Caltrain's Bogus Ridership Numbers

On May 15, 2025, SFGate published an article on Caltrain ridership: Bay Area train is red-hot with riders, but trouble lies ahead which claims that Caltrain ridership is way up:

According to new numbers provided to SFGATE, in April 2025, ridership jumped 60% compared with the same month a year prior. That follows a similar spike in ridership in October, when Caltrain reported its weekday ridership grew 54% compared with the same month in 2023.

But the numbers in the article do not support the headline. More from the story:

During April 2019, average daily ridership was nearly 1.6 million people. ... the April 2025 ridership reached 925,000 people.

Commuters riding the train frequently tend to purchase the monthly pass, and Caltrain announced that it had changed how those riders are tallied starting this year. Instead of estimating that each pass represented 26 trips per month, Caltrain is now counting 37 trips. [emphasis mine] The agency said it made the change based on feedback from a 2024 rider survey.

So Caltrain has now boosted the ride count of the 59% of all riders who have Go or monthly passes by 42%! This is a fraudulent tactic to obscure the severity of the ridership decline. Without that adjustment comparable April 2025 ridership would be 741,000 - less than half of the 2019 level. And this ridership falloff comes after spending $2,440,000,000 to electrify the system. In my opinion, the adjustment is unreasonable. Work-from-home has increased from 2019 to 2025. An adjustment  is in order, but in the other direction.

Caltrain officials said at the rate it’s going, the annual deficit would grow to at least $60 million a year starting in 2027.

This "deficit" number isn't the total subsidy needed by Caltrain - it's the amount needed in addition to current subsidies of around $200 million per year. In 2024, Caltrain earned $50 million from fares, parking, and advertising sales. The system cost $194 million to operate plus $58 million in depreciation - $252 million in operating expenses - for a loss of $200 million (made up through subsidies). Subsidies are currently 4X ticket revenues and still aren't enough. 

But that's not the whole story. Caltrain doesn't pay real estate tax, personal property tax, or fuel tax - unlike Uber or Lyft or Waymo. And the traffic disruptions caused by the system cost automobile and truck drivers time and fuel.

The system is in place and working. We might as well ride it to take advantage of the sunk costs and low marginal cost. But it's a drain on the local economy to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Urban commuter rail is an 18th century technology that benefits politicians (who sell control station location, movement of people, and patronage jobs). We need a 21st century transportation system, with cars, jitneys, and buses that are flexible and redundant. We need transportation systems that take people from where they are to where they want to go, when they want to travel. That's not Caltrain.