Good morning. Welcome to the August 2nd meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. Could we start with a roll call? Commissioner Rodgen. Here. Commissioner Chase. Commissioner Botthorff. Here. Commissioner Alternate Johnson. Here. Commissioner Leopold. Here. Commissioner Friend. Commissioner Coonerty. Commissioner Caput. Here. Commissioner Kaufman-Gomez. Present. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Bertrand. Here. And Commissioner McLendon. All right. Well, the first item is oral communication. This is a time to address the commission about items under the purview of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. We are going to be hearing presentations about both rail and trail today. So if we could keep the comments about those things during those periods and keep the oral communications about things that aren't on today's agenda, that would be great. And because we have two presentations, I'm going to limit the oral communication to no more than a half hour. Is there anyone who would like to come forward? Good morning. Good morning. Clay Kemp, Executive Director of the Seniors Council and Area Agency on Aging. I have a handout for you. I'm not sure which way to send it. Some of you attended a solution summit focusing on seniors and people with disabilities last November. And out of that summit, we created a number of work groups to address key issues facing that population. One of those work groups were involved around loneliness and isolation. And the reason I come here today is because transportation is a key element to combat that condition. And the handout I have is an infographic that the work group has put together regarding just some general information about loneliness and isolation. We will be coming back to the community with some specific actions and solutions. But right now, this is just kind of an information item just to raise some awareness about this. I'm really happy to share with you also that the Commission has already contributed to countering this trend. And one of the things that is just getting started right now is the Loudon Nelson Center or the Loudon Nelson Center has a variety of senior programs and classes. And a number of the seniors attending those has identified transportation as their biggest barrier to getting to those classes. So Lifeline and the City of Santa Cruz have worked together to use measure D funds to provide seniors taking a class a free ride to attend those events. And we think participation and engagement is one of the most important things to counter the challenges that loneliness and isolation present in some of the facts and concerns that are in that fact sheet. So I'm just really happy to share that, you know, not only raising awareness about the issue but announce that measure D funds are being used effectively to counter some of that. And, you know, thank to all of you for that campaign and its success. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you for your support of measure D. Good morning. Hope you enjoyed your hiatus for the last few weeks. Michael Saints with a campaign for sustainable transportation. And before each of these RTC meetings, I go through a constant battle on what to say for this limited time of three minutes to try and help to move the needle away from a single car occupancy to mass transit. Today, I'm not going to talk about SB this a be that or any of the numbers. We all know that the oxalane projects are not going to solve our congestion problem and actually will also harm our greenhouse gas emissions. Primarily, if you believe that the thing I want to talk about is climate change and global warming, we seem to not touch on that too often anymore. If you believe in climate change, then we should do everything we can to mitigate this issue. The first behind what we are going to do is the RTC's decisions going to allow an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled with the oxalane's project. Or are you going to take the suggestions of some of the commissioners in the past few months, which have said we want to move people and not cars? It is about time we said no to the automobile. These are all your words. And specifically, one member said we know that this will not solve our congestion problem. Greenhouse gas emissions, as you know, are increasing on the transportation side of the equation. And it is almost up to 50% of our greenhouse gas commissions in the tri counties. Science is telling us what to do and government is not doing it. California's greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle mile traveled targets is not just a technical exercise. Air resource boards and RTCs need to become a national and global model for responsible planning and development. If human civilization is to survive global warming. It is crucial that targets be adopted that lead to sufficient change to meet state's aggressive goals. Failure to do so is not an option. We have a very serious situation with the global warming and it seems to be placed on the back burner, no pun intended. The reason it's placed there is because of voter mandates. Even if they're harmful, we follow those. EIRs are lowered to the level of community interests, not global interests, and measures are passed with the help of entities whose only goals are to improve their bottom line at the expense of the environment. So two questions for this RTC. Are you up to the task of making uncomfortable policy decisions and scary decisions for public that does not like change? Are you willing to lead us to us and the community to a safer world and help us fight climate change? Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to address us during oral communication? Good morning, Mr. Hurst. Good morning, Commissioner Lowell Hurst, Mayor of Watsonville. So I say welcome to Watsonville. I don't know who's going to give the traffic report today. I wasn't out there on the road. I was local. But when I came through the garage, I saw a lot of cars in the garage today. A lot of people obviously drove here. But one person in the audience really exceeded all expectations that I could ever have.  And so that's Gina Cole back there. So I say congratulations to Gina. We're in a celebratory mood this morning. Good morning. My name is Peter Stanger. I also want to congratulate all the commissioners and anybody here that took Metro or rode their bike in to Watsonville today. I did along Beach Street again. Beach Street has no bike lane. Beach Street has 40 miles an hour. Also the access into Watsonville along Freedom Boulevard has no bike lane. Yet we're here talking about or we will be shortly talking about how to parcel out money that would could be used to make biking safer in Santa Cruz County. I think it's a matter of trust. Back in January, one of the commissioners said, Gee, maybe the public isn't trusting us. And I'd like to point back to that and say, Yeah, that's true. Because you wound up with two plans for segment 17 of the Monterey Bay Scenic Sanctuary Trail. And neither one of them. It looks like it's going to get funded until the train tracks are completed up in Santa Cruz. They built you all built the rest of rebuilt the rest of the trestle with no bike lane. Again, what do you think in here?  Also, you built the Yacht Harbor parking lot and bike lanes there using Monterey Bay Scenic Sanctuary Trail funds. Couldn't there be some money for South County like Beach Street or Freedom Boulevard? I just don't know. I think there's a big effort here to depress the will of the people. I see that now your cronies with Fort want to depress the citizens of Capitola from voting on what their feelings are about a train running through their community. I would ask that this commission start listing more to the people and perhaps even put it on a ballot. Thank you. Gail, I just want to I've asked people to sort of we're going to do the trail and rail later on. So these are issues that we're not going to cover today. Okay, I will not go into the rail and trail. And I would just like to say, you know, it's wonderful to see so many people here this morning working together hoping for achievable solutions to our county's transportation crisis. Those of us who drove here from North County at this time of day, I think maybe the worst of the traffic was over. So it was moving on the other side. But I imagine if we had come an hour earlier, we would have seen something different. So going back in this series to Jared Walker, who pointed out a few months ago that transportation equals opportunity and freedom. Clearly, we're here today with with hope. And we do need to work on bringing more opportunity and freedom and equality to our county when it comes to transportation. Those traveling northbound from Watsonville each day, obviously bear the brunt of our transportation crisis. So it's appropriate that we're here today for this meeting. And Greenway, we do we want to reiterate the fact that we do support continued freight to Watsonville. But we also support keeping the door open to all of the options that we're currently studying in the Unified Corridor Study. We believe that these costly studies should have measurable outcomes. And we hope that this conversation today will be part of moving these outcomes forward. So thank you for doing this today. We're looking forward to hearing the speakers. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address us? Seeing none, we will move to see whether there's any additions or deletions to the consent or regular agendas. Good morning, Mr. Dondaro. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and commissioners. We have a few additional pages. I'll read them in order replacement page for item five replacement pages for item 12 add on pages for item 12 replacement page for item 14 handout for item 20 and handouts for items 22 and 23. And we have no other changes to the agenda. Okay. Thank you. Then next we move on to the consent agenda. This is I'll see if any commissioners have any items in which they like to comment on or or pull off the consent agenda. Seeing none, it would be appropriate time for a motion. Move approval of the consent agenda. Did you want to ask the public if anybody had issues first? Thank you for reminding me. Second. Is there anyone from the public who would like to address items on consent? Then we will go back. There's a motion by Rockin seconded by Botorf. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed motion carries unanimously. Next we'll move into our regular agenda, which is our commissioner reports. Are there commissioners who would like to to make report? Mr. Bertrand. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I'd like to report some actions that the City Council of Capitola just completed on the 22nd written up by our legal staff. At the Capitola City Council meeting held on July 26, 2018, the City Council unanimously directed the Capitola City Attorney's Office to prepare a lawsuit called a writ of mandate challenging the Greenway Initiative. The City of Capitola will be seeking a judicial declaration that the lead the measure is legally invalid and in order directing that it not be placed on the November ballot or alternatively, that it be removed from the ballot depending on the date, we're able to get it to set for a hearing. As it is a legal challenge to an election matter, we are legally entitled to an expedited hearing. But the Court still has some discretion as to the hearing date. The three basic grounds upon which we are basing the challenge are that it only directs administrative action and is not legislative in character, which is required for initiatives. Two, that it improperly attempts to impair with the city's legal authority over fiscal matters in the city. Three, and then it is couched in terms that are impermissibly vague. That's it. Thank you for sharing that with us. Are there other commissioners who would like to make any comments? Seeing Miss Kaufman-Goedman. Yes, thank you. We're pleased to see that we are moving our freight. We have the big creek has moved all of their lumber from the Bajaro yard and are now being able to get their product for their business. As well as a couple of the vendors that we have in town that we've had, I've had some direct conversations with. And I will mention that we are looking to try and see what we can do about moving some of the freight that's in front of Walker. I think there's some traffic area there that it's impeding the visibility of the traffic for that particular section. So I'm encouraging you to do what you're capable of doing in terms of moving that section from where we're right on Walker Street here. So in things we're moving traffic, our freight's working for us down in Watsonville. And we just want to make sure that we have clear corridor there. Thank you. Any other comments from commissioners? Seeing none, I'll move to our director's report. Good morning, Mr. Dondaro. Good morning, commissioners. A couple of few things to announce, but just in response to the last comment, we did receive a copy of the filing with the STB and it appears a progressive rail will be operating on August 16th. So and they are bringing their team to town next week, talking with many of the shippers. I was copied on some emails this morning. So they're really doing their part to get communication going with all the people that are going to be depending on the freight service. So that's good news. As far as moving the tank cars that I think you're referring to. Unfortunately, Iowa Pacific is still in control of those and we've asked them to move them, but I don't think we've received any response. So probably we'll have to wait until progressive gets on board to move those. So a few other items. Oh, and also in response to the Capitola statement that Commissioner Bertrand just read. We did send a letter to City Council yesterday. Comment letter is very consistent actually with the content of your statement. So we're looking forward to seeing the outcome of that. So the North Coast Rail Trail project our last meeting we announced that we were anticipating release of the draft EIR for this seven and a half mile North Coast Trail project. Our staff and our consultant team have been working on wrapping up a few elements of the analysis in this document. And the current anticipated release date is sometime next week. I still don't can't give you the exact date, but we will send out a news release when it's available. And we'll also publish dates for the public meetings that will accompany that. It will be posted online. Hard copies will be available at our office as well as a major public libraries during the 45 day review period. Next week on August 9th at 11 a.m. transportation agency for Monterey County will conduct a groundbreaking ceremony for their new passenger station at the site of the current Amtrak station. Tamsi will also be adding new layover tracks to accommodate the extension of commuter rail service from San Jose into Salinas. And as you all remember that service will make a stop in Pajaro Junction very close to where we're sitting today. So it will be available to citizens of this county. Of course they'll have to get across the river and get over to that station. But that's where our rail line connects with the Union Pacific main line. Then we'd like to welcome a new staff member. Benjamin Wolfe joined us in June on a senior accounting position. Most recently been served as the financial controller at Newman's Own Organics in Aptos for over four years. And prior to that he was the chief financial officer at Network Management Solutions in Santa Cruz. He's also an active CPA with a focus on tax preparation and business consulting. Ben's not here today but he's working back at the office keeping learning learning the ropes with the books before Daniel leaves us. Ben comments