Senate Select Committee on Bay Area Public Transit

Okay, I'll call this hearing to order. This is the inaugural hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Bay Area public transportation. I want to welcome everyone. We continue to welcome the public for public participation in our hearings. We also have teleconference participation ability. The participant toll free number is 877-226-8216, and the access code is 621-7161. For today's hearing, we'll be hearing all the panels of witnesses on the agenda before we take public comments. We'll do that after the panels, and we appreciate everyone for today's participation.

So I want to welcome everyone for this hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Bay Area public transportation. We formed this Committee at the request of our Bay Area legislative caucus so that we can deeply engage around the financial emergency facing public transportation in the Bay Area and elsewhere, and it absolutely is an emergency.

While we are a Senate Select Committee, I want to just really thank all the various Members of the Legislature from all parts of the state, particularly in our Bay Area delegation in both houses, who have engaged on this important issue. The purpose of today's hearing is to dialogue with our Bay Area transit agencies, advocates, and other stakeholders to talk about the challenges, particularly the financial challenges our transit systems face and the reforms that systems are working on or planning to address these huge challenges.

We need to be crystal clear. Public transportation is not optional. It's not a luxury. Public transportation is absolutely essential for our region's economy, our quality of life, the ability of people to get around, and our climate goals. We cannot and we will not allow our public transportation systems to collapse due to inaction by the State of California. We're committed to ensuring that these transit systems remain viable.

We're committed to ensuring that people who cannot afford a car, who are disproportionately seniors, young people, Low income people, and people of color are not shut out of our economy and our public life because the State of California has negligently allowed their only transportation option to fall apart. And we're committed to working with these transit systems to enact the reforms that they need to provide reliable, safe, clean, and relevant public transportation service for millions of Bay Area residents in the coming years and decades.

It's hard to overstate the impact the pandemic has had on our public transportation systems. Overnight, ridership dropped by up to 90%.

But these systems and the frontline workers who operate them continued to show up to work every day while some of us had the privilege of working from home and continued to show up every day for our community and for the people who also continue to rely on transit throughout the pandemic, including healthcare workers, grocery store workers and other essential workers who helped us get through this health emergency. While the global pandemic has now been declared over, the damage to our transit agencies persists.

Bay Area transit ridership currently sits at approximately 50% of pre Pandemic levels with significant variation among systems. While ridership continues to increase. It's not happening quickly enough to make up for the increased costs that the systems face due to inflation and the end over the next one to two years of federal relief funds. Those federal relief funds prevented our transit agencies from shutting down entirely, perhaps permanently, during the Pandemic, but they're ending due to slow fare recovery, and it is increasing, just not quickly enough.

And plus the end of these federal relief funds and increased costs, Bay Area transit agencies face a $2.5 billion operating shortfall over the next five years, nearly half of the estimated statewide operational transit need over the same time period. It's hard to overstate the harm to our region. If our transit systems go over this impending fiscal cliff, they'll be forced to enact massive service cuts that could induce a death spiral for a number of these systems.

SFMTA has indicated that Muni will eliminate 20 entire bus lines gone. If something doesn't change. BART has indicated it may need to end weekend service entirely and significantly reduce weekday service. Those are just examples. If transit agencies are forced to make these massive service cuts, we know that Transform, one of our transportation policy groups, estimates that Bay Area residents would take 735,000,000 fewer transit rides over five years.

More than 100,000 people could switch to gas powered cars costing a collective $5 billion over five years for those who can least afford it, and completely clogging our roads and freeways with increased car trips, releasing massive additional greenhouse gas emissions and threatening our progress towards our climate goals. In the face of this crisis, the Governor's Budget proposals in both January and just last week do not propose funding solutions.

The Governor proposes to slash $2 billion in previously committed transit capital funds and proposes no aid at all for the transit operations fiscal cliff. The Senate Democratic Caucus. And I want to thank our caucus and my leadership. Senator Atkins, Senator Skinner. The Senate Democratic Caucus has rejected this $2 billion transit capital cut and committed to finding a solution for the fiscal cliff. The Governor has indicated a desire to engage in dialogue to find a solution, and I know that our Assembly colleagues get it as well.

I want to stress that this crisis is not a crisis driven by financial mismanagement. While appropriate, oversight of transit agency finances, of course, is essential and can help with some cost savings. No amount of belt tightening around the edges or fare increases or crackdowns on fare evasion will alter the fundamental fact that the Pandemic changed the world.

An unprecedented increase in remote work greatly reduced ridership during traditional commute times and in traditional commute directions, and especially impacted more fair reliant agencies that relied on commuters for a large portion of their budget. Agencies have begun to adapt and continue to adapt to this new reality. Public transit agencies in the Bay Area and across the state must work to identify longer term funding sources.

That, combined with near term relief that we are of course pursuing at the state level, can help public transit operations not crater in the near term. At the same time, transit agencies must continue working together with stakeholder partners to identify and implement service changes and other reforms to help regrow ridership through various strategies. Transit agencies, of course, must also ensure that riders feel safe when they ride our systems. For transit ridership to recover, in addition to providing reliable service, systems must be safe and clean.

Riders need to feel confident that choosing transit means efficiently, getting where they're going, and not having to deal with unsafe or unsanitary situations. So in the hearing today, we're going to hear from various agencies and advocates about a number of critically important issues. And I want to thank in advance everyone for coming here today and everyone who is watching on TV. So I now want to move to our first panel having to do with the fiscal cliff and accountability.

Our first presenter will be Rebecca Long, the Director of Legislation and Public Affairs at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, followed by Kate Breen, the Director of Government Affairs at SFMTA, Dennis Mulligan, the General Manager and CEO of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, and Laura Tolkoff, Transportation Policy Director at Spur. So welcome and really appreciate you being here.

Thank you, Senator Wiener and Members who hopefully will arrive. Rebecca Long with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. And just thank you, Senator Wiener, for your incredible leadership on this issue. I'm honored to be here today. In my presentation, I'm going to give you a brief overview of where the region's transit system stands today, share our support for ridership focused accountability framework, and provide an update on key initiatives underway to improve the transit rider experience and implement a more streamlined decision making structure.

Overall, transit ridership in the Bay Area is at about 56% of what it was pre pandemic, with a lot of variety by operator. Even so, there are still a lot of trips being taken, on average 22 million trips from the last March to January to March, and we are seeing a gradual uptick month over month. This dramatic drop in ridership within the region has affected operators very differently.

Depending on the revenue model that supported their operating budgets, with those that were most reliant on fares and considered the gold standard in the industry hit the hardest. In addition to the revenue mix, the type of service they provide, and the demographics of the riders they serve, pre pandemic is also key to understanding their financial position. What we have is a challenged business model due to the massive increase in remote work, especially in the Bay Area.

A study by UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto on the recoveries of downtown across the US. Found that downtown San Francisco and Oakland have the lowest rates of office in person occupancy in North America, leading transit systems that cater to commuting having the most difficult time building back their ridership base and underscoring the need for them to expand their appeal to riders going on different types of trips.

So here we have the crux of the problem Bay Area transit operators cumulatively report operating shortfalls of about 2.5 billion over the next five years. These shortfalls do begin next year for a couple of operators, but really kick in in 24, 25 and the year after when they begin to exceed 700 million, as the federal COVID relief funds are fully exhausted. As part of the funding request to address these shortfalls, MTC strongly supports accountability policies that focus on achieving the outcome of increased ridership.

A recent poll commissioned by MTC was very encouraging, with 75% of Bay Area voters saying they would ride transit more if it were improved. We support the proposal by the California Transit Association to require operators receiving funds to report on their finances and planned actions to expand ridership, followed by regular updates, and we believe that those actions should have a focus on rider priorities, which include safety and cleanliness, convenience and speed.

This slide breaks the poll down by frequency of transit use, illustrating that even among Bay Area residents who never use transit today, a majority say they could see themselves riding it more if it were improved, with 65% of nonriders saying they would ride it more if it felt cleaner and safer to ride. So that's really encouraging.

And even with the diminished investment we are seeing, Bay Area voters overwhelmingly recognize how valuable transit is to our region, with 87% saying we need to maintain the service that we have today for those who depend on it. Next, I'm going to turn to key improvements that are underway in the Bay Area. This slide highlights the core focus areas coming out of the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force spearheaded by MTC in April 2020, with participation by many of the region's operators and other stakeholders.

I'm going to focus today on fares and payment and customer information, two of our top priorities. In August 22, we launched the Clipper Bay Pass, a two year pilot, to study the impact of a single transit pass that will provide some 50,000 Bay Area residents free access to all bus, rail and ferry services in the nine counties, one pass, all operators.

The pass is being piloted at four universities and 13 affordable housing sites, and so far the results are very encouraging, showing a 35% increase in transit trips taken compared to those without the pass. The next phase of fair integration is a no cost and reduced cost interagency transfer policy that will launch next year along with the next generation of Clipper.

Another major initiative is to simplify and harmonize the transit rider experience across our two dozen operators, so that when riders navigate the system, they can focus on their destination rather than what system they are riding. Making the system easy and attractive to navigate is really key to increasing its market share. In addition to these rider focused initiatives, this summer we are launching regional network management formalizing the increased collaboration among operators and MTC. That is one silver lining of the Pandemic.

While this diagram is somewhat complex, I'd invite you to focus on the central rectangle, which consists of 10 seats for transit agency General managers representing the region's, 27 individual operators, plus a seat for MTC's Executive Director. This is the Network Management Council, which will be a new forum that meets regularly to initiate and resolve transit network policies. A customer Advisory Committee will accompany this new structure to make sure that we're hearing about what truly are the customer priorities.

The Network Management Council will make recommendations to the Commission, creating a formal process to move from idea to action. Importantly, while this does represent a much more centralized transit decision making structure, it is still a voluntary one and its success will ultimately depend on timely implementation by operators to deliver the best results for riders.

This last slide is a simple illustration of the path to a financially sustainable business model for transit that provides a timeline of these initiatives that I've described and others, including a new regional transportation measure that we hope to secure enabling legislation for next year and bring before the voters in 2026.

By 2028, we hope to see many tangible results from the Blue Ribbon initiatives as well as other initiatives that you'll hear about today from other operators, further increasing ridership and bringing revenues and costs into better alignment so that transit truly can survive and thrive. That concludes my presentation and thank you again for having me today.

Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. Good afternoon, Chair Wiener and Members. I am Kate Breen, Director of Government Affairs for the SFMTA. The SFMTA is a Department, as you know, of the city and County of San Francisco and responsible for the management of all ground transportation in the city. Our agency has oversight over muni the public transportation system as well as bicycling, paratransit, parking, traffic walking and taxis. As we consider the transit fiscal cliff in San Francisco and statewide, context here is important.

The economic impact of the pandemic continues in San Francisco. Downtown offices once filled with commuters are experiencing unprecedented high vacancy rates, and while we are optimistic about the future, we are mindful that it will be a slow recovery. Our ridership is recovering from Pandemic lows and currently at about 60% of pre Pandemic levels systemwide, but patterns are differing due to work from home rates in San Francisco being among the highest in the country.

