South San Francisco Station

undefined South San Francisco is a Caltrain station in South San Francisco, California, served by local and limited-stop trains. The station is on the east side of Highway 101 beneath East Grand Avenue; downtown South San Francisco is across the freeway. It is currently undergoing a substantial modernization and expansion project, scheduled to be completed in November 2021.

History
A depot for South San Francisco was built in 1909 shortly after the completion of the Bayshore Cutoff, with an entrance on Grand Avenue. Prior to that, a smaller station existed at least as early as 1898. The 1909 building was demolished in the late 1950s and replaced with a smaller building with an entrance off Dubuque.

Current status
The station was built before the Bayshore Freeway and retains many of the aspects common to older, unmodernized stations along the Peninsula Commute; the platforms are not ADA-compliant, and riders for northbound trains must wait for the northbound train to come to a complete stop before crossing the southbound track to a narrow boarding platform between the tracks, thus requiring the so-called "hold-out" rule (GCOR 6.30)&mdash;if a train is stopped for passengers, an approaching train in the opposite direction on the other track must wait outside the station. In 2012, a southbound Baby Bullet express train passing through the station narrowly avoided striking passengers for a northbound train stopped at South San Francisco. The Baby Bullet express did not have a scheduled stop at the station and had ignored the hold-out rule.

South San Francisco is the only hold-out rule station with regular service on weekdays - Atherton, Broadway and College Park have limited or no weekday service - making it a bottleneck for rail traffic.

Automobiles can reach the station by turning from Grand Avenue north on Dubuque, just east of U.S. 101, and a pedestrian staircase climbs to Grand, above the station. Several SamTrans routes run near the station on Airport Boulevard, but steep ramps and tight turns make it impossible for large buses to access the station from Dubuque. The south end of the parking lot features a large mural on the retaining wall for Grand Avenue entitled "Prometheus Brings Fire to Man" by artist Nicolai Larsen, painted in 1996.

Modernization
In 1998, the City of South San Francisco (SSF) prepared a concept plan to relocate the station southward so that trains would stop south of the East Grand Avenue overpass in order to improve bus and pedestrian access to the station. This would allow buses currently stopping on Airport Boulevard (west of Bayshore Freeway and the station) to directly service the station and open up access from the east for employer-provided shuttles.

In 2012 Caltrain and SSF began work on a Downtown Station Area Plan to redevelop the area around the station and make it easier to reach downtown from the station. The project will update the station by renovating the southbound platform and extending it south, and building a new northbound platform to eliminate the "hold out" rule and to be ADA-compliant. The project will include a bus and shuttle drop-off area on Poletti Way and an ADA-compliant pedestrian underpass to the new platform that would connect with East Grand Avenue/Poletti Way (on the east) and Grand Avenue/Airport Boulevard (on the west). The west entrance will also feature a new pedestrian plaza at the southeast corner of Airport Boulevard and Grant Avenue, on right-of-way currently used as a Caltrans storage yard. A new pedestrian gate crossing at the northern end of the new platform will provide access to the existing parking lot.

The plan was approved in February 2015 and will be funded by $49.1 million in funds provided by San Mateo County Measure A, a half-cent sales tax approved by county voters in 2012. Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board contributed $4 million and SSF contributed $9.2 million, including $3.3M to expand station property and remediate soil.

The current plan calls for a new 700 foot-long island platform (between northbound and southbound tracks) relocated south of the existing side platform with a pedestrian underpass connecting the platform to Grand Avenue and Poletti Drive (on the east) and Grand and Airport (on the west). Although construction was scheduled to begin in 2016, the design was not finalized until December 2016, and groundbreaking for the modernization project was held on November 6, 2017 in a ceremony attended by State Senator Jerry Hill and SSF Mayor Pradeep Gupta. The new station was projected to open in 2019, but was delayed to August 2020 after planned underground utility relocation work was determined to be a prerequisite for construction of the new pedestrian underpass. it was further delayed to summer 2021 and then November 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.