All yours, Mr. Chair, if you'd like to start. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District Meeting of November 20th, 2020. I will begin with a roll call, please. Good morning. Dr. Batov. Here. Dr. Coffman-Gummies. Dr. Gonzalez. Here. Good morning. Dr. Leopold. Here. Dr. Lind. Here. Dr. Matthews. Here. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Myers. Here. Dr. Paytler. Here. Dr. Wathrell. Here. Dr. Rockin. Here. Exefficio Director Henderson. Here. Exefficio Director Northcott. Here. Dr. Coffman-Gummies. Not here. We have quorum. Thank you very much. We do have a quorum and we'll begin. Today's meeting is being broadcast by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. Our first item on the agenda is Board of Directors' comments. This is an opportunity for members of the Board of Directors to make comments for items not on this morning's agenda. Do we have any comments? John Leopold. Thanks, Chair. You know, this meeting is likely my last meeting as a member of the Board of Directors of the Transit District. I've been serving here since 2009. I'm very proud of the work that we've done all together. We've had to rescue the agency at different times financially, but the community has stood strongly behind the Metro. It's a valuable service. I'm really proud of the work that we've done to shore up the financing of the organization. I think there's a lot more good work to be done. I want to express my appreciation to the members of the Board who have had a chance to work with the drivers who do so much good work, all the employees at the Metro. I'm especially appreciative of Clifford and the work that he's done. I was glad to play a role in being part of the group that hired him, and I look forward to continuing to see the strength and growth of the Metro. I'm currently the vice chairman, so I'm going to be resigning that post here today, and I wish you great success in the future at the Metro. Thank you, John. I make a comment myself. I want to thank you for extraordinary service to this district and this community. You have not simply sat in a seat on the Board of Directors here. You've taken real leadership on a number of very difficult issues, helping us get out, as you pointed out, a serious financial crisis that Alex Clifford led us out of. But it takes a bore to make that happen in a serious way, and I think he took real leadership over that. That's never easy. It's easy to add new services and provide new things for the public, but to make hard decisions about what has to be cut at times or how to restructure things in a serious way. And I appreciate the leadership you've shown there. There's no question that our community is in a better place for the work that you've done in terms of public transit in this community. I won't go into all your other accomplishments and other areas. I think we'll save those for other fora. But for sure, you've been a key player in the transit district, and we appreciate your many, many years of great service here. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Ed. Dr. Orff. Yeah, I just want to echo some of Mike's comments. John, just to keep it real, a lot of people are on this board and people come and go, but you have totally been committed to Metro all in. I can't think of anybody else who has contributed more to keeping Metro going as it is. And I wish you well if you're in new endeavors. Thank you, Ed. Mike, I'd say the same thing. Yeah, you just can't gauge how much my John has put into this and made things happen. And so much of what goes on Metro, there are a core of who our ridership is right in his district as well as Supervisorial District. But he's always looked out for the breadth of the county and making this thing work as best as we can. And yeah, I know that when we hired Alex, it was really an important decision that we made so we could get on track again financially. We've had some adjustments to make, but John's been in the lead of helping us make those decisions. And I really appreciate his participation, his leadership in this getting Metro on the right track, literally. So it's going to be sorely missed. And we're going to, we just appreciate everything you've done, John. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bruce. And I'm proud to have a leadership position with you on the Measure D campaign, which provided a nice, a bit of funding for the Metro. Yeah, another thing that should be recognized. Thank you. Any other comments and board of directors comments this morning? Mr. Chair, Cynthia Matthews. We go ahead, Cynthia, please. Oh, I just want to add my appreciation for John. I came on when I think the worst of the financial crisis was over, but still so many deep decisions over time. And John, you have provided leadership so above and beyond everything on this issue. So thank you on that. There will be lots of changes going forward and just really appreciate that institutional memory and commitment and political acumen to keep this going. Thank you. Thank you. And Donna Myers. Donna Myers, go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, John, you and I have known each other for a long, long time. I was very excited to serve with you on this board and hoping it would have been for a longer term. But I just want to thank you for all the guidance and just your commitment to what transit really means to the people who need it most in our community. So thank you very much for everything that you've done. So, and I also just want to extend my thanks to Ed and Cynthia as well, serving with both of you has been a real pleasure as well and Trina. So we're losing quite a bit of our board. So I'm wishing you all all the best and thank you. We make Donna, I don't think either one of us could have figured out when I was a student at UCSC sitting across your kitchen table that we'd be serving on a transit board as elected. Yeah, when we were 18. Or in my case, John. Watching a direct mail services. Yeah. Watching the L.A. law together. It really happened. I have a really dating us. Yeah. I have a question of Julie Sherman, our council. We've just lost our vice chair and likely not to be replaced until January or February, given the way that these appointments get made in terms of where we're going next. And we make our appointments, I think in either January or is it early February? I'm not sure for new officers for the board. Is it possible for us to replace our vice chair right now at this meeting? So not right now because it's not agendized under the Brown Act. But for vacancies, what your board bylaws provide is that anytime there's a vacancy, you just agendize it. So you can agendize it for January, which will be your next meeting if you had one in December, but you won't. And then you can nominate and fill that position in January. Thanks very much. I'm gonna suggest then that we do agendize this for our next meeting and not wait for the formal reappointments that happened perhaps a month after that or something. I hope to be able to serve fully in this position and through all the way through, but it's good to have a vice chair in case there's some need for filling, which does happen. Any other comments from board of directors? Yes, Mike. Yes. My computer kept freezing up, so anyway. Most everything has been said, but John and I were elected the same year and ended up serving on LAVCO and various commissions and really the flight path issues, particularly that were intent. But I wanna appreciate and thank you and echo what has been said, your dedication has really been wonderful to watch and work along with you and you will be missed. Thank you, Donna. I really appreciate getting a chance to serve with you. Thank you. Okay. Oh, one additional separate comment. Wanted to acknowledge that RTC, and I'll pull it up, but sent out a notice as far as the grant applications to CTC for Watsonville and Santa Cruz Multimodal Corridor Project and acknowledged the work and the contribution Alex and staff at Metro had made and this moving to be approved by CTC and hopefully successfully obtained. So thanks, nice to see that acknowledgement and thanks to Alex and staff. Thanks for that. Mike. Yes. Yeah, I just wanted to tell John, in the city of Watsonville, thank you for serving on Metro and always supporting South County and its needs. It was a short pleasure for me to be with you, but I hope to continue our friendship on to the future. Thanks. Thanks, Aurelio. Juan Rothwell. Everything's been said, I think pretty much, and you can get us well ahead as this continues much longer, but I just wanted to add my comments that I would truly appreciate what you've done, John, and I know that you've been really involved in countywide politics for a very long time. I voted for you. I was really terribly sorry to see that you lost. This has been a horrible year in so many ways and that's just one of the additions that we can add to 2020 that we'd like to forget about. So I wish you well. I tried to contact you several times, but for some reason your email, at least on my computer, wasn't working. So I wasn't able to contact you. And I'd like to contact you sometime and find out what your plans are for the future. John, send them an email so we can get back to you. I will definitely send them an email and Dan and I had the great pleasure of working at Cabrillo before we got a chance to work on this board. So yeah. You were absolutely wonderful. You and John Laird were like the two greatest board members I think we've ever had. And we were so sorry to see you leave, but you went to higher places. Yeah. Proud of my service on Cabrillo. You should be. Any other comments? You had Larry Pegler, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I appreciate the help and identifying people. There's a lot of faces on the screen here. Larry, go ahead. Thank you. My audio died for a moment. John, you know, I almost never repeat things that have already been said, but I need to today and that's to the appreciation for your leadership and your involvement as a resident of the first district. I very much appreciate all the work you've done for us. I haven't known you since LA law, but it's. So I look forward to working with you more in the future and best wishes always. Thank you, Larry. Best to your family. Proud to be able to work with you on this board. Any other comments? Okay. Thanks again, John, for your many years of great service to this district and the public that it serves. Next, we have oral and written communications from the public on items that are not on this morning's agenda. Are there any written communications? I didn't see any in the packet. We do not have any, Mr. Chair. You do have Mr. Peoples, I believe, wishing to speak. Okay, Brian Peoples, go ahead. You've got three minutes, Brian. You're muted still, I think. Brian, Peoples. Sorry, I'm there now. Okay, thanks to everybody. Brian Peoples with Trail Now, we're a grassroots organization trying to get the world-class Santa Cruz Trail opened. One of the things we really like to emphasize is there's three main corridors that are critical. So Cal, Drive, Highway 1, and the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail. We gotta open it up. We can't leave that closed. We support it, Measure D. Our support was significant. We initially didn't support it because 24% of the funds went to a train. The money was the RTC redirected money to Metro and we became a big supporter and we like to recognize that we were a big player in making that happen.  We supported Jimmy Dutra. We're really excited that he won. He didn't have the support from his other council members but it really was great to see Jimmy and we're looking forward to him coming back. And of course, we did support not the incumbent for first district supervisor. Supervisor, nobody thought we could do it but it was overwhelming. I think John, I think you're a great guy. I do appreciate the work you've done, the commitment you made for the community. Sorry that we're on different teams but again, just wanted to say thank you for your time and your efforts and at any ways I just wanted to make that opening remark. That's all, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Any other comments from members of the public or items not on our agenda this morning? No hands showing at this time. Let's do another second here. Okay, next we have, are there any comments from labor organizations this morning? Looking, no hands, no hands. Going once, going twice. Mr. Chair, you have one hand from Michael Rios and just a brief footnote, we do have a board member, Trina Coffman-Gobenz with us. Welcome Trina and go ahead Michael. Hi board, I just want to thank John as well. John Leopold for having an open door policy with us here at the union and always keeping us in mind and always letting us reach out to you during any tough times that we had. It worked out really great, you were a great leader and yeah, you will be missed definitely. Thank you for your comments Michael. Thank you Michael. Any other labor organization comments? I see no hands. Okay, do we have any written communications from the Metro Advisory Committee? We do have a report this morning from that organization. No written communications, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Next we're coming to the consent agenda. These are all the items numbered nine dash something, nine dash one through nine dash 11. We're gonna take action on these all at once unless a member of the board would like to pull one for further discussion. If members of the public would like one of these items pulled for further discussion, you can let us know and then if any board member wants to support that we'll pull it off the agenda for further discussion. If anyone, first of all on the board wanna pull in the item off consent agenda for further discussion by the board before we take this action in my entire, yes. I'm sorry, I wanted to, I didn't know if we're gonna go through the whole list but there's other Ed Bontore, Trinity Kaufman, Gomez and Cynthia Matthews will also be leaving us. They're gonna all be back at our next meeting, Bruce. They will, okay. Because our rules are that we don't replace them until they actually get appointed, they're appointing bodies, they're city councils. Okay, very well, my dad and I are good. So we have to win this a little longer, thankfully. We may or may not be back again. Depending. Anyway, I appreciate the sentiment there and share it actually because we're not gonna let them go without some comments either. Again, I see no one in the public, anyone on the board, again, anyone in the public wanna discuss any of these items on our agenda, on the consent agenda, numbers nine, one through nine, 11. That's the thing, any hints, Mr. Chair? Mike, I just think that on 8.6, the ridership reports, just to point out, it's tough times. Our ridership decline has been 85, 90% and we're still rolling and a great deal of credit to keep us going and safe at the same time under this COVID crisis that we're having. So I just wanna say thank you to the staff, to our administration and everybody for keeping the buses rolling in these very, very difficult times. We're keeping our head above water, so to speak. And it's not easy, but thank you. I just wanna make a comment that under these trying circumstances, we're still providing the service and we just hope we get those riders back as soon as this thing is over. So thank you very much to the administration, to the bus drivers, to the whole staff of Metro. You've done a phenomenal job on some very trying circumstances. I wanna follow that comment just by pointing out that I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that one of the safer places you can be these days is on one of our buses. We have separated from other people. Everybody will be wearing a mask and there are plastic sheets between, actually a plastic flexible sheets between various rows in the bus and so forth. And so it actually is quite a safe way to travel at this point. And I wanna encourage the public to consider using the bus to get where they need to go. I wanna make a motion to adopt a consent calendar but I do see that James Sandoval has his hand up. Okay, James, let's hear your comment first. Can you hear me? Yes, you're good. Sorry, I didn't get to say my piece during labor communications. I thought I had my hand raised but I just wanted to say my piece on John Leopold too. Wanted to give him credit. He had an open door policy with our union too. He always answered my calls. He had a great dialogue. It was an honor and a privilege to work with somebody like John Leopold and I appreciate everything you've done for Metro. Thank you. Thank you, James. Thanks for your comments. Any other issues on consent agenda? I'll take a motion to approve it by Ed Bahtorf and who would like to second the motion? Yeah, Larry Pegler has his hand up that I grabbed first. So if we have to take a roll call vote on the consent agenda. I'm sorry, I got the motion by Director Bahtorf but I didn't catch a second was second Larry. Larry Pegler. Thank you. Okay, roll call. Director Bahtorf. Aye. Dr. Kaufman Gomez. You're muted. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. I think I heard an aye. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pegler. Aye. Dr. Rothmell. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. Enanimous. Okay, that passes all those items. Thank you very much. I know some significant things and they're not controversial things but they're important to our district. We hired a new manager. I think that's important as well. Next on our agenda, we have employee longevity awards and this is recognizing people who've served our district for a period of time. And then this morning's case, either 15 and one case, 20 years of service. Our most valuable asset as a district is the employees who've been here and know how this district operates and provide the service to the public over the long term. So we wanna recognize these people and take a moment. We don't have enough time to give them the full recognition they deserve but I do wanna say something brief about each of them if I may. The first is, and I may butcher people's names, I'm afraid that happens in the situation but first is Edan Albarado. And is it Edan? Is that how that's being pronounced? Has been a fixed route driver just for a short period of time but he spent many years of the district as a paracruise operator and wanna appreciate the service. Rhiannon Axton has been involved in the union in various capacities but enjoys mentoring new operators. She's also a very talented seamstress. They have people who have lives beyond what they do at the district. Next, these people have all served for 15 years and the names that I'm reading now. Ed Davidson has been a valuable employee. He's always met each day with a smile and a positive demeanor towards the public. He's devoted to the community, both on and off duty. Juan Fernandez Magana, Johnny as he goes by started with Metro as a vehicle service worker and then was promoted to bus operator within less than three years. He loves his job and enjoys every day of work. He is proud to work for Metro and never refuses a request to work longer days. He accepts every day with a smile on his face and a positive attitude. And this is after, remember this, 15 years of service. This is not easy work that people do here. William McIntyre or Bill is a true professional, dependable operator since he started with Metro. His calm demeanor and friendly disposition are consistent every day. Ezekiel Osorio or EZ as he goes by has been a true professional since his first day. His family's from El Salvador and he's a role model and mentor for new operators. Jaime Renteria, Jaime is proud of his work with the operators union, especially in participating with the accident with the accident review process. He's a devoted and loving husband and father and loves outdoor activities with his family. Ezekiel Torres can be seen daily going above and beyond for all of his customers. His positive attitude and love for his job are beyond any others. He's a loving father. Valentin Zarate, Valentin got his name because he was born on Valentine's Day. He loves riding his motorcycle to work and has an infectious laugh. Joy Olander is the senior payroll specialist for Santa Cruz Metro. Joy following her dad's love for Metro was hired as an accounting technician in 2005 and moved up to payroll within a few years. Joy supports Metro employees, management, SCIUs, smart, helpers and payroll processes. Joy continues to provide payroll integrity for Metro, which is obviously critical. Let me ask Daniel Zoraga if he can make a couple of comments about Chris Sullivan. I don't know Chris. Daniel, I just sprung this on Daniel. Okay, good morning, directors. Chris Sullivan began at Paracruz as an operator. He is now a paratransit supervisor. Chris is great as he's actually our trainer. He trains all our new drivers and he's great at de-escalating situations. He's the person that we rely on whenever we have a problem with a passenger. Chris is married and he's been an excellent employee here at Metro for the 15 years that I've known him. That's great. Thank you very much. And thank you, Chris, for your service. And last but not least, working for the district for 20 years as a bus operator, John Otto, enjoys his time off work in the sports car, driving with the top down. He enjoys his daily interactions with the public as a bus driver and is grateful for the many years of service as an operator and we're grateful for his service to this district. Again, recognizing 20 years of service with this district and we appreciate that. This is our most valuable asset, these employees. I think we should have a round of applause for these people who've served our district for so long. By the way, they will all be receiving the actual formal notice of this through the staff. That won't happen in the meeting. We would be standing up and recognizing these people but we won't be doing that here because we're remote in the meeting. Next, we have a resolution of appreciation for two people who are retiring from the district, Chris Kane and Don Martin. Let me ask, first of all, we should probably give a motion that recognizes this appreciation. I'm looking for that motion. So moved. That was by- A second. Tyler Leopold and seconded by Donald Linn. I need further comments before the motion. All those in favor, we have to have a roll call vote. Every vote has to be a roll call vote. Next generation of bus drivers. That's definitely an aye. Yes, somebody doesn't like early morning. Director Batoev. Aye. Director Kaufman-Germas. Yes. Director Gonzales. Aye. Director Leopold. Aye. Director Lind. Aye. Director Matthews. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Myers. Aye. Director Peguart. Aye. Director Rothwell. Aye. And Director Rotkin. Aye. unanimous. Okay. Hold on just a moment. Let me, Alex, let me ask you who would be the appropriate person to read a little bit of background information on the two people retiring. I'm afraid I don't have that one of me. The two retiring, let's see. I think that's gonna be Freddie. Freddie, are you on for Chris? Yes, I'm on. Okay, why don't you go ahead and. Okay, so Chris Kane, she's worked with us several years already. I don't know exactly how many years, but she's said a wonderful person.  She's a custodian. She's all over the place.  And what we always remember of her is, I don't know, her kindness of her heart. Every Christmas, she brings in a her apple cider to all the employees, the staff. And like I said, that's just out of her kindness of her heart. She is a really special person. And the other person is Dawn Martin. Yes, so Mr. Chair, I'll ask Eddie to turn on his microphone and I'll just chime in first by saying that when Dawn started, she started working in my office actually, working for Gina. And she was really fabulous. She contributed greatly to the successes of our office on the administrative side. And I hated to see her go when she promoted and moved over to Eddie. And Eddie, why don't you talk a little bit about the work she did for you. Yeah, good morning, Chair Boyd. Yeah, Dawn Martin worked for me. She totally used at Metro was 15 years. She worked for me in keeping us straight on our budget and making sure all of our invoices was paid and taken care of. She has one daughter that works at Metro as well in HR. Her hobby, I can't really say what a hobby is, but I know she loves her pets, her dogs and stuff. So just quite a bit more I can say, but I wasn't expecting this right at this moment. But anyway, Dawn had, we had a really reliable employee coming to work and stuff. And we hated to lose her when she came in and announced that she was going to retire. It was very kind of a bittersweet for us. So that's, thank you. Thank you. As often the case, we're both happy for them and sad for ourselves when they decide to retire. Mr. Chair, you have a Don Creme. Don, go ahead, Director. Good morning, everyone. I just would like to add that Chris Kane has been with Metro for 21 years. I think that was important to mention and recognize. 15 in the later position, but before that six years apparently. No, no, no. Chris Kane, the first one that Freddie spoke of. Oh, I see. Yes, yeah, 21 years. Wow, thank you. All right, we've taken the action of proving this. They're gonna get plaques, which I've seen copies of, but I don't have here remotely, obviously, but those will be delivered. Those are actual physical plaques, not just a picture on a computer screen that are on their way to them. Our next item is about the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis. The Santa Cruz Metro is a partner with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission in a study to determine what form of public transit makes the most sense on the existing rail corridor through the county. And John Urgo, our Planning and Development Director has this item. Yes, good morning. Thank you, Chair. I just wanna briefly introduce this item by saying that this has been a very collaborative process between Metro and RTC staff over the past several months and the consultant team. And we feel our input and our concerns and our ideas were heard and incorporated throughout. So I thank Ginger Dicar, senior transportation, our senior planner RTC and project manager this effort for this way. And I think we're gonna hand it off to Steve Decker, the lead consultant at HDR to go through the presentation and recommendations. Thanks. Good morning, Steve. Good morning also. Metro and RTC staff are here to answer any questions as well. Thank you. Thank you, John. I'll wait for the presentation to show up on screen. And then I'll just ask whoever's operating it for the next slide. I know there'll be a little delay between the slides. I assume in your presentation you'll be explaining where we are in this overall large process, right? Yes, yeah. So at the beginning, I might as well start now before the slideshow goes up. There have been three major milestones as part of the transit corridor alternatives analysis. Started about a year ago, if we go to the next slide. A milestone one was we really evaluated and identified the goals we want to adhere to during the course of the study. Oh, well, talk about the agenda here. Primarily we're talking about the performance measure results and then our proposed draft recommended locally preferred alternative. I'll provide a brief overview of the four alternatives that we evaluated in this performance measure analysis, this detailed analysis. Talk a little bit about the pros and cons of each of the four alternatives that move forward. Talk about the recommended draft locally preferred alternative and then get into some of the next steps including stakeholder outreach and schedule. Thank you. Next slide. So just in terms of the milestones, we've had three major milestones, some with multiple steps. The first milestone was identifying the goals, screening criteria, performance measures that we went out to the public stakeholders had an initial public online public meetings as well as online meetings went through that process probably in February of this year before COVID. The second phase based on all that information or second milestone based on all that information we developed in milestone one, we did a high level screening looking at, I don't know 19 to 20 different types of alternatives which we called our universe for potential core services for the rail ride of way. And then we use this initial high level screening to narrow down the alternatives to about four and we call them bus rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail and autonomous road train which is also a rubber tire type of service using the right of way. When we got through that analysis we moved those four into value engineering and this is where we did a lot of work with Metro. Metro was involved throughout Metro and RTC to really define options for each alternative service plans, costs, ridership potential, travel time savings potential. We looked at four different alternatives for BRT and two different alternative alignments service plans really for light rail, commuter rail and autonomous road train. And now that's the first part of milestone three. We're now into milestone, the second part of milestone three which is the detailed performance evaluation which is the focus of today's discussion. Really comparing these four alternatives to one another from value engineering, we did choose select one alternative, one option for each of the four to move forward for detailed analysis and those were really the best performing. And then we use this analysis to define a draft recommended locally preferred alternative. Next slide. So here are the four alternatives. I'll provide a brief overview of the pros and cons for each of these from starting with bus rapid transit show the alignment. Next slide. So the bus rapid transit, this is the preferred option coming out of the value engineering phase that we just spoke about or just spoke about starting in the local roadway system in Watsonville up highway one, if we're going northbound highway one using taken advantage of potential bus on shoulder and then going through city streets and Aptos capitol to the right of way. And we do avoid the Santa Cruz boardwalk bypass that and then get back on the right of way. There are 23 stations, 15 minute frequencies of service and the service runs from five AM to 12 midnight. Next slide. And through our value engineering and the detailed analysis, we identified some pros and cons to BRT. Obviously, there's some strong ridership different types of ridership but markets are served with bus rapid transit. There's a longer travel time and shorter trips are served as well as long distance trips. You know, the Watsonville to Santa Cruz trips. There are lower costs as a pro compared to the other alternatives. And you know, there is some flexibility on this service in terms of addressing potential future climate change issues and the adaptation of this service to future technologies. In terms of some of the cons it's definitely longer in terms of the trip probably about 90 minutes on average but it does serve a variety of shorter distance trips of riders. It doesn't use the full right of way uses about seven miles of the right of way and uses highway one and other local roadways to support the alternative. And there are some issues with compatibility with free rail in the future. Can you try the next slide? Can you explain if we can move on why is it that it uses only a portion seven out of 32 miles it wouldn't be full 32 but seven of the miles on the right of way. Maybe you can explain briefly why that's the case. Well, when we did the when we got into the value engineering process we wanted to take advantage of bus on shoulder opportunities to provide some travel time speed. We didn't feel we needed to use the entire right of way to really garner some ridership, increased ridership in Watsonville as well as Santa Cruz and we had some better connections there considering this trip was somewhat longer the 90 minute range if you went from point, start point to end point. So we looked at a mix of the roadway, local roadway highway one with the rail right of way as part of the option. We looked at about four different scenarios and work with the BRT. We did assess potentially using the full right of way and the cost would be pretty high. That was one reason to really focus on some using some portion of the right of way and as well as to garner as much potential ridership as we could. There was the cost of actually building a roadway for the bus to ride on on the corner would be more expensive even than rail in some cases I guess. That is correct. And then the rail right of way would really not be rail anymore. It would be more of a roadway and that would be a high cost. As we'll see with the autonomous road train. Thank you. Go ahead. Steve, this is Dan at UCSC just to clarify right of way along is the rail, right? So. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. So it's and it's not wide enough. You know, the right of way is literally the rail. So it's not wide enough to have a road next to it or anything like that. It has to be on top of the rails if we would this with the BRT, right? Well, we were considering that for sure.  And we knew we couldn't accommodate that on the full right of way. But there were, there are ways in which, you know, you could have one way operations that could work effectively as it would with with the rail options. But that is one consideration for sure. The operations of the system. Thank you. Go ahead. By the way, I should, the public should be aware. We're going to take comments from the public after we have this presentation. Go ahead. There's no order of significance or priority here at all with how these are presented. So the next one is commuter rail transit which uses predominantly the right of way from Pajaro station in Watsonville. The rail right of way through natural bridges does travel through the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  And we're looking at frequencies of 30 minutes in the peak periods and 60 minutes in the off peak periods running from, you know, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Next slide. Some of the pros and cons, ridership is very strong. It provides that long distance trip to from Watsonville to Santa Cruz. Definitely more reliable service here and faster travel times. We're talking almost half the travel times of BRT predominantly because of the different type of service and it's predominantly on the rail right of way. Can operate effectively commingle with freight rail currently now what's happening in the Watsonville area with current freight rail operations as well as potential future. And does, you know, use the entire right of way. In terms of some of the cons, the costs are somewhat higher than BRT, somewhat lower ridership, but the ridership is strong for each of these alternatives and serving a variety of different markets. And there may be some impacts in the future that we need to design for in future phases here as we move this project forward and design in environmental to address potential climate change issues. So light rail transit or LRT is the next very similar service plan with more stations. There's, I know they're usually with the commuter rail versus light rail. There's more spacing distance between stations with commuter rail for a variety of reasons, the speed and weight of the trains versus light rail for example and the different types of services. But this LRT has about 15 stations compared to 11 for commuter rail. And they operate very similarly with a different time of service, 30 minute headways or frequencies all day from six to nine PM tracks with the, follows the rail right of way alignment from Pajaro stations to natural bridges. Very similar pros and cons to commuter rail, definitely reliable service, faster travel times, reliable travel times. There is some VMT vehicle miles traveled reduction from autos and therefore reduced greenhouse gas emissions from autos with people who switch to this alternative. It happens with each of the alternatives but this one provides greater relief or greater improvement. There is commingling with freight rail both currently and potentially in the future. We might have to separate the services freight rail from light rail by time of day. That's part of it. And there is, as well as with commuter rail, a great opportunity for transit oriented development near the stations, which could increase augment ridership. In terms of the cons, a little more expensive than commuter rail, right in the middle, a little more expensive than BRT ridership while strong is a little lower than BRT, there is the climate change issue as well too. One of the key issues here is there will likely need to be a transfer at a Pajaro station to connect with inter-regional rail opportunities, whereas commuter rail provides that, could provide that one seat service for folks from say Monterey up through Pajaro and Santa Cruz. Before we move to the next, can I run that last one? Could you briefly describe how is it that we can have two-way service on a single track? I think a two-way service is, I don't have my operations guy here, but we have the thing called sightings that will need to be developed where one direction needs to, we will have two directions during the time periods predominantly in the peak flow period, the morning going northbound, southbound, the afternoon going southbound. So there'll be sightings where trains can park and wait for trains to pass by, and there'll be locations up and down the quarter, four or five locations, maybe less that will accommodate that, and there will be signal systems and safe systems in which that will allow these operations. So that's pretty typical of a service like this. Thank you. In terms of autonomous road train, which is vehicle, you know, the rubber tire on pavement, you know, very similar service to an alignment to light rail, very similar vehicles. In the case of this, we're starting the service, not at Pajaro station. There'll be a shuttle connection from Pajaro station to autonomous road train right at Lee Road at the rail right of way, and there are a variety of reasons why we did that, including when you pave, you know, we would have to pave the rail right of way, and there's really no room to expand the right of way for a paved system to also accommodate freight rail in that area. So we decided to move that up a little bit, you know, three miles or so, to, you know, avoid those freight rail operations, to continue those freight rail operations with this alternative, that's why the shuttle service was provided. There's a very similar, you know, alignment once it hits Lee Road through natural bridges, less number of stations, but very similar in terms of the light rail. Next slide. So in terms of the pros and cons, definitely strong ridership has all provided, does reduce greenhouse gas emissions from autos with the switches, potential switches to this alternative, definitely provides this potential to adapt to new technologies in the future, right? It is a new technology, I think it's been implemented in China and has yet to be implemented here in the United States. Does support, you know, transit-oriented development as well, some of the cons are it's very expensive because we would have to pave the full right of way, and we talked a little about that a little bit during the BRT discussion. And there is freight rail compatibility or will be freight rail compatibility issues, and the travel time's a little bit longer because of that connection, the connector to Pajaro, and the train will go a little slower. So that sort of provides the overview, and I'll spend a few minutes on the recommended proposed locally preferred alternative, which we're calling passenger rail, and moving both commuter rail and light rail forward into the next stage of the study, which is really going to focus on design, preliminary design environmental, but is there a question? Okay, and we talked a little bit about this earlier in terms of the pros and the cons. These services are very similar to one another, and we can do, you know, in the next phase of this study, when we're really looking at the project to define the project, this is where, and it's pretty typical, pretty common to move, you know, more than one alternative forward from an alternatives analysis like this. And this is our opportunity to really look at specific issues with stations, station locations, you know, the travel speeds are going to be generally the same, the ridership is generally the same. FRA is the Federal Railroad Administration, and if we go with commuter rail, we need to adhere to their requirements for those types of systems that also operate with rail freight rail systems. If not Federal Rail compliant with light rail, for example, we have to adhere to Federal Transit Administration requirements and different kinds of strategies to make this safe. And we talked about that earlier with positive train control requirements for commuter rail and centralized traffic control, very similar things with light rail. So we have to work through all those issues and they're very similar. The frequencies of service are very similar that we talked about, you know, they're basically 30 minute headways, the service is from six to nine p.m., six a.m. to nine p.m. We didn't talk about level platform boarding, but that is a key feature here for access of all types of users. Makes it easy to access the vehicles at boardings, platforms and stations. There is the opportunity to tailor the vehicles to accommodate more bicycles. And with the trails, that's gonna be important feature. We've heard that throughout the project or other types of mobility devices. So these types of services, the passenger rail services sort of bubbled up to the top in terms of our recommendation. And then we are planning to use non-physical fuels to support the alternative here as technology increases and improves with electric battery, hydrogen fuel cells, et cetera. So that's where we are recommending to go as our draft. And so some of the benefits we talked about, faster travel times, greater travel time reliability. You know, for example, bus on shoulder would, or BRT would use bus on shoulder to get out of the main, you know, travel congestion on highway one, but there are travel time reliability issues there in case of accidents and those kinds of things. So these services provide some greater reliability of services that travelers can depend on. They both reduce VMT auto vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. They provide a lot of service to not only disadvantaged communities in Santa Cruz, but to the entire community. They provide this rail network compatibility that we're very interested in working with Caltrans and other services in Monterey and other services up and down the coast to Northern Southern California. We feel that this based on our experience provides about a 13 year timeframe to implement shorter than autonomous road train and BRT for example. And we're assuring the continuous use of the quarter for transit and trails. Really great opportunities for transit oriented development, which could increase, you know, people getting out of their cars, increase, you know, use of the trails, increase use of alternative modes to auto.  We did a detailed funding analysis as well as cost estimate estimation analysis and with California really focuses focusing on passenger rail. There are significant state funding sources that we can tap into for passenger rail versus the other modes. And, you know, dare I say that federal, there may be more dollars available for federal sources for transit as well with a potential new administration. I have heard as recently as earlier today about getting back to pre-current administration types of, you know, focus on transit. So that that could be very, very helpful. Anyway, those are some of the key components including, you know, that connection with the level boarding and access for various all users in terms of the benefits of the locally preferred recommendation. In terms of the schedule, we are currently in our milestone number three online open house. We started on the sixth. It's gonna end on the 27th of November. This is where all folks, public stakeholders can provide input into this planning process. We provided the draft report for people to review as well and comment on, we have conducted a couple of chat rooms, last week in Wednesday night, where we had, you know, up to 20 or more folks asking us questions that we were commenting on and responding to in the chat room. And then we are gonna have our, later this month, our RTC advisory committee meeting. We had our partner agency meeting yesterday, sorry. We are gonna spend, after outreach is done, we're gonna spend some time revising the draft report and refining, you know, the recommended preferred alternative as needed based on public and stakeholder input. We will have our RTC meeting, public hearing presentation of the final draft report in January and then trying to seek approval, obviously in February with RTC in February and April. So that's sort of the schedule as we're moving forward. And this has been a very, you know, intense schedule and now we're in the December role in November, 2020 component of the schedule. And so I'd like to open it up for questions and we have Ginger Dicar, possibly Luis Mendes, Brianna Goodman from RTC, as well as myself to answer questions and then Pete Rasmussen, Matt Marquise and John potentially to answer response to questions as well from Metro. So we're gonna, at this point, not this is not time for discussion, but questions to clarify on the presentation from board members first, then we'll hear from the public any comments they'd like to make. Are there questions from the board? This is Bruce, I wanted, as far as Metro goes, I'm concerning about the last mile. First of all, I wanna say thank you to the RTC and the cooperative effort between RTC and Metro like we've never seen before and it's happened for the last several years. So much appreciated. You know, on the last mile, that component of it, it would have a lot of responsibility on Metro. Just get a general idea about what the cost might be and it's maybe separate from this report per se, but I'm just wanna get an idea of what that last mile component, if it is gonna be a cost to Metro or how that would work. It'd be part of the overall little grant program that we might get into or how would that work. And please explain what the last mile is for those members. So you get to a station and you drop off the passengers and they have to go, say, from the rail line up to Cabrillo. So I would guess that maybe we might have a bus going from that stop point up to Cabrillo, that kind of a situation. Yeah, that's the question's clear, Steve. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ginger and Pete wanna jump in. So in terms of what we did in the analysis, we did not get into a detailed first last mile analysis at each station and we didn't get into a very detailed station analysis either which will come in the design and environmental stage, but our assumption was that there will be good solid connections of existing Metro bus to these stations, if a service exists today, as well as other private first last mile types of services, the not shuttles, but the bikes, ride hails, services, those kinds of things. And then there is the opportunity, of course, to build additional services in, other types of shuttle connectors, et cetera, the first last miles. There certainly is no reason why we wouldn't be able to connect with private entities as well, such as shuttles to and from the university or other types of services, other businesses that might offer those kinds of services. So while we didn't get into that analysis, that needs to be done as part of the next phase here for sure. And in terms of the costs, I think that's something that, obviously the cost of those types of services will need to be addressed in that study as well. And I think it could combine and use a different, a variety or a mix of different kinds of funding sources. Thank you, understood. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Other questions from board members? Mary Pegler, next. Thanks, Mike. Steve, could you elaborate briefly on the criteria of resiliency to climate change? Is that associated with proximity to the board or to ocean? Or can you explain that, please? Well, we did look at regulatory issues. We did look at floodplains. We understood the proximity or the location of the rail right of way primarily that is in sometimes floodplain areas in coastal. So obviously that was one of the considerations here that said, hey, there could be issues in the future. And usually these are very long-term issues, maybe even shorter term here, shorter than 50 years. So we looked at those and evaluated those at a very general level at that level. But certainly when we get into the design of this service, any service really that's in the coast, the climate change, sustainability, design components need to be built into that to keep this viable for many, many years, if that makes sense. Other questions? I don't see any, I'm gonna get it in place here. Seeing none, at this point then, we're gonna go to the general public. Again, comments or questions, you have three minutes each to make your comments or questions. If it's a question we can answer, we'll try and answer it. Otherwise, we'll certainly get back and try and respond to any questions people ask. So we're looking for hands for members of the public who'd like to speak. Mr. Chair, you have Mr. Peoples and you have somebody that just shows up as JL. Let's ask JL first since we heard from Brian earlier and then we'll come back to it to Brian. JL, I have to unmute yourself. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, my name is Johanna Lighthill and I'm an Aptos resident and I just wanted to make a couple of comments about the TCAA. I'm both excited and confused about it and I'm excited about possibilities for improving transit options in our county but I'm also confused about the proposed preferred alternative. I read the 282 page report is kind of daunting but I think I found to be most helpful is your attachment B in your agenda today which is called alternative evaluation results. And if I advise everybody to look at it, it's a line by line comparison of each alternative with each metric. And I think that with this presentation we've heard, I think that the benefits of bus transit have been kind of skimmed over. If you go through that results, you'll find that there's a lot of advantages of bus over rail including highest frequency every 15 minutes rather than rail 30 to 60 minute frequencies, longest duration of service. The bus runs till midnight while rail quits at nine. There's the most number of stations within the half mile of disadvantaged communities, lowest capital costs, lowest operating costs, the least impact at grade crossings which is related to safety. There's the highest ridership countywide, the highest weekday ridership, the highest weekend ridership, the lowest fares, the most flexible for to adapt to future technologies, flexible to design for bikes or mobility devices, quieter, least impact on the environment to sensitive areas using existing metro stations. And I think most importantly it allows transit and trail to coexist. I just wanted to comment lastly is that a few years ago, the RTC invited some speakers, transportation speakers and one speaker called named Jarrett Walker came and he's from Oregon. And he has a website humantransit.org and he's written a lot and he talks about the transit ridership recipe and he emphasizes that in any transit facility, frequency and duration are key components to get ridership. So as you move ahead, I appreciate your listening to my comments and I hope that BRT will be raised to the top of the list rather than rail. I think the service to the community is more. I think rail services commuters, but bus wouldn't service communities. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Appreciate them. And then Brian Peeples. Hi everybody, Brian from trail now. Thank you for the time. So yeah, this is a very high level report and doesn't really go into the details which you really needed to understand it. Some things to consider is Aptos Village, you show a station there. Well, there's a parade street. You don't have a spot for a train station there. So that would show it as a deficiency. Another deficiency is you don't look at actually the impact to the trail itself. The trail actually from past RTC reports showed there would be more users. They would have a greater impact on transportation on climate change for a transportation trail. So making it exclusive to a train restricts the use of it as a trail. And it actually, the train will create fencing. We'll have fences, miles and miles of fencing that you did not address which is going to limit the access points and how the, which will be a major constraint. One of the things you say is you're getting funding. Well, if you look in September, 2015 funding rating scorecard, so to say from the federal government, any type of transit, rail transit for our community would grade very low and you would not get that funding. We're really encouraging you to understand the transportation requirements as a whole. This is, you didn't do a systems engineering approach of how you do design of transportation. You looked at a single entity. You didn't look at how is it integrated with highway one. How, you know, right now the county's going out and widening highway one and that's the focus to get bus rapid transit there. So you're basically creating a competitive project. So you're gonna go to the California Transportation Commission and say, you know, we need a billion dollars for this train and oh, by the way, yeah, we want the highway one by me. So it doesn't show very well and obviously we're going to be opposing the train. We will be working very, very hard opposing the train but we will support bus rapid transit. So, you know, let's get some rubber wheeled vehicles on that corridor versus fixed rail. So we're really, we're really hopeful that Metro understands that why would you create an additional cost to our community that will never be able to use this corridor because you have this ideology that one day you're gonna have a train. Well, the community is not going to allow, we're going to be actively working on the political front and the legal front. So we're really hopeful that the message was sent from the last election that you're gonna support what the community wants and work with us. We think we're gonna have a great transportation system. You know, I'd love to go to the California Transportation Commission with you supporting, yeah, we need the widen highway one. We need bus rapid transit, we need a trail, all of that. So we're hopeful that you do not recommend rail and you do recommend rubber wheeled vehicles bus rapid transit, thank you for your time. Thanks for your comments. Are there other members of the public with comments on this item? I'm looking for hands and seen none. Mr. Chair, I don't see any hands either. One more call for that. Any other comments from the public? Okay, we'll bring this back to the board. Let me ask Steve, what action are you looking for from us this morning? I think I would point to Ginger for that, if you don't mind in terms of the action. Thank you. Ginger? Yeah, I'm happy to answer that question. It's mostly the input we're looking to receive from the Metro Board today. And the action will take place from the Regional Transportation Commission at the February meeting. We'll be presenting the results in January, on January 14th, then the actual beef on the commissioners. So today we're looking for the input from the Metro Board. So we're in a situation where we could legally make a recommendation as a board as a whole, but I think it probably more appropriate at this point to have individual comments that board members might like to make about this process. Is that my understanding, Ginger? That's correct. Open to comments. I have a brief comment in the Father's Dome, but I'm waiting to see if maybe somebody wants to go first. I'll go ahead. Chair? I'll go ahead. Thank you. First, I want to thank the RTC and Metro staff for working with the consultants. You know, one of the things that has been a real pleasure over the last couple of years is to see the RTC and Metro work closely together. And in January 2019, when the RTC unanimously decided to have transit and a trail, the RTC accepted the Metro's recommendation to do this alternative analysis. Because it would be helpful to have the transit district intimately involved in the planning of what kind of transit should go on this trail. And I know that John and his staff has been intimately involved with this. I know we've talked with Alex and that ad hoc committee. And I think that the RTC's decision to look at these four strategies were all very good. I think that the idea of how we use this corridor for transportation is really important, not a portion of it for transportation, but all of it for transportation, having a dedicated corridor really makes a difference. And having safe, reliable travel times will help in providing the options for people about choosing how they get around. You know, we have 18 miles of the trail under design or construction right now. And so the RTC continues on with the building of the trail. And you're gonna hear a lot over the coming weeks and months from people who are now changing their tune because they can no longer say there's gonna be 60 trains a day on this to complaints about fencing and costs. And the fencing concerns, if you look at what's already been done on the west side of Santa Cruz, these are not prison fences. These are simple barriers that keep the transit and the pedestrians or bicyclists apart from each other. They're not unsightly and they work, I think they'll work really well. I think that when we're looking at making major transportation decisions, transportation infrastructure costs money and hundreds of million dollars is a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination. But if you look at any piece of the transportation infrastructure, that's what it costs. I mean, the 41st Avenue overcrossing, if you were to replace it would have be over a hundred million dollars. You could fund this whole thing in part with just that money. So you have to make those investments for how they make a difference in the long run whether they actually offer a good alternative. I appreciate the work that was done here. I think it was that we looked at the right pieces of this, right? The economic issues, the environmental issues and the equity issues. And I think that when you look at that triple bottom line, the recommendation is really clear what it is we should use. And I look forward to watching this as a citizen, but I encourage you to take all those pieces into perspective when making a decision. Thanks, John. I'll make some brief comments. So I appreciated the member of the public, J.L. Sorry, I forgot her full name, who made comments about the virtues of bus rapid transit as an alternative. I have to note that the real issue, at least for me, and I believe for the success of this project, whatever we choose, is that we deal with the question of how long it takes to get from Watsonville to Santa Cruz or vice versa. And the train is very much faster. I mean, it's dramatically different. If you really want people to get out of their cars, you can offer them a 90 minute ride to Watsonville. Even under our worst circumstances in the morning, it typically doesn't take 90 minutes. It does, there's some bad days, but doesn't typically take 90 minutes to, and this would be every day, 90 minutes or so, for the bus rapid transit. It's not a very attractive alternative for getting out of your car. More importantly is the dependability of the schedule that you know you're gonna get there on time. Otherwise, you have the problem when I take public transit, you have to leave a half an hour early to make sure that you're actually given traffic problems and so forth, that you're actually gonna get to your class on time if you're a teacher as I am, or if you have a job and your boss expects you to be there, you know, when the day begins, you can't afford to like be late 10 minutes or six minutes or whatever it is you have to be on time. So I think that that's really critical. And the final thing that I would note as a bicycle rider, a serious bicycle rider, I've been riding less to the university because of COVID that I used to ride to all my classes up at school. The reality is that a train has the possibility of adding a whole car of bicycles, for example, which buses, you're gonna have a very hard time getting beyond three bikes on the bus. I mean, we've had that, whatever kind of bus you've got, bus rapid transit has some possibility of adding a car like that. It's not out of the realm of possibility, but it doesn't adapt quite as easily to that. So for me, those are kind of really overriding considerations in the long run. If we want people to get out of their cars, you have to provide a better service with public transit, not just one that'll work or that's adequate or something. So for me, that's a serious consideration. Looking at this, I have no vested interest in rail versus bus or anything else personally speaking. I just wanna try and figure out and our consultants are helping us do that. What makes the most sense given the options that are in front of us? So I'm happy with the way this process is going. I'm happy to wait for the public to weigh in on this issue before we come to a final decision about it. But that's what leans meet more towards rail based on what I've seen from this study. I went into the study quite honestly, not sure. I would be quite happy to have had bus rapid transit without knowing what the consequences were. And the work that's been done even before we come to a final decision certainly makes me lean more towards the, and I lean towards the right light rail service, frankly, rather than the commuter rail. Just among other things, it's a lighter train and it has less impact on the neighborhoods that it passes through and so forth. So that's an issue of community acceptance, I think that needs to be weighed into this as well. Comments from other members of the board, if any. Mr. Chair, you have board member Cynthia Matthews, Donna Myers, and I believe Trina Kaufman, Gomez-Header-Handup. We'll not order Cynthia, go ahead. Yeah, I've followed this somewhat through the process, not living and breathing, not serving on RTC and all the details, et cetera. I do wanna echo the issue that first raised about the class pile and the first pile through the connection to this. I mean, what we've seen today is just the system itself not how does the rider get to their ultimate destination. And it does seem to me a rider is concerned about frequency, reliability, speed, et cetera, but also costs. And so that first and last mile, I do recall some coverage of this in previous RTC option presentations, but when we come to it, ultimately it will be not just the cost of the ride but what is the first