Published Friday, September 23, 2005, in the San Francisco Examiner

BART increases Peninsula service

By Christine Lias

More and longer BART trains started running Thursday on the Peninsula
to address crowding following the return to school by many area
students.

Ridership for the five Peninsula stations, including Colma, increased
by about 2,000 for a total of about 30,000 in August, officials said.
Since school began, many peak-hour trains have been packed, officials
said.

The service increase signals an about-face and comes less than two
weeks after cuts requested by SamTrans went into effect Sept. 12. The
cuts were aimed at helping to reduce SamTrans' estimate $20 million
deficit and were supported by lower summer ridership numbers, said
Christine Dunn, SamTrans spokeswoman.

Under a 1990 agreement, SamTrans pays BART to operate the extension
from Colma to Millbrae.

Richmond train routes were extended an additional stop to Colma on
Thursday. The number of trains was increased from one to two every 15
minutes.

BART doubled the length of two trains, from four cars to eight cars,
leaving Millbrae, which shares its station with Caltrain, between 6:31
a.m. and 6:46 a.m. Dunn said ridership overall is up 5.3 percent this
year but is still short of projections at the time the five-station
BART extension south from Daly City opened in June 2003.

"That's encouraging if they're having to restore a little bit of
service," BayRail Alliance executive director Margaret Okuzumi said.
<http://www.bayrailalliance.org> "The fact remains that the extension
is performing more poorly than what was projected."

At the time of the extension's opening two years ago, BART expected an
average weekday ridership of 40,000 a day, Dunn said. Last month,
there were 30,247 riders, according to BART spokesman Linton Johnson.
"In November 1999, they thought service would open in 2002 and be
54,000 for 2003," Dunn said.

San Mateo resident and retiree Allan Buscaglia said he doesn't see a
problem with crowded trains or waiting for service. He's just happy
to have another transit alternative into San Francisco. "I love it. I
don't like to drive into The City because of the parking," Buscaglia
said while waiting at the Millbrae station.


E-mail: clias@...