2025 has been a challenging year for many, dominated by the Trump administration’s attacks on civil rights, democracy, and the environment, from ICE kidnappings that suppressed transit ridership to the administration's attacks on emissions regulations, transit funding, and renewable energy. But despite the difficult environment, Californians for Electric Rail has experienced a year of growth and success.
We’ve seen a number of wins for electric rail this year:
- In January 2025, California released an excellent State Rail Plan that calls for 1500 mi of overhead catenary by 2050, with Metrolink and Capitol Corridor electrified. Thanks to our advocacy, a previous, hydrogen-heavy version was substantially revised. While the plan is great, it lacks dedicated funding or an implementation mechanism.
- We helped organize a protest in support of High-Speed Rail that drowned out Transportation Sean Duffy’s speech at LA Union Station. At a time early in the term when institutions across the board were ready to lie down and submit to Trump, the protest was a galvanizing act of resistance.
- In response to advocacy, SANDAG added a 110 mph option for the Crest Canyon alternative for the Del Mar Tunnel. While they have still not committed to a tunnel clearance sufficient for catenary, this moves the needle away from hydrogen and towards electrification for the Surfliner and Coaster in the long term.
- In June, ValleyLink switched from hydrogen trains to BEMUs due to high costs.
- For the first time ever, the legislature guaranteed CA High-Speed Rail a fixed $1 B/yr in Cap and Trade funding, which will allow the Authority to access private financing. This win came in spite of a concerted media effort to disparage and defund HSR, the Trump Administration’s illegal rescission of $4 B in federal HSR funding, and an extortion effort by LA county to hog transit funds in exchange for HSR.
- Caltrain celebrated the one year anniversary of electrification. In that time, overall ridership grew 57%, weekend ridership doubled, and customer satisfaction reached a record high, making it one of the fastest-growing transit agencies nationwide.
- ARCHES, California’s hydrogen hub, paused all activities in November after Trump lawlessly canceled its federal funding. While Trump’s actions were a flagrantly undemocratic violation of the will of Congress, the end of ARCHES is good news for electric rail, as ARCHES has been a major player in the state’s attempt to force hydrogen trains on local agencies.
- SBCTA canceled the ONT Connector Tesla Tunnels project, after costs rose to more than $1.28 B for just 4 miles of speculative car tunnel that would carry only 100 passengers per hour. CER and local allies have lobbied against this project for years, and turned out 43 pages of comments supporting the No Build alternative during the EIR comment period earlier in the year. Comments from the SBCTA board about reinvesting in Metrolink harken an opening for San Bernardino Line capacity improvements, level boarding, and electrification in the future.
- Thanks to our efforts, the SB 125 Transit Transformation Task Force final report includes several of our priority recommendations, including growing state capacity, streamlining 3rd party permits, and formalizing service-led planning. After two years of meetings, capital project delivery reform was nearly left off the agenda altogether, but after we sent thousands of letters to the task force and showed up in force to comment, several of our priorities made it through. Unfortunately, the final report lacks strong recommendations on operations funding, capital funding reform, or fare and schedule coordination (which was left out entirely), but it is nevertheless a victory for our advocacy. If the task force works as intended, these recommendations will become legislation and hopefully law within the next few years.
We haven’t won everything, though.
- When Trump took office, California withdrew its ambitious zero emission trucking mandates, the Advanced Clean Fleets and Advanced Clean Trucks rules, as well as the In-Use Locomotive Rule, with Congress later rebuking the state for the regulations. The fall of the state’s trucking regulations is already impacting the ZE truck industry and is a major loss for air quality and frontline communities, and removes one of the few incentives for rail modal shift.
- SB 445, the bill to streamline 3rd party permits, died in the Assembly amidst heavy opposition from utilities and local governments after significant revisions narrowed it to an unworkable regulatory framework for high-speed rail only. SB 445 lives on in our hearts, and we will continue to push for reforms to 3rd party permits.
- While the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP) was saved from extinction during Cap and Trade negotiations, our push to convert the program from a competitive grant program funding nearly everything to multi-year funding agreements for the State Rail Plan failed.
