And welcome to the November 15th special meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. Could we start with a roll call? Commissioner Rotkin, Commissioner Chase, Commissioner Botthorff, Commissioner McPherson, Commissioner Leopold. Here. Commissioner Alternate Mulherrn, Commissioner Alternate Schifrin, Commissioner Caput. Here. Commissioner Kaufman-Gomez. Present. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Bertrand. Here. Commissioner Lowe. Here. So now we will move to oral communications. There's just a couple things that I'll, oh, one thing I'll say at the beginning. We do have interpretation services tonight. Mr. Mendez, can you make it an announcement? Certainly. Thank you. So we're going to move to oral communications. I, we're here to hear testimony tonight about the Unified Corridor Investment Study, which covers almost all of our transportation options. So I'm going to ask that you think about that at your oral communication because you will get a chance. The other thing that I want to say at the beginning of this evening, and I'll try to remind us as we move through the evening, is people are very passionate about transportation in Santa Cruz County. And passion for policy is a great thing. But I want to remind us that we also live in a small town. And that the person you yell at or call names or accuse of some conspiracy is the person you're going to see at the supermarket on the street or in your house of worship. So we've been really good if we think about these things beforehand and we, and we think about our measured tone and sticking to the issues instead of personal attacks. And if we have a problem with that, I'll, I'll stop the meeting. But I just wanted to say at the beginning because I want to make sure that we have a good meeting where we hear people's opinion. So good evening, Mr. Nelson. Yes. I'm here. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Leopold, and I second that sentiment. My name is Jack Nelson. And so kind commissioners and RTC staff and members of the public, we're here with Santa Cruz County, bathed in smoke from out of control fires that the scientists are telling us we can look forward to more of because we're changing the climate. It's getting hotter and drier. We're having more drought.  But I think at this point with that smoke in the air, I wonder if we can stop and contemplate what the climate scientist told us on October 8th of this year, the international, I'm sorry, intergovernmental panel on climate change issued a special report advising us that humanity as a whole needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions dramatically by 45 percent by 2030 if we wish to avoid catastrophic levels of change in our climate by the year 2040. They're calling for transformation. So I'm posing that as a kind of backdrop to your considerations because we in this county are still growing our greenhouse gas emissions and transportation. That's what the California Air Resources Board has told us. We're doing pretty well on the power grid. We're reducing emissions there, but in transportation, we're still growing them. So could there be an agency in this county that would propose to grow infrastructure that grows those emissions? There could. Or could there be an agency in this county that, hence in the opposite direction, and tells the residents of this county that's what we need to do for the sake and the future of humanity? An agency that does the former and grows those emissions I would propose is the most dangerous organization in this county. An agency that does the other and leads us to reductions would be, would have its place in history as doing the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Gina Wheeler, and I'm here representing the North Coast farmers and property owners. I'm representing them because they are harvesting right now. So they're a little busy. Our members have a long history in this community dating back to the 1800s. And we have farmed the lands on the north coast of Santa Cruz County since the early 1900s, back when the cement plant was built in 1906. We take pride in our heritage as members of Santa Cruz County and the work we have done to protect the coastline as a beautiful resource for our community. We believe building a world-class trail along the north coast will not only help ensure the sustainment of this valuable resource, but it will provide a great opportunity for more members of our community to visit this great resource. So I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask you to just stop there, not because we don't want to hear, but we will be talking about trail, trail only, rail with trail as part of tonight's discussion about the unified corridor study. I don't have much more to go. All right, well, then it will let you finish, but I won't let you come back and testify during that portion of the meeting. Okay. Our families have operated and owned properties on the north coast of Santa Cruz County when the first railroad tracks were laid to support the new cement plant. We are excited how these old unused railroad tracks can become a great opportunity for our community as a world-class trail. Did you even realize that the location of the railroad tracks today is different than when they were, when they were first built? This interesting fact was discovered during the environmental impact report, the EIR analysis. In fact, this turned out to be somewhat of an issue with developing a trail plan because the property owned by the RTC is not actually in the same location of the original purchase by the railroad company. We are hopeful that this does not complicate the plans to move forward with a world-class trail. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission is our neighbor. We want to support their plans to develop a world-class trail. Having said that, we want to express to the board that we have major concerns with how RTC staff is performing their work, specifically their efforts to work collaboratively with their neighbors and community members. Simply put, they have been unwilling to work with us on a win-win solution. We have provided all the inputs and comments requested upon us at these public meetings, and we have clearly stated to them that our goal is to get a world-class trail built by the 2020 deadline. We have actively requested to meet with them to come to an agreement on a plan that works for all of us. If you think about it, we are the first community members who are being asked to work with RTC staff on building the trail. And today, we say the RTC staff has not been a good neighbor. The EIR has many assessments and charts. Based on the EIR, our proposed alternative plan meets all the environmental requirements and will meet the 2020 deadline. We are committed to working with the RTC on getting the trail built and are hopeful that our supportive trail plan that meets all our needs. Thank you. We're just asking for support and collaboration. Thank you. Mr. Peoples, if you're going to come up and talk about the same thing, I'm going to be a lot more strict with future speakers. I want to give you a chance for everybody to speak. Thank you. Brain People's Trail Now. I'm here to talk about what the color of my hat represents. It's a pink hat. It means collaboration at working with the community. It's finding transportation solutions as a team. My blue hat represents the ocean, our community, and the need for transportation that will help save our ocean and our resources. My green hat represents many things, climate change, stopping the emissions, using the corridor now. But it also means money. We don't have any money. We are land rich, cash poor. Understand the limitations. We don't want to waste our tax dollars. That's what the green hat represents. It also represents economic benefits. The coastal corridor will be a game changer as a trail. The quality of life of our community will benefit immensely. The red hat has many representations. It's people are frustrated with traffic. We're frustrated. We're mad. We're angry. Traffic is gridlock. We're seeing failure by this group, this organization. We're in a transportation crisis. My black and white hat represents the facts, the cost to build, the build a substandard trail we understand now, the actuals. The eight years that our corridor has set as a vacant lot. It shows the facts that we're in gridlock. That is a fact. It's a fact. Every day, people are suffering from our transportation problem. We are suffering. People are dying. Cyclists are dying and getting injured. That's a fact. My black hat is actually the most popular hat. It's actually the most popular hat with the kids. And that's what this hat's about is the kids. Protecting them, protecting the planet, building a transportation plan that they can afford, that can be used today, and that meets the solutions today now. No more. We need to use the corridor today. Thank you very much. Mr. Peoples, I think that you abuse the oral communications, so you will not be speaking as part of the Unified Corridor Study. Mr. Pico, before you come up here, I am going to stop you if you start speaking about things that are covered by the Unified Corridor Study. I'm trying. No, no, no, I have a quick question. I'm giving you a warning. I'm going to honor it. No, the money that it goes into what we're paying into the train today. It's not about the Unified Corridor Study. You have our support, John. I don't mind waiting. Why don't you wait until we get to the item, and then we'll speak. If someone wants to speak about something that has to do with transportation that doesn't involve the Unified Corridor Study and the elements of it, I recognize the council member from Watsonville. Libra Hernandez, Watson City Council member. Speaking of personal attacks and fake news, I don't know if you guys got the opportunity to get some fictitious cartoons on here, but I urge you to take a look at it. That said, I'm here to invite people to our downtown Watsonville Complete Streets plan. We have several sessions that we're going to be having. The first one that we're going to be, or actually the second one is going to be December 11th. It's going to be here in the community room from 5 to 7 PM. It's a project input. We want people to tell us and let us know how they want to see their downtown and the two parallel streets, Rodriguez and Brennan, slash Union. So we're going to talk about different things like bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure that we want there, the speed assessment, maybe how fast cars travel on these routes, everything that we can to make our streets safer for our community. So I encourage people here to come to that workshop, especially people from South County, from Watsonville that either live or work here in Watsonville to give their input to make our streets safer here in Watsonville. And then the following one after that is going to be in our last winter council meeting coming up in December as well. So I encourage everyone to come out here and give some input to our downtown. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I just want to recognize that when we come here to the Watsonville Chambers, there is always multiple council members and others who come and care about transportation and speak about it. And it's a real sign of leadership in the county that when we come to the city, that the others who don't serve on this commission also come out and speak. So thank you for sharing that, Mr. Hernandez. Thank you, I'll mind. I'm Jack Carroll. I'll play by the rules that you know where I live. It's my opinion that there isn't a good countywide planning authority that covers all the jurisdictions that we have within the county. And the affordable housing crisis has kind of called that to my attention, the question about where are we going to put housing. And tangentially, it's connected to what the RTC does. So I would ask you to put on an agenda at some point here, an item to perhaps gather some folks in the community to discuss what's an appropriate planning authority to take the big county picture. As much as I disagree with the RTC, I think you're probably the best bet for it. So that's my two cents. Thank you. There is the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, which is a tri-county metropolitan planning organization. We're not going to get into a discourse about it, but I'd be happy to share information about that and what they do around housing. Is there anyone else about oral communications? Then we'll close our communication and I'll see if there's any additions or deletions to the agenda. Yes, good evening, Mr. Chairman. We have several handouts all for item four. We have a handout. We have add-on pages, another handout, and replacement pages. And the one handout that's addressed to the RTC board members, I apologize. This was sent to you yesterday attached to an email and I neglected to sign this copy, but it is for me. But it's the exact same thing that you received in your email yesterday. That's all I have. Thank you. Not yet. So we have no items on our consent agenda, so we'll move to our one item on our regular agenda, which is the Unified Quarter Investment Study, the draft-preferred scenario. Good evening, Ms. Dicar. Good evening, Chair, commissioners and members of the public. I'm Ginger Dicar. I'm a senior transportation planner here at the Regional Transportation Commission and I'm project manager from the Unified Quarter Investment Study. I've had many people say, boy, I'm so glad I'm not in your shoes. The item to be presented tonight is the draft-preferred scenario of the Unified Quarter Investment Study. I see a lot of familiar faces here tonight, so I sincerely doubt anyone in this room does not know the objectives of this study, but for protocol, I'm going to repeat it. The objective of the Unified Quarter Study is to identify transportation investments for walk, bike, transit, and automobiles that on Highway 1, SoCal, Avenue, and Drive, and Freedom Boulevard, and the rail right of way. With the purchase of the rail line in 2012, how best can we use the rail right of way in combination with Highway 1 and SoCal Freedom, the parallel corridors, to address the transportation needs of the Santa Cruz County community? I do want to mention that the funding for this study has come from Caltrans through their Sustainable Communities Transportation Planning Grant and from local voter approved measure defunds. The recommendation before you tonight is to review and provide input on the second draft Unified Quarter Investment Study, step two, scenario analysis and preferred scenario, and consider approval of the preferred scenario as shown in Attachment 1 at the December 6, 2018 Regional Transportation Commission meeting. RTC staff has been working very closely with consulting firms, Kimbley Horn, and Strategic Economics, who have been hired to perform this study. The presentation to you tonight will be a team effort. I'll get things started, and then we'll hand it