Caltrain Ridership, Capacity, and Electric Rail Car Design Decisions

Friends of CaltrainAdina LevinSeptember 2014

Topics

1) Ridership and Capacity2) Level Boarding3) Transbay4) Platform Compatibility5) Space on cars (standing room, bicycles,

bathrooms)

Caltrain “success disaster” - Long-term ridership growth

Dot.Com Bust

Baby Bullet Launch

Financial crash & recession

Second bike car

Trends - car-light culture

● Today’s workers prefer less driving...○ 40% of Caltrain riders don’t own a car or don’t drive○ Only 24% drive to station and park○ 17% use a bicycle for first/last mile

● ...fostered by transportation incentives and policies○ 42% of Stanford employees drive to work, down

from 72% a decade ago, following Santa Clara County trip cap and Stanford TDM program

○ 50% of Bay Meadows residents prefer to take the train in major City of San Mateo Transit-Oriented Development with transit incentives

Trends - transit corridor growthPlan Bay Area - Priority Development Areas focused on transit corridors Regional goal:

accommodate 80% of housing, 60% of job growth in < 5% of land w/transit access

Price premium for offices, homes near Caltrain

National trend: growth, demand in walkable transit-served areas

How much future ridership growth?

San Francisco expects Ridership to increase 3x by 2040

San Jose Expects Ridership to increase 5x by 2035

Caltrain expects ridership to increase less than 2x by 2040

How much future ridership growth?

Caltrain Electrification Forecast

Continued Growth Trend?

Why Level Boarding? Faster.

Credit: Clem TIllier

Peak period growth and crowding

Train can seat 650 passengersHigh season trains carry over 900Peak and reverse peak crowding

Crowding is concentrated in peak period, faster trains

Baby Bullet

Limited

Local

Why level boarding? Smoother.

Smooth schedule challenges with High Speed Rail blending

Ridership driven by Downtown Extension to Transbay Terminal

Credit: Clem TIllier

Service to Transbay

2 Caltrain trains to Transbay, in Caltrain electrification environmental impact report

6 Caltrain trains in blended system plan

10 Caltrain+HSR trains in blended system plan

16?? Maximum per preliminary engineering analysis???

Keeping up with capacity

SF Central Subway

SF - Downtown Extension to Transbay

SJ - BART to Diridon Station

HSR - 2029+

How to keep up with demand growth

Passengers per peak hour

Today 5 cars seated 3,250

Standing room 5 cars w/standees 4,225

6 car trains 6 cars x 5tph 5,070

Electrification 6 cars x 6tph 6,084

8 car trains 8 cars x 6tph 7,301

Increase freq. 8 cars x 8tph 9,710

Timeline

2016 - Positive Train Control2019 - Caltrain Electrification2019 - Central Subway202x - Longer platforms at major stations202x - BART to Diridon202x - Downtown Extension to Transbay - drives demand for more frequent service~2029 - High Speed Rail

Credits

Clem Tillier - Caltrain High Speed Rail Compatibility BlogGoogle - contributed to capacity analysis