Caltrain on track

"It was our goal to get the service back early in the 2004 baseball season," Caltrain spokeswoman Rita Haskin said.

After $163 million in system improvements, weekend service is now resuming. Monday marks the debut of Caltrain's baby bullet express that will slash travel times from San Jose to San Francisco by 39 minutes a trip.

"That's an hour a day or about six hours a week the commuter can save," Haskin said. "That's a huge savings. This will put time back into people's lives."

Friday, state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, the project's lead proponent, took the inaugural trip on the baby bullet at 2:45 p.m. from Fourth and King streets in San Francisco to Millbrae with about 200 other riders.

As the baby bullet passed a local train just south of the Bayshore station, riders erupted with applause.

"Look at how slow that other train is going," Speier yelled.

Speier is credited with securing $127 million for the project from the state's Transportation Congestion Relief Program. She told transit enthusiasts yesterday that 79 percent surveyed wanted to avoid traffic.

"A five-car train takes 800 cars off the freeways," she said. "The automobile now has competition."

She also said her husband and son ride Caltrain everyday and have been complaining about the lack of weekend service.

"Now I can tell them to shut up," she said.

San Mateo resident Lavinia Schaumkel said she can't wait to try the baby bullet and is relieved weekend service resumes today. Schaumkel works for Virgin Air at San Francisco International Airport and has lost an hour a day on weekends while Caltrain made track improvements.

County Supervisor Mike Nevin, who served as master of ceremonies at yesterdays inaugural run, said the baby bullet offers speed and convenience and huge cost savings.

"With parking and escalating fuel prices it costs a bundle to drive your car into San Francisco. It's time for commuters to make better choices and Caltrain is one of them," Nevin said.

The supervisor also said he rode Caltrain once for a weekend game and highly recommends it.

"It's the best way to get to a Giants game. That's a sports train. You've got the Sharks on one end and Pac Bell on the other," he said.

John McLemore, chair of the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, said about 34 miles of new and reconstructed track was built with 292,000 pounds of concrete poured. He announced yesterday Caltrain service will be free this weekend and next.

Haskin said to consider the new baby bullet schedule as phase one of a plan to make future improvements.

"When financing becomes available we'd like to extend the four-track system," Haskin said.

Full service begins for the baby bullet on Monday with the first express departing San Jose at 5:45 a.m. The first departure out of San Francisco for the baby bullet will be 6:11 a.m. and there will be 10 baby bullet departures a day for the morning and afternoon commutes.

Caltrain has 35 stops but the baby bullet will visit only seven of them. The stops are Fourth and King streets in San Francisco, 22nd Street in San Francisco, Millbrae, Hillsdale, Palo Alto, Mountain View and Diridon in San Jose.

The 22nd Street stop in San Francisco was added after the other stops were picked because Stanford students and employees living in San Francisco's Potrero Hill district lobbied Caltrain.

"There's a huge reverse commute out of that stop to Palo Alto," Haskin said. "Palo Alto is our busiest spot on the Peninsula."

The Caltrain board approved the baby bullet project in July 2001 and eliminated weekend service a year later to start construction. About $110 million went into constructing eight miles of track and installing a new signaling system in Brisbane and Sunnyvale that the baby bullet will use to pass local and limited trains. Another $53 million was spent on purchasing six aerodynamic locomotives and 17 low-floor passenger cars. There is no additional cost to riders to catch a baby bullet train.

Caltrain has about 27,000 riders a day and expects the number to increase with the addition of the baby bullet.

Before weekend service was suspended almost two years ago Caltrain had 10,000 Saturday riders and 7,000 riders on Sundays.

The Giants' next weekend home games are early afternoon interleague affairs on June 19 and 20 against the Boston Red Sox. The Saturday game will be aired nationally on Fox while Sunday's game will be televised locally on KTVU Channel 2.

Visit www.caltrain.com for revised schedules and information about weekend and baby bullet services.