that quote I'm very excited to join the RTC having grown up in Santa Cruz. I've seen our town change so much over the years with transportation being one of our primary community issues. I hope my finance and operations background can enhance the RTC's processes and reporting enabling us to efficiently deliver much needed transportation solutions to our county. Ben graduated from Santa Cruz High, Cabrillo College in Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. In his free time he enjoys mountain biking and longboarding in addition to spending quality time with family friends and his dog. So that concludes my report. I'm being glad to answer any questions. Are there questions for Mr. Dondaro? Great to see a new staff member on board. That's obviously a critical position. Yes. Look forward to meeting him. Next we'll move on to item 21 which is our Caltrans report. Last month we or last meeting we didn't get to our Caltrans report so I'm glad to recognize our Caltrans representative. Thank you. Good morning chair. Good morning commissioners. I do have a few announcements. First and foremost is dealing with safety because obviously safety is our top priority and it's our top priority for road repair and construction as well. Caltrans and its partners such as RTC are facilitating many road repair and construction projects statewide. In fact it's a level of work that we haven't seen in decades and the reason is because of funding from Senate Bill 1 which is the road repair and accountability act of 2017. A couple of local examples throughout Santa Cruz County for projects that will be funded through this fund is for one Highway 17 we're going to do a capital maintenance pavement project between Santa's Village Road in Scotts Valley to the Santa Clara County line. So that will be a total of 26 lane miles for a cost of around 19 million dollars. That will also include replacing the high friction safety surface that's north of that's north of Laurel. So that's that's going to be the first project that we see coming up and that's going to be later this year in November of or mid-November. The second is Highway 1 near Davenport a culvert replacement or a drainage project and that'll be 8.3 million dollar project which will replace and upgrade for existing culverts with reinforced concrete pipe. That that's a little later scheduled for fall of 2021 and then further down in spring of 2022 is Highway 9 San Lorenzo River and Kings Creek Bridge replacement project. That'll be a 23.2 million dollar project that'll that'll construct needed replacements for those bridges. My second announcement is a call for projects that is part of the local partnership formulaic program that's cycle 2 of the local partnership formulaic program. That's administered by the California Transportation Commission and will total 200 million dollars statewide in annual formula grants to reward counties cities districts and regional transportation agencies that have voter approved fees or taxes solely dedicated to transportation improvements. And of course this program will help address the state's highest transportation needs while fairly distributing the economic impacts of increased funding. This is also funded provided by Senate Bill 1 the Road Repair and Accountability Act. And so this is the call for projects is for cycle 2 with applications due August 29th and as a refresher in cycle 1 the RTC was able to conduct a full deep full depth recycle and overlay project throughout the county for around 500,000. And there were two vehicle replacement projects for Santa Cruz Metro that were that were 155,000 and 631,000. So those were where we're seeing some immediate dividends in our community here. Thirdly here another thing we talked a little bit about climate change and another recent newsworthy item is the recent award of our low carbon transit operations program which awarded 152 local projects statewide totaling $97 million in funding for this program. And out of those 152 projects more than 130 projects and 87 million were targeting disadvantaged and low income communities. And of course the the general purpose of this program is to support reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving public transportation sustainability. Let's see I have one of the projects that was awarded was awarded to the Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Metro for a Watsonville zero emission bus replacement and that'll add another zero emission bus to the fleet and that what that award was for $619,000. Finally another quick announcement about a project that we have coming up in Watsonville it is a safety and a pedestrian improvement project and that'll be on beach and merchant right by the Watsonville High School and that is very early in the project development the details are still being worked on but it'll essentially improve the pedestrian mobility with enhanced crosswalks, high visibility signage and rapid flashing beacons on the signs that alert motorists that this is a pedestrian crossing area that's being developed right now and is scheduled for construction in late 2019. That's my report and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. I see my colleague, Supervisor Caput has a question. Well, thank you very much. The cooperation with Caltrans has been wonderful and I appreciate the communications and everything that merchant and e-speech anyone that knows that area well that's at Watsonville High School and it's used by a lot of students especially in the morning in the afternoon when school gets out and also during lunch and so it's going to be a wonderful project and I appreciate that. The other one that would be the I guess on Riverside Road Highway 129 that's pretty much completed now from the San Benito line to Watsonville City Limits. Yeah, they may be wrapping up a few things for construction but it is basically completed. Okay and there was a problem over the weekend with the traffic lights and they've been fixed. There was a big backup recently so thank you for that too. The other would be just maybe a quick report and what we're looking at is a crosswalk also on 152 at Lakeview, St. Francis High School and the Valley Catholic Church. Some kind of enhanced crosswalk with lights and if you can just maybe briefly go over what we've been looking at. We've been talking about different crossing improvements for pedestrians there. That location hasn't triggered so far as a safety improvement project but we are, Caltrans is conceptually in agreement with the county and that that you know improving pedestrian mobility is a possibility there and we're willing to work with the county and Supervisor Caput on looking at potential encroachment or a project through an encroachment permit process. And we'll be also talking with the mayor and the city for their support maybe on that and also the one on Marchend. They're both a big concern for students and why the city is involved with Lakeview even though it's out of the city limits. Almost all the students that go there are from the city of Watson. You know walking crossing in that area. Thank you very much. Mr. Racken. I just wanted to add a comment. I don't know if members of the public are aware of this. More than six hundred thousand dollars that's available for the zero emission bus in Watsonville pays for about half the cost of one bus and even those of us that have been in public life for a long time are still shocked by these things but people need to be aware of what it costs to have public transportation. That gives you some idea and someone said oh six hundred thousand dollars plus. Well good they have six new buses or something. No it's half of the cost of one electric bus. Mr. Bertrand. Yeah thank you Kelly for answering an early question. Maybe the public would like to hear your answer. Basically a number of constituents have asked me about the debris from accidents on like 17 or highway one and how do you go about taking care of that and so you remarked to me that there's actually a website I guess through Caltrans and so I look forward to hearing more about that and it's nice to know that we have an option. Yeah absolutely and I don't have the exact address but I think if you google Caltrans customer service request it takes you to the website and it's a pretty straightforward form where you could enter in what the issue is and as many details as you have about it specifically as many location details that you have would help our maintenance crews in this case get out there and address the issue as quickly as possible but I can get the exact website to you and that's kind of our interface for intaking those things such as you know debris or if you know vegetation control type of things is what that customer service request form is really good at handling. Thank you Kelly. Are there any other questions Ms. Kaufman go miss. Yes I'd like to know a little bit more about since our main street is the Caltrans street or a road through Watsonville here what you've got on the plate for any type of safety there we do have on the city section some crosswalks we're putting in in terms of flashing lights but we have a couple other significant crossings on our main street here which are Caltrans and would like to see what we can do about getting some work put on those especially in light of some density construction for housing that's on our main street and I know that we would be very happy to see something implemented and put into place for the crossing on our main street that's the Caltrans street. Thank you and that actually brings to mind a couple of recent planning grant efforts that we've awarded to city of Watsonville in the past couple of Caltrans planning grant cycles we've awarded the city one study to look at the downtown area and to study main streets and complete streets types of improvements for that are specifically focused on the downtown area including highway 152 and then the second study is looking at a similar idea increasing pedestrian bicycle mobility and improving those conditions there specifically targeting locations around schools so it's a safe routes to school related project and we can work together on if you know looking at specific questions because you know we don't want if there's if there's specific questions or maybe some safety concerns that you're seeing we want to look at those now we don't have to see those play out in the planning effort but I would encourage everybody interested you know the community residents and and Watsonville the Watsonville community to participate with the city's planning effort and those both efforts are um planning to heavily engage the public and get a lot of input and build their recommendations off of those so I would just like to put a plug in for those two studies and and they should be um reaching out to everybody about different events and and ways that people can um engage with those studies any other comments is there any comments from the public about the Caltrans report hi Stanley Sokolow Santa Cruz um a few years ago I rode my bike uh from Santa Cruz to Costa Noah KOA campground on highway one along the shoulder and uh on the route I encountered a lot of patches of broken glass and even though I'm alert to it I accidentally punctured my my tire on one that where you couldn't see that the glass was there so it I wonder how often Caltrans sweeps the shoulders of highway one between Santa Cruz and going north thank you I I think what a good thing to do would be is we have our our quarterly directors report and I know that we're updating that report for the next quarter so I think what I'm gonna do is work we know we talked about the customer service request a little earlier I'm gonna work to include maybe a link to that customer service request in that report and try to get that out so that you know it's it's available for everybody for things like degree or you know if you see debris on the road side things like that I don't know anything about schedule on it you know if there is a specific schedule on on doing those things but for I do think that the best way for for bringing these things to our attention is through that customer service request so I'll work on getting that in the in our report so that it's in the agenda thank you a couple years ago I had asked for safety improvements at Freedom Boulevard in Soquel Drive where it goes over the freeway and that was evidently part of Caltrans jurisdiction because it went over the freeway when the Santa Cruz public works devised the green lanes they did a job where when you're going south on the Pacific Coast bike route the green lane stays on the right hand side although you have to make a left turn and so you then have to go over two lanes for some reason it just dead ends on the right hand side instead of letting bicyclists get across the two lanes and make a left turn on the other direction going towards Aptos High School still on the Monterey on the Pacific Coast bike route bicyclists have to go over the freeway this was part of Caltrans then they have to make a left turn on the Soquel Drive and again Caltrans approved these plans where the bike lane stays on the right hand side of the road and there's no way for a bicyclist to safely get across the two lanes to get to the turn pocket to get into Soquel can you address where the where the lack of oversight by Caltrans on this plan was because this makes no sense I don't have any specifics on that I do remember seeing that go through the encroachment permit process but I don't have any specifics good morning good morning Steve Trujillo of Watsonville um along Eastlake Avenue which is not all but part of Highway 152 exiting the eastern part of the city I have observed since I moved here from Capitola three and a half years ago many near misses with pedestrians and bicyclists we have no green lanes we have no yellow warning signals it is a wide stretch of street and it turns into a racetrack about nine p.m uh that's what I'm hearing as I'm campaigning for city council from all of the merchants along Eastlake what can Cal Cran well Cal Cran's what can Cal Trans I know you don't raise cranberries what can Cal Trans do about the situation and what input could I have as a potential perhaps city councilman next year or even as it is to regular old ordinary citizen thank you again I would point to the city's planning effort for that their study area will include the location that you mentioned and its city led project Cal Trans is involved of course uh not only as the administrator of that that grant program but then also when it does come to 152 involved as a stakeholder as well so I would point you to the city's effort for their planning study that's going on right now good morning good morning how are you this morning going alright alright this is just a quick question first of all I like the fact that you're talking about 152 um and making a crosswalk where St Francis the church Lakeview is um I think it's really important and we've talked about it for years but I'm concerned about a crosswalk only because that is such a people are going 50 miles an hour there and if you have people step out it's almost like we're inviting people to get hit I I I don't know how to else to explain it it's it's dangerous and school time sure 25 miles an hour but weekends you've got people working on one side going to the other side I mean it's not just when school is in session so I'm wondering if more than just a um crosswalk if there's some type of a bridge or overpass or a tunnel I don't think will work because of the water level but something more there it needs something needs to be done and I commend you for mentioning that but I am concerned about just putting a crosswalk there and people being hit there right so that's a that's a great point and and we were talking a little bit before the meeting to