San Francisco County Transportation Authority - Regular Meeting

To the July 28, 2026 regular meeting of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Board, I'm Commissioner Myrna Melgar, chair of this board. Our vice chair is Danny Sautter. Welcome, everyone. The clerk today is Amy Sayoung. And I would also like to acknowledge Eugene Libadia at SFGov TV for staffing us during this meeting. Madam Clerk, please call the roll and then make your announcements.

Commissioner Chan Chan absent Commissioner chin chin present Commissioner Dorsey Dorsey present Commissioner Fielder Fielder absent Commissioner Mahmood Mahmood absent Commissioner Mandelman Mandelman absent chair Melgar here Melgar, present. Vice Chair Sauter? Sauter, present. Commissioner Sherrill? Sherrill, present. Commissioner Walton? Walton, present. Commissioner Wong? Wong, absent. Chair, we have quorum. Also, the Transportation Authority welcomes your attendance here in person at the Legislative Chamber, room 250, second floor of City Hall. When you can't be here, the proceedings are streaming live at sfgovtv.org or airing on SF local cable channels 26, 70, 71, 78, or 99. Written public comment may be submitted by sending an email to clerk at sfcta.org or by mailing comments via U.S. Postal Service to SFCTA 1455 Market Street, 22nd Floor, San Francisco, California 94103. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. At this time, I'd like to excuse Commissioner Mandelman from the remainder of this meeting. And before calling the next item, as chair, I'd like to invoke Rule 3.26 from the Rules of Order to limit total public comment per item to 30 minutes for today's meeting. Each speaker will have two minutes to speak on a given item. Madam Clerk, please call the next item. item two chairs report this is an information item thank you madam clerk this month we helped san francisco public works mayor lurie and commissioner chen celebrate the mission geneva transportation improvements project with the outer mission excelsior community that project's delivery culminates several years of planning and community with extensive capital improvements to increase safety for all users, pedestrians and transit riders, merchants, cyclists, with over three dozen corner and transit bulb outs, street resurfacing, and over 80 curb ramps. to raise crosswalks and upgraded signals as well as curb loading and bikeway upgrades. The Transportation Authority contributed over $8.6 million in funding from our sales tax and Prop AA vehicle registration programs for over a quarter of the total project cost. Congratulations to all who contributed and congratulations Commissioner Chen. This month we also saw local and federal responses to the congestion in autonomous vehicle or AV operational challenges that we have seen before with large scale events following the July 4th fireworks near the Golden Gate Bridge. The responses include requests from Supervisor Mahmoud to city departments asking about the factors contributing to the traffic and transit gridlock. Following the conclusion of that event as well as messages from Mayor Lurie to the California State Transportation Agency and state regulators about the need for stronger AVEV which is emergency vehicle coordination standards. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration officials also issued an open letter to the AV industry calling for improved readiness in these situations. And today, Representative Kevin Mullen is announcing his new AV Emergency Response Coordination Act to ensure public safety is maintained as AV technology continues to evolve. I want to thank the Mayor, NHTSA, Administrator Morrison, and Congressman Kevin Mullen for their timely efforts that recognize that advancing innovation must be matched by strong standards for operational safety and emergency management. The Transportation Authority looks forward to working alongside these leaders and our public safety partners in collaboration with the autonomous vehicle industry to ensure first responders have the tools, information, and coordination they need to protect our communities. Thank you, and with that, I conclude my remarks. If there's no questions or comments from colleagues, let's open this up to public comment, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item two, the chair's report? There is. Your two minutes begins now.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Melgar and members. Alita Dupree for the record. She and I are with Team Folds representing Skirt Folds. Thank you for this report. I didn't go to the fireworks events on 4 July. I stayed on the other side because I kind of had a premonition of what this was going to look like. But I really think there are bigger issues than about AVs and autonomous vehicles and emergency vehicles, not to be confused with electric vehicles, though AVs are electric and hopefully our emergency vehicles will be too. When you get lots of people in a crowded place and we're not designed to handle that, it makes you wonder why people get into the mix in the first place. There are bigger issues. I often ask myself why we don't have a four-track subway in that area like they do in New York to be able to handle the density of that community. People to ask me. Well, what should I do? I was said stay home and watch it on TV because There's a lot bigger issues than simply a B's And how do you move all these people? around these narrow streets that you find within San Francisco and I think that we have to have bigger conversations about much bigger issues than focusing on autonomous vehicles and emergency vehicles. Again, probably in New York, I don't know that I'd want to be riding crowded subways either sometimes, but I do it anyway. We have to think bigger than what happened. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Is there additional public comment? There is not.

OK. Public comment on this item is now closed. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Item 3, Executive Director's Report. This is an information item.

Okay, we will not have a verbal presentation of the Executive Director's report today. However, it is posted on the agency website at www.sfcta.org. Director Tilly Chang is representing us right now. The Transportation Authority at the press conference referenced in my chair's remarks where Representative Kevin Mullen will announce the AV Emergency Response Coordination Act. So I look forward to hearing updates on what is entailed in this legislation at our next board meeting. So if there's no questions or comments from my colleagues, let's go to public comment on this item, please.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item three, the executive director's report? There is not.

Okay, public comment is now closed. Please call item number four.

Item four, approve the minutes of the July 14, 2026 meeting. This is an action item.

OK. I don't see anyone on the roster with questions or comments about our minutes. And we have been joined by Commissioner Cheryl Mahmoud Anfielder. So let's go to a public comment on this item, please.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item four, the minutes?

There's not. OK. Public comment is now closed. Colleagues, may I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes? Moved by Walton, seconded by Sautter. Let's call the roll, please, Madam Clerk.

On the motion to approve item for commissioner Chan Chan absent commissioner Chen Chen I commissioner Dorsey Dorsey I commissioner Fielder Fielder I commissioner Mahmoud Mahmoud I commissioner. Chair Melgar I Melgar I vice chair Sauter Sauter I commissioner Cheryl Cheryl I commissioner Walton Walton I commissioner Wong Wong I there are. Nine ayes. The minutes are approved.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let's go to the consent agenda then, please. Items 5 through 11.

Items 5 through 11 comprise the consent agenda. Staff is not planning to present on these items, but are available for questions.

Colleagues, may I have a motion in a second to approve the consent agenda moved by Walton, seconded by Fielder, and we can have this same house, same call. The consent agenda is approved.

Madam Clerk, let's go to item number 12, please. Item 12, Caltrain Financial Outlook. This is an information item.

OK, we have Martin Reyes here to present. And we also have an honor to have the CalTrain general manager, Michelle Bouchard. Welcome.

Good morning, Chair Melgar, members of the board, SFGov TV. I am sharing my slides. Martin Reyes, principal transportation planner. I'll be presenting a very brief set of slides as an introduction to Caltrain's presentation with some quick reminders of where we are in terms of Bay Area transit recovery. Maybe give a couple of seconds to get the slides up here. There we go. Starting with some good news, as the slide demonstrates, Bay Area transit ridership has been steadily increasing since the pandemic. Earlier this year, Muni achieved 81% ridership recovery with full ridership recovery on weekends. BART has achieved 50% recovery, while Caltrain was at 71% recovery. But even with increasing ridership, operators are still facing a fiscal cliff. And as of this year, this fiscal year, that fiscal cliff has finally arrived. State and federal COVID-19 relief funds have run dry. Operators do have access to state bridge loan funding for this year, but only for this year. And without new revenue sources, Bay Area operators are facing over $800 million annually in operating shortfalls. Earlier this year, as part of budget discussions at San Francisco's major operators, the operators have developed service scenarios that may have to be implemented if the two upcoming November 2026 transit ballot measures, one five-county regional sales tax measure and one San Francisco parcel tax measure, are unsuccessful at the ballot. These scenarios consider a range of service changes, including elimination of lines, closure of stations, reductions in frequency, and fare increases. And today we have one of San Francisco's biggest operators, Caltrain, here to provide more details on what may come to fruition in the near future without new revenues. And with that, I'll hand it off to Caltrain's Executive Director, Michelle Bouchard.

Martin, thank you very much. Chair Melgar, Vice Chair Sautter, supervisors, thanks so much for the opportunity to give Caltrain's story. I want to tee this up, and the majority of this presentation will be given by my colleague, Devin Ryan. In many ways, first of all, we want to thank this body so much for all of the support that Caltrain received during our electrification program. We launched electrified service in September of 2024. And what that has proven is that a smart investment in transportation can transform a region. We have been growing by an excess of 50%. We have been named the fastest growing transit agency in the United States as a result. The polling for our onboard customer experience has also been off the charts. Devin is going to talk a little bit about that. And we will be presenting a presentation that has been presented to our board. So Supervisor Walton, sorry for the repetition. but thank you for your support at the Caltrain board. We are definitely at an inflection point as an organization. Notwithstanding all of this amazing growth and also something that we try to emphasize is that Caltrain is not only the customers that we serve, it's also the communities through which we operate. And the benefits of this regional railroad accrue not only to San Francisco, but to the entire region that we serve. Whether you're riding the train or not, we are carrying three lanes of traffic on 101 on a daily basis. And that helps anybody who might be trying to traverse 101 or 280 during the morning. We also support property values at every single one of our stations. And so you see all of this, not only housing, But offices springing up around Caltrain stations, it's because we are providing the type of service that in post electrified world really is resonating for people. You can show up at any Caltrain station every half hour. and get a train to anywhere you want to go in the Caltrain system. And that clearly has resonated with the riding public. As Martin talked about, we're at 71% pre-COVID. I think we're inching up a little higher than that. And markedly on the weekends, for people going to all sorts of special events, we're at 150% of pre-COVID. Our model is proving out. It's proving to be a benefit. And notwithstanding that, we do find ourselves at a crossroads in which we do have some quite serious financial problems, which will cause us to have to do things to the service that we would not want to do if we are not able to secure some external funding. So with that, I hate to take all the good news. Bad news, Devin Ryan is going to step up now and complete the presentation. But again, really, really appreciate your time and attention today.

Thank you, GM Bouchard.

Welcome, Ms. Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Michelle, for the good news. Several of you are probably very familiar with the Caltrain system. We're 77 miles of track. We have 31 stations. We run across three counties, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara County. And as recently as a few months ago, we have 82% favorability across the Bay Area with all voters and 91% favorability with riders on our system. Caltrain's a part of everyday life, as Michelle explained. We reduce traffic on the 101. We help people get to school, get to work. But we also help people get to health care appointments. We help them get to their kids. It's a great community service, and that's how we view it. As Michelle said, we are removing about three lanes of traffic. We're also reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the Bay Area. So it's not only that we transition from diesel to electric rail service, it's that we are running on 100% renewable energy. So when you're running on Caltrain, you're on wind energy. You're on solar energy. And we're also supporting a stronger economy. As Michelle said, we are increasing property values throughout our system. We're also contributing to the local tax base as well. And we're also doing some major initiatives, especially regarding safety. Our safety enhancement corridor crossing strategy is very focused on improving crossing safety with new technologies. We're also working on a battery electric multiple unit train. This will start running in the 2029 timeframe. It's currently being built. But what's amazing about it is that would allow us to run on battery power from San Jose to Gilroy, giving a zero emission service to the remaining part of our corridor that's still using diesel. We have improved service tremendously. The electrification has allowed us to go, as Michelle said, to every 30 minutes at local stations. We doubled the service on the weekends. It just improved folks' commutes, and the response has been great. We also have free Wi-Fi outlets. We've got better bathrooms. We've got digital displays. There's a million reasons to like the new trains. And our ridership has grown tremendously. We were recently named the fastest growing transit system in the United States by APTA. We also have been named one of Time's top 10 transportation companies in the country. And we're seeing that all over our stations. You can see the individual ridership from August 2024, before we electrified, to June 2026, after we electrified. And we're over 100% at many of these stations. And we also welcome city partnerships. We're always looking to partner. We're always looking to be a better part of our community. This includes special events. This includes highlighting businesses. Any number of things, we're always interested. And the ridership trends are good. So we are really increasing ridership. In fact, in June of 2026, we had our highest ridership of any month so far at 82% recovery from pre-pandemic. We're carrying over a million passenger trips a month, and we're an incredibly important part of the daily life of the Bay Area. But this ridership growth is not going to fix our fiscal deficit. Before the pandemic, Caltrain was the highest fare box recovery system in the United States of America. That is 72%. of all of our budget came from tickets. That's incredibly weird for America. This is not common. It's actually weird for Asia. I mean, this is pretty incredible. And we were so proud of it. And what ended up happening with the pandemic is our ridership went from basically almost over 100% capacity to 2%. overnight. And it stayed that way for a long time. And while we're recovering from that, as we said, we're at 71% of that, and we're working our way back up. But there have been systemic changes. Hybrid work, there have been changes in terms of just folks' patterns that they're used to in their lives. They got used to driving, those types of things. And that is taking some time to counteract. And as a result, our farebox recovery went from 72% to 30%, give or take, depending on the year. And what's interesting is folks are like, what is causing Caltrain's $75 million a year deficit? What is responsible for this? If you took the farebox recovery from 2019 and you just adjusted for inflation, We barely have a deficit, if any. So that's the answer. It's a giant hole in the fare box. Now, there are changes in terms of the cost of electrification. Whether we run one train or we run 200 trains, we have to maintain 51 miles of overhead catenary system, the same amount. We have to maintain the track maintenance on 51 miles no matter what, whether we have two trains or 100 trains. So there are some fixed costs that will always be there for a railroad. But inflation has been brutal, as everyone here knows. But also, just the ridership revenue loss is the main driver of Caltrain's deficit. And so here's our deficit over time. If you look at the next 15 years, that's how we arrive at that $75 million number. So it's not the case that the first year we'll have 75. It's actually a little less. But if you average it over the course of the 15-year period. And so we're trying to help ourselves. We've done strategic hiring freezes. We have a comprehensive cost recovery efficiency program. There's a number of efficiency crew scheduling efforts that we've managed to implement that have saved us a lot of money. In fact, I believe there was just an MTC study on cost containment that showed that we've been saving about $70 million with all of these attempts at reducing our our footprint. And then in addition, we're trying to do sort of non-revenue strategies, fiber optic cable leasing. We're looking at commercial leasing, advertising rights, special events. We're open for business if anybody has any ideas. We are always welcoming any ideas. And so really want to pay attention to the schedule here. So right now we're in FY27. We are continuing current FY26 service levels because thanks to a very generous loan by the state of California, we have this one-time money where we can continue to operate as normal through 2027. However, starting in 2028, unless we get some sort of external funding source, we are looking at service cuts. And so here's the bad news. So our current service, fantastic, trains every 15 minutes in the peak in San Francisco. Off peak is 30 minutes. It's beloved by all who have decided to partake in it. If we hit 28 and we do not have an external funding source, we are looking at hourly weekday service, no weekend service at all. Now remember, we are at 150% of pre-pandemic weekend service. We'd have to cut all of it. Early shutdowns, we would have to shut down at 9 PM. No special event service because we can't run extra chains because we wouldn't have the money. And then station closures as well, talking about closing about a third of our stations. And part of the problem with cutting service, as everybody knows, is this is a downward spiral. The more you cut, the fewer riders you get, the less revenue you get, and the harder it is to climb out of this hole. And we're also really connected to other transit agencies. BART, AC Transit, Muni, they're all experiencing these financial problems. If we all cut service, then we have no connections. How are you going to get from one place to another? This is a huge issue Bay Area wide. And so we're at a critical inflection point, as Michelle said. With no external funding, we will be in a pretty intense scenario of service cuts. And then also, it not only hurts us in terms of the downward spiral, but it eliminates all of the gains. We have so many ridership gains over the last two years with electrified service. We want to keep that momentum going. We're at 71. We want to climb to 100. We want to climb back up. And so I leave you with this photo. You want a train? You want no trains. Happy to answer any questions. And I'll defer back to Michelle.

