:15 1:15 2:15 3:20 3:43 4:12 4:45 4:59 5:07 5:45 5:27 6:01 6:09 6:45 6:28 6:59 7:07 7:43 7:55 8:35

also 9:35 10:35 11:35 but those are after the 9pm transition.

Of course I am viewing this selfishly because I live on the peninsula :) but it'd be nice if the connection were less awkward.

Anyway given all the parameters it seems like a dedicated shuttle or spur line would make more sense.

I wonder if that was on a shortened train? I know some times of day they won't run 10 car trains as they do take extra power and they don't need the capacity.

I remember when I worked at BART in the 80's a "busy" day was considered 250,000 passengers. When the Bay Bridge was knocked out after the Loma Prieta earthquake, we were up in the 350,000 range and still functioning pretty well.

From what I've read recently, BART had 528,679 riders the Friday of Super Bowl week, the third busiest day every (highest was during the World Series in 2012). Even with the system expansion since I left there in 1991, I can't see how they can accommodate all these passengers without placing new trains in service (think the first new cars are due later this year) and running them closer together. That can't happen soon enough.

My most memorable day there was when I ordered power shut down in the Berkeley Hills tunnel as police pursued someone on foot from Orinda all the way down to Rockridge. Didn't want them taken out by a train. :)

For those here that go back a ways, I had an instructional video on track safety narrated by Dr. Don Rose from KFRC when I first started. Anyone remember him? Think he lived somewhere around Alamo and did his radio show from home for a while after a shooting accident in Canada.

Nope. A 10 car train which was going through SF proper during the 3pm hour.

Methinks you refer to Dr. Donald D. Rose as he called himself :-)