tally frustrated. You hear people say, I'm not going to Santa Cruz. Oh, how long is it going to take me? No, I don't want to shop in Santa Cruz. It's too much traffic. They'll go to Salinas. They'll go to Seaside. They'll go to Gilroy. Anyplace but Santa Cruz. So we're losing out. You know, it's our county. And I think we need to continue to find ways to fix the road and get that train going. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your service at Watsonville. I appreciate the testimony we received from so many people. Unlike the first couple of speakers here this evening, most of the speakers here tonight were focused on facts, information in the Unified Corridor Investment Study. You shared with us good information to give us ideas of what it is we need to be thinking of. We're not making a decision this evening. We'll be making that later. But your input does make a difference. We have been listening. We've been taking notes. And we've been weighing the different perspectives that are here. And I appreciate that everyone came here with most of you came here with testimony specifically about the Unified Corridor Investment Study. Now I'm going to turn to my colleagues about questions and comments. Well, I want to keep going because it's 8.30. But if you need to take a break and please do. But now let's hear from commissioners. Mr. Rockin. I have two questions on which I'm not clear. And I believe I've read the study carefully. But it's still not clear to me. In the past 2035 expansion of HOV possibility and the preferred alternative as it was laid out tonight, that's not part of the earlier study but new to us in the last period. Is that basically changing the auxiliary lane into an HOV lane? It's not adding a fourth lane to the highway.  It is a naive question. But as I read through stuff, I wasn't clear what we're thinking about for that. Great question. Frederic Ventra-Kimley-Horn. So I think you will see, we had two scenarios in the step two analysis that had the HOV lanes in it. After we have assessed the implementation strategy and looking at timing, we've now just pushed that out to beyond 2035. So that's in terms of timing. Oh, I understand the timing. We're talking about what we're thinking about doing at that point. It was anticipated maybe done earlier, right? So regarding the widening of the freeway, so the widening will start with the auxiliary lanes. The auxiliary lanes are going to be constructed between the interchanges on the outsides of the freeway. When we start construction of the main line and we start improving the interchanges, during that time everything will be in place and so actually provide the HOV lanes. But since it will be segmented as that construction happens, there will be some stage down that construction. Probably two mile sections will be done and as that opens up and we get close to having the final done, the HOV lanes will be striped. So my gut feel is that Caltrans will construct them maybe as an inside shoulder by the median but they will happen on the inside. So there will be an HOV lane, and the auxiliary lane on the outside. My follow-up question to that, which you're probably the right person to answer. And this applies to a... I'm going to ask about a particular alternative, but the alternative study that will follow at some point are decisions. At least that's the current structure of how we're supposed to be deciding this. We'll start to look at ways we might be modifying the plan as we get new information and things become different. I'm going to give you one example, but how we think about this will apply to other ideas that people have. So I look at the fact that the auxiliary lane, which leads to bus on shoulder possibilities, not really on shoulder in the auxiliary lane for the most part, it allows the buses to pass through the bridges without spending the money that it takes to reconstruct the major bridges that cross the highway at various points. The one place where that can't take place are the two railroad bridges in Aptos where the buses would have to re-enter one of the traffic lanes and that causes all kinds of slowdowns and bottlenecks and stuff when it happens. If I understand correctly, those are cheaper big bridges to replace because they're modular type bridges for railroads that are different than building a concrete car traffic bridge. In what way would it be part of an alternative process afterwards to look at the... Again, it wouldn't affect our decision probably about what we're doing overall, but when we think about what the alternative lane induced traffic, the things that people have raised, the possibility of a through bus on shoulder, let's call it bus on shoulder that runs all the way down, spending a lot less money to fix two bridges and the buses maybe not making it a change...  My question is, is that not still a possibility even if we decide on the preferred scenario which says nothing about what I just laid out if I understand it properly? My question clear? I think so. Again, there are lots of other things like that that I'm not bringing up, but this is one example of that. I'm not sure I understand completely your question, but let me take an attempt. So between State Park Drive and Rio del Mar, there's the two railroad... Optos is the two railroad bridges as well as the bridge over Spreckles and the creek. And so those are the constraining areas for having the auxiliary lanes as well as what we are calling bus on shoulders, but as you mentioned is really bus on auxiliary lanes and shoulders under the interchanges. And so for the preferred scenario that we're proposing that auxiliary lane as well as the other two auxiliary lanes that bring you down to freedom or to San Andreas would be the kind of the second phase after the measure D auxiliary lanes. And in the intermediary, we would have to be working with the RTC, working with Metro and Caltrans to identify, okay, what would we do in that section between Rio del Mar and State Park prior to making those widening of those three bridges, really the two railroad and the bridge over the Spreckles and the creek. So my question, I appreciate that. My question is the feasibility of that, the cost of those bridges, which I'm estimating in my head, knowing very little about it, that's something that would happen in the alternative study that follows our decision that's to happen fairly soon here about our overall preferred alternative. Is that correct? I don't think so. The alternative analysis, if I understand it, is to look at, you know, whether you're going to use a train or a bus or what are the alternatives you can use on the rail line. What you're talking about is an improvement to the highway. Or change anyway. Or change. And in that case, we would probably be looked at in the environmental impact report when we do those sections of the highway, which is different than the alternative, I think it's different than the alternative analysis. But they're not ruled out as a potential issue that we might get into and figure out a cost that is feasible and that's not in the billions, but a lower cost possibility for us to look at at that point. Now we'll ask the professionals to see if we got it right. Sarah Christensen here is your transportation engineer. Hi, thank you. So if I understand it correctly, you're curious about what's going to happen south of State Park with the potential for auxiliary lanes and any other types of improvements. Well, the plan, as I've read it, is that the buses will re-enter the traffic lane and there'll be the traffic bottleneck problems that could occur from that. I'm asking, is the commission foreclosed from investigating the possibility, not next month, but sometime in the future, but not, you know, 2035, but sometime in the next couple of years, whether they're in fact a feasible project that would actually allow a bus to travel twice as fast as cars on Highway 1. That's really where I'm going with this. Right. That could definitely be studied as a Future Tier 2 project within the overall Highway 1 program. And hopefully we secure some SB1 funding for the auxiliary lanes that are in the expenditure plan for MeasurD. That would free up MeasurD funds for future improvements such as that so we can move south. And so there's a lot of possibilities within that area. I've got a lot of ideas about, because we own those bridges now. Right. And so there's a lot we could do and I feel like we could find a really good compromise, a good cost-effective solution to get a good bang for our buck in that segment. I've taken enough time. Thank you. I'll stop my questions here. Other questions looking down here. Mr. Mullhorn. Thank you very much. So I have, first of all, this document doesn't exist in a vacuum. And if you forgive the extension of the illusion, it exists in a constellation of relationships and other documents that sort of circumscribe our decision-making. I think the first of which, and Commissioner Schiffern several meetings ago addressed this one, is how does this comport with the decisions that we made for the 2040 Regional Transportation Plan? And I ask that because in the funding assessment in the UCIS it says that allocating the funds, the UCS projects, requires shifting funds identified for projects identified in the RTP action element, which is part of AMBAG's EIR, which was certified in June. So does changing the project mix in our work plan for the 2040 RTP affect AMBAG's EIR that's already been certified? I'll try to address that one. So our Regional Transportation Plan is a programmatic level document. It doesn't provide detailed environmental review for the projects themselves. And we did provide in this updated report Appendix A, I believe, that showed that the projects that we are evaluating in this study are in the Regional Transportation Plan. Some with constrained and some with less constrained amount. Typically it's a mix of constrained and unconstrained. When projects are coming to where there's actual funding and they would be programmed, it does not matter. I mean, it provides guidance to the commission for deciding what projects would get funded, whether it's in the constrained and unconstrained, but it does not lock us in in any way. The RTP or the UCIS? The RTP. The RTP does not lock us in. So changing our work plan does not affect the certified EIR? Correct. And I can take that to the bank? We're not going to get sued on this at some point? Okay, thank you. We'll get sued, but maybe... Well, I mean, successfully counsel somebody. Okay, I have these concerns because an EIR is a very official document. The process that led to the RTP was the extensive 10-year process, created this document, and now we create this document and we're going to go around and jigger with our work plan that went through an extensive public process. Curious. Okay, so the constellation. This is a document that... Thank you. This is a document, the RTP, which is one of these planning documents that helps guide our decision-making. But it's also, like in the constellation, our relationships with other agencies. I think one important point that has sort of been touched on through the public comments is how this staff-preferred scenario affects our existing transit agency. And some people, I don't know how many of the commissioners have read it, but have seen Metro staff report that's going before their board of directors tomorrow that has an initial take on some of the assumptions and some of the project mix that's been asserted in the staff-preferred scenario. And some of the conclusions that Metro staff have reached are troubling. So not the least of which being the limited amount of transit capital and operations funding that comes into this county would become competitive between two transit agencies within the county. So what the staff-preferred scenario recommends is that we divert bus transit funding to rail transit.  