a day ago
Push underway to restore weekday service to Burlingame Caltrain station amid growth
Take a walk down Broadway in Burlingame, and it's clear that Ross Bruce knows the lay of the land better than most.
"A lot of our businesses have been here for a lot of years," he said. "We're standing in front of the Royal Donut shop where I was a busboy there in 1961."
He's a longtime real estate broker at AVR Realty, located on Broadway.
And for the past 20 years, he says new residents, tenants, and business owners all find themselves surprised when they find out one fact about the area.
"The train station is not open during the weekdays, when a train station is traditionally open," he said.
Bruce would like to see that change, saying it's long overdue and much needed.
"Before Caltrain started to cut back on our schedule, we had about 2,000 people a week in terms of ridership," he said. "With 800-1,000 new units of rentals, within walking distance of here, that figure would probably go up dramatically."
There's a petition circulating Burlingame that is gaining speed, urging the city and Caltrain to bring back weekday service to the area, one that is seeing both commercial and residential development.
Advocates like Bruce say reintroducing this vital transportation hub will benefit both the local economy and environment.
"There have been a lot of promises over the years that if just one more thing was fixed, they'd give us our service back, so we're encouraging them to follow through with that," Bruce said.
Caltrain closed the station to weekday service back in 2005 when the railway launched its express service. The reason? A safety requirement known as the holdout rule, which due to the layout of the Broadway Station in Burlingame, leads to traffic and safety challenges, according to Caltrain spokesperson Dan Lieberman.
"So, the decision at the time was to close the Broadway Station for weekday train travel and hold off until the grade separation could be completed so we could effectively move through the station, the holdout rule would be eliminated, and those traffic impacts and safety concerns would be resolved," he said. "When we have southbound trains, that means they're stopping the Broadway intersection for minutes at a time. Now that we've got four trains per hour per direction, you can see how complicated that would get."
But 20 years later, the grade separation project has yet to break ground.
"There was a pretty significant jump in the funding estimate for the project last fall," said Burlingame Mayor Peter Stevenson. "We've been working with different agencies – Caltrain, the transit authority at the county level, and obviously the state level folks – on reassembling our plan for securing the funding to make that project a reality."
Stevenson said the grade separation project remains the top priority, which likely needs to come before weekday service can resume.
"I love the discourse and the dialogue that the community engagement brings, and I hope that continues. But right now, our plan is really, we've got to stay focused on the grade separation," he said. "Opening a station is a difficult thing if it's at grade because of the congestion and the safety issues."
CBS News Bay Area asked Lieberman if there is a world where weekday service could resume before the grade separation project is complete.
"It's hard to see that. Ultimately, I don't want to say never say never, but the big concern is that if we're providing that service, we want to be doing so safely, we want to be doing so without having an undue traffic impact on the neighborhood. Once we're convinced that we can do that the right way, I think we'll be happy to move forward."
From Bruce's perspective, the timetables continue to shift – so he believes the order of operations needs to change.
"The grade separation, which has been on infinity hold, and then we've got 20 years' worth of promises from Caltrain offering to restore our service. So, now, there's no real reason not to restore the service," he said. "We've got pretty much everything we need already here. It would require very little money to change it over to full service."
