Caltrain in serious trouble

[Amtrakfflyer]

https://www.caltrain.com/media/29888/download
peak trains ridership down 93 percent with no uptick in sight.

 

[DCAKen]

https://www.caltrain.com/media/29888/download
peak trains ridership down 93 percent with no uptick in sight.

There seems to be something wrong in their interpretation of the numbers from slide 12. I see it as saying that 93% of the lost riders are from the peak time period. From the numbers in that chart, peak ridership is down 81% and total ridership is down 74%.

 

[allanorn]

That 93% number looks strange, unless it's stating that 93% of the decline in ridership can be attributed to peak riders.

I'm not surprised Caltrain is in trouble:

• San Francisco hasn't really recovered from a business or commercial property perspective post-pandemic;
• A number of business in the Bay Area and on the peninsula are scaling back on employees, or are closing down in a post-zero-interest rate environment;
• Those business remaining either are fully/mostly remote, or are on a "hybrid" schedule of working 2-4 days in the office, often at non-standard times;
• Less demand for commuting during peak hours opens up 280 and 101, and parking at work has also opened up - so it's become more time efficient to just drive instead of take the train; and
• Electrification, new EMUs, and other infrastructure improvements have taken their sweet time and are having significant cost overruns, so that has to hurt the wallet a bit.

 

[Septa9739]

I read the report (powerpoint). There's a huge calculation error and that number isn't accurate. The authority added its peak AM and PM shortfalls to get an absolute number of peak shortfalls. They did the same with percentages, which you can't do. It's really off about 80%, not 93% at peak (9973/53799). However, in a certain sense this is a distinction without a difference. Total ridership is floating around 25% of 2019, which is still a crisis. SEPTA's Railroad Division is still off about 35% and they are starting to get freaked out.

 

[poncho]

The financial issues of Caltrain and BART (along with BART's completely dysfunctional management issues) might allow for the respective organizations to dissolve and re-emerge into new singular Bay Area regional transit agencies given these are the two main regional transit players in the Bay Area. The trains arent going anywhere, their current entity might.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

The new world order, thanks to high speed internet, same day deliver, and a pandemic.

With a additional bonus of a housing shortage and people urban camping on the sidewalk.