Our efforts to address where riders are in this new environment is a key part of our recovery. And perhaps most important, as you have already clearly stated for the broader conversation today and I think it's really important as we carry on in this conversation to remember the partnership that we as cities and departments of Transportation and Transit have with the state and our mutual goals towards achieving around climate, equity and sustainability.

So, over the past three years, we have been aggressive at the SFMTA in response to our financial challenges. In efforts to responsibly manage our system and bring writers back in a changing environment, we contracted our workforce knowing that the impacts of COVID would be long lasting. We reduced hiring and shrank the agency by 1200 staff through Attrition. We increased efficiency. And since the Pandemic began, we have adjusted service more than nine times.

We made service faster and more reliable, having implemented over 21 miles of new transit lanes, bringing our transit lane network to more than 70 miles. We've reduced subway delays significantly through quarterly subway shutdowns at night to do maintenance and upgrades in the subway system. We made Muni more equitable through our Muni equity strategy to improve transit routes to the most critical households with Low income, people of color, seniors, and people with disabilities.

And finally, we launched a new customer information system, providing customers with more accurate, real time information. Muni riders have noticed these improvements, and from an accountability perspective, our busiest lines are faster and more reliable. Two thirds of our riders who took our most recent annual survey rated our service as good or excellent, a 9% increase from 2021 and the strongest increase since 2018. It's important to remember who we serve. Nearly 400,000 people ride Muni every day.

They are essential workers, the people who keep our economy going. They are students whose families may not own cars. 57% of Muni riders are people of color, and 70% of our riders make less than $50,000 a year. Muni service is critical to students and schools. Muni provides service to close to 29,000 students on an average day. Every middle school and high school in San Francisco is served by at least one Muni route.

And there is special school tripper service, where supplemental Muni routes begin after school and serve middle and high schools throughout the city. We are committed to ensuring that we provide this critical service for all students to ensure everyone has access to educational opportunities at all levels. So SFMTA relies on three primary sources of local funds to support transit operations fair revenues, city General Fund support, and parking fines and fees. And this chart also shows the federal relief funds that we receive that are nearly depleted.

All of these Fund sources are down. Transit fare revenue is down due to ridership declines. Our city's General Fund contribution is down. Nearly 40% of our revenues come from the San Francisco General Fund. And I think it's really important to note that San Francisco is one of the only cities in the country that supports transit operations.

Through its General Fund contribution, which is evidence of the city's fundamental commitment to transit, our one time federal relief funds are running out and parking fines and fees are essentially flat to decline. On the expense side, expenses continue to rise, labor costs go up, the cost of living in San Francisco is high and inflation is high. This is a snapshot of our five year forecast related to deficit projections. If we continue along our current path, we will have a $130,000,000 deficit in FY 2025.

This might not seem far away, this might seem far away, but it is not. It is critical that we have assurances now in order to have a path that we can manage over the next 18 to 24 months through attrition and not layoffs. And as has been stated in the press and today by the chair, to get a sense of what $130,000,000 deficit looks like, it is the equivalent of more than 20 munilines.

This does not mean that we will immediately cut 20 Munilines, but it does mean that we have paused adding service on Muni until we have a better understanding of where we're going to address the financial situation. I thought it was important as we talk about what's the local commitment where is our skin in the game? If you look at this pie chart, you can see that nearly 75% of our operating budget is based on local sources.

We have skin in the game and we will continue that commitment. We have a path to Muni survival, but as you can see, it relies on the assurance of state gap funding to get us to local and regional ballot measures.

This path includes stretching out federal relief dollars, extending parking meter hours on evenings and Sundays which we are doing starting July 1, limiting to hire backfill or priority positions, keeping Muni at current service levels, which does not include the past bus lines that we used to offer. And even with all of these actions, the fact is we still can't make it without state assistance to get us to 2025. We continue to urge your support for transit operations funding to provide the assurance that we need.

We specifically support the multiyear funding package developed by the California Transit Association. We also ask the Legislature to consider limited redirection of a portion of California's increase in federal highway funding due to the fact that the state is receiving over $1.0 billion more than was anticipated from the bipartisan infrastructure Bill. All options in this conversation should be on the table. Until they are not, we support accountability measures, as has been referenced and will be discussed by Laura further on this panel to ensure success.

Finally, as we continue to pursue state funding relief, we want you to know we aren't doing this alone. Mobilizing our efforts as part of a broad coalition of advocates, transit agencies, labor unions and community based organizations that are committed to both the near term survival and the longer term thriving transit network in California. We are grateful for this broad base of statewide support and look forward to working together to advance our mutual climate, equity and mobility goals. And thank you.

Mr. Mulligan?

Yes should be. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Members of the Committee, my name is Dennis Mulligan. I'm the General manager of the golden gate bridge, highway and transportation district. I have the honor of being here today to talk about the fiscal cliff. Sadly for my agency, it's an easy story to tell if you want to travel between the chair's district and Senator Mcguire's district. The bridge district has monopoly. It's via our bridge, our bus or our boat. The sidewalks are free.

If you're unhappy with your trip, you only have to call one person. So there is clear accountability regardless of the mode chosen about if you're unhappy, who to talk to and how to fix it. This photo was taken the first day of the shelter in place orders. It's helpful to remind everybody of what rush hour looked like that first morning. This was the busiest moment on the bridge. Prior to the pandemic, bridge tolls were our largest source of funding for our bus and ferry system.

Prior to the pandemic, transit fares paid by our customers were the second largest source of revenue. So we are a fee based agency primarily. Sta and TDA are vitally important. So please continue the exemption that is in place during the pandemic for those of us that are struggling bouncing back. But that's how we Fund ourselves with user fees and we redistribute fees from motorists to our transit riders. So the genesis of our fiscal cliff is shown on this slide.

Today, there are 150,000 fewer people in downtown San Francisco each weekday as compared to pre pandemic. Today, the office vacancy rate in downtown San Francisco is 30%. And the amount of available office space for lease in downtown San Francisco is equal to 20 salesforce towers. Since we're a fee based agency, that has a profound impact on us. Given the State of downtown San Francisco, demand for commute service on bridge, bus, boat or bicycle is way down.

Tolls are our largest funding source before the pandemic for our bus and ferry system today. During the morning commute 05:00 a.m. To 09:00 a.m., there are 30% fewer vehicles traveling on the golden gate bridge. Needless to say, that has a profound impact on our finances. Today. Revenues from bridge tolls and transit fares are down $1 million each week as compared to pre pandemic. That I dare say, is at fiscal cliff. However, we're not sitting on our hands since there's less demand for our services.

We're providing less service to meet our customers needs. We're trying to mirror when our customers are out there and where they're out there. So today our bus ridership is 42% of pre pandemic levels. And the total number of overall bus trips that we provide today is 48% of pre pandemic levels. But we've been very focused on equity and mobility in the corridor. We offer two types of bus service. One is regional bus service from Santa Rosa to San Francisco, a distance of greater than 60 miles.

And we offer the only transit service across the Richmond San Jose to bring workers from the East Bay into jobs in Marin and Sonoma counties. We have maintained that service during the Pandemic. Today, virtually all that bus service is out there 23 hours a day. Providing mobility in the corridor where we have slashed service and added it back slowly is on our commute routes. Buses that go into neighborhoods and take workers to downtown San Francisco. Today, only 17% of those customers have returned.

So we're only providing 16% of that bus service. On the ferry system, it's similar. 46% of our riders have come back after the Pandemic as compared to where we were three years ago. So our largest commute ferry route is from Larkspur to San Francisco, and prior to the Pandemic, we did 42 trips a day between Larksburg and San Francisco. Today we do 28 trips a day. We're getting no complaints from customers because we have ferry boats when they want to ride them.

But instead of having two ferry boats, I only need one, and I'm not sadly, selling any of them out yet. What has come back, though, is recreational and tourist travel. So we have adjusted and made changes to that. During the pandemic, we took over ferry service between San Francisco and Angel Island. Very important to provide opportunities for people to escape San Francisco, to see the beauty of Angel Island, but also for school children to go out there to learn about the experience.

With the Immigration Station Museum that just was reopened, this service dovetails well, actually with some of our commute service, where a ferry boat would leave tipper on in the morning with commuters and come back virtually empty. Now it can take school kids and volunteers to Angel Island. So we've tried to right size our service to meet customer demands while saving money. So today through Attrition, we have a lot fewer staff. Before the Pandemic, we had 275 bus operators.

Today we have 170 bus operators, so we have 100 fewer bus operators. What that does is it allows us to take our federal one time COVID relief money and have it last longer. So the big green bar that you have on page three of the staff report won't be as big next year and allow us to live longer to see another day.

We need a few of our customers to come back for us to pencil out, so we need a little more time to achieve that objective. But we continue to add service back as service needs arise. If customers are out there, we will run buses and ferry boats for them, but we will not run empty buses up and down the corridor.

That's bad for the environment and it's bad for our bottom line, and we would be out of federal funds right now if we had chosen to do that. So we have a fiscal cliff. We've taking steps to reduce costs to make our federal money last as long as possible. So I'm here to respectfully request your assistance in any way that you can to help Golden Gate and all the other transit operators here in the Bay Area and throughout the state that have similar struggles.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. And I'll close mine.

Good afternoon. My name is Laura Tolkoff. I'm the transportation policy Director for Spur. Today I'll be providing let's advance today I'll provide some background on the state's current role in funding transit operations and then transition to focus on how the state can achieve accountability by how the Legislature can affect the use of a onetime multiyear operating commitment to make transit better.

The state plays an important role in funding transit operations, but the vast majority of transit operating funding in California is generated locally through fares and local taxes. There are three programs in the state that Fund transit operations that total about $1.9 billion. This may seem like a lot of money to you, but it is spread out across more than 200 operators in the state. In addition, the lion's share of that funding is actually considered local funding through the local Transportation Fund program.

In addition, the Bay Area's transit systems have historically been very self reliant. In 2019, 83% of operating funding in the Bay Area came from fairs and local sources, compared to just 62% for operators in other parts of the state. Nearly every county in the Bay Area has one or more sales taxes that contributes to operating funds totaling over $1.1 billion annually. State Funds state funds account for a small portion of what the state's largest and most productive systems, like BART and Munich spend on operations.

When we compare the state's funding levels to other states, especially those with similarly mature and well used transit systems, we see California falling behind. For example, only 5% of BART's operating funds come from the state, a number that belies its value to the region and the state. This is also comparatively Low to places like New York and Pennsylvania, which provide 30% and 50% of the MTA and SEPTA's operating budgets, respectively.

Notably, these states are also stepping up to avert fiscal cliffs on their systems with dedicated multiyear funding. Our policy goals for transit are ambitious in this state, but put plainly, our funding levels have not caught up, especially for our largest systems, which have the greatest potential to reduce climate pollution, reduce traffic congestion, provide access to economic opportunity, and improve housing affordability.

