Atherton Caltrain Station

This train station is only open on the weekends but it is the best station because there’s no one ever here and it’s nice and peaceful.

Shame it only runs on weekends!!! Otherwise safe as the Atherton PD is just a building away!!! Nice walk to Holbrook Palmer park!

I like this location but its a real shame that its only open on weekends. Its quite, small, and clean, things you typically wont see in a train station.

Picture this: You’re coming back from a Saturday night in San Francisco. It was fun, but unfortunately you had to cut it short, leaving the bar at 11:30 to make the last Caltrain back to your home in Mountain View. Your head is pounding and every minute of the nearly hour long ride so far has been excruciating, as the train has slowly made its way down the peninsula, stopping what seems like every ten feet. It’s brutal. «Caltrain: encouraging drunk driving since 1987,» you think. On the bright side, you just passed Redwood City, which means there are only 5 more stops before you get home. That’s when you hear those three terrible words: «Next stop, Atherton.» Your morale sinks like the Titanic did in end of the epic movie «Titanic» (sorry, should’ve said «spoiler alert» there). You want to puke out the door of the train. It’s not like anyone will ever walk on it — nobody gets on or off at Atherton.
The train slows to a stop and the doors open. You hear the crickets chirping. As usual, nobody gets on or off. The area outside the train is about as lively as Bernie in «Weekend at Bernie’s.» Someone drops a pin out the train window five cars behind you and you hear it clink on the paved surface.
A few facts about the residents of Atherton:
–They pronounce their town name «AAAAAHHH-​thah-​ton»
–They consume more Grey Poupon per capita than any other town or city in the world
–They consider Mark Zuckerberg «middle class»
–They think five-​figure salaries are only found in third world sweatshops
–They consider Palo Alto a slum
–Their guest house’s guest house is bigger, nicer, and worth more than your actual house
–NONE OF THEM RIDE THE CALTRAIN! (seriously, I’ve looked at the Caltrain’s annual reports and this is true)
Of course it makes sense for the Caltrain to stop there at 1am on a Saturday night/​Sunday morning though. I mean there’s so much nightlife there. There was that one great bar… what was it called… oh, never mind, that wasn’t a bar, it was yet another $ 10 million house.
Why is there a station in this land of the well-​to-​do, where 57% of residents currently employ a limo driver for their maid’s assistant’s butler? Well, technically it’s not much of a station, but rather a tiny pseudo-​shelter and a strip of pavement, maybe a ticket machine. Maybe they put it there just because they can — because they’re Atherton and they have more combined net worth than most U.S. states — or so the residents can «mingle with the peons» and see how the less fortunate 99.9% live if they’re ever so inclined. Or maybe the Caltrain conductors wanted it there so they could stop to grab some Grey Poupon in case they ran out. I mean, hey, it is a REALLY long ride.

Nice little station that now only offers service on the weekends thank goodness. As a Caltrain commuter I find that not even on weekends do folks use this station and support Caltrain not wasting time stopping here when there are so many other close stops to here. I vote yes to discontinuing this station all together to save money if they asked. But it is a nice little station that is clean when you do happen off at it.

Ever since the inception of the Baby Bullet service, the Atherton station has been relegated to weekend-​only service, which makes it basically useless to the only people who ever used it – students and folks coming to do house & yardwork for the folks in Atherton. What’s the point of even keeping it in existence?