Caltrain is a commuter rail line in California, serving the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley. The southern terminus is in San Jose at the Tamien station with weekday rush hour service running as far as Gilroy. The northern terminus of the line is in San Francisco at 4th and King Street. Caltrain has express, limited, and local services. There are 28 regular stops, one limited-service weekday-only stop, one weekend and holiday-only stop (Broadway), and one football-only stop (Stanford). While average weekday ridership in 2019 exceeded 63,000, impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been significant: in June 2024, Caltrain had an average weekday ridership of 24,580 passengers.
Millbrae station is an intermodal transit station serving Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Caltrain, located in Millbrae, California. The station is the terminal station for BART on the San Francisco Peninsula, served by two lines: The Red Line before 9 pm and the Yellow Line during the early morning and evening. It is served by all Caltrain services. The station is also served by SamTrans bus service, Commute.org and Caltrain shuttle buses, and other shuttles.
San Jose Diridon station is the central passenger rail depot for San Jose, California. It also serves as a major intermodal transit center for Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley. The station is named after former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod Diridon Sr.
Downtown Mountain View station is an intermodal transit station providing public bus and rail service, located in Mountain View, California. The station is served by the Caltrain commuter rail service, for which it is simply called Mountain View station. Santa Clara VTA Orange Line light rail service is provided to an adjacent, dedicated light rail facility, known as Downtown Mountain View station. VTA local transit bus and employer-operated shuttle services are accommodated from the Mountain View Transit Center on the Evelyn Avenue side of the station.
Palo Alto station is an intermodal transit center in Palo Alto, California. It is served by Caltrain regional rail service, SamTrans and Santa Clara VTA local bus service, Dumbarton Express regional bus service, the Stanford University Marguerite Shuttle, and several local shuttle services. Palo Alto is the second-busiest Caltrain station after San Francisco, averaging 7,764 weekday boardings by a 2018 count. The Caltrain station has two side platforms serving the two tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision and a nearby bus transfer plaza.
San Francisco 4th and King Street station, also known as the Caltrain Depot, is a train station in the SoMa district of San Francisco, California. It is presently the northern terminus of the Caltrain commuter rail line serving the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley. It is also the eastern terminus of the N Judah and E Embarcadero, as well as a stop along the T Third Street of the Muni network. The station is additionally the projected terminus for the first phase of the California High-Speed Rail project and a station once Phase 2 is completed.
Bayshore station is a Caltrain commuter rail station in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The station is on the border of San Francisco and the neighboring city of Brisbane. The parking lot and the northern section of the station are in San Francisco, while the remainder is in Brisbane. The station address is in San Francisco proper.
Broadway station is a Caltrain station in Burlingame, California. Caltrain only serves the stop on weekends and holidays; weekday service is provided by a bus shuttle to nearby Millbrae station.
Burlingame station is a Caltrain commuter rail station in Burlingame, California. The station building was constructed in the Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission Revival architecture styles in 1894, opening for service on October 10 of that year. 18th-century tiles from the Mission San Antonio de Padua at Jolon and the Mission Dolores Asistencia at San Mateo were used for the station roof.
San Mateo station is the northernmost of the three Caltrain stations in San Mateo, California. It is in downtown San Mateo.
San Antonio station is a Caltrain commuter rail station located in Mountain View, California. The station has two side platforms serving the two tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision, with a pedestrian tunnel at the south end.
San Carlos is a Caltrain commuter rail station in San Carlos, California.
Gilroy station is a Caltrain station located in Gilroy, California, United States. It is the southern terminus of the South County Connector service, and is only served during weekday rush hours in the peak direction, with trains going toward San Jose in the morning and returning southbound in the evening. The station building was constructed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1918 and restored in 1998. Future plans call for extended Amtrak Capitol Corridor service, as well as California High-Speed Rail trains, to also stop at Gilroy. The station was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 as Gilroy Southern Pacific Railroad Depot.
Atherton station was a Caltrain station in Atherton, California. The station had one side platform and one island platform serving the two tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision, with a concrete and wooden shelter on the west side of the tracks. The station opened by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1866 as Fair Oaks and was renamed Atherton in 1912. Caltrain cut weekday service to the station in 2005 due to low ridership and a hold-out rule that prohibited two trains from being at the station simultaneously. Weekend and holiday service continued until December 19, 2020.
Lawrence station is a Caltrain commuter rail station in Sunnyvale, California. The station has four tracks with side platforms serving the outer tracks.
California Avenue station is a Caltrain station located in Palo Alto, California. It stops at the historical town center of Mayfield, which was annexed by the town of Palo Alto in 1925. The current station structure was built in 1983 and the station was expanded from one platform to two in 2008.
Redwood City School District (RCSD) is the public elementary school district serving Redwood City, California. As of 2019–2020 school year, the district serves over 8,500 students in 16 schools.
The Dumbarton Rail Corridor is a proposed transbay passenger rail line which would reuse the right-of-way that was initially constructed from 1907–1910 as the Dumbarton Cut-off. The Dumbarton Cut-off includes the first structure to span San Francisco Bay, the 1910 Dumbarton Rail Bridge, although the vintage Cut-off bridges would likely be replaced prior to activating new passenger service. Dumbarton Rail Corridor would provide service between Union City in the East Bay and Menlo Park on the Peninsula, with train service continuing to both San Francisco and San José along the existing Caltrain tracks. It has been in the planning stages since 1988, and would be the first above-ground transbay rail line since Key System electric trains stopped running on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge in 1958, and the first new transbay crossing of any kind since the completion of the Transbay Tube in 1974.
The Caltrain Express (CTX) project was implemented from 2002 to 2004 to establish the Baby Bullet express service, which shortened the transit time on the Caltrain commuter rail line between San Francisco and San Jose, and certain stations in between. New locomotives and rolling stock were purchased for dedicated express service, bypassing most stations; quad-track overtake sections were added in two locations along the Peninsula Corridor right-of-way to allow express trains to pass slower local trains that were making all stops; tracks were also upgraded with continuous-welded rail; a centralized traffic control system was added; and crossovers were added every few miles to allow single-tracking trains around disabled trains. Congresswoman Jackie Speier, then serving as a California State Senator, is credited with securing the funding for CTX and one of the new locomotives acquired for the project is named for her as a result. During commute hours, the Baby Bullet went up to 20 percent faster than driving south from San Francisco to San Jose. On September 21, 2024, with the completion of the Caltrain modernization project and the transition to electrified trains, the Baby Bullet was renamed as simply the Express service.
The Caltrain Modernization Program (CalMod), sometimes referred to as the Caltrain Electrification Project, was a $2.44 billion project which added a positive train control (PTC) system and electrified the main line of the U.S. commuter railroad Caltrain, which serves cities in the San Francisco Peninsula and Silicon Valley. The electrification included installation of a 25 kV catenary system over the double-tracked line from San Francisco to San Jose, and acquisition of new rolling stock, consisting of Stadler KISS double-decker electric multiple units (EMU). Caltrain is transitioning from its legacy push-pull trains hauled by diesel-electric locomotives, most of which have been in service since 1985.