off to the consultant team. Frederick Venture from Kimbley Horn is here. He's a transportation engineer and project manager of the Unified Carter Study from the consultant team end, and we'll be presenting the preferred scenario. We also have Darryl de Pencier, who will present the results of the performance measure analysis for the preferred scenario. Mike Schmidt from Kimbley Horn, as well as Derek Braun from Strategic Economics are also here to help answer any questions. I do want to take one moment to acknowledge Grace Blakesley from the RTC staff, who has been putting an incredible amount of time and effort into this study with a lot of passion and dedication. The approach that has been taken to recommend a preferred scenario for this corridor has had a number of steps as shown here on this slide. We've developed the goals, the performance measures to determine how well those goals are advanced, the project's list was determined, and a scenario analysis was performed. I want to emphasize that this performance-based scenario analysis approach is a recommended process from the Federal Highway Administration, as well as the Federal Transit Administration, and that it is used by transportation planning agencies all over the country. The Unified Corridor Study does build upon work that has been done over many years, including the Highway 1 Draft Environmental Impact Report, the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail Master Plan and Environmental Impact Report, the Rail Feasibility Study, regional transportation planning documents, as well as at the RTC and with AMBAG, as well as numerous decisions over the last few decades from the many people who have served on this commission. There is a document included in the staff report. It's an exhibit A of Attachment 1 that shows the many decisions made by commissioners starting in the early 1990s to purchase the rail line, to build a trail so as not to preclude rail, and to accept funds from the California Transportation Commission for purchase of the rail line on the condition that RTC provide passenger rail service. The goals of the study are to evaluate safety, reliability and efficiency, environment and health, economic vitality, and equitable access. There has been an immense amount of outreach for this study. Over 40 outreach activities have occurred since this project first started in 2012, when funding first became available from Caltrans. The travel demand model was developed first for Santa Cruz County in order to be able to have the tools to perform this study. The study itself, to evaluate the three routes in the corridor, started in earnest in July or in early 2017. And every key milestone for the project, input from the public, community organization, stakeholders, RTC advisory committees was solicited, and approval was provided by the Regional Transportation Commission. We heard and learned a lot from the public and our partners on priority transportation needs. Just since this draft report was brought to this commission, there has been two public workshops brought to this commission on October 4th. So there has been two public workshops, a stakeholder meeting, a set of focus group meetings with community organizations, both in Santa Cruz and in Watsonville. Staff has presented the unified Carter study results in all four city councils and the Metro, as well as the three RTC advisory committees. Comments received are included in the packet or linked, provided to an online document. And staff has provided answers to questions that we have been receiving from emails from our community through a frequently asked question document that we regularly update and provide online. Based on this input received, we have updated the draft report as provided to you here today, which includes a recommendation for the preferred scenario. And with that, I'd like to hand this over to Frederick Venture, who will be providing you the information about the preferred scenario. Thank you, Ginger. Good evening, commissioners and the public. It's an honor for us to present to you this preferred scenario. I think you will call back with a step two analysis that we presented. There were a lot of numbers in the format of performance measures, a lot of questions asked. So after that, performance measures that were analyzed plus extensive community input and thinking about what the needs are for the community, we have developed this preferred scenario. The slide shows a 2035 preferred scenario that we're going to talk a little bit about tonight, but also a beyond 2035 scenario. And we're going to discuss that in a little bit more detail. What we know is that there's an immediate need. We've heard that many, many times for to relieve the transportation demand in the county, along Highway 1, along the local arterials in all manners that people need mobility and for bikes, for pedestrians on the bus system. So what we did was we developed a system based on an input that really focuses on how can we retain potential capacity in the future, but do it in the best way manner to sustain the environment, but also provide the opportunity for any future planning organization not to end anything at 2035, but perhaps go beyond that. The way of the future is definitely transit. Transit is the way in which we're going to commute in the future. Yes, cars will always be there, but we will see moat shifts happening. We can only the widen the freeway so much and by that time what is going to happen and also greenhouse gas emissions we need to reduce as well. So in this alternative, we have specific focus on especially transit and some freeway improvements that will also provide capacity for transit but also benefit single occupancy vehicles, heavy investment in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and then ultimately retaining that right of way for the rail corridor, having exclusive right of way for public transit in the future is the biggest benefit that this county has in terms of moving people and that moving of people will continue to grow in the future. In the selection factors, equity is extremely important. We need to serve the needs of most of the people in this county and that's what this study does that provide the benefits to serve most of those needs. The reliability and efficiency, that's about how fast can I do this? How long do I need to wait at a signal? I think through this in areas that we've selected we give all the options for all the people that need to commute to improve their conditions of travel, have a faster travel speed, reduce your VMT impacts as much as possible, reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. We know from the economic study that as we improve transportation, we improve economy. It is a known fact any study out there will show that on all levels. Pedestrian movement, bicycle movement, transit movement and people movement in single occupancy vehicles. Staying sensitive to the environment and the health is very important for us. So how we sustain our environment moving forward and safety we've heard again tonight as well. Safety is major impact for our community and I think the options that we've selected enhance the safety moving forward. This is a graphic presentation of the corridor in between Watsonville and Santa Cruz and the bit north to Davenport. If you think about, and if you just look at this in the roadway infrastructure, I think the preferred scenario projects has tried to optimize reasonably and within performance measures criteria every single right of way or real estate that you have for transportation. That's what you're gonna see in the projects. I'm gonna walk through every individual project on this map to and talk you through it and then see how it all comes together in the end. So the corridor without any of the improvements. First up we have the auxiliary lanes. So auxiliary lanes between SoCal and State Park. You have funding for some measure D project. It's out for design right now. That's an immediate effect. You can build this probably by 2022, 2023, 24. This could be in place. The next option is the bus on shoulder. So bus on shoulder will run from Watsonville through to the metro in the center in Santa Cruz. Between Watsonville and approximately San Andreas Road is where we will have the bus mixed with cars on the mixed flow lanes on the freeway because that's where we have fast speeds right now. After that the bus can start moving on the shoulder and then the moment the auxiliary lanes are in place the bus will then share the auxiliary lanes and move faster than what the cars are moving. The next project up is the extension of the auxiliary lane project from State Park all the way to San Andreas to provide additional capacity on the freeway. So we know that's where the bottlenecks are now. Starts basically at San Andreas all the way through to SoCal.  Let's focus on how to relieve congestion for that bit of the freeway. Of course the bus on shoulder can start using those auxiliary lanes as well. The moment it opens up. Ramp metering. So ramp metering is a mechanism by which we maintain capacity and flow of traffic on the freeway much longer than it does now. If you think about it, where does the congestion start? Immediately when you have an on ramp and more vehicles join the freeway and then what is capacity for ramp metering will help manage that. So you extend the life of flow on the traffic much longer. So ramp metering projects will be implemented very soon after the auxiliary lane projects are in. The HOV lanes on the freeway is a substantial improvement and provide additional capacity for faster service number one. Number two is you can have your express bus service or go on the HOV lanes or you enhance the transit services and you get vehicles out of the mixed flow lanes that help take up that capacity on the HOV lanes as well. So we recommend the HOV lanes and those will extend from San Andreas all the way through to Cicil Morissi. We heard about the Monterey Bay Scenic Trail flagship project all along Monterey Bay. There are extensive efforts on the way to construct this trail and do it in a really, really great manner exactly as it's envisioned in your MBSST plan and as it is envisioned in this unified corridor investment study. We recommend that the trail be constructed next to the rail facility on the corridor. There's already sections that are in construction. We recommend that prioritization of segments be conducted and that this implementation happen as soon as possible. We hear loud and clear that the trail along this corridor will be an excellent asset for Santa Cruz and we 100% agree with that finding. Connecting to the bicycle routes. This will be a trunk route for all pedestrian and bicycle trips in the county within Watsonville and also within Santa Cruz. This is not, that's one of the key elements of this whole rail corridor that you have in this exclusive multimodal facility that we want to implement in the future is how do we establish that last mile, first mile trips? That is important for us because our trip starts at our front door and it ends at our door at our work. It doesn't start on the rail corridor. So also then the recommendation is that these lines that lead, the feeder lines that extend to the bicycle trail and the pedestrian trail be implemented as vigorous as you implement the trail itself. The passenger rail service is a recommendation for many reasons but primarily because you have the right of way, you have the RTC acquired the right of way, implement the rail service, also with the extension services, get the stations in place, that last mile, first mile service to the rail station. The train will run all the way from Parro station to Santa Cruz and freight service will run with this and then the excursion trail, the excursion rail that we analyze was a bit from north of Santa Cruz into Davenport. Of course excursion services could be implemented along the entire corridor. You will see on this map that there's this link to the Parro station and we're gonna talk a little bit later about the rail plan specifically, how important that is and that was one of our main criteria for recommending that you do continue with a rail service along the rail corridor because of all the opportunities especially in funding, the statewide support for it, linkage to other cities in Monterey Bay and to the entire rail system. Great rail service can be provided on the service line as well with the passenger service line so we can provide that service all the way from Davenport through Watsonville to Parro station. Bicycles, this county is up ahead there in terms of bicycle trips, bicycle usage, you've got your jump bikes, we heard loud and clear from the community, we love our bikes, make it better for us, make it safer for us. So along, so Cal and Freedom, we are recommending prioritization of the implementation of buffered and protected bike lanes. These will vary, you have severe right of way constraints in many locations, access locations, driveways, so where you can fit the type of facility in that goes with the land use associated to it and with the travel speeds. We recommend that you move forward with bicycle lanes along that entire corridor, it will serve local needs, especially local needs and local travel and again, that supplemental service to the trail on the rail right of way as well. Get back to our ultimate map, again, every single corridor that you see here that is a people mover in terms of single occupancy vehicles, trail, pedestrian and transit, we believe has been optimized in how we present the performance measures in terms of the corridor study and how we should move forward with a plan. Some key considerations that I think we should be aware of, a preservation of the rail right of way, rail banking has numerous challenges, there's in the staff report an extensive write up about that. The cost of converting back to rail is likely a local burden that is not anticipated right now and it could come in. Failure to implement the rail service will likely require repayment to the CTC. I think there's a letter that George has as well from the CTC about that. We believe that this service and the map and the three corridors and the projects that we've selected provides the widest array of transportation options between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. It's there for the entire community, it solves needs from both traveling northbound and people traveling southbound. These projects will generate for you the maximum number of funding available. We heard there's never enough money. You are so dependent on getting grant funding from everything that's out there. The rail plan doesn't have a funding plan with it yet, there will be extensive funding sources from the FTA on rail services. We are very consistent with the 2018 rail plan. We've heard, can you please look at it? So this is the map from the rail plan. If you look at this, there will be a high-speed rail service coming, going through Gilroy up into