Palo Alto station

Palo Alto
Caltrain
Commuter rail

The rear of the station.
Location 95 University Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Coordinates 37°26′36″N 122°09′55″W / 37.443442°N 122.165196°W / 37.443442; -122.165196Coordinates: 37°26′36″N 122°09′55″W / 37.443442°N 122.165196°W / 37.443442; -122.165196
Owned by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board
Line(s)

Caltrain

  Local service
  Limited-stop service
  Baby Bullet
Platforms 2 side platforms
Tracks 2
Connections VTA: 22, 35, 522
Dumbarton Express
Stanford Marguerite Shuttle: MC, N, O, P, RP, S, SE, X, Y,
Samtrans ECR, 280, 281, 297, 397
Palo Alto Shuttles: Embarcadero, Crosstown
East Palo Alto Shuttle
Stanford Health Care TECH Shuttle[1]
Construction
Parking Available
Bicycle facilities Racks available
Disabled access Yes
Other information
Fare zone 3
History
Opened October 1940
Traffic
Passengers (2016) 7,424 per weekday[2] Increase 3.2%
Services
Preceding station   Caltrain   Following station
Local service
toward Tamien
Gilroy during peak hours
(game days only)
toward Tamien
Gilroy during peak hours
Limited-stop service
toward Tamien
Gilroy during peak hours
Limited-stop service
Baby Bullet
Peak, Pattern A
Baby Bullet
Peak, Pattern B
toward Tamien
Baby Bullet
Reverse Peak, Pattern A
Baby Bullet
Reverse Peak, Pattern B
Palo Alto Southern Pacific Railroad Depot
Location Palo Alto, California
Coordinates 37°26′34.82″N 122°9′53.56″W / 37.4430056°N 122.1648778°W / 37.4430056; -122.1648778
Built 1931
Architect John H. Christie
Architectural style Streamline Moderne
NRHP Reference # 96000425[3]
Added to NRHP April 18, 1996

Palo Alto is the main train station in Palo Alto, California and the second busiest in the Caltrain system after the 4th and King Street Station in downtown San Francisco.[4] It is a regional transit center where passengers can take buses serving Santa Clara County (VTA), San Mateo County (SamTrans) and Stanford University (Marguerite Shuttle), as well as Caltrain commuters; in addition the Dumbarton Express bus administered by AC Transit takes passengers back and forth over the Dumbarton Bridge to Union City BART station in the East Bay. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.

Location

The station building is across the tracks from Alma Street, with a car entrance to the parking lot at Alma Street and Lytton Avenue. Daily parking is $5. It is on the west side of Downtown Palo Alto and offers easy access to the downtown Palo Alto Area and the Stanford University campus. It is one of two stations in Palo Alto; the other is farther south at Alma and California Avenue. On December 11, 2009, Cafe Venetia opened inside the historic Palo Alto train station.

Architecture

The current 1940 structure replaced an earlier 1897 station as part of the grade separation project that moved the tracks a few feet southwest from the straight line that had extended south from Redwood City.

The station is in the Streamline Moderne style which is not typically found in Palo Alto.[5][note 1] This one-story structure personifies the tendency of the 1930s to style buildings like transportation machinery, in this case the Streamline train. The structure has all the trademarks: porthole windows, horizontal parallel lines to indicate speed and glass blocks.[5] It was designed by J.H. Christia, a full-time architect employed by the Southern Pacific Railroad and the cornerstone was laid on October 20, 1940.

The station is 215 feet (65 m) long by 25 feet (7.6 m) wide and has two buildings connected with an arcade facing the track and a marquee at the rear. The interior originally had a ticket office, waiting room, rest rooms, and, in the second smaller buiding, a baggage room; an open air but roofed passageway connected the main building with the baggage room.[5] Tickets are now purchased from machines on both sides of the track and the waiting room is now a coffee shop. The waiting room also has a mural by John McQuarrie depicting Leland Stanford's dream of a University influenced by a pageant of transportation. It shows facts and events in the development of California.

The station was refurbished in the 1980s.

Platforms and tracks

Northbound ■ Local service toward San Francisco (Menlo Park)
■ Limited-stop service toward San Francisco (Menlo Park or San Carlos)
■ Baby Bullet, Pattern A toward San Francisco (Hillsdale)
■ Baby Bullet, Peak Pattern B toward San Francisco (Redwood City)
■ Baby Bullet, Reverse Peak Pattern B toward San Francisco (Menlo Park)
Southbound ■ Local service toward Gilroy (Stanford or California Ave)
■ Limited-stop service toward Tamien, Gilroy during peak hours (California Ave)
■ Baby Bullet toward San Jose Diridon (Mountain View)
■ Baby Bullet, Peak Pattern B toward Tamien (Sunnyvale)

Bike station

Due to the high number of bicyclists in Palo Alto, a bike station has been built inside the old baggage room. There is now a small fee to leave a bike there, and the area is no longer supervised. Use of these facilities requires sign-up.

Station amenities

Notes

  1. ↑ During the 1920s and 1930s most significant buildings in town were designed by a local architect, Birge Clark, who usually worked in the Mission Revival or Spanish Colonial Revival styles. The other major buildings of that era, such as large commercial blocks and apartment buildings, the main Post Office, the Community Center and other civic buildings were Mission Revival or Spanish Colonial Revival styles.

References

  1. ↑ Tech Line Schedule
  2. ↑ "2015 Annual Passenger Counts" (PDF). Caltrain. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
  3. ↑ National Park Service (2006-03-15). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  4. ↑ "Palo Alto Stations Improvement Project". Retrieved 4 June 2011.
  5. 1 2 3 "Palo Alto Southern Pacific Railroad Depot". California's Historic Silicon Valley. National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-01-18.

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service.

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