Thank you so much, Ms. Ryan. I wanted to acknowledge the contributions of Commissioner Walton, who has for many, many years served on the Caltrain board representing San Francisco's interests and doing it very well. Do you have comments, Commissioner Walton?

Thank you so much, Chair Milgaard. And again, thank you to Director Bouchard and her team. I do just want to say that I think we all understand the importance of Caltrain to the region and the importance of ensuring that the November ballot measures do get passed. Otherwise, service reductions, cost increases, organizational shrinkage, All of these things will most certainly occur, which is very problematic for not only Caltrain, but for the entire region. And all of our work on electrification, Measure RR, increased services will really be in vain. And there's been a lot of work, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on behalf of all counties involved to make sure those things happen properly. the pandemic was devastating and We are now here with the reality that we must make sure that we get increased revenue into the system So thank you for the presentation, but also thank you just for all your due diligence during the pandemic and all the work prior to as you can see the fare box recovery was exceptional for Caltrain unlike no other and if we can get back to that point and get the increased revenue that we can at least get on some stable ground to continue to grow so thank you both so much for being here and appreciate you

Thank you. So I don't see anyone else on the roster. I did have a question, which is we are all working hard to get the transit measure passed regionally. And aside from the cost reduction that you talked about, are there any other income sources that Catherine is exploring? For example, fare increases or development or any ventures that, you know, might increase your income?

Yeah. Um, absolutely. Uh, I think one of the advantages that Caltrain has is over the course of time, we have really, really focused on the operation and we had not really turned ourselves to understanding every single asset that the railroad has both soft and hard by soft. We mean, how can we do charter trains, naming rights, things like that, all the way through to, we have two major developments that we're working on. Obviously, we have the rail yards and TJPA up in San Francisco, and then down at Deeradon. We have an independent Caltrain facility I think it's 800,000 square feet that is just waiting to be developed. And so obviously we need a little help from the economy to spring some of these revenue sources loose. But we really are turning over every rock, and we're taking a very structured approach to identifying those assets. And then when Devin said we are open for business, we truly want to see how we can leverage resources private investment and private participation to use those assets in ways that can really spin off money for the railroad. So more to come on that, but we really are putting a lot of effort into that, and certainly I think it will yield good results. What it will not do is cover the entire $75 million. I just want to be clear about that. But it's a reflection of really needing to diversify where we get our revenue. We were highly focused on the fare box. That was great while it was great, and now we need to figure out how we diversify so we're not so impacted by a major seismic event with respect to our ridership.