- The state plans to run hydrogen trains on the LOSSAN corridor, on the Coaster, Sprinter, and eventually Metrolink.
2025 was a productive year for us. We put out four whitepapers:
- Against Patchwork Funding: How Multi-year Investment Frameworks Can Deliver Rail Faster and Cheaper This report how California’s reliance on a patchwork of multi-purpose competitive grant programs for transit capital drags out timelines, drives up costs, and is out of step with international and even domestic best practices. We outline the need for California to guarantee funding for the State Rail Plan and move projects to multi-year investment frameworks with a lower number of funding sources, like Utah, Illinois, New York, and lower-cost countries around the world.
- Running on Fumes: A Critical Analysis of Caltrans’ ‘Colored Squares’ Justifications for Hydrogen Rail. In this report, we break down Caltrans’ flawed logic and motivated reasoning behind their hydrogen strategy, which resulted in spending $207 M on hydrogen trainsets with no service goal (which will now be run on the LOSSAN corridor). The report is also a general resource for the problems with hydrogen trains.
- CARB has presented a misleading picture of rail vs. truck emissions. We break down CARB’s Trucks vs. Trains analysis, originally a comparison of proposed regulations that has been misused by well-meaning environmentalists to argue against freight modal shift. We find that with many of CARB’s signature freight emission regulations demolished by Trump, and with more real-world data, trains are still cleaner and greener than trucks, though emissions reductions in all sectors are needed.
- Electrolink: Modern Passenger Rail for Southern California. We calculate the service benefits of electrification, level boarding, and through-running for Metrolink, Surfliner, and Coaster. These improvements would cut travel time on the Metrolink San Bernardino Line by 33%, pave the way for high speed rail, and unlock new types of trips.
We didn’t publish these research papers, but they’re definitely aligned:
- The Powerless Brokers: Why California Can’t Build Transit. Whitepaper from Circulate San Diego about 3rd party permitting issues, which SB 445 was supposed to address.
- Letting People Move. From the Climate and Community Institute, this paper highlights the negative costs of our overinvestment in highways, and identifies federal strategies to reduce car dependency, including growing federal staff capacity and streamlining rail electrification.
Other CER publications of note
- How California Overcame a Major Barrier to Rail Electrification with AB 2503, guest post at the High-Speed Rail Alliance touting our big accomplishment of 2024.
- How Extortion by Corporate 3rd Parties and Poor Design Practices holds back Critical Capitol Corridor Improvements in Sacramento An exploration of the common domestic worst practices that have dragged out a simple capacity project for Capitol Corridor for more than 12 years.
- What DOT Secretary Duffy has wrong about California High-Speed Rail - takedown of common anti-high-speed rail talking points and explanation of the real reasons for its cost increases and long timeline.
- The High-speed Rail Song - ???? $130 Billion, I think that’s fine, ‘cus 220 sure beats going 79!????
- Why California won’t give up the dream of high-speed rail - Op-Ed by Jeff Beeman
- Rail advocates fear Del Mar project could lock in slower, more polluting trains to LA - in-depth coverage of our advocacy around the Del Mar Tunnel at KPBS.
- Is California High-Speed Rail Still Important? - another takedown of common anti-high-speed-rail talking points, in video form
- Hydrogen Rail Not the Answer - Op-ed by Narayan Gopinathan about SPRINTER electrification
- How Southern California would benefit from electric trains - coverage of our Electrolink report by Benjamin Schneider
Looking forward to 2026:
- Strengthening service, governance and project delivery along the LOSSAN corridor to unlock capacity and competitive service.
- Building up local initiatives to support electrified regional rail in Sacramento, San Diego County, Santa Cruz, Inland Empire, and beyond
- Building state capacity to help implement the State Rail Plan.
- Legislation and administrative action to accelerate delivery of the High-Speed Rail program.
- Educating the public, operators, funders, metropolitan planning organizations about the importance of service-led planning and programmatic and formulaic funding.