Senate Standing Committee on Transportation

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Good afternoon. The Assembly Transportation and Senate Transportation Committees are called to order. I want to thank everyone for your patience on this very rainy day and thank you all for your attendance. The hearing room is open today for attendance of this informational hearing, and it can also be watched from a live stream on the Assembly and the Senate's website.

We encourage the public to provide written testimony by visiting the Committee website and note that any written testimony submitted to the Committee is considered public comment and may be read into the record or reprinted. All public comment at this hearing will be in person and will be limited to 1 minute per person. Finally, the Assembly has experienced a number of disruptions to the Committee and floor proceedings in the last few years. Conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the hearing is prohibited.

Such conduct may include talking or making loud noises from the audience, uttering loud, threatening, or abusive language, speaking longer than the time allotted, extended discussion of matters not related to the subject of the hearing, and other disruptive acts. To address any disruptive conduct, I will take the following steps: if an individual disrupts our hearing process, I will direct them to stop and warn them that continued disruptions may result in removal from the building.

We will also document on the record the individual involved and the nature of the disruptive conduct. I may temporarily have to recess the hearing. If the conduct doesn't stop, I'll request the assistance of the Sergeants in escorting the individual from the building. I want to thank you all in advance for your cooperation. Today's informational hearing will focus on strategies to bring back and build transit ridership in California. It's the first time this Committee has had an informational hearing on public transit since 2009.

Transit ridership has been on the decline in California long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. According to the University of California Los Angeles Institute of Transportation Studies, the six-county Southern California Association of Governments region lost 72 million annual rides between 2012 and 2016. While the Bay Area bucked the national trend of decreasing transit ridership for much of the 2000s: In 2017 and 18, the nine-county Bay Area region lost 27.5 million boardings, or 5.2% of its total trips.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, transit ridership plunged 50% to as much as 94% in California. The federal government provided billions of relief in funding to keep transit agencies afloat as ridership hopefully recovered. However, we haven't seen the kind of recovery that we would like to see. National ridership of transit is at 73% of where it was pre-pandemic. The Pacific region of the US, however, is doing worse: with only a 67% return of transit riders.

While most agencies in California will be fiscally sound because of their ability to adjust service to maintain adequate operating funding, agencies that were very dependent on farebox revenues for operating costs may face funding shortfalls in the next few years as federal relief runs out. So why is this important? Of course, the state can't reach its carbon neutrality goal by 2045 without a reduction in car travel. According to CARB, according to their scoping plan, in 2022, -

-in addition to the transition to cleaner vehicles, the path to carbon neutrality also requires a 25% reduction in vehicle miles traveled by 2030 and a 30% reduction by 2045. And transit, of course, will play a key role in reducing vehicle miles traveled. Transit agencies need to be thought of as mobility services that provide accessibility and reliability throughout the day rather than just during the morning and peak commutes because people are traveling differently.

At the same time, cities need to think about how they can operate, how they can make land use decisions that make transit an attractive option for choice riders. And of course, besides our climate goals, transit is important because a lot of people are transit-dependent in California. They may be too young to drive. They may be too old to drive safely. They may not be able to afford the huge burden that owning and operating a car takes on people.

They may just choose to not contribute to our greenhouse gas and climate crisis by driving. They may be unable to physically drive. And we have to think about all of those people as well. And we know in places like Los Angeles and San Diego, in our inner cities, that if everybody had to drive everywhere all the time, we'd be stuck in traffic. The lack of transit options are often the reason that people say they don't want housing built in their communities.

They say, what about the parking? What about the traffic? And transit is the obvious solution to alleviating that concern. So transit is tied not just to climate. It's also tied to mobility, to equity, to public health, and certainly to things like housing. So it's very, very important. Today's hearing is going to have three panels.

First, we're going to get a larger perspective on transit and focus on what the state is currently doing to improve the transit experience and to hear what steps the state should take to refocus transit financing in a manner that promotes innovation and service, not just farebox recovery. Next, we'll hear from transit agencies and regional governments on the steps they're taking to improve their service and increase ridership.

And finally, we're going to hear from stakeholders who will discuss the needs of riders and operators and what transit agencies need to do to improve and bring those riders back. It's my hope from this hearing that the state can get a better perspective on what the agencies are currently doing across the state to increase their ridership and to hear what we can do to hold transit agencies accountable-

-to the customers they serve while also making changes to ensure that transit is a good option for people who rely on it. Not just what they have to do but that it provides the kind of experience that will get people who have cars out of their cars and use transit. Because that's what we really, really need to have.

I also want to note that Senator Gonzalez and I have introduced AB 761, the Transit Transformation Task Force, to have the California Transportation Agency convene a task force to evaluate state policy on transit financing and what the state can do to encourage transit operations that improve the transit experience and increase transit use.

Because at the end of the day, we want our financing for transit to be truly sustainable, not to go down when the budget goes down at the state, but to live on its own and breathe on its own and to generate the kind of sustainable revenue that we need. Now, I'd like to ask my amazing partner in the Senate, Senator Lena Gonzalez, to make her comments.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I appreciate your comments as well. And I thank you for working with our team to make this happen. And I thank our consultants as well for creating this really robust panel. So, as mentioned, for many Californians, transit is a lifeline, providing an affordable opportunity for transportation to get to and from work to school, etc. And as mentioned by my good colleague, for some, transit is the only travel option as they have no access to a car.

Even more reason why transit should be elevated. It is estimated that almost 60% of California residents who commute on public transit have a household income below $35,000. In fact, in the Bay Area, a snapshot of AC Transit's ridership makes it clear that 65% of their riders are low-income, 75% are people of color, and 43% do not have access to a car.

In Los Angeles, LA Metro's riders have 83% that are living on less than $49,000, 80% are people of color, and 73% have no regular access to a car. And I know outside of the urban areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco, our friends in the Central Valley and rural areas, inland and beyond across the state, are also facing similar challenges, ensuring that they're getting hardworking people to and from work, the doctor to school, etc.

So we know California transit operators are fighting to come back from the Pandemic, with some facing serious operational and financial challenges, as we will discuss today, whether it's technology and coordination to make it easier to plan and ride transit or making sure when you ride it's comfortable, safe, enjoyable is also part of this discussion.

And I look forward to the witnesses today to share their experiences in detail, both the challenges facing transit and, of course, hear from my many colleagues who this is their first meeting, their first meeting not just in transportation but their first hearings from across the state. So I look forward to those discussions, and I thank you, madam chair.

Thank you very much. And now I'd like to see if any other committee members have any comments they would like to make.

Okay. Seeing none, I'd like to invite the first panel to come forward and just a little housekeeping as they make their way up to the front. I want to make sure that everybody will stay after your comments; just stay up at the table, because I'm sure we'll have questions from committee members for all of you. And members, I will also ask that we allow them to get through all of the presentations from all of the panelists, and then we can ask any panelists we'd like questions.

And then from the public, just so you know, after we hear from all three of the panelist's presentations, at the very end, we'll take general public testimony. Okay. And with that, panel one, I think we are leading with Professor Brian Taylor.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Chair Friedman and Gonzalez and the members of the committee, for inviting me. I've been asked to make some opening remarks on the current state of public transit in California and its prospects for the future. So, in my five minutes, I'd like to make five points about public transit.

First, by public transit, we are generally, though not exclusively, referring to buses, trains, ferries, and the like that operate on fixed routes and fixed schedules and are available to the general public for a nominal fare or, in some cases, for free. Second, public transit systems excel at moving large numbers of people in the same direction at the same time.

In places of concentrated activity, like in downtowns, at universities, at airports, where it can be difficult to drive and park, transit is often a convenient and effective way to get around. But in most suburbs and rural areas where development is spread out, and parking is abundant, traditional transit tends to play a much smaller role. So development density and transit fit together like hand and glove. And in many California cities today, there's a very strong demand for higher-density housing in already built-up areas.

If built, such housing could help to ease our affordability crisis and would undoubtedly increase transit use. But perhaps ironically, such projects are often opposed by residents in the area on the grounds that they would make it harder to drive and park. The third thing to know about public transit is that it serves two principal markets. The first are travelers commuting to and from downtowns and other large activity centers I've just described.

And the second are mobility-disadvantaged travelers who rely on transit for all manner of trips who tend to have little or no access to private vehicles. Members of this second group of transit riders are more likely to be low-income and, as the chair noted, immigrants, people of color, or have a disability. In addition, this group also constitutes a much larger share of all transit riders than downtown commuters.

Now, when a downtown commuter - and I'm using that sort of in a general term - when they ride, it's often in lieu of walking very long distances or not making the trip at all. Excuse me. It's in lieu of driving, which is an environmental benefit. But when a transit-reliant traveler rides, it's often in lieu of walking or not making the trip at all, which is a social and economic benefit. So there are important environmental and social, and economic benefits that accrue from transit.

The fourth point is that in the 2010s, public transit use was declining in spite of stable or, in many places in California, increasing service, largely because vehicle access was increasing. Throughout much of California since 2000, households of all income levels acquired and drove more cars. However, increases in vehicle ownership in lower-income households affected transit the most because they constituted a very large share of former riders.

In addition, households of all incomes were also able to access car trips one at a time through the ride-hail services like Lyft and Uber. Our research suggests that ride-hail had the biggest negative effect on transit ridership in the San Francisco Bay Area, while increased car ownership was a principal culprit in much of California prior to the Pandemic.

Without question, the brightest light for California transit in the 2010s was transit commuting into and out of downtown San Francisco on BART, San Francisco, Muni, and a few other operators. However, the script flipped in the Pandemic as former downtown commuters moved their offices home, stopped riding transit, and have remained working at home at least part-time ever since.

Thus, systems with the largest share of those downtown commuters before the Pandemic tended to lose the most riders and have recovered fewer of them as the Pandemic has become endemic. These systems also tended to have fund a much larger share of their operations out of the fair box and are, as a result, facing larger fiscal cliffs in the months and years ahead.

In contrast, systems with high shares of transit-reliant riders lost the fewest riders early in the Pandemic and intended to recover many more of them since then. And fifth and finally, if California and its many regional, county, and local governments committed to making it much easier to build housing in central areas and committed to systematically managing traffic congestion and parking, driving would be both better and rarer, and transit use would not be in decline, but would be experiencing a renaissance.

Short of sweeping changes like that, however, the state could still do much to improve public transit and advance state goals, providing mobility for those without and improving the environment. To offer one example, the state could reform its funding allocation programs under the Transportation Development Act to incentivize moving transit riders to destinations rather than incentivizing transit systems to collect fares, as others will likely delve into these issues in more detail. I'll stop my overview here, but we'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Yes, hello. Thank you very much. I'm Chad Edison, Chief Deputy Secretary of Rail and Transit at CalSTA. The question of how to bring back and build transit ridership is one we're grappling with here in California and throughout the United States. Proposed ideas are often high-cost, have long lead time, and require wishful thinking, such as hoping we can fully return to the well-understood travel patterns of the pre-pandemic era.

While there will certainly be significant long-term investments needed to get transit ridership to the levels we envision for the future. CalSTA, Caltrans, and our transit and rail partners at the regional and local levels work on a number of key activities and projects that will help us grow back ridership and do it as cost-effectively as possible. I will highlight activities that both lower cost and increase ridership and discuss the feedback loop between these efforts.

As was articulated in the MTC's Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force and illustrated by agencies such as San Francisco Muni, there is tremendous value in supporting transit priority for buses on local and state-owned roads and highways. As trips are made faster and more reliably, ridership demand on such corridors can rise rapidly.

But this faster journey time also means that the same driver can make more trips on the route, allowing a similar level of resources to provide more service, which in turn attracts more riders. In some cases, Muni saw a 20% to 30% reduction in travel time upon implementing such improvements, and this translated specifically into Muni's ability to restore more service.

CalSTA has worked with Caltrans to highlight the state's intent to support such efforts statewide with willing partners, with an emphasis on state roads and highways where we can make targeted investments in operational improvements that provide transit priority. We can prioritize our existing staffing resources as well as project funding to advance such efforts in key locations and identify where small amounts of additional funding would assist in advancing more projects sooner. Headquarters planners and data scientists are working with district planners and engineers on these efforts.

We want to target investments at sources of transit delay using both state and federal funding, where agencies have identified key transit projects that could also bring additional housing, including affordable housing, to transit stations and centers near high-frequency transit corridors. CalSTA has made a specific priority of funding these projects through the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital program.

We were glad to fund two of our strongest applications last year that included housing and transit-oriented development, both at three BART stations in the East Bay as well as in Humboldt County. These efforts are key to growing ridership by making it easier to use transit.

CalSTA is also working with rail operators throughout the state to better integrate regional and inner-city services so that we can operate a more efficient and better-connected rail network that will give riders more opportunities to connect between cities that are only infrequently connected today. Growing ridership at a lower cost of operations. Finally, we want to help rail and transit agencies lower their cost of revenue collection and attract more riders.

Fortunately for California, we have a great solution being piloted by the California Integrated Travel Project, known as Cal-ITP, that is available today, and it's already being deployed by local transit agencies. Cal-ITP achieves three goal: improves the customer experience, ensures maximum inclusivity to attract and retain riders of all types, and it reduces operating costs for agencies. Let me walk you through how Cal-ITP accomplishes these goals. Cal-ITP makes one fundamental change.

It helps transit agencies across the state shift from a system where riders either buy prepaid monthly passes or load prepaid cards with money that can only be spent on transit to a pay-as-you-go system where riders use their existing debit or credit cards for contactless payment, as they do for any other retail purchase and as they will for electric vehicle recharging. This one simple change powers a broader transformation, especially when it comes to the rider experience.

It speeds boarding and reduces wait times, utilizes technology that enables agencies to accurately track vehicle arrival times so riders can trip plan, simplifies interagency transfers, and, most notably, allows riders to use what's already in their pockets, contactless bank cards or smart devices to pay for transit. Because riding transit should be as simple as paying for a cup of coffee, the program also improves transit's inclusivity.

First, it allows riders to pay as they go, so people on a tight budget don't have to pre-purchase rides they may not use. It also enables fare capping so riders will never pay more than the cost of a monthly pass. This is especially valuable for those on tight budgets. In addition, we are working with the California Department of Technology to provide automatic application of eligibility-based discounts, such as those for seniors. The improved rider experience, coupled with expanded financial inclusivity, will drive sustained, increased ridership.

For agencies, Cal-ITP is a cost and time saver. The standardized hardware and software has already been procured by Cal-ITP, saving months of work for smaller agencies who can utilize already completed DGS contracts. The program also decreases fair revenue collection costs, simplifies payment processing through regulated third-party vendors, and provides agencies with a partner to negotiate agreements with payment processors and financial institutions.

Further, the planning level data captured from trips can help operators improve their service delivery and enhance fair pricing programs to increase revenue and ridership going forward. At CalSTA and Caltrans, we are energized by these opportunities in doing everything we can to align existing resources to deliver meaningful support for transit and rail services. Our largest hurdles include both state and local-level challenges in hiring for key positions.

Given the tight job market, the need to do innovative and complex procurement and legal work without fully staffed departments and without full access to contract help that could handle highly specialized work. Filling in these gaps so that we can provide support as rapidly as possible will go a long way towards helping agencies spend less time and money on capital purchases, revenue collection, and slower than necessary service and more on running services that grow ridership.

A final hurdle is a lack of sufficient housing and transit-oriented development near high-frequency transit systems. Addressing this through streamlining state processes and utilizing state-owned land and buildings is one way we can help, but we need to work collectively to give Californians more reasons to use transit in places that already have quality transit infrastructure. Thank you for your interest in this important topic today. I'm glad to address any questions you'd like to ask.

Thank you very.

Much next panelist.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this timely hearing on the state of California's Public Transit Industry.

I'm Michael Pimentel, Executive Director of the California Transit Association, a nonprofit trade organization that represents more than 200 Member organizations from across California's transit industry. Our membership includes transit, rail and ferry agencies, mPOS, RTPAs, as well as the manufacturers and suppliers who provide goods to our industry.

Now, as I begin my remarks, I want to first acknowledge and affirm that today the nation's transit agencies, not just those in California, face significant challenges that threaten their short and long term financial and operational viability. The committee background document does a great job of detailing the breadth of these challenges.

And in my remarks, I will elevate supporting information that further contextualizes these challenges as sourced from a recent survey of our member agencies.

My central message today is this, while many California transit agencies are struggling to regain their footing in this post pandemic environment, many of the challenges they face are symptomatic of broader social and economic factors that extend well beyond our industry.

And as such, over the mid to long term, these challenges will require a whole of government approach to address. In the short term, these challenges will require Stopgap assistance, including through the provision of new transit operations, funding to create a runway for policy and funding changes, as well as the introduction of operational improvements.

So, according to data from the American Public Transportation Association, transit ridership nationwide, as you noted, Madam Chair, sits at roughly 73% of its pre pandemic levels. And as you noted in the pandemic, our numbers are a bit lower. Of course, this aggregated data obscures significant variation in the ridership recovery between agencies, agency types and geography.

Through our survey, transit agencies reported ridership recovery ranging from a low of 26%, to a high of 90%. And as we've shared this information with stakeholders candidly, we are often faced with a question as to why transit ridership has failed to rebound and why agencies across the state are broadcasting significant financial shortfalls, beginning for most in fiscal year 24 25, despite historic infusions of dollars from the federal government over the last few years.

And at times behind these questions is the perspective that transit agencies are solely responsible for their troubles, the belief being that agencies are resistant to adapting or irresponsible with their expenditures. Now, as an association, we acknowledge that there is absolutely room for continued improvement to transit services.

And to that end, we have championed solutions throughout the pandemic, both statutory and budgetary, by including in our current budget request to provide agencies with the tools and resources they need to continue to evolve.

At the same time, we want to elevate the importance of examining and accepting the external social and economic factors thwarting our industry's full recovery. And I'll touch on just a few today, remote work, hiring challenges and safety and security.

So, as Dr. Taylor had noted, and as affirmed by our survey work, we've seen the widest variation in ridership recovery between once commuter focused transit agencies and agencies that have historically served transit dependent populations.

For example, Caltrain and Metrolink, two commuter rail systems with historically high-income riders, stand at 55 and 41% of their pre pandemic ridership levels, respectively. While systems like Long Beach transit and San Diego MTS, that transport lower income riders have reached 85 and 88% of their pre pandemic levels of ridership, respectively.

Now, this spread is influenced, as you've heard about, by remote work, which has eliminated or severely constrained transit trips for white collar workers. And in this sense, the challenges faced by commuter focused transit agencies mirror those faced by downtown office building owners and the restaurants and services that once catered to their tenants.

Now, what's more, commuter focused transit agencies historic reliance on Farebox Revenue to cover operating expenses and high fixed costs of service has left them with greater financial exposure after federal relief is fully expended relative to their brethren in the industry.

Now, while I myself have highlighted ridership figures relative to their pre pandemic levels, it is also important to note that this comparison isn't particularly useful or instructive for gauging transit's performance. And that's because few agencies have fully restored their service to pre pandemic levels.

Our survey shows, for example, that only 20% of respondents are operating pre pandemic service levels. And a dominant reason for this is a trenchant operator shortage. In response to our survey, nearly 60% of our respondents identified having trans operator vacancy rates of between ten and 30%.

20% of survey respondents noted that their vacancy rate is 20% or more. And this high vacancy rate reflects on one level a tight labor market, but also the rise in retirements resulting from an aging workforce and the pandemic. And in fact, the survey conducted by Caltrans showed that the top factors impacting agencies' operator shortage were compensation, competition with other opportunities, and retirement.

Finally, our survey did not collect information on rider safety, but we do continue to hear from our member agencies that rider safety concerns continue to depress ridership. And I believe you'll hear a bit more about this later today.

Now, studies conducted prior to the pandemic show that rider safety concerns are particularly dominant for women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA community, who unfortunately face disproportionate levels of harassment and violence in public settings, including at times on public transit systems.

And these safety concerns also intersect with growing levels of homelessness on our system, which has influenced perceptions of safety and system cleanliness.

So, as we turn to the focus of the conversation, which is what we do and how we move forward, I do want to note that in the short term my association has been calling on the state to provide transit operations funds to address funding shortfalls and to support the implementation of array of ridership retention and growth strategies.

Our request is two-pronged because we recognize that each transit agency has different needs, but also because we know the Legislature and the public expect transit agencies to adapt to and overcome the external factors and forces, I just discussed.

With new funding support, the State could encourage transit agencies implement improvements to their services specifically to design to enhance the rider experience and regrow transit ridership, much like Chief Deputy Secretary Chad Edison noted.

And some of these examples include, service restructuring that addresses changed travel patterns and emerging community needs, the introduction of contactless fare payment systems, real time information, and greater integration between systems and the implementation of safety and security initiatives benefiting riders and operators alike.

Now, the State should also remove impediments to delivery of more equitable service and fair structures like TDA's farebox recovery requirements and cost per revenue hour requirements and replace them with requirements that more fully align with state and local policy objectives.

In the long term, the State must work toward increasing and making more stable transit operations funding. The State must also continue to pursue policies that support transit ridership by enacting, as we've heard, laws and regulations that deliver land use decisions and affordable housing that is supportive of public transit. I look forward to our discussion today and thank you for the opportunity to present.

Thank you all very much for your presentations. We're going to move now to questions. I'm going to just ask a few questions and then go to the committees. First for Mr. Pimentel. So, given the stress right now on your member agencies, how many of them are looking at increasing fares?

Is this something that you're seeing from your agencies or do they feel that that would have too much of a downward pressure on the already diminishing ridership? And then secondly, and I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions now, and then I'm going to just ask somebody else a question after.

What percentage of your members expect to have unmanageable budget deficits in the next few years? I understand that it's a little bit uneven across the state, but do you have any sense of that? And of any of those agencies, are any of them looking at sales tax, revenue generating measures or any other ways like that to bring revenue into the system? So those are my two questions for you.

All right, thank you for the questions, Madam Chair. And I do want to just note that on the fare front, we haven't as an association specifically asked information from our agencies about the possibility of fare increases. But I do want to just acknowledge that certainly at individual agency levels, we have heard reports of agencies considering amongst a variety of options the potential for increasing fares.

But I do want to note that on that front, much of the concern, as you had acknowledged, is the impact of those fare increases on the riders that they have today. We do know that ultimately, ridership and a person's decision to ride public transit is fairly elastic, and particularly for those choice riders, as fares go up, the likelihood that they're going to ride transit goes down.

That does also then have impacts on equity front for the transit dependent populations. And so I will say that based on our read on our scan, while certain agencies may be discussing fare increases, the likelihood that they're going to be forthcoming is fairly limited.

These are options that are generally kept as a secondary or tertiary consideration after they exhaust further options. Now, with regards to agencies that are facing significant challenges. Here, I just want to note for you that in our survey we asked members, when do they expect that they're going to fully expend the federal relief that they secured from the three rounds of emergency relief?

And here we found that in fiscal year 23-24, fully 45% of our respondents noted that they would be exhausting their federal relief in that fiscal year 23-24. Another 10% said that they would be exhausting their federal relief in 24-25.

And so that would suggest on those data points alone that roughly 55% of the agencies are going to see themselves in dire financial straits, come the beginning of fiscal year 25-26.

And so that's why as an association, we've mobilized around the need for operations funds that are short term, that can be provided by the state in this fiscal year budget to provide that additional runway for the agencies to reach recovery.

And then finally, to your last question with regards to local measures. I would say that there has been a bit of discussion around this within the industry. I think probably most notably in the San Francisco Bay area where there have been conversations by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission about the timing of a new regional measure to provide support to agencies and to provide them with additional relief beyond what can be provided by the state.

Now, as we expand into other areas of the state, conversations about additional measures has not been as public or forthcoming. But certainly, I think as we turn the corner on the availability of funds here at the state level and have an understanding of what can be provided, we may have to have some further conversations with our members about what can be pursued at a regional or local measure to provide that necessary support.

Thank you. Mr. Edison, I have a couple of questions for you and thank you so much for being here. First of all, how do you think that we at the state can best support transit agencies right now, in terms of their efforts to increase mean? Outside of the obvious of more funding, is there anything else that we can do, kind of regulatorily or legislatively that would help?

Right, well, I mentioned a number of examples of ways we could help in my testimony. And I will emphasize, in addition to those, the value of really integrating the services in our regions and making sure that they are redeployed in ways that serve the markets of today and not the markets of yesterday.

And so I think that will go a long ways if we can use the data that's available at the state level as well as the regional knowledge to get to systems that are kind of designed for what people want to use the service for today.

And do you think that we should be mandating that given that we've seen somewhat spotty adoption of some of these systems?

The best work here that I'm familiar with is one where we collaborate on coming up with those networks and solutions and changes. And so I think that there's good examples of that throughout the state where systems are starting to talk to each other and it's hard to come up with one way to mandate that.

But I think that it's definitely effective to get the systems together to look at the data and at the state level we're willing to offer what we have in our resources into that conversation.

You talked about building housing around transit stations and on transit owned land and public land and certainly that's a way to generate more natural riders who are living very close to where the stations are. But there are other types of projects that could be built that might actually bring revenue into the systems.

I'm wondering how you balance that desire to, of course, provide affordable housing anywhere we can. And people who would be most likely to ride the system against the kinds of models that we see in many other countries that have very successful transit systems of stations that are a draw to people from all over the region, that have retail, that have restaurants, that have entertainment, and then use that development as a way to generate revenue for the system.

It seems to me that we've left a lot of money on the table because we don't do very much value capture with the land around stations. And I know that there are other places in the world where their systems are financed 100% in some places.

Not through farebox recovery, but through that kind of development. So I'm wondering what thought you give to that and how you would balance those and are we thinking about that anywhere? And if not, why not?

Those are great questions and I think there are complex answers to them. There is a balance there, as you indicated, to both bringing people to live near the transit that's there already and bringing in the revenue streams that come from the Transit Oriented Development.

A number of our major cities around the state have the best opportunities for this at stations like Diridon Station in San Jose, LA Union Station, some of the places where high speed rail will be building stations in the future.

These are all good opportunities, and the best international examples are ones that have that kind of revenue stream in places of fairly high academic activity. The smaller stations around the state have less revenue potential from those kinds of activities. And so, it's really something that is targeted towards specific locations where the market conditions are good for that.

So yes, there is definitely a balance here between the housing that needs to be in the area around key transit assets as well as the revenue generation activities.

And yet I just haven't seen a lot of that kind of development activity which could be a sustainable source of not just revenue, but also a way to bring people into systems where one of the things that we hear is people don't want to go into transit. Systems that are empty, that don't have a lot of people in them. Yes, professor?

And I'll just ask if any of the other panelists have anything to add on that particular question. Because it seems that we're seeing transit agencies really struggling for funding.

Well, I think that one thing that ties your question and a couple of other comments that were made earlier is that while there are municipal operators out there, Santa Monica, San Francisco, many of these agencies are joint power authorities or others that aren't part of local governments.

And a huge amount of the policy issues that we're discussing here are controlled by local governments.

So, everything from the transit lanes that would be operating on streets that allow vehicles to move through much more quickly have an advantage over vehicles to the development along transit corridors are controlled by local governments and not transit agencies.

So they can cajole and encourage and try and work with their local governments, but ultimately their local governments have people pushing back against a lot of these sorts of proposals, worried about losing parking in place of a transit lane, worried about increased housing density causing more congestion.

And in many cases, the transit agencies are doing their best to work with local governments, but it's ultimately local governments that have much of the control over these decisions and not the transit agencies.

Yes, so I don't have a significant amount to add to the conversation specifically with regards to housing and its intersection with public transit. But what I would just flag for you is that agencies are very actively looking to identify and to implement new partnerships to bring in new forms of revenue.

I think one of the most successful routes that agencies have employed has been partnerships with schools, whether that be school districts, community colleges, CSUs, UCs, to create a new stream of riders who can provide steady service and steady revenue to the agencies. The other area where we've seen strong potential and quite a lot of movement has been in forms of ancillary revenue development.

Things like advertisements or consignments with, universities, hospitals, in these districts to serve as a means of generation, revenue generation for the agencies. And so there is quite a bit of creativity that's being applied to how it is that we are generating revenues beyond the farebox, beyond what we pull from the state, the federal governments, as well as local governments.

But certainly, housing is something that has become of increased interest to our member agencies in trying to establish one. Is there a revenue path there, but then also probably at a lower order, is there a ridership path there that can sustain the systems over the long term?

Thank you. I'm going to go now to Chair Gonzalez.

Thank you. This has been a very great panel so far, and we haven't even gotten through half of it. So thank you very much and incredible questions. And I can't emphasize enough the value capture point. I think, having traveled extensively, I think, like many of the Members here, seeing that opportunity, I think, is where we should certainly think about thinking bigger. My first question goes to Mr. Taylor.

I first want to thank you and the team at UCITS for all the incredible work that you do. When we're looking at long term TDA reform, can you elaborate on how the state can incentivize innovation? I know you talked a bit about that, but what does that look like? And if anyone else has additional questions on that, and then I'll just make another comment. Thank you.

Well, when TDA was passed in 1971, it was actually motivated to try and provide more operating support for transit agencies by extending the sales tax to gasoline and then dedicating a quarter cent to public transit in counties. It's sort of been on autopilot since then.

And part of one of the motivations when it was first passed was a concern about rising costs at the time, in the 1970s. And the Farebox Recovery requirement was put into place to encourage systems to attract paying riders.

And the thought was, by having this threshold requirement, that it would encourage operators to attract paying riders and help to stabilize their finances. Now, over time, that's created some problems. As agencies have struggled to meet the Farebox requirement, numerous exemptions have been put into place to allow new service to be exempt and a variety of other exemptions to avoid this.

And in some cases, some operators will be in a position of having to actually cut service, that they'd prefer not to cut in order to meet the Farebox requirement. So, the question is that if the goal is actually to encourage transit agencies to collect to attract more paying customers, the Farebox Recovery requirement nominally does that in a way that motivates that behavior.

If the goal is to increase transit ridership overall, then it might make sense to use different kinds of performance measures and not have this threshold requirement that encourages them to take actions like cutting service that they prefer not to cut in order to meet the requirement.

Thank you, Mr. Pimentel.

So, one thing that I would want to note, and Dr. Taylor touched on this, there have been a series of exemptions that have been provided to what is counted toward Farebox recovery for agencies that were implemented over these last few years.

And while some of those exemptions speak to addressing costs that are inordinate and that serve to challenge agencies and their ability to meet Farebox recovery, there have been a series of exemptions that I would say very specifically drive us toward innovation.

So, for example, in the last round of statutory relief that was provided by the Legislature, the Legislature did provide an exemption for the movement toward fare-free, or discounted fares and how that is counted within Farebox recovery.

And so historically, agencies have been averse to moving forward with fare-free, or discounted fare programs because it took a hit to their Farebox recovery, made it more challenging for them to meet that test, and as a result, agencies would be facing penalties if they failed to meet that test.

And so again, there was an exemption provided there, but then also there were new exemptions that were provided to make as excludable costs things like the introduction of micro transit service as well as the introduction of contactless fair payment systems.

The idea there, being that the costs for these technologies are generally fairly high, the costs for maintaining those technologies over the long term are fairly high, and they typically would undercut the agency's ability to meet Farebox recovery.

Now, those exemptions again went into effect in only the last two years, and so we have seen agencies in that same period rapidly introduce new technologies, rapidly consider things like fare-free, or discounted fair programs. I would say precisely because now we have got those exemptions in place. Now that is in no way intended to be a defense of the Farebox Recovery Ratio.

As I noted in my testimony, I believe we need to start anew and consider new performance metrics, but there are ways in which we have already begun to lay the groundwork for improvements and innovation within the transit industry.

That's great. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay, I just want to touch on Mr. Pimentel. You mentioned the school partnerships as well, which I think is great. Obviously, it's been happening to some degree.

