In this series, we’ve explained Metrolink’s imminent budget crisis and its struggles to deliver comprehensive service improvements or capital modernization, all stemming from its broken governance. The imminent fiscal crisis provides urgency for reform. Metrolink is a regional system that will someday be part of the backbone of the state high-speed rail network. Its capital projects are primarily funded by the state. Fixing Metrolink’s dysfunction is in the state’s interest - and the state has intervened in local transit budget crises before, with the state’s 2025 loan to Bay Area transit agencies in crisis. But the state agency most poised to intervene seems instead poised to let us down.
In 2024, the state passed SB 1098, mandating a state study of ways to improve coastal resilience, capital project delivery, service coordination and delivery, and governance for passenger rail along Southern California’s LOSSAN corridor. These questions are intimately tied to the budget crisis of Metrolink, one of the principal passenger rail operators on the corridor. The study was due on February 1st, 2026 and to be written by a working group including agencies as well as “Business, community, transportation, environmental, labor, and civic organizations”. Instead, the working group met for the first time at the end of February. Non-government stakeholders, like Californians for Electric Rail (or OC Coastkeeper), were not only not included in the working group but effectively barred from attending even as spectators. For the March meeting, the agenda and location were not publicized. The only participants were from Southern California, state, and federal agencies - the very same actors responsible for the existing crisis.
Governance reform has not been discussed at all, and has been shunted to the final meeting. This raises the spectre of a repeat of the SB 125 task force, where the most important topic was delayed until the final meeting, resulting in disappointing recommendations. As for the topics that have been discussed, the recommendations are troubling.
Staff and SB 1098 WG members want to expand eligibility in competitive grant programs like TIRCP for State of Good Repair (SOGR) projects. CER has written extensively on the challenges with California's domestic worst practice of partial awards under such programs for expansions/enhancements. Turning TIRCP et al into SOGR programs is even worse. Whether a rail bridge is being maintained should not be a discretionary decision subject to administrative preference and competitive scoring. Utilizing TIRCP and similar programs for SOGR will escalate hard costs and schedule as well as professional services like grant management and other overhead. Global and even domestic best practice for SOGR is formula funding, which allows agencies to keep project overhead lean while delivering continuous re-investment. The proposal would further dilute the declining purchasing power of TIRCP et al for enhancements as the salami gets sliced thinner.
The March 27 meeting minutes recommend using a data-driven approach to identify the riskiest grade crossing and invest in the improvements to those locations. This approach already exists as CPUC Section 190 Program, one of the least efficient ways to grade separate crossings. Rather than delivering grade separations as one-offs, grade separations should be completed along a corridor during a program of other modernizations using standardized designs - and paid for with road funding, as they primarily benefit drivers.
While Metrolink is in crisis, the entity nominally charged with fixing it is proposing status quo false solutions to smaller problems. SB 1324 was supposed to implement the SB 1098 working group's recommendations, but has instead been revised to simply extend the deadline for the report. We hope that regardless of the outcome of the SB 1098 working group, the new legislation proposes the bold solutions we need. This crisis highlights that Metrolink’s hyper-local governance is untenable. As Senator Blakespear (D-Encinitas), sponsor of SB 1098 and 1324, wrote in a recent op-ed, it’s time to act. Metro and OCTA must recognize, and fund, Metrolink as the regional workhorse it truly is. The state must step in to avert service cuts and reform Metrolink to a structure that allows an ambitious vision for the system to advance.