Sacramento-Bay Area trains are having an exciting comeback. But we need more | Opinion
America is back riding the rails at levels before the COVID pandemic, but the Capitol Corridor trains serving the Sacramento-San Jose mega-region haven’t caught up.
Ridership “is about 60 percent of pre-COVID,” said Robert Padgette, general director of the Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority, operator of the Sacramento-to-San Jose rail service. Passenger revenues, meanwhile, are about 70% of pre-pandemic levels.
Behind the numbers, however, something exciting is happening. A service once dominated by diehard daily commuters is growing more popular with occasional riders traveling by rail for pleasure and business.
This means that train travel is becoming more common than before for more Sacramento-region residents. It’s become an item on our regional menu of travel options. With an expanded downtown steadily emerging in the Sacramento Railyards, the capital is destined to play a bigger role in the corridor’s revival.
Nationwide, Amtrak is enjoying a record summer and is on track for its best ridership year ever. The same holds for the Pacific Northwest, Amtrak’s service between Portland and Vancouver.
Meanwhile, last May, the Capitol Corridor carried nearly 95,000 passengers, according to Padgette’s JPA. That was 14% more riders than in May of 2023. But it was 42% below the pre-COVID levels of 2019.
The ridership profile, however, has completely flipped. It is mirroring a post-COVID economy that is embracing a hybrid work pattern with days split between home and the office for many office jobs. And the passenger rail service is evolving right along with it.
“Sixty percent of our riders get either on or off in Sacramento,” Padgette said, making Sacramento most important hub of the Capital Corridor. “And Davis is also one of our busiest stations now, and that share is even stronger as a share of our total ridership as it was pre-COVID.”
Some logistical constraints have been holding back the recovery of ridership. There were once 15 round-trip trains between Sacramento and Oakland, for example. Now there are 12. Seven trains made it as far south as San Jose. Now there are only six. Despite that, longer train trips are comprising a larger percentage of ridership than before the pandemic, Padgette said.
The reduction in available equipment is a short-term result of how California has been deploying its regional passenger rail fleet. The state funds three services - the Capitol Corridor, the San Joaquin service between the Bay Area and Bakersfield and the Surfliner service between San Luis Obispo and San Diego.
As the San Joaquin service is expected to get new equipment, more can be deployed for the Capitol Corridor. Padgette is expecting to resume a pre-COVID schedule of trains sometime next year.
And the schedule will be different. Once heavily stacked to accommodate traditional office work hours, Padgette is looking to spread trains more evenly throughout the day. “You might not be commuting, but maybe you’re doing a lobby trip to Sacramento, or doing a meeting with a housing agency up in Sacramento,” Padgette said. He wants trains to accommodate the mid-day work meeting. “We’re going to see a lot more of those work-related trips continue.”
The service also has two emerging drivers for greater success and ridership. One is the worsening misery that is known as Interstate 80, despite the Newsom administration’s futile attempts to solve the region’s mobility problems with more freeway lanes. The other is the coming renaissance of Sacramento’s long-dormant railyards just north of the station, an area that is the size of the existing downtown.
“Sacramento is going to do some really awesome things to make transit and rail work better, and we’re excited to be a part of that,” Padgette said.
Newsom and state lawmakers found enough money in this fiscal year’s bleak budget to help resume full Capitol Corridor service. That made all the sense in the world. Frankly, all these state rail services are woefully underfunded compared to the fat freeway improvement budget of Caltrans, as it now spends hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars locally on freeways rather than transit.
This growing mega-region desperately needs a rail service alternative to the automobile that starts early and runs late. Baseball fans cannot attend a major league baseball game next year in West Sacramento, for example, with a service that can only get them to the game. The same holds for a local football fan heading to Santa Clara to watch professional football.
Padgette hopes ridership will fully rebound in perhaps two years. The sooner, the better. As an asset to the Sacramento economy, the Capitol Corridor train service is our not-so-secret weapon that gives the capital a home-field advantage. Sacramento was the birthplace of rail in the West. It should lead in rail’s post-COVID renaissance.
This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 7:00 AM.