One, you increase your fares. Two, you reduce service. We've done both of those to our Metro system. So the bus transit system is already disadvantaged. What this proposal seems to do is to divert discretionary transit operations funding away from Metro to rail transit. I think that it would be interesting to know what Metro thinks about this. And I think that they should have an opportunity to formally respond to the staff-preferred scenario. We've done a great job of public outreach over the course of the past year. We've done a great job of engaging with our stakeholders over the past year. But we come to the staff-preferred scenario here, and while we're doing a good job of engaging with the public, we don't seem to be engaging with our stakeholders. These are separate agencies from the Regional Transportation Commission who make their own decisions that are dependent of our decisions here. Metro is in a special case because they are dependent upon us for a great deal of their funding. Their three main revenue sources are in many ways controlled by the RTC. So they are subject in many ways to the decisions that we make according to this document. Another question that I have in the research that I've done over the past couple of months, which isn't a lot but what are the impacts of adding a new rail transit line on bus service? And does staff report to Metro seem to indicate that there might be some conflict there? I would like to know more about that. How does this staff-preferred scenario conform with Metro's own strategic plan? So some of the projects that Metro is considering to increase their viability, things like they want to re-institute service to the San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley. That's great. They want more Watsonville routes. They want microtransit which would increase their flexibility and interoperability with some of our other systems that are already in place. And they want on-demand services, on-demand transit services. What they're proposing is a flexible system for addressing people's transit needs on the existing infrastructure. My takeaway from the overall UCIS, by the way, is that the low-hanging fruit here, the lowest-cost investment with the biggest bang for buck is bus transit. I was a little dismayed that some of the more innovative systems, so bus rapid transit light increased frequency of transit with express services were excised from scenario B. So scenario B was, sounds like everyone's preferred scenario, but we took out these investments in our bus infrastructure. So I'd like to know what Metro has to say about that, too. I'm glad that Ms. Lighthill is no longer here. She mentioned the metropolitan, the major transportation investment study from 1998 or whatever it was. That was the 20 years ago version of the UCIS. It's a very candid document. Conversational, easy to engage with. This was very academic, I think. That one I thought was very easy to engage with. But in that study from 20 years ago, they said that, or those consultants, Parsons Brinkerhoff said that passenger rail is financially infeasible. And that plan recommended bus service on a fixed guideway on the rail line, which was one of the proposals in the staff report that's going before the Metro Board tomorrow. So progressive rail. Talking about stakeholders, organizations and agencies that are dependent upon this transportation network that we have here and whose decisions are independent of the ones that we make here. Progressive rail is a private corporation. They currently own a 31 mile, 32 mile freight corridor along the rail line. There's no mention of progressive rail in this entire document. According to our Administration, Coordination and License Agreement with progressive rail, freight service on the rail line. And all other uses are secondary and subject to freight service. So how does running commuter trains on the freight easement affect progressive rail's business model? Everything that I've read has said that single track railways, on single track railways, freight and commuter rail are incompatible. There are different business practices for freight businesses to run freight on there and that they compete with these on-demand schedules of commuter rail and it makes their freight business less economically viable. There was a decision called the Stagger's Act it was a legislation in 1980 that allows train companies to make decisions that are based on their own economic interests over all other considerations. And so freight companies, the latitude to say yes or no to any other services on the rail line if it affects their business model. And the surface transportation board has oversight over those decisions anyway. And our Administration, Coordination and License Agreement with progressive rail very clearly states that any services introduced to the rail line that interfere with freight service have to both be approved by the rail operator and I don't see any of that process in the unified corridor study. Finally, I well, I'm sorry, yeah, finally Guy Preston stakeholder it's going to be his responsibility to implement whatever decision that we make. And other people have said and I know there's going to be some arguments about this but I feel very strongly that as the head of an agency, this individual whom I've never met should have the opportunity to weigh in on this as well. So to that end I mean, if it pleases the chair I would like to see this vote not on December 6th but on January 17th to allow an ant we're not making motions but share your... I won't make a motion if I have to chair. I'm telling you I'm going to hear comments from all the members. And I would like responses from Progressive Rail and Metro and Mr. Preston about what they think about the staff preferred scenario. How does it affect their plans in the county? How does it affect their business? How does it affect their strategy? I would like formal responses from each of those and if I need to make a motion I will. Just for context, I know that there's this perceived time crunch we need to hurry up and get this done, right? One of the one of the gates that we've been presented with a deadline, a drop dead deadline is that there's the California Transportation Commission wants our executive director to go up there and give a presentation in January on the outcomes of the Unified Corridor study. That meeting is on January 31st. So if we can push this decision back 23 work days to January 17th allow all these other stakeholders an opportunity to weigh in on the staff preferred scenario I think that we will make a better decision. It's only 23 days. It will still meet the deadline set by the CTC. Our new executive director will still be able to go up there and do his power point about what the UCIS is. It's not an unreasonable request. I'm not saying it's unreasonable. I'm just wanting to I told people that we hear from commissioners and we'll be ready to take some action. I'm not even necessarily in disagreement. I'm just trying to honor what I said we were going to do. Would you then schedule this vote for January 17th? Let's hear from everybody and then we'll get to whether we're going to make motions about the dates. That's what I'm asking. Well, it's no surprise that people who were acting out at the beginning of the meeting are still acting out at this part of the meeting. We heard we listened to all of you and now we're going to listen to people here at the commission. There were a number of questions there about well I perceived them as questions about the role of metro in the planning process of this document. I'm not going to go into the general because I serve on the transit board that they're going to be taking up this issue tomorrow. There were presentations. They were part of the focus groups that were part of this process. It hasn't been done outside of the metro. I can add some clarification to that if you'd like. I've definitely been working very closely with metro through this whole process, both Barrow Emerson had a number of conversations with Barrow and we feel like this rail right away is an amazing dedicated potential to have a dedicated transit facility in Santa Cruz County. That's number one. Metro and the RTC are partner agencies. We've worked together before. We'll continue to work together in the future. If the rail does come to fruition, there would need to be a redesign of the whole transit rail bus network. There's no doubt about that and being partner agencies we will be working together. We understand the potential for funding issues and how there could be some clashes but that's not the intent. We are, again, we work together to make sure that this transit network would work for our community in the most efficient way. Metro is a likely candidate to be the rail operator. That is still to be determined. They could be making many of these decisions about how this network would come together. I think there was also a question about why the BRT light was removed. I can address that. There was a substantial amount of increased frequency of service for the BRT light that was added for Scenario B that was based on Metro's input on how best to evaluate that. We did not see the much increase in the travel time or the improvement, reduction in the travel time with adding the transit signal priority and transit queue jumps. We felt like that service is definitely needed on SoCal but with having additional transit service on the rail right of way that provides a much faster transit service with stops in 10 different stations and then the bus on shoulders and eventually HOV trains for transit on Highway 1 that provides more of an express service for transit that they would be more of the main trunk lines for the transit network in the future with SoCal and Freedom obviously serving significant population but the transit travel times were just not the reduction with the signal priority was just not that great to increase the service there. Let's hear from other members. Thank you. On the 2035 preferred does that stand alone or that's in addition to all the other scenarios? That's what I want to clarify. It's not a scenario on its own. It's in addition or a follow-up to all the other scenarios. So we've developed in Step 2 scenario A, B, C and E. And then we were tasked to develop from the outcome and from the outreach a preferred scenario. And that preferred scenario took into consideration the comments plus the outputs from those scenarios and you will see it's a combination of some of the other scenarios. So it brought in elements of the other scenarios to become a preferred scenario. So if somebody voted for scenario B they would also have to vote for the preferred 2035 in order to add freight to scenario B. So I think people prefer scenario B because that's what was presented to them. Tonight there's a preferred scenario that has elements from the other scenarios. Most of the elements come from scenario B but we've taken some other ones from some of the other scenarios. So if you vote tonight I guess you would have to vote for the preferred scenario and say