I know Los Angeles Unified School District, Long Beach Transit as well, has done some incredible work with K through 12 and it seems to be going well. And hopefully we'll be socialized a bit more across the state. AC transit the same thing.

So not necessarily a question, but just hopefully down the road we can get that data back and really figure out how those school partnerships worked and what we can do to expand those programs that I think provide new writers in the system. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a list of Members. Senator Weiner, you're next.

Thank you. First, I want to thank Chair Gonzalez and Chair Friedman for convening the hearing and for allowing me to be here today as a transit nerd who is not a Member of the Transportation Committee. And I want to thank the Chairs for their incredible leadership on all things transportation.

And I wanted to be here today because the Bay Area is so dependent on public transportation and is so deeply impacted by the current financial pending disaster.

It's not just challenges, it's a pending disaster for public transportation statewide, but particularly in the Bay Area. If we allow these agencies to go over the fiscal cliff and potentially go into a death spiral where they have to start cutting service and raising fares and then that lowers ridership even more and then they have to cut more service and raise fares even more, we have to prevent that.

We know how critical transit is for our climate goals, for equity, because not all people are impacted equally if transit falls apart. We know that if transit falls apart, congestion will be worse. So this isn't just about benefiting transit riders, it's benefiting drivers as well. It's in no one's interest for these systems to deteriorate and we know it will be deeply harmful for our economy.

We have already made it hard to impossible for low income and working-class people to live in places like San Francisco or Santa Monica or parts of LA. And now we're going to say we're not even going to give you a good bus service to be able to get to work. It's bad for them and it's bad for everyone who relies on that labor.

We know that even before the pandemic, California was not doing enough to fund public transportation pre pandemic, we were letting these systems struggle and now it's dramatically worse.

And the question for California is are we going to have public transportation in the future or are we going to just watch as these systems decline and in some cases become borderline non functional? We just have to acknowledge that these systems are not optional, this isn't a luxury and that we have to be there for it.

And that means, that if need be, that we have to use the California General Fund to provide a lifeline for these systems as the federal money runs out and as ridership recovers.

And I'm not saying ridership is going to always look exactly like it was before the pandemic, but we know that ridership is going up so it's not nearly as quickly as we want. Some Muni lines are over 100% ridership on the weekends. So things are looking a little different but it's taking time.

And wouldn't it be tragic if we just sat by and let these systems fall apart when we could have saved, them making all the reforms that we need to make in transit so that they reflect what we need in the future. I want to thank the Chairs for recognizing the linkage between public transportation and housing and that we need to stay on track.

By focusing housing density in sustainable locations, including near public transportation, that benefits housing, it benefits our climate goals, it reduces vehicle miles traveled and it benefits ridership on public transportation. I also just want to say we are allowing some of our transit systems, we're throwing them out there on their own to deal with homelessness.

And particularly BART and I know LA Metro and other systems have become homeless providers. They've been forced to and we're not giving them the funding to do it.

I know that BART has had to spend tens of millions of dollars out of its own budget on homeless services. They have to go begging cities and counties to give them money or to partner with them. They shouldn't have to do that. If we're going to expect them to be homeless providers, then the state should be giving them fund.

They should be eligible for more funding programs for homelessness. And we need to continue with the reforms. We need more dedicated bus lanes.

We know that that works, and it increases ridership. We've seen that in San Francisco, we've seen it elsewhere. We should be requiring Caltrans to add bus only lanes where it makes sense. That should be a mandate on Caltrans to do that. Not a pretty please, but a mandate.

And we need to move towards open loop payment systems and away from systems that are much clunkier and more expensive and less user friendly. So the good news is we know what we need to do.

None of this is rocket science. We have leadership from our Chairs and from our budget leadership to move in this direction and we need to all work together and get it done. And so, my question, Mr. Edison, is I know I don't expect you to speak for the Governor on all things budget.

I don't want to put you in that position, but I'm going to a little bit put you in that position right now, keeping in mind all the great things that you talked about that we need to do in the future. How are we going to save these systems so they don't fall apart and so we can keep them alive and make all of those great reforms?

Well, thank you very much, Senator Weiner. I appreciate it. There are many of these solutions that require consultation between the operators, the Administration, Legislature, on getting to the right solutions. And those are both policy level solutions.

Those are working within the budget and statutory provisions that we already have in place and they include conversations around how to better align resources in the future to make the most important investments happen.

We have a lot of flexibility within the funds that we already have and some of that involves some of the new federal money that's coming to California and making sure it lands in the right places. We really think that there's a long-term solution here and look forward to that consultation that will happen in these coming weeks.

And it also has to do with the proposed $2 billion capital cut in the Governor's January budget that needs to be reversed as well. So, thank you very much. Madam Chairs.

Thank you, Senator Wahab.

Thank you. I do not use public transit for specific reasons, one in particular being that it's slower than me driving anywhere, even in Bay Area traffic. Right?

Even if I were to come from the Bay Area to Sacramento, I drive faster than what's available via public transit. And I think that's another reason why so many people turn away from transit. Right? And I wanted to ask if there has been any consideration in areas, for example, the nine Bay Area counties, there's 27 official transit agencies. Have we thought about consolidation?

I'm happy to start off with that question. I would say certainly there have been conversations about consolidation in the past. I think much of the conversation, though, today has pivoted toward this concept of a network manager in the Bay Area, one that can coordinate the agencies, coordinate their schedules, coordinate their fair media as a way of ensuring that their seamlessness be between the systems. But having not worked particularly close to those regional conversations, wouldn't want to suggest that conversations are any more advanced than those conversations about network management that are an outgrowth of the seamless Bay Area discussions.

Yeah. And I would add that what you're pointing out here about how long it takes to use transit is a really critical piece here. As we've looked through the data and seen how long it takes people to use it. Relatively few trips, often less than 10%, can be made in less than twice as long as driving. And many trips are four or five times longer than driving or aren't even possible at the time of day you want to take the trip. And that really puts a burden on people who are dependent on that transit because it takes so long to get where they need to go, and it's one of the reasons we look at opportunities like transit priority. During the blue ribbon task force in the Bay Area, one of the things that we highlighted was the opportunity to take trips in the corridor, like the 680 corridor, and make them regional express trips. And that really addressed this issue of taking four times longer than driving now and getting it to something that was more reasonable, something that was not quite double, but still relatively efficient. And so this is a really key way that agencies working together, it doesn't necessarily take consolidation, but it takes good regional conversation and data analysis and a real concern about the trips people are really making, rather than just focusing primarily within your service area, because many people go beyond your service area. And so I think this is kind of a lesson of metropolitan regions like the Bay Area, southern California, where we really need to encourage that as much as possible the working together to make the trips better.

Definitely. I do think that a study needs to be done that's more up to date in regards to consolidation efforts, number one. Number two is that the big concern has always been and will continue to be speed. When you compare us to DC, New York, they have two trains at any time going. You have one that goes to the, let's say, destinations from San Jose to San Francisco, and another train that will go to each stop when you're in New York City or DC. We do not have that option here in the Bay Area. And then the timeframes that many people utilize these options, for example, there is no nine to five in the Bay Area. People are working a lot earlier, a lot later, and oftentimes that's a limitation in itself, especially for working class people and individuals that want to save a buck and also want to not think when they're driving. Do we plan to have a study? Do we plan to kind of have this? Because I will say, if you speak to any person, as much as we'd like to collaborate, sometimes there's too many chefs in the kitchen and there's not a significant, too many silos, too many territorial disputes and so forth, and not the big picture of how can we make this faster, efficient, cheaper and better for residents.

I think that the question about consolidation has been looked at over the years, and it's really important to kind of think about the various things that transit agencies are doing. One of them is that we have a lot of different agencies with different fare rules, different route structures that make things very confusing to the consumer of the service. But that's not necessarily the same thing as being efficient in terms of delivering the service. So very large transit agencies tend to cost more per unit of service than medium sized agencies, which is sort of the sweet spot. So there could be models where you actually have multiple providers of the service, but they don't have to all be branded differently with different fare structures. They could be done in a way that on the consumer side is much more seamless between them. So I think that we kind of phrase it as a zero 1. Either they're all consolidated together in every aspect of their operation, or they're all separate, and there could be ways of delivering. You occasionally have flown on service that's nominally American airlines but provided by another provider. It was seamless to you, but it was done for operational purposes. So that's one thing I think that would be important to look at in terms of the benefits of consolidation. The thing I wanted to mention about speed, and I just want to tie it to something very specific that's come up here, is that one of the most important things to a transit traveler after safety is sort of reliability of service. Am I going to get to my destination on time? Do I understand when I'm going to get there? And over time, as we allow anybody who wants to crowd onto any road they want, it slows down the transit vehicles, it makes things much less reliable. Transit lanes in congested areas speed those vehicles relative to the other lanes. So necessarily you don't have a big advantage when you're driving relative to traveling on transit. So you might be alone in your car, and there might be 30 people on a bus, sort of logical to allow them priority to get through. One of the things that that does is by speeding up the vehicle, it actually shortens the time between vehicles. It stops. That's the same as adding more service, but it didn't cost you anymore. And by doing that, the thing that really affects people's use is how long they have to wait for a vehicle. And if you can shorten those wait times by speeding up the vehicles, you can get all sorts of payoff at a relatively low cost. So I think you're absolutely on point about the importance of coming up with better ways to manage the speed and reliability of the system. We know how we can do that, but often that meets with enormous resistance, again, against folks who don't want parking taken off of that commercial corridor to allow for that transit lane to go through. And these are ways that, if we can get these in place, we can get more ridership by making that service faster and more reliable and maybe attract you out of the car.

Thank you, Senator Blakespear.

Yes. Thank you. First, I want to say thank you to the chairs of this committee, both the Assembly and the Senate. This is my very first committee meeting as a legislator, so I'm excited that it's around transportation, and I want to thank you and everybody else who's here today and just echo some of the comments that have been said. I'll be brief. I know that we have a lot to get through, but Senator Weiner mentioned that transit needed more investment before the pandemic, and I think that's really worth emphasizing. And I was very alarmed to see the governor's budget not leaning into this area. So when it comes to both capital costs and operating costs, we clearly need to be doing more at the state level. So the background paper that I thought was very useful and relevant, and I'm happy to have had it provided to us, says that 14% of transit is funded by the state. Just 14%. And that really shows you how little actually the systems are getting by with state support. And so, thinking about how we can be more efficient and effective. I just want to mention a couple of things that were referenced, particularly by Chair Friedman. This issue of the ways that we can make money from actually within the transit system. So the background paper mentioned these things parking fees, concessions, advertising. These are things, I was on an airport authority, as well as being the chair of SANDAG, which is the transportation agency in San Diego, the airport authority was very effectively creating revenue streams from parking, concessions, advertising. It was a major part of what we talked about at board meetings, and it was clearly built into the operation of their systems. And our transit systems just do not seem to have that. And so I wanted to think about ways that we could either provide more oversight, more incentives, more mandates that would make this part of the revenue stream that would be more effective for transit agencies. And also to mention along the same lines of the barriers to entry to using transit. Mr. Edison referenced this, being able to use a credit card, which seems so obvious that you would use a credit card. This is the way it operates in many transit systems throughout the world, but also in nearly everything else we buy. So what was referred to as fragmented fare policies. I think there's no question that that creates a feeling of discomfort, a barrier to entry, confusion around, and no one wants to prepay for these things. I mean, all of that is just a major problem, which it also seems to me we should be, as a state, either incentivizing mandating focusing on getting transit agencies to change that because clearly the current system of just letting the agencies do it as they want to has not resulted in these two areas revenue generation or the fragmented fair policies resolving themselves. And I want to just highlight what you shared, because I did not realize that the TDA exemptions actually were what created the opportunities for free passes to be something that transit agencies would embrace. And unfortunately, in this really excellent background paper, the city of San Diego, or the county of San Diego was not mentioned at all. And the county of San Diego is the second most populous in the entire state. There are 3.3 million people who live there. And so there are two major transit agencies in that county. And one of the things that we did in July of 2021 was we started a program, a Youth Opportunity Pass program, which was funded through local transit money, also through the county. And the Youth Opportunity Pass program allows for youth ridership for anybody 19 and under completely free. So you can go anywhere on any transit trains, buses, anything, including the train, so it's not just the bus for free. And it increased youth ridership by nearly 90% in one year. So if you think about that statistic, 90% of youth, it went up 90% in one year. And those you're building transit riders for the future. You're allowing low income families to bring their whole family to get onto transit. I mean, the unbelievable benefits in equity, in understanding how to get around in a way that works for them, freedom for anybody who's under 16 but can take transit and they don't have the opportunity to have a car. I mean, it's just incredible what a Youth Opportunity Pass can do. So the fact that we've only had those exemptions, as I just learned today in this hearing, for two years, means that those regulatory changes really can make a big difference. And so I'd like to really encourage us to think about our regulatory environment so that we are incentivizing those things better. The other thing we're doing in San Diego that's worth mentioning, which was mentioned, is these transit lanes that are on the existing road network, because the existing road network exists, and it goes where people want to go. So the idea of building fixed rail in other places is tremendously expensive, as we see. I mean, we obviously see all the hurdles, capital and otherwise, particularly land use issues which we don't talk about enough, eminent domain, all the very unpopular elements of trying to build new transit. And so how do we reimagine the transportation networks we have and making it so that we consider our road networks to be transit only? I think that's a really important thing. And we're doing bus on shoulder with CalTRANS in San Diego. You know, there are obvious problems with that. And there are also opponents because sometimes cars do break down and they have to pull over somewhere. So to the extent we can be re envisioning, that part of our transportation network, I think that's really so I guess I would say my question, there are a lot of statements in there and just things that I think are important that we think about. But the Low Sand Corridor, which is the second busiest rail corridor in the nation, goes 350 miles from San Luis Obispo all the way to San Diego. And that has had a major reliability problem. When you have to take a bus bridge, get off the train and take a bus bridge for an hour to go around a section of the tracks that is crumbling into the ocean in San Clemente, you know that you have a major problem. And this background paper said that reliability is the number one criteria for people choosing to take transit. Reliability, punctuality, frequency, comfort, security, all those things being so important. And so thinking about investing in that existing fixed rail corridor, but also making sure that we can allow people to continue to ride the system. These are all so important and there are these barriers that I wanted. The question is, what can we do to do more in this area? And I give it to any of the three of you to really be focused on the solutions, because I think that's what we're all here to do is to try to come up with those solutions. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you.

So I want to touch on a few things, and here I'm going to look backwards, but it does speak to how we move forward. And that would be as an association, we've been bullish about securing new statutory rights for our agencies to pursue transit prioritization projects. And just a few examples of this include last year's SB 922 by Senator Scott Weiner that provided to the agencies the ability to exempt from CEQA the delivery of things like bus only lanes for bus rapid transit projects. And the idea here is that too often we have folks who don't want to see these prioritization projects take hold because they're concerned about what that might do to their travel times in a single occupancy vehicle, or they're concerned about what might happen to their parking. And they stand to object to the project, often on environmental grounds, and that draws out the project and keeps the agencies from delivering it and delivering the travel time savings. Now, thanks to SB 922, we've got a CEQA exemption that helps accelerate that. But as a twin measure, we had also pursued with Assembly Member Richard Bloom, who's no longer in the Assembly, AB 917 that provided agencies with the authority to use forward facing cameras to cite individuals who were parked in bus only lanes. And this speaks to the travel time savings. You can have a bus only lane, but if it's encumbered by a car, an Uber, a Lyft, or any individual who just chooses to park there, the efficiency and the effectiveness of that bus only lane goes away. And so we have created a pathway toward those citations. But then I also want to acknowledge that we as an association have long pursuit and this probably goes back to 2016 or 2017, broader authority for bus on shoulder pilot projects across the state. We've looked at what has happened in SANDAG. We've read the reports that happened after the first pilot and saw that we had on time performance reaching something like the 95% to 97% level. That doesn't happen often in public transit. And so we've been wanting to encourage that. Unfortunately, we've been faced with some challenges here in the state Legislature to pursue those. But our encouragement to the Administration here, I'm talking to my colleague, Chad Edison, but also to CalTRANS is we've got to find a way to prioritize within the state's assets, public transit service that's high capacity, that allows us to achieve these travel time savings, the real time on time performance that will get folks onto high capacity public transit. Now, the very final thing I want to acknowledge is on the Faire Free front, though it's a departure of prioritization is beyond the regulatory relief that was provided by the state. The other thing that has provided strong support for agencies to move in that direction is funding. We have a program today, the Low Carbon Transit Operations Program, that is supported by 5% of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund on a continuous basis. The variety of projects that are eligible for funds from that program include fare free or discounted faire programs. And we have seen that as a dominant means for agencies to secure that state dollar, pair it with a local dollar, oftentimes in partnership with a school district, a community college, or a CSU or UC, and together have enough funds to sustain those programs for duration. And so my encouragement would be, as we move forward with this consideration of Faire free, my message would be we need to focus on state funding to bring these projects online, make sure that they're sustainable, that they're resilient, that they don't charge agencies with doing more than their financial capacity could allow. And with that sustainability comes, as you're noting, lifetime riders for our systems.

