Caltrain is sending its retired diesel fleet to Lima, Peru, where it will have a second chance at life by providing commuter rail service. On Saturday, the U.S. Department of State, Lima representatives and several world leaders will celebrate the next stage for the trains while gathering for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Peruvian capital.
I'm so glad they were able to get out of disabling the equipment. That was such a bummer of a requirement imposed by politicians who don't actually understand the environmental benefits of transit...
When Caltrain put their 1985 F40 diesel locomotives on the market, the fine print noted that the engines had to be inoperable due to a state grant funding agreement. When building out the $2.4 billion electrification project, Caltrain agreed to decommission and disable the locomotive engines to receive funding. To send the trains to Lima for further use, Caltrain had to first procure a waiver from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District so the trains could still return to service.
I'm so glad they were able to get out of disabling the equipment. That was such a bummer of a requirement imposed by politicians who don't actually understand the environmental benefits of transit and wanted to wave around this flag of getting those "dirty diesel trains" off of our tracks. It's lovely to see that these units are able to be sold at steep discounts to continue to operate and provide public transit services in areas that can't afford the newest and shiniest transit equipment.
To sum it up: Even the dirtiest and smoggiest and smoke-bellowingest and diesel-hungriest prime movers have less environmental impact than the alternative of having everybody drive their own car.
This October, Caltrain saw more than 753,000 passengers take to its railways, a 54% increase from October 2023, according to a news release Thursday. Comparing August 2024’s “primarily diesel service” to October 2024’s all-electric service, the trains saw an overall 17% increase in ridership. Rather than its typical post-August decline in monthly ridership, the service has seen more than 100,000 additional riders.
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The trains have also surpassed pre-COVID-19 ridership levels, with weekends becoming increasingly popular. Saturday ridership has increased 169%, and Sunday ridership has increased 142% since last October, the release said.
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Although the electric trains still reach the same top speed as diesel ones — 79 mph — they start and stop much faster, saving riders time.
Turns out people love trains and trains work if you give them the opportunity to. This is why I scoff at people who dismiss the High Speed Rail project. We need to get out of its way and let it...
Turns out people love trains and trains work if you give them the opportunity to. This is why I scoff at people who dismiss the High Speed Rail project. We need to get out of its way and let it happen because when it's up and running nobody is going to remember or care how much it cost to build (and if we inhabit that thinking from the get go we can make smarter choices that will actually save money).
The central valley portion is happening since it's the "easiest" portion of the alignment. The route into the Bay is via CalTrain (hence the electrification project, CHSR can run on existing right...
The central valley portion is happening since it's the "easiest" portion of the alignment. The route into the Bay is via CalTrain (hence the electrification project, CHSR can run on existing right of way that CalTrain currently uses), but the route into Los Angeles isn't fully decided on the last time I checked. There will be debate in the future about easements, rights of way, tunneling, and so forth. A favorite NIMBY argument is cost, and the State's numerous air quality and environmental laws provide a lot of avenues for bad faith lawsuits meant to stop projects for personal reasons under the guise of environmental impact.
As an example, Los Angeles Metro is currently designing a mass transit rail corridor along the 405 freeway from Sherman Oaks to LAX. Homeowner's in Bel Air have been throwing everything at the wall trying to stop or worsen the project. They claim it's because tunnels that will run nearby (and, to be clear, nearly 800ft or more below the houses) present an environmental or quality of life hazard. That argument is provable nonsense, but the wealth of the area means the homeowner's against the corridor have a lot of power to make the project more expensive. That's their goal, to claim something costs too much and then drive up the cost.
We also saw this in LA with the subway project from Downtown to Santa Monica, where an alignment runs under Beverly Hills High School and there was great acrimony from residents there who didn't want a station in the neighborhood trying to claim that the tunnel under the school was a hazard. Beverly Hills lost the lawsuits, but it still ate up years and budget to fend off.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none There were “debates” for the Central Valley too, especially canal relocations and cutting up land...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, information
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
There will be debate in the future about easements, rights of way, tunneling, and so forth.
There were “debates” for the Central Valley too, especially canal relocations and cutting up land parcels. CAHSR has handled these effectively, either winning or settling all lawsuits.
The entire section has passed environmental review except a tiny portion which will be approved next year. That is basically an ironclad defense as long as the review is conducted appropriately, which it has been. We may see litigation, but it is frivolous.