You can see here we have numerous housing laws, many of which you championed, that are predicated on being near frequent transit, which simply will not exist if we go over the fiscal cliff. Our goals as a state were going to be challenging to meet before the pandemic, but they're going to be impossible if we allow transit to slip into a death spiral.

The transit death spiral is a vicious cycle caused by service cuts, lower ridership in revenues, and ultimately making transit less useful, which in turn begets further cuts, and so on. Once you're in the death spiral, it's almost impossible to climb out of. You cannot simply dial back service and cut costs without some dire consequences, especially for the 1 million people who use transit in the Bay Area daily.

Still, the only way to disrupt the death spiral is to backstop key transit services from being cut with emergency funding, as you see here, while steadily rebuilding ridership and revenues and improving and scaling the system over time, emergency funding is the only way. And that's why emergency funding this year is so critical. It will. Thanks.

If you want transit 50 years from now, you can't let it collapse in the next five. It will take sustained and concerted effort over time in partnership with the state to get things on the right track. Sorry, I'm going to go back. Of course, the first step is that emergency funding, which should be used to provide reliable and safe service to build ridership, align revenues and costs at scale, and secure new riders, new revenues.

I also want to mention that the fundamentals of transit success is really dependent on good land use, residential and employment density and transportation policies that discourage single occupancy vehicle use. And we're going to need your help. So let's talk about accountability.

In our view, accountability measures should seek to achieve three things with a multiyear commitment of funding, the funds should go where they are needed most to avoid imminent service cuts, they should actively support ridership recovery, and they should help operators successfully transition away from emergency funding to a new business model. The basic premise here is one that while most of the money should go to operating needs and service, a portion should focus on transformation initiatives.

Two, if an operator touches this money, they must initiate accelerate and scale transformation efforts that are currently in pilot phase. And three, the state should implement accountability through multiple points and mechanisms to have maximum influence over the funds. So let's talk about how that could be implemented. First, the state should target the distribution of funds narrowly to avert near term service cuts and Fund transformation initiatives.

Even though operators are all very different, the state should provide clear boundaries and expectations about how money can and cannot be used, and allow mPOS to further direct and distribute to operators that comply with those requirements annually. Second, the state should condition funds on operators'participation and delivery of transformation initiatives the deployment of regionally integrated mapping sorry? In the Bay Area.

This includes the deployment of regionally integrated mapping and wayfinding to harmonize Rider experience expanding the Clipper Bay Pass, a universal pass, the means based Clipper Start discount program, establishing a transit priority policy for those that can, and identifying causes of bus delay and key organizational reforms that my colleagues will talk about later, including clear steps towards a permanent network management to improve overall coordination and efficiency. For regions without such a plan, they should be required to develop them and update them.

And lastly, the state should monitor progress and adjust the distribution of funding based on performance. mPOS should be required to measure rider experience, safety and satisfaction and report on state defined targets related to productivity and efficiency that are tied to ridership and monitor progress towards identifying new Fund sources, repurposing funds, and progress on organizational and governance reforms. In closing, I reiterate that if you want transit in the next 50 years, you can't let it fail in the next five.

And if you want transit to be better, now is your chance. Thank you.

Thank you. So that concludes our first panel. Colleagues, any questions or comments? Senator Becker? Senator Cortese. Senator Cortese.

At the risk of making it sound like I wasn't listening till right at the end of that presentation, the accountability piece here is much appreciated. I know in earlier conversations in prior months to today over the past few weeks, that's something I've raised or just asked about and I think others have as well. So commend you for pulling that together as part of what all needs to be done.

And as a former Commissioner at the MTC, I was there long enough to know that there was an accountability discussion long before the pandemic. I think there's folks who don't want to lose sight of that over the next five years. As you just said, that's all I have. I don't have questions. I just wanted to make that comment.

Great. Thank you, Senator. Senator Becker.

Yes. Thank you. Question for Ms. Longo. I was watching the presentation from my office and I appreciate you talking about some of the aspects of the early returns from the Clipper Bay pass and such in the mapping and wayfinding. Is data included in the mapping wayfinding project so that we can do better interoperability?

Thank you.

Senator Becker. There is a data component to the mapping and wayfinding project where there will know essentially a database of the entire network. Right. And let's say you're a private company having a conference. You could make a custom map and a custom map that is oriented towards those folks coming to your conference. It's not so much about a scheduling system, the mapping and wayfinding, that is something that does already exist.

So MTC provides kind of the GTFS backend information to the private sector today so that you can use Google maps to figure out exactly how to get from A to B on the scheduling side.

Great, thank you for that. And the, and the you mentioned the regional network management. What was the timeline around that, do you say?

So we're launching that this summer. I think the first meeting is scheduled to happen in July.

Great, well, thank you for that. Well, I thank all of you for coming and painting the picture of where we are and talk about getting to where we need to be. So thank you.

Great, thank you very much for our first panel. We'll now go to our second panel relating to ridership recovery, short and long term reforms to improve the rider experience. And we'll be joined by from BART, we have Rod Lee, the assistant General manager of external affairs and Kevin Franklin, the acting chief of police for the BART police.

We also have Seamus Murphy from the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Area water emergency transportation authority and Ian Griffiths, the policy Director of Seamless Bay Area Emily Loper, Vice President of public policy for the Bay Area Council. And finally, Annie Lee, managing Director of Policy for Chinese for Affirmative Action and stop AAPI. Hate. So firstly, here from BART.

Good afternoon, Chair Wiener and Select Committee Members. I'm Rod Lee. I'm Bart's, assistant General manager, responsible for external affairs. And I'm joined by Kevin Franklin, who's our Interim Police Chief for The BART Police Department. We thank you for this opportunity. We also thank you for convening this very important hearing. We're here to talk about what BART is doing to improve the rider experience and restore ridership.

As you know, BART is highly fair, dependent, and regaining riders is as important to our survival as developing a more sustainable long term funding model. We keenly understand that current and potential riders want us to fully adhere to our mission. And our mission is providing safe, reliable, clean service. So we are here to talk to you about several initiatives that we're implementing, and I would like to pass it to our Chief of Police so he can begin talking about public safety.

Thank you, Rod. Good afternoon, Senators. Making sure that BART is safe for everyone is more than just my job. It's a vital task that I take extremely personally. I have deep roots in the Bay Area and with BART. I was born in Oakland and grew up in Oakland in Orinda. What's more, my parents and family regularly ride BART. I would not allow my loved ones to ride on trains if I didn't think they were safe.

I've dedicated 27 years of my career to the BART Police Department. I've seen it all during those decades of service, and I firmly believe in the system. In the weeks and months ahead, you're going to be seeing a lot of me talking with our riders and the press about what we're doing to boost safety on BART. I know there are some who have doubts about safety on BART. It's critical that we own those concerns.

Many of our former riders say they don't think BART is safe and that's why they've not returned as we emerge from the pandemic. While I disagree with that conclusion, I acknowledge that's how many people feel about our system. We have to show them the results on safety. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but the steps we are now taking have us on the right track. There's nothing more important to me than doing all we can to ensure safety.

Many of the safety challenges we face are larger than BART and must be addressed on a regional level. That's why I'm personally reaching out to our partner law enforcement agencies to enhance collaboration we are more effective for the Bay Area when we work together and maximize resources. I'm excited to share with you our latest safety initiatives. Our focus is on using all available resources to boost our visible presence in the system.

This effort includes both sworn officers as well as nonsworn crisis intervention specialists, transit ambassadors, community service officers and fair inspectors. We are all hands on deck for presence in the system. Bartpd launched a big Redeployment plan in March that has dramatically increased the number of officers on our trains. We now have an additional eight to 18 officers patrolling trains per shift. That has more than doubled the presence of sworn officers on trains. The visible safety presence is making a difference.

From the first day of the new deployment plan through April 16, almost a full month, the BART Police Department recorded a 38% decrease in calls for service and a 40% increase in arrests. Like every other Police Department in the country, we are facing a challenge when it comes to hiring officers. There are fewer quality candidates and the market is extremely competitive. But despite those conditions, we are doing everything we can to make officer hiring easier while maintaining our high standards.

We are now recruiting to fill 29 sworn officer vacancies. Full funding for each of these openings has been approved by the BART Board. We are working hard to add more officers to our team. We have been aggressive in our public outreach and are offering a $15,000 hiring bonus. I've also been in talks with the General manager and our board of directors about boosting our hiring and retention incentives. We have fast tracked our hiring process for both entry level and lateral officers.

Our recruitment team uses a tool that provides applicants direct access to a Member of the team who can immediately respond to the applicant. The opioid and homelessness epidemics are challenges bigger than BART. Transit agencies weren't meant to deal with these societal issues, but many of the incidents riders are most concerned about often involve someone in crisis. Doing nothing isn't an option for BART or the BART Police Department. Crisis intervention specialists are doing great work making contacts with people in the BART system who need help.

In just four weeks, from mid March through mid April, our crisis intervention specialists made nearly 2000 contacts with people in need of services. I'm encouraged by our recent progress since we launched with the new Redeployment strategy, but I also know we have a lot of work ahead of us. We welcome the challenge.

We are going to build upon the steps we've taken in recent months to get as many officers as possible onto trains, recruit new officers to build up our Department, and continue to count on unarmed Members of BART PD to maximize our presence in the system. As the interim chief of the BART Police Department, I know that the stakes couldn't be higher for both BART and the Bay Area. If we can boost our ridership.

That can be the engine that helps drive the revitalization of downtown San Francisco. The key step in getting riders back is to offer them a safe experience they can believe in. That vision of safety is what personally drives me forward as we respond to the concerns of our riders. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Senator, I'm sorry.

Just a couple more items, if you don't mind, if I could go through to make our system even more secure and accessible. We're excited that we're moving forward with new faregates system wide. The first of the new fare gates will be installed in West Oakland later this year. Not only are our entry points going to be revitalized in their appearance, but these new gates will be more resistant to abuse and fair evasion. This is a big win for rider safety.

Furthermore, the gates will improve access for all BART users. They will include State of the art sensors that can detect when someone in a wheelchair or someone who's pushing a stroller is passing through. The gates are being designed to optimize reliability and reduce maintenance needs. Our goal is to have new gates installed system wide by 2026. Our riders have told us they want to see cleaner trains and cleaner stations.

This is another part of the rider experience where we are taking action through hiring and making the most of our limited resources. We're now thoroughly cleaning the interiors of all of our fleet of the future cars. Twice as often, eight teams of car cleaners scrub cars when they're in storage overnight. This deep cleaning is in addition to all the quick clean crews that sweep through our trains at the end of the line during our operating hours.

We're also adding four more deep cleaning teams who will focus on scrubbing heavily used stations. The cleaning teams represent 66% of the new crew scrubbing the stations. This deep cleaning includes pressure washing stairwells and other busy areas of the station. And then finally, in regards to improving service and reliability, beginning in September, no BART rider will wait more than 20 minutes for a scheduled train, no matter what time of day of the week.

