The comment section from the last post has overflowed, so here is an open thread to keep the discussions going. Some noteworthy developments fished out of the previous comments:
- Caltrain ridership is rising quickly, with June total ridership up a stunning +75% from one year ago; stay tuned to their ridership dashboard for upcoming July numbers. This steep increase is likely driven by a combination of a superior product and freeways jamming again as the post-pandemic return to the office continues. While this is still only 65% of June 2019, a full recovery seems within reach.
- As ridership increases, it will soon be time to consider tightening the base takt from 30 minutes to 20 minutes. In past times of fiscal crisis, Caltrain has argued that its high fixed costs would make service cuts kill more ridership and revenue than the money saved on operations & maintenance; that same argument can be turned around that increasing service will generate more ridership and revenue than the money spent on additional O&M.
- The pre-pandemic "long-range service vision" has been scaled back, with the ambitious 12 Caltrain + 4 HSR per hour per direction "expanded growth" scenario eliminated from the planning horizon. The 8 Caltrain + 4 HSR per hour per direction "core" scenario thankfully remains, and one hopes that Caltrain planners understand that its successful realization requires four-track Redwood City station approaches, not just a four-track station. See quantitative justification.
- The old gallery fleet is being transferred to Lima, Peru, with the first shipment already delivered and the second being loaded as of this writing in Stockton. Follow the ship here. Per YouTube videos, there is political controversy developing in Peru around the Caltrain transaction. Notably, there is disappointment that the trains are old and decrepit, but we knew that.
A request to commenters: thank you for staying focused on Caltrain and HSR issues here in the SF Bay Area.
Posts
The service vision materials you link seem to permanently foreclose the possibility of quad-tracking for much of the Peninsula Corridor… isn’t that a fairly substantial change from current policy that deserves robust public input?
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a major change, and it's hitting on major weaknesses in the current governance setup: Caltrain JPB governed by individual cities, which have an interest in freeing up ROW for TOD; state interest in the corridor not considered. The Board had a small quorum when this was discussed in June, but the ED and members present were very dismissive of the 12+4 vision, and eager to reap the near-term benefits of dropping it.
DeleteIn my opinion, the 4th & King yard is sacrificable: the real long-range vision is through-running to a yard in the East Bay. That takes care of SF's interest in maximizing its Prologis development deal (though imo that also shouldn't go through until DTX construction is done and the construction site logistics can be massively improved).
However, giving up 4-tracking of the other areas on the corridor is fraught: we don't know what the eventual through-running service, as contemplated in the state rail plan, will require. And the TOD and grade separation savings opportunities there are much less substantial than at 4th and King - maybe you save 25ft of width on your rail overpass, but that's a tiny share of the overall cost. Maybe you gain 25ft of TOD at a station, but that's in the double-digit millions of building value.
Caltrain doesn't need to commit to ever running 12+4 service specifically, but it should guard its ROW more like a freight railroad would. Without intervention from the state to protect the ROW, this could become a major headache for future investment.
The JPB's job is to run Caltrain well, period.
DeleteIt isn't to roll out the red carpet for HSR, whose cheap-out plans for the peninsula would absolutely gut Caltrain service quality. Their entire approach is to bunch regional trains together to open up HSR express slots without adding any tracks, making some Caltrain dwells exceed five minutes (if everything is on time!) so the HSR express can overtake.
This cheap plan is sold on the false pretense that regional commuters would enjoy faster SF-SJ trips via HSR, but we need only look at ticket prices between Stamford, CT and New York Penn to understand that HSR yield management will preclude it: Acela is many times more expensive than Metro-North, to preserve sales of more lucrative long-distance seats.
I didn't see the elimination of the 12+4 "expanded growth" scenario as a secret plan to sell off ROW, so I'm not particularly exercised about it -- that would indeed be incredibly short-sighted.
If the state wants to run HSR on the peninsula, it will have to invest a lot more $$ to make the services mesh well by adding passing tracks. The microscopic amount of funding contributed to the electrification project does not earn it the right to gut regional rail service, which will always generate more ridership than HSR.
That said, I've often griped about Caltrain being so careless with their ROW utilization (Hillsdale? San Bruno?) that they preclude efficient development of the corridor's latent transportation capacity. Case in point: Redwood City, the one and only four-track section actually needed by Caltrain, where indications are that the agency just doesn't comprehend the dire operational implications of their plans for a two-track grade separation. They have enough ROW for four tracks and they should make efficient use of it-- if there is ever a place to throw around their legal rights as a railroad, this is it!
