Specifically how did the new 49ers Stadium in Santa Clara receive public-funds, taxpayer dollars to help it break ground (San Diego: earthquakes, live)

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by bigdumbgod

Not as remote as Candlestick. About how many people get in there without a car?

The Santa Clara site was chosen with transportation in mind, and three hours sounds way overblown. Caltrain to Light Rail is pretty simple from SF. That site is served by six bus lines, Light Rail, Amtrack, is a few miles from Caltrain, is right between 101 and 237, and has 11 different highway interchange options to get into the parking lots. Should be plenty of ways to get in and out of there in reasonable time, unlike the one way in and out of the Stick.

Hunters' Point is thoroughly contaminated, past the point of making it cost-effective to clean it up and then build an expensive stadium on it, hoping nobody glows green from attending an event there.

I don't think it's as overblown as you might think. From my girlfriend's place along the well-served transit corridor of Geary Blvd, it would take me an estimated 2 hours 30 minutes - 3 hours (depending on time a day and schedules) on a typical Sunday afternoon. Oddly enough, the "quickest" route is taking the 38, to BART, then connecting to Amtrak and walking from the Great America Amtrak stop. For Caltrain, it's recommending taking the 31, to the N, to the local Caltrain to Santa Clara, and taking the 60 VTA to Great America. It's not showing me the light rail VTA option, but if one were to do that, I'd get off at Mountain View and take the 902 southbound to Great America (around 25 minutes), and this option would probably save 15 minutes from the VTA bus (VTA 60) option from Santa Clara. The Caltrain route would take around 3 hours.

Now, it's certainly reasonable and probable that they'll run some sort of express service on the Caltrain corridor on 49ers gamedays, but even if it's baby bullet express service (say, stopping maybe 2-3 times en route to Santa Clara), that part of the trip will still take almost an hour. Add on the light rail/bus, and you're getting close to an hour and a half just there. Add on any buses/trains you need to take to get to Caltrain to begin with, and you can see how this could add up really quickly.

I'm not going to argue that Candlestick is a better option for access, because it isn't great, either. But, I guess if they're going to spend all of this money building a new stadium, it would have been nice to make it so it wouldn't take San Franciscans 2-3 hours to get there.

I don't know what would have been a different option...I don't know where else they could build it...it just seems unfortunate to me that it's so far removed from the city the team's named after. I'm not a 49ers fan, so I'm not that broken up about it, but I do appreciate teams with a lot of heritage and history (of which, the 49ers do have a good amount of).

[sav858]

I'm not sure why people keep using current Sunday transit schedules on how to get to Santa Clara when it's pretty much guaranteed there will be Special Event service to games, especially in the Bay Area where they emphasize the use of public transit heavily.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by sav858

I'm not sure why people keep using current Sunday transit schedules on how to get to Santa Clara when it's pretty much guaranteed there will be Special Event service to games, especially in the Bay Area where they emphasize the use of public transit heavily.

As I said in my post above, it's probable that Caltrain will probably offer some sort of Baby Bullet express service to the new 49ers stadium. But that will still take 45-55 minutes from 4th and King (depending on whether the train goes to Mountain View (VTA light rail) or Santa Clara (VTA bus)).

If you're not lucky and don't live immediately adjacent to the Caltrain station in SOMA, you'll have to take whatever transport to the station, and this can take up to an hour for some people in the outer areas of SF (such as where my GF lives in the middle Richmond) because rarely can one take just one bus/rail line to connect to Caltrain.

Then you'll have to add on the time it'll take to connect from the Caltrain station near the stadium to the stadium itself. I'm estimating at least 20 minutes on the light rail line from Mountain View, and maybe 20 minutes for a bus from Santa Clara (although I'm sure that'll get stuck in the street traffic)...

Even with the best case scenario of express trains/express buses, etc, it'll still be taking people 1 hour 30 minutes - 3 hours from SF if using public transit. That seems perfectly realistic to me.