and last mile cost to the system, whoever that provider is to the rider. So I think just in terms of kind of being upfront about expectations realizing that these are course estimates, but if you're getting on, if you're traveling from your home in Watsonville to your job, let's say on the west side of San Luis, wherever, what it was the total time and total cost because that's really what people are gonna do. Thanks for your comments. Donna's next. Yeah, I just wanna compliment the work of the RTC and the process. I think it's been very helpful to sort of see at building on the analysis and coming to the locally preferred analysis or preferred alternative at this point. Very pleased that Metro was so involved in this as well. I think it's been an important partnership to work on this together and not be responsive to the extent that we've been doing that work. And so I congratulate both agencies for the work. I too really come down to the sort of the ability, the frequency, the ability for folks to get where they need to go, cost, those kinds of things. I do believe also that those are the things that ultimately we need to consider. I am very excited though by the light rail and just very, I do agree and believe that we will get more federal investment in these kinds of opportunities in the future. So I think that there is an opportunity here as well that will be very worth looking at and considering as we move forward on the project. So thank you to both staffs and I'm excited to see where we are right now. Thank you. Trina and future Ryder. Yes, yes, I figure that if we're looking at a historic moment, this is the baby and by the time he gets to high school, he'll be on those wheels somewhere in this corridor. It's been a pleasure working with both Metro and RTC and the TCA to work through this project and see through it to fruition. I know that we also have good leadership that's gonna make sure that it's an inclusive project that everybody's voice can be heard and provided with input for this. I also know that we're gonna do whatever we possibly can for the best leverage in order for us to get this sooner than later on what we can do to move people around this county. It's been quite frustrating living in Watsonville to see anything that has to move on the North End every morning. And even with COVID, we're still seeing a lot of activity on the highway and whatnot. And we could be just about ready for high school by the time we see something here. And again, I really appreciate working with all of the staff on this and doing the due diligence. And knowing that we'll get through this and see a project to fruition. I'm also on the ex-officio for the TAMSAR as well. And freight is still important. And I still wanna make sure that we're hearing from the word freight when we're having this conversation because if we're doing anything in an alternative that an alternative to this and it impacts what happens with the freight business that concerns me. So I always wanna make sure that I've included that in the conversation on record because we have what can we take off the highway? We can put it on this corridor to move it around and also help eliminate the GHG issues that we have and the impact that it's had on our highway system. So I wanna make sure that that's also part of what the record is about. And again, maybe he'll be there for a ribbon cutting when it finally comes to fruition at some point and we'll have to show him the before and after picture when it comes to fruition. So thanks again for your time and your patience and for allowing me to work with this project. Thank you. You'll be one of the people with us. I'm sure at this ribbon cutting, recognizing your early contributions to the process. Other members of the board with comments? Yeah, Bruce. Yeah, I am probably gonna vote against this and this is no indication. I think we are obligated to get this far with the passage of measure D. And I think that the report that we're receiving is very well received and very well researched. But just with the cost uncertainty, this probably shouldn't come in any surprise because of my recent votes on some of this. But I'm just so much uncertainty in the cost. We have a new federal administration, et cetera. I get that. I just, I'm just not comfortable moving ahead with this because I'm very uncertain about how the voters might receive this once we find out what the cost obligations are going to be. So it's a difficult situation to be in, in some sense, but that's the reason I probably won't. It's not because I don't appreciate the effort and the thoroughness of this report, but I just have some uncertain things. And I think some others have said we ought to discuss this further offline possibly, but anyway, that's the way where I am at this point. And I think I needed to explain that my reason for voting shouldn't come as any surprise. I don't think anyone, but thank you for, I'll meet my input. Thanks for your comments. Other members of the board? Don't see any hands, Mr. Chair. Again, we're not planning at this point to have an overall vote. We're just looking for individual feedback from board members. Donald Lynn has a comment. I, it's been a really good process to see. I share some of the same concerns about costs. And before I would, I was excited to be able to, to ride the smart train and hear what was done up in Santa Rosa area. And as much as I would love to see it, I would just definitely, and particularly in light of our economic situation, want to know how those costs would be covered. But I do appreciate the research, the work and the studies and the information. I think we all want to have all the facts and know all of our options and certainly have concerns about how we can improve commuting and travel throughout the county. So I'm torn on it. I have some concerns about costs. And I appreciate going through the process and being able to hear all the facts and be able to make later an informed decision. Thank you. I'll call myself for a brief comment. The, I appreciate both Bruce and Donna's comments here about cost issues, but I keep looking at the issue of climate change and the need that we have to really find a way to address this issue. And it's not that, you know, we know the answer or we've figured out the last engineering level of this, what the actual final costs will be. The last mile issue that Cynthia Matthews raised is important. And those are all things that we can't, you know, this is not going to move ahead unless we address those issues and have clear information about that. But there's no way we're going to get out of the situation we're in with climate change. If communities like Santa Cruz County can't find a way to get people out of their cars. I mean, that is the bottom line. Somewhere between people disagree 40 and 60% of the greenhouse gases we generate come from the automobile and our things related to the automobile. And you've got to decide, you're going to start at some point to find a way to address that, even if the costs seem, you know, beyond or almost beyond our imagination in the long run, but there's not an alternative to that that I understand. So again, none of us have signed off on the bottom line on a particular mode here or that we're actually, that this is happening and we're done with it or something. But I think that moving forward with this alternative and studying, you know, the real final picture, what does this thing actually look like? Where would the stations actually be? And that's our next phase before we are going to actually say, pull the trigger and whatever the right metaphor, pull the lever, whatever the right metaphor is to actually decide we're building this transportation system. But I think we have to keep moving forward with this and understand what the option might be. Without it, I think we're just, it's empty words when we say we care about climate change issues because if we don't have something like this working, we're never going to address it. So that makes me want to move ahead, thank our consultants for a really good job. I think they've done a good job of presenting us what the pros and cons of each of these alternatives and again, not even against each other, but as a whole, what are the consequences of picking one of these options and what does it look like? I think we're in a good position to understand that and move into our next phase. So again, we're not looking for a motion at this point for the board as a whole. We'll take the comments people have made. Those will go back to the RTC for their consideration. Unless there's anybody else on the board with a comment, we'll end the side of here. I see no one else with a hand up. Okay, thank you all for your comments. I want to thank the public for their comments. Those were appropriate comments and weighed in the right tone, I think. And we want to appreciate that because this is often a controversial issue before us. Next is the Metro Advisory Committee or the MAC, as we know it, it's semi-annual report and Veronica Elsie, who's online is going to give us that report. Good morning. I should be all back reconnected again here. Good morning, all of you board members. And in case there's anyone listening in the public for the first time, I'm Veronica Elsie. And I am just about at the end of my term as chair for the Metro Advisory Committee. And it's always just such a pleasure to come here and report on this dynamic and really worthwhile committee. We, as usual, have had very good attendance since we spoke to you in June. We did lose one member and that was Jason Lopez, who moved out of town. And we look forward to James Cruz joining us in January. So we will be back at a full compliment again. So thank you to the board's ad hoc committee for being so quick and diligent in replacing our committee members. We had a couple of members down in August, but it was because of evacuations from the fire. So I wanna make it really clear just how serious and committed this committee is and that if people miss a meeting, there's usually a really good reason. And so I really appreciate that aspect of the committee. Over these last semi-annual period, we did have the opportunity to meet Danielle Glugola. And we've had some really good discussions with her about various things as you'll see when I go through this report. I want to bring to your attention as a reminder that at our August 19th meeting, we sent a letter to you, which was in your August 28th packet, where the committee really wanted to commend the Metro Bus Operators for the work they did in helping with the evacuations in the CZU Lightning Complex fires. It just really spoke to us about how committed to the community these bus operators are. And we just thought it really highlighted one of the extra values of having such a good Metro Bus System that don't often get talked about. We've also had two very detailed COVID-19 updates from Alex. We tended to ask a lot of questions and talk a lot about things related to the comfort of the riders. One of the things that we had a good discussion about was the putting back of the service windows at the Pacific Station and the Watsonville Centers. And when they're opened and where customers can ask questions, we also, and we've done this before, we talked about bathrooms again because one of the things that can be a bit challenging as a bus rider is that because the frequency of buses is decreased, you can have some long waits, say at the station or out at ocean and water various different things, and then you have a long transit ride. So if you've taken the Highway 17 bus, those don't come too frequently. You get to Pacific Station and now you have to go all the way out to Aptos to go home. You can get pretty uncomfortable. So we did find out about putting out a flyer at the customer service, at the customer service booths where people can find out which businesses in the vicinity will allow them to use their restrooms. But we hope that this will be a continued item of consideration as we figure out what the bus frequency is gonna be and how we organize things as COVID goes on. We also had a report on your ridership survey, which for the most part was quite encouraging. Some of our members did kind of wonder and hope that Metro really looked at what's that sweet spot gonna be? Because if you really start decreasing some of the routes too much, are you then going to erode that community support in your future ridership that might return? So please do your best to match the things we understand like the funding and really try to hang on to the riders. Some of this is that last mile thing that you guys were just talking about. I also should mention that our member James Von Hendy did represent the MAC at your safety event a few weeks ago and he gave us a nice report on all of the things that you demonstrated and most of us have seen it just from riding the bus. So again, as I said at the time, we've all expressed confidence in what our experiences have been riding the bus and the bus drivers have been nice. People have been very accommodating to me with the dog and telling me where other people are and giving me time to squish the dog into a seat further back and I really wanna commend Metro for doing as much as they have just to make the passengers feel comfortable. We also have had some good discussions with your staff about para-cruise, maybe co-mingling a bit with microtransit service where some of the para-transit that may not be used because people aren't going as many places, you can call up and get an on-demand ride to somewhere and help make up for some of the loss of some of the bus service. And so we understand that's still being discussed and we appreciate the creativity and the flexibility. We've also had a lot of discussion about the various technologies that Metro is looking at, whether to put Wi-Fi on the bus, adding some of the conveniences. We think that was a good idea. We appreciated the candid update that Isaac Holley gave us on the ITS and that we're waiting for it to be a little bit more stable. Many of our members have talked about how at their offices and whatnot, they are really trying to help promote the splash pass because a lot of people seem to think that it's a really helpful way to commute, so you're getting a lot of promotion help from the committee there. John did include in our packets the Metro Planning and Development Annual Status Report that you received in September. So we are up to speed there. We've talked a lot recently about some of the bus stops. We've had a lot of questions about the Pasa Tiempo bus stop for when the world gets going again and we have our people commuting over the hill and what things does Metro control? What things does Caltrans control for improving the bus pad and a few things like that? So we did get a really good report and basically Caltrans has kind of the higher authority on this one. We did talk a lot at our last meeting about the new bus stop signs. We asked questions about how they would be designed and where they would be placed and being able to easily locate things like your bus stop ID number so that we can then get more details out of our phone, the phone text message service to find out when the buses might be coming or what might be happening. We talked about the change in putting up all the detailed schedules there and wanted to just remind all of you to keep in mind that not everyone in Santa Cruz County has a cell phone and that for many of us where it's such a major part of our lives it's easy to forget that there are people who still don't use them and so it's still really important to make sure that people have access to those bus stop schedules in lots of different ways and enough information so that they really can know when that bus is coming until those apps are really out there working and everybody gets a cell phone. We had one member