And I will open the meeting of the Executive Committee of the North County Transit San Diego Railroad before we begin.
Members of the public who may be viewing the meeting on NCTD's YouTube page, please note that in order to make a public comment during the meeting you must connect to the meeting using the Zoom link provided on the agenda.
In addition, you must also register by sending an email containing your name or phone number and the agenda item on which you wish to speak to clerk at NCTD.org.
I am going to go ahead and ask Ms. Rodriguez, Clerk of our Board, to call the roll.
Thank you. Madam Chair Bapatow. Here. Vice Chair Sonella. Here.
Committee member Martinez. Here.
Committee member Edson. Present. This completes the roll call.
Great. Thank you. And if you could please provide the safety brief and review evacuation procedures as well.
Yes. In case of emergency, I will dial 911. In case of an evacuation, please take the stairs. Do not use the elevator.
Once clear to the building, do not re-enter unless clear to do so by emergency personnel.
There are fire extinguishers and first aid kits on each floor of the building.
There is a portable defibrillator on the first and third floor of the building and staffed
on hand, trained on CPR procedures if needed.
This concludes my safety brief.
Thank you.
We're moving on to public comments.
Do we have any general public comments today?
We do not.
All right.
At this time, we will end public registration to provide general public comment.
And before we proceed, I have a couple of quick protocol items
to share to make this meeting as efficient as possible.
If we could please hold our comments and questions
until after the agenda item has been presented.
And when the time comes for board member comments
or questions, if you could raise your hand,
I will call on you in the order that it's received.
Our first item on the agenda is the review
of the 2026 proposed executive committee work plan.
Mary Dover, our chief of staff, will present this item.
So I'll go ahead and pass it off to her.
Thank you, Chair, members of the committee.
So the proposed work plan includes meetings
in April, October, and December.
Today you'll receive the proposed work plan,
and then afterward you'll receive the presentation
on the proposed fair change study.
In October we'll do our annual review of board policies,
and then you'll go into closed session
to do the performance reviews for our deputy CEO
and chief general counsel and our CEO.
And then on the December 8th meeting,
you'll receive a proposed legislative program
for calendar year 2027, which will then go to the board
following your feedback.
And with that, I'll take any questions.
OK, thank you.
Are there any questions or comments about this?
Board member Martinez.
So if I remember right, there were several board members
that wanted to participate in the evaluations.
Do you remember that?
Yes, so after the executive committee
does their closed session for the evaluations,
then the full board will go into closed session as well,
review the executive committee's initial review,
and then they can make a recommendation
for approval to the full board.
That's good, okay, thank you.
Any other questions or comments?
Great, all right.
So there is no vote on this item.
It's informational, thank you, Ms. Dover.
The next and last item on the agenda
is a review of the proposed fair chain study.
Over the last few months,
the region has been discussing possible updates
to the regional fair ordinance.
Today's staff will provide an overview
of proposed modifications and public feedback
received before it is brought to the full board
at the regular board meeting next week.
So, actually, you're still here.
Mary Dover, Chief of Staff, and Yoni Tolakova,
our Director of Service Planning, will present this item.
Mary and Yoni, you have our attention.
Amazing job on Yoni's last name.
Yoni.
Yoni.
Yoni.
Yoni.
Yoni.
Thank you, Chair, members of the committee.
So, as you're aware, NCTD, MTS, and SANDAG
have been conducting a fair change study.
The last time the region conducted a fair change study
was in 2019, prior to the launch of the Pronto fair system.
And prior to that,
the region's monthly fairs haven't been raised since 2008.
As you know, since 2008, costs have risen,
and so in order to keep up with rising costs,
NCTD and MTS are exploring raising fairs
to help manage inflation,
rising fuel costs and rising labor costs.
The region started this effort last summer
when SANDIC started gathering demographic data
about the populations we serve and our riders,
and they began modeling potential fair change scenarios.
We looked at how our regional fairs
compare to the fairs of our peer agencies
throughout California and nationally,
and then we conducted phase one of outreach
where we started talking to the public
about their priorities,
whether they'd be interested in raising fairs
to help lessen some service impacts that we might see
given the challenging financial outlook
that both of the transit agencies
are facing in the coming years.
The performance administration and finance committee
received an update on the initial survey results
in December, and Sean has kept the board apprised
of the study's progress in his CEO updates
and in various emails to the board.