For most lots, which are dirt or sand (not structures), cases are easily won. The more pressing issue is that CAHSR has not yet acquired the land of future station sites. As the land value increases over time, in some cases rapidly, that will escalate costs. Cost escalations may prompt planners to redesign some stations. This may require alterations to the alignment and therefore more environmental reviews—which is where NIMBYs strike. Enviro review is time-consuming and expensive, and the easiest place to delay a project.
This could be avoided with better planning: pre-purchasing important lots years in advance, similar to the Hudson Yards acquisition in New York City ahead of the new rail tunnels—something like 20 years of lead time.
If funding is there, they will find a solution to any NIMBY problem. It might just be a little expensive.
NIMBYs of this sort are diametrically opposed to any and all change. They want everything to be forever frozen exactly as it is (except for property values, which are of course supposed to...
NIMBYs of this sort are diametrically opposed to any and all change. They want everything to be forever frozen exactly as it is (except for property values, which are of course supposed to continue to climb).
As an example I recall that in the SF Bay Area, there were owners who opposed Caltrain’s electrification even though that had exclusively positive impacts for rail adjacent homes (e.g. electric trains cause much less noise and vibration).
You asked what I thought would hamper the high speed rail project, and the answer is NIMBYism, particularly as the alignment starts to form near Los Angeles. Thus I provided examples of rail...
I wasn't asking about NIMBY opposition in general.
You asked what I thought would hamper the high speed rail project, and the answer is NIMBYism, particularly as the alignment starts to form near Los Angeles. Thus I provided examples of rail projects in Los Angeles hampered by NIMBYs. California overall has let its well-intentioned environmental laws become bludgeons that delay projects.
Everyone already knows that NIMBYism exists, though. The interesting bit would be reporting about how it holds up this particular project. But I guess it’s too soon for that? @scroll_lock argues...
Everyone already knows that NIMBYism exists, though. The interesting bit would be reporting about how it holds up this particular project.
But I guess it’s too soon for that? @scroll_lock argues that CHSR is largely held up by lack of funding, which is a different mechanism.
Comment box Scope: comment response, question, personal take Tone: surprised Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none 800 feet??? Surely you mean 80? It is an absurd objection either way. You can’t feel...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, question, personal take
Tone: surprised
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
They claim it's because tunnels that will run nearby (and, to be clear, nearly 800ft or more below the houses) present an environmental or quality of life hazard.
800 feet??? Surely you mean 80?
It is an absurd objection either way. You can’t feel vibrations from a subway more than a few meters underground unless you are standing directly over a ventilation grate; even then it is less noticeable than an automobile.
I was using hyperbole, but not that much. Bel Air sits on a mountain top. The surface of the pass in which the freeway sits adjacent (west) of Bel Air is between 600 and 800ft mean sea level....
I was using hyperbole, but not that much. Bel Air sits on a mountain top. The surface of the pass in which the freeway sits adjacent (west) of Bel Air is between 600 and 800ft mean sea level. Proposed tunnels running under Bel Air (east of the freeway) would run beneath property that sits around 1,000 to 1,300ft mean sea level. The north end of the mountain range is a valley (known as "the valley) which is roughly 700 to 800ft mean sea level, the southern portion known as West LA and Westwood starts to get as low as 100ft.
So the subway would run from below the surface of an 800ft valley to descend down to sit below the surface of a 100ft valley. The Bel Air people are just assholes.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: where marked Sarcasm/humor: none State lawmakers have made the decision every budget session not to allocate the funding...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, information
Tone: neutral
Opinion: where marked
Sarcasm/humor: none
State lawmakers have made the decision every budget session not to allocate the funding necessary to complete CAHSR. They have also not voted to create a ballot measure to do so. There are many ways to acquire funding on the state level, such as:
Bond measures going to CAHSR
Allocating a greater portion of “Cap and Trade” funds to CAHSR
Raising carbon taxes and allocating that to CAHSR
Sales tax increases going to CAHSR
Allocating toll, gas, aviation, or congestion taxes to CAHSR
Simply allocating a greater portion of the general fund to CAHSR, either by reducing funding from other transportation projects or by increasing the income tax slightly
Federal lawmakers have also chosen not to allocate enough funding to complete the project. They have provided some grants (including a recent grant of about $3 billion), but only enough to complete the Central Valley portion.
The project’s environmental review is complete in all sections except a small portion in the south which will be approved next year. If they had funding right now, they could start building the missing links tomorrow.