I would like to believe that there is no plan to sell off ROW behind this change in policy. However, the original slides presenting this to the board made clear mention of development possiblities in the Belmont parking lot as a motivating factor for the change. Take a look at what happened with TOD at San Carlos Station and you can see the potential impact. 4 tracking is now only possible if the station is relocated.
DeleteI bet $1k that it is all about selling off ROW in Belmont, forever crippling Caltrain service.
DeleteI mean, just look at the utter fucking disaster of the Caltrain-reaming public-screwing San Carlos "TOD" -- same house, same call. It's almost as if they're in the business of destroying the public realm.
The dickwad clowns on the PCJPB and SMCTA will go on and on and on about the revenue their "fiscal cliff" agency is receiving from this Transit Oriented Development, but in reality the net from forever crippling future service will be measured in the single digits of millions of dollars -- where we know Caltrain today can't even build half a mile of non-revenue track for $10 million.
It's pure evil and pure corruption and pure stupidity. These people are the very worst, and we're all utterly doomed.
"The JPB's job is to run Caltrain well, period."
DeleteThis attitude is the exact antithesis of the one taken by places which get the highest transit usage. German "Verkehrsverbünde", Swiss/Dutch national Takt timetabling, RATP in Paris or TfL in London all work on the principle of integrating different modes and maximizing/optimizing use of infrastructure, not sandbox games of "this is mine go build your own." New York City wasted billions on East Side Access because Metro North was unwilling to allow Long Island Rail Road access to some of Grand Central Terminals numerous tracks and platforms. Adopting the same attitude on the Peninsula is just an opening for Richard's "Finest Transportation Professionals" to want to 'invest' much more than a microscopic amount of money in things like totally unnecessary tunneled HSR, or HSR building two track grade separations while leaving Caltrain with at grade crossings ("they didn't roll out the red carpet for US, why would we pay for THEIR grade separation...").
I completely agree with out that local commuter ridership always dwarfs intercity travel, and the tail should not wag the dog, but yes, Caltrain SHOULD roll out the red carpet for CAHSR. The peninsula rail corridor is a state (national?) level asset for the access it gives to the core of the fifth largest combined metro area in the country. The work needed to be done to accommodate CAHSR is an opportunity for both it and Caltrain, not an attack.
As jpk122s mentioned, Caltrain explicitly states the motivation for this change in policy in the presentation linked in this open thread's parent post:
Delete"A. Reduced costs for planning and design
B. Benefits for Caltrain, partners, and corridor communities
C. Improved potential viability for SF Railyards Development Project
D. Reduced costs of capital project investments"
It goes on to include a map of Belmont station, explaining that "Preliminary analysis shows removal of Expanded Growth passing tracks in a future update to the Rail Corridor Use Policy maps could result in one potential opportunity site that could be available in the near-term for a development project at Belmont Station." "Service Vision Capital Project Overlay in Belmont currently preserves JPB property for potential future passing tracks for Expanded Growth. Impacts of potential future capital projects to non-JPB property are not mapped."
Through we don't like it, as Clem's "HSR Lays and Egg in Caltrain's Nest" post notes, HSR has the right to, and intends to, screw up Caltrain headways to create the 8+4 operating plan, bunching up local and express trains to create big gaps in service where HSR trains can operate non-stop. Any fix to that is going to require more passing track than is in the 8+4 plan.
In my opinion, Caltrain is OK to drop the ROW expansion provisions of the 12+4 plan, but should continue to prohibit use of existing ROW for TOD. They're welcome to, and should, start a new long-term operating plan study that incorporates new info: standard-gauge Link21, the state rail plan, etc.
But that's not their current intent; their current intent is to give up 12+4 and any owned ROW required for it to TOD that's low-value vs the value of a preserved rail corridor. They need to be steered away from that via advocacy.
Right of way preservation for a statewide rail system should be the job of the state. If the Caltrans division of rail or the California HSR Authority are asleep at the wheel, that's on them-- it isn't "advocacy" that can replace competent centralized planning.
DeleteEvery example cited by Onux above is coordinated at the regional level, not led from behind by individual operators or sub-regional component agencies, which is what we seem to expect Caltrain to do. I'm all for regional coordination, but asking Caltrain to do it is like asking a monkey to manage the zoo.
I hadn't read closely enough that Caltrain wants to sell off ROW in Belmont, and that would indeed be astonishingly shortsighted. The state should stop them, and if they don't, then California is ineffectively governed.
IMHO a problem is that USA still to a large extent clings on to having the same company/organization/agency owning tracks and running trains. The one major exception is also the worst example of not doing this: Amtrak on tracks owned by freight railways.
