Senate Transportation Subcommittee on LOSSAN Rail Corridor Resiliency

The Senate Transportation Subcommitee on Low Sand Rail Corridor Resiliency is now coming to order. Thank you to the public who is here today, and we welcome your participation for today's hearing. We will hear from panelists first and then we will take public comment.

So first I would like to thank those of you who are here today to speak with us at the Subcommitee on Low Sand Rail Corridor Resiliency. This is our second hearing of the year and I would like to thank my colleagues and panelists and the public for joining us today.

The Subcommitee last met in Los Angeles at LA union station on May 30. We had a great discussion about what is being done to prepare for an influx of visitors and specifically train riders when the region hosts the World Cup and then the Olympics.

We heard from the City of Los Angeles, the California State Transportation Agency, and other state and local partners on the importance of rail service in meeting travel demand with a sustainable, reliable and convenient alternative to driving. There are many challenges in meeting that demand, and we heard about those.

But I'm also optimistic that our local and state partners will be able to step up, work together and ultimately do what's necessary to be prepared. Today, our focus is on how to strengthen the foundations of rail travel, how to boost ridership, deliver capital projects, and improve planning and financing.

This Subcommitee has already heard from corridor operators, infrastructure owners and state partners on conditions across the corridor. We've heard about the need for more dynamic thinking, better strategic planning, and more thoughtful coordination. We know the corridor is threatened by coastal erosion, sagging bluffs, and other challenges that are exacerbated by climate change.

For the rail corridor to endure and succeed, our rail services have to be reliable, primarily reliable. They have to be more frequent and they have to be competitive with driving.

We have to continue toward this type of vision for our rail network so that it works for people and to help us meet our climate goals and the transportation needs of the future. I'd like to talk briefly about each topic that we'll cover today. First, we'll start with ridership.

I look forward to hearing from partners along the corridor on their near term, long term and actionable plans to grow ridership. Second, we'll hear about capital projects. The state has invested significant funding for capital projects to boost rail performance and services. We'll hear what projects are in the pipeline and third, services and financial planning.

We have to collectively do better here. We won't succeed if all of our operators have different plans and different visions for the corridor services.

In addition, we of course need to be financially stable and healthy and I look forward to the remarks that we'll hear and our discussion on how to best ensure passenger services are integrated, solvent and ultimately serving the millions of residents in Southern California with high quality services.

I've authored two bills to strengthen the planning and coordination along the corridor.

SB 677 required resiliency planning to be incorporated into the Low Sand Agency's annual business plan and SB 1098 requires Calsta to submit a plan to the Legislature by February of 2026 in partnership with corridor operators, track owners and the Coastal Commission, among others, on how to improve the performance, coordination and day to day operations of passenger services.

I know CALSTA is working with all of its partners to fulfill its obligations under SB 1098 and better support this rail corridor. I want to acknowledge that the Losan Rail Corridor Agency and the North County Transit District are not here today and in their absence I'd like to share a couple of additional pieces of information.

The Losan Rail Corridor Agency is the local managing agency responsible for operating the Pacific Surfliner service between San Luis Obispo and San Diego and I will be taking that actually tomorrow to go from San Diego to up to LA and then eventually to Santa Barbara.

Similarly, the North County Transit District manages and operates the Coaster passenger rail service between Oceanside and San Diego. According to the Losan agency's third quarter corridor trends report, the Pacific Surfliner saw nearly 435,000 passenger trips between between January and March of 2025. Pre 2022 that number was closer to 700,000 quarterly.

It is clear that we must do more to increase ridership on the Pacific Surfliner for coaster. Its April 2025 transit operations performance Report shows that monthly boardings totaled nearly 88,000 riders, slightly above projections but still only 75% of pre pandemic levels.

If we want different results on our rail lines, we have to do things a little bit differently. We have to market our rail services, we have to think about service planning and frequencies and we have to prioritize the capital investments that will work better for passengers.

Additionally, I'd like to share a quick update about the tracks in San Clemente. The Orange County Transportation Authority, or octa, is continuing to deliver the emergency projects needed to stabilize the existing railroad tracks adjacent to the ocean and I thank the state for being an active partner.

OCTA is hosting Coastal Rail Resiliency Study public meetings this month to continue identifying short to medium term solutions that protect the rail infrastructure and support coastal resources. I encourage my colleagues here and the public to Engage so that we get a comprehensive report from octa.

That report will then be used to inform a long term study, to inform how we have a rail line that continues to exist for generations. And, and I thank calstr for leading this long term study.

In closing, I'd like to thank my fellow Senators and colleagues who are engaged on this topic of making the Losan rail corridor more work better. And I appreciate your time, leadership and thoughtful comments. So now I'd like to invite up our panelists to join us at the table.

