South San Francisco (Caltrain station)

South San Francisco
Commuter rail
South San Francisco station is underneath Grand Avenue. Bayshore Freeway crosses south of the station.
Location	590 Dubuque Avenue South San Francisco, CA 94080
Coordinates	37°39′21″N 122°24′18″W / 37.65583°N 122.40500°W / 37.65583; -122.40500Coordinates: 37°39′21″N 122°24′18″W / 37.65583°N 122.40500°W / 37.65583; -122.40500
Owned by	Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board
Line(s)	Caltrain   Local service   Limited-stop service
Platforms	1 side platform, 1 island platform
Tracks	5
Connections	Commute.org: Oyster Point, Utah Grand
Construction
Parking	Available
Bicycle facilities	Lockers available
Other information
Fare zone	1
Traffic
Passengers (2014 average weekday)	432  19.8%
Services
Preceding station   Caltrain   Following station Bayshore toward San Francisco Local service San Bruno toward Tamien Gilroy during peak hours Limited-stop service San Bruno toward Tamien Gilroy during peak hours
Location

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.

The station was built before the Bayshore Freeway and retains many of the aspects common to older, unmodernized stations along the Peninsula Commute; the southbound platform is 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)—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: two (Atherton and Broadway) are served only on weekends; one (College Park) has only limited service, with two round-trip stops per weekday serving the nearby Bellarmine Prep; and one (Stanford) is only served on Stanford's home football game days. As such, the South San Francisco station is a bottleneck.

Automobiles can reach the station from Dubuque Avenue, and a pedestrian staircase climbs to Grand Avenue, above the station. Several SamTrans routes run near the station on Airport Boulevard, but hills 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.