the Bay Area, going east to the Central Valley, that's the red line. TAMSI is currently planning a passenger rail service from Gilroy to Salinas and that service will also extend further north into the Bay Area. It will go through Paro Station. They thinking implementation of that rail service could be done by 2021, 2023. It is just around the corner. What the rail plan shows is that there's connectivity between Santa Cruz and Monterey for rail service, but more efficiently also Santa Cruz to Paro, where that station is currently being designed to be improved. The rail plan, we believe, if implemented can increase ridership on the rail service from what's forecasted in the plan right now because of this interconnectivity between a rail system. This is, don't underestimate the value and the importance of this rail plan and the vision of it for us to move people in the future. Anywhere you go now, in any urban area, roads are fully built out. Roads are occupied 100%. The peaks are stretching from six in the morning until 10 in the morning, four, five hours, long exactly like your experience on Highway 1. We need to focus on transit as that people mover of the future. So what we've also heard is, please give concern to implementation. We need projects now. We cannot wait for them until 2035. So this table, what we've tried to do and with reasonable assumptions for design, environmental considerations, SIGWA, NEPA, funding, we've broken the projects down into three phases. The near term we call through 2027. The midterm is through 2035 and then beyond 2035 is what we call longer term projects. So you will see with the Highway 1 projects, the bus on shoulders start immediately with that. It's a people mover. It will complement the, it will be complemented through the construction of the auxiliary lanes. It will carry through with the extension of the auxiliary lanes through to 2025, probably earlier. The auxiliary lanes, of course, the measure D funded. We think they could be implemented 2027 is probably a little late 2024, 2023. Very reasonable if everything goes well. The additional section beyond that and after 2027. The metering of the ramps will most probably happen midterm. It's going to take quite a bit of local improvements. So all ramps will be widened. They're gonna need some right away. So it takes a bit of time to implement those. And then the interchange improvements and occupancy vehicle lanes is a longer term project. So people may ask, wow, why is this only 2035? Can we please not do it by 2022? So it's not just the HOV lanes and the widening of the freeway. Number one is if you build the auxiliary lanes, it's important to go build them in the ultimate location so that as you move forward, you immediately have all the right away that you need to add the HOV lanes. That's number one. So make sure that happens in the auxiliary lane project. Your interchanges, every interchange will undergo significant improvements as the HOV lanes are constructed. And that's what's taking up so much time. I believe that if you go look at the EIR, there is segmentation of the freeway improvements is planned. You cannot do the whole freeway on one go because nobody will be able to move. So if you plan it from a construction perspective, you can have some sort of mobility during construction on the freeway as well. So funding, a very big concern. There's no funding in place. It's of course a very expensive project. So Cal Avenue and Freedom Projects, the Buffett bike lanes and intersection improvements, those are extremely important. We recommend that every intersection that you ever see improved on any of these corridors, make sure that they prioritize bikes, beds and transit before they prioritize cars. Again, you want the buses to move faster than the cars. How do you get them moving faster on so Cal? You give them bus priority at the intersection. How do you do that? You provide the jump lane for that bus through the intersection. Make sure that bikes have the safety. Make sure that the green lanes are there for the bikes. In the rail right of way, start immediately with the Viking pedestrian trail. And there's great momentum going. There's going to be a lot of funding. SB1 was not repealed. We're going to see so much money coming out of that. Make sure that you tap into that part of money, spend it on the trail, get those sections and those segments built that the people are asking for. The Capitola Tressel, we recommend that the Capitola Tressel be replaced. It is, of course, a momentous task. At the moment I say that everybody's like stepping, taking three steps back because how are you going to do it? But that is a huge element of the success of this trail and the rail corridor. Local transit with inter-regional connections. Remember we showed that you have a trunk line. You have a trunk line in the rail. You have a trunk line in the rail and the trail element. How do you connect people to that to last mile and first mile services? And then, of course, the freight and rail excursion will happen as you implement and improve the rail tracks on the rail corridor as well. I'm going to hand it over. So what we did is this was the infrastructure project portion. We took the performance measures and we actually reorganized the data that you saw the last time to actually reflect the performance measures and that was going to walk you through those results. Good evening, commissioners and members of the public. So yeah, we're going to talk about the numbers a little bit and how that compares. So if you remember the scenarios, the four that we presented last time, we're going to repeat that information here so you can see it, but we're going to talk about how the preferred scenario compares to those numbers and then a look at that beyond 2035 value once we get the HOV lanes installed. So if we start with the safety, if you recall, we had basically two tiers of scenarios for safety when we added transit and we added a lot of the smaller safety improvements, that's where we got the biggest bang for the buck and then the scenarios where we added the HOV lane, we had that same reduction in crashes, but we also had a corresponding increase in traffic volumes along the freeway which kind of brought it back up. So when we look at our preferred scenario, that's where we have taken all of those elements that reduce the crashes the most. So at the 2035 level, we have pretty much our optimal crash reduction and then when we add the HOV lane, we pretty much back where we were before. So in terms of safety, the risk of driving is still lower, but you have more driving. So there's a few more crashes out on the roads. In terms of the auto speeds, again, it's pretty similar. So our preferred scenario, we're adding a lot of transit, we're adding a lot of bike and ped infrastructure, we're seeing that mode shift away from the automobile. So our auto speeds are not necessarily increasing a lot on the highway until we get to the beyond 2035 when we add the HOV lane. And then we did get a lot of comments about how to interpret this, the county-wide speed versus what does that really mean on the highway. So we've actually added some information here from the Highway 1 EIR that Caltrans did. So they basically evaluated that once we get the HOV lane in, you'll be seeing speeds of about 40 miles an hour on the Highway 1, as opposed to where we would predict without those HOV lanes, it's closer to 21, which is a pretty big difference for those who commute on there every day. And that was enough to move the whole county-wide average as we saw in the previous. So peak hour transit travel time, again, we had some different scenarios out there before. We really saw that the rail was one of the faster ways to get between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. So our preferred scenario does include that. So we have that option. And then the bus on shoulder doesn't operate quite as quickly as the rail, but it is also another pretty fast way to get there. So with both of those in operation, we provide a lot of access to different parts of the county in between. Gives people a lot of options for how to move forward. We're treating SoCal Freedom a lot more like a local route. So the existing services remain there for shorter distance trips, but we're really taking that trunk transit service off of SoCal Freedom and putting it on to SR1 in the rail right of way. And then once the HOV lane would go in, that bus on shoulder would shift to the express version of the bus that runs down the HOV lane and becomes faster again. So we have a really good fast set of transit that's very competitive with the automobile. In terms of our mode split, so when we look at this, this is another one that was a little bit hard to tell how to evaluate how different these scenarios were. So we move from about 83% of people using vehicles to get around to our preferred scenario is 79.4. So just put that in a little bit of context, that would represent over 150,000 trips at the end of the year. So it's a pretty big amount of change that you see when you make those things, even though the percentages look pretty small. And then again, when we have the HOV lane beyond 2035, we see a tiny shift back into the vehicles, but because we have such a robust transit infrastructure, we have all those bike and ped facilities, we're not getting anywhere near back up to the no build. We're still getting a pretty good mode shift out of the cars. So in terms of vehicle miles traveled, again, our preferred 2035 scenario with the transit, the bike pad, we're seeing that our VMT is pretty competitive with some of the best scenarios we evaluated of the four, but recognizing the need for reducing the highway one bottleneck, adding the HOV lane eventually, we'll bring that VMT a little bit back up, but it's a more efficient VMT because it's a moving faster speed, it'll produce less GHG for each mile traveled. So that is a good option. And you can see that here. So when you look at the greenhouse gas emissions on our preferred scenario, we're pretty much the same give or take as where we were with scenario B, which was the best performing one on our previous analysis, adding the HOV lane adds a little bit, but not to the same level that you would think from the VMT change. So in terms of the impact and the environment of construction, the rail and the trail is where the largest set of those impacts happen. So that would happen in the preferred scenario, little over 40 miles of that construction would need to be dealing with some environmental sensitivities. If you recall that includes wetlands, areas of seismic vulnerability, erosion potential, even things like noise. There was a whole series of factors we looked at. Once we had the HOV lane in, because we've already done the auxiliary lanes and those other things, the construction impacts are actually pretty low for environmental impact at that level. When we looked at the ability of minorities and low income households to benefit from these, just a reminder in the county right now about 14% of households classify there in what would call transportation disadvantaged. So the preferred scenario really does prioritize the improvements that have the highest benefit to the transportation disadvantaged households. So we see a pretty good benefit there when we add the HOV lane in that didn't have quite as much, but we're still pretty significantly above that 14% threshold for benefit to the transportation disadvantaged households. So I think there's good solid representation of that. So the cost of the scenarios, this alternative does take a lot of the higher cost items because that's what gets us the most results. So it's almost $950 million total cost to construct the preferred scenario. The known and anticipated funding sources were able to cover roughly half of that. So this definitely demonstrates the need for additional local funding to be able to realize all these plans to be able to get them constructed. Similarly for operations and maintenance, we can see that the preferred scenario actually has one of the best outcomes in terms of available funding. Rail has a better fair box capture ratio than bus does and since we're not enhancing the SoCal Freedom Bus service as well in this one, we can actually bring that cost down. And then you may have noted from the state rail plan if service was implemented in a similar fashion to what is anticipated there with service between Santa Cruz and Monterey, you'd actually see a higher ridership, lower cost and even a better fare recovery which could close that gap even further. So I'm just gonna pass it to Ginger. I just wanted to re-emphasize the staff recommendation before you tonight. It is to review and provide input on the second draft unified corridor investment study, the step two scenario analysis and preferred scenario and consider approval of the preferred scenario as shown in attachment one at the December 6th Regional Transportation Commission meeting. A decision by the RTC on December 6th on the preferred scenario will provide a clear policy decision that will allow staff to continue to move projects forward and to seek funding. Kimberly Horn presented the timeframe for project completion, but I just wanted to re-emphasize the recommendation from the UCS project team for the near term approach. Here on the slide under the rail right of way, the recommendation is to continue the development of the trail from Davenport to Watsonville along the rail right of way next to the tracks, pursue passenger rail service by developing a preliminary design and conducting environmental review. The environmental review includes an analysis of alternatives and is the next step required to be eligible for funding. Continue to work with Metro on an integrated transit network for Santa Cruz County that includes both rail and bus. For the Highway One, staff is working to go to construction on the SoCal to 41st auxiliary lanes in 2020 as part of Measure D. Aim is to utilize Measure D funds as matching funds to compete for and secure state and federal competitive grant funds for construction of the auxiliary lanes. Also for Highway One, continue to work with Metro and Caltrans on the bus on shoulders, integrate bus on shoulders with the construction of the auxiliary lanes. And for SoCal and Freedom, work with local jurisdictions to construct Bufford and protect the bike lanes along SoCal Drive and Freedom Boulevard while feasible and work with local jurisdictions to prioritize pedestrian and bicycle improvements to intersections. With that, we'd be happy to take questions and comments. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation and all the work you've put into holding public sessions, focus groups and responding to the many questions we've had and putting together the frequently asked questions on the website. I think it's been helpful in terms of sharing information. It's, you've worked very hard and the staff has worked very hard to try to answer the questions that have come from the public on a very complicated study. So I really want to express the appreciation of the commission for your work on this. I want to get a sense of the commission. I'm interested in hearing from the public before we start doing questions and everything. I'll take that. But then after Mr. Mulhern, we're going to go to the public and we're going to then we'll come back to the commission for questions and comments. Thank you. Very quickly on the goals and performance measures under the economic vitality segment of it, the staff preferred 2035 scenarios says 948 million and then beyond 2035 is 1.28 billion. Is the 1.28 billion in addition to the 948 million or is that the total of like? That is the total. The total. So thank you. Okay, I think we held this meeting at night in order to encourage participation from the public and so I want to prioritize that. And I'd like people to come forward and make their comments. I do want to remind everyone that we're going to be focused on the issues in front of us around the unified court or investment study. If I want to stay away from personal tax, tax on staff or conspiracy theories, let's try to keep to this very meaty document. Please, Mr. Long. Longers of public tax. No attacks. I come unarmed. No, before you start, they will get three minutes. This is designed to hear from the public this evening so I don't want to cut it short. My name's Rick Longinati and I'm with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. And I wanted to say that we're educating ourselves in our group about induced travel but it's a simple concept actually. It's something that we all actually have experienced. Anybody over 30 years old has experienced the expansion of a freeway near you in which cars have recongested that freeway and people have studied that and they've given it the name of induced travel. So when you make it easier temporarily to drive then more people decide to make trips. People decide to relocate in our situation here. If we make the Highway 1 easier for a while to travel on because we add a lane or we do ramp metering, people will start to think, wow, it's not so bad to drive from my job in Silicon Valley to Watsonville and maybe I can relocate there and that's how induced travel happens and it's a fact that this is not disputed by anybody in academic circles and but it's not well understood in our community and I think particularly for people who are stuck on the highway who live in Watsonville or live in Aptus, it's not well understood because kind of the sort of lay person's idea, well, if we add a lane, it'll be all better, right? Well, no, it won't be all right. But I'm here to say that the people that do understand it are the last generation of people who've been educated as transportation professionals and urban planners and those are the people that are sitting in the Transportation Commission staff and they're gonna be evaluating grants from this agency and if we come to them, and by the way, the Congested Corridors Program grant which is the SB1 funded program, they're asking for comprehensive corridor plans now. We come forward with a comprehensive corridor plan that says, you know what, we're aiming to double the width of our highway here in Santa Cruz. That'll go in the waste basket because there are a lot more communities that are more obviously transit priority than that, okay? So we can end up with nothing because we wanna please everybody. Pleasing everybody in this case means, yeah, we'll give something to the transit and for the people who are stuck on the highway, we'll tell them, we'll go to HOV after 2035 and in the meantime, we're gonna spend over 200 million on ramp metering and auxiliary lanes that will not benefit them. So this is a question of integrity. It's telling people the truth, especially people, you folks who represent people in Watsonville, it's telling them the inconvenient truth, really. Mr. Dandero asked Susan Hannity, professor from UC Davis, the obvious question, what do we do for those people who are stuck on the highway and she said, give them alternatives. We've got potential occurrence on the rail corridor, transit on the rail corridor. We've got a bus on shoulder which doesn't need auxiliary lanes to get accomplished. And we've got bus service on Soquel, thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners, my name's Dave Wright. I live in Sunset Beach, which is essentially part of Watsonville, it's the unincorporated part of the county. And I work in Santa Cruz. So in the mornings, I leave my house at 6.30. It's not too bad, it's about half an hour, get to Harvey West Park at about seven o'clock. But when I leave my office at four in the afternoon, every single day, it takes me an hour or an hour and a quarter or an hour and a half to get home every single day. If there were a train available, I would take it. And so would thousands of other people in the south part of the county that have terrible, costly, time-consuming commutes. That's why I really support what the staff is recommending which is option B. And I'm hoping that you'll approve option B as well. I think that another part of option B that to me at least is attractive is that it helps disadvantaged populations. The Sentinel reported a few weeks ago that we have a high poverty rate in the county. There's a lot of people here living near the poverty line. And the Federal Transportation Administration says that the number two expense for most households is transportation. This is one of the few opportunities that a government body has to help bring our cost of living down here. Not that much you can do about housing, but you can do something about transportation and giving us transit, giving us passenger rail service would be a significant step in that direction. Finally, I just wanna say this is what voters asked for. We approve Prop 116, we approve Measure D. All the surveys that I've seen of people participating with the RTC have said we want passenger rail. Please give it to us.  I really don't think they represent the majority of people who really do need options to this traffic. Finally, I just wanna say I think the staff and the consultants have done a great job that they have really given it public an opportunity to participate in this process. So I appreciate that as well. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Stanley Socolow, I live in the Santa Cruz area. I'm confused about one issue. The slides today showed nothing that would provide improved bus service on the SoCal Freedom Corridor. Neither in the projects of the preferred scenario, nor in the timeframe slides. But in the narrative description of the projects, it said bus on SoCal would have a queue jumping and transit signal priority were feasible. Well, it's feasible in a lot of places and it's even more feasible if you provide time of day, no parking along congested areas of SoCal Drive and SoCal Avenue so that the buses can use that as a bypass lane. So there's a lot of feasibility there, very little cost putting up some signs and painting the curb. But in the presentation by the consultant, he said there would be queue jumping in TSP. So I don't know what the intention is. Is there gonna be improvements to the bus service on SoCal or not? Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, I'm Jack Nelson. I'm a retired land use planner and tonight I'm wearing a little hat as the chair of the local Sierra Club's Transportation Committee. The Sierra Club here in Santa Cruz County has just around 4,000 members countywide. And the Sierra Club among big green organizations is a democratic organization. We have national elections for the national board. We have local elections for the local board and we also vote on the positions we take. So the Sierra Club has been considering this unified corridor study. And we have a letter in the works, it's not done yet but I've been authorized to say tonight the Sierra Club supports scenario B with some concerns and those would be detailed in the letter that's forthcoming. Among the concerns about scenario B would be inclusion of auto capacity increasing projects. We don't support that. But on the other hand, we really see scenario B as opening the door to a new paradigm in transportation which is to use the rail corridor as a multimodal transportation corridor. That is just so awesome. Another aspect that Rick Longinati touched on is induced travel, we get that. We understand that induced travel destroys auto capacity expansions within not many years. If you spend the money to put that out there the people will find it and use it and you're back to square one on congestion. So I haven't said anything about the preferred scenario. And now I think I'll just speak as myself. I don't see that as a modified scenario B. I see it as a whole new kind of late in the game scenario that is kind of a patch together scenario. It wasn't approved among the proposed scenarios and I don't read in the staff report that it's been analyzed in the same way. It sounds like staff and the consultants did some estimating to guess at how it would perform. I don't see it performing superior to scenario B. So that's my comments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Hello. Thanks for the holding this event. My name is Bill Le Bon. I've been a transportation activist in Santa Cruz for about 25 years. And I just wanna say how it just seems so obvious you know like you're stuck on highway one gridlock and there's this train corridor that's just empty sitting there. It was built before the freeway. It was built a long time ago and it's just been sitting there empty for so long. It just seems so obvious. If you know anything about trains and how many people they can move. You know I was up in Sonoma County for a couple of years and where they got the smart train and I rode it recently and here you are zipping along this train. It's packed full and you're going right by the freeway and the freeway's gridlock. Nobody's moving. And there's a bike trail and there's like one or two people on a bike trail but the people who are moving are the people on the train and there's a lot of them. That train was packed. You know hardly I rode the whole bike trail or big chunk of it about 10 miles of it and I saw like five cyclists but the train was packed and it was going back and forth and it was just blowing by all the cars stuck in gridlock. So to me it just seems like so obvious and I just wish you'd put the train and make that the number one priority because that's how we're really going to move people quickly, fast so thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening and thank you for taking public input and congratulations to the RDSD staff on completing the unified corridor study. I'm actually going to disagree with that previous comment that you just heard. We've heard a lot this evening. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Liz Whiteley. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz. We've heard a lot this evening about the importance of public transit and how that should play a role in the future and I absolutely agree. But when you look at the results of the study and specifically the performance dashboard which is the comparison of the four scenarios you'll see that the first performance measure that's considered is the mode share. So the breakdown of car travel, single occupancy cars, HOV lane cars, transit, biking, walking, et cetera like what comprises all of the transportation modes. And even in scenario B which is the preferred scenario here transit is only 6% of the projected mode share. So as incredible as public transit is and how I would love to see it used more frequently if we're only projecting 6% of transit mode share is coming from a bus and a train combined all of our public transit investment. It feels to me like a train is extremely expensive, extremely controversial, has low projected ridership in that the real investment is in biking and walking infrastructure. And again, you can see that in the projected mode shares. So for scenario A, it's just over 15% for biking and walking combined whereas transit is projected at 4.1%. And then when you look at scenario B, transit only increases to 6% of mode share. And again, biking and walking is just over 15%. So I think what the data is showing us and what the projections show us is that biking and walking is where we can make some worthwhile investments in that a train really is not gonna solve the transportation crisis. And I think we really need to have a reality check as we consider how to move forward. So I would just encourage the commissioners to look at that mode share breakdown and be thoughtful as you consider your preferred scenario. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Anderson Shepherd. I'm a home owner and resident in Santa Cruz. My training is as a scientist and I have a strong belief in the importance of real data. So I was anticipating release of this phase two of the UCS. Let's see, after reading it though, I was discouraged to find it lacked any kind of analysis or discussion regarding the impacts that a heavy gauge diesel train would have on neighborhoods through which it passed. Using county GIS data, I did some spatial analyses, all of which I'd be more than happy to share total data, all the spreadsheets and everything to anyone who's interested in order to look at the spatial relationship between the rail corridor and residential properties throughout the county. I was startled but honestly not surprised to learn that for instance of the three and a half thousand land parcels county wide that are within 250 feet, less than a football field of the railroad tracks, 89% are residential. And that's not saying that each parcel is one person. Many of those parcels are actually multi-family residential apartment buildings, just residential parcels. In districts one and two, Commissioner Leopold, this number's even higher. And in much of the county people's homes are even closer to the tracks than that. In Chairman Leopold's district for instance, 93% of the parcels that are within 50 feet of the tracks, essentially adjacent to the tracks, are residential parcels. So this rail corridor doesn't follow a freeway or predominantly scored along industrial or commercial properties as do CalTrain and SMART and many other railroads around the nation. For the vast majority of its length, our corridor cuts straight through residential neighborhoods. The intimate proximity of the rail corridor to people's homes is a major reason why a trail only option is so ideal. And yet another reason why the commuter train would be so impactful. I just hope that this information will give you a little bit of pause and reason to reconsider. Hastely pushing forward on a plan that would put diesel trains thundering through your constituents' backyards. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, I'm Brett Garrett from Santa Cruz. Just a comment to start with, I don't know why the preferred scenario is being described as scenario B. If you look at it, and especially if you look at it beyond 2035, it is scenario E. All the choices are the same, the results are the same, the beyond 2535 scenario is E. Another thing, I've read Barrow Emerson's report that he produced for tomorrow's Metro agenda and I agree heartily with his perspective. I support and appreciate the idea of a formal alternatives analysis process. I think Ginger mentioned that's in the works. I support it and I would add that it should not just be for bus and train, the alternatives that are studied must include personal rapid transit, also known as automated transit networks. Basically the same thing, pod cars on a dedicated guideway, a better transportation system as shown in this report right here that I obtained for Santa Cruz County because I think it's important to study this technology. It uses a lot less energy per passenger than conventional transit and that's a key to solving global warming. As an elevated system, it achieves climate adaptation. This report here is very conservative in its approach emphasizing tried and true technology that's already being proven in service. The modeling approach that's in the report is described in the report and I urge you to have Kimley Horne validate these results. They're very important. It appears that a PRT system covering both the rail corridor and Soquel and Avenue and Drive all together would attract five or more times as many passengers as the train. This is big. It can't just be swept under the rug. It needs to be looked into. The key is providing transportation that is often more convenient than driving. The system runs on demand so it's not like you have to wait for the three o'clock bus. You just arrive at the station and go, fly over traffic, never stuck in traffic. That's how you get people riding transit instead of driving their cars. The report concludes that PRT or ATN would produce better results than scenario B for all 13 of the UCS criteria. It's at least worth investigating and seeing if your consultants can back that up. Whatever decision is made for the unified corridor study, please keep the door open for innovative approaches and alternative technology such as PRT. It's what the world needs. It's something we can do here in Santa Cruz County. And it can be a form of rail so it might meet the easement requirements for the rail corridor. I know there's some funding that's supposed to be contingent on passenger rail. This might meet those requirements. I don't know. I don't know if it meets the legal goals of providing rail services, but I think it might. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Hello, I'm Dana Bagja and it's good to be seeing you again. I'd like to underscore what Brett just said about the PRT. I like to think of it as public transit rather than personal small pods. I'd like to see bigger pods, bus size pods. I'd like to talk particularly about the rail corridor. I live near the Santa Cruz Wharf and I can remember some years ago I had a friend come in a sailboat from Santa Cruz, San Diego to... A harbor? No, where you're from? Greg. What's a mill? I'm from Capitola. From Capitola, right. All right, sorry. I just went blank. Okay, so she came to Capitola. And then on a sailboat then she was gonna come see me. So how did she come see me? She didn't have a car. She looked at the map and she saw that the rail line was the most convenient, the most direct route to the wharf. So it makes a lot of sense. Someone just said it's been there for a long time. But I do think that it has problems when you talk about passenger rail at this point because of sea level risings, storm surges, coastal erosion. I think that it is not a good investment for long term. And I would advocate that we consider elevated light rail, pods, something that would be much more cost effective. It would be what I would put my money on. They're automated pods, so you don't have to pay for the drivers. It's powered by solar. It uses, there's no carbon emissions or methane emissions to make the energy for these pods. So it just makes a lot of sense for the future. And I was encouraged to see that you will be looking at alternatives for rail. I think it's a good route. We just need to be up a little higher instead of being so vulnerable on the ground. Maybe it's good for rail for freight, but not for passengers. So I'd like for you to please consider that when you look at the future. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Johanna Lighthill and I'm a Aptos resident of 34 years. I'm really nervous here, so bear with me. I read the dashboard and I thought it was a bit oversimplified and the charts were a bit misleading. So I dove into the report and my eyes glazed over because of these giant numbers and a lot of data. And I became concerned with some inconsistencies. I thought that the auxiliary lane project included the reconstruction of the Aptos bridges, even though there are some scenarios that don't include rail. And so I wrote to the staff about that. It was changed and it was modified by $44 million. And that was a concern to me that was I the only person that noticed that? And that was a red flag. I would like people to check the tables for even addition problems in the projects from A to B. There's a lot of changes going on. The real reason I'm here is because I really love my community and I've lived here for a long time in Aptos and where I live, it's only a half a mile from Aptos Village and it's being rebuilt, Rancho del Mar. But there's no way for me to walk there. And I'm separated because there's four lanes of highway, there's Soquel Drive, streets, local street traffic, a rail corridor, two bridges, fences, guardrails, retaining walls, and a creek. And I know that they are proposing the trail but access to the trail will be limited because if it's built with the rail, there are six foot fences that will be dividing them and I think the access might be limited. So when you move forward, I hope that you will consider the pass. I know that they put a study together about 20 years ago, the major transportation investment study. Okay, I think they concluded that bus is the way to go. And I hope that you'll consider that option too as part of transit, we definitely need transit. I hope you look back to when they designed Highway One. What a great idea. Join Watsonville to Santa Cruz, but by doing that, they bisected communities and people are not able to move in between the communities and that's what I'm dealing with right now. And I'm sure that now they're building bridges to join Chanticleer again and apparently more Vista, but millions of dollars and 70 years later is a long time. So I hope that as you move forward, you'll prioritize people over projects and function over funding and that's it, thank you. Thank you, and you did a good job here. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners, thank you. My name is Peter Stanger. I think we're looking, the way I understood it, maybe 3,500 people would be taking the train daily and the investment would be $635 million. And it just seems to me that that's gonna be a lot of the transportation funding from the County of Santa Cruz for many years to come. And people here in South County and I live in Las Alva Beach, we're choking on traffic and we have been for the last 10 years while the rail corridor sat empty. It would have been real nice if we could have used it more actively for bicycles and pedestrians instead of just letting it sit. But that wasn't the way it was handled. One would think, gee, I could get to Santa Cruz a little bit quicker. I would bicycle in from Las Alva Beach. I heard someone else say they came in from sunset. They wanted to train. I would get from Las Alva to downtown Santa Cruz. It would take me an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. And with e-bikes, I can only imagine it would be even quicker, especially if the rail corridor was wide enough for bicyclists, pedestrians and e-bikes. And that's what I would advocate. Also, when you talk about using the rail corridor for trains, for example, the gentleman in Sunset Beach, well, where's he gonna get on the trains?  Is he gonna drive into Watsonville and park on the streets there? I doubt if they'll even have a station in Las Alva Beach. We don't even have bus service in Las Alva Beach. We're so starved for transit funds. But wait, we have $635 million to spend on a train. And given the last estimates for, let's say, segment seven of the rail trail, I think the estimate came in at one number and then all the bids are coming in three times as high. So how can we trust the estimates that are coming our way? I would urge this commission to use the rail corridor for active transportation. I heard the study and they were saying that they would buffer the bike lanes along Soquel Drive. I'm just wondering to myself, how are you gonna buffer the bike lane in Aptos Village? I mean, I'm a little bit aware of the complete streets here in Watsonville. They would never have buffered bike lanes because they want parking for the businesses. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Gloria Gehring and I'm here at the request for public input that came from the Registered Pajoronian. My preference of the scenarios is the scenario B with auxiliary lanes and freight in Watsonville. I don't have a comment about the preferred plan, which I just heard this evening, but I did have a concern about the PRT light being excluded from that as that could bring options. I was glad to hear the projected implementation because I know meetings I've attended, it almost seems like people are saying nothing's gonna happen until 2035. So I was glad to see the phased implementation on that. And I just wanna say thanks to the RTC and all the community that works on this so hard. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm David Van Brink. I live in Santa Cruz City. First, congratulations on that first little piece in Santa Cruz for the bridge widening. That's the very first part of the trail that's been put to construction if I understand rightly. So that's wonderful. I'd like to talk for a moment about locomotive hypersensitivity. This is a condition in which the person experiences distress at the proximity of rail to vehicle transportation. Perhaps they even believe that they can detect it from quite a long way away. This isn't new at all. This is a poster from New York about 100 years ago. I'm sorry, it's very small, but it says things like locomotive railroad, dreadful casualty, outrage, and Warren's mother's to look out for their children. More recently, in a 2003 report from local historian Ross Eric Gibson. This is something you put together. I'm sure some of you have seen this. It's some history of the railroads and some suggestions for how to use our transit corridor for rail to transportation. And he's pretty casual about it. He does mention a bit of self care for those with hypersensitivity. He says, those who do not like trains should not buy houses next to train tracks. Fear can make us illogical. We can create complex systems of rationalizations when we're acting out of fear. Systems of a fictional arithmetic and so on. Perhaps hypersensitivity fear of locomotives is a proxy for something else. Fear can be contagious. We have a billion years of evolution that tells us better safe than sorry. I've heard some people say that the RTC proposal is to run hundreds of trains carrying hazardous materials from Davenport to Watsonville. And in my mind, I'm thinking, wait, can that be true? So we're programmed to respond to these things. So we should of course be compassionate to those afflicted with locomotive hypersensitivity. They're acting out of fear, but we mustn't let that irrational hypersensitivity poison our process. Please stick to the schedule that you've been working on and let's all move forward. Thanks for all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for your patience, Mr. Pico. No, my name's Kerry Pico. I live in Rio del Mar, Aptos, however you want it. When I first got involved with this, by the way, somebody asked me to come. I actually would not have come without that. So I, in a way. When I first got involved around 2014 before the feasibility study came out, I got a preview at a government invitation only. I don't know how I got into the invitation part, but when I went to that meeting, everybody there seemed to have their hand out going, which piece of the pie am I gonna get? And everybody was gonna get everything. And I remember asking $133 million and 200 people from Watsonville. This doesn't make sense to me. And when I left that meeting, I said, and I want a pink pony too. And I have never forgotten that comment. And so now when I look at the scenarios, we want everything. And by the way, I don't have, actually I don't care if it's a trail, trained, I really don't care which scenario. We are 270,000 people in this county and we have to be able to afford what we have. And with all these different scenarios, it's not just one pink pony they're asking for. They're asking for a whole corral of pink ponies. So one thing I wanna talk about the expenses. We keep talking about how we have to have a train so we don't pay back the $10.2 million, by the way. I resent the $11 million. We've already spent $12.4 million unrelated to the purchase of the corridor. I've gone through the financial audits of the RTC and took all the stuff related to the rail. Okay, it doesn't include the trail. That's 12.4. That means we've spent an average of 1.2 million every year on maintaining upkeep, improving the train tracks for a private company. We've also committed with this progressive rail thing another 16 million, 15 million. If you add it up over the next 10 years, the total including the last 10 years is $28.9 million, okay. So we're not saving our $11 million, $10.2, excuse me. You've got me saying it, back to that. And we have limited funding. We are $270,000. What can we get for what we can do? And back to the person who said about the trail, I'm the one who pointed out that it's gonna cost three to four times the cost based on the original bids, construction bids. That's $405 to $500 million. We're not gonna get there. If it's that much, I don't wanna trail. In fact, I barely don't even wanna trail if it's $100 million. So we really need to figure out what can we use our money for. You can pick whatever scenario. I'm not asking for anyone. That's why I was confused about where I should speak. I'm not telling you how to vote. I'm just saying we have a limited amount of funds and I haven't changed the story from the beginning. Okay, thank you very much. And I have handouts for you guys if you'd like to see the summary. Great, thank you. Hi, my name's Brad Mills, I live in Freedom. I'm not very good at speaking but that's why the rail company didn't work last time. There's a eagle that lives out there where I'm talking about too. The bald eagle, you guys might know it, from 2012 out of Penal Lake. The male got electrocuted. Well, she came back out to Harkinsloo. I have a picture of the first nest. I have pictures. I'd like everybody to see the pictures, but yeah. Bald eagle, she's beautiful. I named her Freedom too. That's a better picture. This is the first time I've seen them together. This is back like in April. April 1st, I found the nest. This is a picture of her today. She's still out there. They had construction going on out there for the water district and they put in a thing. Well, they had a bunch of earth movers and stuff going on back there. And it scared the eagle. She's scared, she's over on the tree. This is a picture of the nest for 1918. Watsonville, man, this is the only eagle in Watsonville, Santa Cruz County. She's feeding, see that little white thing to her right? That's the baby's head when it was two weeks old. I've been doing this for eight months now. Right, here's a picture of the nest at long distance. I never did get close to them until after the eagle was fledged. And I heard all that noise going on out there. And I love these eagles.  