We are increasing service on nights and weekends to prioritize ridership growth potential from trips not related to a work commute. We are also boosting service on the Yellow Line. This is the busiest line in our system. It extends from Contra Costa County under the Bay into downtown San Francisco and then onto the San Francisco International Airport. Trains on the Yellow Line will now arrive every 10 minutes before 09:00 p.m., instead of every 15 minutes.

The new service plan will enhance our reliability and untimed performance during the peak commute. Because there will be less train traffic and congestion through the core of our system, better spacing will allow us to recover from delays faster. That concludes our comments, and once again, we thank you for the opportunity thank you.

Before we go to Mr. Griffiths, I just want to say I'm primarily a uni rider, but I do ride BART pretty regularly. I'm in the downtown BART stations all the time, and I've definitely noticed more physical presence, not just of officers, but of ambassadors and other BART staff. And I really have seen the effort. And I know that BART gets kicked around a lot and gets held up as sort of an example and is all over social media, but I've noticed the difference.

So thank you for everything you're doing. So Mr. Gerhardt. zero, I'm sorry, Mr. Murphy. My apology.

The Committee. I'm Seamus Murphy, Executive Director at Widow, which runs the San Francisco Bay ferry service. We're not one of the region's largest operators, but we serve five Bay Area counties, and before the Pandemic, we were the region's fastest growing system. Now, thanks in part to a focus on customer experience, we're hoping to be the first system to emerge from the Pandemic and fully recover ridership.

We carried 3.5 million riders in 2019, and so far in 2023, we're on pace to hit 80% of pre Pandemic levels. As we've heard, the transit systems hit hardest by the Pandemic. They were like us they're fair dependent with a commute focused ridership base. And when that market dried up, like other operators, we cut our service back, and we held on until the Federal Government stepped in with relief funding. Those funds were a lifeline, but they gave us options.

Do we wait and hope that ridership will eventually return? Or do we take steps to incentivize ridership by improving our service and making it more relevant for a new market? We chose to do the latter, and in July 2021, we implemented WIDA's Pandemic recovery program, which was focused on restoring service, enhancing equity, and incentivizing a larger share of the traveling public to choose our system. We became the first agency in the Bay Area to fully restore service, but we brought it back with major changes.

We've dramatically increased our off peak service. Our new ridership market is more dependent on shift workers traveling outside of traditional commute hours. Weekend service now looks a whole lot like weekdays looked prior to the Pandemic, and we structured our weekday service to look to start earlier, end later, and to add more midday trips. We also reduced our fares, but we didn't do that. Haphazardly. We deliberately aligned our fares with other transit modes traveling in the same corridors.

Before the Pandemic, riders would pay a premium to take the ferry, and if they didn't want to pay that premium, they would ride BART or an express bus. We wanted to take cost out of the equation, so riders would simply be able to choose the mode that works best for them. We made other improvements. We launched a new mobile application with enhanced real time and service alert functionality. And since occasional riders and leisure travel have become such an important part of our market.

We made our mobile ticket much easier to use. All of these improvements have helped we to restore ridership from a new market that is more Low income and more transit dependent than it was pre pandemic. Our weekday ridership has dramatically outpaced downtown San Francisco office occupancy, and our weekend ridership is over 100% of pre pandemic levels.

Riders have always enjoyed their experience on the ferry, but we can officially say we have a 99% customer satisfaction rating, which is the highest of any transit agency in the country. And the number of very satisfied riders, which I think is more impressive, has doubled from 38% in 2018% to 76% today. We've learned a lot about ridership recovery and what it'll take to restore financial sustainability to our transit systems.

First, if we're going to capture a larger share of travelers, we need to make transit better, period. Second, we can't go it alone. We've been able to restore service because we haven't seen the kind of operator attrition that our bus systems have experienced. Our system is highly dependent on quality. First, last, Mile connections. We need restored local bus connections to maximize ridership potential, and we certainly can't let those connecting systems hit a fiscal cliff.

Third, no matter what improvements we make, it's unlikely that we'll be able to provide high quality, integrated traffic, reducing GHG, eliminating transit without additional public subsidy moving forward. And that doesn't make us unique. In fact, it just makes us like every other state and region across the country. Actually, we were unique before the pandemic. If you look at pre pandemic fairbox recovery ratios, the Bay Area's regional systems are total outliers. We had weed a BART Caltrain others hovering between 70 and 80%.

The rest of the country was half that rate if they're lucky. But they didn't need super high fairbox because their states and their regions recognized that transit is a public good and it needed to be subsidized at a high level in a prior role. I remember telling you, Senator Wiener, how proud we were of caltrain's 75% fairbox recovery, and you said you wished it was lower, and I thought that sounded crazy at the time, but it turns out you were right.

It turns out lower fare box, in addition to making transit more equitable and accessible to everyone, also makes transit more resilient in the face of a pandemic or a recession or whatever might be coming next. But it only works if there's enough subsidy. Other states and regions learned this by necessity. They didn't need a pandemic to figure it out. They just invested their resources in the services that they value.

Bay Area transit is learning the lesson the hard way with a crisis, but we're doing our part. The Bay Area's Transformation Action Plan will make transit better and more relevant to a post pandemic ridership market. It includes things like off peak service enhancements and regional fare integration, things that wida has tried to advance early. It also includes significant wayfinding and mapping overhauls, bus transit priority plans, and network management solutions that will make transit faster, more frequent, and more relevant to Bay Area travelers.

But again, no laundry list of improvements will let us go back in time to the days when Bay Area transit was a fair box outlier, when we could do more with less. The Pandemic's been a great equalizer in a lot of ways, and this is another one. Bay Area transit now looks more like the rest of the country, and it will need to be resourced like those other systems in the Bay Area.

That means moving forward with a regional ballot measure that will help Fund customer focused improvements and that will create new dedicated revenues for transit operations. Moving forward, it also means that in the interim, state support is critical. We're past the Pandemic, but we need to maintain transit service for essential workers and to maintain jobs for transit workers is still a priority. We understand what we need to do. Transit needs to get better.

It's hard to get better than 99% customer satisfaction, but our goal is to continue to demonstrate how customer focused improvements can help move the ridership needle. That's all going to take time, and we need the state's help to bridge that gap. Thanks for the opportunity to present to you today.

Thank you very much. I do remember that conversation. Okay, now, Mr. Grimace and welcome, Senator Dodd. I don't know if you wanted to make any comments before we go on. Okay. Thank you, Senator.

Good afternoon. I'm not seeing my slides here, so. Perhaps. I have them on a jump drive. So I will just insert.

Absolutely.

So we were talking up here on the Fair gates. That's something that could be big time in terms of safety and everything else there. Why is it going to take till 2026 to get that done?

Senator, thank you very much for that question. We are very committed to making certain that we get this right. We don't want to rush this process. These faregates are game changers, and they're going to be in the system for the next 50 years possibly. So therefore, we're going through a very detailed engineering process and testing process. Hopefully, we can get through that quicker and get them installed before 2026. But that's what our goal is, to make certain that we get it right.

Sir, is there anybody else that's gotten this right across the country or across the world that you can copy?

We're looking at models throughout the world. Correct.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. All right.

That was good. Efficient use of gap time. It was great. Thank you.

My name is Ian Griffiths, policy Director of Seamless Bay Area. I want to begin by stating that Seamless Bay Area strongly supports the call for operations funding for transit in the current state budget, including the full list of sources recommended by MTC, particularly looking at federal highway funding. Any amount of service cuts would be devastating for the future of transit, and we really don't have a path towards transformation, which is what I'm going to be discussing without near term operations funding support.

Transit plays a pivotal role in Bay Area communities, including serving essential workers and many disadvantaged groups. However, transit in the Bay Area was not working well for many people. Prior to the pandemic, ridership had been declining per capita for several decades, and transit made up only 5% of all trips, compared to over 70% made in cars. So we need not only to save transit, but we need to put it on a much stronger footing moving forward if we're going to achieve our climate goals.

The reason why transit didn't carry more than 5% of all trips is in part due to insufficient service in many parts of the region and lack of supportive land uses. However, the lack of convenience of transit for many types of trips is also related to the extreme fragmentation and lack of connectivity of the network.

Transit just doesn't make sense for so many types of trips, and this is a reflection of having so many different fragmented entities that have separate schedules, planning, fares, routes, and schedules that make it both inconvenient and very confusing for riders. So we need to address this. A higher ridership system with significantly higher levels of ridership needs to be seamless and customer focused.

A connected rapid transit network that is strategically planned to actually work as a system where transit agencies, and we may continue to have many of them they work together to operate different parts of that integrated network. That means service quality, fares, schedules, wayfinding needs to be seamless and reliable and as simple as possible for the end users. But this requires not only new funding, but governance changes to deliver that integrated network for customers.

This is the vision of seamless Bay Area, and this is very broadly supported among the public. Over 80 groups across the regions, our main cities San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Fremont have all and many small cities have endorsed this vision of seamless transit. Our major transit agencies, the BART Board, the VTA board, and nearly 90% of the public in public opinion polls have endorsed this vision of seamless transit.

And the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force that Rebecca Long mentioned took a really important step in that direction by setting the right ambitious vision of an integrated network with unified service, fare schedules and customer information and identified the right thematic areas where we need to make progress, like fair, integration, mapping, and wayfinding and governance. This discussion of bus and rail network management, it was identified as an area where we need to make progress. However, the existence of a report, of course, does not result.

That alone does not deliver change, and already we are falling behind in the implementation of. This plan. So we need to use the opportunity of state funding and the state interest in this topic to enhance our ability to deliver the Transformation Action Plan and commit to the long term reforms that can deliver that transformation. So we have a series of recommendations we've developed in concert with other advocacy groups, and they're really oriented towards three potential future sources of funding.

The one time gap funding that we're seeking with this budget cycle the prospect of a major regional funding measure, which we are all committed to and we know as part of the long term funding solution, but also the opportunity of new statewide sources of funding. So on the nearest term, opportunities to build ridership. Over the next couple of years, we have made important progress. The Bay Pass is a fantastic pilot program that's building ridership.

But some of our other strategies for building ridership are taking far too long to implement because of our very fragmented structure for making decisions in the Bay Area, free and reduced price transfers is a policy that can build ridership, but it's going to take three years to deliver. From the moment that we adopted that policy and more than two and a half years since we identified the funding for it, it's not going to be deployed until late 2024.

We should be delivering this right now to riders if we're seeking to really change people's habits. Another key recommendation from the Fair Integration work is a unified fair by distance policy for regional services. This was estimated to have a 5% ridership benefit, but there's absolutely no time frame for the implementation of this policy because there's no clear governance structure to determine what a regional fare structure would be.

So we recommend that in Association with one time operations funding, that we streamline the implementation of the Transformation Action Plan initiatives, in particular Fair Integration, but also wayfinding transit priority connected network planning and real time data standards, and make participation in those Transformation Action Plan initiatives a condition of receiving that funding. Transit agencies shouldn't be able to opt out of these initiatives, especially because they've already been agreed to, and this will help speed up the implementation of these initiatives.

