SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments has approved plans to help fund expanded Pacific Surfliner passenger service, which would create a rail commuting option for Ventura County residents working in the Santa Barbara area.
The new service could begin in late April or early May.
At its Feb. 19 meeting, the SBCAG board unanimously authorized a cooperative funding agreement with the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, overseer of the Surfliner service, and the Ventura County Transportation Commission for the additional service. SBCAG and the VCTC would evenly split the $2.22 million in funding costs of the 12-month pilot program.
The expanded Surfliner service is in place of a previously proposed extension of one Metrolink round trip from Ventura County into Santa Barbara County. The SBCAG board was told in January that proposal was no longer feasible in part because it would require a new operating agreement between LOSSAN and host railroad Union Pacific, and UP had indicated there would be some delay in addressing such an agreement because of its merger plans with Norfolk Southern [see “Plan scrapped to expand Metrolink service …,” Trains.com, Jan. 17, 2026].
The revised plan calls for an additional round trip between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, with a northbound train leaving Los Angeles at 5:13 a.m. Its schedule would include five stops in Ventura County, beginning at Simi Valley at 6:14 a.m., and three in Santa Barbara County, including stops at 7:56 a.m. in Santa Barbara and 8:15 a.m. in Goleta. A new southbound train operating between San Luis Obispo and San Diego would serve the nine Santa Barbara and Ventura County stops between 2:35 p.m. and 4:41 p.m. Existing service already provides reasonable return options commuters using the added northbound train.
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