Skepticism of the project is what informs lawmakers’ decisions not to fund it immediately—unlike routine funding toward highway capital projects, which are approved without question. The skepticism is not entirely unwarranted, but I agree with the poster that the benefits of the project outweigh the capital cost of construction greatly.
Comment box Scope: comment response, speculation Tone: neutral Opinion: sure Sarcasm/humor: none It is probably a modal shift from cars to trains. In absolute terms, the travel demand is there,...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, speculation
Tone: neutral
Opinion: sure
Sarcasm/humor: none
It is probably a modal shift from cars to trains. In absolute terms, the travel demand is there, people are just making a different decision about their vehicle. (And likely a bit of entirely new demand.)
People who would normally drive may now decide to take the train because the trip is meaningfully faster (about 25% faster). Electrification significantly reduces train weight and allows for much faster acceleration/deceleration.
I wouldn’t chalk it up to recreation alone. Lots of people work on weekends. And lots of people dislike commuting by car. It’s stressful and expensive—the more you drive, the more you pay in gas and maintenance costs, plus risk of collisions. If the train is time-convenient, it induces greater ridership.
And indeed having fast train service is certainly convenient for people who want to come into the city to get dinner or see a show, and don’t want to deal with parking. It all adds up!
I’m skeptical that it would actually be faster on the weekend for going into San Francisco because for most people, there will be mutiple legs in the journey and they need to make connections. Not...
I’m skeptical that it would actually be faster on the weekend for going into San Francisco because for most people, there will be mutiple legs in the journey and they need to make connections. Not being slower helps, though.
I wonder how many journeys go into San Francisco versus other stops, and what people use for the other legs?
Lots of people will go into SF right to Oracle park a block from the train station. And transferring to the muni trams is pretty efficient. When I lived in the burbs I would also sometimes take...
Lots of people will go into SF right to Oracle park a block from the train station. And transferring to the muni trams is pretty efficient. When I lived in the burbs I would also sometimes take the train up to SF to see friends that live within walking distance of the station. It’s pretty dense with apartments there.
Comment box Scope: comment response, elaboration Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none For a given person, the train doesn’t necessarily have to be faster than driving, it just has to be...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, elaboration
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
For a given person, the train doesn’t necessarily have to be faster than driving, it just has to be fast enough to outweigh the frustrations associated with driving. The 25% speed increase from electrification puts some people over that threshold. For a lot of people, Caltrain is the longest duration leg of a multi-leg journey, so a speed increase there is particularly valuable.
Everyone has their own thresholds informing modal shifts. Personally, in an urban area, I would rather take transit than drive if the transit duration for a single-seat trip plus walking (end to end) is less than ~2x as long as driving and parking. But frustrations also affect the equation for transit. If I need to transfer, that reduces my willingness to use transit—I would rather walk, and if that takes too long, I’d sometimes rather not go at all. Some people don’t mind. I don’t mind transfers if I’m in France or Switzerland, but I find them irritating in the US. The location of the transfer also matters: people nearly universally prefer transferring near the beginning of their journey rather than the end, though this isn’t always feasible in both directions. Cost of parking, and whether I am driving my own vehicle, getting a taxi, or being driven also affects my decision.
You can understand that set of decisions being made collectively to estimate ridership alterations.
You’re right that not everyone will want to take the train, and for some people no amount of transit speediness will change that. There are lots of qualitative factors at play. But the goal isn’t necessarily 100% train use, it’s just minimizing car use.
I wonder how many journeys go into San Francisco versus other stops, and what people use for the other legs?
BART is probably the #1 transfer in SF. I doubt anything else comes close; various combinations of bus systems maybe. I don’t know where one would find this information in a dataset. It might not exist.
Caltrain Ridership Statistics are available on their website. The 2024 Annual Ridership Report section 7.6.1 has “Ridership by Origin Station” statistics in average mid-week riders from their “fare media model.” I don’t think these are exact ridership numbers, but they’re part of how Caltrain figures out which stations are relatively more trafficked than others.
