Since 1863 the
San Francisco Peninsula, the series of towns (and later, cities) between
San Francisco and
San Jose, has been served by a railroad. The
San Francisco and San Jose Railroad first provided freight and passenger service, followed by its successor, the Southern Pacific, and then briefly by
Caltrans and finally by a regional Joint Powers Board which runs today's passenger trains.
San Francisco–San Jose Railroad Although a line had been proposed in the past, construction on the railroad between
San Francisco and
San Jose was started in 1860 "by a group of local capitalists of more than ordinary energy and resources" under the auspices of the
San Francisco and San Jose Railroad (SF&SJ), and completed in 1863. The
Central Pacific Railroad transferred its rights for the construction of the right-of-way between San Jose and
Sacramento to the
Western Pacific Railroad (WPRR, which was founded by the same members that had founded the SF&SJ) in late 1862. In December 1865, the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company (SP) was incorporated to build a rail line between San Francisco and
San Diego.
Under Southern Pacific Under Southern Pacific the line was double tracked in 1904, and multiple cutoffs were built over a period ending in 1910. which veered to the west around
San Bruno Mountain. The Bayshore Cutoff also eliminated the use of helper engines to bring trains over the mountain. The second, the
Mayfield Cutoff, opened in 1908 to provide service to western
Santa Clara Valley cities such as
Los Altos and
Los Gatos. The third, the
Dumbarton Cutoff, opened in 1910 and included the first bridge across the San Francisco Bay Area, between
Newark and
Menlo Park, saving many miles to
Oakland and Sacramento compared to the prior route through San Jose and
Santa Clara. The
Peninsula Electric Railroad was incorporated around the same time the Dumbarton Cutoff project was launched, and it was suspected that it was controlled by Southern Pacific in preparation for a quad-track expansion, as it was laying a route parallel with the Southern Pacific. As envisioned in 1909 from plans for the Peninsula Electric, SP announced that it would investigate the
electrification of its Peninsula Commute line in September 1921, promising better and more frequent service. Just a few days later, SP cited excessive post-war inflation, taxation, and competition from publicly funded highways as factors making electrification neither "practicable or desirable". Similarly, plans to eliminate all at-grade crossings were announced in 1909, but not carried to completion. As Southern Pacific's franchise to operate on 4th Street in San Jose was ending, it elected to build a diversion track to the west. This line forced a move for the city's passenger traffic to a
new station at Cahill, placing it one mile from downtown (whereas it had previously been a four-block distance). Passenger service along the
Ocean View Branch ended after November 1928. SP's Peninsula Commute experienced record ridership during
World War II. During the war, 26 trains ran between San Jose and San Francisco per day, with headways as low as 5 minutes (traveling north) in the mornings and 3 minutes (traveling south) in the evenings. After the war, a May 1946 railroad strike displaced approximately 10,000 train passengers onto highways, causing "historic" traffic jams along the
Bayshore Highway, with commute times for some automobile drivers to balloon from 30 minutes to 75 minutes going from
Burlingame to San Francisco, a distance of approximately . In 1954, surveys comparing traffic on Bayshore Highway with train traffic concluded that just over half of all commuters to San Francisco passing through
Brisbane were taking the train, and that eight more lanes would need to be added to the freeway to accommodate traffic if rail service were to stop suddenly. However, in the period after the war, Peninsula roads were improved; the four-lane undivided Bayshore Highway (completed in 1925) was rebuilt into a six-lane divided freeway between 1949 and 1962, and
Interstate 280 was completed in the 1970s. Train ridership declined with the rise of automobile use, falling from a peak of 9.2 million annual boardings in 1954 (approximately 16,000 weekday riders) to 4.4 million in 1977 (approximately 7,000 weekday riders). Service to Los Gatos ended in 1959; the railroad noted the ease of reaching Vasona, the new end of the line, via automobile. The Mayfield Branch saw its last service in 1964, with its right of way reused in construction of the
Foothill Expressway. During peak hours in 1975, Peninsula Commute trains operated with headways as low as three or four minutes; however, with skip-stop and express train service patterns, the minimum wait for riders at a given station would be ten minutes. compared to 12,000 daily passengers in 1967 In 1971, when
Amtrak took over long distance passenger operations, Southern Pacific's extended commute train to
Monterey, the "
Del Monte", was discontinued. Some SP passenger locomotives were sold to
Amtrak and the remainder were transferred to Peninsula Commute service, which continued to operate. In 1975, the
Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) published the
Feasibility of Upgrading Peninsula Passenger Rail Service (
PERSUS) report.