who actually found and he may have sent it to some of you some bus stop fitness ideas. This was came from Cleveland, Ohio and they were really cute about if we're gonna have to wait longer, let's find some cool things to do while we're standing out there at the bus stops and do a little exercises and keep ourselves fit so we actually had quite a good time looking at those and seeing what we really could do at the bus stops. In our conversations with Danielle we got a good look at the safety tips brochure. We talked about putting some other brochures on the websites and other things that we could use those brochures for to help inform passengers about different aspects of riding metro buses. So we also asked again about the passenger code of conduct and we talked with her about possibly at some point in 2021 working on how we can use these brochures and the website just to help market that code of conduct in a very friendly way once things calm down and ridership picks up. The last thing that we did this year is we elected our new chair and set our calendar for 2021. Our new chair will be James Von Handy. So he will be presenting to you in June and I really look forward to working with him as chair. He's been a very active member of the committee and I'm sure that you will enjoy him. Our meeting, oh, Joey Martinez will again serve as vice chair. Our 2021 meeting schedule we try to look at the key months when you do things like budgeting and things where we wanna make sure that we can give you some valuable input. So our meetings in 2021 will be February 17th, April 21st, August 18th and October 20th. And in closing, I would just like to thank all of you board members for access to you, for the ability to talk with you, for the ability to have Metro staff give up their evenings four times a year and come and speak with us. We are treated respectfully. We are getting our questions answered. We are being heard and we really appreciate that and thank all of you board members that are not able to continue on the board for the service that you've given. And I just wanna say, serving as chair for the last two years that it's been an honor and a real joy to come represent this committee because there's such a level of commitment and responsibility here. And I will continue to serve on the committee and look forward to doing whatever I can to help enhance Metro service and advise all of you from the perspective of writers. And thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you Veronica. And thank you for your many years of service on the Mac. It's really critical to us to have the kind of input that your organization gives us. The connection with our writers is much more direct through you frankly than directly to the board and we appreciate particularly for disabled members of our community and other folks who might not be prepared to come to a board meeting and make a comment. We get important feedback from you about the services we've provided and how they might be provided in a more effective way. Thank you. And people do come and find us and say stuff to us. So that really does work that way. Thank you. Are there any questions from members of the board? Okay. Thank you very much again Veronica for your service. We appreciate it. You've left big shoes to fill here. Thank you so much. Next we have Alex Clifford, our CEO and general manager is gonna give us an update on COVID-19 fiscal crisis and how we're responding. Yes, Mr. Chair. So what I'll cover today is a little bit about the upcoming sequence of holidays. We have three holidays coming up in a row here. And as we know from prior statistics in the 14 or so days following holidays we tend to see the COVID numbers go up. So I'm really gonna focus on that and take advantage today of being able to speak not only the board but our employees, our union representatives and the public. This is a very important time to be extra careful. As I've been making the rounds talking to our employees I have tried to reinforce over and over again that they have done a great job statistically the number of COVID cases that we've had at this agency on a per capita basis are below the county experience. So that tells you that our employees are doing something right. And so as we enter into the holiday season my message has been don't be complacent, don't take it for granted, don't think that just because you have been lucky you can start letting your guard down. Now's the time to double down. This is a tough period of time that we're getting it ready to enter into. And we wanna come out on the other side somewhere around mid-January and be able to say, wow, we did a great job, we stayed safe. So I'll just share a couple of messages today. Certainly as with Thanksgiving, fastly approaching, people may be hosting gatherings they may be attending gatherings. And so the CDC advises when you're attending a gathering bring your own food, drinks, plates, cups and utensils wear a mask and safely store your mask while eating and drinking. Avoid going in and out of areas where food is being prepared or handled such as in the kitchen and use single use options like salad, dressing, condiment packets, disposable items like food containers, plates and utensils. Now, if you're not attending one you may be hosting a gathering. And in that case, CDC recommends that you have small outdoor meal and family and friends who live in your community. Limit the number of guests, have conversations with guests ahead of time to set your expectations of celebrating together. Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces and items between use. If celebrating indoors, make sure to open windows. Limit the number of people in food preparation areas have guests bring their own food and drink. And if sharing food, have one person serve food and use single use options like plastic utensils. As we all know, on the 19th, the governor issued another limited stay at home order which really put in place a curfew that starts this coming Saturday at 10 p.m. And it will apply going forward to any county that is in the purple tier of the state rating system. That's us right now. That is us right now. So Rufus is in the process of reviewing that to see if there's anything we need to do different but at this point we will continue to operate service beyond 10 p.m. Because people who are associated with essential services will still need to be able to travel on our system. So we don't expect, at least at this point, subject to further review that we'll need to terminate service at 10 p.m. We'll still need to be there for people who need us. Also, I thought it was interesting in looking at the state website, state health and human services agency. On November 13th, they posted some really interesting information. And something that people don't always think about is, and I'll just read from their document, a person with COVID goes on to infect two to four people or what they say is an average of 2.5 people. So for example, if each infected person spreads the virus to two people who in turn spread it to two other people, those four will spread the virus to eight others. Those eight spread it to six staying and so on. So as a result, after 10 of those transmission cycles, one person could be responsible for 1,024 other people contracting the virus, important to think about. The state also has in that same document says recommendations and mandatory requirements for all gatherings. Attendance, gatherings that include more than three households are prohibited. So as a state, much more strict than CDC. Location gatherings must be outdoors for counties in the purple tier, must be outdoors. All gatherings must be held outside in the purple tier and indoor gatherings are strongly discouraged in the red, orange and yellow tiers. Consistent with all of our advice for employees, customers, don't attend gatherings if you feel sick. Individuals in a high-risk group are discouraged from attending any gatherings. Practice physical distancing and hand hygiene when at gatherings, wear a face covering to keep COVID from spreading, keep it short. Gathering should be two hours or less, the longer the duration, the risk of transmission increases. Singing, chanting, shouting, cheering and similar activities are strongly discouraged at outdoor gatherings and prohibited at indoor gatherings. Prohibited. So Mr. Chair, I wanted to take this spot in our agenda to convey that information, to get everyone to recommit and to double down, whether you're a board member, a community member listening or an employee, double down in the next two months to be really extraordinarily safe. Think about it. You're playing with fire, if you're not, if you're not listening to these guidance, not only do you put yourself in jeopardy, you put your family members in jeopardy, and if by chance you contract it and come to work, you put your fellow employees in jeopardy. So to all who are listening, great job for what you've done, keep doing a great job and we'll get through the holidays. Let me add that CDC's most recent advice, it's not a requirement, but advice is that people make the difficult decision, I had to make it, my family had to make it this year, not to invite guests outside of your immediate family. I mean, traditionally at Thanksgiving, we bring friends and other people, particularly if they don't have other families they're having Thanksgiving with, that's a big part of the holiday and stuff, and we've just decided that's not great as an idea, not only for us, but for the people, and it's not just the people that come to the dinner, as you pointed out, it's the people you go back home to, who may even be more vulnerable, they might not have showed up, but if one of somebody from their family shows up, brings it back to them, there's a problem. So they advise against travel on Thanksgiving, which is another, it's the heaviest travel day of the year, and they were one of them anyway, and so they advise against traveling to Thanksgiving events and they advise against having multiple family Thanksgiving dinners, and so that's a hard thing to swallow on some level, but I think it's good advice to pay attention to. Great. Any other questions from Alex about the district and more COVID issues and responses? John labeled. Well, thanks for the report. You know, as we watch the COVID numbers, we've seen that every time we get a little bit better, it gets a little bit worse, and we're really gonna be challenged over the next couple of weeks, but I appreciate all the efforts that has gone forward to make it safe for people to still ride the buses, for employees to be safe, and I think we're gonna have to continue to double down on that in the coming year, because even with the news of the vaccine coming, it will be as long as a year before everyone can actually access this. So this is our way of life for 2021 as well as 2020, and so we just have to adopt these practices in order to make it safe for people to ride on our transit. Thanks. Thanks, John. Any other comments or questions? Okay, next we're gonna have our general CEO's role report. Alex has that as well. Yes, Mr. Chair, Director has a number of reports for you, but first I thought I would go off agenda and just have some friendly competition with Trina Gomez. That's my new grandson born yesterday morning. Oh, congratulations. Maxwell. All right. So Maxwell is born in a year that we will never forget, marked by all the challenges we just talked about. COVID babies. That's right. Healthy baby and mom is doing well too. So onto my report, and I just want to acknowledge under promotions and new hires, we had an internal promotion, Maria Vicky Sanchez, who was formerly our customer service representative has been promoted to customer service assistant, effective on October 29th. So congratulations to Vicky for that promotion. I also want to note, as I think the chair will clarify towards the end of our agenda that I don't see a need for us to have a December meeting. And if you would like to do what you have done in past years and go dark in December, we can do that. I do want to take just a quick moment to acknowledge John Leopold, Supervisor Leopold, and the working relationship that we've had. I will tell you that when I came aboard and we had this fiscal crisis, this huge structural deficit, this impending fiscal cliff, John brought his financial and budgetary expertise to the table and helped us greatly in navigating our way through that process into the ultimate solutions that helped to save the agency. I will tell you also that over the years, John has been really important to me in this agency's relationship with our unions from time to time, we've had scuffles between the CEO and some of our union reps. And when you have these scuffles, you have a breakdown in communication. And John has been there to be a valuable conduit to help break that log jam. When you have a log jam, the two sides are not communicating. And that conduit between the two has helped to get us through numerous challenges, whether they be little here and there, scuffles or negotiations relative to the contract. And what I really appreciate too is that John, when one side calls John, John doesn't just run with that. John looks for both sides, what do both sides have to say about a particular thing and then offers his counsel. John, I will miss that. It's been over six years of a really wonderful relationship. I'm extraordinarily sad to see you go. Thank you, Alex. And I appreciate your dedication to the transit district. It's been really great. Appreciate that. Onto the report that's just hot off the press our monthly sales tax numbers came in this. Now this is just for the 1979 half cent sales tax. This represents the sales tax on taxable items for the month of September. And so just in the way of brief background, you know from previous reports that now four of the five months in the current fiscal year have come in over what our budget is. Well, it happened again. I thought we'd go to the other side this month, but that it was not the case. Our actual was $1,533,324. Budget was $1,509,512. That's about just shy of $24,000 to the favorable on the half cent sales tax. So that's still good news. Still hope, and all of this is so important to that, but likely impending fiscal crisis from COVID. You know, we're not getting as many revenues from the fare box. So we're suffering every month there. And then of course, as the economy continues to flounder as a result of COVID, we can expect other economic dependent revenues to drop. So the more we can bank now to help us get through a longer period of time and hopefully not have to cross a furlough and layoff bridge, the better we are. So we're really thankful for those numbers continuing to look favorable for us. My final report has to do with the federal side of business. I don't have much to report on the state side. We've completed that cycle, but as you know, we have a number of important transit items pending in the federal government side. I do wanna point out that President-Elect Biden has appointed a 18 member transition team to review the DOT, Department of Transportation, the FTA and FRA fall under those under the DOT. What's that? The administration and what was the third one? The DOT, the federal and the FTA, Federal Transportation Association. And we get our funding from. Yeah. And Phil Washington, who is the CEO of LA Metro down south is the lead of that. Some speculate that he is potentially being considered to be the new administrator of the DOT. So that'll be interesting to see. But his job is to review the DOT. Now this is highways, this is rail, this is bus, right? All under the DOT. And to make recommendations to the transition team about what needs to be fixed changed. So that's an interesting person to have involved in that. Strong, strong transit history and we'll see how that shakes itself out. You also probably heard that on September 30th, there was a continuing resolution so that the federal government could continue to fund entities that are dependent on it like us and also a fast act extension. So the fast act was extended for one year. So now Congress has up to a year at prior baseline funding levels to decide what they wanna do, create a new fast act or continue it and just add more money to it. And then the continuing resolution for the FY21 funding is through December 11th. So they'll have to get to work on that rather rapidly. On that note, you have two recommendations. One from the Senate Transportation Housing and Urban Development. Sometimes we refer that as the third and another from the House. And we have been dependent now for the last two years in Congress taking the baseline funding that's in the fast act and we use the term plus up. They've added money to it in the different categories. 