So then earlier this year, we began finalizing
the fair change scenarios based on the feedback
that we initially heard from the public,
and we looked at the potential impacts to ridership
anticipated revenue generation of each of the scenarios. Throughout the month of
March, NCTD conducted robust outreach to talk to the public about the two
scenarios, explain the process for changing our fares, and what each
scenario might look like for service levels. Now we're discussing the results
of the outreach with our boards so they can make an informed decision and
determine if they'd like to make a recommendation to SANDAG for a fare
change, and I'll go over some of the next steps at the end. So NCTD and MTS and
and Sandag developed two packages
that we went to talk to the public about.
At a very high level,
NCTD chose varying levels of increase
for package A and package B.
Package A is a more modest increase compared to package B,
and so therefore it is anticipated to generate less revenue
for NCTD than package B would.
Package A proposed a smaller increase
in adult monthly passes,
but a higher increase
in senior disabled Medicare passes, or SDM.
package B proposed a higher monthly pass
with the thought that a lower increase
in the SDM monthly pass could be maintained.
So adults, we asked the public if adults
would be interested in paying more
so that we could keep that steep discount for the seniors.
And with any fair increase,
we do expect to lose some ridership.
So package A's projected ridership loss
is lower than package B
because package A's increase is lesser.
So these are an overview of the two packages.
I won't go through them one by one,
but the board should have received this
in an email to the board from Shawn,
sorry, from me in the beginning of March.
So package A has more modest increases in our flat fare.
These are consistent with what MTS is proposing
to their board as well.
So it would take the base fare of 250
and raise it to $3 in package A and 350 in package B.
Across the board for coaster,
we do propose collapsing the zones
so that it's just one zone fare for the whole system.
We expect this to be easier for riders to understand
and easier for our employees when we're checking tickets
on board.
For the single ride one-way passes and the day passes,
we do keep that half price discount for the SDM pass
as well.
So that's carried on throughout all of the packages.
The last thing I'll note is for the day and monthly passes,
the regional pass that you see here
includes Sprinter Breeze, MTS Bus, MTS Trolley, and then
MTS's Rapid Service.
The premium regional includes everything included in the regional, but it also includes NCTD's
flex service, as well as MTS's Rapid Express and MTS rural, and then the coaster regional
includes everything except the paratransit services that both the agencies provide, NCTD's
lift and MTS's access.
For the monthly passes, as I mentioned, particularly for the regional and the premium regional
In package A we did propose a higher increase for adult monthlies, and then a lower, less
of an, sorry, higher of an increase in the SDM pass for package A, and then in package
B it is a higher monthly pass, and then a lower monthly pass for the SDM.
So for the regional we're proposing to take the base fare of $72 and raise it to $90
versus $100 in package B. And then for the regional it's currently $23 for SDM.
package A it's proposed to be 30 and 28 in package B. For the coaster we kept it
relatively consistent in terms of the level of increase for adults and SDM. For
the coaster again we proposed collapsing all of the zones and we proposed a very
modest increase from the three zone fare of 182 to 185 in package A, 196 in
package B and then for the seniors it is still it's a greater discount than 50
from $58 to 60 in package A and from $58 to 72 in package B. NCTD also offers a
Sprinter Breeze monthly pass for those folks that maybe aren't traveling into
the MTS service. It allows them unlimited transfers between Sprinter and Breeze
passes for the month. So this is currently $59 in package A. It's
supposed to be 65 and 70 in package B. And then for the SDM, it's currently 19
in package A. It's supposed to be 23 and just a very modest increase of $20 in
package B. After developing these fair change scenarios, we did want to talk to
the public and get their feedback about which scenario they'd be comfortable
with. We asked them demographic data to get a better picture of the population
that we're serving. We did 12 in-person outreach events in both English and
Spanish. We held two virtual workshops. We also rode the Coaster, Sprinter and
Breeze for 17 trips across our highest ridership routes and trips on Coaster
converter. Throughout this outreach we asked the public to fill out our online
survey and in some cases we had paper survey for those folks that maybe are
not tech savvy. Our staff then inputted those into the system so that we could
have that data. We published a survey on social media and pushed it out try to
get the general public to maybe aren't current writers but would be willing to
take our survey and we also wanted to make sure that our frontline employees
were educated on the proposals so we gave them business cards. If they were
were asked by any rider about these fair change proposals,
they could scan that QR code and go to our website
and fill out our survey.
So now we'll go into the survey results
and we'll start with the demographic data that we gathered.
