Abaddon wrote:
so I've been trying to take the train to work lately...

Tom's law of the bay area: All modes of transportation suck equally. Switching from one mode to the other isn't going to make you happier. It may be slightly faster, or slightly less expensive, but those will be balanced by some other form of suck/annoy.

so with gas costing me about $2.70/gallon lets compare the price of public transit to the price of driving my car...

In order to get the real advantage of not driving you actually have to not have a car. This means:
A. No car tax.
B. No car gas.
C. No car payment.
D. No searching around for 40 minutes for a parking space when you get home at night or...
E. Paying $150 a month for a parking space you don't have to search for.
F. Renting a car if you ever need one, which is fairly easy.
G. You can work on the train.
H. Embracing the local urbahippy way. Simplify, man!

However....
A. It takes longer to get to and from work.
B. The taxi system fucking blows. (I eventually started taking limos to the airport. This was pre-bart. It was only $5 more and they actually showed up when you called them.)
C. Missing the last Caltrain is the suckiest thing that can possibly happen.
D. Except getting mugged on the way home from Caltrain, but that never happenned to me. Your hood may vary.

If you want to see the way a city ought to be run, move to Hong Kong. Until then, welcome to America.

you would think that they would try to put some of that communism style of politics that they love in these parts into action by subsidising public transportation like caltrain...

What you're missing is that the Caltrain mostly serves rich people who live or work in the valley. They don't want to help rich people. They hate rich people! They want to help poor people. The poor people live in east bay and take Bart. Bart is cheap.

Look on the bright side, you can drink beer on Caltrain. You think they'd let the commoners on Bart drink beer in a public vehicle? No way!

RE: caltrain blows