Okay. Assembly Member. Carrillio.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Apologize for my voice. Thank you, first of all, for both chairs for facilitating this meeting. And thank you to the panelists for providing your expertise in this space. A couple of comments on what I've heard so far and then a question on the use of technology to be able to use data that is important to continue to provide and increase use of transit.

When we are only funding 14% of the state funding for public transit, there's no way we can get better, faster and cheaper transportation. I have to agree with Senator Winner here that housing and public transit go hand in hand as well as the jobs availability around these transit areas and housing opportunities throughout the state in different rural areas, including in rural areas. I represent an area that is rural in nature. It's about 60 miles away from LA.

It's the high desert, the Antelope Valley and the Victor Valley. And I heard also a comment about successful and reliable transit. If we don't invest in social infrastructure, we're not going to get there. Yes, riders want reliability to be able to get to where they're going, getting to work and getting back home in a timely manner rather than spending 3 hours to get home after a hard day of work. So I think that we need to start investing that social infrastructure.

As far as making these transit systems being profitable, I think that we are looking at it in a different way. I think that we need to really look at the social infrastructure that we need to invest in the mental health issues that we have. We all drive on the freeways, we all get sometimes running late, sometimes we are fighting to switch lanes and get to where we need to go.

And I think that that's a big area that we need to focus on as far as providing the mental health and the social infrastructure that we need to invest in. Yes, there are other nations that make public transit been reliable, but that is because they do invest in the social infrastructure of their countries or their citizens. That's my belief.

And I think that we need to start looking at that rather than just making a profit on a transit system in a monetary way, we need to start looking at the social investment that we need to do so that we can get people to work and get them back home. I did leave to another meeting. I apologize for that. My question has to do with technology and what do you use now to look at the data that is there? I'm a city planner by profession.

I remember using traffic manuals, those big thick books that told you the trips and that's how you calculated parking requirements and all of those things. But with technology now, I think that we need to find a way that we can have better access and provide it in a uniform way to all different agencies. We talked about the different agencies that are throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, the LA area, but a lot of times local jurisdictions do not use the same data.

Sometimes they're looking at old data, and sometimes they're looking at different types of data. And I apologize again. I left for a little bit. I don't know if you talked about the type of data that you use to see where riders are going, because again, with technology now we have to be able to see where riders are going, what time they're going, and increasing the frequency of buses.

When we provide free buses to students, if there's going to be a bus an hour and a half later, that really doesn't help much. As far as increasing the usage of public transit in urban areas, that does make sense. Increasing the ridership by 90%. But in areas that I represent, where there's two community colleges, but if you have only one basket route every hour, that doesn't motivate people to do that.

Another quick thing, I also heard that we need to motivate Low income families to use transit. I think that we're looking at it in the wrong way. If we want to really make public transit be reliable, why aren't we not focusing on everybody, not just the Low income families, to use transit? We need to look at that too.

With that, I just want to let you know that I'm looking at the use of data, the use of technology, making it, again, available in a uniform way across the state. And for that, I introduce a Bill, AB 749, that will allow all transit agencies in all your local jurisdictions to be able to use data that is going to be up to date with the use of technology that is available right now.

Again, can you tell us or tell me what kind of data you're using to increase readership?

Sure. Thank you very much. There are a number of different forms of data that can help here. And some of my colleagues know a lot more about this. Who are data? Scientists within Caltrans and other parts of state government. But specifically in the category of knowing where people are going and when they're going there. There's a lot of anonymous data out there. A lot of it's generated from cell phone activity that gives that sense of where people are traveling and when they want to travel.

And when we match that's part of how the data that I was talking about, where we can say that in many places only 5% of trips can be made in twice as long as driving. That's from matching up that data of how people are traveling around the state with a transit timetable and its frequency and knowing that there's a huge gap there between what's available to them when someone is making a trip today by car and what's possible on a transit system at the same time.

Likewise understanding the reliability of transit vehicles, many of the systems that either do contactless, payment or otherwise report into dispatching systems, report into something called GTFS Real Time, and it provides a real sense of where the transit vehicles are on the system all day long, and it's a constant source of data. We did one investigation of this on Pacific Coast Highway with Long Beach Transit and saw every place in which that bus slowed down kind of throughout the day and where the bottlenecks were.

And working with state engineers looking at traffic signal opportunities, queue jumping, other kinds of things, the idea here is to be able to use that data to identify how to improve that corridor so that more people move through it more quickly. There was one place near Cal State, Long Beach, where just getting a quarter mile down the road on average took eight minutes for the buses that were on that corridor, and they were carrying tens of thousands of people a day.

And so it's using this information that we have and then applying it to fixes that we can make that is really key to making service more reliable and understanding how people are using the system now and how we can then put transit in those places and make it reliable at the times that people want to use it.

Just one quick thing on that, I want to tie it to an earlier comment. We're doing some work for Skag where we're using mobile device data in the Southern California region, and we're looking at post pandemic travel. And while traffic levels are similar to what they were before, they've shifted enormously in time and space. And one of the things is that the peak period has spread in the afternoon over a much longer period of time.

And now the peak of the peak in Southern California is between three and 04:00 P.m. And not between five and 06:00 P.m.. And the growth in traffic that we're observing is most closely related to where schools are. So we're seeing lots of vehicle trips because students are being picked up and dropped off. And that's a huge shift in the change in traffic levels related to pickups and drop offs of schools. And that ties me to something that's come up quite a bit nationwide.

More people ride yellow school buses in a year than ride all the public transit systems combined. Yet California ranks at the very bottom in terms of per pupil yellow school bus service in the state. So these things are not unrelated to one another. And so because of that, we have a situation where huge growth in traffic around schools, limitations in some cases on what operators can do to provide, I mean, regular transit operators to provide extra service around schools.

And we don't have yellow school bus service that we do in many other states. So these things sort of tie together and also go again to that developing that transit habit. If people ride school buses growing up, they may be more likely to ride regular buses when they're adults.

Thank you. And as a mom who has to drive her daughter to and from school every day yes on that, Senator Cortese.

Thank you, Madam chair and Chairs. I should say poirle. I do appreciate the hearing. Obviously, as Senator Weiner was indicating, we feel a great sense of urgency, particularly in the Bay Area on this issue. It's great to hear my colleague from San Diego area bringing all of her expertise and knowledge into this discussion. As a new Member of the Senate. First, before I forget or fail to mention it, we and when I say we, I refer to my office, but also certain Members of our caucus.

Senator Weiner and others fought very, very hard last year in the budget process to make sure that we had infrastructure funding that was coming out of the General Fund to augment all the other buckets of funding that are out there to get us to completion or at least much further along on what we were referring to. Many of us were referring to as legacy projects within the state that just aren't going to get done if we miss this window of opportunity.

I understand that the delays or reductions, depending on how you look at those in the governor's budget this year, impact both operating and infrastructure about equally. If I'm wrong on that, please correct me when you respond. Either way, we can't have that. And I just want to make that clear as a matter of my own opinion. In my area in the South Bay.

The connectivity to the BART system, of course, which has been a huge self help project along with Federal and State Dollars in the past, but a huge self help project based on very large sales tax investments over the year and other investments it really hinges on, as one example, hinges on those dollars. And I know that you know that so called BART to San Jose or South Bay BART project, that extension.

Let me just very quickly note a couple of things, and I do have a question or a specific response I'm looking for on one issue, which is the fairbox recovery issue, which you spent some time talking about and which is highlighted in the notes that I read. Let me just say by way of background, for 22 years I've been at some level involved in public policy on transportation. 2001 to VTA, our cog the association of Bay Area Governments. At the same time.

Then a few years later, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. And I chaired that for a couple of years. When I left there, we had just launched this blue ribbon task force that you have referenced several times. Ironically, for those talking about the use of transit, including some of my colleagues, it was about 2 hours to get from San Jose to San Francisco for those meetings on BART and 2 hours back. I mean, the round trip was basically a two hour adventure.

About the same in my EV, so at least that one was kind of a wash. I mean, it was much more efficient, much more predictable, much more reliable, of course. So I do want to give a shout out there. But the big irony is the fact that we went to remote meetings and I think a whole bunch of us were saying why in the hell have we created such an individual carbon footprint over the years racing from every county in the region to San Francisco?

No offense, Scott, prior to that, Oakland for these meetings when we could have been doing them remote all along. I mean, that's an issue in and of itself that has a little less to do with this hearing, except for the fact that although local governments and regional agencies can't do that anymore or won't be able to do that anymore, absent some sort of legislation that will allow it, we all know that industry has done it and is doing it.

And I think that alone is going to make fairbox recovery sort of more obsolete than it already was. I don't believe in fairbox recovery in terms of it being any kind of truly sustainable revenue source for transit operators. Based on my years as a public official in VTA, for example, was always less than 10% of the total cost of doing business, our total budget.

And yet, frankly, a lot of local officials would emphasize it as if it was the be all end, all of making ends meet. It isn't, but it has been a huge indicator, performance indicator, especially at the regional level in in my observation for who's worthy of of continued support by state and federal government and regional governments and who isn't. The fact of the matter is, we have bus systems and some light rail systems aren't carrying any real ridership.

And I think there are other ways to get to that issue, rather than just pointing at their poor farebox recovery and then trying to do the punitive things or trying to force consolidation, as Senator Wahab was talking about, which I do believe is needed in the Bay Area. I'll second that motion. But somebody's got to come up with a way to fully subsidize what used to be fair box recovery, not depend on self help measures in the counties.

There's just no way you're going to add more sales tax, which has historically, as you know, been the only way we could figure out how to get measures passed in our counties. We're maxed out. You can't sales tax your way out of this anymore. So how do we backfill fairbox?

If you want to get rid of it and if you want to get rid of it, what's the new measure exactly for performance and then how do we hold operators accountable if they don't hit those performance measures? Because all of that, as others have said before me today, have led us to what two years ago I referred to as the thelma Louise effect.

And I think the only reason we haven't gone off the fiscal cliff, of course, is the subsidies that have been received as a result of the pandemic postponed this day. But the day of reckoning is here.

And I just don't see whether it's been the blue ribbon task force in our Bay Area or anybody else that's really figured out the new equation and how to balance it and certainly hasn't figured out how to get buy in from the boards of 27 or 28 different operators even in our own region. So we have a big problem. I don't expect that the State General Fund is going to be able to in any permanent way backfill fair box recovery over the long haul.

But if not, if that's a correct statement, then the question to you is how do we get there? And I'll stop there. I think each and every one of us from what I've heard today could go on and probably make this a 16 hours hearing or something that none of us would want to have.

And I also want to say I'm happy to see on the next panel rebecca Long among others from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission because I know she'll have some more insight into the impacts in our region. But let me just leave my question there on the fairbox Recovery side. Thank you.

Well, thank you for the question, Senator. And I do want to acknowledge first a bit of a process story and that is prior to the pandemic we were charged by the then chairs of the Transportation Committees, Senator Jim Bell and Assembly Member Jim Frazier to take on an effort to reform the Transportation Development Act.

And embedded within their request of my association in our industry was that we identify a path toward continuing to provide the state with information about our performance as an industry and at an individual agency level, but to move past the concept of fairbox recovery. Now, the unfortunate thing is that as we were making progress as an association, the pandemic hit in March 2020 and conversations about that replacement were put on hold and in place.

What was presented and what became law were what I've referred to throughout this hearing as statutory relief. And that was further exclusions from what is counted toward fairbox recovery and STA's performance criteria as well as a series of one off measures to support agencies and continue to hold on to their share of state revenue while we were seeing some significant shifts in what agencies were reporting in what we call revenue basis.

And so one of the things that we are taking on this year and it's been an ongoing conversation with the committee consultants about parameters and timing is precisely this conversation about replacement. What more can be presented to the state to address your need for information? I would say your rifle imperative to that information with the reality that our traditional performance measure of fairbox recovery no longer demonstrates a whole lot about what agencies are doing, their effectiveness as services and thus requires a replacement.

And so much of our work is going to be informed by the thinking that has come out of transportation studies and Brian may be able to speak with a bit more specificity in terms of some of the recommendations so far. But we do want to find a metric that speaks more broadly to the social impact of public transit because we're going to recognize there are certain agencies that the sole focus of their service is providing lifeline service to Californians.

Those systems may never be effective from a fairbox recovery perspective but the role is still essential. So how do we find a way to comprehend that, to affirm that, but then also recognize that for certain other agencies they're going to be productive on what are traditional performance metrics and that may be an okay route for them. And so we are still very much looking to identify a path forward.

What I do want to though highlight with regards to your second question or the corollary to that question, which was how do we identify revenues if not fair box revenues? I think here I would posit that we still very much see a path toward continued generation of fairbox revenues. But what that is going to require is a change in our business model. And so no longer have we seen that agencies can provide service to commuters because commuters in a lot of contexts don't exist.

But we might be able to find some new growth opportunities. I've highlighted, for example, partnerships with schools. That may be one path forward but we're also looking to see how might we encourage more choice writers for things like recreation. And for that I think we need to demonstrate the value proposition. And to Senator Wahob's points, we've got to find a way to demonstrate travel time, savings service reliability and effectiveness to bring those people in.

And so much of our work over these next few years are going to be on that performance front but also advising the industry on how it is that we identify those growth opportunities, lean into them if they require additional statutory authorization, working to secure it so that we can build into that sustainability. But I think as we're having these conversations we also want to make sure that we are establishing diversity in our funding streams.

I would not suggest to you that there may not be another push for additional sales tax revenue. I think regions across state are having some initial conversations about that but that may not be the sole path forward. And I think to the conversations earlier about identification of ancillary revenue.

We want to find what those options are so we can create a composite of funding streams that provide us with the same funding support that fairbox revenue once did and that also allows us to have some sustainability over. The long term, recognizing that other forms of revenue sources that we have sales tax revenue from local transportation Fund diesel sales tax revenue from the state transit assistance program are also things that are volatile.

And certainly if we see an economic recession, sales tax revenue is going to go down. If we see this continued drive toward eliminating diesel fuel, the taxation that happens on diesel fuel that provides support to the State Transit Assistance Program is going to take a hit. And so these are broader based conversations that we are in the process of having as we have turned the corner on the worst of the pandemic and that we're going to want to lean into in concert with these committees.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member Jackson.

Thank you very much, madam Chair. I held from the Inland Empire. Raised in San Bernardino, now representing Riverside County. And one of the things that we forget about just how diverse the geographic regions are in California, and my concern and the reason why I've even requested to be on this committee is to making sure that a region such as the Allen Empire is represented in terms of how we create policy.

Many times we have a lot of urban focused transportation policies, but folks like me are usually left out of the discussion. I spent six years driving from Riverside County to Los Angeles, right? If you're driving two and a half hours, 3 hours drive one way. Right. Member Korea knows the pain I'm talking about. Had about a year or two of road rage, never ended up in jail, thankfully. But obviously we've got to do a better job at planning. Not too much time.