no, I don't like the preferred scenario, I like scenario B. But that's anybody's option to vote for. What we're recommending is the preferred scenario. Okay, that's fine. And then the other I guess small item on page 4 dash 15 under reliability and efficiency second one down AM peak hour highway 1 goes 2015 baseline it's 28 and then it goes down miles per hour to 21 for the year 2035 preferred. Is that a mistake or is that it's going to actually be slower? Can we just confirm? Yeah, reliability and efficiency on 4-15 second one down 2015 baseline 28 2035 preferred 21 miles per hour. Yeah, that's correct. So in the 2035 preferred we don't have the HOV lane in place yet at that point. So the additional traffic that happens between 2015 and 2035 would be loaded on to the freeway without that additional capacity. So there would be a reduction in travel speed from what we have today. Okay, all right. And then real quick I'll go from the Watsonville City Councilman Philippa Hernandez had to leave and I tend to agree with what the Watsonville City Council approved and I don't know if anybody here is privy to was it a unanimous vote? It was unanimous, okay. The preferred scenario presented tonight is consistent with what our Watsonville City Council resolved would be best for our city and for the county for the near term and for the future. We need highway improvements and safer streets. We need to use all three corridors for transit, not just two. Trail only does a little for Watsonville and removal of the rail line is not negotiable. The unified corridor study follows years of public input and other studies and I trust, I guess he's saying we trust its findings. Our council approved scenario B and we are pleased that the preferred scenario added auxiliary lanes and freight service as recommended. It is time to move forward to make decisions and build something. I urge the commission to move forward now with the 2035 preferred scenario and with the beyond 2035 for consideration later. Felipe Hernandez, Watsonville Councilman. Thank you. Mr. Bertrand. I have a couple of questions. I don't know if you can hear me. In terms of rail banking and the issue of landowners holding a tile to part of the rail has the RTC done any surveys to see if that's actually the case for any particular parcels? Do we know basically if there's landowners that actually own piece of the property that the rail goes over? It's not a question of whether the landowners that own a piece of the railroad property now the railroad owned the property? If part of what the railroad owned their easements then if you get rid of the track and get rid of the rail service then that property would revert to the adjoining property owners that tends to be the case. Are there areas where there are easements? Yes, there are. How many exactly? Yet. And also there are areas where there is insufficient documentation because Unipacific did not have documentation records or laws from the 1906 fires from the earthquake in 1906 because the headquarters of the rail line were in San Francisco a variety of things complex history of ownership of rail properties. We have engaged services at the approval of the commission of consultants that are helping us to sort that out for some areas of the rail line we're not working on the entire rail line yet but as the commission moves forward with projects in different sections of the rail line that does need to get sorted out. So I know that's the line segment north of Santa Cruz that we've already paid some money, right? So basically right now the RTC does not know exactly where we actually have control enough so that if we do a rail banking we can't be forced to give that property back. That's why I'm trying to get to because basically rail banking is predicated on as this memo from George said the ability to keep that property so that no one else could take it away basically from us because we're not using it for active transportation excuse me for rail freight. The RTC does not fully know how many parcels could potentially be at risk if there was rail banking. We don't know that yet. And it probably would be impossible to know that as well because it would depend on where people might see openings for potential lawsuits and see whether they could get something out of those lawsuits. So it might be impossible to fully know the full extent. Okay. The only reason why I bring it up is because the whole idea of rail banking is predicated on what I'm talking about and RTC has owned this line for a long time and basically said we can't rail bank because of this particular issue. So it seems to me it's something that's been addressed because you're putting it out there is something that we can't do because of this particular problem. So I'd like to support wholeheartedly some of the positions that Patrick Mulhorn, Commissioner Patrick Mulhorn has brought up. But I'd like to go over something that someone did say people over projects, a lady came up here and she talked about that. And I think it was the same lady that said I tried to understand I tried to understand the scenario analysis and I was going crazy and then I went back and tried to understand the data behind it and I found a lot of mistakes. So I did that too and it sort of led me to where are we actually here? So the things that have caused me the most concern is that to me what is working best in Santa Cruz and should be supported is the things we could do right now and the things that are effectively working and I'm thinking of Metro. So in public comments one of the stakeholders comments said view rail and bus transit as a system in its entirety and not too competing services. And I think that is a great statement. I wish I was there when the person said that.  That to me is a major issue. So we are not talking about two systems that are cooperating. We're talking about a system that is taking money away from something that's working and using it as something that we don't really know is going to work. So from the staff report that is going to be presented tomorrow at the Metro there's a comment here currently Metro is only able to maintain its bus service at a minimally effective level with available funding and it is acknowledged that in order to attract additional riders there is need to increase the frequency in span of existing service prior to preserving and pursuing new service. How can the Metro which is probably the most egalitarian operation we have here in terms of serving people expanded service if money is being sucked out to pay for a train that we don't even know if it's going to work. Well 3,500 people back and forth each day yes maybe. I have a problem with that. That's why I agree with Patrick. Metro is a clear stakeholder. A clear stakeholder that many in this room probably use right now. I see faces I see head shaking so I know that's right. The other issue is progressive and I have a question in scenarios C progressive is freight service only in Watsonville. I have yet to see anything about how good or how much progressive has proceeded on their claims. When I read their book it was a clear snow job as far as I can see. The book that they gave us in terms of what they were going to do for Santa Cruz I totally completely agree Watsonville freight service there if progressive can do it. I've been in bargaining positions before if someone comes to the table and says they can claim something and it's everything under the sun I say work on the thing that you most have the best chance of doing and to me that's Watsonville freight. SP Sierra and I forget the other one abandoned this freight line because it wasn't viable. It wasn't viable and we're talking about the RTC making a decision to give it back to someone SP a major network Sierra nor the in the other one I forget whatever it was called they abandoned I read some of the number excuse me I read the letter saying we do not want this because we can't make any money on it. It's aspirational to think that we're going to have something like that high school students said in his video it was a beautiful video and that's the kind of thing that sways a lot of people because you see it in a video it's aspirational I've taken trains all my life and I said this at the last city council meeting in Capitola first couple of trains when I was a kid in high school I went up to Seattle I went up to Utah I drove across the Oakland Bay Bridge and got on the train station in Oakland I had no problem much longer drive than from Capitola to the proper station which doesn't exist yet if people want to take the train to somewhere in California on a regular basis that may not be too bad of a sacrifice but when I look at the money that we'd have to make a budget to make that happen as a convenience I have a problem the main thing I said in Capitola is what I think about in terms of when I approve a budget each year I've only approved four so far but many on this council here have approved many more than I have I think in terms of competing needs the competing needs that are really important right now in Capitola is to pay for PERS we have other competing needs the county has talked about that quite a bit the city of Santa Cruz just got some more money because they can't meet their general obligations without asking the public for more money so are we going to put half a billion whatever it is into making this train work when we have these other needs in Santa Cruz one last comment one of the competing needs that Capitola has is we have a bluff a lot of people like coming to Capitola because they go up to the bluff and over the years the bluff has been falling off into the ocean the people that have the houses on the edge of that bluff want us to do a bunch of work to complete some sort of riffraff or a gun eye position building a huge wall so that the surf won't keep pounding and the bluff won't keep corroding we don't have the money to do that they would wish we did so a little bit south from the bluff work Debo Hill is and the bluff continues and guess what is on that bluff the rail line someone just came up here and talked about how can we invest in something that is going to have a foreshortened lifespan because of climate action and bluff erosion caused by climate action now it's true the rail line that is running along Park in Capitola is further away than the houses on Debo Hill but it's inevitable bill an inevitable action those are my comments thank you I just wanted to come to have a conversation of what we want to do about timing Mr. Dondaro has received information from Progressive Rail they were interested in coming and making a presentation about what they're doing and I asked not to do that because I figured if we said that we were doing a Progressive Rail as trying to sway people one way or another so I actually said let's not do a Progressive Rail presentation because I felt like that would generate the wrong kind of interest but if we're interested in that we can have them come to a meeting I think it's important because if I may briefly because I want to hear from everybody else too briefly so in scenario C we just only have freight in Watsonville and then now it's taken over to the prefurb for the whole line and that's something I can't support and I can't support especially because all the other operators we've had don't even see any viability there what I'm just saying that if we want to have a presentation for Progressive Rail they can come to our next meeting I haven't done it because