Trains set record despite cheap gas

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Nov 17, 2006 | by Erik N. Nelson

While cheaper gas and the open road beckoned in October, Californians flocked to the state's intercity railroads in numbers not seen since the birth of the freeway system.

The Bay Area and Central Valley led the charge, with the Sacramento-Oakland-San Jose Capitol Corridor line increasing 9 percent over October 2005 to a record 120,074 riders. The San Joaqins, which runs from Oakland to Stockton to Bakersfield, increased 5.5 percent to a record 66,750 passengers, according to figures released by the state Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Both lines are operated by the national rail service, Amtrak, but receive large state subsidies.

"In the run-up of gas prices, people discovered that there was this alternative out there" and continued to ride the rails even when gasoline dropped sharply during October, said Bill Bronte, chief of Caltrans' Rail Division.

Southern California also saw an increase in intercity rail service, which Caltrans classifies separately from commuter lines like the Stockton-to-San Jose Altamont Commuter Express and Gilroy- San Jose- San Francisco Caltrain services.

The Pacific Surfliner trains, which run from Santa Barbara to San Diego via Los Angeles, increased 1.3 percent to

215,692 passengers for October.

Much of the Capitol Corridor's increase came after the line boosted its service, especially between Oakland and San Jose where it paid for track improvements that allowed smoother coexistence of fright and passenger traffic, said Eugene Skoropowski, managing director of the multi-county Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority.

"We now have the same frequency of trains as Amtrak runs on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and New York," he said, noting that when the line was created in 1991 it had three roundtrips and carried 270,000 passengers a year.

Today it has 16 roundtrips and carries nearly 1.3 million passengers.

That growth has pushed the Capitol Corridor to Amtrak's third- busiest line, after the Northeast Corridor and Pacific Surfliner, Bronte said. The San Joaquins line is in fifth place, but may soon move up, he added.

"Another big thing people don't realize is that 20 percent of all the riders on the entire Amtrak system are in California," Skoropowski said. "Twenty years ago, we weren't even on the radar screen."

The ridership increase, along with regular fare increases, have also brought increased revenue. The Capitol Corridor pulled in $1.37 million in October, up 15 percent over the previous October, while the San Joaquins saw revenues jump 12 percent to $1.9 million.

Those increases have helped both lines to come within a few percentage points of the state's goal of paying for half of the lines' operating costs through fares.