The, of the survey respondents,
we got a pretty even modal split among our top three modes,
Coaster, Sprinter, and Breeze,
and then we got a pretty good showing of riders
that rode very frequently, five and seven days per week.
The most common payment method of the survey respondents
was a pronto app or card,
although we did see some folks that were paying with cash,
a paper ticket at a TVM, ticket vending machine,
and then those that are tapping their credit card
on the validator with contactless payment.
The most common fair type among survey respondents
was the monthly pass, but we did see some survey respondents
that purchased one-way tickets or had a day pass.
The demographic split among survey respondents for age
was relatively even across the board,
although we did see more in the 25 to 34 age bracket,
and then household income,
it was relatively even across all income brackets,
although we did see a higher propensity of individuals
that preferred not to say.
One of the things that we wanted to make sure
that we kept consistent when we were engaging the public
and getting survey responses
is that the survey responses were representative
of our service area, and so as you see here,
we were able to gather that information,
and the survey respondents are representative
of our service area.
So after gathering that demographic data,
we talked to the public about the various
fair change scenarios, and then we talked to them
about what a higher fair might mean
for their service levels.
So the majority of survey respondents did say
that they would prefer to pay a higher fair
to lessen some of the service impacts
that we might see in the out years,
and we did see a majority of survey respondents
say that they would be comfortable
scenario be fair increase. So today we're discussing the survey responses and the fair
change proposals with the executive committee. Any feedback we receive will inform the staff
recommendation that we'll then talk to the board about at the April meeting next week.
Should the board decide to make any recommendation, it would go to SANDEG's transportation committee
in May and then June. There's two readings for final review and approval. And with that,
take any questions. Thank you. I was just frivolously writing down questions. So
before I ask mine, do any members have questions or comments? I can go down the
line. Chair, committee member Edson. Thank you. Thank you for the report.
Took a good look at the slides early on and again this morning. What's
What's the current annual ridership?
System-wide.
It's about 9 million system-wide.
It helps to have that information when we're looking at, you know, these numbers that may
be impacted or, you know, as far as the hits.
And do we have a projected revenue shortfall that we're trying to actually fill?
yeah so beginning in FY 28 NCTD does have a projected deficit of about 16
million we're looking at we're looking at closing that gap in a variety of
different ways in some instances we do have the opportunity to shift some
capital resources to cover operating costs we're also talking to the
legislature about introducing some flexibility in the funding sources that
we do receive so that we can use some of our capital dollars for operating those
are short-term and often one-time fixes, but we we certainly don't expect that a
fair increase will close our budget gap. There's a lot of other belt tightening
that we're going to do in the in the coming years. So when we're talking to the
public, we're by no means telling them that it's going to solve all our
problems. It's really intended to manage those rising costs and help bring in any
additional revenue that we can. Okay, I mean we all know that the cost of labor
has gone up as well as the cost of maintenance and equipment and and what
not just as the cost for everybody at home for a loaf of bread and a tank of
gas don't even want to talk about that tank of gas but one of the things you
know we always look at frequency reliability but also cost compared to
car so for a monthly pass rider with these increases what how does that relate
to the cost of driving? Yeah so transit is still the cheapest option for getting
around in in San Diego County a monthly pass even with you know somebody that
fills up a tank of gas twice our monthly pass is still cheaper. Okay that's all
good information thank you. If if there was any pushback like at the board level
or among committee members going with B, Package B,
which seems to be Steph's recommendation to some degree?
Is that true?
So we, as I mentioned, NCD and MTS's boards
will review the proposals
and then provide a recommendation to SANDAG.
So we are also working with MTS
because a lot of these fairs are regional,
and so we wanna make sure that the region is aligned
in the recommendation that is made
to the Sandy Transportation Committee.
Their board will receive an update
the morning of our board meeting.
So we'll be monitoring that to see what MTS,
what MTS's board decides to recommend.
But right now we are talking about a potential
phased approach that would get not quite up to the phase B
or the scenario B fares, but gets us, gets us close.
We do want to make sure that we are managing the price
of our tickets for our customers,
even if the survey respondents did say
that they were comfortable with scenario B.
Okay, I guess my main concern was the really kind
of steep increase in costs for the regional day pass
because these are people we want to keep riding.
And so I wondered a little bit about, you know,
is there potential to do more of a hybrid
and look at not doing such a steep increase as package B,
but it's comforting to know a phased approach
might help us get there a little slowly
instead of being like, boom.
So thanks.