every time we say the word train if the staff says train people said you're biased right and so I didn't want to care I was trying to avoid that so we could focus on the document but if we want to have that we can have that discussion they are a major stakeholder as Patrick said Ms. Kaufman-Golmes let's hope I'm a little bit briefer well I know everybody's looking to get home it's getting late I too would like to see a bit more about Metro I believe that we're going to be seeing some of this presentation we do need to be able to be cognizant of the money we're spending on the transportation modalities we currently have and I know that other areas have done this implementation between the trains and the buses I'm sure that that's part of what we're doing here is we if we move this forward then that's going to be a major focus in studying on how to facilitate that how has it worked elsewhere what resources are being balanced out between the two modalities for the transportation and how they can complement and where they are competing against each other so that's not an answer that we're going to be able to have tonight over it it certainly means that we'll have continuous dialogue about it and we have a lot of questions that will come out of it that's the point of doing the drill down further so that that can be flushed out with those details and where money's going to come from and who's going to take over what part of it all that's going to be flushed out and again we have a lot of you up here that have the interest for transportation as a whole commodity for this county that represent the RTC as well as the Metro so we're not going to give one up for the balance of the other one it will be all looked over thoroughly and those type of questions will definitely be part of what we want to have addressed and that we're not losing the services because certainly they're areas that aren't this corridor I mean Freedom Boulevard, Soquel that's not part of this rail corridor, rail corridor is only an entity of the pathways that we're looking at here as the bigger picture I do have maybe some vocabulary terms just not too familiar bus jump lane can somebody give me a definition of a bus jump lane maybe how that it's terminology I'm not familiar with great question so if buses typically is in mixed flow traffic now so in a travel lane and they get to an intersection of the signal they have to wait for the signal to go green before they can proceed and get to the bus stop what a Q jump lane does it is and it can be in two forms it can be an exclusive lane just for a bus so you basically build almost like a right turn pocket or an extra pocket as the bus approaches the signal there will be interconnectivity so it's basically communication between the bus and the signal that the bus will actually turn the signal green for the bus and stop the traffic so the bus can actually bypass the back of the queue of the cars waiting at the signal and continue and there's a bus only signal that says bus only and the bus continues through if you cannot do this just for a bus you can actually do it for a right turn pocket as well it's a little bit more inefficient but the right turn pockets have a right turn on right after stop so they typically empty out so you can push the bus into that lane as well and get the same effect green light bus goes before the car so you give the transit priority to the bus okay so that's helpful in moving buses because my concern is you get them off the auxiliary and they're sitting in the same stoplight everybody else is and how does that actually make it more efficient for getting buses moved along that option for the corridor I had you know some numbers in terms of volume stats on whether are they current numbers or are they the futuristic numbers there was 150,000 trips reduced in the mod B plan and it's based on today's costs or today's counts or future counts can we get an idea of where it's related to time so our forecast scenarios we had our 2015 baseline then for each scenario and each forecast we would have given you a 2035 no build so when we're talking about our reductions it's generally between our scenario 2035 number and the no build 2035 number so that's okay and again everybody is looking at this is what can we do urgently what can we do that's going to take us to the 2035 number and I know that when our new director comes in it's going to be a priority for them for him for Guy to go ahead and look through everything he's got the almost 30 years of experience doing this and will be able to educate us even further from his perspective coming at it this is a fresh look on some suggestions and ideas and we certainly want to make sure that we can account and accommodate that and figure out to you know better timeline I mean I know that these are sort of squishy numbers 2027 2035 you know we're all saying let's hurry up and see what we can do and I think that with moving this forward with the adoption we'll be able to see a bit more of that work effort take place to be a bit more accurate on where the timeline looks for these projects and the funding sources as well as the cost factor because again there's so much speculation there and anybody can sort of cherry pick one end or the other on the cost or not cost and the frequency and the not frequency the volume and not we know we need we have a ways to go to cover on those items there I had I think sorry the EIR for the highway one it was 2017 that we've had the EIR but we don't have it finalized yet and every time I've had a meeting I've been hearing that we should know soon do we have a final EIR for highway one we're still on schedule to deliver it in December December at our meeting in December for I can't say it will be at our meeting but sometime before Christmas so maybe Santa will bring that for us huh it'll be it'll be yeah quite a treat yes I'm sure it's a big relief because then that allows us with what we are trying to be working on as anticipating some of these projects because keep in mind that people look at this as it's forever it's too far out there but we're not going to see anything on highway one for the next six years from based on the materials that I'm reading here I don't um but but again we have the EIR still to go through and I know we've gone a couple years out already because of measure D um 2024 I mean when is the first when are we going to see the first car on the first new auxiliary lane what year does the construction begin well it's planning to begin 2024 the auxiliary lanes between so come 41 2020 that's a year a little bit okay so we no you're saying 2020 is when the construction would begin yes the way she said it it sounded like about that 2020 we're okay we're close here so what I was looking at is the actual vehicle on that auxiliary lane for completion is still 2024 which my number is still six years correct construction would probably be a year and a half to two years at the most so 2022 is when construction would be done so community folks 2022 before you see anything on one based on these auxiliary lanes um I know that there's other types of improvement projects but the big impact of we have six auxiliary lanes on this wishlist three of which are measure D and we're not going to see before 2022 I would say I might want to remind the commission that Miss Christensen presented to us a way to speed up the work on highway one by starting the engineering work before the EIR was complete but still legal we we began the design at risk during environmental in order to cut 68 months off of the schedule yeah so the and as EIR it's been as long as I've been in office we've been trying to get this done and we're actually in the final lap assuming we don't get sued and there's some injunction but you know that's we're moving that we are as close as we've ever been to getting this done that's correct yes so bear with us audience we're about there and we also have don't we have the EIR for the north coast trail project as well I just want to know is it completed so that okay so let us talk about what takes us of the north end to finish if we don't have that completed yet either we're working on the administrative draft of the final EIR which we're planning to bring to the commission at the beginning of next year so that means because funding happens to do with we have to do get something ready for 2020 on the north end but that's also subject to this EIR separate EIR and remember we're starting construction on the city of Santa Cruz segment 7 in 2019 we hoped it could be starting construction on the north coast on 2020 I'm not sure when we're going to be doing the Watsonville piece and then we'll also have this EIR done of the highway and be moving this along we're going to be doing a lot of projects by 2020 well and so everybody will then need to be patient with the cone zones and making sure all that goes so that you know that we're actually making progress and then people will be frustrated that they see the progress happening so I'm just wanting to make sure that we have a better understanding in the audience that it's government process we all have to be patient not everything's going to happen overnight and we will certainly do our best to be fiscally responsible up here as commissioners when these reports come to us and really really want to do the drill down on the type of questions the hard questions to be answered and be able to address a lot of the concerns that this community has brought forward so these are some of my basic questions on this thanks for the time and we all know patients is going to be a virtue here for whatever we're putting together here thank you this brown I'll be really brief I just want to my questions were mostly answered I shared some of the questions that commissioner Rodkin and commissioner Mulhern raised in particular about the question of the HOV lanes in addition to auxiliary lanes and the idea of then getting to four lanes in some places which I can't say that I personally support at the moment particularly with the kind of limited information we have given the late inclusion of that but I also wanted to just say that I have concerns about the potential competition with metro or under mining metro funds but for buses given that we are placing such a high priority on getting buses moving more quickly I think it's important that we that we really allow metro to weigh in and really take it very seriously how the rail line transferring funds or shifting funds may affect that so I just wanted to put those items out there let the public know those are my big concerns at the moment and we'll see whether we move forward on the 6th or the 17th depending on I don't have a real strong opinion on that I think Mr. Dondara, do you want to respond to something? Well, yes since the issue of the fear of sucking funds from metros budget keeps coming up I would just like to refer the commissioners to page 101 in the plan that's dated November 2018 I don't know if you have it with you but jot this down please page 101 the first bullet I'd like to read it funding identified in the financial element of the 2040 RTP for Santa Cruz metros ongoing capital and operations is not assumed to be available for UCS rail projects though some UCS projects or expanded bus services are eligible for some of those revenue sources and are assumed in the UCS so the only UCS projects that assume use of metro funds are bus projects our staff work very closely with metro staff this was not there was