[sav858]

I'm not talking about just Caltrain but buses that will offer a one-seat ride with no transfers and direct service to the new stadium. I can't imagine that one bus ride taking more than an hour on a Sunday morning.

Yeah it's going to farther for SF residents but likely more convenient for most people in the Bay Area. Only around 10% of the Bay Area lives in Sf and only about 25% of that 10% don't have a car.

Driving it's easily taken me well over 2 hours to get home to Walnut Creek because of how inaccessible Candlestick is. Welcome to having to deal with what much of the rest of the Bay Area has had to for over 40 years.

If SF residents were so concerned with a long commute via transit to Santa Clara then they should have never let them leave in the first place.

[Hard8]

Originally Posted by sav858

I'm not sure why people keep using current Sunday transit schedules on how to get to Santa Clara when it's pretty much guaranteed there will be Special Event service to games, especially in the Bay Area where they emphasize the use of public transit heavily.

True, but let's not pretend this is going to be a situation where you'll be hopping off Caltrain and then sitting in your seats 15 minutes later. Anytime they run shuttles from a large event to a train service, those shuttles get very, very backed up.

As an example, I went to the US Open at Olympic Club, they were running shuttles non-stop from the event to the Colma BART station...After the winner putted-out on 18 to claim they title, I waited at least an hour just to get on a shuttle. And when I say they were running "non-stop" shuttles, I mean that - the buses kept coming and coming and they still couldn't keep up with the masses of people leaving. And that was about 30k people trying to leave, at the most. Now double that number of people for a football game...and you can imagine the nightmare this could become for anyone trying to get back to Caltrain.

Ironically, the location is probably pretty good for anyone coming from anywhere but the City the team is named after. I think you can plan on easily a good 2-hour commute, one-way, for anyone coming from San Francisco.

I'm with HockeyMac, seems silly and disrespectful to use the City's name and then put your new stadium over 40 miles away. I'm not a big Niners fan either but I am a football game, and it was always nice to jump on the Candlestick Express bus on Van Ness and take it directly to the gates of the stadium.

[Hard8]

Originally Posted by sav858

I'm not talking about just Caltrain but buses that will offer a one-seat ride with no transfers and direct service to the new stadium. I can't imagine that one bus ride taking more than an hour on a Sunday morning.

If this is the case, that would be nice and a big improvement over the Caltrain scenario.

[sav858]

Originally Posted by Hard8

As an example, I went to the US Open at Olympic Club, they were running shuttles non-stop from the event to the Colma BART station...After the winner putted-out on 18 to claim they title, I waited at least an hour just to get on a shuttle. And when I say they were running "non-stop" shuttles, I mean that - the buses kept coming and coming and they still couldn't keep up with the masses of people leaving. And that was about 30k people trying to leave, at the most. Now double that number of people for a football game...and you can imagine the nightmare this could become for anyone trying to get back to Caltrain.

Have you ever been to a football game? Look at the parking lot and all the tailgating going on. Those people didn't hop on Muni with coolers and a bbq.

I would bet money the majority of Niners fans don't even live in the city too so I don't think the owners were too concerned with that very small faction of fans who don't own cars.

Dealing with crowds and congestion is part of big sporting events. This is Sunday we're talking about too, it's not like you're gonna have to rush to a game after work like baseball and basketball except for possibly the one Thu or Mon night game.

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by Hard8

If this is the case, that would be nice and a big improvement over the Caltrain scenario.

Not hard to imagine a new gameday shuttle service boom occurring with the opening of the new stadium, as the need arises to get people to and from the game in a pleasing manner. Might be time to invest in a fixer-upper bus, or a slick new limo-quality one for Niner patrons coming from the City. Something cool, like our idea down here for double-deckers painted in team colors/graphics for the Earthquakes games.

They're going to need a lot more places surrounding the stadium for all these people to go before and after, too, which might tie into the shuttle thing.

[WantToHaveALife]

Super Bowls help the local economy, it sucks that California does not see the opportunity in that

[gone down south]

Some which train do you take into Candlestick, exactly?