The San Diego region has a new blueprint for what its transit network should look like by 2050 — but high costs and the will of voters could create plenty of headwinds in the future. The Board of Directors for the San Diego Association of Governments inked a $125 billion regional plan on Friday, w ith elected officials commending the package as far more transparent and realistic than those from years past. Required by law, the regional plan identifies projects SANDAG wants the region to build by 2035 and by 2050. The document is a broad-strokes wish list for the future of transit in San Diego. Dozens of projects are included, from bike lanes along the coast and new freeway lanes in North County to safety improvements on the rural highways of the backcountry. “This is kind of the big snapshot,” SANDAG CEO Mario Orso told the board on Friday. Escondido Mayor Dane White was the only member of the board to vote against the plan. With the regional plan, SANDAG must do more than identify what projects it wants to build — it must also show how it’s going to pay for them. To finance the regional plan, SANDAG has made a key assumption: that voters will back two separate ballot measures to raise sales taxes between now and 2050. One of them is a half-cent ballot measure being sought by the Metropolitan Transit System in 2028. The combination of that sales tax surcharge and other new MTS revenues is expected to bring in $11 billion for MTS projects in the regional plan by 2050. SANDAG also says it needs its own 2036 ballot measure to raise countywide sales tax by three-quarters of a cent to finance the plan. That sales tax hike, if passed, would bring in $14 billion for the regional plan by 2050. Both ballot measures would require two-thirds majorities to pass. But SANDAG leadership acknowledged that a looming budget crisis at MTS, a key partner for the agency, could disrupt key planks of the regional plan. MTS’s projected budget deficits could reach $120.1 million in fiscal 2029 and $145.6 million in fiscal 2030. Trolley passengers heading south on the Blue Line board at the H Street Station on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in Chula Vista. The SANDAG board signed off Friday on a new regional transportation blueprint to shape countywide infrastructure in the coming decades. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune) In the regional plan, SANDAG is leaning on the expansion of rapid bus routes not only to expand transit access in the region but to meet state mandates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The regional plan calls for 35 new rapid bus routes, and high-level planning for six of them is already underway. “That’s a big conversation,” Orso said of MTS’s budget crisis. “It’s not within the regional plan conversation, but we are bringing it up.” The growing emphasis on buses separates the new regional plan from the last one SANDAG adopted in 2021. The 2021 plan called for major investments in high-speed commuter rail, a new transit mode for the region pushed heavily by former CEO Hasan Ikhrata. One heavy rail route in the old plan was the Purple Line, which would have stretched from the U.S.-Mexico border to Sorrento Valley. But SANDAG’s current leadership and some on the board have since criticized the old plan as unrealistic. The push for less ambitious aspirations is reflected in the new plan, which downgrades the Purple Line from heavy rail to light rail, shortens its route substantially and delays its completion to 2050. San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones said SANDAG leadership has shaped the regional plan to incorporate feedback from the elected officials who sit on the agency’s board. “After being on the board when the last plan came forward and then now, it’s a totally different experience,” Jones said. “I actually feel heard.” Despite support from the board, the regional plan has dismayed some environmental advocates. About $2 billion in the regional plan is pledged for more managed lanes on roadways, in particular on state Route 78 in North County. Managed lanes favor carpooling and public buses but allow for individual drivers to pay a fee to drive on them, much like a toll road. Chris Roberts, an activist with climate group San Diego 350, predicted the plan’s emphasis on highway expansions instead of the Purple Line will backfire, pointing to a SANDAG analysis that determined that more managed lanes will lead to more driving. “A few years after completion, the congestion on these highways will be as bad as it is now,” Roberts said. ...read more read less