where right now where we are in any kind of project stages is very very early and the way that an encroachment permit project would go is that we would work with the county to make sure that the specific design details make sense and are safe because it there's a lot of nuance and complexity to it conceptually you know we're we're we're ready to move forward with with developing the project but but then when we get into the specific design details the number one priority is to make it safe and and I really appreciate that I don't know you know encroachment of of land whether you have churchland or school land or whatever but I know people would be I can't speak for them but I think they would be really happy to have something there and and it's I'm glad you were you were addressing that thank you thank you seeing no one else will moved to the main part of our meeting um item number 22 is the evolution of smart we have a guest speaker Farad Mansouran general manager of the Sonoma Marin area rail transit as well as the chair of the smart board I think she's still chair of the smart board Windsor mayor Debra fudge so I look forward to hearing from both of them I think Mr. Dondaro has a couple of opening remarks yes thank you Mr. Chairman you essentially did a good job of introducing them and my apologies to Mr. Mansouran for misspelling his name at least once in my staff report so we'll we'll have to make amends on that later just a little bit more about our this is a continuation of our speaker series of innovators in transportation we actually have two different presentations today this is the first one Ms. Pudge is the only six-time mayor in Windsor's history and she says she was really excited to be on the board during the startup of passenger rail service in Marin and Sonoma counties she's working hard to extend the train north to Windsor Healdsburg and Cloverdale and she has degrees in community development and environmental planning creating green belts transit oriented development and now commuter rail service are her life's work which she has been pleased to contribute to Sonoma county Mr. Mansouran has worked for Marin county for 31 years most recently as the head of department of public works he also managed the Marin county transit agency for 12 years and served as executive director of Marin county's congestion management agency for 14 years so he's got a deep background in transportation in addition Mr. Mansouran was a key figure in the 2008 effort to pass measure A a quarter cent sales tax approved to fund smart service in 2011 the smart board reached a unanimous agreement with interim executive director Farhad Mansouran to become the agency's new permanent general manager a little bit of comparison of the smart line to our lines and why there's a bit of interest coming from this county both lines parallel highways that are congested for many hours of the day in a context that offers few alternative routes both lines are single track both have existing freight service and both serve multiple established communities that continue to grow both lines are building parallel bike pedestrian trails to serve a growing population of bike users and both corridors host a heavy visitor traffic in addition to many commuters going to work in school and finally both corridors have a substantial number of seniors living nearby who want alternatives to driving a car so back in May the Santa Cruz area chamber led a group of community leaders up to ride the smart train and two of our board members were able to go commissioner Bertrand and commissioner Kauffman Gomez but we felt like there was quite a rich story to be told here and so we thought well if we couldn't get you up there we would bring the story here so that's why we invited our guest speakers today so I'll hand it over to Mr. Montserran who's starting first Debra okay Debra we'll start thank you as you'll hear today a rich story is probably an understatement about what it took to get a train running through cinnamon marine counties I just wanted to give a brief you did a great job George with my background I've been a city council member for the town of Windsor for 22 years and in fact as the smart district was being formed Windsor started building from scratch a downtown a TOD with three-story mixed juice buildings and we built our own train station in 2007 the sales tax wasn't passed until 2008 so a lot of us in cinnamon marine had vision and on our own without any help from smart at the time started training planning for transportation planning so as because I was my appointment to smart I've been on the board for 13 years I was appointed in 2005 went through two sales tax measures the second one was successful so I've been through that background and worked with Farhud for years I was chair in 2010 and then I've been chair for the past two years but I think which is what is of most interest to all of you is I'm a Santa Cruzan so I moved here in 1970 I'm a 1974 graduate of Harbor High the third full graduating class my stepfather was a founding professor of UC Santa Cruz and was provost of Cowell College from 1974 to 1979 and my mom taught at E.A. Hall, Jr. High here in Watsonville and she started their first computer lab she started out as a home ec teacher and then taught got a computer lab and was really concentrating on teaching the migrant farm worker kids computer skills so they still live in Santa Cruz I'm here every month helping them as they age and I age and so I know this rail back and you know from the back of my hand I've been riding my bike along it for years and I just can't tell you how excited I am to be able to share with Farhud our experience with SMART to be able to help my own hometown because my heart is here I'm a fish out of water in Windsor and Sonoma County but my heart is always with you and I wore my sea glass here so Farhud is going to give you a lot of information it's um we've had a long road but it's exciting because we're here now and there are still people we've been in operation a year who haven't who are just now riding SMART for the first time we have lots of commuters but we still have new people and if there isn't a there isn't a day that goes by where someone doesn't tell me and write an email or say something on Facebook you've changed my life my life is better my quality of life is better because I have an alternative and it's and it's really connecting our communities people are getting to know each other and the economic development in San Rafael alone nobody went to San Rafael before they're going down just to visit and get off the train and go to this restaurant called Soul SOL and as I was driving into Watsonville today I was picturing the renaissance of downtown Watsonville it really can help connect your communities connect your county and there's a lot more positive aspects to it than just transporting you so Farhud will will take over from here and I'll be here for questions at the end oh and for those of you on the board and and for staff this is our commemorative coin so when you start a big transportation project especially a rail we made commemorative coins that we've been passing out for the last year these are very special the public doesn't have these so there's one for each of you here today so we're giving this to you thank you thank you and welcome back to Santa Cruz good morning Mr. Chairman distinguished commissioners Farhud Mansourian smarts general manager thank you for having us here to share with you our story as soon as I get the clicker so our plan is in the next four hours take you through what we've gone over the last 50 years and exhaust you so you don't ask any tough questions at the end our plan our chair and I our plan is to walk you through a journey that we did since the 70s and how we got to where we are today and then kind of pause Mr. Chairman you decide at that time either we go forward because we had a meeting last night and a large member a community was there that were asking questions so I added some more questions for yours because people said so what is the relevancy of smart to Santa Cruz and so I've added some of that thoughts for you and then you decide whether you know we go with that so where we are just so everybody knows where smart is we are north of San Francisco the first county we connect is Marine and the second county we correct is Sonoma and we have a history of having rail service actually you see on the left until 60 years ago we had passenger rail service in Marine County and it was a big, big part of history in Marine and Sonoma then in 1998 smart commission was formed a group of people who wanted to get together and figure out what to do congestion was getting worse and worse and both counties had representatives and they started early planning studies what do we do what kind of vehicle we buy where the stations should be and how do we start going forward and then they did a tremendous work they also did the EIR for their vision and started looking into financial planning well where is this going to come from and the biggest boost for them was in 2000 where they got traffic congestion relief program money and they now had a big seat because state of California in particular really likes to reward communities who are getting together and are having a path forward nobody wants to give you money if there is a fight going on everybody waits till the fight settles down and once they got into this level the state really rewarded them and that was a tremendous point of progress at that time and then in 2004 our agency was formed from a commission to an actual transit agency by passage of assembly bill 224 so now SMART is a transit agency under state of California we're governed by 12 board members they're all elected officials they hire the general manager who he and she serves at the pleasure of the board and then the general manager runs the district on behalf of the board in 2006 they put a quarter cent sales tax and they almost got there 65.3 percent so consistently over majority but not the two thirds they spend the next two years figuring out what did we do wrong what can we do better and then in 2008 it passed by almost 70 percent and just when everybody was planning great what do we do with this 900 million dollars that they forecasted then came the 2009 the greatest economic downfall since the great depression and boom then everything had to come to a stop I had nothing to do with SMART at that time but studying the history I have to give the board tremendous credit because they stopped and they said we're going to live within our means and let's make a hard choice and phase the project as elected officials you all know how hard that is you just finished an election promising people you're going to go 70 miles and then boom your money is cut almost in half what do you do then so they survived that and our citizenry understood you know when I read all the files they appreciated being told exactly what it is we no longer have that much money so they phased the very first part of the project so then they in 2010 they went through a process and they selected this particular vehicle the board was very very adamant about this board needs to be extremely environmentally friendly has to be quiet and has to be green and based on those specifications Somitomo of Japan one and this is the car that we have which you will see in a minute it's bi-america compliant it meets tier four diesel engine that is the cleanest requirement in the country right now for diesel engine and we already meet that for what is coming up level boarding you'll see an example of course ADA compliant one of the things we laid around the as I arrived is you know the clicky clicky sound it's because you have a joint every 44 or 45 feet and in our case we got rid of that and we have a quarter mile and every quarter mile you'll have a joint where we also weld that so it's a very quiet and very smooth ride in a two car concess we have restroom that it's ADA compliant and a little coffee place where has now become a party place because we also serve wine and beer and it's one of the happiest commute you have in the evenings trust me because we ran out of those consistently then on weekends it's also the workers as well as the tourists and I'm told we run out of wine and beer by 11 a.m. so what is the inside of a car looks like ADA compliant we a two car system carries 321 people sitting and standing that's a two car and 24 bicycles and when you sit down you think you're in a first class of an airline you have your own power outlet and your seat reclines and it's really a pleasant ride for you we have tables for those who are doing their work so if you could hit that start button for me please I thought we'd take you inside so you can see what the inside looks like and in a real world this is a three car very quickly after we opened up we ran out of capacity lots and lots of bicycle lots and lots of passengers so we immediately had to carry third car and that's for over 500 people and about 36 bicycles so here is a look at what inside looks like this is on my iPhone so no Hollywood claim to the left is the ADA compliant restroom if you go the farthest distance it's one hour seven minutes and our board had the vision that maybe that's a little bit too long so they created the restroom for us then you go through and you're now in the next car and in that next car we have the coffee place where you can buy you know very simple snacks items we have a special designated area for ADA and we have places where the bicycles can hang their bicycles that actually hold down to them this is our snack area so that was the empty car we thought we'd show you what not empty car looks like we started doing a toy drive that has become extremely successful and the idea is please during the holidays you bring one or two toys and we leave them on the train and if you need toys you take them so some people bring them and some people take them and whatever is left we go and give it to the other communities you know it has become a little bit of community itself those people who commute which is about 60% of our traffic is during the morning and evening commute people get to know each other and you walk in there and everybody knows who's going to get off at what exit and there is a lot of events that those people are actually sharing with each other oops so in 2012 we started our construction and I'd like to share with you very quickly some of the milestones of the construction on the top you'll see the condition of what the railroad looks like because passenger rail service stopped 60 years ago in some of the areas we had freight but in most of the area we had no freight so the condition was really bad and so here is a quick snap we totally reconstructed 43 miles of track we had to rebuild 63 at-grade crossings and we quickly received tremendous amount of thank-you notes from motorcyclists and bicyclists because you can imagine the condition of those at-grade crossings crossing your city streets were horrible and everything was rebuilt you know as my Caltrans friend can tell you you go through a public works life and you're lucky and your county public works city public works you replace one bridge in your career life for Caltrans maybe few we had to replace 27 bridges that were old and we had to totally rebuild them because you now have this fast moving modern rail and heavy freight that needed to accommodate our transportation so we had to rebuild we had to rebuild that then we had to rebuild the platform foundations and we also installed 43 miles of a dock bank what does that mean that means we buried fiber optic for emergency communication train control and something else that I will report to you in a minute and then of course we had to build over 100 signal system so very very large public works project