[wburg]

I like it for the view, and not all rail/bus is created equal. It's a comfortable charter bus, not like a MUNI city bus, and, as I said, I like the view from the bridge. Taking BART from Richmond (or presumably from Oakland) means buying a BART card in addition to the Amtrak ticket (a bit more complexity) and going through the station and turnstiles, and getting onto a potentially crowded BART car. I like public transit so don't mind a crowd or a diverse group of folks riding with me, but I suppose it might make some folks uncomfortable.

And there is already a rail to rail transfer station from San Francisco to Capitol Corridor, it's just Richmond rather than Oakland, a generally quieter and less crowded station, that's just a couple minutes farther out. It sounds like there are other potential advantages to consolidating regional intermodal transit in Oakland, but driving additional SF/Sacramento traffic doesn't sound like a particularly important purpose of that project. And if it's BART's problem, then it's everyone's problem, because this plan depends on BART's willingness to be the main vehicle of the new hub.

There once was a direct rail connection between Sacramento and San Francisco, but only 1939-1940, the Sacramento Northern interurban electric railroad--you could get on in Sacramento (the train started in Chico but Sacramento was the system's hub,) take an electric train all the way through the East Bay and into downtown San Francisco's transbay terminal, taking a car ferry over Suisun Bay and the brand-new Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Shame we don't have one today.