That's really good. Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. I will give a compliment, which is I think you guys are doing an outstanding job with marketing and social media. I particularly loved the little campaign targeted at Giants fans last year. That was really effective. So thank you for all you do. Thanks. OK, I don't see anyone else on the roster. Let's go to public comment on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 12, the Caltrain financial outlook? There is. Your two minutes begins now.

Thank you again, Chair Myrna and Malagarn members. Alita Dupree for the record, she and her with Dean Foltz. I can only share from experience. I share things as I know them and I call things as I see them. And I believe in this railroad. It's not just a little railroad that could. This is a system of national and international significance This is a system that I use, and I have used more often since we went to the 30-minute electrified service. And I go to their meetings, speak at their meetings. You can see videos of me doing that. So I'm part of that. And my experience with Caltrain in San Francisco is not that long, a decade and a half. But I go back to the fall of 1980 when I visited, really, a pier system, an ecosystem called Grand Central Terminal. It's a legendary and historic railroad station that is located in New York City. I don't know if any have ever seen Grand Central Terminal. And I took a train on what is now known as Metro North and ate in their famous oyster bar. How do we keep this going? I know what underfunded public transportation looks like. I remember New York City subway in the 1970s. It wasn't just reduced service. Back then, 3 million people used it. It was the graffiti. It was the broken lights. It was train failures. Often, it took a lot to bring that system back from the brink. We cannot afford to let Caltrain fall because the Bay Area depends on it, including me. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Is there additional public comment?

There is not. Okay. Public comment on this item is now closed. Madam Clerk, let's go to item number 13, please.

Item 13, investment report and debt expenditure report for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. This is an information item. Okay. Welcome, Ms. Fong.

Thank you. Cynthia Fong, Deputy Director for Finance and Administration. As of June 30th, we had a total cash balance of $61.3 million. This represents 50.9% sitting in our city treasury pool. We are in compliance with the California Government Code in addition to the TA Board approved adopted investment policies. We have enough funds for the next six months in addition with drawdowns from our revolving credit agreement. In terms of our revolving credit agreement loan, we drew down approximately $16 million last month to help fund the BART fleet of the future, the NextGen fare gates, and El Terrible transit enhancements. This brings our outstanding balance to $109.1 million of the $185 million loan we have available to draw from. In addition, we have an outstanding balance of $148 million in our 2017 sales tax revenue bond. We are in the process of making our next timely biannual payment this Friday. With that, this ends my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms. Fong. I don't see anyone on the roster with questions or comments. So let's go to public comment on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 13, the quarterly investment report and debt expenditure report? There is not. Okay. Public comment is now closed. Let's go to item number 14, please. Item 14, introduction of new items. This is an information item.

Okay, I don't see anyone on the roster wanting to introduce new items, so let's go to item number 15, please.

Item 15, public comment. Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 15? There is. Your two minutes begins now.

Thanks again, Chair Myrna Malgar and members. Alita Dupree for the record. She and her with Team Folds. Good meeting today. Brief and succinct meeting. Got a lot of work done. Where do I fit in all this? I'm just an ordinary user of public transportation. Who was born in New York City? I come from five generations of New York City. I'm sure some of my forebears used that new subway on opening day, 27 October 1904. I'll never know, but they probably were there. But I'm seeking after a system that works. And by and large, it is a system that works. I took Bart over here today. It was crowded. I had to stand. But it works. And these aren't perfect systems. But when they work, they work well. But it takes stewardship over time. in ensuring that they are kept up with. Otherwise, we're going to have the graffiti and the broken lights like I mentioned in New York. I don't know if any of you ever knew about that. I live that. There's plenty of pictures of that. How do we make sure that we get it? That people are interested in public transportation. I've driven in San Francisco years ago. I don't particularly like it. I like letting those autonomous vehicles do the driving. And I can sit in the back and close my eyes and listen to a podcast or open my eyes and watch plane spotting on my phone. I don't know if any of you are familiar with plane spotting. And so this isn't just about San Francisco. I don't look like someone from San Francisco. It doesn't matter. This is for anybody who comes here. Go Raiders. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. There is no additional public comment.

Okay, public comment is now closed. Madam Clerk, please call item number 16. Item 16, adjournment. We're adjourned. Thank you.