The Brief

Major service cuts to Metrolink are on hold for now thanks to a $20 million grant from California’s State Transportation Agency. The Metrolink board of directors approved the agency’s $420 million budget on Friday.

The previous budget proposal included slashing a third of weekday trains and 40% of weekend trains.

“Thankfully, our customers were spared the disappointment and frustration of losing the service they rely on to travel the region for business and pleasure,” Tom Schamber, chief financial officer at Metrolink, said at the board meeting.

How did we get here? 

The Metrolink budget had been approved quarterly since June as staff worked out the annual budget.

Metrolink staff have worked on this year’s budget since last September. The agency has pointed to slowing fare revenue, rising costs due to inflation and low ridership numbers for its budget troubles.

“Fare box revenue ended the year $14 million under budget. This was sobering, and we realized that not only was fiscal [20]26 off, but our ridership expectations for fiscal year [20]27 would need to be recalibrated to this new baseline,” Schamber said.

A majority of Metrolink’s budget is funded by Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties’ transportation agencies. For more than a year, Metrolink officials have been building a budget that member agencies, like the Orange County Transportation Authority and L.A. Metro, would approve.

L.A. Metro and OCTA cut their subsidies to Metrolink by 3% and 10%, respectively.

“The challenges ahead of us were becoming more evident,” Schamber said at Friday’s board meeting. “In addition to disappointing fare revenue and funding limitations, we must absorb inevitable cost increases in several of our largest contracts.”

What we know about the grant

The $20 million grant from the state comes with the expectation that Metrolink will retain the same service levels provided today, Schamber added.

Metrolink CEO Darren M. Kettle said another expectation is that the agency must plan to maintain its services for the upcoming year.

“We don't have a plan. We're working on a plan to make sure we have the funding to deliver the same level of service at a minimum,” Kettle said. “With respect to these conditions, based on what we know now, as of last evening, our staff is confident that Metrolink will be able to meet these conditions.”

What’s next? 

Kettle said staff got a head start on next fiscal year’s budget through the state grant application. Officials said the rail agency is also gearing up for the 2028 Olympic Games.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon because of communications problems at regional air traffic control centers. The FAA notice said the ground stop was being imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there is a communications issue affecting the 22 regional air traffic control centers that direct planes en route between airports nationwide. He said FAA technicians are investigating. This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023 when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year. Miles of old copper wires have been replaced with fiber optic lines and old radio systems are gradually being replaced at airports across the country.

But much work remains. Duffy has said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

By the time Gov. Gavin Newsom spared the lives of over 500 prisoners who were sentenced to death last week in the nation’s largest act of mass clemency, capital punishment had long become an afterthought in California.

The state hasn’t executed anyone since 2006. Newsom guaranteed that wouldn’t change when he issued a moratorium on the practice shortly after taking office in 2019. He later dismantled the San Quentin State Prison death chamber and sent condemned prisoners across the state to other facilities.

Of the 548 people whose sentences he moved to commute last week, the vast majority were waiting to be appointed lawyers for appeals and challenges. Just 45 faced imminent execution if the moratorium were lifted, though that was unlikely with Newsom’s successor, Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra, saying he also would not execute anyone while in office.

And even before Newsom acted, a pending California court case that argues the death penalty is applied in such a racially biased manner that it’s unconstitutional, might end the imposition of death sentences indefinitely.

Voters as recently as 2016 indicated they wanted to keep the death penalty on the books when they passed a ballot measure to speed up executions and rejected one to repeal the practice. Death penalty opponents believe they won’t immediately have to run another campaign to repeal capital punishment if they prevail in the court case.

Still, the contradictory status quo remains: Like about half of U.S. states, California still has the death penalty on the books. It also allows for a death sentence under broader circumstances than any other state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Those include the murder of a police officer, prosecutor or any other public official, and murders involving gang activity or financial gain.

Local prosecutors have vowed to continue pursuing the punishment when allowed, meaning the state is likely to slowly continue sending defendants to death row, even if the Supreme Court approves all of Newsom’s commutations.