DeleteIf Caltrain were structured like railways in for example parts of Europe, there would be:
* An agency that owns, builds and maintains the infrastructure absolutely needed for running trains (tracks, bridges, tunnels, signalling, electrification, platforms, any bridges or tunnels for accessing the platforms, but usually not station buildings and absolutely not trains, except trains for maintenance/inspections and such).
* An agency actually owning and operating the trains (or sub contracting the operations to some private company). This latter agency could own station buildings, but they could also be owned by local cities.
* Local cities/counties would own station buildings at places that aren't a major interchange between trains and longer distance buses, destination and/or origin of travelers. I.E. 4th/King, Diridon and such would be owned by the agency that owns the tracks, while "medium importance" stations (like major interchanges to local buses / transit) would be owned by the agency that owns the trains, while stations that are only of local importance would be owned by the local city/county.
In this case Caltrans would be the suitable owner both for the infrastructure Caltrain owns, and also for the infrastructure that the Metrolink counties and San Diego county owns, and also the Cali HSR infrastructure.
The objective for the agency owning the infrastructure should be to provide an as good as possible general public transit within the limits of their funding. Meanwhile the objective for the agency running the trains should be to provide an as good as possible local/regional transit in it's area.
(Had to split it into two comments)
DeleteBut now we are stuck with mini fiefdoms owning their part of things. The counties involved in Caltrain can at least be happy that they are just three counties and that they have a joint board. Although Metrolink is a joint operation, the right-of-way is owned by each county individually (except when it's owned by freight railways of course). It's also organized in a way that seem to make it impossible for a single county to decide on trains that only run in their county and it's related infrastructure. Also even though Moorpark-LAUS and along the LA River, and from Fullerton and southwards, are publicly owned, the non-greater LA counties that are part of the Surfliner have no say in what happens with this infrastructure.
Anyways, the goal of Caltrain and the PCJPB should be to do what's in the best interest of the population on the peninsula. And I'd argue that it's in their best long term interest to have a decent connection to Cali HSR, and it's also in their long term interest to in the future be able to run a mix of express and all-stop trains along the route. The alternative would be that Cali HSR just dumps off / picks up all passengers at Diridon. Also if it ends up being a question of who is willing to take Cali HSR trains, the owners of an improved Capitol Corridor route might be interested in having HSR trains running to Oakland/Richmond, and then the peninsula part of the Caltrain route suffers, especially the northern part. (Yes, I know that prop 1A specifically states SF-LA, but afaik it doesn't hinder trains running to/from other places too).
Re fares: Since PCJPB owns the route, I would assume that they would get to negotiate trackage right fees for Cali HSR. This in turn means that they can negotiate other things with Cali HSR, like for example Caltrain ticket validity along the Caltrain route. Unfortunately in general it wouldn't work great to share southbound evening peak trains and/or northbound morning peak trains. Fortunately though I assume that the peak hours directions for regional commuters is mostly northbound in the morning, and southbound in the evening, while for HSR trains it would be the opposite direction, and thus sharing would be a bit more feasible.
A possible option would be to allow sharing, but have a slightly higher fee for tickets that are also valid on HSR trains. This likely keeps out the most obnoxious local/regional passengers from the HSR trains. Like it's not great if the area around a seat is full of garbage left from a SF-SJ commuter if that seat is then to be used for someone traveling from Fresno to LA.
The CAHSR Authority has shared for the first time that it intends to issue a Request for Proposals for public/private partnerships (e.g. DBFM) to build large segments of CAHSR, with private financing backed by the $1B/year guarantee that Newsom is negotiating to be included in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
ReplyDeleteRFEI question response #28 states: "The Authority anticipates releasing a Request for Proposals for P3 in 2025."
The RFEI itself says that "The Authority’s medium-term goal is to link the Bay Area at Gilroy and greater Los Angeles at Palmdale in less than 20 years and deliver useful project segments in the interim." RFEI responses were due at the end of July; interviews with respondents are to take place through August.
That P3 proposal is a complete Hail Mary. Note that Brightline has stopped paying their bonds, which are now junk.
DeleteIn practice they are trying to take out a type of loan.
DeleteWhy would an organization entirely owned the state of California take out loans by their own, rather than the state itself taking loans, likely with a much lower interest rate?
This is 100% a politics failure.
Would there be any benefit to increased service into triple tracking the whole corridor? Would having 3 tracks allow adding CAHSR trains into the mix of Caltrain service without gumming things up?