San Francisco: 4803
Palo Alto: 2889
Mountain View: 1703
Redwood City: 1624
San Jose Diridon: 1547
Millbrae: 1222
Hillsdale: 1212
Sunnyvale: 1140
San Mateo: 914
22nd St: 854
Menlo Park: 646
Santa Clara: 595
Lawrence: 513
Burlingame: 474
San Carlos: 471
California Ave: 458
Belmont: 454
South San Francisco: 418
San Antonio: 414
San Bruno: 233
Hayward Park: 225
Tamien: 211
Morgan Hill: 100
Gilroy: 95
Bayshore: 95
Blossom Hill: 57
College Park: 43
Capitol: 38
San Martin: 29
Drops off quickly after SF, predictably. A few of those stations have very low ridership and could benefit from more transit-oritented development.
I agree! However, that's a different claim than saying it is actually faster than driving. I misunderstood you as making that claim, but after re-reading, I see that you were comparing with the...
For a given person, the train doesn’t necessarily have to be faster than driving, it just has to be fast enough to outweigh the frustrations associated with driving.
I agree! However, that's a different claim than saying it is actually faster than driving. I misunderstood you as making that claim, but after re-reading, I see that you were comparing with the train's speed before.
If the connections are fairly effortless, I don't see how that should be a problem. Around here people go to destinations by train en masse during the weekends, which often also will involve at...
for most people, there will be mutiple legs in the journey and they need to make connections.
If the connections are fairly effortless, I don't see how that should be a problem. Around here people go to destinations by train en masse during the weekends, which often also will involve at least one or two transfers by train and some other means of public transport.
It’s not necessarily a problem, but in comparison to travel by car, it does add delay, depending on how often they run and how good the scheduling is. Of course during rush hour on a weekday,...
It’s not necessarily a problem, but in comparison to travel by car, it does add delay, depending on how often they run and how good the scheduling is.
Of course during rush hour on a weekday, traffic delays are often much worse.
At least over here in Europe-land, having public transport be a bit slower than your car isn't a bad thing. As it comes with a lot more convenience. I.e. you can get drunk AF and not have to leave...
At least over here in Europe-land, having public transport be a bit slower than your car isn't a bad thing. As it comes with a lot more convenience. I.e. you can get drunk AF and not have to leave your car downtown, you don't have to find (and pay for) parking, you can zone out on Tildes rather than drive etc.
I got a chance to ride the new EMUs recently and it was great! It was pretty quiet, smooth, and the Wi-Fi was decent. I made the mistake of sitting in the front car for my first journey to SF from...
I got a chance to ride the new EMUs recently and it was great! It was pretty quiet, smooth, and the Wi-Fi was decent. I made the mistake of sitting in the front car for my first journey to SF from Sunnyvale and just heard the horn non-stop which was annoying but I guess that's what not having grade separation gets you. Made sure to sit elsewhere on my ride back and it was pretty quiet, even with a commuter crowd. I don't live on the peninsula so I won't use the service much but it's definitely a welcome upgrade.
Also:
Caltrain finds international buyer for retired diesel fleet
I'm so glad they were able to get out of disabling the equipment. That was such a bummer of a requirement imposed by politicians who don't actually understand the environmental benefits of transit and wanted to wave around this flag of getting those "dirty diesel trains" off of our tracks. It's lovely to see that these units are able to be sold at steep discounts to continue to operate and provide public transit services in areas that can't afford the newest and shiniest transit equipment.
To sum it up: Even the dirtiest and smoggiest and smoke-bellowingest and diesel-hungriest prime movers have less environmental impact than the alternative of having everybody drive their own car.
From the article:
…
…
Turns out people love trains and trains work if you give them the opportunity to. This is why I scoff at people who dismiss the High Speed Rail project. We need to get out of its way and let it happen because when it's up and running nobody is going to remember or care how much it cost to build (and if we inhabit that thinking from the get go we can make smarter choices that will actually save money).
Who do you think is in its way and not letting it happen? I don’t think it’s come up for a vote again since 2008. Aren’t we just observers?
The central valley portion is happening since it's the "easiest" portion of the alignment. The route into the Bay is via CalTrain (hence the electrification project, CHSR can run on existing right of way that CalTrain currently uses), but the route into Los Angeles isn't fully decided on the last time I checked. There will be debate in the future about easements, rights of way, tunneling, and so forth. A favorite NIMBY argument is cost, and the State's numerous air quality and environmental laws provide a lot of avenues for bad faith lawsuits meant to stop projects for personal reasons under the guise of environmental impact.
