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Caltrain to expand service By Gennady Sheyner
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purred by a swelling number of commuters, Caltrain plans to bolster its weekday service by adding six trains and having more existing trains stop in Palo Alto. The proposal, which Caltrain presented to Palo Alto’s City Council Rail Committee Thursday afternoon, June 7, would raise the number of weekday trains from 86 to 92. This includes adding two trains in the afternoon peak hours and restoring four “shoulder peak� trains that were suspended in 2011 when the agency was wrestling with budget cuts. These trains run at the tail end of the morning rush and before the busy afternoon hours. Two of these limited-stop shoulder-peak trains would depart San Francisco at 9:37 a.m. and 2:37 p.m. The other two would depart San Jose at 9:33 a.m. and 2:33 p.m., according to Caltrain. The proposal, which the agency’s board of directors is
tentatively scheduled to vote on next month, would also add an additional stop to 12 existing trains. Six of these would stop at Palo Alto’s downtown station and six others would stop in Sunnyvale. The new stops would add about two minutes to a trip on the babybullet train. The changes were prompted by a surge of ridership at the popular train service. According to Caltrain statistics, the number of riders jumped from 37,779 in February 2011 to 42,354 in February 2012, a 12.1 percent jump. Jayme Ackmann, Caltrain’s government affairs officer, said many of the existing trains currently operate near or beyond capacity. In many cases, riders stand in the trains’ vestibules or in aisles. The high number of bicyclists also adds to the congestion. “We have to bump bicyclists more and more frequently because there’s not enough spaces to carry their bicycles,� Ackemann told the committee. The Palo Alto committee was
generally supportive of the proposal, though it urged Caltrain to take a closer look at another part of Palo Alto — the Caltrain stop at California Avenue. While the University Avenue stop is the second-busiest station on Caltrain’s line and will likely continue to get the bulk of service increases, city officials argued that the California Avenue stop is increasingly important because of its proximity to Stanford Research Park, residential neighborhoods and the California Avenue Business District. Ackemann also said Thursday that Caltrain’s service changes aim to accommodate riders from the technology community, many of who work different hours than typical work commuters. Many of these riders were not satisfied with Caltrain’s service levels during peak hours. “We’re adding stops to several of our express trains to further accommodate some of the ridership increase we’ve seen,� she said. V
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Hospital names three new board members MOVE WILL ADD EXPERTISE IN FINANCE, QUALITY CONTROL AND POLICY By Nick Veronin
COUNCIL NEIGHBORHOODS COMMITTEE Community Meeting For Mobile Home Park Residents Mountain View Senior Center 266 Escuela Street Thursday – June 28, 2012 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. The City of Mountain View Council Neighborhoods Committee will be holding a community meeting with mobile home park residents starting at 7:00 p.m. on June 28, 2012 Residents are encouraged to participate in this meeting to discuss your thoughts about City services and how they might be improved. Council Neighborhoods Committee members, City staff and Project Sentinel staff will be available to respond to your questions and comments. This is an opportunity for you to express your ideas about ways to make your mobile home park and the community a better place to live. For further information, please call the City’s Neighborhood Preservation Division at (650) 903-6379 8
â– Mountain View Voice â– MountainViewOnline.com â– June 15, 2012
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l Camino Hospital’s board just got bigger. In a move intended to help the hospital board make better decisions, the health care organization finalized the appointment of three new directors on June 7. Dr. Neal H. Cohen, Dr. Jeffrey Davis and Nandini Tandon — all of whom have experience in medicine and business — will help the hospital board “apply governance best practices� and “create more depth of subject matter expertise in the areas of finance, quality and policy,� according to an El Camino press release. The new members will join the five current directors, plus El Camino CEO Tomi Ryba, to bring the hospital corporation board to nine members total. In addition to bringing more points of view and a greater level of expertise into the hospital’s decision making process, the new members could be perceived to be bringing greater outside oversight to organization. A recent audit by the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission was critical of the fact that the hospital corporation board was composed
of the same members as the hospital district board. The lead author of the audit, Stephen Foti, said that the district board ought to be composed of different members than the hospital corporation board in order to avoid the potential for the directors to make decisions during hospital district meetings based upon their interests in the hospital corporation. Chris Ernst, spokeswoman for the hospital, said the decision to appoint the additional board members had nothing to do with allaying the concerns of Foti and LAFCO officials. “The addition of the three new hospital (board) members ... has been in process for the last 18 months,� Ernst wrote. “The District Board researched best governance practices over the past year and decided to expand the hospital board to best reflect that governance research.� All three new board members boast backgrounds in healthcare. Cohen is a medical doctor with multiple master’s degrees in business and public health and has experience in risk management and regulatory affairs; he is currently working as a professor of anesthesia and perioperative care
and medicine at the U.C. San Francisco School of Medicine. Davis is also a medical doctor with a master’s degree in public health; he is the chief medical officer of Avivia Health — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kaiser Permanente — and the medical director of national sales and account management at Kaiser. Tandon holds a doctoral degree in biochemistry. She has 20 years experience serving on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms and worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for a decade “Drs. Cohen, Davis and Tandon bring years of clinical and business expertise that will further strengthen the board’s expertise — not just in finance, quality and policy — but also add a new dimension to our knowledge in hospital and physician relations, managed care, population health and disease management,� El Camino Hospital District Board Chairman, John Zoglin, said in the press release. “Beyond these areas, their understanding of the dynamic health care market in Northern California will help us continue providing high-quality care for our patients in a rapidly changing health care environment.� V