In the last couple of weeks, over 400 people have sent letters to Caltrain urging them to add wifi on the train, in line with other services around the states and around the world. So far, the ratio of supporters to skeptics has been 410 to 4.

The main concern of the few wifi skeptics is that Caltrain’s top priority should be funding to maintain and improve its train service. Friends of Caltrain agrees that this is the highest priority – but since the financial emergency is at bay for the moment, it is a good time to look into improvements that increase ridership and satisfaction. One rider noted that some people subscribe to data services that already get them wireless everywhere. Since over 400 people have expressed their demand for wifi, clearly many people do not have these services.

Friends of Caltrain looked into the issue. It turns out that in the September board meeting, Caltrain had actually hired a consultant to revisit the possibility of adding wifi to the trains. The project is included in a list of ten consulting companies hired for a variety of IT projects, see Agenda Item 5 My best guess is that LM Consulting is the firm looking into the wifi option based on googling their names – please comment if you find more.

Wifi isn’t a frill these days. Muni Wireless reports that “According to Amtrak, Wi-Fi is the most important technology amenity required by passengers; 89% of those polled said Wi-Fi influenced their decision to choose the Acela service, while an astonishing 35% of all passengers use the Wi-Fi network every day with an 80% satisfaction rate.”

Other services with successful wifi programs includes the Boston MBTA commuter rail, which had 10,000 riders using wifi on the Framingham/Worcester line as of September. In Europe, Virgin Trains in the UK serves over 100k users per month, and SJ trains in Sweden serves 80,000 riders per month.

Some services charge for access, and others offer it at no charge. One powerful economic model is to use the network to provide other internal operations services to reduce costs. For example, the MBTA uses it as a maintenance tool to provide train malfunction data through a web browser system to accelerate the response of the Mechanical department in correcting any malfunctions.

Hopefully the consultant will identify practical and cost-effective solutions, and Caltrain will be able to head down the path to provide wifi.