LA Metro’s State of the Agency (2025): CEO Stephanie Wiggins & Incoming Chair, Fernando Dutra
VX News shares this excerpt from LA Metro’s 2025 State of the Agency, with CEO Stephanie Wiggins and incoming Board Chair, Whittier Council-member, Fernando Dutra, who reflect on the agency's efforts to build a safer, more resilient, customer-centered, and inclusive regional transit provider. Highlighting a 53% increase in ridership and an 87% customer satisfaction rate, Wiggins emphasized safety gains, equity-driven initiatives, and system-wide service improvements as Metro prepares for the global stage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games. Dutra, committing to on-time capital delivery and workforce development, affirmed Metro’s unified goal: to deliver world-class mobility worthy of every community it serves.
“The Metro family has helped us lead a people-powered transit revolution in Los Angeles as One Metro with One Goal: to be the first choice for transportation in this region… our collective work has resulted in a more than 53% increase in our ridership over the past four years [and] our customer satisfaction rose to 87% in our most recent rider survey.”
“Through wildfires, storms, civil unrest, and unbridled celebration, our teams have answered the call to keep our essential service running, and our planning, program management, operations, and customer experience teams have worked together to plan, build, and open more dedicated bus lanes, rail stations, and rail lines”
Stephanie Wiggins: Now, it truly is my honor to be with you here today for my fifth State of the Agency address. I'm humbled by that. But before I begin, I really do want to take a moment to recognize that it has been a difficult time--a very difficult time--for many in our immigrant community across our region, including members of our own Metro family. I know that recent events have caused fear, anxiety, and heartache in communities we all serve and call home. Many of us have friends, neighbors and loved ones who have been impacted, and yet, in the face of uncertainty and pain, you continue to show up with integrity, with compassion and with a deep sense of duty to the people of this organization. For that, please know I am profoundly grateful to all of you. Thank you for your resilience, for your service and for your unwavering dedication to our work and to our community.
Now, I stated during my first State of the Agency address in 2021 that people are the most important ingredient to our success. And you heard it from the director, but I'm going to lift it up--If this year hasn't proven that to me, I don't know what could. Because when this Metro family commits to a common goal and we put people first, we find new ways to work together and we get things done.
I have witnessed that commitment when our safety, operations, customer experience, and homeless outreach teams came together to co-create a multi-layer public safety ecosystem. They are making our system safer while ensuring everyone is treated with dignity and respect.
When our bus operators faced a significant increase in assaults, our maintenance and procurement teams worked around the clock to be the first in the nation to get those fully enclosed barriers inside every bus to protect our operators.
The results: year-over-year, assaults are down by more than 66%.
Through wildfires, storms, civil unrest and unbridled celebration, our teams have answered the call to keep our essential service running and our planning, program management, operations and customer experience teams have worked together to plan, build, and open more dedicated bus lanes, rail stations, and rail lines--including the iconic lax Metro Transit Center, truly a masterpiece six decades in the making.
The Metro family has helped us lead a people-powered transit revolution in Los Angeles as one Metro with one goal: to be the first choice for transportation in this region. And I'd also like to thank our board of directors, both current and past, for your continued support of the Metro family as we pursue our shared goal.
Now our collective work has resulted in a more than 53% increase in our ridership over the past four years. Better still, our customer satisfaction rose to 87% in our most recent rider survey. Now let's give that a big round of applause.
We earned that rise in customer satisfaction by putting ourselves in our rider shoes, understanding every step of their journey. 53% of our riders in this survey said that their experience has improved over the last year, and the top reasons they cited--better service and better safety. These aren't check boxes. These are muscles. We've been building them day by day, ride by ride, and every little effort matters, because we all know we're heading toward even steeper climbs and greater service milestones in the years ahead.
Now, we've strengthened our service muscles by adding more trains and installing more bus priority lanes on 70 miles of city streets, helping buses move faster and more reliably.
We've strengthened our safety muscles by ensuring uniformed personnel are more visible. Access to our system is controlled and people in need are connected to resources that can truly help them. We've deployed taller fare gates and the tap-to-exit pilot programs, which riders say make them feel safer and more secure on our system. On certain lines, we've seen a reduction of up to 55% in incidents like vandalism, fighting, and harassment that's being reported on our new and improved Transit Watch app.
But what's interesting is that as we build this strength, we've also built something even more important--We built community. Together we've turned ordinary trips into shared moments--shared trips to school, work and yes, even play. Dodger games, World Cup, Hollywood Bowl. We are proving that transit isn't just about how we get there. It's part of the full experience.
