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Peter Ratto has ridden public transit his whole life. Growing up in Daly City, he remembers when Northgate Transit was the premier bus service. It was operated by a collection of drivers who owned their individual buses and took turns driving the popular and slow routes.
The bus had no regular map or schedule. Ratto said people learned “from riding, from word of mouth.”
Then, in late 1976, SamTrans took over.
“Before it started serving Daly City, we got information in the mail. These are our routes … these are our schedules,” Ratto said. “It had maps that showed you where the bus went and where the stops were.”
“It was something we had never had before,” he said.
This year, SamTrans celebrated its 50th anniversary. It began operations on July 1, 1976, by consolidating local bus services in a handful of cities. Now, SamTrans — formally known as the San Mateo County Transit District — manages an interconnected network of buses, trains, paratransit and on-demand service that stretches from Palo Alto to Half Moon Bay to San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood.
The district hosted a 50th anniversary celebration on Sept. 26, with live music, food and activities including guided tours of the new Millbrae headquarters and a history exhibit. SamTrans spokesperson Randol White said the celebration was a “resounding success,” with close to 1,000 people in attendance.
Ratto now serves as the SamTrans’ Board of Directors’ transportation expert. In his 50 years as a rider and 11 years on the board, he said the district prioritizes serving its riders.
Riding and operating the bus
Former SamTrans employees said the focus on riders began with respect for front-line workers. Monica Colondres began working as a SamTrans bus operator in 1977 and retired as the director of Human Resources in 2015. In between, she worked in maintenance, operations and labor relations, giving her a rounded perspective on the agency.
Over her nearly 38 years with SamTrans, she saw the agency morph from a “ragtag group of people who were just trying to get by to a really well-oiled machine.”
“We were running an agency on a shoestring when we first started, but it was fun, because everybody pitched in to make it successful,” Colondres said. “(Our maintenance guys) were just good mechanics but they took pride in putting these buses on the road every day, and that makes a difference.”
Colondres said her fellow employees often took it as a challenge to provide quality service and celebrated their successes. That sense of responsibility to the public was most clear in emergencies, however, when Colondres said everyone from drivers to dispatchers and mechanics would step in to provide extra support. One such day was Oct. 18, 1989, a day after the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake shook the Bay Area. Although the region was in turmoil, Colondres said more people came in to work than had been scheduled, just in case they could help.
“It was just a crazy, crazy, crazy day, but again, our folks stepped up and they’re just like, ‘The community needs us, let’s go, let’s do what we need to do,’” she said.
SamTrans purchasing the railway right-of-way from the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1991 was another instance of the district’s foresight in service of commuters, according to the district’s former general counsel, David Miller, who helped broker the deal.
This purchase led to the creation of Caltrain and a handful of additional rail lines, including BART’s expansion to the San Francisco International Airport, which could have otherwise been shuttered.
“A lot of San Mateo County passengers were the majority of the riders on the system at that time, so SamTrans saw its role as stepping in to protect the interests of people in the county, and the other counties joined in,” Miller said.
Adjusting to the times
While many Bay Area transit agencies have struggled to increase ridership after the COVID-19 pandemic, White said SamTrans’ ridership completely returned as of March 2025. He attributed some of the ridership recovery to the Reimagine SamTrans initiative — a comprehensive overhaul of routes and services that went into effect August 2024, with the aim of better addressing rider needs. This included consolidating bus routes to shorten ride times and adding Ride Plus on-demand services in East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, Half Moon Bay and El Granada.
Although many said rider experience has been a priority, there are many ways it could still be improved. Belmont resident Jade Costello, who is communications manager for the transportation advocacy nonprofit Seamless Bay Area, said she’s glad for the agency’s Coastside connections, but wants more options and shorter wait times between buses.
Bus stops are another place Costello said SamTrans could improve its rider experience. Many bus stops don’t have shade nor trash cans nearby, which she said would go a long way to improve the average rider experience.
“I think they should look for what riders want, which is in many cases more frequent buses, better bus stops, (and) more options,” Costello said.
Redwood City Councilmember and SamTrans Director Jeff Gee said he expects the agency to continue improving for riders’ sake. He saw the gravity of public service through his father, Richard, who was hired in 1981 to be SamTrans’ head planner and engineer. The role involved setting up physical infrastructure, including the district’s first maintenance yards and headquarters, and Gee remembers watching his father pore over bus schedules at the kitchen table, annotating the minutes between stops by hand.
While Gee sees the agency from a different perspective than his father, given his role on the board, he said they share a work ethic and sense of public duty. As the world of public transit changes, he said riders need the district to find a way to meet expectations.
“My hope and expectation is that SamTrans is going to continue to evolve to meet the needs of our community and that we’re gonna be required to evolve faster than we’ve ever been asked to,” Gee said. “The community is expecting us to move them around the county, and the pace of innovation is just going to continue to increase.”
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