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Record rail ridership isn’t limited to the East Coast. During the fiscal year ended June 30, Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board’s Caltrain commuter rail logged 10.5 million trips, a 7 percent increase compared with fiscal-year 2000. Average weekday ridership jumped 9.2 percent to 32,812. The total and average weekday numbers are the highest recorded in the system’s 138-year history.



Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board in 1991 purchased the San Francisco-to-San Jose, Calif., corridor from Southern Pacific Railroad, assuming Caltrain’s operations in mid-1992. Since then, overall ridership has grown 50.8 percent; average weekday ridership, 57.6 percent.



During the past decade, the agency increased train frequency, built new stations, installed ticket machines and added more shuttles. Currently, 80 trains run daily between the two cities, with commute-hour service to Gilroy, Calif. Weekend service runs from San Francisco to San Jose.