[artsrc]

building a lane of high speed urban transport is really expensive.

And a rail lane has 50 times the passenger capacity of a private motor vehicle lane.

So if the problem is linking people to sfo, rail is much cheaper.

You need to get the link to rail at both ends right. Maybe you need baggage check and parking available in Marin county where you get on the train.

[rsync]

"Maybe you need baggage check and parking available in Marin county where you get on the train."

Does that exist anywhere ? Genuinely curious ... is there anywhere where you can check luggage at the train embark 20-30 miles prior to the airport ?

Park and ride is something I already do while traveling solo[1], but three kids, strollers, skis, whatever ... there's no way we're packing, unpacking, and packing again to do a park and ride ... we just need to drive to the airport.

Travelers who rented cars at SFO are in the same position. Like it or not, no matter how smartly we Jane Jacobs up the place, people are gonna need to drive to the airport.

[1] Marin Airporter

[samcheng]

A number of cities do satellite airline baggage checks, primarily on the city end of airport express rail.

Here's an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoyuan_International_Airport_...

Here's another one:

http://www.hongkongairport.com/eng/transport/to-from-airport...

[ido]

    is there anywhere where you can check luggage at the 
    train embark 20-30 miles prior to the airport ?

You can do that with the CAT[1] in Vienna, IIRC.

[1] http://www.cityairporttrain.com/

[astrange]

It's common in urban Japan to have a courier company take your luggage to the airport a day or two before you leave, and then you can just take the train or a bus without taking up so much space on it.