We keep saying we need to plan on a statewide level. I think we'll be missing too many people if we do that. How do we plan based upon the unique geographic areas of California? Right? And so my first question is how can we do a better job with planning with non urban areas in mind? Any thoughts about that?

One of the struggles we have with the industry and I think there's a lot of promising work going on, is that we have a basic business model, which is typically a 40 foot bus operating on a fixed route. On a fixed schedule, which, again, works really well in built up places where there's a lot of demand, in particular corridors and the service can be frequent. And when it is, it's attractive for folks.

If you keep extending this service out into lower and lower density areas where the origins and destination trips are more spread out, that big bus operating on that fixed route eventually becomes not very viable way of delivering service. There's a lot of pilot projects and experiments going on now with different forms of microtransit.

The ability to deliver a transit service which is going to be more what we'd call sort of demand driven, that someone can call for a vehicle and let them know that they need to be picked up. You think of it as somewhere of a hybrid between something like Lyft or Uber and a traditional transit vehicle or.

Like a Dial a Ride or something.

Yeah. It's actually a high tech, more modern version of what Dilemmide, which was developed in the 1970s to provide this kind of service. The paratransit meant, beyond transit, something more at the time. The technology wasn't in place in the 70s when it was first developed, and now it is.

And there's some really promising experiments on how we can deliver something which is higher quality for the user, which is lower cost, because you don't need to operate big buses on fixed routes with fixed schedules in outlying areas. And I think that there's going to be a lot of developments in the next few years as some of these pilot projects play out. And I think that it's important not just to do it in the larger cities. We have some projects like that in LA.

Metro right now, but in places around the state where we have difficult to serve environments where there are people who don't have access to cars that do need service, and they need better quality service than we're able to provide cost effectively with traditional service. So I'm sanguine about the future in this because I think there's a lot of good experiments going on right now.

Anyone else?

Yes, Senator Archuleta.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you both for bringing us all together. And I think these things that we're talking about, all transportation across the state and of course different regions have different problems and so on, but in the Los Angeles area, greater Los Angeles, San Diego Valley in the area. So if you ask some of my constituents, why don't you get on that bus? And those that do, they say, I have no choice. That's what I got to do.

I've got to wait in the rain. I've got to wait an hour, whatever it is. That's no choice. Then you ask somebody that. Here's what we have to come full circle. If someone says, I do have a choice, I prefer to take the public transit because I know about reliability. I know about dependability. I know about cost and the future.

Someone in that same category would say, I know they're safe, they're clean, and it's a good way to go to take my family for a Sunday ride, not in the car, but on the bus. Imagine if we can do that.

But we're not going to be able to do that until we start cleaning up the graffiti on some of these buses, clean up the graffiti on the corridors that are down these highways and freeways until we actually clean up California, because our streets need to be cleaned up. Granted, we're not talking about the homeless that are out there, but that's an issue. We're not talking about so much housing, but that's an issue. But as far as transportation is concerned, we need to double down.

We need to have a brand new PR program that we can go ahead and promote that in California. Anywhere you go, you will find quick, reliable, clean, and safe buses. Transportation will get you from point A to point B, and we'll do it in a timely manner. And more importantly, that you can take your family with you and feel safe. When we accomplish that, I think the doors will open.

And yes, we've got to give you more money, but I think also you've got to give us a good PR program so we can start opening these doors. Your comments? All.

There is a Clean California program that was brought online a year or two ago that is providing agencies with the ability to apply for dollars for making things like station area improvements, that clean up Graffiti, that clean up debris at their stations, at their bus stops as a way of providing a cleaner outward face to the General public of our services. But I do want to also touch on the homelessness issue a bit more.

It's something that I touched on in my remarks, something that Senator Weiner brought up in his comments. And here part of the solution is new funding from the state directly to the transit agencies. In Senator Weiner's words, agencies have to go out and beg to local governments to secure those dollars. And as we've talked to our agency Members, they are very much pulling from their operating budgets to address the incidents of homelessness on their systems.

And the agencies that are making the strides in this area are not moving in a direction of further criminalization. They're moving in a direction of establishing ambassador programs, directing folks to supportive services, and finding a path forward for ensuring that those individuals can ultimately find themselves in a position that they're financially stable, they're financially healthy. And it's there that we do need some additional help. And part of that is a social or moral imperative. The other intersects with this ridership story that we've been telling.

When we talk to folks that were once choice riders, they had the option to take public transit or to take their single occupancy vehicle if they're not riding today. There are two dominant reasons for that. One is remote work. The other are concerns about safety or cleanliness of the systems. And so having a through line to direct state support there would help us immensely in making some progress on these fronts.

Have a comment? I'd like to, if I may, Madam Chair. Is continue on this note. We all want our air cleaner, zero emissions. And I know that foothill transit where I took a look, see a tour, and actually rode the buses, hydrogen, the hydrogen buses. We're finding more and more transit agencies are going in that direction. And I think we also need to support them because that's an alternative.

And I think that those who will ride those buses in the future will feel that they're giving back, giving back to the clean air that we need, giving back to the children and their children because an agency is actually going forward with clean hydrogen. What are your thoughts on that?

Yes, sir. Hydrogen is definitely part of the package here in terms of clean transportation. And on the state side, we are looking at both inner city bus and inner city rail services that will use hydrogen as part of the package. A lot of times, those also come with batteries in the same vehicles that can provide additional support for the service.

But definitely hydrogen is one of the technologies, and we're working with a number of bus operators, both urban and inner city, around the state to provide that kind of advance, those kinds of procurements and do those together, because in many cases, agencies, each doing their own procurement in this space, would be wasteful of resources.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. I want to thank the panel for being here and taking all these questions for such a long period of time. I know that you can see the level of interest for all the legislators. So thank you. I just want to let you know, too, that we are working on a measure about homelessness outreach on transit, and I definitely want to continue the discussion about whether transit agencies should be doing this work at all.

Not that you don't do it well in many cases, but are our local transit homelessness agencies stepping up, and don't we need more coordination, less fragmentation? So let's continue that conversation on another day. But thanks again, and we'll call our second panel up, and I'll remind myself and all of our remaining legislators that we still have two panels left and lots of people have lots of planes to catch, et cetera. So we will try to do our best to get you through this.

But again, thank you. You can see that there's an incredible amount of interest from the Legislature in transit agencies, and I'm really very thrilled to see this level of participation as well. We don't get that very often in an informational hearing, so that's because of the quality of the speakers that we have. So thanks again for being here, and I'll let whichever of you wants to begin.

Here we go. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Gonzalez and Chair Friedman, for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Michael Turner. I'm the Executive officer for government relations at Metro here today on behalf of our CEO, Stephanie Wiggins, who needed to remain in LA. Due to the storm's impact on our system. Metro is the second busiest transit agency in the country, and we are the lead transportation planning and funding agency for Los Angeles County, home to 10 million people.

I should note our goal as an agency has been to transform transit in Los Angeles County, and we're doing that through the nation's most ambitious capital expansion program and some of the most innovative transit programs in the country. Like other transit agencies in California and indeed the state of California, we're also facing a fiscal cliff with the loss of federal revenue and the increased costs as a consequence of the Pandemic, ridership is down, but it's coming back. We've had good progress to restore it.

We're about 70% overall of our ridership from Pre COVID and it's growing. Our annual ridership is up 12% a year post COVID, so those are all good news. The ridership increase is a direct result of the steps we've taken to improve quality and frequency of our service and make it more accessible and more transit and user friendly. We specifically targeted, for example, Low income riders, women and K through Twelve, and community college students.

We know the Pandemic has disrupted our customers travel patterns and we've implemented some new ideas that are paying off. First is to offer fast, frequent and reliable bus service. If we're going to recover our bus customers, who represent about 80% of our ridership, we need to think outside the box and do things innovatively. So we've implemented our next generation bus program. Could use a better name.

It'd be easier to say, which is a data informed strategy that optimizes our bus routes and provides greater bus frequencies throughout the day, particularly in the afternoons. One of the key things we did with this was we used big data. We used anonymized cell phone data to see how our riders are actually using our system because our bus system hasn't been restructured for about 20 years. So we was useful to look at where our patrons were actually traveling.

The data showed us that shift workers benefit from greater afternoon frequencies to facilitate changing work schedules and irregular commute hours. Also, women benefit because they more often perform household sustaining activities like picking up kids from daycare or going to the grocery store on the way home in the afternoons. We've also needed to build our workforce to make Next Generation work. So we went out and hired hundreds of new bus operators in 2022. We raised the starting wage for our operators by $4 an hour.

We're spending more money, but we're also providing a much better and more useful service. Because of that, we fully restored our pre Pandemic level of bus service through Next Generation through Next Gen in December of 2022. So we're back at the full level of bus service we were providing before the Pandemic. It's working and our ridership is slowly coming back. Data informed strategies are not all that we're doing. We've implemented new programs to help Low income people and students afford transit.

Our GoPass program partners with K through Twelve and community college districts and provides free access to students throughout our system and dozens of others in the county. GoPass resulted in a nearly 300% increase in student passholders in 2022. We've also partnered with the LA County Department of Public Social Services to help sign up people automatically for our Low income.

Low Income Is Fair, one of our subsidy programs where we're able to automatically enroll people in certain social assistance program into our reduced fare programs taken together, these two programs accounted for about 9% of all boardings last year and may have contributed a lot to the 12% increase we've seen. While these programs and initiatives are helping to restore ridership through an equity lens, we are faced with some stark realities and some big headwinds.

Metro is projecting a 400 million dollar deficit in fiscal year 2025 and a $1 billion deficit in fiscal year 2026. Let me repeat that deficit. Our projected deficit in 2025 is $400 million, and in 2026, $1 billion. GoPass and Life programs are currently paid for by operating funds. GoPass will cost 13 million in 2023. Life will cost 31 million.

You've heard from Mr. Pimentel talk about homelessness in our system, and we are experiencing that as a very significant problem in Los Angeles County, and it comes at a very big cost. Since 2018, Metro has used about 24 million in operating funds to pay for eight outreach teams to help provide people experiencing homelessness to connect to services. This year, we will spend about $255,000,000 on additional system cleaning.

A big chunk of that extra cleaning Bill is direct response to the second order effects of homelessness, and anyone writing our system today can tell you it's not enough. I'd also like to note that these problems are not unique to Metro. They're impacting all transit agencies in California. We work with all the municipal operators in LA County who are also experiencing similar challenges when it comes to real estate.

We've also donated parcels of Metro owned land for interim housing, not to mention the thousands of supportive and income housing restricted units that can be provided on our property and that can be built through our joint development program. Unfortunately, Metro doesn't qualify for funds to address the homeless crisis on our system. We have to rely on the service providers. In order to do that. We can't deliver the type of transit experience the voters expect without addressing that core issue.

And I'll close by saying this our moonshot goal at Metro is to be Angelino's first choice for transportation. To do that, we need to transform the way people move in LA County. LA counties voted at 71% in 2016 to transform our transportation system by voting for Measure R. We stand ready to collaborate with anyone and everyone to deliver on that vision. Madam Chair and Chair, I'll close my remarks there.

Good evening, chair Gonzalez and chair Friedman and Members. My name is Rebecca Long and I'm the Director of Legislation and Public Affairs at MTC. Thank you for having me today and for holding this hearing. I was asked to share what the Bay Area is doing to bring back riders and MTC's role in it. MTC is the Regional Transportation Planning Agency, or rtPA, for the nine county Bay Area, a region of 8 million people served by 27 distinct transit operators.

As you've already heard, despite this fragmented governance, riders can navigate the system with a single fair payment card known as Clipper, also available on your phone, which was developed by and is administered by MTC. As the RTPA, MTC is also responsible for long term planning, our Sustainable Community Strategy, which is the regional plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and project prioritization, and we distribute both state and federal transit funds.

In December 2022, over 20 million trips were taken on public transit in our region, a large number, but only 53% of 2019 levels. This significant reduction in ridership, along with steep increases in the cost of operating these last three years, results in a forecasted shortfall in our region of between two point five to two point nine billion dollars over the next five years.

Transit has always been a lifeline for the Bay Area's Low income residents, as well as many persons with disabilities and seniors who count on transit to get to work, school, medical appointments and other essential trips. But today, these riders represent an even greater share of Bay Area transit customers. Transit riders are also disproportionately more likely to be people of color. As such, having a healthy transit system is truly foundational to advancing equity in our region and our state.

So what are we doing to bring back riders and preserve our transit system? When the Pandemic hit, MTC recognized the crisis was also an opportunity to address long standing barriers to a more seamless transit system and formed a multi stakeholder blue ribbon task force to identify strategies to win back riders. Our first initiative is fair integration. I mentioned the Clipper card, which makes fair payment simple, but fair integration goes one step further, creating synergy and access where today there is a lot of friction.

The second is improving the experience writers have using multiple operators so that it feels truly like one connected harmonious system instead of a confusing maze of logos and symbols. We call this our Mapping and Wayfinding project, and we've recently brought on a consultant to develop it across the region. And last but not least, it's about speed. As we've already heard today, if transit takes much longer than driving, most people who have a choice won't take it.

When you give buses priority and cut down travel time, the riders do come. As helpful as these initiatives will be. They are one offs to sustain the momentum generated by the task force and create the customer focused seamless system we need. Just last week, MTC approved a new regional network management structure for the Bay Area to drive transformative improvements in the transit rider experience.

This will elevate the role MTC will play in coordinating public transit in partner with the transit agencies, and also includes a new Transit Customer Advisory Committee to give Bay Area transit riders a single forum to voice their concerns. In closing, I'd like to highlight some of the key challenges we face in bringing riders back. By far, the largest barrier the Bay Area faces is the shift in how we work.

Remote work has taken hold in the Bay Area more than anywhere else in North America, and there's little transit agencies can do about it. So those that were focused on serving commuters trying to avoid weekday traffic do need to reinvent themselves to attract different kinds of trips, like the weekend entertainment options, shopping, school trips, essential service workers, and more. Implementing transit priority is also a challenge.

As you also heard in the previous panel, transit agencies typically need permission from their city or from Caltrans to get preferential treatment on the roadway, and that is not easy. Finally, a major challenge is hiring. Many agencies do face operator vacancies of 20% or more and say the biggest barrier they face for ridership recovery is not having enough drivers to provide the better service levels that their customers would like to see. That concludes my prepared remarks, and thank you again for holding this hearing today.

Thank you. Next panelist.

Well, good afternoon. And honorable chairs. Gonzalez and Friedman. Thank you and committee Members, I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here today. I'm alex. Clifford. I'm the CEO at San Joaquin Regional Transit District, what we call RTD. Well, I've only been the CEO at RTD for a little over a year. I've been in transportation leadership for over 30 years, having served as CEO of Santa Cruz Metro for nine years prior to coming to RTD.

CEO of Chicago Metro Commuter Rail, one of the largest commuter rail systems in the nation. General Manager and as an Executive Officer of High Speed Rail at Los Angeles MTA, and also a Riverside City Councilman for eight years in which I cut my teeth on transit, representing the city and the county on various transit and rail commission and boards. I'm also a Member of the California Transit Association Executive committee.

You met Michael Earlier, chair of the Board of Directors of the California Association for Coordinated Transportation, known as Kellak, vice Chair of the American Public Transportation Association APTA small Operations Committee and board Member of the Bus Coalition. Also on various other national committees, including the Zero Emission Bus Resource Alliance, known as Zebra. Some quick demographic facts about our region. RTD is located in the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, a nonatainment district under the Federal Clean Air Act. RTD provides service throughout the county.

Between 2010 and 2020, the population of San Joaquin County increased nearly 14%. The Hispanic Latino population increased by 3.6%, the African American population remained at about 7.1%, and the number of Low income census tracts in the city of Stockton increased from 51 to 61. Let me just repeat that. The number of Low income census tracts in the city of Stockton increased over that ten year period from 51 to 61. Census Tracks approximately 75% of the census tracks in Stockton are identified as disadvantaged communities.