“I think for all intents and purposes, the death penalty is over in California and nobody will be executed again,” said Michael Romano, director of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School, who chairs a state committee on revising criminal sentences. “The energy and focus and money around criminal justice reform have shifted elsewhere.”

Romano predicted advocates will turn their attention to issues like restricting solitary confinement in jails and prisons and changing the cash bail system.

It’s unclear where California voters stand, but in a nationwide Gallup poll conducted in October in the wake of a botched execution in Tennessee, American support for capital punishment dipped just below the majority for the first time in 55 years.

The sweeping commutations mark how far California has moved in three decades, from the nation’s toughest crime laws to, under Newsom, experimenting with a Nordic approach focused on rehabilitation and preparing most offenders to re-enter society.

Despite their 2016 vote in favor of the death penalty, Californians have also since 2012 passed ballot measures to reduce criminal sentences. The Legislature has passed several laws allowing prisoners new release opportunities and the state Board of Parole Hearings earlier this year allowed some prisoners serving life without parole to gain the opportunity to be resentenced, inspiring a legal challenge from law enforcement groups.

Even Proposition 36, the tougher-on-crime measure voters approved overwhelmingly in 2024, focused on requiring defendants in drug- and theft-related cases to undergo treatment rather than go straight to jail. Results have been mixed, with few defendants getting mandated treatments, CalMatters has found.

“It wasn’t, ‘Lock people up,’” Romano said. “It was, ‘We are going to give people rehabilitation.’”

For San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson, that “doesn’t change the fact that the law still allows for the death penalty to be sought.”

Anderson, who opposed Newsom’s commutations, is one of several district attorneys who have said they’ll continue to push for death sentences when appropriate, including in Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties.

He discusses the likelihood an execution won’t happen with murder victims’ families when deciding whether to pursue the death penalty, Anderson said, but the moratorium doesn’t deter him. Nor, he noted, has it deterred juries that recommend the sentence.

“All that other stuff is a side argument,” he said, of the long appeals process and unlikelihood of an execution.

Since Newsom’s moratorium, Anderson’s office has secured death sentences against five men.

Another one is on the way. Louis Gabriel Lucero of Victorville pleaded guilty this year to killing his girlfriend and her two sons in 2020. Last month a jury recommended the death penalty and a judge next month will decide whether to impose it or a sentence of life without parole. If he’s sentenced to death, Lucero would be among the first to be sent to a post-clemency death row.

Of the 40 condemned prisoners from San Bernardino County, nine had their sentences commuted automatically by Newsom; the state Supreme Court will need to review those of 31 others who had more than one felony conviction. Anderson has filed a motion to unseal their criminal records so the details of their crimes and what he called their “recidivist nature” are public as the court considers Newsom’s requests.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which opposes the commutations, has filed similar motions. State public defenders and anti-death penalty advocates have also filed briefs supporting the commutations.

Anderson said while he respects differences of opinion on capital punishment, he disagreed most with Newsom’s wholesale commutations, saying the governor should have considered each case individually and that if his goal was to end the death penalty he has “enough power, prestige and political savvy to put another proposition on the ballot.

“You have a law on the books that’s essentially been overridden by one person,” he said.

Newsom said, in an open letter last week to Californians explaining his decision, that he didn’t want to create two tiers of murder victims in which some perpetrators deserved to die for their crimes and others did not.

“I carefully considered different categories of capital crimes and offender characteristics,” he wrote. “I have learned, however, from speaking with the victims harmed by these crimes, that each experiences their loss as the worst of the worst.”

Rather than propose another ballot measure, death penalty opponents are instead hoping a state court strikes down the death penalty in a case brought by the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Office of the State Public Defender.

In a novel challenge to the death penalty, the plaintiffs argue California death sentences are broadly applied with such stark racial disparities that it violates state constitutional protections against discrimination. They say four decades of sentencing data show that Black defendants are up to 8.7 times more likely to receive a death sentence than other defendants in murder cases. Defendants are 8.8 times more likely to receive the death penalty in cases with a white victim than a non-white victim. The state Supreme Court allowed the case to move forward in August; a Sacramento County court is now hearing evidence.