As an example, Los Angeles Metro is currently designing a mass transit rail corridor along the 405 freeway from Sherman Oaks to LAX. Homeowner's in Bel Air have been throwing everything at the wall trying to stop or worsen the project. They claim it's because tunnels that will run nearby (and, to be clear, nearly 800ft or more below the houses) present an environmental or quality of life hazard. That argument is provable nonsense, but the wealth of the area means the homeowner's against the corridor have a lot of power to make the project more expensive. That's their goal, to claim something costs too much and then drive up the cost.
We also saw this in LA with the subway project from Downtown to Santa Monica, where an alignment runs under Beverly Hills High School and there was great acrimony from residents there who didn't want a station in the neighborhood trying to claim that the tunnel under the school was a hazard. Beverly Hills lost the lawsuits, but it still ate up years and budget to fend off.
Comment box
There were “debates” for the Central Valley too, especially canal relocations and cutting up land parcels. CAHSR has handled these effectively, either winning or settling all lawsuits.
The entire section has passed environmental review except a tiny portion which will be approved next year. That is basically an ironclad defense as long as the review is conducted appropriately, which it has been. We may see litigation, but it is frivolous.
For most lots, which are dirt or sand (not structures), cases are easily won. The more pressing issue is that CAHSR has not yet acquired the land of future station sites. As the land value increases over time, in some cases rapidly, that will escalate costs. Cost escalations may prompt planners to redesign some stations. This may require alterations to the alignment and therefore more environmental reviews—which is where NIMBYs strike. Enviro review is time-consuming and expensive, and the easiest place to delay a project.
This could be avoided with better planning: pre-purchasing important lots years in advance, similar to the Hudson Yards acquisition in New York City ahead of the new rail tunnels—something like 20 years of lead time.
If funding is there, they will find a solution to any NIMBY problem. It might just be a little expensive.
Why are they concerned with rail projects happening deep underground?
NIMBYs of this sort are diametrically opposed to any and all change. They want everything to be forever frozen exactly as it is (except for property values, which are of course supposed to continue to climb).
As an example I recall that in the SF Bay Area, there were owners who opposed Caltrain’s electrification even though that had exclusively positive impacts for rail adjacent homes (e.g. electric trains cause much less noise and vibration).
Is the LA Metro somehow related to CHSR? I wasn't asking about NIMBY opposition in general.
You asked what I thought would hamper the high speed rail project, and the answer is NIMBYism, particularly as the alignment starts to form near Los Angeles. Thus I provided examples of rail projects in Los Angeles hampered by NIMBYs. California overall has let its well-intentioned environmental laws become bludgeons that delay projects.
Everyone already knows that NIMBYism exists, though. The interesting bit would be reporting about how it holds up this particular project.
But I guess it’s too soon for that? @scroll_lock argues that CHSR is largely held up by lack of funding, which is a different mechanism.
Comment box
800 feet??? Surely you mean 80?
It is an absurd objection either way. You can’t feel vibrations from a subway more than a few meters underground unless you are standing directly over a ventilation grate; even then it is less noticeable than an automobile.
I was using hyperbole, but not that much. Bel Air sits on a mountain top. The surface of the pass in which the freeway sits adjacent (west) of Bel Air is between 600 and 800ft mean sea level. Proposed tunnels running under Bel Air (east of the freeway) would run beneath property that sits around 1,000 to 1,300ft mean sea level. The north end of the mountain range is a valley (known as "the valley) which is roughly 700 to 800ft mean sea level, the southern portion known as West LA and Westwood starts to get as low as 100ft.
So the subway would run from below the surface of an 800ft valley to descend down to sit below the surface of a 100ft valley. The Bel Air people are just assholes.
Comment box
State lawmakers have made the decision every budget session not to allocate the funding necessary to complete CAHSR. They have also not voted to create a ballot measure to do so. There are many ways to acquire funding on the state level, such as:
Federal lawmakers have also chosen not to allocate enough funding to complete the project. They have provided some grants (including a recent grant of about $3 billion), but only enough to complete the Central Valley portion.
The project’s environmental review is complete in all sections except a small portion in the south which will be approved next year. If they had funding right now, they could start building the missing links tomorrow.
Skepticism of the project is what informs lawmakers’ decisions not to fund it immediately—unlike routine funding toward highway capital projects, which are approved without question. The skepticism is not entirely unwarranted, but I agree with the poster that the benefits of the project outweigh the capital cost of construction greatly.
Ridership increase is surprising, especially in the weekends. Suppose it’s just people going into SF for fun from south bay
Comment box
It is probably a modal shift from cars to trains. In absolute terms, the travel demand is there, people are just making a different decision about their vehicle. (And likely a bit of entirely new demand.)
