Better to fund Caltrain than SC? In the great scheme of things I'd agree with you, but in the weird world of government funding it isn't possible. The SC money is from a bond issue (thank you voters! though I'm not sure you-all understood what you were voting for and by the way it wasn't actually free money ... paying for the bonds is one reason why roads aren't being fixed and buses aren't running as much) that can only pay for line purchases and "capital" stuff i.e. buying cars/locos and building things. A lot of those fancy shops and other buildings/track work you've seen on Caltrain were paid for from bonds not fares and other operating funds.

What Caltrain needs now is *operating* money which can't and shouldn't come from bonds. You know, pay for somebody to run the trains and fuel to burn and maintenance of stuff. What they need is higher fares (which is happening to nearly all transit systems ... sorry folks) and a guaranteed cut of Samtrans-Muni-VTA $$. Not something from the goodness of their transit-corporate hearts that changes at annual whim. Alternative really is to cut back to what can be funded largely from fares: weekday commute service only, like SP used to do. If that happens, there better be a bunch of freight service developed to help pay the maintenance bills.

BTW, Golden Gate Transit has done this for years. Their commute express buses don't get any Federal or State tax help. They run on fares and bridge tolls (OK, tolls are sort of a tax, but only on people that get some benefit from the buses). That's why the service gets adjusted frequently and sometimes painfully - can't have extended fare losses. Harder to do that with trains, so the fares have to go up (for premium service, right? would you rather ride a Samtrans bus?).