Gilroy Transit Center
bonus points for having a Super Taqueria within walking distance
I had half an hour between my 568 arriving and my 59 departing (read those reviews too!), so what better to do than to criticize every aspect of the Gilroy Transit Center?
The depot was located on the Southern Pacific Coast Line, with trains to San Francisco and Los Angeles in its heyday. The final non-Caltrain service ran in 1969 as the Del Monte, a train to Monterey. In 1992, service to San Francisco returned to the station through peak hour Caltrain service. Gilroy is currently the southern terminus of Caltrain’s South County Connector, a series of timed transfers at Diridon to the few diesels that Caltrain still shuttles between Diridon and Gilroy after electrification in 2024.
the infrastructure
Architecturally, this station is amazing. The Italianate building was built in 1918, replacing an older classic wooden SP depot, which looked like the one still standing in Santa Clara.
The platform is pretty bog-standard for a smaller Caltrain stop. Shelters, ticket machines, benches, all that.
There are six bus bays here, not all of them actually used. All the bus shelters are done up in a nice style indicative of the actual depot itself, which is very nice! A lot nicer than the regular dark blue and often-crumbling VTA shelters you find elsewhere.
Gilroy is at the very end of the line, which means it just has to have a massive parking lot. 471 spaces! At least there’s a bit of bike storage space too.
This station used to have a sandwich shop. Train stations need sandwich shops. I think this sandwich shop, like the rest of the depot, was a victim of COVID and probably Greyhound.
Here’s the inside of the depot. By the looks of things, yet another victim of COVID and Greyhound being… inadequate.
the service
Service wise, this station is underutilized. It serves just local Gilroy buses VTA 84, 85, and 86, the VTA communter routes 68/568 and 121, as well as longer-distance commuter buses MST 59 to Salinas and a San Benito County bus to Hollister. Greyhound is also here, and Greyhound is… well, Greyhound. Capitol Corridor service has been explored in the past, but nothing has come of that. The station depot is too small to accommodate more Caltrain service, yet Gilroy needs all-day rail service to the rest of the Bay Area.
in summation
This station needs more trains. That’s it. More trains. Gilroy is a town of 60,000 (2020 Census) and absolutely deserves off-peak and weekend train service to the rest of the world.
The buses are nice. I like buses.
Thanks to Mark Duncan’s The San Francisco Peninsula Railroad Service: Past, Present, and Future for providing information about the history of Gilroy Depot.