I will introduce them Paul Hubler, Chief Strategy Officer at Metrolink and and Frank Jimenez, Senior Fiscal and Policy Analyst at the Legislative Analyst's Office. And joining us virtually is Don Batisi, Chief Financial Officer of the San Diego Association of Government. Sandag, welcome. And you're welcome to begin when ready.

I'm going first. That's right. Can you hand me the clicker? Well, first of all, thank you, Senator Blakespear, for convening this meeting and for your advocacy for regional and inner city rail.

Often I think we feel in the world of public transit that we're sort of the poor stepchild, somewhat neglected, and we need strong advocates like yourself really to have our systems integrate well, serve the needs of California and integrate well with the other transit providers. And so we appreciate this opportunity and particularly your leadership on this issue.

I've got a slide program that I'll go through. First of all, a little bit of background on Metrolink. Metrolink is Southern California's commuter rail operator, although we're changing that branding. We're becoming a more of a regional rail operator, which I'll get into later during my testimony.

We are the third largest commuter rail operator in the nation based on route miles. It is a large system of seven different lines for a large urban conglomeration. We also operate the cleanest diesel fleet in the nation with 75% of our fleet of locomotives being Tier 4, which is the EPA's cleanest certified engine.

And this I think is particularly interesting. We're the second largest transit provider in Southern California based on passenger miles. So the number of passengers by the number of miles that they move, we tend, unlike our fellow operators in the bus world, we tend to move people long distances.

In fact, the average trip of a Metrolink passenger is between 30 to 40 miles. So these are long trips that have a substantial impact in terms of reducing vehicle miles traveled in what is admittedly one of the most congestion congested regions in the country and one that suffers from severe air pollution.

So again, thank you for that, for the introduction, I've got five slides and I'll move to the next slide. The five slides, the first couple of slides are going to talk about our new service schedule where we increase service frequencies in an attempt to capture new riders and, and to expand ridership.

And then I'm going to talk about State of our capital investment program that's intended to facilitate increased service frequencies along these seven routes that I mentioned. And this growth in future ridership is in alignment with state objectives, as I mentioned, to reduce vehicle miles traveled and allow access to jobs, affordable housing and other opportunities.

And then finally I'll talk about our finances, particularly post pandemic, and hopefully give you an impression of the significance of state funding to Metrolink's budget. So this first slide since we last presented to you, I think it was last year Metrolink instituted a major service schedule and service initiative, increasing service by 23%.

As you can see there, we added 32 trains. We went from 142 trains a day to 174 trains a day during the week. And particularly the intent was to add more midday and evening options. These were serious gaps in our service schedule that we otherwise didn't have. We and I'll show you on the next slide.

We were set up as a commuter railroad with peaks in the morning bringing people into the downtown areas. And then the trains would park and the crews would go to hotels, literally to hotels to wait until the second part of their shift in the afternoon when they would take people out.

What our studies have shown is that there are people moving about traveling during the day and we want to try to capture that market, particularly given that the traditional nine to five commuters not coming back with work from home schedules. That market is growing gradually.

But there are untapped markets that we can serve and get people to their destinations during the middle, again the middle part of the day and into the evening. That the other advantage of this service schedule that we launched was it optimized trains, fuels crews.

If you're bouncing trains back throughout the day, you don't need to put your cruise in a hotel to wait till the afternoon shift and you're using your equipment, frankly, more efficiently.

And then it also expanded connectivity and made LA Union Station for us truly a hub where you wouldn't have to wait more than 10 to 20 minutes to transfer.

If you come in on the San Bernardino line and you get on the Antelope Valley line to get to Burbank or Glendale from somewhere in San Bernardino before this, you would have to wait hours, literally hours to transfer to that train.

Now with this new service schedule, you have no more than a 10 to 20 minute wait to get onto the connecting train. This graph sort of illustrates the transformation of our service.

As you can see, the grade outline showed the peaks in the morning where we had the trains coming in and then a valley, dirt valleys, frankly, during the day, middle part of the day and then the afternoon peaks as well.

We've tried to, to the extent we can level that service out throughout the day and further into the evening so that we offer that convenience to our riders. The attracting new discretionary riders will take time, but early results are promising. Weekend ridership in March of this year broke our all time record.

Not just a post pandemic record, but all time with 123,000 riders. In April, Metrolink ridership reached a new post pandemic record with nearly 23,000 average weekday boardings. 23,000 boardings a day, up 7% from our previous high water mark. In November, Metrolink ridership over the course of fiscal year 25, which just ended last month, reached 7.78 million boardings.

It's an increase of 24% over the prior fiscal year and reflects a recovery of 65% of our pre pandemic ridership. Let me go to our next slide. This is. It's rather complicated and we've got a lot of projects up there, but this illustrates our SCORE phase one projects.

And the SCORE phase one projects are intended, as I mentioned, to increase our service frequencies primarily by building additional double track sidings and station improvements in order to facilitate more frequent ridership.