We've also opened up a world of new destinations and opportunities for riders of every age through GoPass and the On the Move Riders Program, because we know that mobility is opportunity and everyone deserves access.
Now, we've accomplished a lot during these strength-building exercises, but we are always keeping in mind we're only halfway through the marathon. This time next year, we will have added more than 13.1 miles of new rail service on our A and D lines and hired nearly 800 new members of the metro family.
We will be in the thick of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, running more than 300 additional buses to handle all the extra visitors from around the globe. The World Cup will be the biggest test of our system before we take on something even bigger. It will be an all-hands-on-deck effort. But like any good training session, the World Cup is preparing us for the main event.
In 2028, we're going for the gold. We're taking 1 million more daily riders carried on our existing bus and rail system, plus a temporary bus system that will add up to 2,700 buses to our fleet, and maybe a water taxi or two, carrying people to and from more than 40 games, venues, and countless other special events. And we've already started preparing to meet this moment.
Our Mobility Concept Plan is being implemented. We have already identified more than 700 borrowed busses from other transit agencies, and we will be at nearly 40% completion of all of our 28 by 28 projects, with the additions of our J line electrification (with ambassadors), section one of the D line Subway Extension, and the Gold Line Foothill extension to Pomona, all to be open this fiscal year.
Both the World Cup and the 2028 games will be challenging, but I am confident we will meet this moment, because like these elite athletes we will be hosting, we've been training and we'll continue to build strength together, and because we are unified behind one goal: to become LA's first choice in transportation. How are we going to get there?
By staying consistent, by keeping our form strong and by staying focused on making Metro better for everyone, regardless of where you come from or what language you speak, no matter your income, your ability, or how often you ride. This is a race we are running together as one Metro with one goal: Making Metro better for everyone is how we stay ready for what's next.
A Metro that's better for everyone means identifying more ways to engage customers in how they want and need to use our system. We keep our core strong by taking the lessons learned from efforts like our Understanding How Women Travel Study, our Customer Journey Mapping Research, and our Equity Platform to ground our actions.
It means implementing improvements that will make our system better for women and girls, people with disabilities, and the people who rely on us the most. It means new trains that are more open, accessible, and easier to navigate for people using wheelchairs, pushing strollers, or carting groceries.
Better for everyone means working with the 88 cities and the county to ensure more bus stops have shade, seating and lighting. It means more friendly faces to help you get where you need to go safely and comfortably and being able to request a stop on the bus late at night so you can get off closer to your destination and have a safer walk home. It means better way-finding signage that is visible if you're standing, sitting, walking, or rolling towards a train platform or bus bay. And yes, it also means a system where the rules are clear and enforced, where transit security officers, ambassadors, law enforcement, and outreach personnel are working together, visible, engaged, and focused on keeping everyone safe--where we help people get the resources they need, where people are using the system for one purpose: transit, and where everyone feels confident and comfortable going Metro.
Just like any great team, we're constantly upgrading our gear.
We're making payment easier. Soon, you'll be able to scan your credit or debit cards to go Metro, just like you use the TAP card today. We're also improving our digital tools. Soon, you'll see an all-in-one app for everything Metro to keep you in the know about when your bus or train is coming, no more scavenger hunts. We're even using soon augmented reality in Google and Apple maps to help get you to your destination more quickly and easily.
But let me be clear, we are not doing this just for the FIFA World Cup, the Super Bowl, or the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We're doing this for you--for every LA County resident who has helped us build this system and who deserves a better, cleaner, safer, easier alternative to sitting in traffic.
Today, I have a challenge for you: if you're flying out of LAX, forget about that expensive Uber, board the train or the bus, avoid the parking fees, avoid the traffic. Going to that concert, sporting event or community event? Give Metro a shot. Extend your event experience with your fellow fans and supporters, make new friends, find your community and discover a new side of LA. Don't spend $100, spend $1.75. This is what we mean when we say we train together LA, and we get stronger every time we all do it together.
One of my proudest moments as your CEO was forming the Metro Youth Council. These young people remind me constantly that leadership doesn't always come with the title. I am always inspired by how they want to make our transit system better. This year, I spoke to Alicia Chavez, who takes the 251 to get around each day. Alicia wants to make our bus stops better for people like her parents and grandparents--to make sure they have a comfortable ride home. Her voice was featured recently in our first-ever Regional Bus Stop Summit.
This is just one example of where the youth voice made a difference. Their actions, large and small, have helped us build a better Metro for everyone. That's been the story of the past four years, thousands of people taking hundreds of thousands of meaningful actions to make Metro better for everyone. This is the story we will keep telling, and the one we’ll continue to build and train for in the next year and beyond, charging forward together as one Metro with one goal--to be your choice for transportation.