The plaintiffs seek a court order barring counties from imposing death sentences. If they prevail, the death penalty would remain in state statute, said Avi Frey, deputy director of criminal law at the ACLU of Northern California, but “any county that tried to bring a capital prosecution would first need to demonstrate that they had basically corrected” any racial disparities.

Natasha Minsker of the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition said she’ll now advocate for district attorneys like Anderson to stop seeking the sentence. San Bernardino and Riverside counties are among the top 10 counties seeking death sentences in the nation, Minsker said.

“The reality is most district attorneys in California understand that the death penalty is a failure,” she said. “That is where we’re turning our attention, to those counties that really are outliers.”

Tinisch Hollins is a crime victim and executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, which advocates for using state funds currently spent on incarceration on crime prevention programs instead.

The commutations, she said, offer some finality in the death penalty debate that she hopes will allow policymakers to move on to other changes in the criminal justice system. She wants the state to expand victims’ services like cash assistance and mental health services for survivors of violence, and to consider more programs that allow prisoners to face crime victims as part of their rehabilitative efforts. And she said even those prisoners whose crimes were eligible for death affect the rehabilitation of others when they interact with other prisoners.

“Their fate is already sealed,” she said, of those whose sentences were commuted to life without parole. “Even for people who have committed the most serious crimes and those who may not ever have the opportunity to return to society, what do we want to happen during their sentence? What do we want to put our dollars toward that will ultimately ensure our future safety?”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

In the coming weeks, you might see an experimental aircraft that looks like a cross between a small plane and a helicopter flying above Los Angeles.

It’s an air taxi.

Archer Aviation, one of the companies jockeying to capture its place in the emerging electric air taxi industry, announced Monday it will soon begin flying its aircraft, initially without passengers, in L.A.

The company’s leadership says the flights are the most significant step yet in a race to introduce electric flying taxis to Southern California skies in time for the 2028 Olympics.

"Los Angeles is where we are writing the blueprint for every city that follows," said Adam Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Archer Aviation, on a call with investors Nov. 9. 

LA28 has named Archer the “official air taxi provider” for the Olympics.

Archer Aviation's upcoming activity in L.A., which will be anchored out of Hawthorne Airport, is meant to showcase its aircraft, known as Midnight, ahead of the Games and give the company an opportunity to learn about the region’s airspace. The company is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine where and under what conditions its aircraft can fly. In 2027, Goldstein said the company plans to include non-paying passengers on its flights.

But whether air taxis will be ready for 2028 is still to be determined. There are several steps for Archer before its aircraft can begin commercially carrying people around L.A.

Chief among those hurdles is approval from the FAA that the design of its aircraft, known as Midnight, meets safety and regulatory standards.

Archer's founder Adam Goldstein speaks during the International Paris Air Show at the Paris-Le Bourget Airport in 2023.

(

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images

/

AFP

)

LA was always the goal

Archer’s air taxis are a new form of aircraft that operate on electric power and have multiple rotors, unlike a traditional helicopter, and are designed to eventually takeoff vertically, rather than on a runway like a typical plane.

The potential for this type of aircraft flying in Los Angeles has been years in the making.

Last year, Archer Aviation acquired the master lease for Hawthorne Airport, and it has begun construction on 11 new hangars there.

Before that, LA28 announced its partnership with Archer, painting a vision of air taxis taking off and landing near Olympic venues including SoFi Stadium and the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. That plan would require installing “vertiports” in key locations. Vertiports are landing sites that allow electric vehicles to take off vertically rather than on a runway.

In August, Archer said it was advancing that vision, announcing plans to build its first vertiport in downtown Los Angeles at L.A. Live, the site of a number of Olympic and Paralympic competitions.

The LA28 Olympic cauldron is lit during a ceremonial lighting at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles on Jan. 13, ahead of the launch of ticket registration.

