#acerail

Yesterday, I learned that the ACE line isn’t fully covered by cell towers. Verizon seems to have an edge over T-Mobile (pun intended).

I also learned that the Tumblr Android app can eat posts away when trying to post with poor coverage.

I also learned that the afternoon ride is likely to be more comfortable in shorts and sandals, at least in summer, and in spite of the air conditioning, and that apparently the middle of the car is more comfortable than the ends.

Getting out of the parking lot at Tracy is an exercise in patience when so many people get from the train back to their car.

I guess there was something crazy buying a house 60 miles from work without first trying the commute for myself. I had done my homework, though, and I knew what to expect on paper.

Today, though, I had a good reason to be in Tracy, and I figured it’s be easier to drive against traffic and to take the train than to try to drive in traffic. That was my first ride on ACE.

Well, it all went fine. Parking was a breeze. The train was clean and comfortable. ACE 03 was on time. Overall, comparing with the RER in Paris or the subway in NYC, this was a low-stress experience, even as a first-time rider.

Amusingly, as a matter of contrast, just like US roads are far less smooth than their French or German counterparts, so are the railroads.

Today, the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority starts to run the San Joaquin trains, which had been managed by the State of California.

The San Joaquin train runs 6 trains each way between Bakersfield and Stockton, with 4 of those trains extending to Oakland and 2 to Sacramento. Combined with the 4 ACE trains, that makes 16 daily train arrivals and departures in Stockton on weekdays, 12 on weekends as ACE only runs on workdays.

I haven’t moved to Tracy yet, so I’m not riding ACE yet. However, I keep an eye on things. Today, ACE 03 is delayed by 24 minutes. That’s the train I expect to ride on most mornings. Reason invoked for the delay: waiting for a freight train to clear the track into a siding. ACE 03 waited at the siding, which implies that the freight train is using the track in the other direction.

After 17 years living along the San Francisco Bay (mostly on the peninsula, a bit in the East Bay at some point, recently in the South Bay), we decided it was time to move away. In a nutshell, we’ve reached the point where housing is too expensive for us. We’re finding ourselves paying more than we’d like for a house that is smaller than we’d like.

Now, the reality of my professional life is still that I work in Silicon Valley, so we’re not moving that far away. 60 miles. Into the exurbs. Suburbs of a suburb of a suburb.

Actually, we’re going to Tracy, which is not a real exurb: it actually has a significant warehousing industry for the Bay Area. It is far enough away that driving to work is impractical. It’s a 1-hour drive when there’s no traffic, and there’s consistently major traffic from very early morning to early evening.

It’s not much of a secret that I’m a major fan of public transit. I’ll be taking ACE, the Altamont Corridor Express, directly from Tracy to Santa Clara, and from there a shuttle takes me straight to work. On the days when I work in San Francisco, I’ll take BART instead.

This blog will talk about my experiences commuting by rail.

Here come the Adventures of a Commuting Exurbanite.