Those are all my questions.
Great, thank you.
Board member Martinez, do you have any questions?
Sure, of course.
So how many in total did you survey?
We had a little over 200 survey respondents.
OK.
And so I was going to ask you when this would take effect.
But you said that it would be phased.
And what's the reason for that?
Yeah, so we could.
We've done phased increases in the past.
and I know that it's common in other transit agencies as well.
It's intended to get us to a place that will be more beneficial to us from a revenue standpoint,
but it doesn't hit the customer as hard initially.
If NCTD and MTS's boards make a recommendation,
and then if SANDAC's Transportation Committee approves the recommendation,
then the first phase would go into effect in fall of this year.
And then, again, the process, I know it will go to the Transportation Committee of SANDAC,
and then will ultimately the SANDAC board make the decision?
SANDAG's board delegates this authority to the transportation committee so the
final approval is that transportation committee. All right, that's all I have.
Vice Chair Sunau? Yes, thank you and thank you for the presentation. Clearly the team
put in a lot of work and appreciate that and getting the feedback from our
riders. I can't remember if I asked this during the PATH committee presentation
or not but in some ways it's honorable that we haven't raised our rates since
2008, but I remember from my days when I was on the water board I'd spent eight
years at Balacetas Water District and we were always reluctant didn't want to
raise water rates of course, but for all the same reasons that we've discussed
here today with rising cost and labor and everything that we had to right and
sometimes if we put it off when we eventually did have to raise rates it
would be more painful for the customers it was less of a kind of a ramp up it
is more of a spike and I think my only question is and I'm supportive of either package whatever
staff ends up recommending that I think it's necessary to keep the level the high level
of service that we that we provide but I do have a question about kind of going forward
should we look at this more frequently should we just put in automatic increases what's
what's the plan for going forward so that we can kind of spread the pain if you will
over, you know, years versus just one spike after, what is it, 14 years? So, yeah, I think
when we did the fair change study in 2019, I think the intention was probably to raise
the fares at that point, and then shortly thereafter the COVID pandemic happened, and
so kind of stalled some of the efforts, but that is something that we're looking at.
As part of the fair increase, Sandex Transportation Committee will approve a review or be asked
to approve a review of the fair change ordinance,
and in that we do have the option
to set a regular cadence of review.
I don't know if SANDIG has considered that so far,
but it's something I can follow up on.
Great, thank you.
Yeah, I would say,
internally from a local review perspective,
we absolutely should.
What I've seen in several different places
is these things sort of happened,
like in 2008 recession.
You can't raise the fares.
2019, we're back at it.
2020, you can't raise the fares.
I think fuel and public transit are two things
that just don't inflate at the same rate
that everything else does.
And I think public transit, until recently,
has done a really good job of maintaining its cost structure.
But what we're seeing is these tariff issues when
you're buying equipment, the increase in cost,
especially with prevailing wage when you're trying to do
state of good repair work has really caught up with us
in the past five years.
That has traditionally not been passed on to the customer.
We're in a little bit of a unique situation
that our fair structure has sort of decided regionally
for the most part there are things locally that we can do
but the regional fair structure and other pieces of it
really go through SANDAG and so I think a little bit
of the difference between our agency and others
and what I'm used to is a phased approach.
we say, you know, every two or three years,
we're gonna go back and look at that fair structure
and what we would approve is, okay,
we're gonna do this amount this year,
this amount next year, so that it's staggered out
to where there's not this immediate impact on the customer
and that seemed to work out pretty well.
I'm not totally sure that the way
that our agencies are aligned regionally,
there may be an appetite for that.
I think any time that our friends to the south
have had that conversation with their board,
it has not gone particularly well.
And for a lot of different reasons,
their setup's a little different down there.
And then by the time it gets to SANDAG,
you're really talking about the same individuals
who are voting at SANDAG that are voting off the board.
So I would agree, I think it's something every,
at least every two years we need to bring back to the board
and have a conversation about where we are,
what does it mean.
The external force driver on that is,
we consistently get asked questions like,
why are you raising the fair?
And then on the other hand,
We get asked why our fare box ratio is declining.
Well, because we're not raising the fare.
And a myriad of other things, right?
One of the things that is a little bit problematic for us
in our current setting is, is the president released
his new transportation budget revised,
and it takes a pretty decent size
hit to formula funding, which we use
to federalize our maintenance.
That's going to be a problem for us in 28 added to that.
But I think to Mary's point, by no means
Is this a be all end all fix for everything?
But definitely something we should look at more frequently.
Just a follow up question to Mike's.
That would take, then, a policy change.
Is that correct, to be looking at them
and assessing a rate change every two years?
Yeah, it may.
Regionally, yes.
Locally, for us, I don't know if it does require policy change.
We can review the fares whenever we want to as an agency.
The policy change would come in at Sandag
to be able to have a review at the sand egg level
should we want to make any changes to the regional fair?
Yeah, so we do just to add a little bit onto that.
We have the ability at agency level to do pilot fairs.
So we have done that with our five and 10 pack.
We haven't seen the necessary adoption of that.
So we are not proposing to keep that
as part of this fair change.
But then the larger regional, it is a policy decision
and it is at Sandex Transportation Committee
because it is the regional fair ordinance
and that's where the policy rests.
Just one other point too.
I know at previous meetings,
some of our colleagues had brought up
the discussion around kind of fair recovery
and those efforts and I noticed
it wasn't part of your presentation.
I do anticipate those will probably come up again
at the next full board meeting
and so you may want to just be prepared
to kind of talk a little bit about
what that looks like and what the efforts are there too.
Yeah, actually I can answer a little bit of that right now.
We have year over year seen an increase in fair revenue,
so I know that we got asked that question
by a local news agency,
and I'm not sure they completely represented
the numbers as they stand.
The dilemma for us is, just to give you an example,
the agency spends about $8 million a year
between our SDSO contract and our security
and our code compliance.
How much money, and this is kind of the discussions
we have internally, how much will it cost us
to add on additional security personnel to recover?
Will it cost us $2 million to recover a million dollars?
And that's where it kind of gets a little sticky.
I would prefer to have the system set
where we have the ability to recoup those funds.
One thing that Lori and her team are working on
is the reinstatement of our ability
to issue citations along the system for non-sheriffs officers.
So the Sheriff's Department has the opportunity to do that now.
We have them out in the field.
They do blitzes periodically on Sprinter and Breeze and Coaster.
But our ability for our co-compliance inspectors
and possibly our security personnel
to be able to issue citations through us
to the courthouse in Vista and then have those
as a recovery mechanism is in the works right now.
So hopefully, we'll have some information on that
in the next couple of months.
OK, I have a few questions.
Thankfully, a couple of them were asked.
But I'll try to go through them quickly.
Could you go back to the slide?
I don't know the number.
I'm sorry.
But if we go back, I should be able to stop you.
I think it was the one where you had all of the different.
I'm trying to look on here.
Yes, that one.
Thank you.
So when we talk about all of these,
It was just a suggestion, maybe having almost like a legend in some sense for everyone,
because I'm a very visual learner, so for everyone on here, just as you're talking through
them, it would be helpful to have like what regional covers, you know, or whatever covers,
so that way everyone's aware of what it is.
The other thing that I wanted to just maybe just to comment, and then most of these are
questions was around similarly looking at that increase from that 140 to 185 or
that 140 to 196. It is definitely a larger jump than that 182 to 185 or 182
to 196. So I just wanted to mention that. Obviously the 182 to 185 I can totally
see that being like a minimal change but if somebody had to all of a sudden from
140 to 185 or 140 to 196 I just I just wanted to emphasize that piece because
it is a big jump from like if you're only purchasing a read one zone pass to
that three zone pass yeah if I can just yeah so one of the questions that we did
want to ask the survey respondents was where they were traveling to on coaster
yeah from to see we have some past data but we really wanted to get some survey
data as well, and we did find that most folks are coming from zone one into zone three.
So, for example, Oceanside down to Santa Fe Depot, and so really the full line is kind
of the coasters bread and butter.
We don't see as many riders using that one zone, and so you're 100% correct that, right,
that one zone monthly pass of 140, they will see a higher increase, but the majority of
our riders are traveling those full three zones.
Okay.
That's good to hear.
Perfect.
And then did we gather any qualitative feedback at all, or was it mostly quantitative?
We did.
We had an open end to question at the end just for general comments on the fare change.
We had a lot of folks that responded saying that they were in general supportive of a
fare increase.
We did have some respondents talk about fare evasion, which Sean just addressed.
So we do kind of see that as a full package of managing our fare revenue.
