Tracks 5 Bicycle facilities Lockers available Platforms in use 1 | Parking Available Owner Caltrain | |
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Location 590 Dubuque Avenue
South San Francisco, CA 94080 Owned by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board Line(s) Caltrain
Local service
Limited-stop service Address South San Francisco, CA 94080, United States Similar Bayshore station, Belmont station, 22nd Street station, San Martin station, Lawrence station | ||
South San Francisco is a Caltrain station in South San Francisco, California, served by local and limited-stop trains. The station is on the east side of Highway 101 beneath East Grand Avenue; downtown South San Francisco is across the freeway.
Contents
Station amenities
Location
The station was built before the Bayshore Freeway and retains many of the aspects common to older, unmodernized stations along the Peninsula Commute; the southbound platform is not ADA-compliant, and riders for northbound trains must wait for the northbound train to come to a complete stop before crossing the (usually) southbound track to a narrow boarding platform between the tracks, thus requiring the so-called "hold-out" rule (GCOR 6.30)—if a train is stopped for passengers, an approaching train in the opposite direction on the other track must wait outside the station. In 2012, a southbound Baby Bullet express train passing through the station narrowly avoided striking passengers for a northbound train stopped at South San Francisco. The Baby Bullet express did not have a scheduled stop at the station and had ignored the hold-out rule.
South San Francisco is the only hold-out rule station with regular service on weekdays; two (Atherton and Broadway) are served only on weekends; one (College Park) has only limited service, with two round-trip stops per weekday serving the nearby Bellarmine Prep; and one (Stanford) is only served on Stanford's home football game days; and as such, the South San Francisco station is a bottleneck.
Automobiles can reach the station from Dubuque Avenue, and a pedestrian staircase climbs to Grand Avenue, above the station. Several SamTrans routes run near the station on Airport Boulevard, but hills and tight turns make it impossible for large buses to access the station from Dubuque. The south end of the parking lot features a large mural on the retaining wall for Grand Avenue entitled "Prometheus Brings Fire to Man" by artist Nicolai Larsen, painted in 1996.
Modernization
In 1998, the City of South San Francisco prepared a concept plan to relocate the station southward so that trains would stop south of the East Grand Avenue overpass in order to improve bus and pedestrian access to the station. This would allow buses currently stopping on Airport Boulevard to directly service the station and open up access from the east for employer-provided shuttles.
In 2012 Caltrain and the City of South San Francisco began work on a Downtown Station Area Plan to redevelop the area around the station and make it easier to reach downtown from the station. The project would update the station by renovating the southbound platform and extending it south, and building a new northbound platform to eliminate the "hold out" rule and to be ADA-compliant. The project would include a bus and shuttle drop-off area on Airport Blvd. and an ADA-compliant pedestrian underpass to the new platform that would connect with Grand Avenue (on the east) and Airport Boulevard (on the west).
The plan was approved in February 2015 and will be funded by $49.1 million in San Mateo County Measure A funds, a half-cent sales tax approved by county voters in 2012.
The current plan calls for a new 700-foot (210 m) long center boarding platform (between northbound and southbound tracks) with a pedestrian underpass connecting the platform to Grand Avenue and Poletti Drive. Although construction was scheduled to begin in 2016, the design was not finalized until December 2016. The new station is still projected to open in 2019.