Caltrain July Proposed Service Changes

Wow - this is a huge, and, if it goes through, will completely reshape how CalTrain is used.

For those not familiar with Silicon Valley, we have several major mass transit systems, "Muni" - which is a light rail system that serves the City (aka "San Francisco"), BART, which is a traditional mass transit system, that spans fairly broadly around the Bay, but does _not_ go all the way down the peninsula, or to San Jose. And finally CalTrain, which is responsible for covering San Francisco all the way down to San Jose (And a few cities afterwards - I've never been further south than San Jose)

Right now - when I'm coming home, or heading to the City, I only have to wait a bit longer outside of commuting hours. During Commuting hours, I usually just walk onto the train, and, if it's a bullet, I will be home faster than any car can get me there.

The elimination of the local stations, is _not_ a good thing. People who wanted to avoid those would take the express anyways. Now - you have no ability to get to those cities with caltrain.

Also, look at the Southbound schedule (Northbound is a reflection):

11 Trains Leaving, from 5:45 AM to 6:55 AM, And in the afternoon, 11 Trains leaving from 3:45 to 4:55 PM.

This is not a "drastic service cut" - this is a complete gutting of the peninsula transit system. These changes are so severe, I'm wondering if it's a bluff, and they will walk it back after public outrage.

I'm a daily user of CalTrain (Mt. View → SF), I'm not at all sorry to it go.

The system is very broken, and is due for a reboot.

1. Payments. Using conductors to check tickets on a mass-transit system is asking to loose on fares. My commute is long enough (3 zones) that I get my ticket checked nearly every time. But many commuters who only travel one zone could easily avoid paying altogether. Conductors simply don't have the time to canvas the whole train between each stop. CalTrain ought to realize that it's in the business of mass transit, not leisurely travel and implement a tag on/off system (i.e. Muni).

That aside, tickets are far too expensive. I pay for monthly parking and a monthly pass. That monthly fee is not much cheaper, if at all, than driving – and I don't have a hybrid or anything. Oh, and driving saves me at least 2 hours of commute time/day.

Mass transit is a failure if it's neither faster nor cheaper.

2. Costs. I know nothing about trains, but I can't imagine that the full diesel engines they use for these 6~ish car commuter trains are necessary. There's got to be a lot of wasted fuel there. Further, do they really need to attach all those cars to every train? I have to think that less cars = less fuel use & less staff needed = cost savings.

3. Logistics. Again, I don't know much about mass-transit systems, but some simple logic and personal experience states that a two-track system means that if one things goes wrong the entire system gets badly backed up. CalTrain has been a lot more reliable lately, but I can testify that when it gets backed up, it gets really backed up.

Tangentially, Caltrain relies on other systems to be useful – you have to either drive, bus, or BART to one of their stations. It's an incomplete system from inception.

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My point: CalTrain is broken, I'd gladly suffer the hassle of not having it for a few years if it could be shut-down and reborn as an extension of BART or somesuch.

No weekend service at all is troubling. I'm not clear as to whether these are just random proposals, or if they will actually be implemented. A fare increase might be the most palatable solution.

It's worth noting that mismanagement (I don't think there has been significant mismanagement, but it's up for debate) is not the main cause of the requirement for cutbacks. The main issue is that CalTrain is no-one's responsibility in particular. Almost half of CalTrain's funding comes from ticket sales, which is not the normal pattern for public transit. The other local transportation agencies (GGT, SamTrans, and BART) have dedicated sponsors from municipal governments. CalTrain, as the name implies, used to be state-funded. A couple of decades back, CalTrans, the state agency, stopped funding it, and municipal governments stepped in. However, their funding has always fluctuated - and this year, has pretty much evaporated.

Remember, public transportation runs the way it does because it's a public good - it is pretty much by definition something that the market is bad at providing, but which people need anyhow. If CalTrain had to survive off of ticket revenue alone, it would cost more than twice as much to ride, and would thus exclude some riders, harming revenues further. On top of this, CalTrain relieves traffic - it provides a significant positive externality instead of capturing value. Government subsidies to public transportation agencies address this externality.

CalTrain is dying because of the tragedy of the commons: a great many people can benefit from it (traffic, air quality) without paying for it, and will resist any attempt to require that they contribute to it. This is the situation that many, many public agencies are in.

This is seriously disconcerting. As someone just considering moving into San Francisco, and using Caltrain to commute to work, it makes me have serious second thoughts.

Maybe BART will finally be able to complete the loop and we can cut the awful Caltrain out of the transportation scene entirely. BART is so on-time and reliable.

It would be amazing if the Fremont line and the Colma line met up in San Jose.

With all the trouble that the Caltrain is having, and with all the good that it does for employees at Valley companies, why don't they do something about this? Google could certainly buy the train outright, though they probably don't want to run it... but a group of companies such as Google, Facebook, VMWare, Oracle, NVidia, etc etc together easily have enough money to donate to help fix the Caltrain's financial issues.

The last morning train leaves SF at 8:30am?! Did they forget this is Silicon Valley, not Wallstreet? We don't all get to work by 9am!

A while back Caltrain had proposed cuts that actually gave me better commuting trains (SF to Santa Clara). Those never went through and now these are way more extreme. If this goes through I'll have to either start driving (45min to an hour each way) or move somewhere closer, and while I have that option not everyone does. I really hope this is just a scare tactic intended to force municipalities to change the way Caltrain gets funded so it stops getting jerked around by the various counties that fund it every time they need somewhere to cut costs, even as ridership increases. I also don't understand how places like SF can allow Caltrain to cut service to games and holiday events. I'd think that would cost them a lot of people who would go if they didn't have to drive, while in turn creating a real problem to figure out how to deal with the increased influx of all the extra cars from those who still go.

CalTrain publishes annual financial reports just like publicly listed companies. Compare fiscal 2007 with 2010. Then check out how much of their total revenue comes from subsidies vs fares.

http://www.caltrain.com/about/statsandreports/Comprehensive_...

They also provide a quarterly CapEx breakout:

http://www.caltrain.com/about/statsandreports/Quarterly_Capi...

And a breakout of ridership per station (check out page 11 of the 2010 report):

http://www.caltrain.com/about/statsandreports/Ridership.html

I see something distinctly odd about their proposal.

It would actually make my commute (home at 22nd Street in SF) to work (Stanford, via Palo Alto) much more convenient. I could catch a train every fifteen minutes.

I don't need this convenience. As it is now, I can catch express trains down every half hour (during commute hours) and back up at 5:06, 6:06, or 7:10. That is quite adequate.

However, under the proposed plan, I'm screwed if I decide to stay late, and of course some of my friends who make do without cars are much more screwed. It seems that's more important, and that there is room to accommodate this by thinning out the commute hour schedule.

Of course my stop is one of those on the docket to be eliminated :(

How am I not surprised that Caltrain, who can't even process a credit card payment over the web and apply it to my Clipper card in 24, natch 48, or even 72 hours... can't seem to run their company at a profit. I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

San nothing of the asanine way they handle tagging on and off for 8-ride tickets within a given zone.

Sigh

Although these are drastic service cuts, at least one proposal might mean faster commutes to SV:

-- Suspension of weekday service at up to seven of the following stations: Bayshore, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Burlingame, Hayward Park, Belmont, San Antonio, Lawrence, Santa Clara and College Park