The first phase, which we show here, is partially funded with key grant awards from the 2018-2019 cycles of the transit and Intercity rail program funded from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And phase one is estimated to be completed by the time frame of 2028 to 2031.

Completed projects will unlock 30 minute bi directional service on three corridors accommodating our San Bernardino, Antelope Valley and Ventura County lines. That Ventura County line is shared with the low San operations.

With these completed capital projects and more frequent service, and that's key, we anticipate ridership growing over the next decade or so to a range of between 14 to 21 million riders per year. So roughly two to three times what we currently have.

But it's contingent on the capital projects being completed and also the willingness or the ability to sustainability the cost of that increased service frequencies.

The next phase of the SCORE program will focus on the development of a mix of hourly and half hourly service on five of our lines, including three that are shared with the low sand corridor. The Orange County Line, the Inland Empire Orange County line and the 91 Paris Valley line.

The Orange County line is shown, you may be able to see it in Orange there goes down to Orange County. Of course, the pink line is the InLand Empire Orange County Line which ties the InLand Empire to Orange County. Orange County being not all trains need to go to downtown LA.

In fact, Orange County is so substantial as an employment and destination based that we have our own line serving that. And then the 91 Paris Valley line is one of our newer lines that goes all the way out to Paris.

You see there in light blue all the way out in Riverside County and connects into Los Angeles Union Station. I would note these last three lines do operate over the BNSF under shared use agreements. And you can see the.

We don't indicate the bnsf, but it's been basically the line that swings south that accommodate between LA Union Station and Fullerton. And then the BNSF Main line transcontinental mainline continues eastward towards Riverside. And as you can see, we've got a number of our lines that travel over the bnsf.

So that is frankly another constraint because those numbers of passenger trains are capped under an extra existing agreement and we can unlock additional passenger slots with necessary capital improvements that are identified by agreement. I'll advance to this slide.

What we wanted to show here was the significance of the state funding provided to Metrolink over the last 10 years. As you can see, an enormous amount and for which we're extremely grateful and have put to good use in TIRCP funds. Again, that's comes out of the Greenhouse gas reduction Fund, $1.2 billion.

And then the operating side somewhat so the, the LC top that's also Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund monies that are flexible between operations and capital, 30.7 million in that. And then State Rail Assistance, which is new and came out of SB 1. It was a new program intended just for inner city and commuter rail operators.

And that's generated for us over the last 10 years about $44 million. So we're again very appreciative of that support. A total of over 74, $75 million over 10 years. But in the context of an operating budget that is typically in excess of $300 million a year.

The amount made available by the state two commuter railroads is relatively minor in comparison to the cost of actually operating the service in the immediate term. As many public agencies would tell you, adequate funding to support Both capital and operations remains a major challenge for us going forward.

We were during the pandemic able to rely on federal funds. But for Metrolink, those funds have been all but exhausted and thus we now rely on our member agencies to make up that difference. I think that pretty much captures my testimony. I'd be happy to take any questions. I would just close with this.

As the Legislature takes up the reauthorization of cap and trade this summer, please keep in mind that chart that showed the significance to our capital improvements and operations of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

We believe there is that that fund and the investment it makes in transit is so important to achieving California's goals of reducing greenhouse gases, other federally regulated criteria, pollutants and vehicle miles traveled and helps connect Californians to affordable housing, jobs and other destinations important to them in their daily lives.

With that I conclude and I'd be happy to take questions.

Okay, thank you. Did you have a last slide? About a 3.7% average fare reduction.

I had that. If there was interest, I could go through that slide. It's about our. We just launched a fare initiative starting on July 1st in order to again rebuild ridership. The intent is to make sure that our fares are competitive and that folks are able to make the best use of the fares.

So I could talk about that if you'd like, or we can save it for questions.

Okay. Well, why don't we go to Senator Strickland with any questions or comments that he might have.

I just have a brief question. Thanks for the presentation. You mentioned that a lot of the federal funding is now a challenge and they're exhausted. What kind of funding are you seeking from the Federal Government? And the.

And then also what kind of funding do you are seeking from our General Fund, which I know we don't have a lot of resources, but what are you asking of legislators here that both work to try to get funds from the Federal Government, but we also, you know, you mentioned cap and trade and what's your kind of overall macro view of kind of the revenue that you are requesting?

Well, let me start from first with the. Yes, please. With the General Fund. We recognize the challenge that the Legislature and the Governor face with the General Fund. And the economy is cyclical, as are revenues. The last time there were significant surplus that was from the General Fund that was made available for Transit was through SB 125.

And what we, what we have advocated along with the California Transit Association, is for the maintenance of the SB 125 funds. My focus really at the state level. And our advocacy has pertained more to the reauthorization of the greenhouse gas reduction Fund which are the auctions of the emissions credits that California has in place.

