California commits $750 million to Caltrain's downtown extension and $20 million to help avert Metrolink cuts

California will put $750 million toward extending Caltrain into downtown San Francisco and $20 million toward keeping Metrolink commuter trains running in Southern California, Governor Gavin Newsom's office announced on November 10. The two are among 28 awards the governor's office put at nearly $1.3 billion in total.

The money comes from two state programs run by the California State Transportation Agency: the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program, or TIRCP, and State Rail Assistance. According to the announcement, both are funded through Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, and TIRCP also draws on the state's cap-and-invest climate program.

What the agency's lists show

The transportation agency's TIRCP award list names 19 projects with $549.4 million in awards, plus a $650 million multi-year funding agreement for one of them. Its State Rail Assistance list, dated November 5, names nine awards that add up to about $66.6 million, by our count. Together that is about $1.27 billion, consistent with the governor's figure. The announcement itself describes eight State Rail Assistance projects; the agency's list has nine entries, and with TIRCP's 19 they make the 28 awards the announcement cites.

Caltrain's downtown extension

The Portal, also called the Downtown Rail Extension, would extend Caltrain 2.2 miles into downtown San Francisco through an underground tunnel to the Salesforce Transit Center, with a new station at Fourth and Townsend streets, the agency's list says. The governor's office describes the route as starting from Fourth and King streets and says the project would also be the San Francisco terminus for California high-speed rail. The list puts the total project cost at about $7.57 billion, so the state's $750 million covers about a tenth of it, by our arithmetic. The announcement says the state money builds on local and regional commitments as the project moves through the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Grant program.

Metrolink service and fares

For Metrolink riders, the governor's office says the $20 million will help the system avoid proposed cuts from its 2025 schedule of 29% on weekdays and 40% on weekends, keeping service running through summer 2028. The agency's list describes it as two years of operations funding to maintain current service levels through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The state expects Metrolink and its member agencies to work on long-term solutions to the system's funding problems, the announcement says.

"This critical investment helps us maintain the service our riders depend on to get to work, attend school and access opportunities throughout the region," Metrolink CEO Darren Kettle said in the governor's announcement. A separate $29.0 million award will expand tap-to-pay fares, using a bank card or phone, across all Metrolink lines, with seamless transfers to other transit and rail operators.

Other projects

In Northern California, the Newark-Albrae project would add a second main track and a new bridge over Mowry Slough to remove a single-track bottleneck and support a fifth daily round trip between Stockton and San Jose, according to the list. At BART's Ashby Station in Berkeley, the award supports turning a parking lot into a development with 618 homes, 307 of them affordable, along with walking and cycling improvements. The announcement lists zero-emission buses for Santa Monica, Sacramento, Kings County, Marin County and Montebello. Other awards on the list fund microtransit in Merced County and Torrance and contactless fares on Beaumont's buses.

According to the announcement, TIRCP has awarded more than $12.7 billion to 171 projects since 2015.