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Reinventing the Railroad
When rail service was launched on the Peninsula more than a
century ago, the focus was on local train service, which stopped
at each station between San Francisco and San Jose. The
schedule went largely unchanged from the 1800s up through
the early part of this century. While the service providers
changed several times over the years, the nearly two-hour
trip from one end of the service to another was a constant.
When Caltrain launched its Baby Bullet Service in June 2004,
it was responding to the changing needs of Peninsula
commuters, who were fed up with freeway traffic but did not
have time to commute on local train service. The Baby Bullet’s
faster travel times attracted many new riders and became
immensely popular. Nevertheless, Caltrain found itself in a
dire financial situation as it entered the 2005 fiscal year,
with a projected deficit of $13-plus million.
Caltrain charted a bold course. Instead of slashing service,
it expanded. The rail agency was convinced there were a lot
more potential customers out there who would like to avoid
the freeway commute. However, the current schedule couldn’t
accommodate enough new riders to turn around the budget
deficit. That’s when Caltrain decided to throw out the old
schedule and reinvent the system. Without increasing
equipment, staff or budget, it reorganized its schedule and
increased the number and frequency of weekday train
service, using a combination of Baby Bullet and
limited-stop trains throughout the commute hours,
to attract additional riders and revenue.
This “reinvented” system was launched on August 1, 2005,
and was an immediate success. The new system offered 96
weekday trains, with varying stop patterns. In just over a year,
the increased ridership attracted by the new service model,
along with a moderate rate increase, resulted in a fare box
revenue increase of nearly 50 percent, and a ridership
increase of more than 25 percent.
Caltrain had the nation’s highest growth in commuter rail
ridership through the first half of 2006. With the success
of the reinvention, Caltrain has been looked to by a number
of other rail agencies as an example of how to effectively
grow out of a fiscal crisis.
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