On Thursday July 1, the Caltrain board will receive a presentation about its proposed service restoration for August, timed to increase service when BART does.
The proposed new schedule addresses popular demand to bring back baby bullet trains. It continues the Covid-era improved connect to BART at Millbrae. It also keeps and improves on the Covid schedule that added more frequency evening and weekends (30 minutes, not hourly), and brought weekend service back from 90 minute frequency that had been put in place for electrification construction.
The staff materials don’t say anything about whether there will be any weekend baby bullet service. And they don’t say how many trains Caltrain is going to run. Before the pandemic, Caltrain was running a 92-train schedule. During the initial shelter-in-place order Caltrain slashed service to 42 trains per day, and restored it to 70 trains per day with the availability of federal relief funding. The 70-train schedule in 2020 improved BART connection and off-peak service based on new board policies for equity and connectivity.
The service restoration plan is extremely important because Caltrain’s service recovery is lagging BART and other rail around the country. Caltrain’s data from May showed ridership still less than 10% of prepandemic levels.
Caltrain is reporting data monthly. Meanwhile, BART is reporting its ridership recovery trends daily on social media. The most recent post said BART weekday ridership is at 20% of pre-pandemic. Weekend ridership is up to 35%. Caltrain has technology limitations that prevent realtime reporting like BART, but would it be possible to be somewhat more timely, given the importance of understanding ridership patterns in a recovery year where travel patterns are hard to predict.
Do you have thoughts to share about Caltrain’s schedule? Send an email to board@caltrain.com and if you can, comment at the meeting using this zoom link.
The item will come up at 10:30 or later, after a long closed session, so if you would like an alert when to comment, send us email at friends@friendsofcaltrain.com
The agenda item is 6J. Unfortunately, because the closed session will be long, this item has been moved to the “Consent Calendar”, which means that the board is not expecting to talk about it. The board is expecting to discuss and give guidance in August, and by that time it will be very difficult to make any changes. So if you want the board to discuss in July, ask them to “pull it from the consent calendar and discuss it.”
On Thursday, the Caltrain board will receive a presentation about its proposed service restoration in August, timed to BART’s service restoration.
The proposed new schedule addresses popular demand to bring back baby bullet trains. It continues the Covid-era improved connect to BART at Millbrae. It also keeps and improves on the Covid schedule that added more frequency evening and weekends (30 minutes, not hourly), and brought weekend service back from 90 minute frequency that had been put in place for electrification construction.
The staff materials don’t say anything about whether there will be any weekend baby bullet service. And they don’t say how many trains Caltrain is going to run. Before the pandemic, Caltrain was running a 92-train schedule. During the initial shelter-in-place order Caltrain slashed service to 42 trains per day, and restored it to 70 trains per day with the availability of federal relief funding. The 70-train schedule in 2020 improved BART connection and off-peak service based on new board policies for equity and connectivity.
Do you have thoughts to share about Caltrain’s schedule? Send an email to board@caltrain.com, and if you can, comment at the meeting using this zoom link.
There will be a long closed session until 10:30 or later, so if you would like an alert when to comment, send us email at friends@friendsofcaltrain.com
This is interesting. Commuting has been changed forever by COVID: I think the days of 5-day-a-week at the cubical are largely over (where WFH is possible). So if the WFH days are equally distributed M-F, than the crowding on trains should be less, and that in turn will make the train more attractive for riders who might have been discouraged pre-COVID. If the focus is on rapid service, so the train can compete with driving times, then I suspect ridership will rapidly bounce back, even if people aren’t at their desks M-F, as before.
On the weekends, the expansion of Sunday service to match Saturday is nice. But my key question: would I want to head from SF to Palo Alto for a bike ride? As long as weekend service is dominated by local trains the answer to that is no for me — it’s simply too slow. Of course it’s not all about me, though, but I don’t think I’m unique.
“Caltrain has technology limitations that prevent realtime reporting like BART”
What are the technology limitations?
Yes, BART has faregates and Caltrain is an open system. However, Caltrain does use Clipper, so they should be able to provide tag-on/tag-off data. I can log in to Clipper and it will show that I rode Caltrain from Millbrae to 23rd Street on mm/dd/yyyy at xx:xx or BART from Millbrae to SSF on date and time. My BART trip will be included with the BART ridership data but somewhat delayed in Caltrain reporting but as zone-to-zone data and is not available without submitting a PRA request. Yes, BART is distance-based and Caltrain is zone-based. This should not prevent Caltrain from providing more detailed and timely ridership data. Additionally, Caltrain should be able to provide TVM data such as date, time, and origin station to destination zone for paper fare products.
Caltrain started the Go-Pass on Clipper pogrom with a limited number of Go-Pass companies a few years ago in order to better keep track of Go-Pass usage. Caltrain has yet to provide any Go-Pass details to the Board or public.
This is good opportunity for Caltrain to develop new model of ridership. Restoring Express train is welcome but not necessary to be previous model of SF to SJ connect within xx min.
I suggest start from SF-Redwood city(RWC) express train. This will become local train south of RWC to Tamien.
At the same time, terminate corresponding local train at RWC and turn around. (using Redwood junction) This will provide 30 min frequency at all the station (SJ-SF) with lower operating cost and provide faster train between Santa Clara county to Milbrae/San Francisco.
It is also consider separate Girloy service but higher frequency? As ridership density is decreasing to south and majority of customer comes from Santa Clara county, Girloy train can be short (2~3 car, one conductor) but operate more frequency.