AB 629

Bill Subjects

Abstract

(1) Existing law creates the Metropolitan Transportation Commission as a local area planning agency for the 9-county San Francisco Bay area with comprehensive regional transportation planning and other related responsibilities. Existing law creates various transit districts located in the San Francisco Bay area, with specified powers and duties relative to providing public transit services. Existing law requires the commission to develop regional transit service objectives, develop performance measures of efficiency and effectiveness, specify uniform data requirements to assess public transit service benefits and costs, and formulate procedures for establishing regional transportation priorities in the allocation of funds for transportation purposes. This bill would require the commission to consult with transit agencies, local jurisdictions, county transportation agencies, and the general public to establish and maintain a transit priority network for the San Francisco Bay area that designates corridors that will most benefit from interventions to support fast and reliable transit service. (2) Existing law requires the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, in coordination with a specified regional transit coordinating council, to adopt rules and regulations to promote the coordination of fares and schedules for all public transit systems within its jurisdiction. This bill would require the commission on or before February 1, 2022, to submit a copy of a specified transit fare study undertaken by the commission to certain committees of the Legislature. The bill would require the commission to submit a report on or before January 1, 2023, to those entities on the progress of implementing the recommendations of that study. The bill would require the commission, on or before July 1, 2023, to create a pilot program to implement an accumulator pass among multiple operators providing service in at least 3 adjacent counties. (3) Existing law authorizes the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to improve service coordination and effectiveness in specified transit corridors by recommending improvements in those corridors, including the reduction of duplicative service and institution of coordinated service across public transit system boundaries. This bill would require the commission, in consultation with transit agencies, on or before July 1, 2024, to develop a comprehensive, standardized regional transit mapping and wayfinding system and to develop an implementation and maintenance strategy and funding plan for deployment of the system. The bill would require each transit agency to use only this system by July 1, 2025, unless the commission adopts a schedule that sets out an alternate deployment timeline. The bill would require a transit operator in the San Francisco Bay area to use open data standards to make available all routes, schedules, and fares in a specified data format and to track actual transmission of real-time information by transit vehicles and report that information to the commission to ensure that schedule predictions are available. The bill would require the commission to coordinate these activities and to develop an implementation and funding plan for deployment of real-time information. (4) Existing law authorizes a regional transportation agency or the Department of Transportation to apply to the California Transportation Commission to develop and operate high-occupancy toll lanes or other toll facilities. The bill would require, on or before January 1, 2024, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, in partnership with the Department of Transportation and the operators of managed lanes in the San Francisco Bay area, to take specified steps to ensure the regional managed lanes network supports seamless operation of high-capacity transit. (5) By imposing new duties on local agencies, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (6) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.