Commuting to the Bay Area from Gilroy is about to get more expensive. Caltrain’s fares will increase Feb. 28, after the railway’s board of directors approved the hike earlier this month. Parking fees will also be going up.
For riders using ticket vending machines, the adult base fare will increase by 50 cents for one-way tickets and by $1 for day passes. All ticket prices will increase with the hike, but riders with monthly pass Clipper cards will see the largest rise—an additional $11.80 each month.
Tickets will jump to $11 for a one-day roundtrip from Gilroy to San Jose and $27.50 from Gilroy to San Francisco. A monthly pass will be $137.80 to San Jose and $349.80 to San Francisco.
“We’ve had about five straight years of monthly ridership increases, which has put a capacity strain on our system,” Caltrain public affairs specialist Will Reisman said. “To meet the maintenance and operation upkeep of our service, we need to review and update our fare prices to increase revenue and to address those costs.”
For the 2015 fiscal year, Caltrain had an average weekday ridership of more than 58,000—or nearly 5,000 more riders than the previous year. During that period, according to Caltrain, more than 18 million people were transported on the railway system. Ridership has increased as more people commute to work in the Bay Area.
Despite increased ridership, Caltrain continues to operate without a dedicated source of funding, such as tax revenue. The last fare hike, in October 2014, affected only riders using ticket vending machines and increased one-way tickets by 25 cents and day passes by 50 cents. Caltrain said this was done to encourage riders to use Clipper cards, which are discounted electronic cards used at more than a dozen Bay Area transit agencies, including BART and VTA.
“It’s always a tough decision to raise fares and obviously there are going to be some passengers who aren’t thrilled with that,” Reisman said. “These are decisions we review very strenuously before deciding to propose any sort of fare increase.”
The board of directors also approved an increase in daily and monthly parking fees, by 50 cents and $5 dollars respectively, beginning July 1, 2016. Starting in February, it will cost $5.50 a day or $55 a month to park.
The fare hike and new parking fees are expected to generate $7.9 million for Caltrain, whose expenditures for the fiscal year of 2014 totaled over $116 million.
“I think it’s reasonable,” rider Eddie Solis Jr. said. “Of course with the economy rising and gas, it is going to increase.”
Other riders, however, disagreed.
“It just keeps going up all the time and the level of service never changes,” rider Jake Boyd said. “If anything, it deteriorates. The trains are overcrowded and they are not efficiently run—they are constantly late.”