We also support the Ridership Recovery plans to include how agencies are going to be addressing rider safety to help build back ridership. We need to address the So to transform Bay average transit. We do need to address the region's fragmented governance. 27 agencies with no entity in charge of a network cannot deliver the scope and speed of transformation that is necessary. The region needs a network manager with the accountability capacity and authority to deliver integration. And this is an institution.

A network manager is an institution that is the norm in regions around the world with much higher and growing ridership, including Vancouver, London, Frankfurt and many others. It's an entity that centralizes and oversees key functions of the entire transit network, including network planning, design, fair policy, schedule coordination, some of these key things that shouldn't be done on an agency by agency basis, but for the system as a whole. The network management framework introduced by Rebecca Long in the prior panel is not a network manager.

It is a structure for improved voluntary coordination. But at the end of the day, it is based on voluntary consensus of all the agencies, and it's very fragile as a result of that. So setting up a network manager in the Bay Area will require future legislation, and the opportunity to do this is in Association with a regional ballot measure for which we'll need enabling legislation in the next year.

So therefore, our recommendation is that as the state authorizes one time gap funding, that it set a clear timeline and expectations for the Bay Area to identify a permanent network management structure with the appropriate authority, mandate, and accountability for a seamless transit system that can be put in place with a regional funding measure. Third, it is time to analyze consolidations. This has been brought up before in prior Senate committees.

There have been studies that have been done this year and in prior years that point to major potential benefits of consolidations, including better decision making, expanded capability, and improved project delivery. These were the conclusions of the 2023 regional rail partnership study led by MTC, in which Caltrans funded, and it recommended as a next step that there be several follow on studies to look further into how to actually make that happen, going back as far as 2012.

Actually, the transit sustainability project also highlighted key efficiency benefits of consolidation, citing that Bay Area transit administrative costs are higher than their national peers, owing in part to the existence of so many transit agencies. So consolidation is not a panacea for all of our issues, but it does need to be on the table, and it won't happen without state action.

So the next step is to initiate a consolidation study to look at specifically how much it would cost, what are the specific consolidation options that would make sense, what are the costs and benefits? And with a report back to the state Legislature on next steps for implementation, and again, the opportunity to move those forward would be in Association with a regional funding measure.

Finally, we support the statewide transit transformation task force proposed through AB 761 as a companion to operations funding assistance to look at additional sources of statewide funding for operations and where the state can build more capacity to help transit agencies and improve regional coordination from a statewide framework. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay, next we'll hear from Senator Becker. Did you have a question before or.

Did to I guess I was going to maybe follow up on Senator Dodd's question, if this is appropriate.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you. Well, I appreciate the BART presentation and the safety and your personal commitment as well. And what Senator Wiener said about changes we've seen. I just did want to follow up on that. I mean, it did it did seem like 2026 is just a very far off date for the fair for the new entry points.

And I just want to echo Senator Don's point about looking where other people are doing and make sure we're not over engineering without any casting aspersions be another San Francisco garbage can project where we over engineer it. I'm sure other Senator. Not under your watch.

But I'm sure other cities and countries deal with people in wheelchairs and strollers. And I'm just worried if you over engineer it and then is that another path for fare of Asia? I don't know. It just feels like other agencies have probably dealt with this in the past and I just want to make sure we don't over engineer something when we can get something up and running more quickly.

Senator, thank you very much for your comments and we definitely hear you. One thing I would like to add that I didn't get an opportunity to mention to Senator Dodd is it's not only the engineering, but it's not only the engineering of the hardware, but it's also the software. So we've got to get both of those functioning properly together.

And that's part of the challenge too, is making certain that we don't have issues once we put those in and invest all this money into a system wide deployment and then have to reconfigure all the software as well as the hardware. So we are looking at models throughout the country and working diligently to try to move this forward as quickly as possible, but as efficiently as possible also.

Okay, thank you.

Great. We'll now go to Emily Loper from the Bay Area Council.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Wiener and Members. I'm Emily Loper, Vice President of public policy at Bay Area.

Emily Loper, Vice President of Public Policy at Barrier Council and we have been advocating to improve our various transportation systems since our founding over 75 years ago. We're very proud to have advocated for the creation of both the BART and Wida systems over the decades and also led the regional measure three just a few years ago. And we remain as committed as ever to ensuring transit success in the Bay Area. Despite the rise of remote work, we know that residents are still commuting around the region.

Our data shows that they are commuting at least a few days per week, if not more, but many are choosing to drive more frequently than before. Traffic has returned to pre pandemic levels or worse on the Bay Bridge and on many of our highways throughout the region.

If we hit this fiscal cliff and the operators are forced to make such severe service cuts, it will not only cut off a lifeline for populations that depend on transit, but it will make it harder for everyone to move around the region. And if we make it so difficult for people to commute, we really risk losing our workforce to other states and our economic engine along with them.

But this crisis also brings an opportunity to rebuild transit into a better service that meets the needs of residents now and for decades to come. As Members of the state Legislature, this is your opportunity to have a role in making these systems better. We urge you to help secure funding, to avert the fiscal cliff and then tie that money to rider improvements on the system.

As my colleagues have mentioned earlier, you have leverage to compel operators to implement these short and long term changes and shape how they do it. This is not a bailout. It is an investment in transforming our transit systems for the future. So how do we recover riders and improve systems going forward? For decades, we have all been frustrated by the fragmented nature of our 27 transit agencies, as Ian just outlined, which of course, makes it difficult and confusing for people moving across the region.

We spent the past few years participating in this Blue ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force to develop strategies to make our transit network more connected, efficient, user friendly system. And so now is the time to implement those reforms. But we recognize that those are longer term structural changes and they will take time. And we also need to invest in near term strategies to address rider concerns.

Right now, addressing these concerns is essential to both regrow ridership and to rebuild voter confidence as we work to a future regional measure. So we have been tracking employer attitudes about transit for the past couple of years, and concerns about safety have reached record highs. 78% of employers are now reporting being either somewhat or very concerned about safety on transit, and they consistently cite safety and cleanliness on BART in particular, as reasons why employees are choosing not to ride.

So that's why we did a recent poll to dive deeper into those concerns and identify specific strategies to bring those riders back to the systems. And the results are compelling. Residents cite safety and cleanliness as top reasons why they're not riding. BART more often outnumbering those who cite the lack of commute. So again, it's clear that remote work is not the only hurdle to regrowing ridership.

But fortunately, and this is very encouraging, 78% said that they would ride more often if it were significantly cleaner and safer to do so. Even higher numbers among the reduced and lapsed riders. These are riders that rode consistently pre pandemic and now ride with reduced frequency or have stopped altogether. Among that group, 85% would ride more often, 59 of which a lot more often. So based on these numbers, our economic Institute estimates this would amount to roughly 300,000 more riders each week.

So there's still growth potential in the weekday commute time. This would also bring more fair revenue back to the system and help sustain them going forward. So how do we achieve this safe and clean system? When asked about priorities for BART respond, 90% of respondents want BART to clean trains and stations more often. And as Rod said, they are doing that.

They are seeing that 79% want BART to better enforce the passenger code of conduct, and 73% want more uniform BART officers on trains and in stations. And I just want to applaud BART's recent work on the Redeployment effort that was detailed earlier. This certainly has improved the presence on the system. I see it. Our Members see it. It's definitely working. And we're also committed to working together to overcome the security workforce challenges that were outlined earlier, too.

In addition to strong support for armed officers, there was also wide support for non armed security personnel, including 63% for crisis intervention specialists and 60% for community ambassadors. And then lastly, of those surveyed, 65% also thought social service agencies should be in charge of homeless outreach on the BART system, which reinforces our support for AB 1377 of Friedman Bill to pursue this approach for people in crisis on transit systems across the state and help transit agencies do that homeless outreach.

But we cannot make any of these improvements if the systems fall apart now. So we're working towards a regional measure to support transit in the future. But the data shows voters are unlikely to be ready to support until they see some of these improvements implemented. We need your support to ensure that transit survives this crisis so it can thrive moving forward.

This is a once in a generation opportunity to influence how transit operates in the Bay Area, and we look forward to working with you to build that better system. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And then finally on this panel, Annie Lee with Chinese for primitive action. And stop. AAPI. Hate.

Stop AAPI Hate is a national coalition founded in response to the escalation of antiaapi racism and discrimination. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, we work in solidarity with other communities of color to advocate for comprehensive solutions to tackle the root causes of race based hate. We reject a reflexive over reliance on policing, prosecution and punishment as a solution to complex social problems. Stop API Hate is the leading national aggregator of self reported antiaapi hate incidents from across the country.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have received more than 11,000 reports from all 50 states in DC. Including over 4300 from California. We know that 11,000 is an undercount, and through an independent study, the number of AAPI individuals who have experienced hate is likely in the millions. The hate that our communities experience comes in many different forms. People think that all antiaapi hate are hate crimes, but crimes actually make up a very narrow portion of the hate incidents that we see at Stop AAPI Hate.

Instead, two thirds of what is reported to us is verbal harassment. Most of the hate that we see occurs in public spaces, such as streets and sidewalks, and 9% occurs on public transit. Overall, our data at Stop API Hate shows that most antiaapi hate incidents consist of verbal harassment by a stranger, often in passing, in a space that is open to the public, such as sidewalks, parks, businesses and transit.

I've shared the numbers with you, but I also want to share the actual reports so that you can hear directly from Members of our community. The next slide contains uncensored experiences about anti AAPI hate on Bay Area transit systems. I plan to read the entire report, including the racist and homophobic language. If you prefer I do not read the slurs aloud, please raise your hands and I will censor one woman shared this experience with us.

I was verbally harassed for 10 plus minutes on the munibus by a man calling me a chink ho, repeatedly yelling how he is happy Asian people are getting beaten up, robbed and killed. How I deserve it? He threatened that he could easily force me to suck his dick and would forcibly prove I'm a freak. One gender non conforming person shared this experience with us.

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 from car to car so I got off at Glen Park and hopped on another train for my safety and others. We know that AAPI communities are not the only ones who experience hate and harassment on transit.

Studies show that women and girls, especially those who are black and Latina or who identify as LGBTQ, are more likely to experience hate and harassment on transit. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders identified education, community based solutions, and civil rights legislation and enforcement as the top three ways to confront anti AAPI hate. Notably, increasing police was not a preferred solution, given our community's express desire for non criminal solutions and our data showing that most anti AAPI hate incidents involve harassment in places open to the public.

Last year, we launched no Place for Hate California. As part of this campaign, we sponsored two bills that became law AB 2448 strengthened customers civil rights in businesses by requiring the Civil Rights Department to develop a pilot program for businesses to take affirmative steps to ensure a harassment free shopping experience.

SB 1161 last year required the Minetta Transportation Institute MTI at San Jose State University to develop and publish the first of its Kind survey tool to measure rider experiences with harassment at transit stops or wild riding transit. MTI is currently consulting the top 10 largest transit agencies and community based organizations in developing the survey tool. This year stop. API Hate is back with SB 43, four. Which builds on SB 1161.

