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Giants ridership rises 2.3%, 49ers ridership jumps 17%, and Bay FC leaps 26% as sports and events support new ridership growth
With over 12,000 riders taking Caltrain to this week’s Valkyries Championship Parade, it is clear that the rail service is increasingly seen as the best travel option by Bay Area sports fans.
Caltrain provided more than 350,000 rides during Giants, 49ers, Valkyries and Bay FC games between July and September, as fans increasingly choose the train over traffic and stadium parking. This is nearly ten times the roughly 38,000 rides on Caltrain to get to the six World Cup matches the Bay Area hosted this summer.
The Giants remain Caltrain's biggest draw, with fans taking 328,663 rides to and from 41 home games this summer, up 2.3% from the same period last year and an average of more than 8,000 per game. 49ers ridership grew even faster: Caltrain provided 5,005 rides to three home games at Levi's Stadium, up 17.4% from last year with the same number of games.
This was the first season since their 2024 inaugural season that Caltrain tracked ridership to Bay FC matches at PayPal Park, providing 5,508 rides to seven home matches, a 26% increase over 2024. Caltrain also continued to serve Valkyries fans traveling to Chase Center in San Francisco all the way to the Finals, seeing a 19% ridership increase over last year.
These trends do not appear to be confined to the summer. The San Jose Sharks have seen a 46.2% increase over 2025 ridership on game days, and per game ridership to Mountain View Station for the San Francisco 49ers is up 51.9% over last year. Additionally, the five games the Golden State Warriors have played at Chase Center this year have driven a 83.2% ridership increase from the previous year.
"More fans are figuring out that the easiest way to get to the game is to leave the car at home," said Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard. "Electrification gave us the frequency to make that work. More trains for more events allow fans to get in and out of the stadium faster and have a more convenient experience. People don't ride transit the way they did 10 years ago, and Caltrain is meeting them where they're going — to ballgames, concerts and festivals, on weekends and at night."
As shifting work patterns change how people commute, games and events have become one of Caltrain's most important sources of new riders. 20% of Caltrain’s first time riders went to a special event, primarily concerts and sporting events. Caltrain now serves an estimated 49,000 unique riders each month, roughly 37,000 more than in 2021 and close to its 2019 total, even though fewer riders now commute five days a week. The increase in special event ridership has been supplemented by Caltrain’s half-hourly service — with even more service at peak hours — making it more convenient than ever before to take Caltrain.
The agency will continue to track event ridership as new teams and events come to the corridor, including a new women's professional hockey team in San Jose and newly approved concerts at PayPal Park.
Caltrain measures event ridership through a count of all passengers boarding and/or alighting within an identified "event window" at specified station(s). This could potentially include non-event riders, and may overlap with other concurrent events.
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About Caltrain: Owned and operated by the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, Caltrain provides rail service from San Francisco to San Jose, with commute service to Gilroy. Serving the region since 1863, Caltrain is the oldest continually operating rail system west of the Mississippi and the first railroad to convert from diesel to electric power in a generation.
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