Yeah just be curious to hear like what the themes were that folks were bringing up
just to understand as they were you know putting putting their thoughts together in a quick manner
what if they did share comments because I know sometimes people will just skip it but curious to
know and I heard you share the number of participants based on that how how generalizable was it to our
population that rides? Yeah so we actually about halfway through we saw that the survey respondents
were heavily weighted towards coaster riders and so we actually did a very
heavy push in the last two weeks on Sprinter and Breeze to make sure that we
got a better demographic split among our riding population versus what the survey
respondents were and so in particular for the low-income population of our
service area and the minority population of our service area our survey
respondents were spot-on with those demographics. Okay yeah and that was one
One of my questions too was how, you know, what it looked like in terms of the split.
And I saw, let me see here, actually where did it go, there it is, compared to our other
surveys that we've done, how well do you think this one performed based on the amount
of outreach that we did?
Because it seems like this was a bit more intensive in terms of the outreach we had.
Yes, this is one of our best surveys.
Okay.
Lida Galvin, our marketing manager, was at the forefront.
She was at almost every single outreach event.
We really wanted to make sure that we were targeting
Spanish-speaking writers as well,
and so her and her team and some folks
in the customer experience department as well
were riding the modes, talking to folks
to make sure that we were doing a very heavy push
to get as much survey responses as possible.
Perfect, and then did we ask our agencies
to put this out as well, like for instance,
any of the cities, did you have an opportunity
or did you all like ask, for instance,
I'll at least talk about mine.
We have a city manager's update that goes out every week,
and I would highly recommend like any time we have those.
I know it depends on the agency and the city manager.
Obviously it's their call if they decide to include it.
I will just put it out there that it would be a great way
to get some information out to some of the folks
that are subscribing, and there are thousands of people
that are obviously looking at that.
So I know we have our following as an agency here,
but at the same time, like our jurisdictions,
folks that may not be paying attention to, you know,
that particular one at least they could get it
from a different avenue.
So just wanted to throw that out there for future purposes
in case we didn't utilize that method,
that that's a great one to think of as well.
The other thing that I wanted to ask,
you mentioned that you also surveyed
those that were not writers right now.
I'm curious what that number was
and what the feedback was from folks if you do have that.
And if not, that's totally fine.
You can send it to me separately,
but I'm just so curious to know
how many people that weren't writers.
Yeah, so we did, oh, going the wrong direction.
We kind of classify that in this
less than once frequency category.
So it wasn't the majority of survey responses,
but it was a little over 20 of the survey responses.
So about like 10%.
Right.
Okay, yeah, it would just be interesting
to hear what their feedback is,
because if it's not the cost,
then I wanna know what it is, right?
Like, why aren't they using it?
Could be the frequency, which is what we usually hear, right?
But I'm just curious what it is that folks
are interested in in terms of being able to want to ride.
The other piece I was curious about
was, I know you mentioned if we go to the slide with the age
demographic, which I thought was really fun to look at.
And then just in general, even the household income,
I'm curious if we looked at where we got the survey from.
So like for instance, where they completed the survey.
So if it was, what the outreach was, was it social media?
Was it something else?
Do we know based on how they took the survey,
where they came from when they took the survey?
Like did we categorize it based on that?
I'm just curious,
because it would be a great way to know
how we continue to do that outreach.
Yeah, we can look at that.
Okay, because if it has a unique link or something,
I don't know if it does, but if it did,
based on the method that they took the survey,
whether it was, oh I scanned a QR code
while I was on the coaster, or I spoke to a team member,
or actually I saw it on social media
and I clicked on the promotion, or whatever,
I think it would help us get better results for later.
It's not for now, but for later it would be helpful
for us to be like, oh, we want to target the 25 to 34-year-olds.
We saw that they were so great at responding last time,
but we're trying to figure out how to get them to ride.
And I know I'm on this soapbox, but it's just
something I'm super interested in.
But also, if we're thinking about how
do we get some more of these individuals to be riding,
that's our way to know what is it that engages folks,
and then how do we continue to engage them.
So yeah, just wanted to throw that out there.
I'm like, let me see.
I think that was it.
Yes, I might have more, but I'll stop.
I think that was it.
Anybody else have anything else?
No, but I liked many of your points.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks.
All right, great.
Well, thank you all.
I know that there's no vote on this.
It was informational.
Is there anything else you need from-
I just had a quick-
Oh yes, of course.
Board member Martinez.
Thank you for this.
This is a really great report.
I think it's important from a communication standpoint.
This will get me to get coverage, I'm sure,
but on why this is happening.
