From KCBS
Caltrain falls victim to own success
By Staff
There has been a drop in Caltrain's on-time performance. More and more often, the popular commuter train is late to its destination.
"What we're seeing on a day-to-day basis throughout the system is the three, four, five minute delays that are caused by just a number of people boarding the train," explained spokeswoman Christine Dunn.
According to Dunn, on-time performance stood at 97% a year ago, but has since slipped to 90%. The transit system's rapidly riding ridership take much of the blame. An estimated 37,000 people board the trains on any given weekday. The high cost of gasoline is likely to increase ridership even more.
"We just added two more evening trains," said Dunn. "So we've got 98 trains a day now. So those are the reasons that people are riding."
Caltrain plans to boost capacity even more later this year, with the addition of several new "low floor" cars, which are designed to be easier for passengers to get on and off of, from the platform.
When Caltrain put "baby bullet" trains into use several years ago, ridership increased 44%. |