5307 formula, bus and bus facilities, low, no grants. They've said we'll take the baseline what the law says and we'll add some additional money to it because we recognize even pre-COVID, they recognize the need for transit to be funded at a greater amount. So in the November 10th Senate version, they are offering a total of 571 million in plus ups, whereas the August House version is about 499 million. So they're not far apart. And as you know, the House and the Senate now have to go through a reconciliation process and come to an agreement. There are some within those numbers, even though the big number doesn't sound like they're too far apart within the numbers, there are some deviations. For example, on the bus and bus facilities program, which we have been awarded buses previously, the Senate is a plus up of 223 million, whereas the House is a plus up of 374. On the low, no program, which we have a 2016 grant for three electric over the road coaches for Highway 17, for example, the Senate plus up is 80 million and the House is 125 million. On the 5339A formula, we depend on that amount. We get a little close to half a million dollars a year that we put into all sorts of much smaller capital needs in this agency. On the Senate side, they have a 223 million plus up, whereas the House had nothing to plus up. And then on the 5311, which is the rule program, we get some 5311 money because we do have some rural areas in Santa Cruz County. There's a plus up on the Senate side of 45 million and zero on the House. So they need to go through a reconciliation and we'll keep advocating through our lobbyists, federal lobbyists for our hopes and aspirations there. Then onto the CARES Act, what I call CARES Act two, it's called any number of things, but basically it's a second round of transit emergency relief funding. As you know, through CARES Act one, which was a $25 billion transit emergency funding across the nation, we received 20 million. So that's pretty substantial and important to us in helping to keep us afloat. APTA is jumping right in and talking to the president, the President-elect's transition team pushing for the House's version, which was House had a Heroes Act, which we really, really hated as we thought it sent all the money to the large properties. Then the House revisited that and came up with Heroes two and Heroes two did a little bit better job, but there's still aspects of it that we have issues with. So in Heroes two, the House is at least proposing $32 billion for the transit emergency relief. They would break that down. I'll just hit the three biggest components. They would break that down as 18.5 billion for formula, so it would be distributed much the same as the CARES Act was. So for example, in CARES Act, again, $25 billion transit emergency relief, we got 20 million theoretically with an 18.5 billion. We would get a proportionate share of that. The part that we have an issue with is that still a big chunk, 10 billion goes to the emergency relief grants program that the FTA manages. And that's problematic for us because that really for the most part will exclude small to mid-sized transit agencies and will target large agencies. So our position has been that all of that funding in effect, 28.5 billion should be distributed through the formula programs and that's the fair thing to do and that's the fair thing that was done in CARES Act one. So we'll continue advocating for that in agreement with APTA on the 32 billion and disagreement with them on that distinction. And then finally, if you've had a chance to look at President-Elect Biden's climate change proposal, he does mention transit in there, but we do have some work to advocate hopefully through his transition team before they put anything in stone. He is paying attention to cities of 100,000 or more in which he wants to focus on zero emissions public transit. We'd like to encourage him to broaden his thinking to transit in general and not just focus on cities of 100,000 or more. So if you have forums with any of the people on the transition team, please mention that they should consider small transit agencies and medium-sized transit agencies in their transit program. All right, Mr. Chair, that concludes my report. Thank you very much for that, Alex. Are there questions of Alex on his report? I see none. Welcome, Mr. Chair. Please. We've had some very successful visits to these days in the past and do you see that there's any need at this point for us to try to make contact with some folks and Mr. Gillio will let us know who those people are. Is there any, could we be making our voice heard back there at this point, do you think? We have a new administration, whether they like, some people like it or not. So I just was wondering if we should take a formal action or try to contact those about some of the points that you made that are so important to Metro in light of our not being able to go back to DC, which has been very successful in the past. Is your question whether the district might send information to the cities and the county that will allow them to support our concerns? Yeah, I think so. And then contact members of Congress about what are, what are the concerns of Metro? That's to you, Alex. Yes, so Chris and I talk about every other week trying to keep track of what's going on and what we can do to influence that process. He has a standing item that if there is an opportunity to get the right people into a Zoom meeting, we won't be making trips obviously back to DC in the near future, but if we can get them into a Zoom meeting and then we would again have our board contingency participate in that, we will do that. So we're watching for that opportunity. In the meantime, Chris is continuing to actively work on our behalf to get our message through. And just this week, he finished in collaboration with our planning department, a letter that I signed and we sent to our representatives, Congresswoman Eshoo and Congressman Panetta to advocate for both the formula program for any new relief money and for a strong new or a strong FY21 appropriations with these plus ups and how much we need those. So we'll keep hitting hard with these communication letters to the various key staff, key elected officials. And as soon as we can find that right forum where we can get together in a Zoom meeting, we'll put that together. And you should look for opportunities to let the various agencies in our County know how they can help support us because transportation is a key issue in many of the, in fact, I would say in every one of our jurisdictions. And so they may well wish to like have us address that or help us address that at the federal level. Thank you. Thank you for that. I don't mean unless questions any further. Yes. Yes, someone has one. Who was that? I think probably most people on the, most people in this meeting know but Zach was really involved with the Biden campaign. He was part of the Biden communications team, regular, regular part of their meetings and so forth. He should provide to the Zach friend for those that don't know. Yeah, yeah. If you haven't already pursued this, he may well have some relationships insights, et cetera, that could be useful to Alex you or the lobbyists. Work them. Thanks Cynthia. Any other comments? Okay. Our next item is to accept and file the year to date keep performance indicators. Our board has been very good and had very good control of the financial aspects of running this agency. On the other hand, the question of knowing how the agency runs day to day, we're not supposed to micromanage that. We have management people to do that and the employees of the district in general, but we now have some indicators that will allow us, I think to stay more on top of how we're doing as an agency in terms of how the service we provide actually operates. We've had that some indicators in the past, but I think we've really improved those indicators. The word being a much better position as we go forward to try and make sure that we understand how our agency is doing and not just financial terms, but in terms of other kinds of key indicators. So this item is being presented. Is Angela here today? I didn't see her on the call. Mr. Chair, Angela is out. So Christina, our deputy finance director will be presenting the report. Good morning Christina. Good morning chair, board members, staff members and public. So I will provide you with a very brief overview of the KPIs for the first quarter of fiscal year 21 and we have data for the month of July, August and September. So this time we have our presentations. We selected five main categories, financial performance, productivity, risk management and safety, reliability, and dependability. And I will start with the financial performance. This presentation and our analysis is basically a joint effort between finance and multiple departments, planning, risk management, operations, and maintenance. So with the financial performance, normally those are widely used KPIs by most transit agencies, primarily because of entity requirements, but also because we analyze those on a daily basis, monthly basis, due to budgeting process. We wanna make sure the way using our resources and effectively and efficiently. And under financial performance primarily we are focused on the system fair box recovery ratio. And this time we presented our, we prepared our presentation a little bit differently. We wanna show you definition and the description of the metric, the importance and also the current status. So fair box recovery, it's basically a ratio of passenger fares to our operating costs. And as you can see, since March and then April and June, it declined significantly. And the reason here, as we all know, it's COVID-19. As we resumed for our collections at the end of June, we can see that in July, August and September, fair box recovery started climbing up slightly. And hopefully this trend will continue. Our average KPI, and this is for the whole system, it's around 20%, 21, 21%. Usually fixed routes have KPIs of around 20 commuters are significantly higher. It's usually 40, 45. And then impericus, of course, that number is significantly lower, between five and 6%. Next slide, please. The next KPI in finance, it's the fixed route commuter costs for revenue service hour. And this is basically a measure of efficiency and we wanna make sure that we are using our resources effectively and we can minimize costs. So what's important to notice here is that fluctuations in the cost per revenue service hours are very typical from month to month. The average cost, however, is what we should be concerned about and the average cost for fiscal year 19 was around $200, $212. In 2021, that cost is significantly higher. And COVID, it's the main reason for that, of course, in especially in fiscal year 20. In the months of July and August, as you can see, especially in July, we have a very significant increase. And what happens normally in July, what happened last year and also this year, we usually prepaid the first URL, which is the unfunded accrued liability. And when that happens, our expenses are significantly higher at the same time, and this year specifically, we kind of had the perfect storm because our revenue service hours are lower. And so therefore the cost, it's much higher. Okay, just expand that for a moment for members of the public. We have a cost for our pension, ongoing pension costs, and if we pay them upfront or earlier, we actually save a great deal of money. And that's the payment that she's talking about in terms of the early payment for people to understand that. The purses are retirement system and we're making early payments of a debt we will owe at some point. And by paying it earlier, the interest costs and other costs go down and we save money doing it. And that's why that pink bar is so high in that chart that we're looking at. Thank you, Matt. That's correct. So the unfunded liability this year was more than 4 million, 4.4 million, but by pre-paying that amount early in July, we save approximately $150,000 for the whole year. So those are significant savings and we will continue doing so as much as possible. Next slide, please. So the Paracruz cost per trip essentially provides the same information, but for Paracruz and in July, you can see the dramatic effect of the unfunded liability, the same pre-payment that we just discussed about. In addition to that, we reduced our revenue service hours in order to respond to the pandemic and our costs are significantly higher as well. Next slide, please. So the next section of our presentation adds productivity and planning could probably provide additional information for our total ridership, ridership per hour, as well as ridership for Highway 17, UCC, Cabrillo and local ridership. If John's available, he'll probably add additional details to this. Sure, I mean, as we've been discussing throughout, this period of ridership is down about 80%, both in terms of total ridership and productivity. You know, normally in productivity, we're at about 25 to 30 passengers per revenue hour when UCC and Cabrillo are in session and 15 to 20 outside of that. And obviously we've been kind of below 10 throughout all this period. Next slide, please. Similar stats for UCC ridership at Cabrillo, you know, with school not in session or in person classes not in session, obviously ridership has been way, way down as we've discussed. And at the end of our local ridership on the next slide, as well as Highway 17 ridership, pretty much tell the same story. Yep. And that's a combination of many things but largely people in the Silicon Valley who are now working from home and not taking that service and San Jose State University, which is having a lot of remote, mostly remote classes. And so that's our ridership from that route primarily and it's dropped very dramatically just as UCSC, which usually has 19,000 students only has a half of whom live on campus but almost all of them were in town using the service to get to classes. And now we're down to a thousand students who actually are living on campus and the number who are in Santa Cruz is higher but it's, I have a student, I'm teaching a class this quarter, a student who comes to class from China every morning. That's a long commute. Yeah, our 2019 Highway 17 ridership found that about 30% of commuters are, 30% of riders are commuters, 30% are students and about 25% is recreational. So all of that have been down but particularly the students and commuters have just been wiped out entirely. And I think the next slide is the local. And here's where we see the strongest ridership. So there is still a core group of riders on our system. They could be essential workers or people accessing essential services but it goes to show that maintaining the network is critically important for still 35% of passengers on our system. And I think finally on the ridership this is looking at passengers per revenue service hour by route. The 91X