Caltrain, BART and other Bay Area transit agencies making progress at coordinating schedules more systematically, and the results are starting to show, with improvements at the Millbrae BART/Caltrain transfer, along the Peninsula corridor, and many other places around the region.
- Both BART and Caltrain will make changes to improve some of the rail transfers at Millbrae Station that will go into effect when Caltrain launches its electric service on September 21. With BART’s schedule change on August 12 and Caltrain’s schedule change on September 21, ~85% of all weekday trains will have a transfer between 5 and 19 minutes at Millbrae Station. On the weekend, ~90% of trains will have a transfer between 5 and 19 minutes.
- VTA is making changes to match upcoming BART and Caltrain schedule changes to ensure timed transfers are maintained at various locations across the South Bay and Peninsula.
- SamTrans is improving several bus routes that serve BART stations. One noteworthy change is to bus route 292, serving both Millbrae and SFO BART stations, with frequency (the time between bus arrivals) to be every 20 minutes from 6am- 6pm to match BART’s frequency.
- In San Francisco, Muni is making changes to improve regional connections, specifically, the 28 19th Avenue bus schedule serving Daly City BART station is changing to ensure East Bay riders can catch the last BART train to Oakland late at night.
- AC Transit and Golden Gate Transit have improved schedules to be more coordinated at El Cerrito del Norte Station and along Cutting Boulevard west of the BART station. This alignment enhances reliability for riders traveling between Marin and West Contra Costa counties via the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
- The Napa Valley Transportation Authority is making changes to Route 29 from Redwood Park and Ride to the El Cerrito del Norte BART station to enhance the bus-to-train transfer timing. 71% of the trips will now have a 5- to 10-minute transfer time at El Cerrito del Norte, as opposed to 23% with the current schedule. The change will positively impact as many as 16,465 riders annually.
- In the North Bay, a series of coordinated changes between SMART, Golden Gate Transit, and Marin Transit will improve service and connections along the congested Highway 101 corridor.
The various agencies are aligning their crew signup schedules to enable coordinated schedule changes twice a year in August and January.
According to BART, the current set of schedule changes was put in motion this past March when agencies convened to share planned changes and look for opportunities to improve transfers. BART shared that there has been a 250% increase in the number of transit agencies changing their schedule concurrently twice each year, six of seven major transit providers are syncing their schedule changes at least once a year, and agencies are already working on another iteration of a coordinated schedule change to go into effect in January 2025.
