Caltrain rider numbers tick down in 2019

Gilroy extension ridership decreased from 800 in 2018 to 750 in 2019 — a 7.1% decrease. The number of passengers boarding with bicycles on average mid-weekdays decreased from 5,919 in 2018 to 5,505 in 2019 — a 7% decrease, according to a staff report.

Caltrain spokesman Dan Lieberman attributed the ridership decline to the overcrowding of trains.

“The fact that many of our trains are above 130% capacity may be discouraging people from riding,” he said.

Caltrain board Vice Chair Dave Pine, a San Mateo County supervisor, also acknowledged overcrowding and added that a Monthly Pass fare increase that took effect last July and cutbacks to the shuttle program due to a scarcity of drivers could account for the dip in ridership. He did add that the number of Go Pass riders has increased despite a fare increase from $237.50 to $285 a year. Go Passes are typically purchased by companies for employees and are good for unlimited rides for a year.

Ridership has steadily decreased over the past six months and Pine finds the trend “modestly concerning.” 

“It’s modest, but any drop is concerning because Caltrain depends on ridership for 70% of its revenue,” he said. “The extent of the drop is still relatively small and hopefully it doesn’t indicate a future trend.”

Board Member Charles Stone, a Belmont councilman, is about as concerned about the ridership numbers. 

“Caltrain ridership has grown exponentially over the last decade and I don’t think it’s unusual to have a plateau or drop-off every now and then,” he said, adding that public transit is down statewide. “I’m certainly keeping my eye on it and if it becomes a trend over the next year or so I’ll be more concerned, but I’m not ready to panic at all yet.” 

Caltrain ridership has nearly doubled in the past decade and only dropped in 2010 and 2017, according to a graph on the agency’s website. Pine attributed the 2010 decrease to the Great Recession. Caltrain changed its passenger count methodology in 2017 and it would have went down the old way, but went up the new way which included counting midweek passengers rather than every weekday.

This year, weekend passenger counts were not performed because San Francisco service was down on weekends due to electrification work.

“It was anticipated that the closure would not only reduce the weekend ridership significantly, but also skew the customer behavior significantly, in part, because there were additional efforts by Caltrain to promote use of alternative transit service such as BART and parallel bus service,” according to the report. 

Stone expects ridership numbers to climb back up in the future. 

“As long as job growth continues in the Bay Area, and it seems destined to continue, I think we’ll see ridership continue to levels we’ve seen and surpass that,” he said. “And I fully expect when electrification comes to fruition, whether in 2022 or 2023, we’ll see robust ridership on Caltrain that comes close to or exceeds planned capacity.” 

Pine also expects the numbers to return to past levels, but nothing substantially higher. 

“It may be with the existing configuration of diesel trains we’re near the ceiling of what we can move and maybe next year it goes back up to 65,000 or 66,000, but I don’t anticipate substantial growth prior to electrification,” he said. 

The board was set to discuss passenger counts at its July 11 meeting, but it was tabled to the next one in August. 

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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