SB 434 requires the top 10 largest transit agencies to collect and publish data on rider experiences with harassment. They may use the MTI survey if they want. These agencies will also need to conduct outreach activities with riders who are underrepresented in surveys yet impacted by harassment to ensure that all voices are heard. SB 434 is a critical step in helping transit agencies better understand their riders and develop effective ways to respond and prevent harassment on transit.

Ultimately, improving the rider experience will bring riders back. We are proud to have broad support for SB. Four. Three. Four. Including from the California Transit Association. We have worked very closely with CTA and collaborated with them extensively in the development of SB 434. We also have support from SFMTA, BART, La Metro, Octa, and a diverse group of community based organizations. If SB 434 becomes law, the top 10 transit agencies will collect data on rider experiences.

In order to develop effective responses to rider harassment, transit agencies should consider a civil rights and public health approach. For instance, they can educate riders on how to report discrimination on transit through California v. Hate or the Federal Department of Transportation. A transit agency's own reporting system is also a resource if it is linguistically accessible. We've also seen agencies like La Metro and BART take action to reduce harassment on their systems.

For instance, La Metro recently hired more than 300 transit ambassadors and BART's not one more girl campaign involved youth designed antiharassment posters tracking sexual harassment complaints and hiring more transit ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists. Not one more girl had encouraging results in reducing sexual harassment on BART and making riders feel safer. Ultimately, we need to address hate on transit because no rider should face harassment simply for being who they are. This will cost money, but it is an investment worth making.

Our working class communities, especially women of color, are dependent on transit. The state must take this critical first step to invest in transit now, and transit agencies must address hate on their systems so that all riders can be free from harassment. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I also want to welcome Assembly Member Lee. Thank you for joining us. That concludes the second panel. Any questions or comments? Senator Becker.

Yeah. Quick question for Ian. You talked about the number of reforms which I strongly support. The network manager, you said this entity is enormous high performing regions, including ones of many local Fund sources. Can you talk a little bit more again about how this works in other regions, and are we sort of on track for that or what would have to happen?

Yeah, well, thank you for the question. There's a number of structures, there's a number of models in other regions. The common features are that there's a central entity that has authority over fair policy, over the customer experience, over a key set of functions, setting the overall network schedule goals, and working with operators, often through service agreements, to deliver that integrated system. But they differ in terms of how many different agencies there may be or whether that centralized entity actually delivers service itself.

But a key feature of that is that it also has the ability to it collects funding and it is able to put money towards these goals in partnership with operators. So that is not a structure we have right now. That is not how MTC works, and that is not how the network management framework that's been developed. That is this voluntary step that we're taking.

It's a step in that direction, but it doesn't ultimately create that authority to be able to function and coordinate and manage an integrated system that way. That would take legislation either altering MTC's authority or setting up a distinct body to be able to do that that could be based off of one or more of our existing transit agencies.

Okay, well, thank you. I appreciate what you all are doing to improve the ridership experience in this time. I'll hold my questions for now.

Great, thank you. Okay, thank you all for being here. Appreciate it. I'll go to our final panel, which is going to focus on adjusting service to increase ridership. I want to welcome up Claudia Bergos, the Director of legislative affairs and community relations with AC Transits, as well as Casey Fromson, the chief communications officer for Sam, Trans and Caltrain, and Aaron Quigley, with the Valley Transportation Authority. So welcome. Welcome.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Senator Wiener, for your leadership on this issue and for convening this Committee and having this conversation. My name is Claudia Burgos. I'm the Director of Legislative Affairs and Community Relations at AC Transit. We appreciate that Committee Members understand how important this moment is and how decisions made at the state level will impact people's lives. AC Transit is the largest bus only public transit system in California and the third largest bus only public transit agency in the United States.

We serve 13 cities and eight unincorporated areas in western Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Our riders include students, seniors, and people with disabilities. 65% of our riders are Low income, and 75% are people of color. Nearly half of our riders do not have access to a working vehicle, and we carry 30,000 students to school on a daily basis. We, like other operators, find ourselves at a crossroads. During the Pandemic, ridership on public transit took a big hit, as did our finances.

Federal relief has allowed us to maintain service during these challenging times, but those funds are nearly exhausted, and inflation has made it more difficult to stretch that funding. As we emerge from the Pandemic, we must, and we are taking measures to keep our service running. This includes taking steps to welcome riders back to public transit by improving the rider experience and making the system safer, faster, and more reliable.

AC Transit's recovery from the Pandemic prioritizes equity and productivity unfortunately, we have experienced the spate of run cancellations due to operator unavailability. Therefore, we have put a pause on restoring service, and we have turned our focus to service reliability. Given the impending fiscal cliff and the difficult operator hiring climate. We've focused on delivering service where we have the most people.

Writing we've restored bus lines based on productivity and on the number of people with Low incomes and people of color within a quarter mile of bus stops. We've also matched service schedule scheduled service to the number of available bus operators, even if this has meant reducing frequency on some lines and running more buses on others. Doing so reduces unscheduled overtime, operating expenses, missed trips, while improving service reliability.

For our Trans Bay service, which moves riders across all Bay Area bridges, all signs indicate that this market isn't going to come back as quickly, so this service is on track for recovery after the local network. We are focused on service in a thoughtful we're focusing our delivering service in a thoughtful and efficient way that delivers the greatest benefit to transit riders. To date, we have completed recovery on 18 of 69 lines on our recovery list, including all trunk lines and major corridors.

We have full restored service on 81 of 132 lines. Most of the remaining lines are Low ridership, lines serving lower density areas, or transbate lines serving San Francisco, where work from home. Trends have devastated the commute market. By emphasizing reliability, we are focusing on meeting the needs of our current customers while attracting new riders that are critical to our long term survival.

I also want to highlight that the transit operators are jointly coordinating with MTC, as you've already heard, on developing a Bay Area connected network plan. The plan, branded Transit 2050 plus, will take a holistic approach to identify transit service improvements and investments that improve regional connectivity. Bay Area transit operators have hired dedicated staff to develop the program with MTC, and these staff are based at AC Transit.

As part of the regional coordination effort, transit operators are very interested in incorporating projects that improve transit speed and reliability, such as dedicated transit lanes, traffic signal improvements, and bus boarding islands. Achieving this and faster project delivery will require coordination with MTC, Caltrans, and local jurisdictions, and that coordination has already begun. However, currently one of the greatest challenges to creating an improved transit system is hiring new bus operators.

AC Transit was working hard to recover as much service during the Pandemic as possible, and we relied on forecasts of operator hiring, retention and attrition to do so. However, the Pandemic has made it extremely challenging to hire and retain bus operators, and the actual available workforce is not sufficient to cover the level of service scheduled. We must compete with the private sector and other operators for these open positions. Attrition is an ongoing issue because of the growing number of retirement eligible operators.

At AC Transit alone, nearly 40% of our operators are eligible for retirement within the next five years. However, we're taking steps to build and retain our workforce. We've increased our initial $1,500 operator hiring bonus to $2,000. We're offering referral bonus to staff for referrals to operators. We've provided appreciation pay. This Saturday, we're hosting a job fair where conditional offers of employment will be made on the spot. We'll be hosting this in Hayward.

We've got a campaign that's running right now, and we have a recruitment van that actually attends community events. As part of our efforts to recruit operators, we continue to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We're doing all we can within our means to grow ridership, build and retain our workforce, and deliver a service that meets people's needs. We have restored our service to 88% of what it was before the Pandemic. We've suspended fare increases. We've offered free and reduced fares. We've reactivated service to schools.

We also launched a new app with real time arrival information and a contactless payment option. And we just launched a major effort just last month to reimagine our entire network so that it matches the changing transit needs of transit riders in the wake of the Pandemic. AC Transit Realign is an inclusive, comprehensive assessment of every bus line within our service network. We're currently in phase one of the project where we are learning rider needs and setting project groundwork to establish new guiding principles reflecting rider needs.

We hope to develop plan scenarios, present those to our board, and ultimately, by August of 2024, we plan to have a new service network in place, one that is built on equity and which attracts new riders, the new riders that AC Transit needs to thrive. In. Closing, despite the challenges of the Pandemic, we've remained committed to advancing projects to improve the rider experience and better serve our customers. We're already seeing evidence of change that is forcing all of us to plan and operate differently.

And at AC Transit, we're doing just that, adjusting innovating, and doing our best to respond to the needs of riders as travel patterns continue evolving. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. We will now go to Casey Fromson from SamTrans and Caltrain.

Thank you so much for having me. Casey Fromson, Chief Communications Officer at a high level, I'm going to be talking about SamTrans, which has already implemented a new comprehensive network change and has seen very positive results, and Caltrain, which has made some changes, but will have the ability to make even more improvements after we finish the electrification project next year. SamTrans operates bus and paratransit service in San Mateo County. Our riders are predominantly Low income, with a large percent speaking little to no English.

We also have very strong Low income fare programs. Prior to the Pandemic, we began a comprehensive operational analysis, which was a deep dive into our entire bus network. We paused this work for emergency planning when the Pandemic started, but we started up again in 2021, touching thousands of people through the outreach process and ultimately completing three major rounds of multilingual outreach, using a variety of in person and virtual tools, and working directly with the community based organizations to help us reach our riders.

We also looked closely at changing travel patterns and the needs of our riders throughout the Pandemic. The network that the SamTrans Board ultimately adopted in March 2022 was a direct response to the technical analysis and information from what our riders told us was most important to them. This new network prioritizes equity, placing resources where people need it most, efficiency, reducing duplicative routes and connections, streamlining service and connecting routes to major job and transit centers. We knew that the plan would need to be phased over time.

The first phase was implemented in 2022, and after we began to make these changes, we reversed a trend of lower ridership and instead saw ridership increase from 64% pre Pandemic levels to the average of 7075%. And we're excited about additional improvements that we're going to be rolling out in the near term, including a new on demand service in East Palo Alto and Half Moon Bay that will roll out next month.

We certainly have more that we want and need to do, and some of the reasons that we're not able to do that is because of our ability to hire operators. Just like my colleague from you know, this is a common challenge throughout the region and an important part of Samtrans'success and our ability to deliver service to riders.

Now, SamTrans is an important part of the local transportation economy, but we know that our riders connect to other systems and it's important that all the systems in our area not only to use the term survive, but also to thrive. Switching gears to Caltrain, which has a different set of challenges and opportunities. Caltrain is the regional transportation network on the Peninsula, connecting three counties in 21 jurisdictions between San Francisco, Silicon Valley and San Jose and Gilroy.

Pre Pandemic Caltrain was standing room only and it had a fairbox recovery of 70%, which was the highest in the nation for a commuter railroad. That high fairbox recovery rate was something we were proud of, but similar to other agencies that you've heard of, that fairbox recovery rate is now driving Caltrain's fiscal cliff and the slow ridership recovery. But Caltrain is on the cusp of dramatic change.

Abraham Lincoln was the President when passengers first started Caltrain steam trains, and 160 years later we'll be retiring our old polluting diesel trains and introducing new electric trains with significant performance improvements that will allow Caltrain to provide a cleaner, faster, more integrated service for the region. Caltrain is not waiting for electrification to make service changes.

