Connect the World? The Bay Area Can’t Even Connect Its Trains

A New Light Rail System Underscores the Frustrations of California's Richest Region

The northern terminus of SMART, the new light rail system officially opening this weekend in the North Bay, is the Sonoma County Airport Station in Santa Rosa. But after my 8-year-old son and I disembarked from an Alaska Airlines flight, we learned that the airport is more than a mile away from the train.

We didn’t know how to bridge this transportation gap. My son wasn’t up for a long walk. There is as yet no shuttle from plane to train. The public bus that would take us in the train’s …

By Joe Mathews | August 28, 2017

What Riding Trains Taught Me About Americans

Rail Travel Induces a Reverie and Intimacy Among Its Diverse Passengers

By James McCommons | August 17, 2017

Amos, a one-legged Amish man, was having trouble with his new prosthesis. He left the leg in his sleeping compartment and came to the diner on crutches—a hazardous ambulation …

All Aboard, Bay Area, on Your Fast Train to Wasco

This Kern County Town, a Conduit for High-Speed Rail, Has a Lot to Offer

By Joe Mathews | March 2, 2017

Dear Bay Area,

Welcome to Wasco.

You may never have heard of this small city of 25,000 in the San Joaquin Valley. You probably can’t pronounce it (it’s WAW-skoh).

But you and …

How Riding the Rails Can Change Cities and Lives

Don’t Judge L.A.’s New Train Lines by the Number of Cars They Take Off the Road. Their Potential to Nurture New Communities Is Incalculable.

By Joe Mathews | March 3, 2016

What will the railroad bring us?

That was the question Henry George sought to answer for California in his famous 1868 essay, “What the Railroad Will Bring Us,” on the eve …

The Explosion That Stopped the Subway

Railtown

by Ethan N. Elkind | November 1, 2014

How did rail gain a foothold in a car culture city? UCLA and UC Berkeley legal, business, and environmental scholar Ethan N. Elkind used archival documents, contemporary news accounts, and …

When L.A. Is the End of the Line

Train

by Tom Zoellner | November 1, 2014

Trains changed the world, but then cars and planes came along, and they became a tertiary form of transportation, particularly in the U.S. But journalist and Chapman University English scholar …

Get More Zócalo