And what we had advocated for was a carve out for commuter railroad or inner city rail in particular. But again we recognize there are significant pressures on that Fund as well. The Governor has made fire suppression a priority, rightfully so given what the state has so tragically experienced. So.

But our advocacy has been on greenhouse gas reduction Fund, not so much on General Fund, recognizing the challenges there and then at the state level or at the federal level. Excuse me.

I would say what we've advocated through the Commuter Rail Coalition, which is our federal advocacy organization in Washington D.C. is the establishment of discretionary grant programs that would be made available for commuter railroads in particular.

It's, it's sort of a quirk of federal law and the way commuter rail is distinguished from inner city rail and Amtrak at the federal level. But commuter rail gets the short shrift frankly. And we're not eligible unless it's an inner city route. Unless we operate over an intercity route.

We're not eligible for most of the FRA funding programs, directly eligible. So we could apply for projects that are located on the low sand corridor. But as you you can see from that map I showed, we've got seven lines all of which are important, one of which through San Bernardino.

Our San Bernardino line is ultimately going to connect to the first active high speed rail service in the country from Las Vegas, the brightline service from Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga. And so we've got to make those investments. We're disadvantaged as commuter railroads there's essentially disadvantaged at the federal level.

And that's something we've been advocating to see, we'd like to see changed and federal reauthorization is reauthorization of the federal transportation program. Typically a five to six year bill is coming up next year. They're already deliver, you know, they're already considering reforms and other requests from advocates. So we've submitted all of that at the federal level.

It's always hard to fight for federal dollars as it is the state. Is there any grant programs you're going after now that legislators, you're going to make us aware of those grant programs that you're trying to get some of the federal funding from.

The federal funds we have in the past unsuccessfully submitted for the raise grant program, which is a transportation grant program. But it's open to all modes. It's everything from bike paths to light rail to trough street Running trolleys, and we've submitted there. It's highly competitive, as you said, and vastly oversubscribed.

So at this point, we don't have an outstanding federal grant application. And we would. But we would be taking a close look at a program called Crissy, which is a rail program, again, intended for either freight or it's administered through the fra. Through. It's either freight or inner city rail.

And so we would have to look at our network to see which projects might apply, but we would definitely be looking for Crissy. And there are other federal grant programs as well that we don't leave any opportunity unturned, including, frankly, congressionally directed spending. We've been very active there and had some success as well.

But those are smaller, typically smaller amounts of funding.

Okay. And then I know you're going after funds wherever you can. Revenues. I see the next page. Affordability is key. Obviously you want affordability, but what kind of revenue are you projecting and how are you doing in ridership with revenues coming into Metrolink?

So that's been a huge challenge for us, frankly, with the pandemic and the precipitous drop in ridership given work from home orders during the pandemic at 1.0. And our revenues typically consist of farebox recovery. So commuter rail, unlike bus or subway or light rail, our fares tended to be higher than the other modes.

And so our farebox recovery was substantial. And that was coupled along with we received some revenues for maintenance of way, which we charge to the other operators that operate, including freight railroads. They pay us to operate over our network and dispatching. We dispatch trains over our freight and other passenger trains over our network.

So that that those revenues, though, drop from about 40% to about 20%. Given the decline primarily in ridership and thus farebox recovery, this has been exacerbated as we've tried to regrow ridership. We've offered fair incentives, discounts for those who hold EBT cards, for instance, receive SNAP benefits, food stamps, and we offer a 50% discount for them.

We offered over the past couple of years, 100% discount for students, which had an enormous effect in terms of growing our ridership by those who use student pass. And we've had other fare incentives as well, to acknowledge that prior to the pandemic, about two thirds of our riders had a monthly pass.

They were the regular nine to five commuters who came into the downtown office buildings. Now it's about a third. And so we've had to try to capture the more discretionary rider. And that Typically hasn't involve different fare structures.

Have you worked with market research or market firms to figure out how to increase. I see that you've done a few things to try to increase student enrollment, student activity, to make that up. What are some of the other ideas? Have you reached out to see what you can do to increase that ridership?

Yeah, absolutely. We have a marketing team both in house and, and they consult with outside experts about how different fare structures are likely to affect the elasticity of participation by somebody who might be a potential user of commuter rail services.

Keeping in mind that many of the, not all, but many of the riders of commuter rail, unlike the riders of bus or subway, they have a car. And so they're choice riders and thus a little more difficult to attract them to use a service.

Once they use the service as those who have recognize it's clean, it's secure and it gets them to their destinations and they can do other things while they're engaged in their commute.

Wonderful. And lastly, and again, I'm sure I'm not bringing up anything you haven't already talked about, but what about revenue in terms of advertising? There's a lot of focus when the trains go by. And as mayor of Huntington Beach, I'm the one that came forward with advertising on our lifeguard stations for just extra revenue for the city.

Is that one allowed? And two, is that something you've thought of?

