Baby Bullet Wins Tranny Award

Caltrain’s popular Baby Bullet service is being recognized by the California Transportation Foundation as the 2004 Program of the Year. The service also recently received the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Grand Award.

Baby Bullet service received the Tranny Award based on the innovative infrastructure and operational improvements that have lead to ridership increases of more than 17 percent.

“The service has been so well-received that less than one year after launching it we’ve already added two more bullets to meet the demand and help raise additional revenue,” said Michelle Bouchard, Caltrain’s manager of rail transportation.

The overwhelming success of the Baby Bullet service is netting more than $2 of revenue for every $1 local trains are bringing in, a testament to the heavy ridership and the long-distances the trains are carrying passengers.

As a result, Caltrain is planning to add another 10 bullets to help bridge a budget shortfall. In fact, in the space of 14 months Caltrain will have gone from 76 weekday trains to 96 weekday trains.

The Baby Bullet service operates between San Francisco and San Jose in under an hour with stops in Millbrae, Hillsdale, Palo Alto and Mountain View.

California State Senator Jackie Speier (D –San Mateo/San Francisco) received Legislator of the Year at the Tranny Awards for her role in conceptualizing the Baby Bullet service along with Caltrain’s retired-Chief Development Officer Howard Goode and current Executive Director Michael J. Scanlon. Speier was also critical in securing $127 million of state-funding for the project.

Caltrain will implement a new 96-train schedule on Aug. 1 that includes 22 Baby Bullet trains. The bullets will be divided into two stopping patterns; Pattern A will stop at San Jose, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Hillsdale, Millbrae, 22nd Street (reverse-commute only) and San Francisco; Pattern B will stop at Tamien, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Menlo Park (reverse-commute only), Redwood City, San Mateo, Millbrae and San Francisco.

The California Transportation Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the career-development, employee and agency recognition for California’s transportation agencies. The forum sponsors educational events and career development activities. CTF was founded in June 1988. For additional information visit www.transportationfoundation.org.

5/27/05