no hidden agenda here or deception involved between our staffs they've been working very well together I've checked in frequently with Grayson and Ginger and Barrow and I think the communications have gone well so I really take issue with any statement that suggests that this plan has somehow going to dismember metro my other comment is if rail service is ever to be funded what you will have to take to the voters is not a rail program but a transit program because we know that metro is still rebuilding its bus fleet and you will have to expand your bus services to really give this county good complete transit service all across the county one of our guests our first guest speaker Jared Walker mentioned the fact that he was surprised at how thinly spread our transit service was if that's really the goal of this commission that's what you will take to the voters not just a rail but a fully funded transit program and it will probably have to be run by one agency that's the way it's done successfully in other cities and I think that's eventually what will happen here right now there's this tension but I think you can grow beyond that I don't want to divert the discussion to this so I appreciate the factual information about working together and I know metro is going to be talking about this at their next meeting and their analysis of the UCIS and I know that Barrow Emerson has put together some really good information and it will be a robust discussion I'm trying to get to everyone and I have a direct rebuttal to what Mr. John Davis said I believe the concern is about the new revenues coming in from SB1 and the new policy that the RTC adopted last December that gives us much more discretion about how these transit monies are going to be spent and I think that their concern is that the RTC will decide to direct those new revenues to our preferred projects I mean the staff report says that it raises their concerns about what we're going to do with this money George these are long standing concerns coming from metro it's not news to us I would say something about this please the person who lost the vote last meeting trying to get $300,000 for the local jurisdictions that was recommended by staff and only being able to get three votes not including yours to take the money from metro this board is way overrepresented by metro and in fact metro always gets what it wants on this board it gets 83% of TDA and even that little $300,000 that I tried to shift to the local jurisdictions was I lost on a nine to three vote I think it was so the notion that somehow this this body would prefer rail over metro this doesn't make any sense to me the metro representatives are extremely active in supporting financing for metro in my view ultimately what really makes sense if rail turns out to be feasible is for metro to run it is the way to get an integrated system and the state rail plan money is money that would only be available for rail and I think what it does is it offers an opportunity to have additional money for transit service in the county that would go beyond just the money that can go to metro so I think this is really a false issue one because metro is more than able to take care of itself in terms of assuring that any money that it can get its hands on it will get its hands on and two the potential funding for rail capital improvements and operations will be coming from alternative funds and the only way that the commission would divert some of those money that money funds that it has control over is in a jointly run integrated system which really is the only way that rail could be feasible and it has to be in a way that would be supportive of the bus system they're not competitive they're really to succeed they need to collaborate and cooperate and if we ever get to the point of being able to fund passenger rail if the commission decides to keep that option open then it's going to be in an integrated way so I look forward to hearing from what Metro has to say but I think I hear it every time we have a commission meeting given the you know the fact that the commission has many of its members are also on Metro and take and have a real deep commitment to the bus system as has this commission as a whole so I just don't think that's a that's a from my perspective it's beating a dead horse to try to get to try to make it seem like somehow there's something nefarious going on here in terms of rail stealing from Metro I'm sorry Patrick but I want to avoid getting into I would like to focus on just like I asked the public to focus on the unified corridor investment study let me go on and if I can go on and I want to make sure to hear from everybody who hasn't got a chance to speak so Mr. Schifrin if there's if there's something you want to talk about the UCIS I'm can I just say thanks for the clarification and the additional information I just wanted to follow up on what Commissioner Mulherne was talking about in terms of the EIR and regional transportation plan because I think it really it's important to remember that the UCS is a planning document I mean there's no money to build rail now there's no money to do HOV now we don't know if we'll ever be able to get the money what the unified corridor study does is sort of look at well in the future what might be possible to do and what might we want to do and most of what we want to do is already in the regional transportation plan any changes will show up in the next regional transportation plan it seems like we're doing them every time we turn around so we will be having another regional transportation plan we will be having another EIR the question I want or the request I want to make to staff is when they come back for a decision on the unified corridor study they talk about the CEQA issues because the regional transportation plan has an EIR done for it there's a real discussion about what action are we taking and will that action be subject to CEQA if what we're doing is really a planning study well planning studies are exempt if what we're doing is making decisions that could lead to effects on the environment I think that leads to potential CEQA problems so I think we need to get a clarification from staff on what's going on I wanted to respond to some of the other concerns that were raised both by public and commissioners in terms of progressive rail didn't we just approve their contract last spring June actually how quickly can we expect them to be doing anything and it's all under the possibility that we're going to end the contract if the commission decides not to have rail service that could be the end of the contract with progressive rail the company to be doing a whole heck of a lot even in Watsonville I think is not reasonable we've got to give them a couple of years and if in fact it's as infeasible as it's turned out with the other contractors then it will go away and we'll have to deal with whether we want to try to convince the service transportation board to allow freight service to force us to keep trying to do it on the other hand if I remember the contract it does provide the option for passenger rail service and working with progressive rail to get that so I think it's kind of a false issue to think that because we have freight on the line we can't have passenger rail service there are ways to work it out and in our contract we can't wait that in terms of some of the environmental concerns about the bluffs et cetera I think those have to be studied and what staff is recommending is that we go forward with design for potential passenger rail service and with environmental review and that's when the kinds of climate change issues will be looked at in a systematic way and I think that's that's the appropriate time to do that if the commission decides I want to keep the rail line the other point I wanted to make there was a good run down I want to thank the commission of where we are in the various projects but one was left out and the one that was left out is the project to build the trestle over the San Lorenzo River the plan estimated to cost $9 million because they wanted to replace the old bridge and as a result of county city and commission and the land trust a study was done and that that project is the bid was awarded by the Santa Cruz City Council on Tuesday and the expectation that the trestle will be widened over the San Lorenzo river the completion by the end of May by the summer it only costs $2 million which is not anything to shake a stick at but it's a significant and it sort of says estimating future course is a dangerous business in this case it went down and let me just say that segment of the rail trail because it connects the east side of Santa Cruz with the boardwalk probably will get more pedestrian and bicycle use than any other segment frankly because huge numbers of people are squeezing through the very narrow trestle now and it's a very popular it will be a very popular segment so the final thing I want to say is really a question for staff and it has to do with the Capitola trestle and I'm wondering I don't really remember do we have a contract now for an engineering study for the Capitola trestle yes it's the same company that's doing the yes or no does that contract include looking at the possibility of cantilevering a trail along that no we already did that we have a written study of that we did that in an earlier study the timber trestles are not designed to have cantilevered structures off on one side is there excuse me for not just shutting up but that's what we were told about the sailor and the river trestle as well it can't be done different structure but I'm just wondering is there a written report that states what you're saying Elise do you want to take that we didn't have a specific report done on that but basically when the master plan was being done for the trail at that time we had engineers on contract taking a look at the bridges and so we asked them for the benefit of that plan to also take a look at the bridge and see what you can't leave her off of and they determined that for the most part most of the bridges you could not that same thing about the San Lorenzo river bridge which is why they recommended it to be $9 million can we vote for $50,000 to look at this variation that was what I'm asking about it's not to look at whether a trail could be there but whether the trestle is just going to fall down the $50,000 extra was to look at the possibility of designing one bridge that can handle both the trail and the rail so it's rebuilding the whole bridge that would be a bridge replacement I made that motion and it didn't specify it could only be a replacement it opened up the question of what it would take to make that bridge work for a rail and trail and I assumed maybe $50,000 is not enough to do a complete study but we didn't say you can't look at that other issue I think that is still open-ended I think we know the answer to that you may know the answer but it wasn't the motion that stopped that and let me just say engineers disagree I've seen that a number of times firms say they can't be done another engineering firm comes around and says we can do it for we will ask them for any possibilities of getting both rail and rail that's all I wanted to pursue so I think those are my questions thank you very much for your indulgence Mr. McPherson thank you for making me last unless you want Caltrans we've got a couple more anyway I want to thank the I want to thank the staff consultants and the staff