SamTrans reroutes bus lines in response to El Camino Real construction in San Mateo County

In response, during an April 1 SamTrans board meeting, staff recommended a detour along California Drive for the project’s duration, as well as splitting the ECR line at Millbrae into a northern segment running to the Daly City BART station and a southern segment running down to Palo Alto, according to the presentation.

“We want to be reliable,” Operations Planning Manager Jonathan Steketee said during the meeting. “Construction schedules change, and we don’t want to get caught where they shift hours or days and leave passengers stranded in a construction zone. Going around the entire area for the duration of the project gives us consistency.”

Riders transferring between the two segments will have a grace period to avoid paying a second fare, and the agency plans to launch a Clipper Card promotion to avoid negative ridership impacts, a staff report said.

The agency also plans to make other route changes this summer, one of them including the CSM route — connecting downtown San Mateo to the College of San Mateo — which will be rerouted onto El Camino Real to expand ridership, with weekend service getting discontinued due to low ridership. The agency may also reevaluate other express and limited-stop routes, as those have consistently maintained low ridership.

“This may be due to the trend of how we’ve seen some work and school go virtual, but we’re just not seeing the ridership return to the levels we saw pre-pandemic,” Principal Transportation Planner Kate Christopherson said during the meeting.

The discussion also comes after the board heard the performance thus far of the Reimagine SamTrans project, which initially began in 2019 and was fully implemented just a year and a half ago. The initiative expanded frequency on 15 routes and added off-peak service and has generally been successful from a customer service and ridership perspective, the presentation noted.

Unlike rail agencies like BART and Caltrain, bus routes have seen healthy post-pandemic ridership recovery, though staff said SamTrans’ figures are particularly notable, with weekday ridership at 97% of pre-COVID levels and weekend service performing even better.

“Weekend ridership is actually exceeding what we saw before the pandemic,” Christopherson said. “That’s where we invested most of our new service hours, and we’re seeing it pay off.”