VTA 68/568 (San Jose Diridon - Gilroy)
slowly rumbling down Monterey Road almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
oh my god oh my god signal priority has a POSTING SCHEDULE??? incredible!!! every thursday at 5 pm PT until i run out of bus routes!!!! wowwwwwww
This review is going to cover two different routes — VTA 68 and 568 — because they largely parallel each other, save for a deviation on the 68 to Cottle LRT, the Kaiser hospital, and Santa Teresa LRT. Because I don’t want to even consider riding the 68 in full, you are getting 568 and 68 combined. Fight me.
Bus service to South County (Morgan Hill and Gilroy) is abysmal. Only two routes run — 68 and 568 — all-day, and on weekends, only the slow, painful two-hour slog that is 68. The 568 was introduced in its modern incarnation on October 11, 2021, replacing the axed-for-COVID peak-hours-only route 168 from Gilroy to Diridon. This was the second post-COVID route addition, after the soon-to-be-killed SCVMC shuttle.
The total journey time is 66 minutes from end to end, assuming no delays.
riding the bus
I started my morning at San Jose Diridon station, which will have a hopefully recurring presence on the ‘stack as I torture myself more. I’d arrived 15 minutes earlier on tram.
Leaving Diridon station, as most southbound buses do, we went on Santa Clara, turning south onto Second as we began paralleling the transit mall. Second St. became First St. which became Monterey Expy. as we headed further south.
The SP Coast Line parallels Monterey all the way down from Communications Hill to Gilroy. 568 serves all Caltrain stations south of Diridon except for Tamien and Morgan Hill (which we’ll get to in a moment!). Capitol and Blossom Hill are both small, bare-bones suburban stops, with nothing else besides some shelters and a couple TVMs.
More railroad tracks, more stroad hell, more Monterey Road. This road gets boring in South San Jose.
Heading down Monterey Rd., we passed by the massive Metcalf transmission plant for PG&E in the small CDP of Coyote. If you drive down 101 ever, this is always a landmark telling you you’ve just left the city. Another landmark of note: on the Coyote Creek trail right off of Monterey there stands a small plaque marking the geographic center of Santa Clara County!
The 568 used to take a deviation here to Morgan Hill Caltrain station, a block to the east of Monterey. Downtown is nice, though. I’ll be back to write about the 87 circulator route around Morgan Hill — check back in a few months for that one.
I wrote a review of Gilroy TC too! And I caught the 59 to Salinas there!
in review
This bus is an endurance test. Ridership-wise, it surprised me a bit that there were, in fact, people taking the route all the way down to Gilroy. Four people were off the bus by the time we terminated. The route is direct and with no notable deviations off the route (although the Morgan Hill Caltrain deviation should be restored, in my opinion). The frequency — every half hour on weekdays and weekends — is adequate, . The scenery is great, especially in the early morning like when I was taking it — you get a good view of both sides of the Coyote Valley at a slow enough pace to enjoy it. That slow speed does become quite unbearable close to the end of the line, where traffic signals in Morgan Hill and Gilroy begin bogging the bus down (or it felt like that, at least).
This route should be replaced by all-day Caltrain service, by the way.
final thoughts
6/10 which I think is quite generous given the slowness of the line. It does one thing and does it acceptably well. The scenery bumps up this score a LOT; it’s probably among the nicest VTA routes to ride. The frequency is also decent for what the line is.
This is part of my ongoing mission to ride and review every single VTA line. You can see the main portal here, and the overall numerical rankings for each line here.
"it surprised me a bit that there were, in fact, people taking the route all the way down to Gilroy" tell caltrain to run more trains to gilroy then