We absolutely have advertised, yeah. And my understanding, again, I'm not responsible for our marketing communications, but we have particularly targeted drive time radio that as a comfortable, convenient and reliable alternative to being stuck in Southern California's traffic. We, we absolutely have. And you know, I mentioned the student fair program.

We've reached out, partnered with universities and schools to make sure that students were well aware of our, our discounts. And so it's, we have seen the effect of just letting people know that there is, it's an option to them. You can choose to drive or take another mode or you could choose Metrolink.

What about. I'm thinking more like when I go to New York and go to the subway, seeing advertising in the train, you know, have you thought about some revenues that might be able to create. Your passengers are on the train and I think you know what I'm talking about. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

You have advertising within the train or at the station. Are there things like that? Are you allowed to do that and are you already doing that?

My understanding is we are allowed to do that and we're, we are engaged in exactly that. We've had train wraps. You know, the wraps around the trains for advertising sporting events, for instance. And the. The Angels, the special trains to the Angels Games. We are also the LA 28.

The Olympics organizing Committee has reached out to us about offering us the possibility of sponsorships as well to realize some additional revenue. Yeah, it's like you said, we have to look at every source of funding, and revenue is one that we're looking at.

Yeah. But I really appreciate your time and being here and your presentation. I know how much work goes into that, so I'm very grateful to that. Looking forward to working with you, Madam Chair. Thanks so much for the time. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, I do have some questions, but I think I'm going to wait till the end so we can go to the next speaker, which I think will actually go first to Sandag. Is that right? Okay. So I think if that's okay, we'll just. Unless you're on a time crunch. Okay. So I think that's appearing virtually.

Yes.

Okay, great. Okay. All right, there you are.

Great. Go ahead. Can you hear me fine? Yes, thank you so much. My name is Dawn Vettese. I'm the Chief Financial Officer for the San Diego Association of Governments and Good Morning Senators. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for inviting us. These are very important conversations about the protection and future development of the low sand corridor.

And we have been working very closely with rail operators to plan, Fund and build the railroad capacity that's needed to support planned service increases for the inner city, regional and freight rail in the region. Our rail work has focused on eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring resiliency so we can realize a safe and reliable train network.

We do this by implementing our region's long range transportation plan.

And that has dozens of projects to improve service reliability, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, help make travel times competitive with cars and allow increases to operations in both directions throughout the day by 2035 with a frequency of every 15 minutes, which is a goal in both the regional plan and the state rail plan.

So to meet these service frequency goals, we need to get the low sand corridor in San Diego fully Double tracked. Since 2009, we've completed 20 rail capital projects and we've taken the San Diego section of the corridor from 50% double track to 75%. We currently also have two rail projects in the works that support special events.

So NCTD North County Transit District is leading the convention center platform project that's in downtown San Diego between first and fifth avenues that will increase passenger and freight capacity south south of downtown and will serve residents and tourists going to events at our convention center or at the Petco Park Stadium.

Coaster service will stop at this platform and Pacific Surfliner trains will stop here during special events like Com Con. SANDAG is also the lead agency now on a San Diego double track and special events platform project that replaces a century old bridge and adds double track capacity.

It provides direct access at a platform to events like the Delmare races and the San Diego San Diego County Fair. In recent years, the state rail plan and regional plan have pivoted from rush hour based commuter service to all day regional service that accommodates all types of trips and proposes regular clock face schedules throughout the day.

So for example, if a writer misses their 2:15 train and that service runs every 15 minutes, that rider would know they could catch the next train at 2:30. These types of schedule changes help with reliability and performance, are and are expected to help increase ridership as well.

These investments help operators achieve their goals to increase their service and Create resiliency and redundancy along the corridor.

Regarding capital projects, each project we have completed not only improves our capacity, but it improves resiliency from coastal hazards across each of our lagoons by raising tracks above sea level rise, protecting infrastructure to withstand flood events and shoring up unstable slopes to prevent landslides.

So in the near term, phase five of our Del Mar bluff stabilization project is strengthening the bluffs to ensure safe and reliable operations in Del Mar for the next 25 years. And additionally, long term studies are underway.

We're in the environmental clearance phase for a realignment that may include inland tunnel to move the track away from the bluffs to ensure the long term resiliency. And we, you know, have tremendous thanks and appreciation for the funding that was provided by the Legislature and in the Governor's Budget to undertake this endeavor.

We appreciate our relationships with the State of California, Calsta and Caltrans in working through this, this very important project, the San Diego Double Track and Special Events platform project that I mentioned earlier that does run across the San Diego Lagoon that is expected to move to construction very soon.

We do have a federal infra grant that is pending execution by Department of Transportation. It is in the Secretary's office now. So we are really hopeful that we will get that grant executed quickly and be able to move to construction on that project. We have also a second set of train tracks across the Badaquitos lagoon.

