SP was faced with falling passenger counts and revenues, leading SP to petition the California Public Utilities Commission to discontinue the Peninsula Commute service entirely in May 1977, which received a preliminary affirmative ruling in July 1979. In response, Assemblymember Lou Papan introduced AB 1853 in 1977 to preserve the service by subsidizing ticket prices and SP's operation. Peninsula Commute ridership was so sensitive to gasoline shortages that passenger counts jumped by 40% in May and June 1979. California would take over financial responsibility for the Peninsula Commute in July 1980. A draft report prepared in 1978 to estimate the environmental impact of the SP petition to discontinue service echoed the conclusions reached by the PUC in 1955, stating "the downtown financial district of [San Francisco] is the principal destination for a large percentage of Peninsula commuters, and most SP commuters." After California took over the Peninsula Commute and set up the CalTrain commuter rail service, the downtown extension was called "critical to the survival of the service" in a 1982 public hearing. During that hearing, Mr. Fred Barton, Deputy District Director of Rail Operations for Caltrans, noted "the existing passenger service provided by SP is not utilizing its full potential in serving the travel demands of the Peninsula residents who are employed in downtown San Francisco. This inadequacy in service is mainly due to the location of the present SP terminal which is remote from the high density employment centers in the city's financial district. In fact, an additional twenty to thirty minute travel time and a transfer to Muni bus service is required by the commuters in order to reach the financial district." The legislature required an annual report detailing planned improvements to improve ridership as part of 1981's AB 1010. The subsequent 1984 Rail Passenger Development Plan called for downtown station extensions in both San Francisco and San Jose. As evidence, when Muni discontinued a dedicated shuttle service between 4th and Townsend and the Financial District, CalTrain ridership dropped by 18 percent, prompting Caltrans to declare a downtown extension should be implemented no later than 1991. Caltrans went on to publish the 1984 San Francisco Terminal Relocation Study, which called for a below-grade alignment from I-280 and Sixth to the Transbay Terminal and predicted that a downtown extension would attract 30,000 new boardings per day. The 1987 Interim Upgrade Study called the downtown extension "the single most