too especially Ginger, Dicar and Grace just sticking with this and putting it together and even though I'm paralysis by more analysis is not always the right approach I think everybody agrees I hope they do that we should wait and I too being one of those metro folks that is on this board as well I do think that we have to have a full vetting of that tomorrow we will in the metro meeting tomorrow morning but I just think that there was some push to have these discretionary funds shifted and that didn't happen as was mentioned and so I mean that's what I think we're a little afraid of and I really appreciate that the RTC and Metro is working probably as well as it has in many many years but I just thinking about this whole we're talking about 3500 passengers on the rail and I'm just thinking that we have in Metro 5 million passengers trips a day and that's 13,700 a day something we don't want to you know, weaken that and I know we're not going to get in an argument between Metro and RTC but we really have to make sure we protect our complete transportation network here and I think that is being done when we're having a hybrid scenario that incorporates various elements is the right approach so I do appreciate that Mr. Johnson Thank you chair I had a question I guess Kimberly Horn you said one of your goals is to relieve transportation demand is that a fair statement you said one of the goals of this whole study is to relieve transportation demand because there's just no more capacity is that right? So will a train do that will it relieve transportation demand to the extent on Highway 1 it'll flow freely or will there still be gridlock? The train does not function on its own to relieve demand the train is part of a bigger system and that's what this corridor does that's why it was an integrated corridor you cannot single out a single because I can also say that the bus does not the freeway if you build the freeway then it's not going to solve it So like the smart train it was sold as something that's going to relieve congestion but it didn't happen there was still gridlock on Highway 101 correct? That's correct So I guess it's a false premise to think that because you build a train system an operating system it's all of a sudden going to magically solve the gridlock on Highway 1 that's one of the reasons why some of the people here are talking about and accusing this commission of not talking about solutions of not talking about real things and real problems and addressing them with the lackality and a sense of priority and a sense of urgency so I guess when I hear here's another example that bothered me just a little bit that every intersection that you explore and transform is going to be dedicated not to people who drive cars but to people who walk, ride bikes and transit Did I hear you correctly? No, if you improve the intersection there will by default also be improvements for cars because they travel through the intersection but you got to make sure because our typical history is about let's do it all for cars and not look at bikes and pets and transit Again, the transportation system it's not typical because we just we just transformed the intersection at Mount Herman and Scott's Valley Drive and there are we actually prioritize some of the things that will help so saying that is not really a correct statement is it? If you go look at the CIPs you will see many intersections have been identified because of level of service and making the level of service better for cars One of the things that I think in general, thank you for that I guess it was throw that said simplify, simplify, simplify and what I see here and it started very early and one of the reasons why I didn't favor measure D is that there were 15 different buckets and actually just six five to be all things for all people okay you know, we keep talking about fiscal responsibility and be able to finance things and so forth but we may be able to talk about how our staff gets along with Metro but there's a limited amount of funds and a limited number of passengers and they compete against each other and it's not just projecting that this is going to happen it's been proven in many other places that they compete against each other and degrade both and there's not enough, especially in a limited population like we have to support both yet we want to forge ahead it's a little bit like going to a restaurant and you have ten dollars in your pocket but you order fifteen things off the menu and hoping that somebody might be the person next to you is going to help pay for those things or some government agency is going to come and pay for the bill it's not realistic in my opinion so when people are frustrated I think it has to do with the whole concept that Measure D promised a lot but one of the things that left out was timing okay it didn't mention the fact that we were talking about 2027 or 2035 or 2050 or whatever it just said these things are going to happen again so when people talk out here about the frustration of not being able to drive their car or move their family or do all the things that we're supposed to be able to do in a modern society and then we also get people who say driving cars is terrible I'm not going to do it again you don't have to raise your hand but just think about if you drove a car here or took a bus nobody did right the reason they don't because of convenience and the same thing is going to happen with the state rail plan you can have a state rail plan that connects Santa Cruz to Pajaro to Salinas and so forth but aren't people move within our county they take their kids to soccer games they go shopping businesses use trucks to do construction on houses people operate on convenience and what I fear is that transportation wise we have this big round peg and we're trying to fit into this big square hole and we continually do that and we're saying well it's only going to be 450 or 600 million dollars or whatever to do this train thing but the reason they're frustrated is that in 2016 we probably had I don't know 38-40 meetings we've talked about highway 1 maybe 2 or 3 times but we've talked about the train and this and that you know 50 times on all sorts of agendas so it's a little bit misdirected and that's why I'm going to quote Mr. Dandera I'm going to quote you because you did send out a missive here you said others suggest the RTC is rushing to make a decision all this can be expected for those who disagree with the draft recommended scenario as they want more time to lobby you to change course more time to discredit the integrity of the study and more time to mobilize social media to whip up resistance well I just heard from my colleague here he had real questions Bertrand had real questions and Metro has real questions and that's what we're talking about so help me understand why people who might have real questions and don't quote want to rush this through why are they being made out to be somebody who just wants to rush things and mischaracterize what we're trying to do here as a commission I do because you know this isn't a brief if you're going to say something because I'm trying to focus on the UCIS I mean that right yeah so my point is that nobody is up here trying to rush anything rush is not really in the vocabulary of this commission because we what we are doing is trying to I think we're trying to weave ourselves through a complicated situation in which we have limited dollars we have risks and reward and people are trying to just trying to find facts that kind of help us come to an informed decision so you know again I think that we're in the solution if we really want to be we're in the solution of having a highway that works a bus system that integrates with that highway system and a trail that doesn't cost you know millions and hundreds of millions of dollars and again getting back to throw simplify a little bit and use the things that actually work and you know if we do that we have a better chance of success instead of just spreading ourselves with the staff with the commission and with our funding that nothing succeeds so do I support this preferred scenario no I don't but maybe after a little bit of time maybe with a little bit more information I might but I'm not going to be accused of you know rushing and not wanting to rush something I think that we do need more information and that's why I think if my colleague here makes the motion I'll second it because I think we do need more time thank you I just had one or two questions and I had a couple statements just one thing I know that bike Santa Cruz County had asked in a letter about getting some numbers on protected bike lanes at least in my cursory look because I just got this revised UCIS it still looks like it says buffered lanes the striping are we going to get numbers for protected bike lanes so we it's a fact that protected bike lanes provide a safer mean to travel and you will get increased ridership in looking at Soquel and Freedom you cannot put protected bike lanes anyway if you have multiple driveways and you have protected bike lanes you need to gap everywhere so physically it does not work so what you tend to do is you put in a striped buffer it makes it easier for in and out if you have a long section or a long block where you don't have driveways and you have the roadway with protected bike lanes are perfect you're going to end up in certain sections where Soquel just does not have the right of way where you don't cannot put a buffer or you can you won't be able to protect the bike lane either so that buffer is maybe going to go away and you end up with a striped bike lane I think so for ease of implementation right now is to look at how you can easily implement this but for future planning as any redevelopment occurs along Soquel and Freedom thoughts should be given about obtaining property from those developers so that you can put in a protected or a buffered bike lane depending on the access locations the driveways and the ability to fit the bikes facilities in Soquel with property well I'm not a transportation expert but I I'm convinced from talking to bicyclists that protected bike lanes are really make a difference and I'll check with my public work staff to confirm your analysis I hope you're wrong the other question I had about you is in the preferred scenario it talks about ramp metering and auxiliary lanes but as my colleagues have pointed out limited number of funds if we if we were trying to figure out where to make the investment would it be ramp metering or the extra three segments of the auxiliary lanes or is the great question so ramp metering so ramp metering there's actually two different elements so I would it would be really hard to say which one is going to give you the best impact unless you do a very detailed analysis and that's something that Calta and Stepik does my gut feel says that the auxiliary lanes are going to give you the bigger bang for your buck because you moving all the weaving that you have on the main line off from the main line so you can get throughput the function of that ramp metering is totally different it limits the rate at which you allow traffic to join the freeway so there's added benefit in that just up front tell you which one is better it's going to be hard right now what you're saying is you have to make a decision on what's more important to you and what's going to give you technically maybe the quicker benefit they're looking for quickly can you build it and ramp