‘We have left the era behind of very big ideas’: SANDAG trades trains for buses in $125B transit vision

The San Diego Association of Governments is in the midst of a reality check.

Five years ago, the regional planning agency called for a $163 billion transformation of public transit over the coming decades. A high-speed commuter rail system, stretching from the U.S.-Mexico border to Oceanside, would be the backbone of a future transit network that helped the region meet state mandates for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Those ambitions are now getting pared down and postponed. And even with a scaled-back version of its transit goals, SANDAG leaders still face uncertainty over how they’re going to pay for it.

SANDAG’s latest regional plan — a $125 billion blueprint for how it will build and fund the San Diego area’s infrastructure by 2050 — no longer includes the heavy rail projects called for a few years ago.

Those projects had been the brainchild of former SANDAG CEO Hasan Ikhrata.

But SANDAG has new leadership now.

CEO Mario Orso and his team have shaped the latest regional plan into what they call a “reality-based approach.” The agency’s board of directors is set to vote on whether to adopt the plan when it meets Friday.

Under the plan Orso is pushing, billions of dollars SANDAG can harness from the federal government and the state — and locally from its half-cent sales tax surcharge — would go toward creating more rapid bus routes, express lanes on freeways, micro-transit shuttles within communities and light rail troll...