Special to Passenger Transport for Commuter Rail Conference edition
Transforming Caltrain:
From Caterpillar to Butterfly in Three Easy Steps

After more than 140 years of continuous passenger rail operation, Caltrain had stagnated. How could the service meet riders changing needs and expectations without a major facelift?

It’s a problem many public transit agencies are facing. In the age of the automobile and the dual-income family, we are challenged to make our service relevant for the unique needs of today’s commuters.

Burdened by years of conventional thinking about the things the rail agency could and could not do, planners weren’t just thinking inside the box, they were trapped in it.

But a conversation between Caltrain executives and California State Senator Jackie Speier (D – San Francisco/San Mateo) exploded Caltrain’s conventions and led to the funding necessary to transform the rail agency by providing a new kind-of express service. Instead of operating in a linear fashion, otherwise known as “first in first out,” the system would offer an express service that passed other slower moving trains and made only a limited number of stops, this came to be known as the Baby Bullet.

With Speier’s $127 million and additional funding through federal grant programs, staff added passing tracks in two locations, overhauled old rails and ties and installed a new signaling system to facilitate the Baby Bullet’s critical passing movements.

And while much discussion surrounding Caltrain’s new Baby Bullet express service has centered on the build-out of infrastructure, the challenge of designing a new service to fit a railroad new in some places and aging in others was monumental.

“We realized that instead of pushing a schedule out and serving the people who show up, we needed to create demand by building a schedule that pulled riders to us,” said Robert Doty, Caltrain’s director of rail transportation.

The rail agency’s staff conducted origin and destination studies to determine ridership patterns, rail simulations to see where new efficiencies could be gained and worked with a consultant to kick-start the paradigm shift. But once the basic service assumptions were developed innovative agency staff only needed to look for the slowest moving train and figure out how to get around it, after that they looked for a faster moving train and passed that one too.

Immediately upon introduction in June 2004, the service struck a chord with a pool of potential riders that continues to grow, increasing average weekday ridership by more than 12 percent in the first 45 days of service. After seven months of service, total ridership is up more than 17 percent.

“First we stopped thinking of the system as ‘linear’ and started trying to really change the way we do business,” said Doty. “Then the internal battle between the perfect train timing and actual passengers began.”

“It was a bargaining process,” added Michelle Bouchard, Caltrain senior planner, of the schedule development which took more than 200 iterations to achieve full metamorphosis.

What Bouchard and Doty recognized is that an organization can’t follow the conventional wisdom if it truly wants to change the way it does business. “You have to completely change the way you look at things,” said Doty.

His advice? Follow three simple steps 1) Ask yourself if the constraints you’ve been operating under are real. By releasing a constraint you are automatically expanding your service options. 2) Bring in fresh eyes to look at your service assumptions and watch them change as you remove real or perceived constraints. 3) Be open to making the biggest changes and don’t be surprised when the toughest problems have the simplest solutions.

For Bouchard and Doty the “ah-ha” moment came as they struggled to make the timing work for the passengers who used the system. Moving one train forward by two or three minutes seemed to destroy the careful timing that made the schedule flow and ensured equipment and crews would be in place to make their turns.

“When Michelle suggested we move the whole peak schedule forward 15 minutes it seemed too easy, but it worked,” added Doty.

The schedule that came out of that – sending out a local train making all stops in front, two limited trains with alternating stopping patterns and a Baby Bullet – put trains in the right places at the right times for critical overtakes on the newly minted passing tracks and created huge equipment and crew efficiencies.

In fact, the efficiencies in the use of crews and equipment were so significant that Caltrain was able to add 10 trains to the weekday schedule and increase the number of weekend trains without adding staff, equipment or increasing costs.

Generally, asking crews to increase the number of daily runs they make and decrease their turn time at the terminals wouldn’t be the most popular request.

“As it turns out the crews were as bored as we were,” said Doty. Engineers, dispatchers and conductors enjoy the new schedule’s flexibility and their increased involvement in making it work.

For Caltrain that means increased job satisfaction among its frontline employees and by the ridership increases that also means happier customers.

But it hasn’t all been good news. In spite of total ridership increases in excess of 17 percent and a more than 20 percent increase in revenues, Caltrain is still facing a significant budget deficit. The problem has its roots in skyrocketing fuel costs and an organization that requires subsidization from three separate partner agencies, each with their own financial crisis to resolve. As a result, the partners have not significantly increased their contributions in four years. Caltrain has covered the deficit through the use of one-time only funds and reserves but those options have run out.

Tapped to provide new service scenarios that might attract even more riders, Bouchard and Doty have gone back to the drawing board and expect to emerge with something even more exciting for the next “generation” of Caltrain service.

3/15/05