metering also creates some other issues too and if you do ramp metering now and you don't have capacity on the freeway so now it's congested it doesn't help if you ramp metering right now because you still can get on right so try to get the main line moving okay I appreciate that and I had I'm going to offline I'll talk to staff about the BRT light and the reason for taking that out of the preferred scenario I don't want to get into that now because I think it's a detailed discussion but I it was less attractive to me to take that out but I want to understand it more I won't we won't get into a discussion about it now you know this study is supposed to give us some information we have the preferred scenario we may choose to move some pieces around on that preferred scenario we might choose to take some things out that's in the end it's a staff recommendation and we as the commission are going to make the final decision and so that's why we have these discussions and we take this testimony because in the end we're going to vote our name is going to be on that motion and how we vote on it and I just want to make that clear to everyone here you don't have to stand up there do what my colleague did so I just I want to remind people that it's the ultimately the commission's decision about this and we're going to take the but we do with everything we're going to take the expert advice from our staff we're going to assess it and we're going to make a decision that's going to be the best as possible the discussion about Metro we've talked about that quite a bit there's a people are very interested in and supporting Metro I too am interested in supporting Metro and to be clear for some of the advocates here is their recommendation also includes not giving up the transit option on the rail line and as I understand the recommendation it's to do the alternative analysis which the staff has suggested we were going to do as what would be our next step in this so they may not completely match up I won't pretend like I could say with the greatest clarity but it gives you an idea that transportation experts are saying don't lose your transit option on your corridor and if you're going to make a decision you really need to look at all the alternatives and both the RTC staff and the Metro have some version of that I think that's important to note because while there might be disagreement on some parts of it there's a lot of clarity about the overall vision of how to use our rail corridor we're going to we always talk a lot about bridges but what's in the recommendation is very much in keeping with Measure D about the trestle and capitol there was a disingenuous campaign that somehow asserted that the train would somehow we would lose the trestle and there's always been money in this measure to repair the capitol trestle and this commission has directed staff to spend money to figure out how you can accomplish both things and so sometimes the rhetoric is much different than the reality we saw that with that campaign for sure and so what Measure L told us is depending on how you look at it and everybody depending on which side you're on will debate what it really meant and what it told about it but it's part of a larger discussion about transit in Santa Cruz County and how we want to move people around success is defined different ways people have said don't spend money on the rail line not that many people will use it I can make a commencing case why spend a half billion dollars on highway one with HOV lanes six minutes so is that a good investment one of the things that we put in our regional transportation plan in 2014 is travel time reliability because one thing you get with a fixed system is you get reliability we know that that train is going to get from Santa Cruz to Watsonville we have a pretty assured time that it's going to take and if you care about that if that's your measure of success then that's a good thing if that's not your measure of success if your lifestyle doesn't want it if you don't ever want to think about a train if you want to stick to your car and you want to deal with the unknowing of what your travel time is going to be then of course you want to put money in the highway so that's why we try to in these scenarios to take a look at different pieces and why our regional transportation plan tried to take a look at different measures of success because we all might some of us might define equity or the environment or travel time reliability or congestion relief it all means something different we're a diverse community and I don't think that we will all agree on one thing and I think that's a great a transportation system that meets multiple needs and I think the success of measure D says that if we look at a multi-multi-future that that is what people are interested in supporting and we could debate about whether they support the train or the bus or the car or the bike or the pedestrian but that was a recipe for success is looking at all those pieces and the UCIS I think about where to move forward now depending on what part of your argument is are we rushing or not some people here said tonight we don't rush anything we're stalling as if we haven't done anything on things like the highway that people complain that we haven't we've owned the rail line for six years why haven't we built the entire trail and put the train in yet these are all things that people assume will happen just like that it only took us 20 years to buy the line right and so we bought the line we approved through an environmental process a trail plan that won awards we are moving forward with the EIR on the highway and as I mentioned earlier we are weeks away from that next step in the process and that we are now talking about dates in which we actually might start building things so it's frustrating because we all want everything today but we are moving forward in Measure D actually put money we got projects in every one of our jurisdictions which are happening we have service on the metro because of Measure D so Measure D is already getting people moving here in Santa Cruz County we have big projects and those projects have to go through the California Environmental Quality Act process and as soon as we can get that process done and some of these other issues we can actually start construction I think it's going to be important for us to think about what are the most important pieces of this if people feel like we are rushing and we need to move it to a meeting in January I'm not opposed to that but if you think there will be any greater clarity about it if you have to read the documents and you have to make your own opinion and you have to ask the questions you don't have to wait to ask those questions here at the meeting you can also talk to staff and try to get some of these questions answered we could be ready on December 6 to discuss this commission about whether we want to wait to January 17 I think it's and I'm willing to go with the will of the commission I have been in contact with Guy Preston he is busy reading all of our past documents he has a stack in his office that he's trying to catch up with only 20 years of work that we've done with the ground running when he gets here but I think if you look at what transportation experts have been talking about some of the big issues and this commission I would be surprised if somehow he looked at it incredibly different because every transportation expert that we've had in front of this commission have said some variation of the same thing we want to keep transit on the corridors that we can't give that up so I look forward to the continued discussion Mr. Rockin they will be brief comments to add about responses to the audience I wanted to start by thanking the audience for the tone of the conversation very different than when we started this conversation there were still huge differences about what we ought to do but people were respectful of each other I don't take that for granted when people feel so passionately about an issue just some very quick comments several people talked about the passenger train as if it's going to be a diesel train like the Cal train or something that runs to San Francisco I'm not answering the question of whether we'll have a train but if there's a train it's not going to be a big hunkin diesel train pulling 15 cars it's going to look more like what that guy did the high school guy did with his video or some kind of a tram some sort of a smaller train or something so the concerns that there's going to be the passenger service is going to be some major diesel train that's going to shake the foundation of every house that goes by is not that's not a reasonable fear at this point whether we should have the train we'll have that discussion and get further into it secondly Patrick raised questions about the compatibility of freight and passenger service I just want to say there's no question that modern train systems even on a single line with some additional pass buys automated services and so forth there's not a technical problem having freight and passenger on the same line that's not an issue at all I'd like the staff to answer is Patrick's question about the ability of the rail operator to stop to thwart passenger service and we've had some answers in the closed session and stuff but in open documents some kind of a written response to what extent do they have the ability if assuming they have a primary interest in freight service of thwarting the passenger dreams that people who want passenger service perhaps more than freight service we need a clear answer to that do they in fact have the ability to run us around and stop us from having passenger service if they wanted to I don't know if they wanted to do so but if they wanted to do so do they have a legal ability to do it I'd like the answer to that question in a clear way my earlier understanding was in the closed sessions without getting into the details what was discussed there that's not a scenario that's going to happen and John talked about this as well how come nothing got done on the rail quarter for the last 10 years well we didn't have any money measure D had not been approved so you had no way to spend any money even for the trail much less a larger project more importantly we were in the middle of the second worst recession in U.S. history and so the fact that there was no money to do anything is why that didn't get built not because there was a lack of will or stalling or dragging our feet or we're incompetent or something but that's not the evidence of it the people who spoke against doing the induced traffic problem which I believe is the case every expert that we brought here told us nothing you can do will stop congestion every one of them they were very very clear about it nothing you can do will stop congestion what you can do is give people alternatives John suggested the importance of knowing how long it takes and so forth there's other issues about it but I want to say to the people who are against induced traffic and don't want to support the auxiliary lanes I think we should stop that part of the project there's in addition to a technical question I certainly believe in induced traffic I don't think that those lanes are going to improve the traffic situation for many very many years before it looks just like it does now and that's what the statistics show us over time it's going to rebuild again but there's a political reality that you have to deal with