and we're lucky we also opened up among the very few in the in the country with positive train control as you know that is the mandate by United States Congress that by end of 2018 every rail operation in United States have to have this technology and the purpose of the technology is to prevent certain type of accidents the railmen head on collusion and those kind of things very very uh this is the absolute the latest of the technology and we're very happy that we actually opened up with that in our service last year also in other milestones we had to really create an entire organization when I arrived at SMART we had staff of six and zillion consultants one of the things we did is we started now building a transit agency we had to hire over 100 key people throughout the country and that generated a lot of employment because for every something we were doing it also got a lot of local businesses involved one of the in addition to all the bridges that I reported to you we also ran into a problem where over Petaluma River Bridge we had to replace this 100-year-old bridge where the bridge would take 15 minutes to turn so the ships can go and the train go over it well you cannot run a commuter trail and a commuter train and have a 15-minute turn on a bridge so we had to replace the bridge and that was a big puzzling for the engineers of us tried to figure out what to do we had to build a rail operation center our dispatch center where we control all the train movements and that's where everybody reports to we build that at Sonoma County Airport one of our other missions is to build a multi-purpose path as much as possible that money allows and we have right away and we have built 15 miles of it so far and we continue building more as we get more money and we get more opportunities yes coming up so some of the key operating details for you our top speed is 79 miles an hour when you go end to end average speed is about 40 with all the stoppage and slowing down and opening the doors and closing the door so 40 miles an hour compared to Highway 101 which is about one and a half mile an hour thank to Senate Bill 1 that Kelly was talking about SB 1 we received fund immediately and we immediately put that to work and have increased our daily and weekday trips so we immediately put that money into operations and we're providing more trips than we even anticipated right at the beginning we serve every 30 minutes during most of the congestion area and as soon as we're able to hire more people then we will fill in and truly have a 30-minute commute in all the evening and morning commute hours we have two-way operation on a single track we chose to do single track our environment and the preservation of our environment is very crucial as it is on the top of our list we did not want to build two tracks where environmentally was sensitive so we operate on a single track and we have built four passing lanes where the trains pass each other at the speed of course very carefully and very precisely and that's one of the deals with the positive train control and since last year we have carried 650,000 people all the people who said nobody's gonna ride you all the people who said this is absolutely just an expensive toy now are well I wish I could say they're quiet but they're not they continue saying yeah but and we'll get into that so we're very happy 650,000 people who are no longer on highways and local roads and have got their life back environmental mitigation when you do major public works project as you know for everything you do you have to do environmental mitigations one of the things we wanted to do and our board was adamant is instead of doing all the little mitigations here and in this county and in that city can we do something major and the answer was yes so we purchased 56 acres of an area right between marine and county and Sonoma counties and the site has been restored and you will see this is what the site looked like it used to be an old marina where people would go and do trap shooting and you know get on their boats and go to San Francisco Bay this is what it looked like for decades it was just run down and we bought that and we turned that into an absolute award-winning marina where now you see species and animals that nobody has seen for decades and it's a beautiful area so that was one of our big contributions almost 60 acres of mitigation then on our pathway one of the things we did is we took a step back and we said you know we want to build 70 miles of pathway how do we do that and one of the things I had our staff do is let's go get NEPA clearance as you know you have SIKWA for the state but for the federal money you need NEPA and thanks to CalTrans partnership we did a NEPA for 36 miles and we are now very much eligible and have been receiving federal funds so it's kind of that kind of planning that you come out with a vision and then you take a step back and you figure out where you put yourself in that best position to do that just in last fiscal year I reported to our board that we just build another 5.6 more miles of bike path at a very good cost of 5.4 million we have seven transit agencies in Marine and Sonoma and it took us about two years to figure out together how do we coordinate your schedule and ours when our train arrives what happens we wanted to make sure from the rider's point of view that you have almost a seamless we're all different government agencies but as a citizen you don't care you want to get off the bus and get on a train and vice versa so we work very hard our transit planners I'm very proud of them and they put a tremendous relationship together so finally what we were able to do is have all of these dialed in we're still learning one of the interesting problems we're having is because train is on its own track we other than something has happened we are on time but the buses are on the local traffic or on the regional highway traffic and we're still trying to figure out how to dial in those final one minute early you're one minute late and how do we get that going we now have a lot of taxes and ride sharing and local jurisdictions like county or marine they really embrace this idea the county provides if I'm not mistaken either 40 or 50 dollars per employee if they're using the green commute and so they incentivize that the employees and then they turn around and they basically buy what I call wholesale deal of tickets from us and their employees are then getting the train ride at very very small price so all of that is taking place then in addition to the bike path we're building we also build lockers for the bicycles and now we're beginning to have bike rentals actually metropolitan transportation commission your counterpart in the bay area just gave marine and Sonoma counties 830 thousand dollars for one year so they can start this bike share program at all of our stations and of course we're allowing the bikes on the train then the latest thing that has happened is not the private cars have showed up we now the CMAs congestion management agencies your counterparts they are doing the car share they're doing the zip card they're having the lift discounts like marine CMA what they do is if you get off the train they give you a huge discount and apparently you only pay five dollars wherever you go so TAM pays the discount they so lift shows up you get on it you go to your place of work you pay five dollars and TAM pays the rest so it's that kind of thinking that everybody is now embracing our arrival one of the things we heard from the employees is what if I have an emergency while I'm taking train I need to go home because of emergency and they've come out with the guaranteed ride homes so these are the things that is falling in place very very nicely our payment method is two way one is on a clipper card which as you know everybody now in the bay area all the transit agencies use and also we developed our own app and the app is extremely popular as you can imagine everybody has an iPhone these days you get on and you buy your ticket and you show that to the conductors our fairs is based on a zone the farther you travel the more you pay it has a base plus the number of zones you go through then we created more products and our number one product that it's very very most popular is the 31 day pass the 31 day pass for 200 dollars you go 31 days no limit as many times as you like and that's the most popular for our commuters the same pass is half price for seniors, youth and people with disabilities for businesses we created what is known as eco pass so IRS allows if you are spending money on public transit and until the recently bicycle was considered public transit but the current administration changed the definition so now it's just transit if you are spending money there is two things you can do one is you can buy those tickets before tax and the second is if you buy those through your employees then that private employer their payroll tax is reduced because they're spending money on that so it has a great business and for your point of view it has that and that's what we have and it's called eco pass many many of our public and private businesses are buying those eco passes which our people use some of the small benefits that we are we planned and we're looking at is of course it's fast it's reliable and it's dependable you know highway 101 is the spine that connects us connects marine and Sonoma it is my marketing plan it is a parking lot I really appreciate that on weekends it is as bad as weekdays because of the tourism that is coming from San Francisco Marine going north so this gives them an option and a reliable and and dependable so these are some of the benefits we open our doors to full passenger service on august 25th very festive area and then I want to stop and just give you so all of this is great but when you build such a large public works project then you run into challenges and I call opportunities so I'd like to share some of that with you so this is where we started with what our stations should look like pretty nice kind of it fits exactly what marine and Sonoma and Santa Cruz right you know it's like and so we go through all of our process environmental how much money is available and the community input and then we actually end up building this which is simple but practical level boarding 48 inch above and fully ADA compliant the location of the stations was one of the challenges fortunately it happened before my time so by the time I showed up Deb and the rest of the board members had to go through this so now all I could do is say yeah this is good or not but I always said it's good we ran into interesting items that I want to run by you so imagine we run train 60 years ago so our right away was was there but as things were going very smoothly we discovered a tree and if you look at this tree and you look at very much on top you see that it has white leaves and so the construction guy was ready to cut it down remember this is in our right away so that means the tree is only 50 60 years old because prior to that there was passenger service and I had an activist who come to me and says Farhad what if this tree can cure cancer and I'm like okay well let's study that so we studied the tree I got experts from UC Berkeley to come in and look at it they looked at it they said nah this is just maybe it's a disease cut it and I said okay can I have that in writing that this is just a nothing tree and they did well the community started talking more and the experts started being divided and the idea was this is a rare shimeric albino tree that there is only 10 of them in the world and you can imagine you see how big it is compared to the guy standing next to it so what do you want to be as a transit agency you want to be the one who cut the cancer curing tree but you have it in the letterhead that says it's good right or do you actually do something about it and I went to my board and I said what do I do and the chair and everybody said you make all that money you go make the decision then we see if you made the right decision or not so I made the decision it became a major operation of moving the tree and the the roots you can imagine this is now about 10 story tall and we have all these utility lines overhead the services so it became an entire operation we're very proud of that because we moved this tree we took 1000 DNA samples from it in case this is a cancer curing tree and it dies during transportation and those are safe in different laboratories where they keep this kind of things happy to report to you the train the tree is doing fantastic in its new place it has a plaque next to it and everybody looks at it and the number one question I'm asking so how much did this cost which I always say and the next slide right because I learned whatever if I tell the true number then it's 50 percent love it and 50 percent say another government waste so next item how's that we had to replace the bridge over Periluma river replacing a bridge where ships go under it and train goes over it is something between 35 and 50 million dollars and our budget did not have a 35 to 50 million dollar budget it's that simple so I dispatched our team of engineers and I said you get out of the typical thinking that we do as engineers what is the safest way and let's figure out what we can come up with the safest but something very unique well we found that United States Coast Guard had just installed the bridge in Galveston, Texas the channel was no longer wide enough and they wanted to get rid of the bridge so we bought a used bridge I took that item to my board and there was almost no comments but everybody was staring at me like really and I said well here is the math we can save 20 million plus and the board to their credit said okay so that's what we did we bought this bridge we transported it and we x-rayed every pieces of it we built a new foundation and the bridge won the California Bridge project of the year two years ago we now have an 80 year bridge which by the way it turns at 110 seconds where ships go under it and the bridge comes up so challenges and opportunities one of the big things that we do during construction and we do constantly is connecting with our community young experienced Latino communities other communities we want them to know what is happening with their train what is coming up and a lot of safety education some of the slides for you we created this website where it teaches people about public safety if you haven't had train operation in your town for a long time there are generations who've never seen the train our generation was grown with train but the younger generation don't know that and they continued driving or walking and riding their bike the way they are so that was a big big challenge for us we go to every single elementary and junior high and high school and we have sessions one-on-one we show films how to be what we call track smart total cost of the project including the phase we are doing today which is connecting us to Larkspur is about 533 million as you can see on this pie chart about 78% was our money and the rest we were able to get from state federal is the capital cost this is everything for a capital cost and everything up to opening day freight service update we have another government agency known as north coast rail authority they have easement on our tracks to run freight and they have hired a freight operator very much like what you have done and right now there is a senate bill that has passed the senate and is in the assembly called senate bill 1029 and senator Mcguire is proposing to get right off the north coast railroad authority and transfer all of their freight duties to smart and also preserve 150 miles way beyond our limit for a trail that they want to build his vision is to have a trail system from golden