Like it was educational to me to learn
that the rates hadn't been raised since 2008.
So I think the communication on this,
the reason the federal cuts,
the potential for losing services,
the increase in operational costs,
just explain to the community why this is necessary.
I think that would be helpful.
There'll be in-depth information.
Yes, and the in-depth survey that you did
and the time you took, too, where they learn more
about the ridership.
Yeah, thank you.
Great.
Anybody else?
If I could just.
Yeah.
Mr. Donahue.
So, and I think it was asked here today,
like, hey, what's the agency's recommendation?
That's a great question.
Part of the dynamic that exists right now
is the differentiation between the two organizations
where SANDAG kind of falls in the middle of that
from a regional fair perspective.
I think one of the conversations we had internally
is it's very difficult for us to have a fare system
that doesn't match our partner
because what we're really trying to provide regionally
is this seamless.
If I get on North County, it's this price.
If I get on MTS, it's this price.
There's no difference between the two.
In fact, when I was in the Portland region,
that was extremely confusing.
We had our own fare capping set up across the river
in Southwest Washington, and my friends at TriMet
had a very different sort of fare structure
based on the modes that they had.
And it occasionally created some issues when we talked about what does a regional day pass
look like, what does that include?
I think in terms of service modes, we're very closely aligned in the sense that they have
the trolley, we have sprinter, they have bus, we have bus, they have a flex, we have a flex.
Sort of the albatross and the whole deal is coaster just because it's a little bit different
and we control that primarily.
So our recommendation is really sort of based on what the region's needs are, maybe a little
less about what the agency's needs are, and I think it's important to recognize that when
we get to the decision point because it's probably, if for nothing else at the end of
the day, our goals outside of a regional fair change would primarily be related to really
bringing Coaster Zone down to one fair.
That's something that the staff brought to my attention right out the gate when I got
here two years ago.
They said, hey, we got to get Coaster down to one zone, and that's kind of the big push
for us.
outside of that it's primarily regional and I just kind of want to throw that
out there because I know people have been asking us like well what's your
recommendation and our recommendation is what makes the best sense for the
region so that the region is sustainable in terms of it and consistent in its
fair policies across the board so that everybody sort of benefits from a
county perspective on that so just wanted to make sure that was that was
thrown out there in case anybody was wondering. Go ahead board member Edson.
So this, Misty may, you know, push back on this question.
That's fine with me.
But there has seemingly been a push
to consider a service on NCTD and MTS
and service on Metrolink, for example.
Do we have any idea how many writers cross the platform
and hop on Metrolink?
Yeah, we have a 50,000 foot level on that.
There really isn't that much transfer between the two.
And this is the conversation
I think we've been having statewide is,
you know, one, I wanna give credit
to our state legislative officials
who are trying to find ways to enhance public transit.
So let's put that out there first.
The nuance behind that is that
That's what Amtrak is doing.
Amtrak is San Diego, San Luis Obispo, right?
Like you're trying to get anywhere between there.
That's the plan.
Coaster was built very specific to riders
that live in North County that are trying
to get to San Diego.
And North County residents who are trying to get to LA
have two options, they can ride Amtrak or MetroLink.
We don't see a lot of changeover,
and the best example I gave is game day, Padre's game days.
We don't have a lot of people
that are jumping off MetroLink and moving over to,
one of the biggest stops along the Orange Line is
San Clemente.
And then the rest of that trip from San Clemente
down to really San Juan Cap, right?
That's where I take MetroLink, I go to San Juan Cap strong.
Like amazing restaurants here.
Shoutout to San Juan Cap's job.
There aren't that many people coming from San Juan Cap
down to Oceanside.
Typically, we get on the weekends,
15 to 20 people come off the train during the weekdays.
It's really not that much.
And I think that's where you saw the reduction
in the schedule by Metrolink on some of the Oceanside runs.
Amtrak continues to run at pretty much full capacity.
And every time we see an opportunity to add runs in
that would fulfill that line, and you've seen it now.
We've seen Amtrak add two more runs,
another run, another two runs.
And that's really what we wanna see,
is that sort of, I don't wanna say one-seat ride,
but, you know, sort of one vehicle all the way
through the LA region or through that area.
So I think that's a great question.
The one thing I will say is,
when we looked at regional rail fares,
ours is extremely aggressive.
Metrolink is higher than ours.
Their regional passes 300.
Yeah, their monthly passes 350, and their day passes 15,
but their one way for a similar distance is 14.
