He's talking about Caltrain. If you can do pure Caltrain + cycle it will be faster than driving during rush hour, often significantly so, except on the one day a month that someone is killed, on those days you're fucked but at least you have a good excuse.

Compared to what?

Any vehicle. Even when going from station to station, VTA light rail is often less than a third the speed of driving. Biking is often faster.

Coverage is also really poor, especially in the southern areas (Cupertino, Campbell, etc.)

(Just to clarify: Biking in the Bay Area is really good. Public transit, at least in the South Bay, not so much.)