Bayshore station is a

Caltrain Caltrain (reporting mark JPBX) is a California commuter rail line serving the San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley). The southern terminus is in San Jose at Tamien station with weekday rush hour service running as fa ...

commuter rail station in the

Visitacion Valley Visitacion Valley (; Spanish: ''Valle de la Visitación''), colloquially referred to as Viz Valley, is a neighborhood located in the southeastern quadrant of San Francisco, California. Visitacion Valley is roughly defined by McLaren Park and Gle ...

neighborhood of

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. The station is on the border of San Francisco and the neighboring city of

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

. The parking lot and the northern section of the station are in San Francisco, while the remainder is in Brisbane. The station address is in San Francisco proper. Bayshore has four tracks: two side tracks for trains stopping at the station, and two in the middle for trains that do not stop at the station. A centerline fence prevents passengers from crossing the four tracks.

History

Bayshore was established by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1907 along the new Bayshore Cutoff, a more direct route into San Francisco. The railroad planned to build an extensive terminal facility in Visitacion Valley that would serve as the primary maintenance and marshaling facility for the

San Francisco Peninsula The San Francisco Peninsula is a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. On its northern tip is the City and County of San Francisco. Its southern base is Mountain View, south of Palo Alt ...

. Financial problems delayed completion of the project, and the Bayshore rail yard and shops did not open until 1918. The facility operated around the clock and employed over 1,000 workers. The Bayshore shops maintained all the locomotives on the Southern Pacific's Coast Division which stretched south to Santa Barbara. By 1952, this was 133 steam engines, but by 1954, diesel-electric locomotives had become common enough that the Bayshore steam shops were closed. The roundhouse continued to service diesel locomotives, but the decline of industry and shipping in San Francisco and along the peninsula led to the closure of the yards in the early 1980s. A $6.87 million reconstruction of the footbridge began in July 2022. The station is planned to be modified to accommodate through-running

California High-Speed Rail California High-Speed Rail (also known as CAHSR or CHSR) is a publicly funded high-speed rail system currently under construction in California in the United States. Planning for the project began in 1996, when the California Legislature and Gover ...

service.

Unbuilt connection to Muni

The

San Francisco Municipal Railway The San Francisco Municipal Railway (SF Muni or Muni), is the public transit system for the City and County of San Francisco. It operates a system of bus routes (including trolleybuses), the Muni Metro light rail system, three historic cabl ...

(Muni) intended to establish another light rail connection to the Bayshore station at

in southern San Francisco with its new

Third Street Light Rail Project The Third Street Light Rail Project was the construction project that expanded the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California, linking downtown San Francisco to the historically underserved southeastern neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Poin ...

. However, following the

Caltrain Express The Caltrain Express (CTX) project was implemented from 2002 to 2004 and led to the establishment of the Baby Bullet express service, which shortened the transit time between San Francisco and San Jose, and certain stations in between. New loco ...

, completed in 2004, the Bayshore station was rebuilt and moved south. , the existing Bayshore station straddles the border between the counties of San Mateo and San Francisco; the platform itself is in

while the main parking lot is in San Francisco. The

T Third Street The T Third Street is a Muni Metro light rail line in San Francisco, California. It runs along the east side of San Francisco — primarily in the median of Third Street — from to the Market Street subway. It is interlined with th ...

extension opened in early 2007 without a connection to Caltrain. The closest Muni station, Arleta Station, is and approximately seven minutes (by foot) north from the Bayshore Caltrain station along Tunnel Avenue. Although

Sunnydale Station Sunnydale station (also signed as Visitacion Valley) is a light rail station on the Muni Metro T Third Street line, located in the median of Bayshore Boulevard in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The station opened ...

is geographically closer to the Bayshore station, there is no public pathway running east–west directly connecting those two stations. The potential connection has also been plagued by cost and design issues. Two proposed development projects adjacent to the station, the Visitacion Valley Transit Oriented Development Project (on the former site of the

Schlage Schlage (pronounced ) is an American lock manufacturer founded in 1920 by Walter Schlage. Schlage was headquartered in San Francisco from its inception until it relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1997. Schlage also produces high-securi ...

factory) and the

Brisbane Baylands development The Brisbane Baylands is a parcel of land in Brisbane, just south of the San Francisco border. There have been several proposals to develop the site, which was previously used as a railyard and a municipal landfill; historical uses have led to con ...

(on the former Bayshore Railyard and San Francisco Municipal Landfill), could hasten the planning and conversion of Bayshore Station into an Intermodal Transit Station with a connection to Muni. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority adopted the ''Bayshore Intermodal Station Access Study'' in 2012. This study examined several alternatives, and proposed to move the platform south by to lie completely within San Mateo County. A loop extension of T Third would be built largely on San Mateo County land connecting the

to a new intermodal platform west of the Peninsula Corridor rail line on land planned for redevelopment as part of the Brisbane Baylands. According to the ''Bi-County Transportation Study'' (2013), the estimated cost of extending T Third is $58 million, with an additional $31 million required to reconfigure Bayshore station. In addition, Geneva Avenue would be extended east from Bayshore Boulevard (where it presently dead-ends) over the rail line to Harney and would connect a proposed Muni bus rapid transit (BRT) line to Bayshore Station. In the ''Geneva-Harney BRT Feasibility Study'' final report, published in July 2015, all of the near-term alternatives for BRT alignment would use existing streets, connecting the new Geneva-Harney line with T Third at Arleta; the long-term alternatives studied would extend Geneva (with a grade separation and connection to Bayshore) by 2040, making a new intermodal station for bus, light rail, and heavy/commuter rail. According to the ''Bi-County Transportation Study'' (2013), the estimated cost of extending Geneva is $90 million, and an additional $210 million would be required to set up the Geneva-Harney BRT line.

References

External links

Caltrain Bayshore station page
{{Caltrain Caltrain stations in San Francisco Railway stations in the United States opened in 1907 1907 establishments in California Caltrain stations in San Mateo County, California Former Southern Pacific Railroad stations in California