San Mateo County Transportation Guide - Public Transportation

SamTrans

San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans) operates a public bus service throughout San Mateo and the San Francisco Bay Area with a fleet of nearly 350 busses. SamTrans currently serves cities all over the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, including Antherton, Belmont, Burlingame, Colma, Daly City, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Pacifica, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Mateo and South San Francisco.

SamTrans also makes it easy to connect to other Bay Area mass transit options like BART, Caltrain and the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). During special events like San Francisco 49ers home football games and Bay to Breakers—an annual race between downtown San Francisco and Ocean Beach—SamTrans operates additional busses to make travel even more convenient.

Caltrain

Millions of eco-conscious Bay Area commuters use Caltrain each year to get to work, visit family or travel to sporting events. Caltrain currently operates between the San Francisco 4th & King station, located just a block from AT&T Park home of the San Francisco Giants, and Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world. There are a total of 30 regular stops and one event-only stop at Stanford Stadium during Cardinal football games.

Caltrain connects to both the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) through BART at the Millbrae Intermodal Station and to San Jose Mineta International Airport (SJC) at the Santa Clara Station using the VTA shuttle bus.

Caltrain stops in many notable locations frequented by business and leisure commuters throughout the Bay Area. The Palo Alto Station, just outside University Avenue, provides convenient access to Stanford University and many vibrant nightlife and dining options of downtown Palo Alto. The Hillsdale Station is directly across the street from the Bay Meadows Racecourse, home of exciting horse racing as well as the ever-popular $1 beer and hotdog Fridays.

The Baby Bullet service, added in 2004, helped to greatly reduce travel time between five heavily trafficked stations. Baby Bullet trains travel between the San Jose Diridon Station and San Francisco 4th & King Station, making only three stops in between. This reduced the travel time between San Jose to San Francisco by about 30 minutes.

BART

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a commuter light-rail system of automated trains that operates throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. BART currently has five different lines:

Richmond - Millbrae (red)
Fremont - Daly City (green)
Richmond - Fremont (orange)
Pittsburg/Bay Point - SFO (yellow)
Dublin/Pleasanton - Millbrae (blue)

Several of the San Francisco stops connect to MUNI Metro lines, San Francisco's own mass transit system of light rail trains. Segments of the MUNI Metro are the famous streetcars that San Francisco is known for.

BART also connects to the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Caltrain via Millbrae as well as Amtrak via Coliseum/Oakland Airport and Richmond. An extension to San Jose is being planned by Santa Clara's VTA in collaboration with BART. This would add a station at Berryessa Road and station in downtown San Jose under Santa Clara Street between 3rd and Market. Currently, more than 350,000 commuters ride BART on an average workday. Many of these riders choose to use BART for green friendly reasons, or simply to avoid the heavy traffic of the San Francisco Bay Area.

VTA

Just to the south of San Mateo County, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) operates a number of bus and light rail lines throughout the Santa Clara Valley. VTA has more than 80 different bus routes that connect to light rail lines, Caltrain stations and BART in Fremont. Line 22 is VTA's most-used route and takes commuters between the Eastridge Shopping Center in East San Jose all the way to the Palo Alto and Menlo Park Caltrain stations.

VTA light rail currently runs three lines in the South Bay:

Mountain View - Winchester Line (green)
Alum Rock - Santa Teresa Line (blue)
Almaden Shuttle (orange)

The Mountain View - Winchester Line provides access to San Jose International Airport (SJC) via VTA Rt. #10 Bus and to Caltrain, Amtrak and ACE via the San Jose Diridon stop. The Alum Rock - Santa Teresa Line goes through San Jose and Japantown, connecting to Caltrain at the Tamien stop. The Almaden Shuttle only has three stops and is not heavily used, but provides a connection to the Alum Rock - Santa Teresa Line.