50% of the Stockton population is classified as lower income or below RTD has been at the forefront of technology advances in the industry. RTD operates 24 electric zero emission buses and was one of the earliest adopters of electric buses, having placed the first two buses in service back in 2013. Today, RTD is ordering five fuel cell electric buses for a three year pilot.

The pilot will help RTD determine the ultimate mix of battery, electric and fuel cell electric buses as we work towards complying with the CARB's innovative clean transit ICT regulation. RTD is in the process of improving the fair payment system to mirror the goals of calitp, namely seamless contact travel between transit agencies. RTD operates microtransit branded as Van Gogh. This pilot is certainly under review. We do not see microtransit as a solution to offsetting ridership losses.

And I'll be happy to double back to that when you get back into Q. A RTD's research reflects that there are a large number of disadvantaged neighborhoods. In Stockton, in which, over the past decade or more, fixed route bus service in these neighborhoods has degraded to 1 hour service frequency and a shrinking span of service. Clearly a formula for failure.

So as I bring this to a close, I want to close with how can the state help us and be happy to talk about these two afterwards? Certainly, as been discussed today, providing more funding, reduce regulations, avoid legislation that just does not help resolve the ridership problem. Operating funding certainly is something that we need if we're going to meet our goal of focusing all of our service, realigning service and focusing on those disadvantaged neighborhoods.

That's going to cost millions of dollars unless we rob Peter to pay Paul Take from some other area and reallocate that service. That increase in service will also cost a lot in capital resources. We'll have to buy more revenue service buses. Those costs of those buses are going up higher and higher, especially in the last couple of years. TDA reform, as has been talked about, should be on the plate.

We need to figure out how to avoid transit agencies, not just ours, but other transit agencies across the state from losing TDA funding. Youth fair programs have been talked about. I know there's been legislation proposed last year. I think it's coming back again this year. I would prefer that you let that be a local decision. A lot of agencies are doing exactly what we're doing. We've partnered with the local school districts. We partnered with the community college.

We're in the process of trying to explore a partnership with University of Pacific. This can be done at a local level, does not have to be legislated relative to the Transit Recovery Task Force chairwoman. I understand that you're proposing legislation. I would just ask you to sort of maybe flip that model instead of having transit and stakeholders and others come together. Consider who you have across the state in the way of your transit experts, the CEOs and General managers across the state.

They work this business day in and day out. They squeeze every bit out of every penny they possibly can to put service on the street. They know, they can tell you, as you've heard today, as you'll hear from this panel today, they know what we need.

What we need is to give that information to yourselves, to a panel, to a task force to take that and go do something with it, to reduce regulation, to avoid legislation, to find ways of bringing more funding to us that would be really helpful for us. So I would respectfully request that you consider flipping that model a bit. And then finally, relative to the California Air Resources Board ICT, we need state intervention. Please direct CARB to pump the brakes on the mandatory purchase requirements.

Give fuel cell buses an opportunity to catch up to the battery electric buses that we have out there. They hold great hope. And what we need is we need an opportunity to get more fuel cell buses out there across this state so that with volume, we can bring the price per kilogram of hydrogen fuel down. So take a look at the 2023, the 2026, and the 2029 purchase mandates and consider adjusting those a little.

I'm not saying to make them go away, but to adjust them a little to allow for fuel cell to be experimented with. I told you we're buying five. We're going to experiment with them side by side next to battery electric. We're going to let the data drive us to the right solution. Fuel cell is promising enclosing public transit to be resilient and to survive long term. We need your help.

The state should not try to provide solutions, but instead to receive input from the transit experts, again the CEOs and General managers across the state and act upon those needs. Together we will succeed. I thank you for the opportunity to present today and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Thanks to all of you. I do have two questions. First, for Mr. Clifford. I am going to ask you to circle back to the Microtransit comment about why you feel that that's not a solution. I was curious about that.

So we have had Microtransit branded as Van Gogh at our organization for several years now under a pilot program. And the problem with it is the cost per trip is just way too much. Now think about it. With Van Gogh, it's sort of Uber like with Microtransit, if you will. It's sort of Uber like transit. And for it to be successful, for people to want to use it, you have to limit how many people you put on any vehicle on any trip.

Typically, we accept that that's somewhere in the range of about three to four people per vehicle. When you do that, it just cannot be productive. And so what happens is the price per trip jumps up to over $100 per trip. $107 per trip. That's not the most efficient way to do business. And I know a lot of folks are patting themselves on the back at different transit agencies, having done microtransit, and they think that it's great, but they're just not talking about those numbers.

Push them to tell you about those numbers, because you just can't get better productivity than that. Maybe a little bit more, not a lot more. In contrast, our paratransit is less than half that cost. It's a similar, like, service, fixed route buses, just under $14 per trip. Where we need to invest is in the fixed route and make that better and get it to the right places to serve the people who need it.

Great. Thank you. Mr. Turner, I was curious because you mentioned that your ridership is on track to recover, doing better than a lot of the other agencies across the state. So why the big fiscal cliff? Where is that coming from?

It's a combination of the increased costs we're experiencing. I should note that our fairbox recovery from that ridership is only about five to 8%, which is why we've been needing the waivers that the state has been granting by pushing off the fairbox recovery requirement. So it's the extra costs we've been experiencing from different things on our system, as well as the loss of COVID funds. And then I mentioned the extra cost for cleaning, for example. Those are some areas of the increased costs we're experiencing.

Thank you. And my last question is, can you maybe expand a little bit on the issues that you've been having coordinating homelessness services with the homelessness providers in Los Angeles?

Sure. And whenever we're talking about this issue on our systems, I always think about something my colleague, Desiree Jones, who implements these programs whenever we're talking about this, that we're talking about somebody's brother, somebody's sister, somebody's daughter, somebody's father, somebody's mother right. That is experiencing this problem. And you don't go and just arrest somebody for a homeless person for writing the system because they didn't pay fare. These are humans that are experiencing a challenge and there's a need to address it.

It has an impact on our riders. It has an impact on our system. But we don't want to lose sight of the fact that this is somebody's family Member that is in need of help. What we've done is we're using our operating dollars to Fund outreach teams. So we're paying for eight outreach teams through the Path program. We've had some fairly good success with that. We've placed over 800 people into permanent housing I'm sorry.

Just because time is getting late. Sure, I appreciate that. But my question is about your issues coordinating with Lassa and other agencies. I know that you're doing a lot and you're doing a great job, and I would normally allow you to talk about that, but it's getting late, and I really want to talk about what's the issue? Are you having issues, or do you find that the coordination is just perfect?

The bottom line is we are not eligible to receive the homeless funding provided by the state. We were not getting services provided on our transit system by the agencies that provide the homeless assistance programs in our county. And so we volunteered to use our money to pay for those services on our I understand.

So let me ask I'll ask it a different way. So why weren't you getting that cooperation with the agencies that are tasked with providing homelessness services? Why are they not on your system providing those services?

I don't know that I can give you a clear answer. I think part of it is that it's perceived almost as invisible because a lot of our system is underground. Somebody in a train riding a train all day isn't as visible as somebody on the street. So I think that may have been a factor.

Do you feel that they felt that they had any access issues or were there?

We've worked through the access issues, though. I mean, there were some issues with the teams not wanting to go in our stations or feeling like they couldn't go into our stations, but that we've worked out. I think it's such an overwhelming problem, and they have limited resources. We filled a gap. So did that help? We could have not done that. I don't think that would have been the most humane response. We could have just said, it's not our problem, it's their problem.

Yeah. So from my perspective, I'll just make a comment, and I could be wrong. It seems to me that you're tasked with operating trains and operating buses, keeping your system clean, but you're not equipped to give full fledged homelessness services. And I don't know that standing up a whole other homelessness agency just because they happen to be in a train and not on a street is the most effective use of resources. And I appreciate and I respect the work that you've done.

And I think that you guys, from what I understand, are providing, given the circumstances, you're doing a really excellent job filling in those gaps. But I don't believe that it should have been your responsibility to have to do that. And so I would love to see the county and the agencies that are tasked with providing homelessness services as their specific task.

That's what they do to make sure that whatever barriers they feel they have reaching your system, if there is one that we address, that they provide the services, they're the ones that have trained social workers. They're the ones that have shelters, and that should be their job and not yours.

And I would note there is nothing that right now in current law, there is nothing that requires those agencies to even assess the existence or levels of homelessness on transit systems and then address it based on those assessments. So. That's a key piece of it.

Thank you. And we're going to try to change that for you, Senator Wiener.

Matthew, your comment, I think, was right on point, because I can tell you with BART, having spoken to him quite a bit, the problem is that the counties, including San Francisco, are not being it's like someone else's problem, right. So they don't want to go into the systems as much. I'm not saying they never do. And there is some cooperation, but you're absolutely right. This is a problem and they need to be forced to do it.

I just want to thank this panel as well to give us sort of an additional insight on what has been going on. And I know it's been a struggle for all of us to try to figure out the operational, of course, with just the safety issues and the issue of our unhoused residents. Real quick question on the outreach teams to follow up with that. How are we selecting, I guess, with each agency, how are we selecting where these outreach teams will actually be? I know.

For LA. Metro, we've spent $20 million, I think, to chair Friedman's point. That's quite a bit of money to spend $20 million on this effort, which I know is a valiant effort, but we've got a lot of other funding within Los Angeles, at least that I can speak of, that should be applied to help you out as well. So I'll stop there and just kind of go down the list on what that looks like in each of your.

Well, for us, what we've done is we have a good idea of where the homelessness is on our system. And at certain stations, 7th and Metro, MacArthur Park, for example, some of the other downtown stations have seen higher rates of homelessness. So we know where the problems are. For example, one of the issues we've had is with end of line at the end of the line in Long Beach, for example, we know that that becomes a problem. So we've concentrated services there.

So on our system, we know because we're doing the counting, this is where we want to see the providers, the counties and the cities that do those services, assess where homelessness exists, and then provide services based on where those counts show. Rather great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Becker.

Oh, sorry. I was going to have them answer. No, no, it's we're sorry.

I'm sorry. I didn't stop the panel, please.

Thank you so much. So we don't have outreach teams that would be very difficult for us to do. I really applaud the effort to place that responsibility where it best can be served. We do transit. We don't handle mental illness and drug addicts very well. I don't know if you want us to become experts in that. If you choose to have us do so, we'll try our best, but I don't think that's where it belongs.

I will tell you that in response to it, we have invested more in security. So our operating costs have gone up. And basically what security does is they're trained in non escalation techniques to try to move folks along. That's best how we handle it. If they're on the bus, if they're at a stop, if they're at the terminal, we try to move them along and get them off our property.

We have come up against the wall a couple of times in the last couple of months where we had severe mental illness situations in which we needed to call for help. And unfortunately, when the police arrived, they were not able to provide us any assistance, any phone numbers, anybody to contact. We need help. It's hurting our ridership. It's contributing.

Senator Becker.

Sure. Two quick things. First to Rebecca Long. Thank you for the efforts. As you know, we tried with the Seamless Bill last year, and I appreciate you picking up those tenets of that legislation and really pushing that this year and talking about it here today. So I appreciate that. I'll just mention quickly because we have an end of line issue at my district at Millbray. That's where BART ends at the end of the night.

And so that community has had to deal with that program and they've actually had some pretty astonishing results working with. So I think it's a model for people to really look at. Unfortunately, we've got no support from BART on that. I know we've talked to BART about that recently, but it's really been left for the community to deal with and community that would normally not be prepared to deal with but has now working with Life Moves, has some good results. So again, might be a model to look at for the future.

Thank you, Senator Archuleta.

Thank you, madam. Chairs. And again, once again, thank you for putting us together. Great panelists. Let me go ask that question. And I agree with the chair that it's not your job to handle these homeless and so on, but if you turn the switch, you can't. Is there a transition to get away from that that you'll go through there at Metro?

Yeah, I think it's going to take time and it's not going to happen overnight. Right. I mean, homelessness is one issue we're facing. Drug use is another serious problem on our system. You probably saw some news about the rate of deaths on our system just in the last two months, and that's from drug use. There are different problems. You have issues with the unhoused population who are mainly just seeking shelter.

We have issues with drug use on our system and somebody's brother, somebody's sister that got hooked on drugs and they need help, and then there are crime problems. Right. And they all need different solutions. Right. We're addressing all of them in what we think is the appropriate way with the resources we have, but it's not something that's going to change overnight.

And with the other panelists that were here earlier, I had mentioned about having a choice. Some people have no choice but to ride the transit systems that you have and others would love to. We'd all love to say, I have the choice and I'm going to ride because they're cleaner, faster, safer, and we have security and we don't have homeless people going back and forth. So to achieve that, to get that pendulum back where it should be, what do you think that's going to take?

Well, when we've talked about this issue in the association, we've talked about it in terms of a couple of years of effort, things we need to do here. Right. We're aware of the fiscal cliff the state is facing, so we want to look at what can we do now that's not a specific give us money response, creating flexibility in some of the funds, for example, allowing us to get assistance through the homeless providers to address it on our system.

And then looking at in the next couple of years what are some permanent long term solutions to funding our system that can be put in place. So we are thinking of this as a multi year effort, not specifically give us money now because we know the state is facing a fiscal cliff, but what can we do to stabilize our system now and then create the long term transformative transit system that the state needs?

And sir, if I can ask, I felt your enthusiasm with the fuel cell hydrogen because I keep promoting it as much as possible. And as I mentioned, I was at the Foothill Transit. I got to see their buses, the fuel cell bells, the technology that's there and how excited the bus drivers are with it and the mileage that they get and on and on. I understood you to say you're getting five new buses.

We're ordering five fuel cell buses, yes.

And you're going to compare one with the other.

Side by side by side and see where the data takes us.

Well, I think we know where it's.

Going to take us.

Yeah. I can tell you from what I heard from Foothill is that they've done the same thing. They've compared and they felt that the ability to go longer, faster, less expensive, actually with the fuel cell battery versus the electric, it's there because you don't have that charging time and that downtime. So these are issues. But brand new buses, they look great. And I hope that that's part of our evolution of clean air down the road in transportation. But I thank you for your efforts.

It holds great hope.

Thank you. Just one quick question. I apologize, I had to step out briefly and I think it was when LA Metro, when you're talking about your funding shortfall and I got some conflicting reports. What is your projected funding shortfall as the federal money runs out?

$400 million in 2025 and a billion dollars in 2026.

So that you will actually have a full $1 billion deficit in 2026.

Yes. Our total budget for our agency is about $8 billion a year.

Okay.

And that total $8 billion includes capital.

Okay. Because I had been under the impression that the Bay Area was in a much greater world of hurt than Southern California because we're more fair dependent, but that's a pretty catastrophic deficit. Okay. Thank you.

How much of that $1 billion is capital and how much of it is operations?

It's operating revenues.

Okay, so none of it's capital or a small portion?

Yeah. We're taking some more information to our board, but the information we took to our board most recently is about a billion dollars.

Okay. All right. Maybe at some point we can get more information about that.

We have some more detailed breakdowns of that we can provide to your office.

Okay. Well, on that very cheery note, thank you so much for being here. That was, again, an excellent panel. Really interesting. Thank you. And then we'll have our last panel. Come on up. Thank you all for your patience. It's wonderful to see so many transit enthusiasts still here in the room with us. And I will ask you to, as soon as you're settled in, to go ahead and push the button and start. Thank you.

I had written down here. Good afternoon. Good evening. Thank you for the invitation, madam chairpersons and committee Members. My name is Colin Parent, and I'm the vice mayor of the city of La Mesa. I'm also the Executive Director and General counsel of the nonprofit think tank Circulate San Diego. Circulate San Diego is a leading voice in our region about transit, safe streets, and sustainable growth.

We've published numerous research reports on public transit and mobility, and we've waged and won numerous campaigns to improve service and access for transit riders in San Diego. Now, public transit in California serves a lot of functions. It's a major component of the state and local efforts to address climate change. Transit is a major employer with lots of bus drivers, mechanics, and more with good union jobs. But the most important thing that transit does is to serve the interests of transit riders.