Pre Pandemic Caltrain had a very irregular commuter focused service, but during the Pandemic, the Caltrain board adopted an equity, connectivity and growth policy and that framework guided eight different service changes and created a more regular service pattern in the midday evening and weekend. Unfortunately, the service restructuring has been coupled with service disruptions and some less frequency, which has been necessary to allow us to finish the electrification construction work as quickly and safely as we can.

Next year we will be done with the construction work and can launch a new service that will provide more service to more communities. That exact parameter of the service is still being developed, but we know that with these new trains that are with their ability to accelerate and deccelerate, we have a much better system in place to be able to make those changes. And we will be using our equity policy as well as other data points to inform that new service.

And as with others that you've heard today, it's not just the service but also the experience of our riders. And we're thinking about that and taking steps now to implement equity focused fare programs that provide free or reduced fares, strengthening our regional connection through a variety of programs, and starting to generate excitement about what the new trains will mean for customers. Checking off many of the elements in a 2023 General population survey of what changes would be needed to encourage frequent rides on Caltrain.

We're going to continue to build excitement about the system and the public will be able to view these trains for the first time on January 29 and we'll have other events in the coming months in San Mateo County and San Francisco. And I just want to wrap up globally with saying we so appreciate your time and attention to this effort.

This is something that is important not just to be able to better connect our region and our local communities, but for us to be able to fight climate change and most importantly serve the people that depend and use our systems. Thank you so much for holding this hearing today.

Thank you very much. And then our final presenter of the day will be Aaron quickly with the Valley Transportation Authority, two of our VTA legislators.

Thank you, chair. Members of the Committee. Aaron Quigley. I'm with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. One moment. The Assembly Member has to leave shortly, but I'm going to give him an opportunity.

Yeah, I apologize for cutting you off there and I'm very grateful for Senator Wiener hosting this hearing today. I've been kind of watching on and off today on the television, but I think it's really important we're having this hearing and working with a lot of urgency to save our transit agency and the transit service.

I'm really thankful for the MTC putting out really thorough surveys and showing that of course it is part of integral not just our economy but the culture of the Bay Area as well, that we continue to support it. I look forward to working with all my transit agencies, especially those in my district as well, to save the transit and to look at all the creative solutions out there, whether it be federal or state funding.

I think Senator Wiener has been really spearheading these efforts and being creative about the funding sources out there. I just also want to put the comment know I've been writing transit across the world. My family grew up in Hong Kong and there are very few places in the world wherebox can cover the entirety of public infrastructure. Very few places in the world. And to have the expectation that fairbox alone can sustain a public good, a public infrastructure I think is unreasonable.

And I think the pandemic kind of woke us up to a lot of these things. So I look forward to exploring a lot of revenue opportunities to save transit, to make sure that we're strong and making sure that people, especially those who don't have cars and cannot depend on car transit, are able to get to the places they need to go to. So I really look forward to it. Again, I apologize for cutting up VTA's. Excellent presentation. I know that will happen, but I really appreciate this hearing today and know that we'll do everything we can.

Thank you. Assembly Member Now you may proceed.

Thank you chair, Members of the Committee. I'm Aaron Quigley with the Santa Clara valley transportation authority. Thanks for having us all here today and inviting me to talk about VTA's visionary Network VTA provides transit service and funds transit service and delivers infrastructure projects for Santa Clara Valley, one of the largest counties in the state and one of the most diverse in terms of transit planning.

Our efforts, pre and post pandemic, have focused on equity concerns around transit dependent rider communities as well as essential workers, and that's guided a lot of our planning efforts to date. In terms of driving our ridership growth, our efforts have taken two main steps in the last couple of years. In 2019, we implemented what we called our Next network, which was an overhaul of the entire transit network in the South Bay, and it focused on a couple of key things.

One of them was integrating BART and Caltrain into our local transit service planning with the BART extension of Silicon Valley coming online in 2020. And the second one was trying to maximize our cost efficiency and moving as many people as we can with the dollars that we had. And that was successful driving a 6% increase in our ridership.

But today we are implementing a different planning effort, looking specifically at the key features of our county and the service area that we represent, including the urban character and land use densities and the demographics of the communities that we serve, and really trying to grapple with the amount of appropriate service for that county. It is therefore not a long range plan, but more a snapshot of what the market demands today in Silicon Valley.

The key features of that network really focus on things like frequency and fundamental transit service principles that are the backbone of any system in the world, but really looking at increasing our frequency one and a half to two times across the system at the Span of Service Weekend services. Again because we're looking at populations that aren't doing typical nine to five commutes.

We're also core to that I think would be taking the service that we are putting out today as a baseline and recognizing that we need significant more investment in transit operations itself to move our network to a core. Network of 10 minute frequencies, which we recognize really complements any coordinating of schedules because it improves connection times between our own system and other regional systems.

The service improvements in the visionary network would be allowing our county to make a genuinely fast, frequent, reliable service and make across the board improvements critically. It really would play a role in making that rider experience enhanced when we're connecting to BART and Caltrain and we anticipate that we would be able to attract 10 to 20 million more rides a year. We would be also focused especially on providing services to new areas in a county that is rapidly developing.

We would be improving our overnight and weekend services that are critical for those frontline and shift workers and better supporting our 15 cities growth plans by providing significantly better transit service along their development corridors. To summarize that our visionary network, though it would provide 83% more service than we are providing today.

It would probably attract somewhere north of 45% more riders, but it would also require an investment of about 190,000,000 a year, which we also think would require about 800 to 900 more operators per year to provide it's a plan that is focused. Those kinds of numbers are on the operations side, not capital. But we wanted to shine a light on the transit operations investments we think are critical at the state level to meet your equity and climate goals. I'll end it there. Thank you very much.

Senator Cortese, do you have any questions or comments? Just a comment. I appreciate the presentation and VTA's efforts in bringing forward, especially the Bay Area coming forward as part of the Bay Area Regional Transportation Delegation for this broader statewide discussion. So good to see you here.

And of course, I'm pretty familiar with the background given my representation, but again, it's important, I think, for Santa Clara County and the VTA to be part of the solidarity I think we're looking for in terms of coming forward to get this issue resolved, especially the fiscal cliff issue. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. So that's our final panel. We'll now go to public comment.

So if Members of the public could come up and we appreciate you being here, why don't we just wait for them to clear a little? Absolutely. For those who want to participate by phone, just as a reminder, the number is 877-226-8216 and the access code is 621-7161.

Chairman Wiener, Senator Cortese, Terry Brennan. On behalf of SCIU California, we represent the two largest units at VTA and BART in Local 521, local 1021, SCIU.

We're here to support the bridge funding primarily because our Members are the ones we've heard a lot of talk about safety cleaning. They're the ones who maintain the vehicle modes, whether it's buses or trains, who clean them, who are at the fair box and do the essential workers who keep these things running in good times and bad. And we appreciate the idea of providing some bridge funding here to get this through.

Because without public transportation, as you well know, Senator Wiener, 40% of our emissions come from the transportation sector. And without clean, reliable public transit, we'll never hit our climate goals, we'll never hit our carbon reduction goals. And the alternative to this bridge funding is service cuts and layoffs, which do nothing but hasten the death spiral and the fiscal cliff and will cost us far more to repair in the future than anything we can do now.

So we join our colleagues in supporting that, and we're here to help in any way you ask. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello. My name is Cyrus Hall, resident of San Francisco. I'm a Member of the San Francisco Transit Riders. I'm a daily muni rider. I also ride BART AC. Transit SamTrans Caltrain on a regular basis. I apologize. The other 400,000 daily riders of Muni couldn't make it today. There's just a couple of us still. To put up with us.

The Pandemic has delivered us to an inflection point in transit. From here, we can move forward towards better time, connections, easier to make, payments easier to understand systems management across agencies. And it's a no small part due to the capital expenditures of the state that we can be at that point. But we can either protect those investments that have happened over decades of time or we can inflict in the other direction and we can inflect towards collapse.

Riders thrown to the curb, elders isolated at home and unable to get around. That is not the future that any of us want. And with climate change as we move to reduce VMT by 25%, transit operations need state assistance. They will give the Bay Area time to build support and then pass a regional transit funding measure that we need to let our systems survive. So to conclude, I strongly support Senator Weiner's proposal for $5.15 billion over five years in operational gap funding and ask the rest of this Committee and the Bay Area Caucus to do the same. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi. My name is Sarah Blaine. I am a Member of St. John's Episcopal Church in Oakland and also a Member of Genesis, which is a social interfaith social justice organizing project in Oakland that my church is a part of. I'm really grateful to hear I'm really grateful to you, Senator Wiener, for addressing this crisis. I'm really grateful to all the people we got to hear today who've worked so hard during the Pandemic to think of ways to keep things going.

I'm grateful to the people talking about improving ridership experience. My children went to school in Oakland. Their lives were on transit. My daughter is now commuting from our home in Oakland to San Francisco Law School. UC Law School San Francisco And her days are long. And I am grateful for she suffers gender based harassment on public transit. And I am grateful as a parent for the efforts made to make the ridership experience easier for her.

As a person of faith, I am very grateful for what I heard today about people's trying, not trying to resist the tendency to criminalize everything, to criminalize homelessness, to criminalize poverty, to criminalize addiction, to criminalize mental illness, to criminalize misery that we live with. So I'm grateful to that. I'm here to support your budget measure to keep public transit going. We know that the Bay Area doesn't work without public transit, and climate change is relentless. We need to increase ridership. We need to increase public transit.

We can't let these investments go. And I just want to say that I didn't bring 400,000 riders with me either. I would like to represent the students who are working hard to keep their lives afloat and absolutely count on public transit to get to work and to school. I'd like to represent disabled people who will never drive a car and elderly people who rely on public transit for just everything in their lives. So thank you, thank you, and I really hope that your measure passes. We have work to do.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. I'm Dylan Fabrics from San Francisco Transit riders, which is a Member supported nonprofit and also a Member of the survive and thrive coalition. I'm also here today representing the hundreds of thousands of riders who rely on public transportation every day in the Bay Area, from seniors who have to wait longer for their bus to students who have been passed up by full buses on their way to school.

Due to the fiscal situation facing public transit, riders desperately need state transit funding to ensure that they can get back to business as usual without wondering if they're going to have to wait for their bus. Countless riders have reached out to us, asking when their go to lines to their favorite park or their best friend's house or their Doctor's office will finally be restored. Unfortunately, San Francisco alone stands to lose 20 bus lines if state funding isn't secured.

But in San Francisco, we've seen ridership meet or exceed pre pandemic numbers on lines that have recently received frequency improvements, proving that with smart planning and enough funding, we can encourage more people to take the bus. For the millions of Californians who rely on public transit, I ask the Committee Members to support the adoption of Senator Weiner's plan to provide gap funding for transit operations.

