BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Caltrain is ditching its plan to drastically increase the number of trains running per hour, but board members are still wondering if the agency is being realistic about its future.
Caltrain currently runs four trains per hour in each direction during peak commute times.
The agency’s “long-range service vision” approved in October 2019 calls for up to 16 trains per hour, including four high-speed rail trains in each direction.
Falling ridership
Melissa Jones, deputy director of policy development, said that ridership has plummeted, population projections have flattened and financing has become more constrained.
“The justification for expanded growth, all that excitement we saw back in 2019, it’s eroded,” Jones told the board yesterday.
So Jones is recommending updating the service vision to call for up to 12 trains per hour, including four high-speed rail trains.
Other impacts
The updated vision will cut costs for construction projects, such as developing near the tracks, adding passing tracks or separating crossings from the road, Jones said.
Cities across the Peninsula use Caltrain’s service vision to make decisions around expensive grade separations, which involve building bridges or underpasses that don’t need any gates.
Board members said Thursday that they are skeptical of reaching even 12 trains per hour.
High-speed rail
Palo Alto Councilman Pat Burt said the costs and timeline for finishing high-speed rail keep going up and getting delayed.
The Trump administration announced plans on Wednesday to pull $4 billion in funding from high-speed rail, calling the project “a boondoggle.”
“The notion that we’re going to have four (high-speed rail) trains an hour is pretty close to a fiction,” Burt said Thursday.
Caltrain is locked into an agreement with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to accommodate four trains, Executive Director Michelle Bouchard said.
Caltrain has indicated that passing tracks would go in Redwood City and around California Avenue in Palo Alto.
Skepticism remains
San Francisco board member Steve Heminger agreed yesterday that even the reduced service vision is unrealistic, specifically its inclusion of a rebuilt line along the Dumbarton Bridge and a connection to Monterey.
“I wonder if it would make more sense to start with a blank piece of paper,” Heminger said about the service vision.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga questioned the cost of running diesel trains from San Jose to Gilroy, and whether the extension could be run more efficiently.
Bouchard said she will discuss the board’s feedback with her team and return in the fall.
Taxpayers should be seriously concerned with the egregious tactics, delays and overcharging by Balfour Beatty to get the electrification project running. There needs to be an investigation and oversight on this.
[Portion removed — Please do not post information from AI chat bots.]
Rail transit operators and the elected officials charged with supervising them in the Bay Area live in a world of self-delusion. Patronage on Caltrain is half of pre-Covid, yet the staff’s response is “we should run even more trains but maybe not as many more as we had originally planned.”
As far as accommodating the infamous California high speed rail system, the most recent optimistic estimate for that is in 20 years, it will be complete from Gilroy to Palmdale. The really expensive parts which are expanding through San Jose and up the Peninsula to SF, and even more so, tunneling through the Tehachapi Mtns. to get into LA, well who knows? There’s no way this can ever be funded regardless of whom is in power in Sacramento and Wash. DC so make plans accordingly for Caltrain.
CalTrain is seeing ridership growth year on year, and during peak times is already at or near capacity. That strongly argues for some amount of increased service.
Absolutely!
Oh Pleeze! Caltrain ridership has cratered. In April 2018, they had just over 60,000 daily boardings. In April 2025, they had 35,374. (Yes, they changed the methodology for counting people, but that only inflated the numbers.)
The fact is, they’re 40% lower than they were in 2018.
Other transit systems have recovered from Covid, but not Caltrain.
Why? There are fewer jobs in San Francisco, so people don’t need the train to get to work. Companies have been leaving SF in droves due to the high taxes, crime, homelessness, etc. Would you keep your company in SF?
So no, Caltrain isn’t anywhere close to capacity at peak times. That’s just a myth being manufactured by train enthusiasts and the Caltrain PR department.
Your comment about “train enthusiasts” made me laugh. There’s [The Post has omitted his name because we don’t know whether this embarrassing story is true] a man who has a large model railroad in his basement and dresses up as a train engineer, with the overalls and hat, just to play with the thing. He’s also a frequent speaker at Caltrain meetings and is involved in various functions involving trains. I’d hate for a man-child like that to be advising Caltrain on policy.
BUILD and complete CAHSR
I find Steve Heminger’s and others’ negativity regarding CAHSR tedious, unimaginative, and unproductive. Lest we all forget here, the reason Caltrain has been electrified and now has state-of-the-art Stadler (Swiss) train sets is largely due to the CAHSR project. We (California) need to get creative and develop a stable and committed funding source that is immune from the defeatist and largely Republican stingy mindset. I am astounded that NONE of the many tech and other billionaires and business interests have not come to the table to complete the CAHSR project, a project that once built will result in the glaringly obvious question: Why didn’t we do this decades ago. The multiple environmental, economic, and social benefits are painfully obvious and increasingly urgent. Enough with the negativity—let’s get it done. Or, are we really becoming a second world economy?
Caltrain is packed lately. More trains!
I used to be an advisor to the Caltrain Board before electrification…the solution to running diesels from San Jose to Gilroy was and still is using battery based power. Much easier now with electrification.
Make it easier, faster, and cheaper to get places by train than by car and people will take the train. Both Caltrain and HSR. More frequent service makes it easier. You don’t have to plan. You just go to the station, and board a train in a few minutes. Why would anyone drive when you can kick back, read a book, play a game, get some work done, etc, and get there faster?
Because all it takes is one braindead hobo to get run over, and the entire system becomes paralyzed for hours, and in both directions. That, plus many other routine reasons Caltrain gives its customers when it routinely and inevitably runs late.
Hey! At least on the peninsula, most of the passenger actions are high school children. Be kind
Anon., it’s a myth that most of the people killed by Caltrain are youths. Last year, 19 people were hit and killed by Caltrain. Only 2 were below age 18. The Post printed the list of deaths on April 7, if you want to look it up (they don’t allow links, even to their own stories).