And if we are going to live up to our ideals as progressives and as advocates for transit riders, we have an obligation to listen to those transit riders. So the national nonprofit Transit Center conducts a periodic survey of current and potential transit riders. That data routinely shows that the top priority of transit riders nationwide is for frequency of transit service and the overall speed of transit trips.

In my backyard, the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, it conducts a similar survey, as I'm sure other agencies do, and it finds the same results. So transit writers say that they are concerned with quality service above other considerations, like the availability of parking or the overall cost of a transit fare. And I think this makes a lot of sense when you put yourself into the shoes of a Low income transit rider, telling a worker who gets paid by the hour you're going to save them.

The cost of a $2.50 fare is cold comfort. If that fare is for a bus ride that takes 2 hours, they'd be able to earn a much more money or do other things with their time if so, much of their day wasn't eaten up by a burdensome long bus commute. And by almost any measure, driving is more expensive than taking transit. Yet many people choose to drive despite those higher costs.

And so the way to attract new transit riders is not to primarily focus on lowering fares, which are already substantially lower than the cost of driving. Instead, the way to attract more transit riders is to improve the quality of service so that it is more competitive with a car. And that means running buses and trains more frequently and across more hours in the day. And that also means funding bus only lanes and other sorts of things that let the bus travel more fast.

Drop bus and other things travel more fast to be more competitive with driving. Circulate San Diego we actually collected a number of these recommendations into a report that we published last year titled Fast Bus. You can probably guess what it's about.

And so as California transit agencies are facing this looming fiscal cliff, the Legislature should be we'd encourage the Legislature to look at ways to ensure that transit services maintained and hopefully improved and investing in service is what can bring back riders and rebuild transit agencies financial sustainability. So there's a couple of options for the Legislature to consider for helping transit agencies maintain and improve service. We heard one just suggested earlier this evening about having General Fund allocations to make sure to bridge those gaps.

I think another important one is that the Legislature provided billions in new capital dollars for transit in last year's budget. The Legislature should consider amending that allocation to allow local agencies to use that funding for operation and service. That is the priority of transit riders. California has some innovative funding mechanisms for transit, including the affordable housing and sustainable communities program, or AHSC. The AHSC program uses cap and trade revenues for affordable housing developments if they're paired with improvements to transit.

But the money can only be used to Fund new transit capital costs, and this can make transit agencies resistant to participating in these. They don't oftentimes, they don't want to build a new transit line if it's not going to come with new monies to pay for the operations for those transit lines. So if the Legislature were to revisit and amend the HSC program to allow those funds to pay for transit operations, not just capital, that would allow the program to Fund the priorities of transit riders.

It will also help transform transit agencies from reluctant participants to the programs like this into enthusiastic ones. In summation, do you want to invite the legislators here today, and the Legislature writ large to prioritize the interests and preferences of transit riders? Transit riders say that frequency and speed are their priorities. Studies show that high quality transit service attracts transit riders and revenues. So let's help transit agencies succeed by helping the transit riders themselves. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next panelist, please. Who wants to go next?

Good evening. Hi. I'm Emily loper, vice President of public policy at Bay Area Council. Thanks very much for having me. As way of background, the barrier council represents over 300 employers across the Bay Area, and we've been advocating for transportation improvement since our founding over 75 years ago, including advocating for the creation of the BART system post World War II. So we heard many times today in this hearing that public transit is essential to meet our state's equity and climate goals.

We know that transit riders are disproportionately lower income and depend on these services to get around. And on the climate goals. We can't decarbonize our vehicle fleets fast enough in order to meet these greenhouse gas reduction goals. We also need more people riding transit. But public transit is also the backbone of our regional economy. In the Bay Area, residents of all income levels depend on transit to get to and from their jobs.

And so ensuring that transit survives this crisis and thrives moving forward is really essential to the state's economic future. So that's why our Members are so focused on supporting transit now and building it into a better system going forward. For almost two years now, the Berry Council has been frequently surveying hundreds of employers across the region to track return to office policies and identify new commute trends.

We've also been collecting their feedback on their attitudes about transit, and the data shows we have hit a new normal. You'll see on slide one that employers are reporting that most people are commuting two to three days per week, and those days are generally Tuesday through Thursday. Employers don't anticipate much of a change in the future, and they have reported consolidating or reducing office space. Employers are also reporting that about 23% of Bay Area employees are working fully remotely now.

Pre pandemic, that number was less than 6%. So obviously, this has dramatic impacts on transit ridership. But we also know that people are still commuting and moving around the region, and they may just be choosing to drive more frequently than before. In slides two and three, you'll see that in the Bay Area, the weekday traffic on our bridges has hit pre pandemic levels, and traffic on some of our highways has even surpassed pre pandemic levels. So why aren't they returning to transit?

In our survey, employers consistently cite safety and cleanliness concerns about the reasons why their employees are choosing not to ride. They're less concerned about COVID safety these days and more concerned about personal safety on the systems. You'll see on slide four, that 71% of respondents said they were either somewhat or very concerned about personal safety on transit. But of course, the extent of this problem and the specific solutions vary widely by systems.

But making transit safe and clean and comfortable for riders now must be a priority if we want to win them back. The second major concern that employers cite about why employees aren't riding as frequently are issues related to the frequency and reliability of the services, which we've heard a lot about today. Employees just want efficient and reliable commutes, and I'll say that employers are also focused on restoring commuter services, express bus services to our downtowns.

And so despite this rise in remote work, the employers are really still focused on improving commutes. And so beyond the basics of a clean, safe, and reliable system, we also need a more customer serviced service, customer focused service to bring riders back. The bay area, as you heard, has 27 different transit agencies, which can make it difficult and confusing to travel across the region.

And during the pandemic, the council participated in this blue ribbon task force that we talked about today and developed strategies to build a more attractive transit system in the future. They concluded that simple improvements that make the systems look and feel more integrated and seamless will go a long way in attracting both old and new riders, and the public overwhelmingly supports these improvements.

89% supported improvements like coordinated schedules for a more reliable and efficient trip, simpler fares and payment systems that we've talked about today, and unified mapping and signage to make transit just easier to navigate across the region. So while transit is in crisis now, we have an opportunity to build transit into a better service that meets the future needs of residents across the state, and we look forward to working with you to help get us there. Thank you.

Thank you. Why don't we go to Ms.. Lee next?

Good evening. My name is Annie Lee, and I'm the managing Director of policy at Chinese for Affirmative Action, which is one of the co founders of Stop AAPI. Hate. Stop. API Hate was founded by Chinese for affirmative action, as well as AAPI Equity Alliance and the Asian American studies Department at San Francisco State University.

In response to the alarming escalation in Xenophobia and bigotry resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, our coalition tracks and response to incidents of hate, violence and harassment and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Our mission is to advance equity, justice, and power by dismantling systemic racism and building a multiracial movement to end hate against our communities. We recognize that in order to effectively address antiasian racism, we must work to end all forms of structural racism leveled at black, indigenous, and other communities of color.

Since our founding in March 2020, Stop API Hate has received nearly 11,500 reports of antiaapi hate from across the country, including over 4300 in California alone. 9% of the incidents reported to us describe a hate incident on public transit. To give you a sense of what these incidents look like, I want to read what a community Member from the Bay Area reported to us, and I apologize, as this account includes racial and homophobic slurs.

The dude was harassing me at the Colma BART station and called me a chink faggot Asian Corona and got on the same train, but wasn't satisfied and followed me car to car. So I got off at Glenn Park and hopped on another train for my safety and others. Experiences like this one make the victim witnesses. Their families and friends avoid public transit.

Too often, public transit is a hotspot for this type of harassment, which scholars and activists call street harassment, or unwelcome comments about a person's identity or appearance by a stranger in a public place. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are not the only victims of street harassment on transit. As stated in the background paper for today's joint hearing, 29% of women in California report being harassed on mass transit. Women who identify as Lesbian or bisexual are more likely to report experiencing sexual harassment than straight women.

And women of color also report feeling more unsafe on public transit than white women. Street harassment drives people, especially women, away from public transit. Women would rather drive, use ride shares, or even turn down job opportunities to avoid using public transit when they do not feel safe.

For those women who have no choice but public transit, the fear of street harassment compels them to make behavioral adjustments, including leaving a bus or train mid trip to avoid harassment, avoiding travel in the evening, avoiding certain settings such as crowded buses and not walking alone to help improve the transit experience for all our communities. Last year. Stop API hate and LA Metro sponsored SP 1161 with Senator Dave Min.

This new law calls on the Minetta Transportation Institute, or MTI, to develop a survey tool to understand how street harassment affects transit riders. MTI will develop this survey tool in consultation with transit operators and organizations representing communities impacted by street harassment. Once completed, MTI will make the survey tool available on its website so all transit operators can utilize it.

This year, we're back again with Senator Min on SB Four Three Four, which will require California's ten largest transit operators to gather qualitative and quantitative ridership data regarding street harassment as riders wait at transit stops or ride transit vehicles, and they may utilize the tool that MCI is developing. The Bill also requires these transit operators to conduct outreach activities with riders who are underrepresented in surveys yet impacted by street harassment so that all voices are heard.

Understanding rider experiences is a critical first step in addressing and preventing street harassment of women and other vulnerable communities on public transit. Street harassment discourages people from taking public transit, and to fix this problem, transit operators first have to measure the problem. By understanding rider experiences, transit operators can develop data driven initiatives to prevent street harassment on public transit systems.

And we know that some transit operators like LA Metro and BART, have already created innovative non carceral responses to data they previously collected regarding sexual harassment on their systems. As transit operators look to increase ridership, efforts to protect rider safety, including the prevention of street harassment on transit, can be a critical tool in rebuilding rider trust and patronage. Thank you.

Thank you. And I wanted to end with Mr. Lindsay before we go to the questions, because nobody knows transit systems better than the transit workers. So thanks for being here.

I will not disagree with you. James Lindsay thank you Madam Chairs for the opportunity to be here. Members, thanks for being here as well. I've been in the transit industry for 32 years. I hired as a mechanic at LA Metro 32 years ago and it's been a great job, learned a lot. I will tell you that I don't disagree with what mostly has been said today.

There are a few things that I will bring to light that is probably some of the issues of why we're where we're at. When I hired in 32 years ago, most operators, the issues they dealt with were collecting fares. They would be required to quote the fair three times, and that would usually get them sped upon or cursed out. Today, we live in a different world.

And it kind of changed around 2010 when 15 year atu Member Larry Kessler of Omnitrans was stabbed to death for saying good morning to a passenger that was getting on the bus. That changed at AC transit, where just a few months back, an operator was standing outside of his bus talking to another operator, and the operator was attacked by a hammer hit in the head as he wrestled the assailant to the ground and tried to get himself out of the situation.

He was fleeing, and he heard a click, and he turned around, and the passenger had a. 22 that luckily jammed and saved his life. That operator complained to management three times about this particular passenger, and absolutely nothing, I say nothing, was done. You wonder why you don't have drivers wanting to just drive your buses. I would tell you safety is probably the response at omnitrans. Just a little more background on me. I negotiate 50 transit contracts in the state of California at 50 different transit agencies.

I represent 13,000 Members throughout the state. There's probably 20 to 25,000 drivers in the state of California in response to Member wahab, New York transit has about 70,000. So there's one reason why there's probably more transit faster in New York than in California. But besides the fact omnitrans, when I was negotiating their contract, told me that to take care of this driver's safety issue, they moved the line back, the yellow line 3ft, and that was to protect the operators.

Meanwhile, at their taj mahal, bulletproof glass went up everywhere. Safety doors went up everywhere but for the operators. We'll put a yellow line three foot further back of the bus, and that's your safety. FTA has put a special directive against AC transit for the top five most dangerous transit agencies in the nation. AC transit is one of them, and they have this special directive to them of reporting safety issues. That's another problem that we have.

Most of these transit agencies don't report these daily issues that happen on bus drivers throughout the whole state. It's a major problem. Attacks on drivers, that's one. The next major problem that you have in getting operators isn't the money. I mean, you heard these others talk about their shortages and the ability. I mean, as a negotiator, it's a great opportunity for me to get tons of money from these transit agencies. But that's not the problem. I just negotiated a contract in central California. 25% pay increase.

The Members shot it down. Members shot it down. They didn't care about the money. They wanted family. They wanted to be able to spend time with their families. Most of these operators spend 14 hours, days at the transit agency to get eight to 9 hours of pay. And then they got to drive an hour to 2 hours home from the transit because they can't afford to live where they're working. So family time at home is what my Members would like.

So scheduling is the biggest fight that is going on. I will tell you that there will probably be a strike at Sunline Transit Agency over scheduling. It has nothing to do with the money. Every one of these transit districts will argue and fight over control. This is why you're going to have this problem in San Francisco, trying to merge 27 transit districts together. It's a control thing. It has nothing to do with providing great service to people.

Every one of them transit districts, every one of them city councils, every one of those county supervisors, it's all about control. It's all about controlling their transit system, putting the buses where they want it, putting the routes where they want it. That's all that is. If you can eliminate that control issue. I've been trying to do it for many years. It's a very tough thing to do. I will just I'll just end with one last thing.

I did serve on the blue ribbon task force that was talked about here so many times today. And again, control, that was one of the main reasons about merging that together. I just want to touch on one more thing. Southern California. The LA. Metro, 50% of their ridership was lost by the 17 lines that they eliminated because they didn't have operators to drive them. So if we're talking about ridership, these 17 lines, I mean, 50% of the loss would be back.

I think one of them was out of Orange County as well. So 16 lines out of LA. Metro were attributed to a vast majority of the loss in ridership because they didn't have the drivers to drive them. Why don't they have the drivers? I just gave you two reasons. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. That's a really important perspective for us to hear. I really enjoyed this panel. I do have just a couple of questions. So for Ms.. Lee. I'm wondering first what barriers you've had when you've gone to transit agencies or any of the advocacy groups, you know, who are working with harassment or these sorts of ridership issues. What sort of barriers have you had to getting your concerns addressed?

Thank you. I think that they also recognize that this is an issue. I think funding is always an issue and wanting to get additional funds to make new programs to protect riders and develop and roll out new initiatives. And so I would say that that's the main issue. I think they do care about rider safety, but we just need more.

Thank you. Mr. Parent, I'm wondering if there's anything you'd like to see the state do to help with those land use issues that are leading to some of the difficulties of having transit reach enough.

I mean, there's a lot the state can and should do related to that. Circulate is sponsoring a Bill with Assembly Member Alvarez on middle income density bonus law. That's like a great example. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other ones that have been introduced related to housing. I think one of the key things, I don't think this is a surprise to anyone in the Legislature, but turns out there's a lot of local governments who don't want to build homes, and they don't want to do that near transit. They don't want to do those things.

And you don't hear this maybe often enough from local elected officials, but I think you should take their power away from them to say no to projects that we need so that people can afford to live where they want to and to help address our climate change challenges. So the Legislature should understand that they are really in the driver's seat on these sorts of things and to not defer to local electeds if local electeds are in fact not willing to be parts of the problem.

So be robust, be strong on those things. We're going to support a bunch of those bills as we have in the past, and would encourage you all to continue the really substantial effort that the California Legislature has had on housing near transit.

Thank you. And Mr. Lindsay, clearly the bus drivers, particularly those that have had a lot of experience driving, get to really know those routes. You mentioned the routes that were eliminated. I'm wondering if there's ever any effective communication between the workers, the drivers who are interacting with the public every single day and sort of management in terms of being the ones to bring some of that feedback kind of up the chain.

Do you find that there are agencies that are responsive when you go in and you say, hey, we really need to move this route or we're hearing this from the riders, do you have that sort of formalized way of communicating?

Obviously, a lot of the drivers talk with passengers all the time. That is a great way. But getting somebody to listen to it is a total different. And I'm not saying that every agency, but it is very tough to get anybody in management to listen to what the operators are saying. To what the passengers are saying.

Thank you, Chair Gonzalez.

