Santa Clara (Caltrain/ACE station)

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Santa Clara station is one of two major railway stations in Santa Clara, California (the other being Great America station further to the north). It is served by the Caltrain from San Francisco, and was served by the Altamont Commuter Express from Stockton although this service has been suspended.

Santa Clara station features a side platform serving the southbound Caltrain track and a narrow island platform serving the northbound Caltrain track. The narrow island platform is connected to the side platform by non-signaled at-grade pedestrian crossings. Additional tracks are located east of the Caltrain tracks used by Amtrak, Altamont Commuter Express, and Union Pacific freight trains. Because of the narrow island platform and at-grade crossings, a "hold out" rule has been instituted at this station, where only one train can enter the station at a time. The "hold out" rule does not apply to trains that operate on tracks east of the northbound Caltrain track.

The Santa Clara passenger depot, built by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad Company in late 1863, was the oldest continuously operating railroad depot in the State of California until the ticket office was closed in May 1997. It was placed in the National Register of Historical Places in 1985. It is the current home of the South Bay Historical Railroad Society, which renovated the building in 1992. It is now a museum that houses a library, many artifacts, and model railroad layouts.

1 Service
2 Adjacent stations
3 Connecting Bus Lines
4 External links

[edit] Service

The station is an intermodal transportation center, with Caltrain and Altamont Commuter Express train service and bus service operated by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). Bus service is extensive and includes limited-stop and, since July 2005, the VTA's brand of bus rapid transit.

It is also served by a free shuttle from San Jose International Airport, the SJC Airport Flyer (Route 10), jointly operated by the VTA and the airport. A project is being considered to replace this bus service with a people mover similar to AirTrain JFK, which provides similar access to rapid transit stations; the status of the project is unknown due to the nature of funding.

The station was considered for California High-Speed Rail, but was rejected on the grounds that it was too close to the nearby, and much larger, Diridon Station in San Jose, and that the airport traffic that it would receive would not be enough to justify maintaining a separate station. Rather, it was decided that two Peninsula stations would be sufficient, one in Palo Alto or Redwood City, and the other serving the larger San Francisco International Airport (probably using the existing Millbrae Station with BART connection to the ariport).

This station is also being considered as a terminal station for the BART to Milpitas, San Jose, and Santa Clara extension project. If completed, the project will extend the BART system south from its current terminus in Fremont, California. Reasons for selecting Santa Clara as the proposed terminus for the BART extension are the access to the San Jose International Airport as well as the proposed BART maintenance facility located in the vicinity of the station. With this line's completion and the completion of the Oakland Airport Connector, BART would have connections to all three major Bay Area airports (the others being San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport).

[edit] Adjacent stations

Preceding station	Transit Line			Following station
Lawrence		Caltrain (San Franisco - San Jose/Gilroy)		San Jose Diridon
Great America Station		Altamont Commuter Express (Stockton-San Jose)		San Jose Diridon