gate bridge for 300 miles north and as I said it has passed through the senate and it's going through the committees not a single opposition so far on the assembly side what is it that we're going to do next is as I mentioned we are building our next connection to lark's work that gives us a fairy connection to san francisco our business community are very very excited about the ability of people who are coming from san francisco and don't want to drive on 101 parking lot is to take the ferry and then take the train the business community sees tremendous amount of growth that should open by end of next year the next one is going north is winzer happens to be depths town that project is 55 million we finished sequa the design is 20 percent done and we just receive within the last two months a 21 million from state of california sb1 money and 40 million from the regional measure three so this is now fully funded and we are beginning the preliminary design and hope to finish that as well then we have two more to go hildsburg and cloverdale and those we finished environmental we finished the 20 percent engineering and then one of the interesting things is if you are familiar with marine and sonoma highway 37 estate highway connects marine and sonoma going east west to highway 80 and it is another parking lot state of california and the rail plan they approached us and they said we want you to look into putting rail we already have freight going there as a passenger service and i met with the secretary of transportation he and his deputy their vision is connecting communities throughout the state on a state rail plan with with rail and they asked if we could do this and i said of course can i see some money to do that and they just gave us money and we're going to start that planning so they're very very serious about doing this and they put their money where their mouth is they're not just requiring you they have you do it lessons learned later on i am speaking on behalf of deb and i i'll be happy to come back spend many hours with you on a long workshop and share with you some of the lessons we learned on the governance model funding options planning and environmental the lessons learned that we would have done different during our eir during our planning process share with you engineering and capital programs why we were successful when do you go out for bed when do you manage this when do you manage that the construction phase how do you handle that and then finally operation and testing so we've learned a lot in that last six seven years and we want to we want to share all of that with you i'll recommend that a number of workshops but if you'd like to come up there and look at what we've built and spend the day and talk about this and meet other board members i think it'd be terrific for you to get that feel of what we went through so mr chairman that's what it is i just have a couple of more slides to kind of get you to think because that's this is what i've added so so what okay this is great thank you smarty the great job what's in it for us and that's what i start putting in is is our case applicable to you so what i'm putting down is for us highway 101 is a parking lot we couldn't move our emergency people couldn't move it is simply a very very bad situation for us those who were using buses and vanpool they were stuck on the same highway than everybody else was that was our situation the housing cost forced people to leave further further further away and employers were having very hard time getting employees and typical commute hour was 60 to 90 minutes so this was our life does this sound any familiar with you yeah is you know you replace 101 with 17 and one you're having the same issues for many years our opposition would want us to do nothing for many years our opposition would say the train to nowhere um it will never get built they would say it will promote high density it will change the character of the community by the way there has not been a single high density built in the last seven years that we've been doing the train because strong land use by the local jurisdictions just like yours that's what controls not us it will change the character of the community i'm sharing with you and of course smart's gonna cut thousands of trees and and it will not sign of highway 101 problem they immediately wanted to know if i spend 100 million dollar how many lanes of 101 in your case 17 are you gonna free up they're using for those simple mats it will cost more fares are too high we haven't even established it yet but they predict that the fares be too high the proposed tax which was the quarry sent sales tax that that discriminates no one will write it anyway so what is it you're just building your forecast is too high and we did 18 ridership studies just so you know so if you really want to do a ridership study I urge you ask George to call me first before you do 18 at then because none of them agree with each other your opponents disagree with all of them your supporters will say they're low and your opponents will say they're high and then the real world is when you open your doors staff doesn't know what they're doing the staff is getting paid too much everything I'm just mentioning and then my favorite is the fuzzy math and to be honest with you I've been reading some of your stuff and the fuzzy math is right there you know two plus two is 17 but alternative doing nothing is great just letting you know so we went through all of these and again if any of these you're already hearing I just want you to know it's there I want to share with you we are looking at smart as an option not a silver bullet there is no silver bullet I mean my 39 years of practicing as a civil engineer we civil engineers can take you to the moon but we cannot get you out of your congestion congestion with a silver bullet you need options this is what our people learned we need options for us train and the bicycle path are two options that's all we're giving you in addition to your car your bus your ferry whatever other mode we're giving you options the train is fast and reliable the bicycle is fast is reliable because we're on our own path we're not part of the highway that's what we're giving you it's an alternative to reduce your congestion health and environmental benefits and jobs and economic growth I cannot emphasize to you how happy our downtowns are and how happy those local jurisdictions are without mentioning names we had a mayor of a town Deb and I and other board members had to assure the mayor the world is not going to come to an end when we show up because there were all these fears and the mayor is so happy because the businesses are so happy their businesses has grown by 30 percent going back to that number 600,000 people just think about this this is our first year we're still learning where were these 600,000 people before there are new people that's they were on local roads highways whatever they were doing they're now coming in on the train so does any of these apply to you this is what I put together so we have a report car because on August 18 we have a celebration our board just declared our first year birthday is August 18 and 19 free service for everybody so it would be a great time to visit us on highway 18 on August 18 we have a big celebration and our report card is as follow more than 650,000 people passengers that we have carried more than 58,000 bicycles so we now have a core group of our commuters about 10 percent who are using the bike as their first and last mile so it's not instead of or fighting it is us together figuring out how to build more facilities for them on the train as well as off the train and oops sorry and we've carried over 2,800 people using wheelchair those people are now telling us that they have a new way of going up and down and have independence they now can get on a train get off go to a restaurant and come back we're getting a lot of good comments there the fare box recovery beyond our budget our chief financial officer she's very very happy I provide that report to our board every month so on the money side we're doing very good and here is what I want to leave you with since 2011 that I arrived because our board put local money and because we started building we have brought in 157 million dollars and we just got another 40 million from state and federal and regional people will watch you and if you're fighting among each other I'm talking about us nobody's interest was interested to help us as soon as we started building and we started going forward the state, regional and the feds want to help you especially they want to help you finish it and that's what it has come so once we started demonstrating and you know 157 million goes into that pie chart that you saw and it will only get more and more so that's really all the items I wanted to share with you I'll be happy to answer any questions and of course the president of our board but we wanted to give you a quick rundown of what is our world so thank you for your time we'll be happy to answer questions thank you very much I really appreciate the presentation I'm sure there's going to be questions and we'll also be taking comments from from the public but I just your your experience in Sonoma and Marin is is very important for us to hear just work my way down here Ms. Brown thank you for the presentation I just wanted to ask a question about the relationship between the rail line functioning and the trail portion of your project as you noted that about 15 miles of the trail has been developed and significantly more than that miles of rail line and operation so I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the the logistics of the relationship between the two the rail and the trail I mean there as you know and I believe it was true in your communities that there are many people who really want to see a trail a bike and ped trail now and to the extent that we can make those work in synergy with each other that's our goal so if you could talk a little bit about that it would be I think helpful for all of us great question remember I said if you decide to go forward I like to bring my team back and have them work with your team even during the planning process you know you have beautiful sketches during the planning process that says I'm going to put the rail here I'm going to put the bike here I'm going to put the tree there and then somebody there well if you don't once you get into construction and actually building those you start looking into the environment the regulations it will very quickly see okay maybe I should not set that maybe I'll come up with a different plan so lessons learned is figure that piece out in our case where the rail and the trail go it is on such a sensitive environmental area that it's simply a red line for our community and certainly my board and so we as a railroad you're existing and you can reconstruct with no regulation and permits or very little as a bike you're not existing you have to go through all these reviews as I speak today we have two lawsuits against us on the bike side property owners who say you can't build a bike path here we don't want it for all the wrong reasons but we don't want it so that's number one the second that you need to be very careful and this is what happened to us the property that you now have purchased has probably three types of ownership the smallest piece is what you write down on the other two pieces is you either have easement or you are operating because for since 1800s a farmer gave it to the next person to the next person and if you start drilling into those descriptions it will say for rail so we're being challenged when we're putting bicycle and trails by those people saying this is not rail so we're going through those that's why they're getting slower and the cost is also very high so we're still committed we want to do the right thing it's absolutely a big part of our mission we just need to be you know much more thorough during the beginning part of it I hope this answered your question Mr. Racken I thank you first of all for your presentation it was very very helpful my first question is what's the population base that is being served I mean I'm not counting San Francisco or might use it but the commuter potential population that's within the two-county area that the track runs through Marine is about 250,000 Sonoma about 500,000 so population base about 750 and you gave us an overall cost for the construction do you having your head or ability to say what the cost per mile was for the construction of the no I mean if you take that and divide it by 43 then you come out with a cost but I want to give you one caution by doing that please don't apply that to yours because people tend to do that here is why your environment might be harder or much easier you might not have 40 some bridges you might have more bridges you might have less bridges so be careful of that that's why during planning process having engineers who have built not engineers who can just give you on paper who have built rail because that's when you have a lot of opportunities in doing cheaper construction the third item is the timing you must spend this is if I was you know your guy I would be saying during good economic time you want to do your environmental your design and get ready and as soon as the economy turns you start building two big reasons you get much better prices and you put everybody back to work and this is what we did we put thousands of people back to work when there were no major projects going so that timing becomes very critical and of course you get the biggest bag for your buck so you've only been operating for a relatively small period of time now what do you know what your operating cost is actually per hour for running this service not per hour our entire operation is 17 million our entire agency budget is about 30 million but the 30 million most of it goes to paying off the bond for the construction that we did but 17 million is our operation cost and in terms of the service that I kind of understand you had a lot you started with local money which has made the state and the federal government interested in supporting you what were the sources for your funding for the local quarters and sales tax that was it that was correct so basically what we told the community we said look at your congestion look at your all this is an option the message that we were giving is every time you spend 100 dollars you're giving me 25 cents okay that's that's the quarter and sales tax thank you so much I really appreciate your presentation thank you sir Mr. Johnson thank you chair so you mentioned that I would imagine during the campaign you a big part of it was congestion relief and you alluded to the fact that there's been significant congestion relief on highway 101 as these trains how many cars before and after in terms of you know morning and afternoon commutes what is the delta what is the difference now that your train is running in terms of number of cars going down 101 and in the afternoon coming back so I'm gonna I'm not escaping your question but I want to give you a different thinking because oh I need it believe me no the reason the reason is highway 101 carries over 100,000 people if you would look at this is a day if you would look at our 3,000 people ridership a day and you would simply say 3,000 compared to 100,000 right you don't even put a dent even if you reduced 100,000 I'm doing a math exercise but this is important for you to let me do and you go to 97,000 and then you reach a conclusion that well that ain't gonna do any good and then you add 500 million dollar expense to that and you say this is absolutely no go so I want to give you different different way of looking at it you spend 500 million dollars and it's a one-time money