Yeah, this has been a very good panel. Thank you very much for just sharing with us your respective insights with Mr. Lindsay. Since you were just talking about management and employee sort of engagement, you specifically talked about the personal safety issue, which I think is obviously what Ms.. Lee was talking about as well, just on the rider perspective. But from the operator perspective, the personal safety is what concerns me. Right.

I'm hearing know from other agencies as well, or from other operators in various agencies as well as to how it's hard to recruit folks because they're just feeling in addition to the wages, that they're feeling unsafe. So what specifics would you ask the state to provide outside of management that maybe could be negotiated? Additionally, what would you ask the state, both on the policy front, if you could, and the budget front?

It's a good question. The safety aspect of the drivers, I think a lot of it could possibly be the same passenger over and over. Nobody wants to throw anybody off a bus. Nobody wants to eliminate them from having the transit experience. And I understand why. But if you're not a good actor, why should you be on our buses? Why should you be riding our systems? I know earlier somebody also spoke about drug use. That's a major problem for our operators.

Our operators are drug tested on a regular basis. Somebody smoking fentanyl on the bus or doing drugs on the bus gets a contact high going on. What do our operators do? Management is just going to send you down for a drug test and then we're going to be fired? I don't know. I think a lot of it from the state standpoint, I would say that we need to look at getting bad actors off buses.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And Ms.. Loper, you talked about a bit of the sort of the business commuter benefit programs available. Is there anything else that we can talk about in this sense as well? Because I do know that there are a lot of businesses that are trying to lean in a bit more with agencies to provide, of course, dollars for some of these programs. I've even heard of property owners trying to also provide for their tenants perhaps some benefit programs for transit as well.

Anything else that you haven't that could be shared? Maybe that could be creative thinking for us? Sure. Well, one of the questions we ask in our survey of the employers is tracking the commuter benefits that they provide to their employees. And we've tracked over time to see if the level of commuter benefits or other transportation programs have gone down at all. And for the vast majority of the employers, like 80% to 85%, they have maintained the same level of commuter benefit.

So that just reinforces this point that the employers and the business community remain committed to making it easier for employees to get to and from work on transit in particular. And despite the fact that there is this rise in remote work, and even if employees are only commuting those two to three days per week, they are doing everything they can to make it easier for them to take transit. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Senator Archuleta. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I guess I've got to share with you, this panel has really touched me. The others were very technical, but here we heard from labor, we heard from people who represent everyday people that get on the bus. And let me start with you, Ms.. Lee. I am so very sorry that you or anyone has got to go through has to go through these things that you're so fearful of getting on the buses.

There's no room in our society for that, and we know it. And the Senate and the Assembly are behind you 150%. And I will tell you that safety. We talked about it over and over, and it's your safety, the children's safety, grandma's safety. Everyone who rides these buses got to be safe. And bear with us. We're going to work on it.

In reference to the drivers, that is so important, we talk about finding good quality in people, buyers who I'm sorry, drivers who can pass all the rigorous tests, not only drug tests, but the proficiency is so important. And it's your representation that you fight for them every single day, as many of us who are with you in the labor movement. But it also goes back to safety and having management understand that if you protect the drivers, you're protecting the riders.

If you're protecting the riders, you're protecting the drivers, for God's sakes. And I talked earlier about public relations and know our theme today is how to bring back and build transit ridership in California. Well, we just learned that if we have this great PR program to bring everybody back so they can feel safe, well, they can't feel safe. If we don't take care of you, they don't feel safe. Our drivers aren't going to be there.

And if the management doesn't understand it, we're never going to be able to do it. And it's so obvious that we got to work together. And it's not the dollars and cents, but it's bringing the safety back into the fold.

So I personally will be looking to work with our chair in the Assembly and our chair in the Senate on transportation and do what we can in the budget and make sure that we all understand that if we don't take care of the human aspect, it's not going to work. We can have the cleanest buses. They can be running on hydrogen, but if we don't get people on the buses, it's not going to work.

And if we don't treat people right once they're there, it's not going to work. And the pride of being a professional driver, it's got to come back. And they have to have time with their family, too. And I agree with that. So I ask you, sir, please listen and be that leader that you are and open up the doors so everyone can feel safe once again. And I thank you, Madam Chair. Well, thank you.

And Senator Archuleta, you get the gold star for being the last non chair standing. So thank you for being here with us. And thanks to everybody else for being here with us. And I want to thank this panel. I agree this. Panel. Having hearing directly from stakeholders is very important, and I learned a lot today from all of the panels. So thank you. I think that everybody that was here listening, we have a lot to think about.

We have a lot to continue the discussion with you about. You see a group of people that are very united and wanting to not just save transit from this fiscal cliff, but to uplift it, to bring more people into the system to make it a more pleasant experience for the riders, a place that people want to go and work. My daughter a few years ago, when she was about seven, wanted to be a bus driver in space. Now she says that was silly.

She just wants to be a bus driver because she realizes the space part may be not so practical. So I want to make sure that when she's a bus driver, that she is safe and has a great experience as well. So thanks to all of you for being here. To continue, do you have any closing words, Madam Chair?

My son was a Long Beach Transit bus driver for his second Halloween. So we have a big, big love for transit, of course. And in Munson with Chair Friedman, we'll do everything we can to continue the conversations. Thank you.

And we have public comment, so we have not forgotten public comment. So what we're going to do now is we're going to give everyone, we're going to be limiting the comments to 1 minute. And you don't have to use your 1 minute. You can certainly use less. But we will be timing you all, because that is just how we do things in the Legislature. So if you want to come around to the microphones, like I said, we will be timing.

And if you can introduce yourself with your name and also if you represent any entity, please do let us know that as well.

Thank you. Chair Friedman and Gonzalez and Senator Archuleta and staff Mitch Steiger with the California labor federation. The worker perspective was pretty perfectly summarized by Mr. Lindsay from Atu. And there's not a whole lot to add other than we would just emphasize the importance that we think we've learned today of listening to the workers.

That one of the reasons that we are so consistently stressing the importance of workers being in a union is that it's one of the few institutions out there that gives workers the opportunity to raise these issues, like workplace violence. And how important scheduling is that without access to a union, workers are typically too afraid of retaliation or feel like they don't have the power that they need to raise these issues. And so being in a union does give them that structure.

But as we've learned today, being able to raise these issues to management, even on a level playing field, sometimes isn't enough. And we still have a serious problem here that needs to be dealt with. And we would just urge the Legislature to take those comments to Heart and urge the operators that are here to take those comments to Heart and explore ways to bring that perspective more in line.

Create new policies that can help further that perspective, whether it's local standards or state standards or something to deal with these issues so that we can do a better job of learning from what the workers have gone through to make the system better for everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Good evening. Mark Joffe with the Cato Institute. One barrier to regaining transit ridership is the Low frequency of train service. Unfortunately, achieving five minute frequency throughout the day would be very expensive and perhaps not even possible due to the shortage of operators. As we discussed here earlier, we can solve the cost problem by using automated trains like the ones you see at most major airports or throughout the city of Vancouver.

We can Fund this upgrade and free up money to subsidize operations by pausing transit projects that no longer make sense in the post COVID era. The most obvious case of a project that should be stopped is the $29 billion second trans bay BART tunnel with dramatically lower peak hour ridership. There is no plausible scenario under which the existing tunnel will reach full utilization in the foreseeable future.

Two other Bay Area projects that no longer pencil out are the $9 billion BART extension to Santa Clara and the $7 billion link from San Francisco caltrain station to salesforce transit center. Before raising taxes to further subsidize, transit, police pass legislation to allow Bay Area transit agencies to divert funds from these unnecessary projects to support operations. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker. And everyone's a little bit over a minute, so just keep that in mind. Good evening.

I am Steve Roberts. I'm President of the rail passenger association of California. And I want to thank the chairs for putting together this excellent meeting. I provided some comments, some written comments. Did they get to? Okay, thank you, and I will yield my time, and we'll make sure that they get to all the Members of each committee as well. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, good evening. I'll be brief, Steve Wallach, on behalf of the alameda Contra Costa transit district. First, yeah, I'd like to also thank you for this hearing. I think the background piece was well done, the panels were great, and I think it really illustrated the wide range of needs that are facing transit. And we hope this hearing is a promising first step in trying to address that. AC transit transit service is a central service for East Bay residents.

We're also facing a deficit of about 155,000,000 over the next coming years. And so we've tried to avoid having to do those service cuts and the impacts it would have across the East Bay. So thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Marissa Wu with UAW 28 65 and UAW 5810 the unions of 48,000 academic workers at the University of California. Thank you to the chairs and the Members. I just want to say that fully funded and accessible transit is absolutely essential to our Members, who are majority Low income and cannot afford to live by the campuses where they work. So we rely on transit in order to commute to work daily and as academic workers.

Our Members are also on the cutting edge of environmental and climate change research and understand deeply that public transit is a crucial part of our transition to a greener future. The state is currently not on track to meet its emissions reduction goals, primarily due to increased emissions from transportation, and tens of thousands of UAW Members commute via public transportation every day. Those who cannot do so generate over 1 million vehicle miles in single occupancy vehicles every week, which is untenable for a state.

In our latest contracts, the University of California committed to create a free transit pass program for our Members. We fought for this demand so that workers could have a green and dignified way to get to work every day. On behalf of UAW Members at UC, we ask that the state stop its plan to cut capital funding for transit and step in with a long term solution to the operations funding crisis that threatens the service we depend on.

Thank you. Good evening, chair and Member Kirk Blackburn here on behalf of the San Diego Association of Government, Sandeg wanted to thank you for this important hearing. Also briefly again tout the successes of Sandeg's Youth Opportunity Pass pilot program, which Senator Blakesberry mentioned earlier. Sandeg launched the Youth Opportunity Pass in May 2022 to offer free public transit to youth 18 and under throughout San Diego County. Since this time, Youth has been riding transit more than ever.

The number of transit rides taken by Youth has more than doubled compared to the month before the program started, and the number of unique Youth users who ride transit at least once a month has tripled. Based on preliminary feedback from users, over 90% report using transit more because of the program, with 70% indicating they plan on using the transit into adulthood.

This pilot program is unfortunately only funded through June 2023, and SANDAG and partner agencies are seeking a permanent funding source to continue the program, including potentially expanding the program to the use of ages 24 and under. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Chairs and Senator. My name is Moira Topp. I'm here on behalf of the Orange County Transportation Authority. We also greatly appreciate this hearing. I think it's been incredibly valuable. We align ourselves with much of what has already been said by our sister and brother agencies. We are one of those agencies that many of our riders are transit dependent. So we have seen a significant reestablishment of our ridership since the Pandemic we're over 80% of our ridership return.

But one thing I'd like to underscore, and that is while we might not be facing an immediate fiscal cliff today, we are looking at those long term impacts of the ICT, the mandates that exist on us. We're seeing a 400 million dollar requirement that we face because of the ICT. Transit is a limited pot of money. And so if we're going to squeeze capital expenditures out of that pot, it's going to have to come from somewhere. So we do very much appreciate this dialogue.

We hope this is the beginning of a long dialogue with you and both of your committees. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, chairs Friedman and Gonzalez and Member Archuleta. My name is Laura Tolkoff, Transportation Policy Director for Spur, a nonprofit public policy organization working to make the Bay Area more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous. You've heard from a number of our colleagues and partners in the Bay Area. So I just want to focus on one key point, which is that the financial and operating challenges are not just a Bay Area problem.

Remarkably, 80% of all of the state's transit trips happen on just five systems throughout the state. And all five are going to experience significant operating shortfalls in the next few years. If the state's largest operators falter, it will jeopardize the state's climate, equity and economic goals. The state therefore has a strong interest in their success, regardless of the market that they serve. Spur strongly supports the request that the state take action to protect public transit.

And in the near term, that requires funding to stave off devastating service cuts. And it also requires efforts to grow ridership which are foundational to the business model and public value for transit. And we look forward to working with you on the many other structural changes and supports that can help make transit successful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Zach Dijkros. I'm the policy Director at Transform. Transform is a Bay Area based nonprofit that works regionally and statewide for affordable housing and mobility for all to create communities where everyone can thrive. I want to thank you for the thoughtful comments in thinking about both the short and long term priorities for transportation and also understanding the connections between transportation, housing and land use that are fundamental to the long term success of our transit agencies.

Transform really understands that there needs to be a comprehensive vision when we think about these things going forward and how we Fund the future of our transportation system. But this cannot happen if we don't also keep our systems running to provide vital services, transit services that folks need across the state. Over half a million people in California don't have access to a car and depend on public transportation.

And public transportation and transportation as a whole is the largest source of GHG emissions and growing source in California. So I hope you'll prioritize both short term funding to support transit operations, while understanding that we have a harder long term problem that we are also continuing to fix. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Ian Griffiths, policy Director of Seamless Bay Area, an advocacy group in the Bay Area. Seamless Bay Area is strongly allied with the organizations and transit agencies across the state requesting operations funding in the state budget. But in addition to near term funding, systemic institutional changes are needed to transform public transit in our state to be more rider focused, effective systems that will attract more riders.

A 2021 paper from the Minetta Transportation Institute studied ten high ridership systems from around the world and found that those systems, in addition to having stable funding, they also have policies and regional institutions and mandates to deliver seamless regionally integrated systems. Integrated affordable fares, coordinated service and capital planning, unified customer information are pillars of success among these key high ridership regions. But the policies depend on stronger forms of regional government that have the appropriate authority and resources, and those don't yet exist in California.

So please, as you consider the transformation of transit in this state over the next coming years and through the various committees that have been set up, please prioritize introducing effective, proven forms of regional government that can deliver integrated, rider focused transit.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having this meeting here. My name is Darlene Jones. I'm a former AC Transit bus driver of 21 years. I started in June of 1989, and I ended my career there in June of 2010. The number one problem as an employee I felt was childcare. We made a recommendation as a collective. We have a driver's committee for AC Transit to bring the child care within the divisions for each division for the mechanics. I didn't have any children.

I was willing to pay out of my salary for the childcare because it would benefit the driver who would always come to the bus late. Let's say that I was the first driver out of the yard in the morning and I was waiting for my relief. The driver would always say that she had problems with child care. I'm going to put that on the state as a solution that I feel as though it is very mandatory today.

And the other recommendation I was going to give was, since I was one of the bus drivers on the Bay Bridge, the day at the loma create an earthquake. If we can build a brand new bridge in a short manner of time, we can fix this problem that we have today. That control issue, my hat goes off to Mr. Lindsay. He is correct. People need to get out of that control syndrome.

If we come together as a whole state in this transportation, we can make it because everyone can't afford an EV today. They can't afford that Lamborghini. You got people today, they can't afford the bus ride. I leave it up to you, my fellow Californians. Thank you.

I gave you extra time because that was so good. So thank you.

Good evening, Madam Chairs. And Senator Archuleta. Thank you very much for convening this very important hearing this evening. My name is Rod Lee. I am the assistant General manager responsible for external affairs at the San Francisco Barrier Rapid Transit District, also known as BART. At BART, we are one of the agencies that has one of the highest fairbox recovery ratios in the country. So therefore, recovering and regrowing our ridership is important to our survival.

Therefore, we have launched a series of initiatives to focus on the customer, such as increasing the amount of service that we have within our system, as well as enhancing personal safety and security. We have currently pre pandemic levels of service, and we're working to improve our weekend and evening service as well. From a safety and security standpoint, currently we have the highest number of uniformed personnel in our system.

That includes police officers, transit ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists and technicians that are throughout our system assisting people. So improving ridership is critical to the success of our agency and agencies throughout the state of California. And we look forward to working with you and partnering with you to improve that.

The final thing I want to say is that our General Manager, Bob Powers, is leading a regional effort in regards to coordination of Bay Area Transit GMs and CEOs in regards to making certain that the rider experience works well for all riders from system to system. So we look forward to working with you. We're eager to work with you, and it's essential that we work with you in regards to making certain that all the transit agencies throughout the state of California survive and thrive. Thank you.

Thank you. So if there's no final words, I want to again thank everybody for being here and look forward to continuing the work this year. That.