According to new data published by the Diridon station planning team, one of the station design options being considered would have a Caltrain-BART rail connection time that’s about double the transfer time at Millbrae today. The San Fernando layout, which would leave the station building and the heavy rail platforms where they are today, would have transfer times from 7 to 9 minutes. This option also would provide long transfer times between BART and local bus and light rail service.

With forecasts showing nearly double the transit transfers in 2040 as there are riders today, a station design with poor transit connections could hamper the transit ridership potential of the station, and impede the goals of San Jose and the region to reduce driving and climate emissions.



Using the very rough method of multiplying the transfer time by the expected number of future transfers between the transit services, we estimate that the station option with the best transfers has about 40% lower overall transfer time than the option worst-performing option.



The “mix-and-match” design options may allow tweaking the station options for better transfers – especially for buses where the location is most flexible.



As a next step, the Diridon Station team will be updating the ridership forecasts. We don’t know if the modeling tools are able to predict the difference in ridership caused by 40% better transfer times, but transit ridership is affected by the competitiveness of travel time and longer transfers mean slower trips.



The Diridon Station team’s outreach showed that community members’ top priority is good transit connections, especially between BART and heavy rail (mostly Caltrain, as well as ACE and Capitol Corridor).



What do you think? Share your thoughts with the Diridon team

The full presentation from the Diridon Station team can be found here.

You can share your thoughts by using this form here https://www.diridonsj.org/contact, or sending questions and comments directly to Lori Severino with the City of San Jose lori.severino@sanjoseca.gov. Feel free to copy us at friends@friendsofcaltrain.com We’ll keep you posted on more opportunities for input as the station design options come to boards council meetings this fall.