you now have a system for 30 years plus we carried 600,000 in the first year is that is that 300,000 each way yes let's assume that right so you where did these 600,000 people do before this is what I say in my debates where were they doing before these are not new workers these are the same school children and the same people who go and up and down they used to be on your local roads and your local highway now they're on a train when I talked to the mayor of San Rafael and say has your downtown changed is it like you see tens of thousands of people a day no except all those people who used to go on a single automobile they now are on their bike or on you so you start looking at it that way the math makes a lot of sense and the option gives you a lot of sense so don't forget we look at the bike path and the train as two options not two silver bullets no I understand that we will never we will never carry enough people that will change a difference to a hundred thousand per day on highway one on one we just won't but even in your report you talk about congestion relief it's not real how is it not real where were these 600,000 before okay where the 600,000 before I'm talking about the efficacy in relationship to the dollars that are invested in something like this so you're talking about 600,000 million dollars plus you have an operating expense of what 17 million when you start talking about fare box recovery what is the percentage of fare box recovery in other words how much has to be subsidized by taxes or the taxpayer I mean you said it exceeded expectations but it's what fare revenue divided by the operating expenses right so I give you all the answers these are very good questions but I want to if I if I can show you if that's where you want to go you can't build anything your highway doesn't make sense your highway system is subsidized every single day your local road is subsidized every single day public transit is subsidized every single day our money comes from the quarter cent that our taxpayers are giving us that's what they're giving us about 30 million a year we used that we bond it we used it for capital and now we're using it for operation that's what the citizens decided to do 25 cents every time they spend 100 there is no other subsidy that's what it is every time you go to a gas pump you're paying about 40 cents of tax and that's how you're subsidizing for local roads and highways so that math if you as I said if you want to look at it then take the 600,000 multiple by 30 years and compare that cost to the one-time cost of building a system that gives you options and then we also looked at is there an option of doing nothing is that what the citizens want and they said no we want you to do something well widening the freeway in the environment we are we didn't want to do that because they're very critical environmental sensitive area if you had all the money in the world would you divide you did you add four more lanes to highway one and 17 is that feasible I don't know but that those are what we went through so our constituents are very happy we got 70 percent of the vote and all I can report to you is they're asking for more not less one last question and forgive me you know you did bring in the kind of political option with respect to what we're doing here in Santa Cruz County so I so I have to be ask a few tough questions so in our packet today progressive railroad and it talks about the agencies tackle first and last mile challenges and embedded in there it says ridership and I don't know exactly this is an LA ridership a rail ridership has grown as the agency has opened new lines it's primarily bus service that is excuse me that is declined help me understand a little bit is there a ratio between the number of trips per day on the rail versus has there been a decline in the number of metro and bus ridership not that I know the way we look at it there are three type of services Golden Gate Bridge provides regional service people who are going from Sonoma County to San Francisco we don't go to San Francisco that hasn't changed then we have local city buses which they're circulating around the city we don't provide that service we don't have people who get on here and go one station I mean we do but as a whole we don't where we are affecting is people who were stuck in 101 from 6 a.m. to 8 30 and from 2 30 till 5 that's the service we're providing plus the tourism and especially the weekends is it fair to say that the cities that are the destination points help me understand a little bit I kind of understand San Francisco but is there also an East Bay component you know from Oakland to Richmond to and other cities along the the 80 corridor that that this service applies to this service provides a parallel service to the highway 101 spine gets you there fast if your schedule works not everybody takes the train because it doesn't go everywhere and the schedule doesn't work for you so that's that it for those that it does it provides a faster and more reliable service we have a small number of our workforce that goes to San Francisco or East Bay I don't know about your demographic here in Marine and Sonoma almost 75% of our traffic is generated inside the county they're going from one workplace to the next workplace back to the next workplace so we're not like Bart that is crossing many different counties we are providing those internal circulations an option to get there faster it's the Sonoma folks working in Marine it's the Marine folks working in Sonoma that is what it's really serving the most one last point I don't want to dominate here but one last point would it affect your reasoning in any way that if you knew that most of the people who travel on highway one during the morning 61% of them don't go into Santa Cruz Capitola Soquel they go over the hill to San Jose or Scotts Valley or our highway 17 do you see where on the one hand you have like a from point A to point B it's pretty straight but here you have people that in no way would ever use a train because they're being diverted to San Jose how would that affect your reasoning in terms of the efficiency of a train in Santa Cruz I'm seeing my Santa Cruz expert coming up to take that question out we have something in common I've been on the city council for 22 years and I've been mayor six times okay there you go there I have a counterpart so knowing your county like I do and looking at what happens in Marin and Sonoma counties is we have a few people not everybody will do this but people will transfer modes of transit so we have people in Marin and Sonoma county who go to the Larkspur ferry and then or you know right now we don't go to the Larkspur ferry so they they travel to downtown San Rafael they get on a bus that we provide that gets to the ferry and then they get on the ferry so what I can envision for you is the people in Watsonville trying to move north trying to trans to go north and those that may go over the hill to San Jose to work at Apple or Google or anywhere else I could see them taking the train to us to the most northern stop and then catching the bus that would go over the mountain so there are people that will try to get out of their cars and try to make an easier transportation choices that are and it also is they can work while they're on the trains they're more relaxed when they get there it's sort of a quality of life as well as congestion but I some people will get on a train from the southern county go to the most northern stop and the buses could meet them and just take them straight over the hill so I could see some people doing that maybe a point of information Mr. Dondaro did you have information that was sort of that 61% of the people go over the hill yeah I I take issue with that number Luis just looked up in our RTP our regional transportation plan um and 77% of people who commute stay within our county now that's not all on highway one but so I I know that the number I remember working on on the highway one EIR is that about 30% of the people on highway one divert up 17 now 17 is a busy road for sure but a lot of those people come from santa cruz scott's valley and so forth so it's not all just coming off a highway one it may be similar in terms of I think there's a lot of similarity to the numbers that you and then I just thought of something that we haven't discussed yet is that the train is also an option during emergencies we our train was used during the fires the first pictures that we saw October 10th from the 6000 houses that burned down came from the train the engineers were taking pictures outside the windows of the train and that's the first time we saw the extent of the devastation was the 419 train going south we had people get on the train with their suitcases to evacuate so they did that on their own without us planning so now we're working with communities and all the fire agencies to really make a plan so that when an earthquake happens we're having a lot of 3.5 earthquakes up in Windsor right now so we're expecting a bigger one that we've got a plan in place so there can be organized evacuations on the rail should the rail still be in good shape and so because one-on-one a bridge could go down and then we would be stuck like we one-on-one is our only quarter to San Francisco we're not like you know San Jose or Los Altos or the peninsula where we have highway 280 highway you know one-on-one you know we only have one option so that this is also good in the face of emergencies and I think that would be good here having lived through the 1989 earthquake here as well thank you Mr. Bertron to seconded director oh to the mayor Windsor I remember the water world and Windsor when that was just a little dinky highway and I never had a chance to stop there because that was on a hell-bent trip to get up to somewhere like but reservoir whatever to go camping but the likes and certainly changed yeah your town so um this is actually to the director I'm sorry to bring you back so I was trying to ask myself how much money you're spending on lawsuits so for various issues that have come up whether they're like right away issues or people that are worried about the tree that might cure cancer or somewhere in between but my real issue is how do you gauge with the public I assume that over the course of your your story involved in this project obviously there was a campaign issue we went through a campaign issue so there's some similarities I'm wondering what you learn in terms of reaching out to the public trying to help them understand the issues involved one particular point if you could cover is transparency another point I wish you could cover is reaching out to the individual concerns some are organized of the community so that you could hear where they're coming from and try to if not ally those fears incorporate their suggestions which in many cases are pretty good so if you could give us some of your wisdom that you've learned I'd really appreciate it you know during the campaign which I was not part of there were all these fears and there were all these questions that you could never answer and even if you would answer they would simply say well we disagree and then you know go do another ridership study and another during construction a lot of attempt was made to stop us because now when they said you will never get going now you are going then we got to the testing and you now have a new phenomena that you haven't had in 50 60 years right and then we opened our doors and came those who are very supportive great those who were not and all we said our campaign was come and try it train is not for everyone trail and bike is not for everyone if it fits your schedule and if you're healthy enough to ride the bike or you like to be healthy enough use it where we are today the leaders of the opposition haven't changed as a matter of fact I was reading some of the anti stuff for you they're calling those guys in marine and Sonoma as part of the reasoning so it seems like they're using the same set of argument none of the numbers matter nothing nothing has changed other than that the story I want to tell you is most of our opponents were centered in a town where I live and everybody was from that town and as soon as I got on smart the board warned me is like watch out for your town because everybody in that town is trying to stop you that town the city council just voted to spend eight million dollars of their money to build the third station in other words just in one year that town that was trying to stop now says I want more because their chambers their students their seniors everybody asked for and my board just approved we built the third station constantly learning um I travel a lot on the train day and night different times as I have my managers do and I know many board members do and we ask people what's going on what are your thoughts what are we doing right and what are we doing wrong and the number one comment is you need to have more train you need to have later train I like to go to dinner and come back late and we're those then become financial issues as well as hiring issues so you never stop communicating it's only the beginning and their input is absolutely crucial for our success I hope I answered your question you sort of did I think that there's always a natural tension between the public and its concerns and whatever elected body that there is that's representing them whether on a city or a county basis I think it's a natural thing I think it's healthy to have that tension I don't think it's something that should be denigrated I think it's something that should be worked with I'm a major proponent of transparency I think whenever agency including this agency George is doing something call the spate as you said right now as most of you are aware of I'm very concerned about our investment study that's coming up which has got put off for a bit of time and so I really cautioned the public to not take that for granted I think that public involvement in that study the analysis of the study once we get it is very important did you have anything comparable to that in your experience so when the board first the smart board smart board went through a period where they had two different general managers in about four months and smart board reached out to my county board of supervisors where I was public works director and asked to borrow me and when I and my board said go help out this board when Deb was on it asked me to do two things talk about transparency one the opponents are saying there is a 30 million dollar shortfall is this true and second is this project doable or are we truly wasting our money and I spend about four months interviewing reading files and talking to everybody who knew including the opposition and I came back to the board by the way the board said we want you to report that in a public setting not in a confidential you know just go out and say it I informed the chair and the vice chair on a Friday night that I finished my study and the chair said go for it and I said what do you mean I mean I'm a county guy dealing with supervisors they're complicated life county council and I'm like just go for it they said go for it so I called the press conference and I said on the first question of opponents saying this is 30 million dollar shortfall is this true and I said the answer is no there's 70 million dollar short number two can this project be built and I said yes you need to have people who have built projects who know how to do project because you go through different phases construction and implementation are very different you have made a lot of assumptions that has made your cost very high because you don't have details or you don't have people who have built projects you have consultants who have never built projects you know and they go look at somebody