PERSUS concluded the Peninsula Commute was underutilized and proposed a minor upgrade to improve service (and ridership), or major upgrades to extend service to
downtown San Francisco, either by connecting with
BART in
Daly City, or by extending the SP terminus to the
Transbay Terminal; the ultimate goal was to remodel the service to be closer to transit than commuter rail, which entailed a reduction in headways so that passengers would have to wait less than fifteen minutes between trains during weekday daylight hours. which prompted SP to petition the
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for a fare increase of 111 percent in August 1974, as fares had increased minimally and ridership, approximately 12,000 passengers per day in 1967 remained flat, despite the fuel crisis. The CPUC authorized a 25% increase in fares in a 3–2 vote on July 12, 1977, effective August 1977. On May 6, 1977, SP formally filed a petition with the CPUC (Application No. 57289) to discontinue the commuter operation due to ongoing losses. At that time, SP was running 44 trains a day. The petition was opposed by regional transit agencies, including the MTC, who passed Resolution No. 479 to request the CPUC deny the SP petition. Since the CPUC had not taken action on the petition 120 days after the filing, SP filed another petition to discontinue service with the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) on November 17, 1977. AB 1853 also allowed
Caltrans to negotiate with SP for operation of the commuter rail service and the purchase of the right-of-way between Daly City and
San Bruno, which had only seen occasional freight traffic since the completion of the Bayshore Cutoff in 1907. were used to draft AB 1853.
PENTAP recommended that train and bus service be improved, fixed rail transit facilities be better utilized in the near future, and facilities and options should be preserved for long-range expansion and modernization. and offered $8 million to help purchase buses to replace the service. However, both samTrans and the Santa Clara County Transit District stated they would not be able to operate that bus service; it was estimated that a fleet of 122 buses would be required, arriving and departing from San Francisco every 35 to 50 seconds. Testifying later at that same hearing,
SamTrans chair John Mauro pointed out that since the inception of the
San Mateo County bus service in 1975, service to San Francisco was purposely crippled in speed to avoid competing with the rail service. Mauro had previously tried to negotiate with SP to enter a "purchase of service" contract in March 1976, but SP refused to accept a direct subsidy, which led to the passenger fare subsidy instead. Ridership increased during 1979 and 1980, aided by the gasoline crisis and fare subsidies; SP's ICC petition received a preliminary affirmative ruling from the administrative law judge in July 1979. In the first fiscal year, covering 1980–81, operating costs were $19.33 million and fare revenue was $7.81 million, resulting in a
farebox recovery ratio of 43%. The deficit was covered by a mix of Urban Mass Transportation Act funds ($2 million), contributions from SP ($400,000), and the state and three counties served ($4.56 million each). By 1988, the service was the only operating commuter rail in California. The state felt that regional control of the Peninsula Commute was more appropriate, as it was primarily a benefit to the region, not the state. Thus, the Peninsula Corridor right-of-way was purchased for from SP in 1991 by the newly formed
Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (PCJPB), who subsequently assumed responsibility for the operation of Caltrain in 1992. The PCJB then contracted operations to
Amtrak, ending 122 years of operation by Southern Pacific.
TransitAmerica Services took over operations in 2012. ==Rolling stock==