Caltrain Faces Possible Shutdown: Report

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — After months of nearly empty trains rolling up and down the Peninsula, pretty soon there could be no trains at all.

Caltrain is facing the prospect of a temporary shutdown later this year amid plummeting ridership revenue due to the coronavirus crisis, The San Jose Mercury News reports.

The 155-year-old transit agency was dealt a major blow Tuesday when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors declined to put a one-eighth cent sales tax on the November ballot.

Caltrain, which needs in excess of $50 million to stay afloat, had to have the proposed sales tax go before voters in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties according to the report.

The sales tax, which was originally slated for electrification, would have raised an estimated $108 million and given the beleaguered transit agency a lifeline.

Caltrain, which relies on passenger fares for 70 percent of its budget, has seen a ridership decline of more than 90 percent amid the COVID-19 crisis according to the report.

With the latest development, the possibility of a shutdown no longer exists entirely in the theoretical realm.

“Last week, this was a scary what-if,” Caltrain spokesman Lieberman told The Mercury News.

“Now, it seems like a more immediate threat.”

Caltrain’s financial woes mirror those transit agencies throughout the Bay Area and beyond are experiencing amid ridership since shelter-in-place orders went into effect.

San Francisco’s cash-strapped Muni will lose 40 of its 68 bus lines unless it can find a new source of funding, according to a report in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Bay Area transit agencies have experienced a combined loss in the hundreds of millions of dollars amid the pandemic, KQED reports.

San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton cited outsized control of the agency by San Mateo County and the inherently regressive nature of sales taxes for his decision to keep the sales tax off the ballot, according to The Mercury News report.

A prolonged Caltrain closure could have a devastating impact on the Bay Area’s efforts to recover from the economic impact of the coronavirus according to a Chronicle report.

A Google “megaproject” that includes an office campus and 5,000 homes adjacent to the San Jose Diridon Station could be imperiled according to the report, as would development in the South Bay and on the Peninsula along El Camino Real.

Read more in The San Jose Mercury News

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