else's numbers and I said you can build this project and you can even go further which is exactly what we did so that's how we started with our transparency on our website all the financial information is there I require one of the things that we did I require our CFO to have a financial report at every month and a quarterly project report and everything is posted on the same day on our website so we're doing everything right now to be honest with you other than the diehard opponents who haven't changed anything not no argument has changed the people who are coming to our board are simply people who want more they're not questioning whether this was a good idea or not they're simply saying I want more I want more choices and I want more options which we say we're working on it or now I'll head this the way Mr. Brottov I want to thank you both for taking the time to come and make the presentation your insight your vision your candors and valuable to us I really have no questions I just appreciate you taking the time to come here and let us know of an option we possibly could have thank you again I concur too with the presentation and I'm sure that the public will have a lot more interest in it I'll try and keep my questions brief one is I didn't hear too much talk about the freight and the relationship with freight on the corridor with the passengers coming from Watsonville we're using that as a freight corridor right now we may not have so much volume but has it changed has it increased timing what is your relationship between passenger and freight great question so we are the controller of the railroad we dispatch both passengers and freight and right now because we operate in a positive train control mode and they're not they have to comply by end of the year we only authorize them to operate when we're not and that's between midnight and four a.m. and we have worked that out with the freight and they have in turn worked that out with the businesses that they serve going forward if the senate bill passes and we do become both passenger and freight my vision subject to my board's approval is to really be able to expand the freight a lot of the freight traffic is on your highways isn't it that's how they're moving goods and that's where there is a lot of green gas issue we did one connection for one of the beer this you know major beers in Sonoma and they said that they have replaced 100 truck traffic a week because of the connection that the freight now has the connections are expensive there are three to 500,000 so if we can figure out and I'm talking to the rail division of Caltrans and state transportation agency they're very much seeing that and they want those trucks off their highway as well so there is a big opportunity but we can't do that till the state legislation goes through and my board becomes the board for both functions but other than that we regulate them and we allow them to operate when we think it's safe and my other question that isn't at all related and since you're looking at your one year anniversary it may take a little bit of time and reflection comment wise you're saying that the communities are engaged with this but what about what findings are you coming up with or that they're sharing with you about the economic vitality as a result of this going through their communities and obviously there's more sales going on there's more tax revenue being generated have we seen or have you seen those kind of changes yet even though it's pretty new we have and I'm trying to get those substantiated in a different way than our folks our community outreach folks went and I'm kind of telling you this my plan was to tell my board this in October we're having a workshop where I'm giving them a lot of information we've been surveying our people where are you coming from where are you going to what time are you coming and going why are you taking the train are you sorry that you're taking we're asking them a lot of question and we're trying to let our board know and our community one of those is we surveyed every word there are within a mile there are businesses we ask our community outreach get off and ask those do you see a difference ever since smart trainers come and many of the businesses have seen substantial increase to their business and they say it's directly because of the smart train and the reason they say that is they can say when the train arrived and comes this group of people but I'm trying to substantiate that beyond he said she said and see how we can put that together so thank you Ms. Johnson any questions Mr. Caput yeah thank you for your report I guess with everything you've answered pretty much all the questions they're pretty they were good questions with everything there's a benefit and a burden so the benefit of course is somehow relieving some of the traffic and everything off the roads and then the the burden of course is the cost and how much it's worth for the public to get involved but you know it comes down to there's not one solution for all of the problems that we do have with traffic and people wanting to get somewhere even even widening and adding lanes and everything to the freeway is only going to benefit so many people and so many it takes so many you know some of that burden off what you're talking about is it looks similar in a way to Bart how Bart works and Bart is at the end of the year even though a lot of people are using it they're they're not in the black they're in the red right so how much in the red are is the system each year if you the fair is not paying for everything how much does percentage wise does the fair pay for the operation of what you're talking about and how much extra that you actually need from the public so by choice my board wanted to make the fair very affordable this is if you were my board that would be one of your decisions do you want to be affordable or not and remember our source of money funding comes from sales tax so when people voted for 25 cents every time they spend 100 dollars for 20 years that's where I'm getting the money the fair revenue is only 12 13 percent which is like four million and that's by design again if you're operating a train agency and bicycle you will have a steady source of income wherever that is it's not going to come from your fair box recovery you know very very few transit agencies in the nation get above 60 70 percent public service whether it's roads or local roads or local highway or bus or transit in order for it to be affordable must be subsidized and they are by your gas tax every day you pump you're subsidizing the roads here it's the sales tax that's how we get our money and then again the benefit on the burden on who it's benefiting and who the burden is on in a lower income area if somebody wants to actually commute and there there can get a job let's say let's say $14 an hour in Santa Cruz and they want to go from Watsonville is it going to be affordable for them and how much of the burden is when they're paying sales tax and everything like that when they're buying something so what I'm getting at is the I don't want to just see upper income people riding this beautiful train back and forth what percentage would you say is there been a study on how many are lower income that are actually using the service up in your area and how many people that are using it are actually going back and forth maybe with jobs or shopping and people that have a lot of money you know you're asking great questions some of them I haven't figured out how I be able to ask that question which is during a survey say so you know Mrs. Johnson can you say how much is your income it's like no I'm not going to tell you that what I can observe for you is this I don't see a lot of rich people using the train on a daily basis this is our observation I see folks who are going places your school your public works your teachers your policemen the reason I know that is we give them a special ID and other workers people who have the ability to use the train some people need their cars some people need to go where the train doesn't go but those who can I see these people who are remember most of our commuters are morning and afternoon I'm sorry right and so that's who we're seeing the biggest debate my board had which you will go through is what will that price be right and that's what we did we had a workshop then we had conversations and you adjust it if your source of revenue is from a sales tax or another source now you can as policy makers adjust your fare box recovery to what your community needs does that make sense because that is not your source of income your source of income is your sales tax parcel tax however you're gonna do it that's really that's really what it is in terms of in terms of benefits I also want to remind us what is the option of doing nothing that's that's what we need to look at what will happen to your employers who can get employees the congestion gets to a point nobody wants to go what will happen then then you start seeing stores close and stores close you see neighborhood start changing character those are the kind of things what is the cost of doing nothing those are very very substantial to the health of your county and your cities and those are the balancing act that these board members had to do that's why they came out with a quarter cent sales tax and seventy percent said go for it and you know they're not using the train many people many of our cities have they're not anywhere near the train I can tell you there are towns that they are 30 40 miles away from the nearest train they voted for it because they thought it was a big picture it was the right thing to do and I'm sure you have the same situation and my last question would be it's actually related to doing nothing we do have to do something and so whether or not you know it's it's worth it so transparency was brought up in one of the questions I think it's really important people know what they're getting it's not going to it's not perfect there's not one solution you could run the one the highway that's not going to solve it you can have rail and everything that's not going to solve some of the problems we have but it's the transparency and everything when you're actually talking to the public how transparent were you and how how many people how many workshops did you have how many neighborhood meetings did you have if you don't mind I have my chair answer it because I was on the opposite side I was at the county we were not part of smart and they went through the hard part like a lot of people I don't mind paying for something but I don't like the small print sometimes well when you said how many workshops and community meetings I rolled my eyes because I can't even count there were so many I can't even count and what we did in the second I was involved with both the first and the second sales tax measures was groups came together because they really wanted it to pass the second time so what made it successful was getting a cross-section of the whole community of both counties to work together so we had labor unions environmental organizations working together for the first time with business untrusted business organizations in the North Bay North Bay Labor Council the environmentalists had never trusted them they became co-chairs of the committee to start going out into the public there were community meetings everywhere there were neighborhood meetings they all got together and coordinated a big we couldn't run the campaign ourselves they did precinct walking for months there were meetings in every city council I mean I can't even count hundreds and so it was a big group effort the second time and so we still continue all that and the cities still get together and work you know our board is really similar to yours we have three supervisors two supervisors from each county three city council members from each county then somebody and then two from the Golda Gate Bridge District and so anyway we all work together and we're reaching out into our own areas including Napa County who has a seat and Mendocino County who have a seat and the train doesn't go to either place so they were all working together because it's like Farhad said it's a big vision that really encompasses everybody but I couldn't even count the number of meetings and that we did I'll just have a couple of questions I appreciate your remarks about reaching out and building a big coalition we found here in Santa Cruz that when we actually all work together we can accomplish a lot of our transportation goals and build the political support to be able to pass funding measures I wonder if you could say something about quiet zones in the past here in Santa Cruz when there's been excursion service there's been loud horns and I've been very disruptive to the community and it still gets talked about every time what do you do about that and on smart so federal regulations FRA requires a train to blow their horn quarter mile before they get to a crossing and continues through the crossing until they get to the other side local agencies cities and counties can go through a process whereby adding additional safety measures meaning more gates Berm and other things that FRA and California Public Utilities Commission in a field meeting with you will dictate by adding those features at your great crossings then the train will be required not to blow their horn with an exception of emergencies in Marine County we have entire county's quiet zone in Sonoma County almost 80 some percent of the county is quiet zone the parts that are not was really a bureaucratic mess that whoever did the paperwork and the application left this one out and we're now cleaning up and so for us we have quiet zone you need to address that during your early design stage and you need to reach an agreement with your jurisdictions about liability and about the cost in our case we spend 10 million dollars of smart money to make all of our 63 great crossings quiet zone ready I took a policy to my board and said you either can wait till we go operational have everybody scream at us then and go back and reconstruct or we can assume they're going to scream and let's assume they're going to ask for quiet zone sometime in the future and therefore let's do it at the beginning get it over with their direction to me was get it over with and that's what we built so those are some of those items that during your preliminary you need to address one of the other thank you for the answer one of the other questions that often gets raised here as we think about a trail next to the rail line is safety and aesthetics that we're going to have some ugly fencing or you know some kind of fencing that that'll be that'll ruin our coastal communities and there's a question of who would want to ride next to when a train's coming by what how do you separate the the train and the and the trail and do you have bike riders on the trail that you have yes we have tremendous amount of bike riders we separate them where we have room as much as 15 feet the reason we put a fence is to prevent people who are not a biker or a train and simply want a trespass and also children so the fence is a security fence if you put the right fence and the right color you won't even see it a week later because it blends in if you're you know federal regulations and your own safety regulation you don't want remember when you're building a bike path you're not building it for this professional person who knows what they're doing that bike path also can have Johnny the seven year old who's in his first week of bike and is using that so you have to have safety measures and that distance is what we use so when we have 15 feet when we don't as many feet as we can but separate we separate them by a fence for safety reasons of both and I think I saw some pictures