This project started or construction started in September of 2024. It is slated for completion in 2028 and this will enable north and southbound trains to pass at the same time through this area of the corridor.

This project also replaces a 1940s wooden trestle bridge with the concrete bridge designed to improve the tidal flow underneath the bridge itself and create a wider channel to help improve the overall health of this lagoon.

So other projects to note we have or other things to note rather, we've seen really good success in this corridor delivering projects using the construction mandate manager General contractor method called cmgc. With this method, we select that contractor early during this project development process.

They help identify constructability issues early, identify value engineering opportunities and other construction related input during the project development phase. And then the selected contractor generally serves as the General contractor during construction. And this helps increase efficiency and minimize risk to getting these construction projects completed.

This method was used in the North Coast Corridor program and it really helped to deliver, helped streamline that delivery process and provide a lot of efficiencies. So in terms of identifying, you know, what more can be done, we've really picked off most of the low hanging fruit.

These remaining projects we have to double track this corridor are all difficult in terms of the cost and environmental and political constraints. We are advancing these projects phase by phase.

And we are often challenged finding funding for construction delays, in finding that funding can also lead to increased costs just through inflation and in General the rising cost of construction, which is outpacing inflation itself. We're also a little bit challenged on local match for state and nationally significant projects which tend to come with high price tags.

It's really hard to come by. And so opportunities to reduce match requirements could be helpful, as would working with our federal partners to try to better align the priorities between the state and federal funding programs. So SANDAG has been able to leverage both state and federal political support to pursue the state and regional vision for rail.

But we have also experienced a lot of local opposition to investments in the rail infrastructure, especially in coastal communities.

It's really been a challenge for implementing agencies and so we really need help balancing local opposition with the broader benefits of rail across the state to help create kind of a more balanced dialogue as we all work together to try to address these issues.

In terms of our financial planning, we do have a sales tax measure in San Diego. County. We refer to it as Transnet. The ordinance runs through 2048. We have two transit specific programs in the measure. Transit operations subsidy program and a transit funding pass through program for transit operations.

8.1% of our distributed revenues, they're designated to subsidize operations for the transit capital projects that are being delivered by the measurements. And so over the next five years, we have about $171 million projected to be available for operations.

And this includes funding for our coastal rail service operated or the coaster service operated by NCTD for the pass through allocation. That's about 16 and a half percent of the distributed revenues. And the operators program those funds for either capital or operational purposes.

So they, NCTD and MTS select the projects and operational programs that those funds will go to. We have over the next five years about $349 million projected for that program. So we remain actively engaged with the operators to annually evaluate their funding requirements for their transnet supported services.

But it's important really to recognize, and we've been having these discussions for quite some time, that the funding increases do not always align fully with the rising operational costs.

So as mentioned in the earlier presentation, you know, a lot of this work is, you know, expensive and we're really always looking for funding sources to help us with this so so we cannot guarantee that all the operational funding needs can be completely met to support all the projects that are in our sales tax measure.

We also have for capital projects the major corridor program and that does provide funding for coastal rail projects. But this program is highly leveraged and highly constrained and the coastal rail corridor is just one of many corridors throughout the region that is in need of investment.

So at Standag, we really continue to value our partnerships and work, really work closely with our transit agency partners with the state, with the low sand corridor and with Calstad to try to, you know, identify funding and deliver the projects that are planned and that can help our transit agencies meet meet these needs.

So with that, that's the end of my planned remarks and I'm happy to take any questions you have.

Okay, well, thank you so much, Dawn. We really appreciate your testimony. Thank you for appearing remotely today. I think we're going to go to the LAO and then we'll circle back for any questions. Thank you.

Good afternoon Madam Chair and Committee Members. Frank Jimenez with the Legislative Analyst Office. I'll be making my comments from this handout which you all should have received. If not, should be making waves around the room. And we presented this handout at the Subcommittee's May 30 hearing.

And I'll be keeping my comments at a very brief and at a high level. So I'll be walking through the handout in chunks.

So page one through four provides an overview of the rail services provided by the state and provides specific background on the three state supported routes such as the state and JPA responsibilities, funding and recent ridership trends. Page 5 through 7 provide an overview of key legislative considerations in this area.

Overall, we find that the state does have a rationale for supporting the corridor, given that it does play an important role in supporting the state's transportation system.

The state could look at providing additional ongoing funding to support services or it could look at providing one time funding to support support special efforts such as addressing impacts related to climate change. However, providing additional funding does come with trade offs. This funding would likely compete with other General Fund and state funding priorities.

The Legislature could also look at increasing revenues to provide additional resources, but that would include increasing fuel taxes, vehicle fees or other broad based taxes.

In addition to these issues, the Legislature will have to navigate supporting a corridor that has ownership split across various public and private entities and has federal, state and local agencies providing transit services, each with different funding streams and capital capacity. I'm happy to take any questions.

