Updated Caltrain Visual Schedule
On July 15, 2017, Caltrain changed their weekend schedule in order to allow construction related to the Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project. Instead of running hourly, trains now run roughly every 90 minutes—a fact I discovered when I showed up at the San Antonio station on the 15th and learned it would be another 20 minutes before my train would arrive. This can make it a little frustrating when trying to get to the city to have avocado toast with your friends.
A new schedule is not all bad though; it means a chance to reuse the script I developed to produce visual schedules for Caltrain. You can find the notebook here (rendered on Github). The schedule data is from Caltrain’s developer site.
Saturday
The top schedule is the new July 15th one, the old schedule is below. Click to enlarge.
The frequency of the trains has decreased to every 90 minutes, and the pair of express trains now spend more time in San Francisco before departing again. There is also an interesting pair of northbound trains that leave very close together. These are required to keep the number of trains heading up the peninsula the same as the number heading down.
Sunday
Again, the top schedule is the new one, the bottom one is the old schedule.
The new Sunday schedule is identical to the new Saturday schedule, except that the first and last northbound trains have been removed, along with the final two southbound trains. Interestingly, the Sunday trains actually run a bit later under the new schedule, with the last train leaving Diridon at just past 2200, instead of at 2100.