in your presentation that that they're like 42 inches high or something correct and they did seem to blend in at least when I was looking at them the you've now been at this for a while we've been talking about it for a number of years how of what do you see about the funding do you see changes in funding that have taken place at the state level or the federal level when we started state had no money to give us they had the traditional step that you all go through and it's so little and by the time you divided between your cities and county you know you as an MPO get $10 to figure out what to do thanks to SB 1 state now frankly has more money than federal government right now we're not doing well with the federal government we're the wrong state and the wrong bay area and all the wrong projects although I have to kiss up to Washington DC because we got 21 million so I am officially kissing up but the fact is state of California right now has tremendous amount of money and they are very good at distributing it the current secretary of transportation I'm sure Kelly knows this but he's just on the Caltrans side but on the rail side and everything else side they're really stepping up and helping you they won't step up and help you when you're fighting they will step up and help you when you have a plan and commitment to do something and more united front the more opportunity I brought the secretary he came with his entire entourage and they looked at our operation facility and he said how long did it take you from beginning to end and I said 48 months and they said that's the kind of project we want to put money in so the future is bright now there is a gas tax repeal as you know that it's going on I think Californians are much smarter than falling for that because for the first time we now have five billion dollars a year that our secretary of transportation can spend on us on our infrastructure and the money is protected in June we passed proposition 69 correct which protects that money and cannot go anywhere else so state and federal through your congressional your senator assembly member start getting them involved and you'll see they tell you fine show us a united front that has been the success story for us um the last question I'll ask is the you know you have very impressive numbers for your first year of operation how has the fires affected that ridership huge huge we lost 6000 homes and they were the type of homes that were the type of riders that we were carrying they were the school teachers and the firefighters and the government employees there were no high-end homes there were some but and our ridership was going steadily up when we opened from August October 10th big dive two weeks the whole county was burning some of our stations we couldn't operate because there were no water or PG&E which my board declared free service during that time and we were just moving people and it has now bounced back and it has gone beyond when we started so I think that 600,000 we took a big jolt I don't want to jinx it but I think next year it'd be much higher and as we're adding more service and as we go to Larkspur and then those houses get rebuilt correct well I think Mr. Rackin had had a follow-up question I just want to thank you for your comments so this is a quick question but you mentioned that you're I understand that fare recovery is not the way you run a system any public transport any fact you've in private transportation system but you would you say I have 12 to 13 percent is your recovery rate the transit district board that I serve on we get most transit districts around the country between 19 and 24 percent have you found problems with funders I mean they want they want local support in order to to match what they're they're doing but if you had people tell you you should have a higher percentage of recovery there's that choice the board made about what you wanted the fares to be is that in any way limited by a concern that if you have too low recovery rate agencies are going to tell you we won't give you any money because of the riders themselves just don't pay enough you know excellent question the way we looked at it is we're a brand new service we're like a brand new business you open your doors and if you're serving a hundred dollar lunch who's going to come my board wanted to make sure that people come and try us and then feel like yeah I can do this so that was number one number two we have a lot of people who are workers who are going long distances and when you do zone we didn't want them to pay 20 30 dollars round trip it just you know the board you know they're all local they have their feeling on what is happening so it was my task to deal with those agencies and I continue having those arguments so I think for next 10 years I'm going to say we're brand new so we're still trying to figure out because we want to keep frankly my board wants to keep the rates low because we're already getting paid sales tax you know so they're already paying that now you know if you ask me I think they should be free do you know what the national what the recovery rate for rail is versus what it is for buses is there any chance I have no the reason is we're brand new every 10 15 years there is a new rail agency created in America so we're very unique the big agencies they're in the 60 70 but they're in their 40 year and 50 year you look at Bart Bart has been doing this in for 40 years and they're still figuring out do I have a parking or not you see what I mean so it's an evolving evolving for us one of the items my board will have that discussion because they told me come back after a year and look at what we charge and what others charge and my guess is they're going to continue with their philosophy we want to make the train something that our teachers can afford thanks again that's my guess I'm going to ask the commissioners to hold any additional questions so we can actually get to the public to hear some comments from them I had a question though can we can we defer that you know it's almost 20 to 12 and we have another presentation right yeah I'm not sure if Mr. Monsourin and Ms. Fudge have to leave yeah so I I'll be happy to stay since what is it million dollars speaking fee today yes so for another million so it'd be two million that's where it goes to the fare box recovery just so you know I'll be happy to stay so we when Mr. Dunder and I talked about this we were trying to figure out whether we should have both presentations and do one series of comments as you're suggesting and we're trying we were trying to figure out how to balance so we didn't confuse all the questions because we're not going to have people come up and ask a question and have Mr. Mr. Monsourin answer it you know we're going to try to take them all yeah but we're an hour and 45 minutes into his presentation it doesn't really it leaves about 20 minutes for the next presentation do you want to expedite the get a sense what yeah how many people want to ask questions or make comments raise them really high one two three four five six so I how many people ten people at the most we're going to do ten people we're going to give you a minute to ask questions or make a comment but please come forward and if you could line up that would also be helpful it actually was seven I can but as soon as I'm standing so close again I just have a quick observation back of the envelope kind of calculation for Mr. Caput I haven't looked at it in a long time but the IRS has a figure how much you can deduct for for trips you take in your car you know for medical trips or whatever which last time I looked at it was a little over 50 cents a mile so if you do a quick calculation 20 miles commute from Watsonville to Santa Cruz 50 cents a mile 54 cents that's 54 now okay let's just say 50 so that's about $10 a trip make it a round trip it's $20 a day five days a week it's $100 a week so for a month it's they're 4.3 weeks in a month so that's $430 a month for operating your car to commute during work the smart monthly pass was only $200 it's way cheaper so for the low income people they're better off even though it sounds like it's an expensive fare Nancy Billisich Watsonville City Council I just want to say this gives me hope I am I was so ecstatic to hear this I didn't know if I was going to be able to make it here I'm glad I did and I think they've done an excellent job and we have hope for the future this is a great plan and it's something we can implement here we'll have to figure it out but we can do it thank you yeah and I would just want to recognize that there have been five council members here at least that I've counted so or so that's very impressive that Watsonville cares so much about this thank you hello I'm Greg Becker from south of La Selva thank you Mr. Mansourian for coming down my question to you is how have you reacted to the LBG LPG tank cars adjacent to your tracks and if SB 1029 will mitigate that thank you Monucone Ague City of Santa Cruz I guess we'll just direct questions to you and maybe they'll make it back to Mr. Mansourian at some point that's the plan I think all right then I've got six questions here the first is there any way you could do this without passing the quarter cent sales tax would the state give you funds without that sales tax from SB 1 to what is the cost of a single train set I believe it's around seven million dollars for a two-car train set I was based on some numbers on Wikipedia but so the cost of a single train set and then the capacity of that train set Commissioner Rockin was good to point out the cost of an electric bus so I'd like to know the comparable for the train set three what is the max capacity of the entire system we hear that there's great demand for increased capacity later hours given that it's a single track with force was that all me yeah we'll only give it a minute oh got it and could you do this with 30% of the population thanks good morning good morning Steve Trujillo candidate for Nancy Seat actually running for city council the important part of all this is if you want to get newcomers new customers new clients you have to keep the price down remember survey came out KSBW Dismentioned Santa Cruz second greatest county the second second worst county for poverty in California after LA county we also have to recognize that no most people in Watsonville aren't rich Marin County has a lot more money than we do nonetheless we need to do we need to pass the quarter send sales tax and we need to do something similar to this because widening Highway 1 is not an option and we need both rail and trail to start the Watsonville renaissance thank you good morning good morning Mark Mercedes-Miller Santa Cruz I just have a few quick questions for Farhad what is the average length miles traveled a rider travels on smart number two have you met or exceeded your goals for ridership and for revenue you know you've painted a pretty rosy picture what what are the three biggest most common complaints smart receives and you know are there other ways to fund train systems than sales taxes thank you Robert Stevens Aptos and I wanted to say I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing about smart I'm a big supporter of trains but I think you have to use the right tool and the right application and I'm not sure our county population warrants this and the one question I have is I believe your ridership per train is about 88 people if you divide 3000 by 34 and I just want to verify that that's correct about 88 people per train I just would like to go back to the thing that we opened with I think it's appropriate that this series began with Jared Walker who put that lens on this about freedom and opportunity and my question is we did hear about the smart train being comfortable for those who can afford to ride it certainly if you can afford a cup of coffee a beer a glass of wine it's lovely I've been on it it's a great ride but it's helping a very small portion of the population I'd like to know what the demographics of that population is beyond kind of the hypothetical stories we heard this morning and I don't know that those answers are here today but I would like to know how this train in Santa Cruz County would create new freedom and opportunity for the people who need it most because quite honestly it doesn't sound like it would and while a big infrastructure project is something that a public agency really likes and while building a train may employ people for a certain amount of time if it's not a long-term solution it's really not where we should be thinking thank you Michael St. Aptos a quick question that came up last night which way do you think was best you guys have taken on the whole operation of this as a basically an RTC type situation or is it better the way we're doing it bringing in an operator as a progressive rail thank you just another question if you were a kid working at the board walking you lived in Watsonville would you rather pay two bucks to get on the metro to get up to work or would you rather pay 23 bucks or whatever a number that they're talking about good morning again Lowell Hurst Mayor of Watsonville I was one of the lucky people that got to ride this smart train and I don't I'm not saying it's going to work here or not going to work here but one of the things that was remarkable to me was that I visited with grandmothers and senior citizens on the train and they unanimously said I couldn't go see my grandkids if it wasn't for this train I wouldn't be able to see my relatives because I can't afford to live close to the city and I also sat next to a developmentally disabled adult on the train who worked had a job but lived in a group home and he said he would not be able as a handicapped individual he would not be able to hold a job or visit his friends or even have a social life if it wasn't for the smart train and so those are just two practical applications that I saw personally thank you thank you Mr. Hernandez I think you're going to be the last speaker on this we only have one minute I prepared seven minutes of just kidding the person sitting next to you will appreciate the other six you know there's a you know every time I talk to folks here in Watsonville you know they tell me that they work in Santa Cruz and different areas in Capitola a lot of young people you know as mentioned before about Santa Cruz beach boardwalk I got two nieces that actually worked there from different sides of the family that actually worked there and I just sold one of them my old car so that they can get to work from Watsonville to the boardwalk it's one more car that's going to be added on the freeway I've talked to different workers from different places like Santa Cruz nutritionals that they say about 60 percent of their workforces from Watsonville women that worked in the canaries here before in districts one and two people that work in the county buildings both ocean street emeline a lot of employees here in Watsonville from UC Santa Cruz you see about 20 vans Dominican hospital and not to mention every single restaurant that's in Santa Cruz majority of the people that work as bus boys dishwashers line cooks are predominantly from Watsonville and every hotel as well not to mention 2,000 cars less greenhouse gas thank you thank you sorry to cut you off so I appreciate the comments we're gonna we want to move on to our next presentation I want to also just thank Mayor fudge for being here I appreciate someone with local knowledge and the leadership skills that you clearly shown in Windsor have been a strong advocate for this and hearing your perspective even briefly here is helpful you and I've had a chance to talk before and enjoy the rest of your stay here in Santa Cruz John can we ask that the questions since there we'll have them on tape could we have them answered possibly