That was brief. You don't have Any more to share than that? Okay. Senator Strickland, do you have any other questions? I don't. Okay, thank you. I'll go back to a question for Metrolink here. So, Mr. Hubler, thank you for being here in person. We really appreciate you coming up for this.

I wanted to just ask about any lessons learned from the student Adventure Pass. So I understand that that was funded with 4 million from the Low Carbon Transit Operations program, LC TOP. And it resulted in a 10% increase in the percentage of student riders as a portion of total riders.

So at that time it was 35% of total ridership. So that's a pretty serious increase. And I assume, and I wanted to understand this better, that a student just uses their student ID. They don't have to get onto the app or do, you know, get a different type of pass or register any of this. Right.

So that makes the barrier to entry really low and easy, which I appreciate, because I think that's a key part of success is having. Eliminating the difficulties of getting a ticket to get on.

And so I was wondering if you think of this as an area for future ridership, if there are any lessons learned about the next generation riding transit and so how Metrolink is incorporating that.

Yeah, thank you for the question. Absolutely. So the Student Adventure Pass program, which Metrolink launched a year and a half ago, was. Our CEO intended it to have a very low barrier, as you said, to access that we should allow students to be able to ride for free.

And so it was 100% discount on the pass that they chose, either through the ticket vending machine or. Or we also coordinated with schools to get email addresses. And so we sent out offers to those who had a .EDU email address. They could register online and go through our app to also receive a pass.

This was available not only to University students, not only to high school students, but any school, trade tech schools. You. Know, professional schools, down to any K through 12, essentially. Now, obviously we didn't have children riding. We didn't want to have children riding.

But what happened was there was a surge in those who were using student pass to travel. And as you said, this is the next generation of writers that if we can show that in Southern California, car crazy Southern California, that you can actually get where you need to using Metrolink.

And keep in mind that we offer free transfers because we're rarely your first or last mile. We are the backbone system. We typically connect to the local transit operators for your final destination, but with that, we offered free transfers so you could get to your ultimate destination using public transit. And you're right, the ridership grew.

Our student ridership prior to the initiation of the 100% free pass was less than 20%. Over the course of months of the free pass, that ridership grew to nearly a third of our riders were using Student Adventure Pass. And in fact, on one of our lines, the Arrow line, It was about 50%.

There happens to be a number of schools along that line. 50% of the riders were using the Student Adventure Pass. So it was just a tremendously successful program. In fact so successful that the cost of the program outstripped the state funds that were available.

And so we were faced with the decision of what to do do with that program because it wasn't sustainable. And for the incoming fiscal year starting July 1st, we had changed it to a 50% discount for students. They can couple that with that discount I mentioned earlier of those who have an EBT card.

So if you have that, you get another 50%. If you have, you're both a student and have an EBT card holder, you essentially have access to 100% discount. But we're monitoring to see how the program will fare with the 50% discount. Anecdotally, I think we still see significant numbers of students on our trains.

But I'm waiting to see what that impact has been.

Yes, well, yeah, the question of whether that 50% is at the cost cost that's driving the decision making or if there are a lot of other factors that go into it. So to me it seems like the ability to get on transit for free and go where you want to go. I wasn't.

It's low barrier and that it's $0.

But if, but I still think there's barrier associated with registering with or even just the way that, that our combination of services to sell a ticket, you know, when you and I've been down at Santa Fe Depot in San Diego getting off of NCTD and getting on to Amtrak and it not being immediately clear, you know, you have to ask the person standing there in a vest like where do you get the ticket for the other.

And I just feel like all of that leads to people getting frustrated or feeling like it's not, they're not going to figure out how it works and they're, they're going to take an Uber or whatever the other options are. So sometimes people of course are transit dependent, but we're trying to draw in choice riders.

So it sounds like what you're saying is you do have to register. You can't just Use your ID, Your student ID.

No, we didn't change the Administration of the program. We just changed the amount of the discount so you don't have to register. You can go to a ticket vending machine, purchase that ticket. If you, if a conductor examines your ticket, he or she may ask for your student ID once you're on the train.

But the barrier, I think administratively is still very low. You can, if you choose, and many, particularly the younger generation, choose to have the app on their phone. And so that, that's relatively straightforward to register as a student for the pass. So we kept the Administration the same, we just reduced the discount.

The discount went from 100% to 50%.

Right. Okay. Yeah. It'll be curious to see what the results of that are in terms of ridership leveling off or continuing to grow or declining in that population. So, yeah, I look forward to hearing about that. Okay, well, I think, let me see if there are any other questions that I have here.

I mean, I think I'll just say that one of my main interests is in growing ridership.

And I think that when people are considering, I always think of riding the train in comparison to flying and the, the fact that flying means that you have to go through security, you have to buy a ticket that's over $100 almost always you have to figure out either parking or getting to the airport and navigating a very crowded environment.