And Caltrain, which is also experiencing
some significant financial issues, their regional passes
split up into six zones.
But their regional passes most comparable to ours
was like 250.
204, their day passes 17, and their one way
for a comparable distance is 850.
What was their zone for there?
That was like two.
Don't have it off the top of my head.
Sorry, that's a set-up question, my bad.
Yeah, this is really good information
because we are getting poked with those questions
on a regional basis.
And certainly, it's been a low-sand topic of discussion,
not necessarily at the low-sand board,
but at the low-sand working group.
And so I think it's really important to get
this information out there.
Thank you for allowing me the latitude.
And again, I would say, I appreciate anybody
who's trying to think outside the box
to improve transit opportunities.
In fact, we're gonna be in Sacramento tomorrow,
and we'll likely run into those folks
and have a conversation with them about this very thing.
I don't think they're asking the wrong questions.
I think we collectively as a state need to figure out
or as a region need to figure out
what really solves that problem the best for us.
And right now, I think we're seeing that volume on Amtrak.
I mean, it's one of the,
it's the second busiest Amtrak corridor,
aside from these coasts.
So clearly there's a move in that region for,
in this region for that traffic, right?
It's just not on coaster and it's not on Metrolinx.
They provide sort of two different services in reality
and our weekend service is going bonkers right now.
So, you know, it's great to see that ridership
continue to increase ever since we added all the,
the additional runs onto the weekend.
I mean, the service has just really exceeded expectation.
And I think that's the shift you're starting
to see statewide as nighttime ridership, midday ridership,
especially on weekend ridership.
And so, you know, we always appreciate the people
who are asking us for a different way of doing stuff.
I love that.
But Amtrak I think is really the ticket for that.
And I'm hearing the same conversations
from like the Los, in the Losan area,
as far as the board goes and leadership there.
So I think everybody's kind of on the same page.
And as someone who does take the train
when I can.
I fully agree, I'm not gonna hop across the platform
and get on a Metrolink to ride every stop to go North
for probably close to the same amount of money,
anyways, as just riding the surf liner
and having a really nice, faster ride
with a beautiful view.
Yeah, and that is one of the things
we did talk about with Coaster
that if there was, I don't wanna say,
consolidation seems like such a static word.
The idea that regionally we would have this system
sort of does these things I think would significantly increase our cost on
coaster and would have to be passed along to the customer where we have a
pretty decent six dollar and fifty cent one-way ride to go thirty miles a
minute so that's kind of unheard of in our business you know our rates are
pretty aggressive and I think we see the ridership that we need to see on game
days and in other events that we have as a as a function of that so it's tough
for us to want to really push beyond I think the Metrolink rate one way to LA
is 14.
14?
Yeah.
So.
Thank you.
Sorry, I don't know if that's the idea.
Just a quick comment.
I know you mentioned that we'll have to weigh the region's needs, which I totally understand
and agree with.
I think one thing that I just want to advocate for is that we advocate as much as we can
for our agency, because I think the part that I notice quite a bit is North County gets
left out of the conversation very often, not just with regional planning but just
in general throughout in with regards to a lot of different conversations. So I'm
just gonna put that plug in there that 100% agree that we need to make sure
that we're thinking of it from a regional perspective but at the same
time doing what we can to advocate for North County which I know you all will. I
just wanted to put that out there. So thank you. Great. I can just add one last
comment on Sean's comments about the staff recommendation. So we are in
conversations with MTS about what a staff recommendation would look like to
our boards with a phase one and a phase two. The regional fairs, so the ones that
govern Breeze and Sprinter one-ways and day passes, those we would like our
boards to make the same recommendation to the transportation committee in a
perfect world. However, the coaster passes are entirely ours. So the board is
comfortable making whatever recommendation it sees fit to the Sandex
Transportation Committee. It's not contingent on MTS, and the Sprinter
Breeze monthly pass is also a fair product that's entirely ours. So whatever
staff's recommendation is to the board and whatever the board would like to
recommend, it's not contingent on what MTS recommends. Okay, great. Thank you. And I
I know we'll see this I believe at our meeting next Thursday.
So, excited to hear what everyone else has to say.
And there's no vote on this item, it was informational.
Thank you so much for the presentation.
Any other, before we close out this meeting,
any other comments or report outs from board members?
All right, seeing none.
Our next scheduled meeting is the regular board meeting,
Thursday, April 16th, 2026 at 2 p.m.
We are adjourned at 11.47.