ReplyDeleteThe main obstacle to adding tracks isn't ROW width, which is ample, but the cost of grade separations. On such a busy high-speed corridor, the CPUC (which regulates grade crossings and their modification) will require grade separation, whether it's for three or four tracks. So the cost of three is the cost of four, and if you contemplate adding a third track you might as well add the fourth and be done.
DeleteIf anyone has it, could they please cite any official (e.g. CPUC, FRA, etc.) rule or regulation that requires grade separation for any increase of tracks beyond two across existing California grade crossings?
DeleteWhile I believe this to be a true, I’d like to have a cite since I’ve recently encountered someone that denied it was actually the case.
I do not believe it is true. Metrolink/SCRRA has a document from 2021 that says "All projects that propose an additional track ... that increases the track count of a highway-rail grade crossing to three (3) or more main line tracks, will require a comprehensive analysis ... and shall involve the full and joint participation of ... SCRRA, Highway Agency or Agencies, CPUC, FRA." So it seems to be possible to have a new 3-track crossing, just lots of red tape.
Deletehttps://metrolinktrains.com/globalassets/about/engineering/scrra_grade_crossing_manual.pdf
Since the approved CAHSR San Jose - Gilroy plan (alternative 4) relies on increasing multiple at-grade crossings to 3 tracks I have to believe that it is not impossible. Like all these things, it just takes political will. CPUC commissioners are appointed by the Governor. As a practical matter does adding a 3rd track really impact safety significantly? There is at least one existing 3-track at-grade crossing on the Caltrain line (Mission Bay Dr.)
Deletetightening the base takt from 30 minutes to 20 minutes:
ReplyDeleteHow about split between SJ-SF Limited and RWC-SF local train? (Limited skip all the station between RWC-SF except Millbrae)
As we see weekend ridership increase of 4th and King, there are very large demands to/from San Francisco. Running express on weekend 9am – 6pm will attract even more leisure customer then 20 min frequency.
With skipping 11 stations traveling time will be16~18 minutes shorter. (SJ-SF 64~62min, Palo Alto-SF 34~36 min). North of Redwood City will see more seats available.
Is this capable? This option need to utilize Redwood Junction as turn around point.
Give it a whirl in Richard Mlynarik's taktulator to see if it works!
DeleteHere you go (did this stuff a couple years ago, brushing off cobwebs, eliminating Tamien):
Delete* The One True Timetable 20s 10% 6MW 4tph San Mateo shuttle 4tph Santa Clara limited
* The One True Timetable 20s 10% 6MW 3tph San Mateo shuttle 3tph Santa Clara limited
Common build-out for both is (Belmont—)San Carlos—Redwood City quadruplication. As anybody with even a single functioning neuron would be prioritizing
Transit analyst/consultant Peter Rogoff (ex SoundTransit CEO, USDOT policy undersecretary, and FTA Administrator) presented his depressing Caltrain Cost
ReplyDeleteChallenges In Line with
National Trends” slide deck to the Caltrain board this morning.
His introduction, presentation, and board discussion begins at the 32:20 mark of the meeting video.
This just feels like a whole bunch of excuse-making. Stuff costs a lot because stuff costs a lot, donchaknow.
DeleteAs Rogoff verbally explains as he talks through his slides, there’s way, way more to it than just the price of stuff (materials). In fact, that doesn’t even appear to be among the top reasons for skyrocketing project costs for all infrastructure (not just rail/transit). Listen to his presentation and you’ll see.
DeleteGeneric thought about costs:
DeleteI think it would be a good idea to be less goal oriented, and more cost-benefit oriented.
Run each possible improvement as a mini project, where someone works part time as a project leader, and then periodically do cost-benefit analysis of each project, and decide which would get a go-ahead depending on which provide the best cost-benefit. Sure, many projects are intertwined, but by doing things this way anyone involved would realize that unless they keep costs down their project won't get done.
@ MiaM - look up Californians for Electric Rail on BlueSky. They discuss this quite a bit, including reforming of the TIRCP program to sort of align with this. The main issue here is planning, engineering/design, consistent funding throughout project phases, and proper contracting procedures (and oversight). Our grant-based programs aren't effective for this: see the issues with city by city implementation of grade separations along the Caltrain corridor vs if we had a statewide agency that did the planning and engineering work. That would cut costs significantly, especially if a standardized design was implemented up and down the corridor instead of a bespoke project for each intersection.
DeleteIn this month's board supplemental reading file, a few train nerd details:
ReplyDeleteThe single BEMU will be delivered in late 2028
18 trainsets have been delivered (the latest in June)
Trainset 19 is coming this month, and is specially tricked out with a $0.7M OCS monitoring system. This one closes out the first option order.
Trainsets 20-23 of the second option order arrive every ~3 months starting next June.