And so it seems like there are these trips that are supplemented with, instead of driving, people are taking the train, but then also the flying versus the taking the train for those longer distances, like where I live in San Diego to Los Angeles, and how easy is that?

And so building, creating a system that is frequent, that's reliable, that is going where people need to go. You know, that's one of my main interests in having the Subcommitee and in talking about what are the changes we need to make or what are the barriers that we're facing.

And I guess, you know, one of the things that I experienced as being the chair of Sandag was that some of the projects we're focusing on have very, very long term goals, like, for example, straightening out a curve in a road which. Or in a rail line which will eventually lead to a somewhat faster trip.

But you know, in my experience, nobody is choosing not to take the train because it's seven minutes faster or slower.

So to me, the things that are the most urgent are making sure that it's reliable so that people who choose to buy that ticket know they're not going to be stranded and also that it's frequent enough, that it is something that can get people where they need to go within a reasonable time of when they need to be there.

Because people aren't going to choose to arrive, you know, six hours early to something. So some of those things I think are like the north stars that I'm hoping that we have increasing alignment around from the operators about how to reach those goals.

And so I think if dawn is still on, are you still on or did she log off? Do you know? Did she log off or is she still.

I'm still here.

Okay, so do you want to just maybe address that concern of mine that some of you said? You know, we're at? Double tracking has gone from 50% to 75%. But you know, and the next level of projects is hard, but can you just address the focus?

I mean, some of the things I think are really good, like the platform at the Del Mar fairgrounds will result in thousands, probably tens of thousands of rides that are right now taken by car will be taken by train. So those are really important functional improvements.

But some of the things like straightening out the S curve and those seem to have high price tags. And just to me they don't. It doesn't seem like it should be our top priority, but we do end up spending a lot of time and money on it. So can you just address that?

Yeah, I think right now work is somewhat paused on the curve straightening as we really, really look at the longer term.

You know, what are the things that are really going to help with the operational reliability and being able to, you know, really get the service to a level where people are going to really want to take the train. So we have to focus number one on safety and resiliency, especially in that area where the bluffs are.

But you know, following that, we've been working very closely with NCTD and with the low sank corridor on which of these double track projects are going to get the biggest, have the biggest benefits, to be able to increase frequency sooner? Right. Certainly all of the double tracking is ideal and needed for the ultimate goal.

But in any endeavor that you undertake, right. Certain things are going to get you closer, faster.

So the Devil Truck projects, it wasn't just low hanging fruit, I will say it wasn't just low hanging fruit, but we did start to undertake some of the projects really based on which was next up that will get us the next service level increase, the next frequency improvement.

And so we've really been working closely with the state, with the low sand corridor agency on identifying what helps, not only our freight rail, our regional rail, but the inner city rail, the low sand services, to get us closer to all the headways that we want and that we need.

But right now, you know that the S Curve project can help improve time savings. But there is a big safety element at that project as well. And so we watch that area very closely. We have experienced in the past some freight train derailments in that area.

And that is one of the drivers that has us looking at that straightening, not just the, not just the headways. Right now, everything is stable there, but we do continue to do some work on that to progress it as we also look to what is the ultimate. What is the ultimate need for the corridor.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate hearing that. I'm glad there's been a reevaluation of the priorities to increase frequencies.

And I guess I'll also just say that I really urge the operators to communicate with us when you are experiencing problems, like for example, with freight, because sometimes I'll hear of delays that are caused by the freight schedule and, you know, we can't help you if you don't tell us it's a problem.

So I want to make sure that I say and communicate repeatedly that when things are affecting the operation of the second busiest rail corridor in the nation, and in General, all of Metrolink service areas, but.

But basically all of the rail in the state, you know, we need to hear about it from you because we have relationships with the local operators, but the relationships with freight are just much more distant, just to be Frank about that.

And so if we're to try to exert any influence to make sure that passenger rail is prioritized on a corridor that's partially owned by freight, partially owned by public entities, you know, we have to have that data.

So I just want to really encourage all of the operators to communicate with the legislators and our teams about what challenges you're facing to be able to deliver the reliable service that we need. So with that, I think I will say that I am really grateful to the three agencies and Members of the panel today.

I just want to say a big thank you to Metrolink and to the LAO and to Sandag for participating. The theme of our hearing today was focused on the foundations of the corridor, so ridership, capital projects, services and financial planning. And we know we have opportunities to accelerate ridership and growth and to deliver critical projects.

I want to make sure that we invite anybody to come forward if you would like to make public comments. So if anyone is in the room who would like to make public comments. You can please come up to the microphone. No. No. Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate the engagement today.

And to those who have participated and will participate. Comments are important to us. And you can also send them in and we will record them as part of the official hearing records. So we have now concluded the agenda, and the Subcommitee is adjourned. Thank you.