Again, thank you Chair, Hahn for walking the walk and talking the talk, putting our riders at the center of everything we do, and pushing us to do more because we can be more. I know that your dad and all the leaders who helped build this system would be incredibly proud of the work you've done and all we've accomplished together. Chair Dutra, I look forward to working with you as our next board chair to help make our system even better for everyone. Thank you all for your support over the past year, and all you will do to help us become the region's first choice for transportation. Go Metro.
Incoming Metro Board Chair Fernando Dutra: As you've heard from our amazing CEO, Stephanie Wiggins, Metro is stepping into its next chapter with clarity, urgency and shared purpose.
One Metro, One goal. It isn't just a theme, it's a challenge to all of us, and we've all accepted that challenge together. Whether you're part of our operations team or leading capital projects, sitting on this board, or riding our buses and trains every day, we all want the same thing, right? We want a transit that works, is reliable, is efficient and is worthy of the people that we serve--and that's what we're going to deliver.
As chair, my priorities are grounded in that shared vision. First and foremost, we must deliver our capital projects on time and on budget, pretty simple. To me, that's the foundation of public trust that we need to build the standard our riders expect, and the principle I've carried throughout my entire career, and it's the only way we meet the needs of a growing, diverse region.
Second, we need to keep our focus on the Southeast Gateway line. That means advancing the right-of-way acquisitions, early works, community engagement, and momentum for full construction. It remains our top priority at the Gateway Cities, and I'll be pushing hard to keep it moving as well.
But also, I want to stress that I'm not just here to advocate for Southeast Los Angeles; I'm here to advocate for all of our projects. As a metro board member, I'm here to support the entire region, which includes the D line (formerly known as the purple line) on the west side and the Foothill extension to Pomona, and the East Side Phase 2 to Whittier (someday, maybe in my grand, great, great grandchildren's time lifetime, but we'll see).
But we're not just the train and the bus company. We also manage projects on the freeways. We all took a freeway here, except for Janice, right? So it's important that we focus on making sure that our freeways are kept safe and that they're repaired. The projects along the 5, the 605, 91, and 105 freeways are very, very important to the entire county, so I’ll be focusing on making sure that we keep our freeways moving freely.
These are priorities Metro must deliver countywide for every community we serve. That includes investing in our local economy by making sure that locally-based companies, especially in engineering, architecture, and construction, aren’t just invited to the table--they deserve a real stake of the work that's ahead. As publicly funded projects, the return on investment should include local jobs, local expertise, and local opportunity.
We've made great progress on safety, and we need to continue that work. The launch of Metro's Transit Community Public Safety Department is a major step forward and a key part in our vision for a safer system. This model doesn't rely solely on law enforcement, but it is complemented with other services, with personnel like our transit ambassadors, community intervention and homeless outreach teams in one coordinated strategy to have the right people focused on all of the right things. But safety isn't just about tactics, it's about a culture. Our teams, our bus and rail operators, maintenance crews, and administrative support teams set the culture every day with professionalism and heart.
Which brings me to my final point--our people. As someone who has run businesses, I know how much it takes to meet the deadlines, to serve clients, to build trust. Metro's workforce does that every single day under tough, tough conditions and challenging environments, with a deep commitment to our riders, the people that we work for. We must continue to support them, invest in them, and create career pathways for the next generation. Lord knows I'm getting grayer. We have here with us today our Youth Council, Metro interns, college students, or as we call it, TCAT fellows, in the room today. So please stand.
Your presence here reminds us that investing in youth and youth talent is how we build the next generation of transit leaders and riders. Metro is committed to supporting and empowering you and the next generation through mentorship, training, and opportunity, because we know that you are the future of Metro. As chair, I will work with our CEO to empower staff and to make sure that the board stays focused on the big picture--delivering transit options to our region. As you know, we will be hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028. I think we can do better than Paris, right? That's a challenge, I think we can do it.
These global events will bring the eyes of the world to Los Angeles. We know that they're more than just big events. They're massive tests on our system, our planning, and our promise to deliver a safe, efficient, world-class transit service. Metro will rise to the moment. We have no choice. We have to make it happen. We will be judged by what we do, right and wrong, so we're going to make it happen.
We're not just planning for a few months, like Stephanie said, or higher ridership, we're training to deliver a world-class system for generations to come. As Stephanie said, we've been training together. We've been building muscle, strengthening our stride, and growing every day as one team. I have no doubt we'll be ready, because we're running this marathon together. We are one Metro, one goal. Thank you very much, everybody. Let's get together. Let's get to work.