Reminder that Caltrain needs 14 trains to run the current service pattern, so they will have nine sitting around and depreciating unless they increase service. 20-minute takt in 2027!
It'd be fun if Trainset 19 was given a Dr. Red livery (Tokaido Shinkansen Dr. Yellow style)
Delete"It'd be fun if Trainset 19 was given a Dr. Red livery (Tokaido Shinkansen Dr. Yellow style)"
DeleteJR Central retired Dr. Yellow earlier this year—inspections now handled by modified N700S sets with onboard systems. JR West is expected to follow.
Caltrain seems to be doing something similar using their revenue fleet. No word yet on MP15s 503/504, but motor cars could take over if they go that route. If so, locomotive operation could be fully abolished on Caltrain in the long term...
ED Bouchard announced today that the long-awaited APCs (Automatic Passenger Counters) have finally been tuned & validated to achieve what she says is acceptable-enough accuracy (95%) for imminent deployment and activation at all train doors. This ought to make available all sorts of new, detailed, nearly real-time on/off rider (and bike!) statistics down to the per-car/door/train/station/hour of day/day of week/etc. level that Caltrain has never before had.
ReplyDeleteRe Automatic Passenger Counters: assuming these are counting total human entries/exits per station stop per train, that's certainly something that might be of use, but it just gives origin and destination data, not origin—destination data (how many people are taking particular trips between particualr points and when) — for that you need periodic random surveys to calibrate models driven by coarser entry/exit data, and Caltrain doesn't seem to do that much.
DeleteOr... in addition, one could TEMPORARILY (2 hour window, after which non-aggregate data is DISCARDED) track pretty much every Wifi device on the train by Ethernet MAC address (randomized or not, doesn't matter), noting when a new device (new to this train, in this 2 hour window, after which forget everything your snooped) starts looking for Wifi networks, and when it stops sniffing.
Not super-ultra precise (but probably good enough for station-level granularity), confounded by people carrying multiple Wifi devices (I mean, who doesn't have a cloud-connected neural implant these days?), and people (WHO DO COUNT!) without any Wifi-promiscurous device, but potentially a useful set of data for service planning and evaluation. If you want to plan or evaluate service. Or of course if you want another route for the Stasi to panopticon surveil. Because you KNOW they won't delete their "temporary" logs, and you KNOW they won't resist building up identifiable profiles, don't you, because, reasons? And of course this would be a multi-million-dollar cancerous IT disaster at Caltrain, because procurement reasons, because consultant reasons.
Origin-destination and other tasty data will come with Clipper 2 as staff plans to require tapping on & off for all Clipper based rides — which includes monthlies and even GoPasses (which already require it for usage statistics for issued passes and each participating agency/organization employer and to help staff gauge & guide their evolving GoPass pricing scheme).
DeleteTo ensure/motivate compliance, GoPass holders are already subject to the standard $75 citation if they’re caught onboard without having tapped on!
This only leaves out paper TVM tickets & passes as IIRC the mobile app (or at least its ticket purchase feature) will be discontinued.
Note though that this type of data is great for for example service planning on an existing route.
DeleteIt's worthless for planning any extensions though.
You'd at least need to combine data from all transit systems for it to be meaningful for any extensions or even changes in stopping pattern.
A prime example is the free shuttle mentioned elsewhere in this thread, that could go to a closer by Caltrain station if that station had a more frequent service. For data to really be useful you'd need to require users to tap in even on this free shuttle.
You really need to know the real origin and destination to plan changes like moving stations, change service pattern, build new routes or whatnot. Except for the scammer within Caltrain, no one lives in the station buildings, and the few people who work in station buildings are negligible from a planning perspective.
As an example someone might live with almost the same walking distance to two stations, and if service patterns differ they would just choose the station with the better service. But also even if they live a bit further away from a station with a better service pattern they might choose the station with the better service pattern even at a time where the "worse" station is serviced, depending on if this person walks or rides their bike to/from the station. (Ages ago I used to commute where buses and trains shared monthly passes, but the bus and the train stopped at different places, and my bike seemed to always end up at the wrong place).
And yes, privacy is a big concern here. This is one of the few cases where collecting data actually are for the greater good for the everyday user of transit systems, rather than for extracting as much money as possible and/or pushing political campaigns onto people or whatnot.
Ridership estimate dashboard has been updated.