is obviously the commuter express service between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. It's strong because there are limited trips but there are people relying on particularly the early morning trip. And then we've seen kind of our, the core of our network, the 69, A&W 71, 66, having the strongest productivity and we see the impact of minimal UCSC ridership on traditionally routes that have this highest productivity the 20 to 16, the 10, et cetera. Okay, our next category it's under risk management and safety and we have two metrics here to discuss. So the first one is the traffic accidents and we presented by Rufus, our risk management director. Good morning board chair, board members and public. Can you hear me? Yes, we hear you. Yes, thank you. So this chart of what we have created it summarizes almost all traffic accidents and categorized as loading zone accident that means in the bus stops, bicycles accidents, intersection that that means in the intersection incidents happening between intersection is between intersectional accidents happening then it's a rare end vehicle accidents and then others and district vehicle accidents and pedestrians. So we look at the highest peak numbers where we are and try to figure out what's going on there what kind of these accidents and how they are occurred. So in the loading zone or bus stops accident we found that out of 14 the highest number there were 12 accidents with other vehicles hitting metro bus or metro vehicle. There were two where metro vehicle made contact and the bicycles there were two one in each square 19 and 20 and in both of these incidents the bicycles lost control and made contact with the bus. These were very minor, nothing no major no hospitalization involved in that. Next one intersection the highest number was 17 out of that 15 were the other vehicles they hit the metro vehicle and the two where metro vehicle made contact with other vehicle. Between intersections we had 38 and 32 were other vehicle hitting metro vehicle, metro bus and six were metro vehicle made contact. A rare end, 23 accidents out of 25 there are other vehicles hitting metro vehicle and there were two where metro vehicle made contact. In the other category 53 where metro had hit a fixed object the fixed object is usually is at the bus stop where there's a pole very close to it a bus stop or where the sign is posted very close to the bus stop or where a tree or tree branch is very close to the bus stop and our buses made contact with them. Between district vehicles the highest number 14 which were very minor, mirror to mirror or backing up made contact with each other. And in the pedestrian category we have one in fiscal year 19 and one in 30 at Bolch were very minor. The pedestrian was kind of playing at the bus stop and hit his shoulder as the bus was pulling into the stop. And the second one was pedestrian. He had his bike. He loaded his bike on the bike rack and he turned and hit his head at the mirror or the curve site. That was also very minor. Next slide please. Before you move on, let me just point out just so it's clear, let's just understand at the finance committee meeting we looked at this and it looks like we're oh, we're doing so well and then 2000 in our fiscal year 21 look how much fewer accidents we're having but this is only to date. And so it might be helpful with a slide in the future to present a slide that compares comparable peer time periods in the first period of each of these years maybe in addition or at least without that otherwise it's very misleading. It sort of looks like we're doing oh, we're so much better off, maybe we won't if it actually looks, if you look proportionally we are a little better off or doing better but to get a better sense of it to compare comparable time periods I think would be helpful to the board. Yeah, next time and we present I, we do note of that comment like a quarterly comparison so that we are comparable in those quarters how well or how bad we are doing. So yeah, we are taking that note and we will work on that chart next time and present this information. Yeah, two things on that real quick, Rufus. One is by doing what the committee suggested we'll actually be able to see seasonality in the wet season you might see a different type of accident pattern than in a drier season. In addition to that, we're gonna try to add some data that shows chargeability that is was it our fault or was it the other individuals fault? We'll do that. I made those notes here and we will do that. Any more questions? Otherwise next slide please. So in this what we have done we have broken the types of passenger accidents while they are boarding the bus they have that many accidents while alighting from the bus that shows that many accidents and same thing while they are on the bus on board they have these many accidents. Oh, we looked at this thing and we were working and developed a tri-fold brochure which looks like this, if you can see and this brochure tells how to safely board the bus and how to safely alight from the bus and while they are on the bus how they can prevent falling in the bus. And this brochure has been put as take one in all the buses. I'm also working with transportation training department to come up with kind of training instructions for the bus operators to make sure that when they are pulling or pulling out of the bus stop or driving be careful of abrupt braking or heart breaking or the movements we do to prevent on board injuries on the bus. So with the education to the passengers and education to our bus operators hopefully we can reduce or make a difference in the coming months and years. Thank you Rufus, our next category is reliability and it's basically the metric here it's the mean miles between chargeable road calls for fixed route and we'll also present the same for Highway 17 and this is normally a good indicator of the maintenance program at Metro the age of the fleet and the state of good repair. So Eddie Benson our maintenance manager could provide a little information about the current status for fixed route first and then for Highway 17 as well. I think he was available earlier. He was on the phone, maybe muted. Well, I could probably just start by saying that usually higher miles where when those bus are going high and higher, that's a positive indicator because that essentially means that we have less mechanical failures and usually Highway 17 it's where we see a better performance fixed route it's a little bit lower but it's still a pretty good indication of the maintenance program, the efficiency of that program as well as the age of the fleet. You could expect more calls during the winter time. So this is also a good KPI that could show you the seasonal fluctuations depending on the weather, depending on road conditions, et cetera. And thank you, Christina. This is Margo. Thank you, Margo. I'd like to add to it. Also we saw lower mileage obviously because of the decreased ridership but the overall mileage between chargeable road calls has improved overall due to the maintenance program or PMI program and in our campaigns that we do. We did see increase in our miles between road calls and para-cruise but I think that will be taken care of when we get our seven new fans online. And with that, I'll take any questions. Are there any questions? Next slide, please. So we have the same information here for Highway 17 and the next slide will present the same para-cruise as well. And with that, we could go into the category of dependability and this is important because it allows us to see the reasons between cancel trips by location, by calls. And so I think Margo could present a little bit more about what happened in the first quarter between the months of July and September 21, of fiscal year 21. So as everyone has been aware, we had a number of fires in August and the cancellations were due to those fires, especially in San Lorenzo Valley and due to the CZU lightning fire, the operators did an outstanding job in assisting the first responders and getting folks out and helping as much as they could and just well-prepared group of folks that assisted us. And for the portion of the where we had to cancel trips in the Cabrillo and South County area, Metro decided to restrict the overtime for bus operators and one reason was due to the lack of personnel. Obviously we had a lot of members out due to COVID-19 and the school closures and fires for many, many reasons. And with that, we restricted the overtime and also we asked the dispatchers to be very careful in the trips that were canceled. They were usually trips that were not long in length. We did not cancel service that ran every hour. We tried to make those certainly. We also made sure that we did not cancel trips that were the last trip. We're high priority in making sure that when we did cancel trips, there was a bus 15 or 30 minutes behind that canceled trip. Hopefully with the new bid, we'll see a larger extra board. We're looking at between 40 and 50% and that should reduce our cancellation of open assignments. And with that, I'll be glad to take any questions. Are there questions? Thank you. I have a comment generally. I think it would be helpful to us to have some, not every report on every one of these statistics or these indicators, but to have some comparison with national, not just general national numbers, but with comparable districts. It's always been helpful to me, for example, if you take the percentage of our finances that come from ridership. When I first got on the transit board, this is a long time ago, 1979. I saw that we were, at that time, I think had about 20% recovery came from, was the riders were paying 20% of the cost of a bus ride. And I was shocked. So 20%, that's, what a low number and stuff. Turns out at the time, better than the national average by quite a bit. And that's continued to be the case. And I think it would be helpful to the board to be able to understand on some of these statistics, how do we compare in terms of the kinds of accidents we have in every one of these metrics? And again, not necessarily every time in every report, but at least maybe once a year or something, give us an annual comparison number, because how else do you know whether what we're doing is out of line with what the industry generally, I mean, how many people, I mean, there's all these examples of people running into us in accidents. Is there something we could be, is that shocking in terms of what the national situation is or comparable situation, or is that basically what's expected in terms of the way traffic accidents happen in the industry and so forth. So if that's something we could develop, I mean, we could work with this in the finance committee in terms of getting feedback on it, but I think it'd be helpful to see those kinds of metrics as well. And Mr. Chair, I think I'm glad you said, what you said earlier, maybe once a year. It's very difficult data to assemble when you're trying to compare to peers. You can't always use the NTD data and the problem with NTD data, a national transit database, which we submit to the FTA. The problem with that is it's two year lagging data. So we're trying to compare today's number to two year old data. So that doesn't work. So it takes a great deal of staff time to call each of the peer agencies and get their updated numbers. Maybe even every other year, but I mean, at some point to have a benchmark to sort of know how we're doing I think would be helpful. Well, I think annual is a good way to go. I think we can do it annually. Thank you. Any other comments or responses from members of the board? Ulta. I just have a quick comment and I would like for it to be edited in some regards, but whenever you can say the ridership is down due to enrollment, I would love for you to say limited enrollment or in-person courses because our students tend to want to appeal saying we don't have the bus and we do. And we offer it for our folks to get around the community as long as they're a student, they get the pass. So I don't want any language that kind of misleads our folks in thinking we're paying for something we're not getting because I get those appeals. That's good advice to our staff. So we'll try and follow that. If you say reduced in-person courses are a limited, that would be very helpful. Yes, no, I'm sure that's the case. Thank you for that. That's a useful comment. Any other questions or comments? Okay, our last item on today's agenda is, do we need to, by the way, do we need to vote to accept that report? Can we just revert it, accept it without a vote? I can sense this, let's say. I think that's fine. Thank you, I appreciate that, Julie. Our next and final item is the review and file of Judy K. Souza Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Project Closeout Report. Okay, so the charging infrastructure was completed on time and we'll be ready for when the Metro receives its first electric buses in early 2021. The project was completed below budget and remaining funds of the one-time carryover funds will actually return to capital we serve. And this slideshow will basically show you the progress of the infrastructure from start-up construction to completion. And if you have any questions or we can just go straight to the slideshow. Let's go to the slideshow. Yes. So and that slideshow shows the first stage of concrete removal demolition and next slideshow. And again, we continue removing concrete and then it comes to excavation in the next slideshow. So on this slideshow, it will actually show you that we, and one of the changes we had to do, we had to run the conduits inside the property of Metro side property and it was a little bit increased cost having to do this. Next slide show. And there it go starts again, escalating and putting the ball in the ball. As you can see right there, that was another ball that we had to change. PG&E requested a bigger ball to be exchanged and that cost another increasing cost. Next slide show. And here we go again, we're continuing more progressing. Next slide show. And that's underground. That's all the conduit, all the piping that as you can see, it's quite a lot of a conduit that went underground. And there, it starts getting covered up. And as you can see, we got rain and even with rain, progress didn't stop. We continued working through. We got pretty lucky and we were able to complete this. Next slide show. And then you start seeing here, we started having some of the, basically the locations where the chargers were gonna be mounted and the transformers. Next slide show. We're completion, concrete, pour it in, almost at the finishing stages. Next slide show. And there you go, everything starts coming into place. You got all the cabinets coming in, the chargers coming in. Next slide show. And that's pretty much completion right there. Everything has been operational and in place.  Yep, and we'll show you right now in the next slide show, actually we're there. Those are the chargers, the actual charge. And then the next slide show. And there is actually the dispensers. These were actually connected onto the wall, which are where we've been connecting the buses to. And there's another picture of different angle of the charging infrastructure. Any questions? Are there questions? My only question is what progress, if any, are we making in dealing with community power about the possibility of getting lower rates for the charging of buses than say the general public receive at their homes or something? I know that's not happening overnight. It's under consideration and there's discussions, but where are we at in that process, if at all? Okay, PG&E recently released a commercial electrical vehicle plan. So we're currently working with CTE, which we're gonna subscribe to a block of energy. So we have to basically at the beginning of the year or when we first initiate st