Thursday, December 14, 2006

Amtrak's Quiet Success Story in California



While it's no Supertrain, things certainly have improved for passenger rail over the last 15 years in Northern California. The San Francisco Chronicle lays some amazing numbers on the table to consider.

Today, the rail service runs 16 round-trip trains between Oakland and Sacramento, including seven of those that go as far as San Jose and one that goes to and from Auburn. A total of 1.3 million passengers rode the Capitols in the past 12 months compared with 273,000 in the first year of operations.

And the train has become the third-most popular line in Amtrak's national passenger rail network, behind the New York-Washington Northeast corridor trains and the Pacific Surfliner between San Luis Obispo and San Diego.


SF Gate

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Took the San Joaquin route to Yosemite this Fall. It was great. You catch a bus from Merced and it takes you into the valley.

Now you can do Yosemite without a car!

Easy to rent bikes in the Valley too. No need to haul your own.