ReplyDeleteStations ranked by percentage of total monthly ridership increase 2024-07 to 2025-07; system-wide: +77.8% of which:
San Francisco: 23.3%
Palo Alto: 7.7%
San Jose: 7.4%
Mountain View: 6.9%
Sunnyvale: 6.3%
Redwood City: 5.3%
Hillsdale: 4.5%
San Mateo: 4.1%
22nd Street: 4.0%
Millbrae: 3.8%
California Avenue: 3.7%
Santa Clara: 3.1%
San Antonio: 2.9%
South San Francisco: 2.9%
Menlo Park: 2.4%
Lawrence: 2.4%
Burlingame: 2.0%
San Carlos: 1.9%
Belmont: 1.8%
San Bruno: 1.4%
Hayward Park: 1.3%
Bayshore: 0.9%
College Park: 0.0%
Stations ranked by percentage of average weekend ridership increase 2024-07 to 2025-07; system-wide: +115.2% of which:
San Francisco: 51.9%
Palo Alto: 13.4%
San Jose: 12.8%
Mountain View: 12.6%
Sunnyvale: 10.6%
Millbrae: 10.2%
Redwood City: 9.1%
Hillsdale: 7.7%
San Mateo: 7.0%
Santa Clara: 6.3%
22nd Street: 6.1%
Menlo Park: 5.0%
California Avenue: 4.7%
San Antonio: 4.6%
Burlingame: 4.1%
Lawrence: 3.9%
San Carlos: 3.3%
Belmont: 3.2%
South San Francisco: 3.0%
San Bruno: 2.8%
Hayward Park: 1.9%
Bayshore: 1.4%
Broadway: 1.0%
Oops I *totally* screwed up (cut and paste error) weekend fraction-of-growth percentages.
DeleteCORRECT Stations ranked by percentage of average weekend ridership increase 2024-07 to 2025-07; system-wide: +115.2% of which:
San Francisco: 27.1%
San Jose: 7.8%
Mountain View: 7.2%
Palo Alto: 6.3%
Sunnyvale: 6.1%
Millbrae: 5.0%
Hillsdale: 4.9%
Redwood City: 4.3%
San Mateo: 3.8%
Santa Clara: 3.4%
22nd Street: 3.4%
California Avenue: 2.7%
San Antonio: 2.6%
Menlo Park: 2.6%
Burlingame: 2.2%
Lawrence: 2.2%
South San Francisco: 1.8%
Belmont: 1.7%
San Carlos: 1.6%
San Bruno: 1.3%
Hayward Park: 1.1%
Bayshore: 0.8%
Broadway: 0.6%
In penance, here's the corresponding average weekday broken out:
Stations ranked by percentage of average weekday ridership increase 2024-07 to 2025-07; system-wide: +70.9% of which:
San Francisco: 22.2%
Palo Alto: 8.2%
San Jose: 7.2%
Mountain View: 6.8%
Sunnyvale: 6.3%
Redwood City: 5.6%
Hillsdale: 4.4%
San Mateo: 4.3%
22nd Street: 4.1%
California Avenue: 4.0%
Millbrae: 3.5%
South San Francisco: 3.2%
Santa Clara: 3.1%
San Antonio: 2.9%
Lawrence: 2.4%
Menlo Park: 2.3%
San Carlos: 2.0%
Burlingame: 1.9%
Belmont: 1.9%
Hayward Park: 1.4%
San Bruno: 1.4%
Bayshore: 0.9%
Gilroy: 0.3%
Morgan Hill: 0.1%
Capitol: 0.1%
Blossom Hill: 0.0%
San Martin: 0.0%
College Park: 0.0%
Tamien: -0.6%
The "Capitol of Silicon Valley" is clearly Palo Alto to Mountain View (include or exclude intermediate California Avenue and San Antonio or not, the objective facts remain the same), not San José, a blood-sucking political leech at the southern extremity, way past Stanford, way beyond relevance.
DeleteHere's a comparison of the percentage change portion of system-wide weekday ridership by station between 2024-07 and 2025-07,
Deleteie how much ridership has shifted relatively between different stations.
The winners:
California Avenue: +0.76% [TERMINATE THE BABY BULLET YOU COWARDS!]
South San Francisco: +0.56% [still hugely underperforming]
Sunnyvale: +0.54% [formerly underserved, now all trains stop]
San Antonio: +0.50% [Greater Palo Alto—Mountain View co-prosperity Zone]
San Jose: +0.48%
22nd Street: +0.22%
Santa Clara: +0.20% [TERMINATE THE BABY BULLET YOU COWARDS!]
Bayshore: +0.18% [still a dog; still should be mothballed]
San Francisco: +0.17%
Hayward Park: +0.17% [still a dog; still should be permanently closed]
San Mateo: +0.14%
Lawrence: +0.13% [TERMINATE THE BABY BULLET YOU COWARDS!]
