CER has written previously about our concerns with the process and conclusions of the SB 1098 LOSSAN working group. On June 10th, 2026, the working group posted their draft report. This is our response, sent to CalSTA and other state officials.
The 351-mile LOSSAN Corridor, connecting San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Luis Obispo, is one of the nation’s busiest passenger rail corridors, but it faces serious threats from coastal erosion and service disruptions, flagging ridership recovery, and increasingly strained funding that existing governance has failed to adequately address. This as Southern California prepares to host the Olympics.
In 2024, the California legislature passed SB 1098 with a clear mandate to provide concrete recommendations for legislation to improve the LOSSAN corridor’s service, resilience, and governance by the beginning of 2026. While the law required consultation with key stakeholders, opportunity for participation from rider groups and transit experts has been minimal. Related to the way in which stakeholder input was collected, the report as drafted does not address governance, project delivery, funding, and other reforms that are the root of the problems in the corridor.
In our response, Californians for Electric Rail and our coalition partners highlight many of the key reforms to governance and funding needed to deliver world-class regional transit throughout Southern California.
Coastal rail resilience is an urgent problem, and while the report suggests some improved procedures for handling emergency closures, there is little vision for a long term solution. Rerouting rail service off of erosion-prone bluffs and beaches in San Clemente and Del Mar must be treated with greater urgency, with CalSTA taking the lead on environmental review, geotechnical work, and design to expedite a permanent solution. To prevent future equipment-related disruptions, CalSTA should also consider adopting a financing model for rolling stock procurement and standardize rolling stock statewide. Bus bridges must be provided when service disruptions do occur - a practice that will be facilitated by proposed changes to governance.
Regional Rail in Southern California has a problem of too many cooks. With nine right of way owners and eleven different public agencies managing service, coordination problems are common and parochial issues take precedence over frequent and reliable rail service that functions as a regional network. To address this, we propose transforming the governance of Metrolink, Surfliner, and Coaster from several partially overlapping joint powers authorities (JPAs) to a single agency with a single infrastructure manager, a dedicated operations funding source, and a board staffed with dedicated public servants, that balances regional perspective with local representation.
A structural reorganization that establishes a single governing body (the Southern California Rail Agency) for all three corridors will enable better project delivery, with more efficient use of state funds and better outcomes for riders. Agency consolidation has the potential to reduce redundancy and create economies of scale that enable increased utilization of in-house staff to deliver capital projects, a cost-saving measure. The new reorganization allows local resources to be reallocated into service planning and better focus on cross-agency service coordination, which would be strengthened by our recommendation to mandate use of service-led planning in regional transportation plans. We also recommend that Caltrans, via CalITP, set a timeline to implement a single payment card and cross-system transfer discounts along the lines of Clipper 2.0.
Funding is another essential item missing from the SB 1098 report. The newly consolidated Southern California Rail Agency must be able to authorize regional taxes to support operations, and receive a reliable state operations subsidy. Further, the state should restructure capital funding away from competitive grant programs, which encourage complex capital stacks, overreliance on consultants, and cost escalations and delays, and shift to a multi-year investment framework model that provides stable funding and state oversight on 4-6 year timescales.
Regarding Corridor ID, we support additional state intervention to deliver these projects. As such, we recommend that Caltrans Division of Rail be the primary program manager, deliverer, and host railroad liaison for all Corridor ID projects, and that Caltrans work to develop design standards that can be applied to all rail projects in the state.
We encourage the legislature to take seriously the need for reform and commit to action on recommendations to improve LOSSAN governance.
Read our full response here: