Caltrain aims to restore service

“The overall goal is to increase service over what we are currently providing, but by making it more even throughout the day, we will be able to more easily accommodate new ridership patterns in what we know is an uncertain future,” Burgwyn said.

At the Caltrain July 1 board meeting, staff provided a partial and preliminary service plan to the board on service changes as more people start to ride. The changes focus on expanding peak periods and evening frequency and adjusting stopping patterns. Overall weekday span of service will not change.

According to a staff presentation, Caltrain will increase peak period service to four trains per hour, maintain off-peak service at two trains per hour and expand evening service. It will also restore baby bullet service and maintain hourly weekend service and add four trains on Sunday. Gilroy service will be restored with three round trips per day. An analysis is currently ongoing about optimizing transfers with BART at the Millbrae station. Conversations about overall service types and tradeoffs associated with travel times, frequency, connectivity and complexity are under consideration.

Caltrain is developing its service plan changes to go into effect Monday, Aug. 30. Service change also would help implement Caltrain’s Equity, Connectivity Recovery and Growth Framework adopted in 2020, which outlines principles and policies for near- and mid-term challenges.

Caltrain staff will develop a final timetable based on scheduling received from BART. It will return to the board in August with a final service plan. It will share its schedule with partner agencies for regional coordination and update the public as part of its “Welcome Back to Transit” campaign this fall.

Caltrain is currently operating a reduced, 70-train per weekday service due to the significant reduction in demand from the pandemic. Ridership during COVID-19 led to a ridership decrease of as much as 98%, with no certainty of when normal ridership will return. The current reduced service is being used to conserve agency resources.

Director Glenn Hendricks, chair of the Valley Transportation Authority and the vice mayor of Sunnyvale, asked that when the board gets more information in August, it includes financial data for Caltrain and a percentage of service increase versus a percentage of cost increase.

“Basically, throw the financial picture into what you are telling us is happening,” Hendricks said.

Director Steve Heminger asked staff to make the connection at Millbrae as tight as possible for BART and Caltrain service, noting the many years it took to improve connection times.

“It took us about 20 years to get it a lot better than it used to be, and I’d hate to lose it on the first schedule change,” Heminger said.

Director Charles Stone, who serves as SamTrans chair and the Belmont mayor, acknowledged it was a challenging time to figure out ways to restore service. However, he thanked the staff for their work and noted decreased Caltrain ridership has nothing to do with the dedicated staff.

“It’s a time that people are having places to go again, and thus we’ve got to get it together, and you are doing a great job of it,” Stone said.

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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