San Bruno, Belmont, Burlingame, San Carlos stable ±0.1%
The losers:
Menlo Park: -0.13% [what's up here?]
Hillsdale: -0.19%
Mountain View: -0.27% [what's up here? Shifting to San Antonio? To Sunnyvale?]
Redwood City: -0.49% [what's up here especially?]
Tamien: -0.56% [a hopeless dog even before its 1tph service was suspended]
Millbrae: -0.68% [some shifted to South SF maybe?]
Palo Alto: -1.52% [some shifted to California Avenue definitely, but overally quite surprising]
(Hello from a current Cal Ave / former PA rider)
DeleteThe lack of a full commitment to Cal Ave means that Stanford still runs its frequent Marguerite Research Park buses from University Ave, wasting to-and-fro time in El Camino traffic. They added the sad little CAX shuttle which I tried once and never again (slow, infrequent, inconveniently long connections).
With all trains stopping at Cal Ave (really just one more stop per hour per direction) Stanford could move their entire RP shuttle operations there and meet every train with 15-minute service.
They’re so close to getting it, but Baby Bullet won’t die…
With 5 buses right now used between RP and CAX given the 35-40 min loop they could cut that to 3 and provide 15 min service. Although they also need to stop doing it as a single direction service where they then dead head back to the start.
DeleteAs I suspect I might have commented here before, I was a 22nd—California Avenue commuter in the 1990s pre-"Baby Bullet" and to even more hellish locations further south after. The northbound Cal Ave "platform" (a strip of asphalt between the tracks) would overflow with people getting on the crappy gallery cars for evening peak hour trains, especially the handful of limited stop options. As busy or busier than Palo Alto at times, so much so that some of those insane-stop-pattern trains skipped PA.
DeleteThe Marguerite shuttle buses were a decent component of Cal Ave ridership, along with a collection of free mini shuttle buses to Stanford Business Park and a VTA line (or two? Can't recall.)
Marguerite, of course, was the project of Jeff Tumlin, then a junior transportation wonk who landed a job as the Stanford Transportation Department, and who went on to be the only good thing that has happened to Muni in 40 years (and was canned by SF Mayor Danny Bluejeans in reward.)
Stanford mucky-mucks (all car-heads, nothing ever changes) actually hated the success of Marguerite and tried numerous times to kill or radically scale back growing useful network during Tumlin's tenure and after he left, but the problem they had was that it was too damned popular and too damned successful, with an appreciative and engaged constituency of riders, and had to learn to live with it.
2004's "Baby Bullet" timetable — and Caltrain's do-nothing staff's 15 year failure to improve or alter the schedule in any non-superficial way — tanked Cal Ave ridership, and with it levels of connecting bus service.
It was obvious that more service to a station with a proven "there there" (it's way closer to the business park stuff than downtown PA is, and more convenient for much of the Stanford campus and, you know, there isn't all that much more activity low-density downtown PA than in the even-lower-density but larger office park spawl less far from California Avenue.
As I've commented here before, the rising ridership at San Antonio is more of a surprise to me — it used to be crickets and tumbleweeds through the mid-2010s. Sunnyvale ("served", like Cal Ave by one train per HOUR at peaks in peak hours in the peak-Caltrain-being-Caltrain Year of Our Lord 2019! 1tph!) no srurpse at all..
But one has to be willing to change, and not be stuck in 2004, and not having spent one's entire professional career doing the same thing year in and year out, because that's how we do things, and we can always rely on Highway 101/280 congestion to force reluctant riders to take the needlessly poor service on offer and then claim "ridership is booming we must be doing everything right".
OK I exaggerate a tiny bit about Tumlin and Muni, but not completely! Proof of Payment all-door boarding, first on trains, now blissfully on buses, came long before, and that was and remains massive. Not all the bus lanes are from his tenure of course, but a lot of Good Shit Got Done "quick build" in 2019-2022 that the assholes have only partially managed to undo.
DeleteAnd yes, he was a prominent cheerleader in public for the fucking disaster Central Subway, but that's how things are done.
San Antonio has had a ton of development in the past ten years: commercial, office, and residential.
ReplyDeleteOn Caltrain’s Facebook page today:
ReplyDeleteCaltrain is hiring a [Project] Schedule Controls Manger to lead the development, oversight, and continuous improvement of scheduling processes for our Capital Program. Apply today: https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/smctd/caltrain/jobs/5042112/manager-schedule-controls?pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs.
At 55%, Sunnyvale had the largest FY25 percentage ridership ridership increase over FY24 in this FY25 Annual Ridership Report slide show. What’s less surprising is that Friday and then Monday were the lowest ridership weekdays.