(

Frederic J. Brown

/

Getty Images

)

That plan, too, still has a number of steps left to become a reality. According to a press release, Archer and AEG, which owns and operates L.A. Live, are now reviewing “operational approach and guest experience” for the project. It’s also not clear what zoning permits the companies might need to secure. LAist asked L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ office about land use rules for vertiports in the city of Los Angeles but did not receive a response.

In a sign of all the work still left to do, an Archer air taxi shown off at the L.A. Live news conference this summer didn’t fly in: It was delivered via truck.

Big hurdles ahead

As Archer moves forward with conducting flights and investing in air taxi infrastructure, its key challenge before introducing air taxis commercially remains securing “type certification” from the FAA.

“This is a rigorous, aircraft-specific process involving engineering analysis, testing, and FAA findings of compliance,” Susan Shaheen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, told LAist in an email.

When Goldstein, Archer’s CEO, announced Monday that the company would launch flights in L.A., he signaled that it was a sign that Archer was close to that goal.

“This is undoubtedly our most important commercialization milestone to date,” he said.

Some observers were more tepid about the significance of the announcement.

Adrian Norris, who has an independent aerospace consultancy, said that the kind of certificate Archer Aviation received to start flying its aircraft in L.A. is used to demonstrate experimental aircraft to investors, press and potential customers.

“For a company which has got as much money as Archer, I don’t see it as a big milestone,” Norris said. “In fact, I don’t see it as a milestone.”

According to its latest earnings report, Archer Aviation has nearly $1.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand.

Norris also pointed to how Archer’s flights in the coming weeks won’t demonstrate the vertical take off and landing configuration of Midnight. Rather, the plane will take off more traditionally, using a runway at the Hawthorne Airport.

“They haven't yet demonstrated, publicly at least, that the aircraft can take off vertically and then transition into horizontal flight with a pilot on board,” Norris said.

Public perception

If Archer can secure FAA type certification ahead of the Olympics, it won’t mean L.A. has the equivalent of Ubers in the sky in less than two years' time. Instead, aviation experts told LAist that the Games present an opportunity to showcase this new mode of potentially controversial transportation to the public, likely by offering actual rides to a select few.

“It’s a big stage, it’s an international stage,” said Josh Metz, executive director of DART, a nonprofit working on workforce preparation for this new aviation industry, about the Games. “Will your everyday Joe be riding in the air taxi to the Olympics? You know, I think that's probably unlikely.”

The question is if Angelenos will welcome air taxis or push back against them.

The company has positioned its aircraft as a game-changing fix to L.A.’s omnipresent congestion.

“Within the next couple of weeks, people will start to see Midnight flying overhead in L.A. as they’re stuck in traffic,” Goldstein said on Monday.

The electric aircraft are also expected to be much quieter than the helicopters that L.A. residents are accustomed to hearing droning overhead.

“Compared to helicopters, it's very obvious that this type of new aircraft generates much less noise,” said Seongkyu Lee, a professor in UC Davis’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who has studied the noise output of these aircraft. “So that's very important in terms of public acceptance.”

Darlene Yaplee, co-founder of a group called the Aviation-Impacted Communities Alliance, told LAist that how people react to air taxis will depend on how the aircraft change their experience of their communities. She named a number of potential problems, like noise, the location of vertiports and even the look of the air taxis in what would otherwise be an open sky.

“So all of a sudden everyone's gonna be experiencing these impacts, and you're not gonna be necessarily living [near] an airport,” she said.

Yaplee said people will be able to turn to local governments to resist air taxis in their communities.

How Archer’s flying taxi is received may also depend on who can actually ride in it.

Jaafar El-Awady, professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said an air taxi ride could cost anywhere from $150 to $500 or more per person for a one-way ride.

“My skepticism concerns the expectation that these services will become routine transportation for the broader public,” El-Awady wrote in an email. “A successful premium air taxi business would not, by itself, demonstrate that we have created an affordable alternative for most commuters or a meaningful substitute for mass transportation.”