I believe in California, I believe we can lead the nation to a greener and more equitable future where people can love their transit agencies and operators as much as they love their cars. But in order to get there first, we have to Fund transit. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Sasha Maldonado, here today with the survive and thrive coalition. I'm a resident of San Francisco. I'm a constituent of Senator Wiener and a regular transit user. I haven't owned a car since 2021, and it's made transit a really big part of my life. I think that the quality of transit services available in the Bay Area broadly actually makes living a lower emissions, car free life significantly easier and significantly better than in a lot of the rest of the country.

And I think that that's something we can be proud of. It's also really obvious from spending time on Barton Muni that a really broad swath of people depend on and just generally use transit. And hearing all the agency representatives here today talking about their commitments to equity, it's clear that that broad representation is really intentional and something else to be proud of. I think the ingredients are for a really bright future for transit.

Liberia are present I think that it's really quite exciting that Caltrain is possibly the first combustion railroad in the United States to electrify that sort of blazes a trail for other transportation systems to decarbonize. Similarly, other projects, service upgrades, fair integration, offer a lot of hope for the future of being a transit writer in the Bay Area. Looks like it's important to keep the great things we have and to keep momentum to improve.

And that's why I'm proud to be here today in support of the budget measure for gap funding for transit operations. Thank you Senator, for your leadership on this issue. I really hope we see this vital funding in this year's state budget.

Thank you so much. Next speaker.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Amy Thompson. I'm a transportation policy and programs manager with Transform. Transform works to promote equitable and walkable communities for excuse me. Equitable and walkable communities with excellent transportation options. And the first step to preventing a transit death spiral is emergency state budget funding. As Senator Wiener you mentioned, the Transform analysis shows that the projected service cuts in the Bay Area will result in 735,000,000 less rides over five years. And if that happens, so begins the transit death spiral.

As people cannot rely on transit, they will find other ways to get around and at least one third of those trips will be in cars. And we can't afford for that to happen. Cars are the most polluting and the most expensive mode. The Bay Area has a transit transformation action plan to rebuild ridership. As was detailed today, we need state funding with accountability measures to both implement the Transit Transformation Action Plan and save and improve transit service.

This will also keep us on track to a regional measure and a sustainable funding model for transit. This is our chance to make transit the first choice for riders because it's frequent, reliable and safe, which will make a better Bay Area. Thanks so much for today.

Thank you so much. Next speaker.

So Adina Levin, Advocacy Director with Seamless Bay Area and part of the Survive and Thrive Coalition, and also in support of Senator Weiner's budget proposal for gap funding to help public transit avoid the fiscal cliff and regrow ridership. While the state plans for long term changing of funding for transit and while the region lays the groundwork for a regional funding measure, the wanted to highlight and uplift some of the really good stories on the work that is being done to regrow ridership.

The Bay Pass all agency Transit Pass is showing that 35% to 40% increase in transit ridership amongst people who can go from a single agency to the wealth of all Bay Area transit. But it's not just about the numbers. It's about the stories in people's lives. People who live in affordable housing, who are able to make more connections to family and healthcare and jobs, students who have more mobility opportunities.

This is helpful to people's lives, in addition to climate being needed for our housing goals and so on. And I wanted to reinforce what Ian Griffiths said about the need to have that funding connected with making sure that these good measures are not only happening now, but are stable and sustained and don't fragment and implode. And lastly, having worked on multiple of the region's successful local ballot measures, we and our coalition is really strongly in supportive of a regional measure.

And we need to get to a point to have something that will be strong and will pass because we cannot afford to fail. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay, seeing no additional public comment in the hearing room, we'll go to the phone lines. Will the moderator please queue up any remote public comment?

Of course. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to make a public comment over the phone, please press 1 and 0. You hear a tone indicating some place into the queue and you will be given your line number. If you are speaker phone, please pick up penset before pressing the numbers. Once again, you wish to make a comment or public comment, please press once and zero. A few have queued up one moment while their line number is given.

We'll be going to line 37. Please go ahead.

Can you hear me? Hello? Sorry, my name is Kyle Posey and I'm a student at San Jose State University with their Masters of Urban Planning program. I've only been taking transit hardcore for about a year and a half now, but just in that short amount of time, I can see the essential need for it. If transit is not given an emergency fund and or is defunded entirely, that's basically saying if you don't own a car, that sucks for you, because owning a car is not a right, it is a privilege.

Public transportation is for everybody else who is not privileged to make enough money in order to own that vehicle. An example I will use specifically is BART. If transit on BART enters the Red Zone, we could see a reduction on weekday trains to about an hour headway.

And that is far beyond unacceptable because it essentially ties the individual to the schedule of the train versus the individual being able to get the train whenever they want to say it's on a 10 minute headway. So I am strongly suggesting that this measure gets pushed through. I strongly support Senator Wiener and I hope transit can actually live in the Bay Area and become viable option for travel. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Next, we're going to line 33. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. My name is Jason Baker and I'm the Senior Vice President of Infrastructure for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. SVLG is a proud member of the Survive and Thrive Coalition, and we strongly believe we need funding and the time funding will buy to ensure the transit will survive and thrive.

Connecting people to one another and to the necessities like healthcare, jobs, groceries and more is a fundamental role of government, and public transit is one of the cleanest, most efficient ways for people to get where they need to go and want to go. Business in the Bay Area has been a strong supporter of public transit over the last few decades. SVLG has led four transit ballot measures and co-led more.

We supported transit because transit is important to the economy, to the region environment, equity, and because it matters to the ability to attract and retain workers. It's my sense the business is willing to be at the table for a discussion of new funding options for transits in a 2026 measure or beyond. But that discussion needs time and it needs some of the improvements you've heard about today.

We need investment from the state now and we need time for real progress on the accountability and safety and cleanliness side. We need to have the best case we can to offer to voters and potential funders of a transportation measure that we have, a transit system they will be eager to invest in. Thank you for holding these hearings and for your focus on these critical issues.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Next, we'll be going to line 36. Please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Lian Chang. I live in San Francisco and I'm on the board at Walk SF. Speaking for myself, really grateful to Senator Wiener for his leadership on transit funding. Just a little bit about me. I normally bike a lot, but I can't bike or walk right now as I ruptured my Achilles tendon and I'll be on crunches for a bit over a month in total. I've been on transit more than ever and it's been wonderful.

I'm shoulder to shoulder every day with other San Franciscans, San Francisco people from all walks of life. And it really makes me feel like, for me, that I am coming back from the pandemic and being around other people again. And transit is, not only it is a way to get around and that is crucial and essential for our economy and for jobs and for access to resources and all of that.

But it's also a way that we come together as people, that we kind of share that proximity and feeling of community with people in our community and are not walled off from each other in cars, where we feel afraid of each other, where we feel distance and separation and all of that. Not only do we need transit for the economy, but I think we need it culturally to come back from the pandemic. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. And I would associate myself with those remarks, but next speaker.

Next, we'll be going to line 38. Please go ahead.

Hi, Zach Lipton in San Francisco. I am also a Member of Walk SF and also want to thank Senator Wiener for his leadership in trying to save public transit. It is an absolutely vital lifeline for millions of Californians, many of whom have done frankly, what the state has asked of us and chosen not to have a car or do not have a car by necessity and rely on public transit to get around.

This budget crisis will decimate transit and puts our climate goals at risk, as transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state and transit represents one of our best ways to reduce vehicle miles traveled. It's vital to equity that we save public transit. It's almost 60% of residents who commute by transit have a household income below $35,000 a year. And public transit supports tens of thousands of good paying California union jobs statewide.

We know that the status quo wasn't even good enough before for our climate goals. And at a minimum, we need to have the short term operations funding to maintain the transit service we have now as we work to build and thrive in the future. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any additional comment on the telephone?

We do have one more from line 39. Please go ahead.

Hello. My name is Bryan Culbertson. I'm calling from Oakland, California. We've heard a lot about how the ridership has decreased over this time. But as a daily BART AC transit rider, I would like to tell you that even at this current level of ridership, it is very packed on BART. Like when I commute home from San Francisco, the trains are full. We're currently talking about potentially losing service but our current level of service riderships are packed on the trains and we need more service.

So what we're looking at here is something that's important for us to consider is that even at the current level of ridership, there is a lot of demand there for more. So thank you very much for looking into not only saving transit, but hopefully increasing and expanding it too. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And we do have one more that has just queued up one moment while their line number is given.

Okay.

Next we're going to line 40. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon, Chair, Members of the Committee. This is Bob Allen with Urban Habitat, member of the Voices for Public Transportation and Survive and Thrive Coalitions. I just want to echo the comments of my colleagues and appreciate the seriousness that the Committee is taking to try to address this crisis. A crisis know in terms of operations, Senator Wiener knows this, we've been trying to deal with structurally for well over a decade since I've been working on this in the Bay Area.

But it's been exacerbated by COVID and the decline of ridership and the changing economic geography of the Bay Area so we can't meet any of the goals, climate, equity, economic justice, racial justice, goals that people have articulated today without a functioning transit system. We're already facing a shortage of workers and we need to rebuild the transit workforce into the kind of green, working class and middle wage jobs that can support families in the Bay Area.

So we hope that you will take action. Many of us have been working on, have raised money for polling and other research to get a regional measure, the Groundwork Foundation for Regional Measure prepared. We're ready to kind of go and build a foundation for that campaign and pass a transformational regional funding measure. But we need bridge funding to get us there while we get out of the current budget crisis. So we appreciate the work of the Committee.

We're ready to work across with all of our partners and preserve the system. It wasn't what we needed before this crisis, but we have the opportunity, the Legislature has opportunity to create the system that we need. And we look forward to partnering with you on that effort. Thank you.

Great.

And there's currently no one else in the queue.

Okay, thank you very much, Moderator. We'll bring it back to the Committee. I want to thank all of our panelists today and all our public commenters and my colleagues. We are in a really tough situation right now with transit in California and in the Bay Area. But the good news is we know what needs to happen to make sure that transit remains viable in the Bay Area and beyond. It's not rocket science.

We know that good work is happening to look towards the future in terms of how transit fits in in the future and what changes have to happen. And I think today really debunks a lot of the narrative that there's no talk of reform and no reforms happening. These systems are working very, very hard to look toward the future, and there's always more we can do, and that'll be a continuing conversation.

But I think that our transit agencies are taking the need to evolve and reform very seriously. The other good news is that when you look at the statewide operational funding shortfall for the next five years, it's approximately $1 billion per year for all transit systems in need for the entire State of California. $1 billion per year in the context of the California State budget, that is highly doable for something that carries around so many Californians every day, and that is part of the economic lifeblood of our state.

In addition, we know that the California Transit Association, the MTC, others, we have various ways of really making sure that the bulk of that funding does not need to come from the California General Fund, which is under so much stress right now. So our transit agencies, our advocates, have done amazing work to try to give options to the Governor and the Legislature.

But you can walk a horse to water, but the horse has to drink. And the Governor and the Legislature now have to drink and take the steps we need to do to save these systems. So thank you, everyone, for participating today. And with that, this hearing is adjourned.