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge non-fan of "percentage ridership increase" because, well, what's ONE BILLION PERCENT of zero?
DeleteYou'll notice that everything I've posted over the last few months derived from Caltrain's posted ridership model (and it is just a model, with a very low degree of real world statistical sampling attempting to validate it) always talks about percentage of total ridership, for just that reason.
So I can simutaneously calculate that Bayshore estimated monthly ridership is UP 143 PERCENT OVER 2024, THE GREATEST PERCENTAGE GROWTH OF ANY STATION, but know that 143% of 0.47% is fuck-all, for God's sake just half of beyond-hopeless Hayward Park's, just stick a fork in it.
Sunnyvale's ridership increase is good and encouraging (and totally predictable, if only anybody had updated the Caltrain timetable any time in the prior 20 years!), but in comparative terms it is 30% of the San Francisco Mission Bay station, and about the same as Palo Alto (which though comparatively "under performing", is and remains Number Two Top Dog in percentage of riders and in percentage of ridership growth and in most everything else), Mountain View, SJ Cahill Street, and is not too much higher than Mountain View's.
Anyway, Caltrain doesn't break out their Tue/Wed/Thu average estimated "mid-week" ridership from "weekday" estimates in what upload to their web site, so it's hard to say anything informed about any of this.
Given that nobody anywhere seems to be remotely close to proposing separate Tue/Wed/Thu vs Mon/Fri vs Sat/Sun timetables, it's kind of academic (interesting to be sure, but of no practical operational use) to exclude Mon/Fri and crow about higher, cherry-picked Tue/Wed/Thu numbers. Just juicing for PR purposes.
(Also, some day they need to get over baseball. Do what BART does and always has done: RUN REGULAR TRAINS OFTEN ENOUGH.)
@Richard:
DeletePlease don't take this the wrong way, but:
Yet you post comments with loads and loads of percentage numers. Sure, they might not be percentage change from previous numbers for a station, but rather percentage of all rides within the period. But yet they suffer from the problem of being hard to compare. Like it doesn't mater if station X only has 2% of all riders last year while it had 4% of all rides in 2020 if the total ridership has increased at least 100%, as the station then still haven't lost riders.
(A bit of an exaggerated example, but you get the point).
ReplyDelete"Caltrain ridership is rising quickly, with June total ridership up a stunning +75% from one year ago; stay tuned to their ridership dashboard for upcoming July numbers. This steep increase is likely driven by a combination of a superior product and freeways jamming again as the post-pandemic return to the office continues. While this is still only 65% of June 2019, a full recovery seems within reach."
Still doesn’t justify dragging 7-car sets around at noon or off peak hours. Caltrain should’ve bought some 4-car EMU set—more nimble, scalable, and better suited to real-world demand.
Early plans as described in waiver docs filed with the FRA by Caltrain’s then “Rail Transformation Chief” guru Robert Doty were to order 4-car sets. For reasons unclear, staff later decided to go for 6-car, and even later with the option 1 order, 7-car sets.
Delete“For reasons unclear, staff later decided to go for 6-car, and even later with the option 1 order, 7-car sets."
DeleteOriginal plan called for 4-car sets. The shift to longer consists came without explanation. Standard Caltrain practice, supported by Bay Area transit planning norms...
If the scam / bad joke "DOGE" would actually had been what it said it were to be (that no-one actually believed), this would had been a great thing for them to look in to. Run things almost like criminal investigations within law enforcement, and find exactly who made which decisions and why.
DeleteI don't know what would be a good idea to do with that information though. If you'd sue people for things like this, I have a suspicion that you'd run out of people employed within the public sector pretty soon.
Perhaps force people to wear some badge, or a badge sewn on to their clothes, stating what mistake(s) they've made, with different colors on how severe it was.
Cost reduction from Coupling/Decoupling may not be so big compared to 30 years ago when EMU have Resistance Control. Even so, Caltrain 4-Car EMU only makes sense if labor union agree to run single conductor.
ReplyDelete... or if "elephant arse" / rubber nose style trains would be allowed. I.E. those with a flat front and a rubber thing surrounding the front, used in Denmark, southern Sweden, Belgium and whatnot. When you are about to couple them, you deflate the rubber thing, couple, reinflate the rubber thing forming an air tight seal between the trains, and then you just fold away the drivers cab, forming a walkway between the trains. The only tell tale that you are walking at this place in those trains is that there is a fairly long and narrow walkway with no windows and to the uninvited no obvious reason for it being so narrow.
Delete