Caltrain is looking for a new home.

The popular commuter rail line that brings 20,000 riders to 28 points between San Francisco and San Jose, with extensions to Gilroy, has been sharing its headquarters with SamTrans since the 1990s. SamTrans, San Mateo County’s bus system, is moving in 2025 to a new office space near the Millbrae Caltrain station. It has invited its roommate to co-locate, but Caltrain is shopping around first.

Owned and operated by the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, Caltrain has been serving the region since 1991, and as an organization since 1863, according to a statement Monday. The oldest continually operating rail system west of the Mississippi River, it is planning to electrify by 2024.

Currently, there are 78 Caltrain staff, but they expect to grow to 177 over time so they are looking for a space of about 20,000 to 30,000 square feet, for a five- to 10-year lease. Top locations, considering distance to stations and amenities like shops and restaurants, include San Francisco, Millbrae, Redwood City and San Mateo.

Caltrain is soliciting offers.  A single PDF submission should be sent to HQ-RFI@Caltrain.com by 1 p.m. on April 22. 

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.