Popular Caltrain heads toward fiscal crisis
Michael Cabanatuan
San Francisco Chronicle
May 6, 2013
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Ridership on Caltrain has been growing for years but has skyrocketed in the past three. Passenger service on the line started in October 1863, mostly as a way of hauling commuters from bedroom communities on the Peninsula to and from jobs in San Francisco. But today commuters head in both directions. Many young tech workers live in San Francisco and work in Palo Alto or deeper in Silicon Valley.
Riders forced to stand
For each of the past three years, Caltrain has seen an 11 percent growth in ridership. The railroad provides an average of 47,062 rides each weekday on 92 trains. During commute periods, trains are extremely crowded. Some trains regularly operate at 130 percent of capacity, meaning many people are standing.
"We're almost on the verge of being overwhelmed," said Mark Simon, a Caltrain spokesman. "We could not have anticipated this kind of growth."
Caltrain can't add more trains during the commute periods but has already put extra trains on the tracks just before and after. It plans to start promoting those trains more heavily, Simon said. It's also considering buying some used rail cars from another agency - it hasn't had a chance to see them yet - to lengthen its most-crowded trains.
"We're worried that if it gets too crowded, we could start losing customers," Simon said.
Along with the extra riders, Caltrain is also seeing higher-than-anticipated revenues from fares.
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So why the doom-and-gloom forecast for the 2015 budget year? Unlike most of the 27 other transit agencies in the Bay Area, Caltrain lacks a dedicated source of funding such as a property tax, parcel tax or sales tax.
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[T]he agency is also looking at obtaining funding from a San Mateo County general services tax, getting cap-and-trade money from the state, supporting legislation that would lower the threshold for passing tax measures, and some "more creative options" that Simon wasn't ready to discuss.
Caltrain's electrification plans, now fully funded thanks to $700 million from the state high-speed rail bond, will help cut costs and increase capacity, Simon said. But the $1.5 billion project won't be done until 2019, and it won't solve all of the railroad's financial troubles.
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