People who would normally drive may now decide to take the train because the trip is meaningfully faster (about 25% faster). Electrification significantly reduces train weight and allows for much faster acceleration/deceleration.
I wouldn’t chalk it up to recreation alone. Lots of people work on weekends. And lots of people dislike commuting by car. It’s stressful and expensive—the more you drive, the more you pay in gas and maintenance costs, plus risk of collisions. If the train is time-convenient, it induces greater ridership.
And indeed having fast train service is certainly convenient for people who want to come into the city to get dinner or see a show, and don’t want to deal with parking. It all adds up!
I’m skeptical that it would actually be faster on the weekend for going into San Francisco because for most people, there will be mutiple legs in the journey and they need to make connections. Not being slower helps, though.
I wonder how many journeys go into San Francisco versus other stops, and what people use for the other legs?
Lots of people will go into SF right to Oracle park a block from the train station. And transferring to the muni trams is pretty efficient. When I lived in the burbs I would also sometimes take the train up to SF to see friends that live within walking distance of the station. It’s pretty dense with apartments there.
My memories of taking Caltrain are from the dot-com era, so I’m sure it’s changed a lot.
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For a given person, the train doesn’t necessarily have to be faster than driving, it just has to be fast enough to outweigh the frustrations associated with driving. The 25% speed increase from electrification puts some people over that threshold. For a lot of people, Caltrain is the longest duration leg of a multi-leg journey, so a speed increase there is particularly valuable.
Everyone has their own thresholds informing modal shifts. Personally, in an urban area, I would rather take transit than drive if the transit duration for a single-seat trip plus walking (end to end) is less than ~2x as long as driving and parking. But frustrations also affect the equation for transit. If I need to transfer, that reduces my willingness to use transit—I would rather walk, and if that takes too long, I’d sometimes rather not go at all. Some people don’t mind. I don’t mind transfers if I’m in France or Switzerland, but I find them irritating in the US. The location of the transfer also matters: people nearly universally prefer transferring near the beginning of their journey rather than the end, though this isn’t always feasible in both directions. Cost of parking, and whether I am driving my own vehicle, getting a taxi, or being driven also affects my decision.
You can understand that set of decisions being made collectively to estimate ridership alterations.
You’re right that not everyone will want to take the train, and for some people no amount of transit speediness will change that. There are lots of qualitative factors at play. But the goal isn’t necessarily 100% train use, it’s just minimizing car use.
BART is probably the #1 transfer in SF. I doubt anything else comes close; various combinations of bus systems maybe. I don’t know where one would find this information in a dataset. It might not exist.
Caltrain Ridership Statistics are available on their website. The 2024 Annual Ridership Report section 7.6.1 has “Ridership by Origin Station” statistics in average mid-week riders from their “fare media model.” I don’t think these are exact ridership numbers, but they’re part of how Caltrain figures out which stations are relatively more trafficked than others.
Drops off quickly after SF, predictably. A few of those stations have very low ridership and could benefit from more transit-oritented development.
I agree! However, that's a different claim than saying it is actually faster than driving. I misunderstood you as making that claim, but after re-reading, I see that you were comparing with the train's speed before.
If the connections are fairly effortless, I don't see how that should be a problem. Around here people go to destinations by train en masse during the weekends, which often also will involve at least one or two transfers by train and some other means of public transport.
It’s not necessarily a problem, but in comparison to travel by car, it does add delay, depending on how often they run and how good the scheduling is.
Of course during rush hour on a weekday, traffic delays are often much worse.
At least over here in Europe-land, having public transport be a bit slower than your car isn't a bad thing. As it comes with a lot more convenience. I.e. you can get drunk AF and not have to leave your car downtown, you don't have to find (and pay for) parking, you can zone out on Tildes rather than drive etc.
The electric trains have the biggest impact on weekends when trains make all stops.
I got a chance to ride the new EMUs recently and it was great! It was pretty quiet, smooth, and the Wi-Fi was decent. I made the mistake of sitting in the front car for my first journey to SF from Sunnyvale and just heard the horn non-stop which was annoying but I guess that's what not having grade separation gets you. Made sure to sit elsewhere on my ride back and it was pretty quiet, even with a commuter crowd. I don't live on the peninsula so I won't use the service much but it's definitely a welcome upgrade.