and not have passed without auxiliary lanes in it it would have gone down in flames we'd have no money for anything that anybody wants a bike trail or anything else that's going on and so I know that's hard to take look at the facts, look at the science I understand the facts and the science and I understand we could spend another 20 years with no money to do anything for public transportation so I bit the bullet and decided I'll live with these auxiliary lanes I don't believe in them, I don't think they're really going to fix stuff but I think you have to respect the fact that we make these decisions and we were not successful, we tried to do something that would not involve that kind of situation, we did polling did a bunch of studies to figure out can we pass this thing, because I wanted to do that can we do this without doing anything to improve the number of miles people are driving alone in their cars and the answer is you couldn't get it passed in this county, it would have gone down in flames and we wouldn't have this meeting we would have no plans and nothing else going on so that's just political life it's unfortunate, somebody once said it's very cynical but that the way things get done is politics is the art of getting morally indifferent people to do good things for bad reasons I mean it's very cynical but there's a political reality to these things if you're going to try and do something in the community I have to make sure that I can put something out there that people who completely disagree with me think still works for them even though they don't share my views I was in city council for 26 years, I got a pretty good sense that you have to try and figure out what you can do that actually will work that makes me a pragmatist and I think that's sort of necessary in political life the most important thing that I want to say is that I really do want to have this progressive rail thing addressed what is the Patrick's question about it like could they in fact wake up tomorrow morning decide they want freight service and they could just kill the passenger part of this whole thing and we couldn't stop them and they have the legal ability to do that and I'd like to know the answer to that question in a definitive way and I think the public has a right to know that answer so that's the one question I really want to leave staff with before we come back to our next meeting thank you now given the hour I want to see if we can get a motion Mr. Mulhorn thank you so much so I think I've been keeping track of questions here Commissioner Schifrin sort of clarified what my concerns were about the RTP whether it's a planning document or a project document is it subject to CEQA is that about what you said no there are two kinds of documents that are subject to CEQA there's a programmatic kind of a document which is a planning document a policy document and then there are specific projects like a building the key question with CEQA is are there potential significant effects on the environment as a result of the decision that's made about the project and in this case it's a question of is this study a project under CEQA and if it is potentially a project under CEQA does it need what kind of environmental review does it need is it exempted under CEQA does it need environmental review and I think those are just questions I would hope staff would come back with answers to so policies like general plans like the RTP those kinds of documents are subject to CEQA whether this the University of Florida study is or not is the question so question one the second question from Mr. Rotkin will limit our efforts to initiate commuter rail I would also like to hear what progressive rail's opinion is of the staff preferred scenario how that affects their business plan I would also like to hear a formal response from Metro on how the staff preferred scenario affects their business plan and their plan for operations in the future and I guess by this point Mr. Press will be around so he can provide his own input but in order to allow for all of these decisions and information to be produced I'm hoping that we can come back on January 17th and have this information provided to us so that we can make a more informed decision and I mean to imply that I'm not being unfairious at all about any of these processes I just feel that these are outstanding issues that I would hope to have answered before I make a billion dollar decision and so that's my motion if we could return on the 17th with these questions answered please we don't have to wait to the 17th to get the answers we want them by the time we vote on this on the table is there a second and I want to make a comment is there a second second from McPherson so motion by Malheur and seconded by McPherson now we have discussion real quick yeah we're just basically putting it off is that correct until the 17th no I'm asking questions and I'm hoping that they can answer them in a 23 work day period that's fine putting that down I just wanted to clarify it and I did want to make where I'm coming from if we did not purchase the rail line about seven years ago we wouldn't be having any discussions on a pedestrian trail we wouldn't be having discussions on bicycles we wouldn't be having a train discussion so the importance of the train on that rail line is a significant piece that we have to address and that's why we're having so much trouble finding out what the priorities are but we did purchase a rail line seven years ago and that's a key part to what South County and Watsonville wants that they want to be connected to the rest of the county with a train thank you and if we didn't buy the rail line we would just argue about the highway now we have something else to argue about but I appreciate your point we can pick each section does anyone want to speak directly to the motion of waiting until January 17th to make our decision or make our motion on the Unified Corridor Investment Study with the additional information that's fine I want to try to get people to speak directly to it thank you we can get that addressed even in the December and at the December time then we would have a better feel for how Guy feels on comfort level of taking a vote then or for January and it could very well likely be January but I still think that we don't need to wait until January to get those things answered Mr. Rockin I just have a piece of information for people I have a class my last class that I teach on December 6th at the time of this meeting so I have a great interest in waiting until January 17th for this decision you should take that in mind when you decide how you want to vote on this motion half the crowd now wants to vote on December 6th Mr. Schifrin and then Mr. Bertrand initially I was wanting to support the staff recommendation which was essentially to come back on December 6th and consider their preferred scenario but I think I will support the motion because I do think that there are enough commissioners who would like a little bit more time I don't think I'll support going beyond that because I think you know those who may not like the decision will be afraid that they won't like the decision would like us never to make it and so I think it's important that we do make the decision I think the questions that were asked are reasonable I think they probably could be answered by December 6th but since there is a motion on the floor from other commissioners a number of commissioners do want to wait until the 17th I will support the motion Mr. Bertrand I'll support the motion I'd like to point out there's two commissioners that are not here so I'd like to have them present at that time not here boy that's a that puts it over you're going to go check out second bite at the apple come on I assume it'll be a friendly amendment but I'd also like to have as much information as we can get it won't be definitive about the issue of the right of way on the rail and what would happen if we were to give up the rail line in terms of like whether land would revert to property owners that lie along the track so I know we cannot get definitive because ultimately we'll only find that out when somebody seizes and takes seven years to get to the U.S. Supreme Court but I don't know enough about how much land even vaguely looks like it might be a threat that would be helpful information when we make our decision as well we did cover a lot of these issues in closed session in the past so we can figure out what it is we can share you don't want to give away your complete legal position so I think we have a motion on the table to get some additional information and come back on the 17th when we will act on the unified quarter investment study recommendations all in favor signify by saying aye and he opposed motion carries unanimously thank you for coming out and sticking with us


It starts all about the battle, how it got confirmed and like how, what it means. Is it a title match? Yeah, so... I just summarised it's like not everything.   Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't, I don't know. Like, he said he'll put it up.  You've got two of the best in the UK going that at one round. And we're both great writers, great punchlines, it's gonna be great. I don't know if it's a title shot, we'll probably decide on a date. Soldo knows a title shot, I'll let you in a secret.   The fans don't know. There's only one we can find out. Don't flop.com, four sash tickets, I'm getting good at this, innit? Lee's November 19th. The card was already finished, so three weeks prep. Let's do it. Definitely the biggest one, whether it's the title match or not, because, you know, it's good to spar with so I respect so-so. It's probably one of the best. Battlers don't block or produce, if you want to say. He's been there from the beginning. He's a phenomenal writer, great writer. He's the champion. And he knows how to approach a battle. He knows how to defend certain angles. He knows how to attack on certain angles. There's no one that's got my style.  I'm always on your toes.  So I'm different to everyone. Skill-wise, soul is the best person. I'm excited to put on a show. I'm going to put on a show and I'm excited for that, because I've grown a lot, especially my two experiences. At King of the Dot, I've learned huge amounts and I'm really, really excited to get on the stage and perform. You're getting more than you're barking for. You have to hunger for more. I've only just started to get hungry. Kruger passed me the cup.  You're one of the best in the country. Well, I'm feeling that rope. You ain't touching me. I'm just thinking about putting on a show. If I become champion, then I'll have to think about things, because then I'll have a responsibility and it'll be at different parts. But if I were there, I'd be an exciting champion and there'd probably be shocks and I would like to do something exciting. I would want to just defend it once a year.  I would like to battle shocks. Maybe we'll do a five-rounder to make up for the two rounds that ain't done against soul. Let's do something. Let's make this do something. The card is crazy.  You know, you work all year to be on the birthday. I've been on the last four, which means, you know, we're keeping a high level throughout the year. The play was done. It's like, well, I'm not on the card.  We're on the card now. The birthdays are the best.   So it's going to be crazy. I hope that it's packed. I hope everyone's growing mad. And you're going to make history.