Empty trains due to lack of secure parking at 22nd Street Station

I live in San Francisco and drive a couple of miles to the 22nd Street train station to ride to Redwood City. It's the first stop going south out of SF. The train is great but really underused. Sometimes there are only a couple of other people in the front car.

Parking at the downtown station costs about $10 a day. Parking here is free.

Some of the people at work tell me they decided to take the train but drive by and can't find a parking space so they just hop on 280 and drive the 30 miles to work.


Actually there are always parking spaces but unless you get there really early then they are often sketchy. The station is built underneath 280 which is great in the rain but makes the area seem scarier after dark. My car has never been broken into but you can occasionally see the broken glass created by other break-ins.

What we need is some secure parking. I think many would be willing to pay for it. There are three people in my company of 30 who say they would take the train from here if there were secure parking. Lots of youngish people do get on the train here, lots of laptops, Yahoo! backpacks. My brother-in-law at eBay boards here a couple of times a week. I'm pretty sure that the popularity of this station started with the rise of Silicion Valley and it's easy to imagine that the same people who moved into the Mission, Potrero, and Noe Valley because it was the Valley side of SF are the same people taking the train from here.

I think that the authorities who are in charge of such things as parking and security and cleaning out around stations haven't really noticed how popular the station is. It could be much more popular.

One of the guys at work who boards here suggests that a multi-level lot be built over the bus depot next door. There is also a huge nearly vacant parking lot nearby at a company called Trayer that would work well.

Anyway, my sense is there are hundreds of people driving to the Valley who would switch to the train if we could figure out how to provide the parking for them. That translates into a quite a few tons of carbon that doesn't go into the air.