Community Corner
Caltrain Ridership Count Underway
The head counts, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays through mid-February, will aid with planning and resource needs, officials said.
BAY AREA, CA – Caltrain started an annual onboard count of riders on Tuesday in order to obtain information for planning improvements, allocating resources and validating ridership estimates based on sales, the transit agency officials said.
Caltrain generally has more than 60,000 riders on an average weekday riding their rail service from San Francisco to San Jose with the limited services in Gilroy, they said.
Because of project costs and budget constraints, the count methodology for weekdays has changed this year.
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Every rider on every train will be counted on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and will be averaged until the count concludes in mid-February.
Riders will not be counted on Mondays or Fridays because the ridership is typically the lowest on those days.
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During the duration of the count, field surveyors will be on every train near the door in the vestibule, according to Caltrain.
Company officials said in a memo they chose this time of year to count ridership because there are typically fewer holidays and special events to skew ridership. Also, keeping the time of year the same during ridership
counts helps to keep them more accurate.
The number of bike boardings and number of bike riders not able to board the train during overcrowding will also be counted, as well as the number of passengers who need assistance utilizing the lifts.
According to Caltrain records, ridership has more than doubled since 1997 when it was just 24,597 passengers compared to their 2017 count of 62,190.
Caltrain gets the heaviest ridership beginning in summer and lasting through the fall, officials said.
In addition to how many riders are on each train, the data will be used beyond ridership average to find out the most popular stations and most popular trains in the system, according to the memo.
Results of the previous annual ridership counts can be viewed on Caltrain's website at www.caltrain.com/ridership.
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--Bay City News/Image courtesy of Bob Stine