It's real hard to see. Here's the papa and here's the baby. Nests, sharks. Hey, this is what the nest looked like out there. There's three different nests. That's one, that's two, that was the first nest. That was her first nest. And where they're doing that construction, right in the middle of that and that. She's over on this tree now. She's over there just about every day. Go down Harkinsley Road and come to the end of the road and look at that tree and she's right there, right there. She's been that way since the construction has been out there and she's scared. Like I said, I don't know what's going on about the trails, but I love riding bicycles. And you know, I love Watsonville, too. But Santa Cruz got bike trails and stuff in town. I mean, it's not safe to ride a bike in Watsonville. There's no bike lanes. You know, is there? Really? I mean, to drive out to Pinot Lake on a bike. Sorry. Thank you, then thank you for sharing your photos. Good evening. Good evening, Chairman Leopold and commissioners. My name is Bud Colligan and I'm a Live Oak resident. Greenway has provided a separate, more quantitative analysis to you yesterday for the UCS. And so I hope you've all received that. Today, I want to urge you to wait for the next executive director to have an opportunity to review the UCS and provide his opinion. No organization, private, nonprofit, or government would adopt a 17-year strategy with a new ED starting next month without his input. Barrow Emerson's memo regarding the possible cannibalization of metro funding and the need for an alternatives analysis on the corridor is a warning to commissioners to fully understand what is being said before you proceed. In the RTC memo that was distributed to you last night, it sounds the alarm about paying back the 11, or as Kerry said, the 10.2 million in funding. This is not new. Soliciting a letter from the CTC does not create more urgency for all of you as our commissioners. The notion that the RTC is being forced to sit on its hands waiting for a decision on the unified quarter study is also not correct. Any delays in the North Coast and Santa Cruz sections of the corridor are either because of surveying on the North Coast property that was not done according to federal requirements or the significant cost overruns on segment 7A. It's not because of delays caused by this process. There's a lot of good information in the UCS, and we should take the time to use it effectively to prioritize projects that deliver the most bang for the buck. As many emails, I think Liz pointed out very correctly, and her email to you have indicated. I hope you'll read them all. We just had elections, and elections have implications. And the people of Capitola, for example, despite what one gentleman said, that it's a small group who oppose scenario B, in fact, the people of Capitola voted against the RTC plan. And there will be different city council members in all the cities and new representatives on the RTC. Usually a decision this important, government bodies wait for the newly elected representatives to take their place. A couple months delay to give the new ED an opportunity to review the current staff work would be prudent, and in almost any organization in the country would be considered best practice. I urge you to take the time necessary to do this right and earn the confidence of the public in your decision, whatever it is. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Jack Carroll, District 1. Let's talk money. All the scenarios require asking tax payers for a lot more money, at least a quarter of a billion dollars. And that assumes that a half a billion dollars can be found from existing government sources. SB1 has significant money for highway improvements, not trains. The California Rail Plan, which budgets for railroad projects through the year 2040, has no money at all for a Watsonville to Santa Cruz train. The UCIS is incorrect about this. That impacts the federal 50% matching funds requirement. Measure D actually prohibits using any of its money for a new train. And it provides only $40 million specifically for corridor improvements. That's enough for bicycles, but not for trains. You have to ask Santa Cruz taxpayers for a half billion dollars just to run the first diesel train on those tracks and make that a billion dollars for the first electric train on the tracks. And that's for a freight train with no customers. We have no money for a train. I like trains. In New York, I ride the metro north into the city. But we have no New York City in Santa Cruz County. People are spread out here, and buses are more efficient moving them. Achieve your equitable access goal by making all the metro buses free. It would cost $10 million a year. We can afford that. Compare free buses to the predicted $15 round trip fare from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, plus the bus fare at both ends, plus the regressive sales tax increase required to fund all this. That doesn't sound equitable to me. Fund more school buses and get parents off the roads at rush hour. There have already been two votes against your train proposal. Capital is Measure L and a county-wide Measure D. And the vote on Measure H should tell you that more taxes are a very hard sell. Will you listen to the voters? Very little of the investment benefits come from the train, just most of the expense. Our county will not approve a half billion dollars of new taxes for a diesel freight train with no customers and a holiday train to nowhere. Drop any new train from your plans. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share my perspective. And thank you for holding this meeting here in Watsonville. My name is Nishan Mutafian. I live in Watsonville. Grew up here and recently moved back to the area with my wife and my two boys. We have been really constrained by the traffic on the way to Santa Cruz. We rarely go there. And we don't use, unfortunately, Aptos in Santa Cruz businesses because we just can't get there and back. So we definitely feel the urgency. And I appreciate all your efforts. I just speak to you from the perspective of someone who lives in Watsonville. Despite the urgency and how much I want to improve transit, I have a sense that this seems quite rushed. I'm particularly concerned about the train. I don't see that the advantages of that proposal in any of the options, single use or carpool vehicles is at a minimum 80% of the travel modes. And so I see that as being the urgency. The train seems impractical, complicated, really rife with a lot of tensions from a number of different groups and really expensive. And above all, I feel that it's a distraction that is not really going to serve my family or the people who live in Watsonville. That's my sense on it. I really urge and I don't see from the reports that I read, I don't see the advantages clearly laid out or distinct in any way. But yet it seems very clear that that train element of any proposal that it's in is going to cost a lot of money and be really complicated. So I urge the group to continue to think about this and please take however much time as is needed to review or gather more data if need be. My position is I encourage you to leave the train outside of this. I happen to be in favor of the rail and the bike lane and pedestrian trail. But above all, I think the urgency is around the highway. That's where by far the majority of our traffic is going to be. And that's what my family is going to care most about. So definitely have that concern about the train. And I urge you to take as much time as you need to before we dive into something that will be so costly and complicated. And in my opinion, will be a distraction from what we really need as Watsonville residents. So again, thank you for the time. And thank you again for holding the meeting here to make it easier for people with families to come and share opinions. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. I think I know most of you. I'm Robert Stevens from Aptos. I wanted to echo that gentleman's comments. Most of us use the freeway and drive cars right now. So that's where we need to put up a lot of our energy. I also wanted to thank the man that brought the pictures of the Eagles. That section of the trail from Buena Vista to Watsonville is known as the miracle mile for most birders, just because it contains so many birds. I wanted to say tonight, I'm not here just speaking for myself, but I'm speaking for Ted Burke, Gail Ortiz, Robert Quinn, Randy Re-Pass, William Mal, a lot of well-known people in our community that are in the business community or in politics, and the 10,000 people that signed our petition and the voters of Capitola that approved Measure L. And I really had hoped, I had supported Measure D, and really hoped for a fair and open study. But I'm afraid that that's not the case so much. I think it's been just sort of stay the course. And that's been the projection since this whole study began. So I'm a little disappointed in that. And I do think George has done a very good job in presenting this, winding it along, and bringing it to this point. And so now there will be a big push to finish this before December, because we want to wrap this up and move it on. And this is the same staff that advised you to go with Iowa Pacific. And now you will have Progressive to follow in those footsteps. And good luck with that. I don't understand your fear of rail banking and that you don't trust the citizens, that if they had a rail bank corridor and we're using it now instead of running tourist trains or freight trains, that the citizens might like that. And God forbid that happened, because we really don't want to listen to the citizens. And I think it's something that could be shared. There could be lots of multimodal uses of that corridor, lots of experimentation. But as long as we save those rails, that won't happen. For you metro members, you're never going to get buses on that corridor without rail banking. That's a fact. So just forget buses. And also I think you should be concerned that the train will cannibalize metro budget. So when you vote, keep those two facts in mind. And the Watsonville members, I'm just so surprised at how easily you gave up your trail. I look at all the trails on the west side of town and the pride people have. And you have an opportunity with Wetlands Watch, the Pajaro Valley High School, right there. And you just gave that up in a heartbeat. And you need your freeway widened, but I don't think that's going to happen. It has happened on the west side of town. I drive the fish hook. I see the improvements, but I don't think we're going to get any here, because we won't have the money. Now, I did see oil tankers on my way here. Progressive has said they've removed them, but on your way home, you can see the oil tankers going over our wetlands. So, Scots Valley and San Lorenzo Valley. Oh, okay. Thank you. Well, anyhow, it went on too long. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Carina McFarlane from Live Oak, and I'm going to read. So in 40 years time, in 2058, I'll be 102. And I can't say what mode of transport I'll be on. McNamara, 40 years ago, said he was on the wrong side of history. We don't want us to be on the wrong side of history with the rail corridor. These meetings in relation to the unified corridor study, especially with regard to rail corridor use, have been puzzling and confounding to me to the point that I was galvanized to reach out to Center for Wise Democracy founder Jim Ruff and ask, would he come down from Washington State to Santa Cruz to help us hold a space for we the people, a dynamic facilitation on the rail corridor with the intention that all corners of the county might understand the issues and what is at stake. The first step in this process just happened over Veterans Weekend. We're not done by any means, we've only just started, but what we do know is that we want the rail corridor opened up as a viable transit corridor expeditiously, as in how fast can we all be on that transit corridor as a conduit to and from our important life and work essential destinations with modes of transport that work for all and exclude none. As I understand it, the train is a lovely idea along a coastal train track for anyone who first pauses long enough to muse on lovely things. But dig deeper and discover the train does not serve Santa Cruz County community complex, being constrained to the tracks and fencing us in and out, it's restrictive and constrictive, most especially along this coastal rail corridor where our communities now live their lives with easy access to and fro. With a train comes a fence, split neighborhoods, and leaves us with substandard intermittent sidebar path for anything that isn't a train. And we don't have to muddy the waters with the Watsonville freight train service, that's not a question. My understanding of what can happen on the rail corridor is an electric shuttle. IBM Oli is but one example, 12-person shuttle. Electric shuttle is like a mini train carriage. It ferries commuters and other riders in the rain, serves disabled, serves the physically challenged, serves the elderly. It's a rapid transit option to suit Santa Cruz County terrain. No new retaining walls, no new bridges. It would be the shuttle ferry cousin to the jump bike infrastructure. These compact self-drive shuttles with the ability to jump on and off the corridor, up to Cabrillo, up to Dominican, give folk south and north county far greater accessibility than any train would. To speak to bikes and who bikes? My husband grew up in New York, Long Island. He says adults didn't ride bikes, only kids. That's the classmate. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Piat Cannon from Ecology Action. I'd like to thank staff and the consultants for their work on this study. It's a lot of good data there. And Ecology Action would like to say that in terms of the study, we look at it through the lens of an environmental group and the environmental issue of the day is climate change. And so we would ask the commission to do as much to prioritize funding for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And as the study shows, really the biggest greenhouse gas emission minimizer is through electrification of transportation. The no build option gets you 27% reduction in greenhouse gas. Emissions just from a cleaner fuel source for the vehicles that we use today, mainly passenger cars and trucks. So to emphasize as much as you can in this study, I know that's not the focus, but electrification of transportation from passenger cars, incentives in education to transit and even to freight. And then also to emphasize active transportation, biking and walking. The consultants said today that, they were looking at biking and walking in terms of not just on the rail quarter, not just on Salk Hill, but also the connections between those two. And it'd be great to have that codified in the study because I don't see it specifically, I don't see it detailed in terms of what connections would be made possibly and how much budget. And this is an investment study, so it's good to have a budget for that. So you can have the connection between the rail trail and the rest of the corridor study area to see how those improvements could happen. And also to detail further, Soquel Avenue and Drive Freedom Boulevard protected bike lanes. Because there is a huge difference between physical barrier between someone on a bike and car traffic versus paint on the pavement. And studies have shown that the people that can bike, they're physically able, they live near their destinations, their common destinations, they're just too fearful to ride a bike in empathy traffic by giving them something that separates them from car traffic gets them on bikes and walking to bikes in this protected bike lanes example. So, and then also in terms of what scenarios ecology action, we looked at scenario B as a preferred scenario. But once again with the emphasis on greenhouse gas reductions, getting people out of signal agency vehicle cars. The woman before me, I think painted somewhat of a vision of the future. And that's what we need to think about too. There's a lot of things in this study that are gonna be changed in the next 10, 20, 30 years due to technology. And so jump bikes is a good example of private sector working with the public sector and providing a mobility choice that is sustainable for residents of Santa Cruz. So hopefully there's enough flexibility in those plans to look at those technologies that are coming on board and how they can steer them correctly. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Anna Kammer and I live in the city of Watsonville. I'm here to ask you to please support the preferred scenario. It's a balanced plan that supports a multimodal approach to the transportation needs of the entire county. A lot of the people that have been up here have been from North County and living here in South County, I'm very involved in my community. And I've talked to a lot of people. I live on the Clifford corridor for the buses. I walk downtown all the time. I ride my bike all over. And I know that pretty much everybody I've talked to is in South County in Watsonville. Area is really supportive of having a train. You should see their faces when you say there's a possibility of having, using that corridor with a train, some kind of transit and people's eyes light up. So county residents, especially those in South County would greatly benefit from the variety of transportation options outlined in the preferred scenario that you have been presented with tonight. Transit on the rail line is an important part of not only our internal county transportation system, but also the future connection to the Pajaro station, which then connects to the entire rail system throughout the state. So I haven't heard that talked about from anybody that has been up here tonight. And I think that that's a really, our branch line connects with, will connect with the Pajaro station, which will be opening three years. And so for us to have that opportunity would be really great. I also want to advocate for improving our bicycle infrastructure, because it would make this form of active transport safer and more attractive to a wider audience of the public. Protected bike lanes are in along major corridors do make people feel safer. I've ridden them in many other cities and it does, I mean, I'm a very experienced cyclist, so I will ride wherever, but protected bike lanes really make that mode of transportation an option for a lot more people. And it also improving our bicycle infrastructure also supports the vision zero goals that were adopted by the Watsonville city council earlier this year. And I'm not sure Santa Cruz city council has adopted those vision zero goals yet, but they are looking at that as well. So in conclusion, we have this chance to be part of the transportation solution for the entire county. I would like to ask you to please approve the preferred scenario as it is. I think that it serves the greatest share of the population regardless of age, mobility, or area of residence. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Charlie Wilcox. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz. I'm an employer of people in Santa Cruz in Capitola and in Aptos-Seacliff. First time I met Mr. Dondaro, he was pitching Measure D and was speaking to the rail and I was kinda liked about it when I first thought of the ideas. It seemed like it made a lot of sense. When the first economic feasibility study came out, I just quickly ran some numbers and it didn't make a lot of sense to me then and I sort of thought maybe I was making some bad assumptions and I've waited and got more information and gotten more into those details, which I'll speak to in a second, but what I would really like the commissioners to think about as they go into this decision-making process, there's a few simple questions that really need to be answered. This is a lot of complicated stuff, but at the end of the day, there's some really just basic questions. I think there are a lot of concerns with the way the study was conducted. It was using 2010 standards at a time when we hadn't heard of Tesla, we hadn't heard of Uber. No one was thinking about automated driving. These factors make a tremendous change potentially to how we think about transportation. My young employees, which is like 75 or 80% of my employees are under the age of 22, they don't think about cars. You guys are thinking about our future. Those guys are our future. Cars is not where they wanna be, but ride shares, convenient easy technology that gets them past that last mile, so they don't have to make up that last mile is really important to them and there's a lot of possibilities as to where that may go. I'm very concerned with the cost estimates and where we see reality starting to come in versus where they've been projected and I think that that really is something that should be sobering. Even with what we take out of the study as it is, $600 million to build the rail, 3,500 people served a day. That's $180,000 per person. Over a 20-year lifetime, that's $9,000 a year per person served. I think we can spend our money better than that. Buy everybody free e-bikes and put in the trail, just as one wild idea. I think that infrastructure is really important that we build more capacity, but trains as much as I love trains, which I do, I've been riding trains for 50 years. I'm sad that that's a technology that's gone by the wayside, but there are economic reasons why it's gone by the wayside. I challenge the staff, find one city that has our density that supports a real rail system. One, there's not. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Leopold and commissioners. My name is Yannica Strauss. I'm the executive director of Bike Santa Cruz County. Bike Santa Cruz County supports Scenario B in the Unified Quarter Study because it estimates that it has the lowest number of annual traffic collisions, highest projected trips by bike, the lowest rate of CO2 emissions and the highest transit mode share compared to the other scenarios. Our vision is that bicycling in Santa Cruz County is a safe, respected, convenient and enjoyable form of transportation and recreation for people of all ages and abilities. To reach that vision, we must have a comprehensive approach and build infrastructure that is safe and comfortable for users, completely separate from traffic. Between 2006 and 2017, there were more than 200 bicycle collisions on Soquel Drive Avenue, Freedom Boulevard, and it has been termed a high injury corridor by the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency in their 2017 traffic violence in Santa Cruz County report. Protected bike lanes provide the physical separation needed to prevent these collisions and significantly increase ridership and because it is a high-use cross-county route for cyclists already, the minimal investment would have a high impact. Therefore, we urge you to prioritize protected bike lanes over buffered bike lanes as I outlined in my letter to all of you on November 1st. In the rail corridor, please continue the development of the trail from Davenport to Watsonville along the rail right-of-way as presented in the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail so that cyclists may find relief from riding on our roads as soon as possible. Additionally, we urge you to maintain continuity of the rail trail by keeping it in the rail corridor as much as possible, including over Soquel Creek in Capitola. The Unified Corridor Study presented compelling transit ridership data for passenger rail. Therefore, we ask that you preserve the tracks and bring the community more information about passenger rail by developing a preliminary design in conducting an environmental review. Lastly, we ask that you improve bike and ped facilities throughout the urban area, closing gaps in the network, expand bike share countywide, provide bike parking and other amenities along the rail trail and across the county and support bike safety education and encouragement programs. When selecting a scenario and specific projects, please consider the needs of your cycling community and those who do not yet bike because they feel unsafe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Before the next speaker starts, can I get a show of hands of who else would like to speak? I want to encourage you to sort of get in line because I want to be able to hear from everybody, but I want to make sure that we don't go too late. So if there's comments, you want to hear from commissioners. So good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Gray Jameson. I am a high school senior and a resident of Live Oak. I was told that I had to ask your permission, Chair Leopold, to play a video tonight for part of my public comment. We're not really set up to play videos. I see it loaded right here on the monitor, though. Oh, okay. So that's already been... Okay, it's already been... I thought you were handing something to us. No, no, no. If something's already been gone. I'd just like to point out that the options are out there for alternatives to a large, smelly diesel train. That is not even what is in the study. From reading the 2015 rail study, I believe it is referring to a light diesel multiple unit as the most likely scenario for the beginning, at least. As you see here, that is the most likely scenario for the beginning at least. As you see here, that is similar to the vehicle that I chose for this simulation that I ran. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ryan Sonatar from Live Oak. And a pithy quote attributed to John Manard Keans goes, when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? And some of the decision makers in this room, and I can specifically refer to some of the commissioners from their public statements, like Mr. Leopold, my representative, and Mr. Ratkin, Mr. Schifrin, and especially Mr. Dondero, have expressed for a long time, years or even decades, a preference for a train. And that preference is in the footprint of the UCIS, where the proper alternative trail options are really not studied, and therefore you don't have the complete data that you need in order to make the proper decision. In the time since they made up their minds, transportation funding has changed. On one side of the equation, infrastructure costs have skyrocketed. On the other, the government funding for rail, never generous, now has to complete with discretionary funds in an era of increasing structural deficits, and especially the costs of taking care of our population as it ages. Thousands of miles of track have been successfully rail banks since they made up their minds years ago. Communities as close as Monterey are happily enjoying trails. The High Line in New York is an incredibly successful installation. Forward thinking communities like Boulder, Portland, and Seattle have invested in paved trails to great public benefit, and these facts haven't changed any minds. In Santa Cruz, the jump-bike program has been a huge success. It's not just tourists. Jump bikes are replacing car trips and giving residents who do not have a car a new transportation option. And it's a shame that Watsonville doesn't have a jump-bike program so the people here could experience this firsthand. Adding electricity to bicycles creates accessibility and utility undreamed of in the past when those minds were made up. And jump-bikes are just the first of many new personal electric transportation options that require a paved right of way. And these game-changing technologies will make the utility of a paved corridor with no rails much more to the benefit of our public. The data no longer support the idea that trains are egalitarian and economical solution for Santa Cruz County. And now in the first test of appeal of a train, the voters in Capitola have rejected it. And that's an entirely different kind of fact. So when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, sir? Thank you. Good evening. I wish I could offer you a moment to stand up and do some jumping jacks. I just want to thank you for enduring all of us. My name is Rebecca Downing, and I live along the rail line in Seacliffe and lived before in Watsonville for 10 years commuting to Santa Cruz. I grew up using mass transit and only started driving when I moved away from it. I also worked in the transportation and logistics industry for a subsidiary of Union Pacific Corporation in Watsonville. I am currently president of the Seacliffe Improvement Association representing 350 households in the Seacliffe neighborhood of Aptos and speak to you tonight on their behalf. I ask the following. Conduct a thorough survey of Watsonville and other South County residents before making any transportation decisions to find out where they go to work, how they travel, and what it would take to get them out of their car. When you spend a lot of money on something like the study, like the rail line, it's natural to want to do something with it quickly to maximize its potential. Perhaps, therefore, RTC studies and recommendations have always included passenger rail when our county does not have the population density nor enough potential visitors to justify the significant infrastructure expansion. According to Jarrett Walker from your own speaker series, this study is written to satisfy regulation rather than addressing community concerns. Since the scenarios are statistically insignificant in their impact, I would ask you to implement all possible improvements using our current roads before considering passenger rail that is expensive and efficient in its transit times and disruptive to adjacent neighborhoods. When you address equity, I must ask, where is the equity for Aptos? We are the choke point for all the commuter traffic which now overflows into and through our neighborhoods twice a day, diminishing our quality of life because we lack infrastructure improvements needed to widen the freeway and accommodate traffic from 20 years ago. We have a newly improved Aptos village that no one can reach on foot safely nor drive to during peak traffic hours. Merchants like Bay Federal Credit Union are already moving out of the village because of traffic. This does not bode well for our future, so we are asking for your help. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for being here. So, I just have a few comments. I want to second Rick's concerns regarding induced demand for adding freeway capacity, and I also am confused about why the preferred scenario doesn't include the VRT light on the chart, although I see on the text of page 4-8 of the presentation that transit on SoCal Freedom is envisioned to continue to provide for local service. That's good. We're feasible transit signal priority and bypass lanes at intersections on SoCal Freedom will be provided. So, I would like to see that prioritized above adding auxiliary lanes because I think it's much less expensive. It uses our existing road infrastructure. We get more bang for our buck and I'm just not quite understanding why that wasn't a priority in the preferred scenario. And I also want to second Yanaka's request to please prioritize protected bike lanes over buffered bike lanes because they are really, really two different things. A buffered bike lane is just paint. You know, a protected bike lane is an actual physical barrier. It's a really big difference and it'll make a big difference in the quality of life and their ability to feel comfortable and safe when they're bicycling from the trail to the other places in town that they need to go. And finally, I would like to say that as was pointed out in the preferred scenario document packet, Caltrans does have the California Monterey rail, branch rail lines in the long-term plans for rail. They want to connect Pajaro and to the wider state. There are listings in the in the 2040 vision Caltrans document on page 176 talking about the Santa Cruz and Monterey regional lines and kind of their estimated capital cost for like electrifying and having rail service. So, you know, we can say oh, we don't have the population density to need rail and it's very expensive. You know, all those things, I don't know. Maybe they're true now, but in, you know, by 2040, Caltrans is going all in on rail because they feel like adding more highway capacity is just completely non-starter for California. It just hasn't worked. And so they've decided we're going to make California a rail transit state and they're investing locally everywhere, all over the state, in order to build out a rail infrastructure that is pulsed, that is easy, where everything connects to everything else. So, I encourage you to keep that in mind when you make your decision. Could you please share your name with the... Sorry, Jessica Evans. Thank you, Jessica. Barry Scott. I live in Aptos. I want to say one of the most important things I just want to start out with. If we build more roads, we get more drivers. And the, I think the objectives of the state and Caltrans is to not add more drivers. If we build transit, we have fewer drivers. And when I talk to young people today, it's hard to find somebody who can't wait to get their license and drive a car. It's just like, are you kidding me? Can I have a train? Really? Honest, let's have a train. So, I think that's important to remember. If we want to build, if we want to invest for the future, we've got to look at what is it that's going to be best for them, what might they want, not keep building for the past. What Jessica mentioned about the state rail plan, it's very exciting and they're very clear. Caltrans says, shifting from highway to railway, you can be more explicit than that. With something like $1.5 billion dedicated to the Monterey branch, to the Monterey branch line and our branch line, any talk of there not being enough money for this seems specious. About the process, I've been following this for a few years and I remember when the state rail plan came in and I thought, okay, next steps, what are next steps? And then we found out that there is an interest in studying trail only despite a 2013 vote by the commission saying, we're not going to study trail only. Well, we've studied trail only. We've got professionals, you couldn't ask for a better product with this stuff and I expected this outcome. I expected that rail transit would be shown to be economical, would be shown to be equitable, would get high scores across all the measures and it did and by golly, we now have a ton more funding than we would have had we started this three years ago, potentially. We have the Pajaro station, we have Monterey building and they didn't need a tax measure for this, mind you. They're building their Salinas to Gilroy extension now with the station at Pajaro, where we connect. So I urge you to move ahead. I understand and I'm not surprised to hear calls for waiting, oh my gosh, we've got a new director. Well, if that director asks for more time then that'd be one thing. But to say we must have it, because we must have it, well, we're going to hear a lot of that. Let's wait, let's wait, let's wait. I say let's move forward, let's build something. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Nguyen, before you start, just want to get a sense about are there people who aren't in line that would like to speak? I want to encourage you to get in line if you can so we can hear you. Good evening. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak. I'm Ashley Nguyen. I live in La Salva Beach. I've been following this issue since I read the feasibility study which demonstrated beyond doubt that rail is not feasible at the current time. The current study, they listed goals, safe transport for all modes. It failed to study the number or consider the cost of rail accidents. Auto accidents? In there. Rail accidents? No. This is not a hypothetical situation. In 1978 or 79, the current existing train went off its tracks right around La Salva Beach and Manresa. I think it's hard to get some statistics from Amtrak because they settle a lot of cases confidentially. We don't have any facts related to this issue in the study forecasting the number of injuries caused by rail. Rail bike, rail car, rail accident, rail derailment. Second goal, efficiency. Auto time gets worse with the preferred plan. And until we get out to 2035 and beyond, when they do, it should have been done a long time ago. I've heard people criticizing induced traffic. We have a traffic crisis now because we didn't deal with Highway 120 years ago. Don't postpone hove lanes now. Third, it says we'll have a well integrated system. The hove lane helps transit and autos. Rail with trail hurts active transport and delays completion of a trail. Every budget deficit has been off by multiples of the first segments that they've done. Environmental concerns recognize what the Santa Cruz Climate Change Vulnerability Report recognized in the Moss Landing study this past year when it said that one and a half miles of track in La Salva is not likely to be here in 40 or 50 years because of erosion. Science matters. Does it really matter to you guys? And you want to put a capital structure of improvements on something that's not going to exist in 50 years? Finally, I'll end it there. But thank you for my time. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Mike Sette. I'm a consultant to the trainwriters association of California. Our last two newspapers, the California Rail News, and we've had articles about Santa Cruz, which I will give you copies for each member when I'm done here. Two or three quick points. One of the criticisms of the rail plan was, oh, you have to string up wire and electrify it. Well, one of these handouts for the group is about a trolley system in New Zealand that operated from 1913 to 1929, strictly under battery power, and it was apparently quite successful. But of course, in 1929, it went belly up because of the depression. The point is, the battery technology in 100 years has improved dramatically, so we don't need overhead wires. We can electrify using batteries or fuel cells. I just want to point out, just tell you a little bit about what's in these newsletters. First of all, one of these documents was something that I produced in April, Optimizing Passenger Rail Service. There are ways of increasing the ridership from the 7,000 a day, which actually confirms the passenger estimates in the original rail study in 2015, which I use the same method to predict ridership in this, with some changes like running to downtown Santa Cruz and having a good connection to Cabrillo College. Those are probably the two key things that is missing in the current rail proposal. In our latest newspaper, we have some articles about the battery trains, but also how around the world there's a few places they've been experimenting with automated street cars. So there's all kinds of possibilities and hopefully any future studies will take this all into consideration. The other thing is that I also have a white paper about what I think could be done with beach shuttles and the fact that if you have a frequent service near the beaches in this rail line, it does go near most of the beaches in the canning. They can help pay for the operations. And the last point I want to make, very simple, in the article about Santa Cruz, there's like seven points very quickly, which I'll go through. The first is the comparison with the Highway 58. I think it's the quarter between Escondido and Oceanside, North San Diego County. They currently have a DMU service there that carries about 10,000 people a day with a 30-minute service, which is what's being proposed here. Points. Well, it's in the newspaper. Thank you. We look forward to reading it. Thank you. More to read. Good evening. Sorry. Good evening. Commissioners, my name is David Date, former development director of the LSBIA and graduate of Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. I wasn't going to speak on this, but to continue Lindsay's point, we have a rail that is built on, predominantly at least in South County, on a coastal bluff, which is considered a dynamic feature for geologic purposes. And if there were one place less stable than the bluff, it would obviously be on the beach, on the dunes. So to put this capital investment into something that is known to be unstable is... Well, it could be wasteful. It wouldn't be a good word for it. The derailment he mentioned happened in, I think it was 78. And if you walk the corridor, you can see scars down the rail ties. The same rail ties are still in place, and there's a gouge out of the center of each one. When the Southern Pacific train hit Manresa and made a left turn, that car tumbled into a La Selva beach home and ruined it, destroyed the house. The sentinel article that I found actually describes the homeowner running out the door with his life, unhinging the door as he left. And that train was going 15 miles an hour. And so we're talking about running trains at 45 miles an hour through neighborhoods on a coastal bluff. Doesn't make sense. Beside the point, I'm a father. I've lived in La Selva beach for eight years. We have a wonderful daughter, Eden. We had to take her out of school. When she was six, we were attending Terra Redwood. It was taking us 45 minutes just to get her to Soquel Village. So now we home school. I work fewer hours. I make less income. The vibe of the community is affected by this because parents spend hours in traffic. They come home to their kids.  Two close friends to us in La Selva are now on psychiatric medications because they cannot grip with the responsibility and unpredictability and anxiety and stress that is our life. We can't move. It's as if every single day was a Saturday summer. You know, and the tourists are coming. We have to plan our day around the tourists that are invading our hometown. But that's every day. So I don't... We need relief now. And we're not talking about a train or a trail right now. We're talking about signing a 10-year lease agreement with a freight company. We're not even talking about solutions. So let's just try to just step back. It's not about a train or a trail. This is about relief now for the residents. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. First, thanks so much for having this meeting, having it in the evening where many can participate. Thanks for hanging in with us more to come. It's very much appreciated. And Chair Leopold, following up on your initial comments, right? Maybe I'll change it up here a little bit. And maybe let's start with what is it we can all agree on? And you know, it really comes down to a couple of things that I think are applicable here. One is first and foremost, right? We all love our county. And that's why you're here. That's why you're providing your service to the community. That's why all of us have come out to share our opinions to be part of that process. You know, next, we all, we have transportation issues which need to be addressed. I think we can all agree on that. And I think we can all agree that solutions need to be implemented in a timely fashion. Yesterday would not be fast enough. Beyond that, I hope we can also agree that we need solutions which are fiscally responsible. And you know, what, so then what is that solution? Well, I'll give you my perspective and opinions that I hear often in my community. And you know, as we see it, you know, and this is noticeably different than the preferred scenario. We need to invest in the infrastructure that we have. We need to invest in Highway 1. We need to invest in SC Santa Cruz Metro, the bus, right? We should not invest further in rail. Keep the Watsonville freight service. But don't pursue passenger rail. Don't pursue additional freight service in the corridor. Any such investments going to require huge sums of money to implement, 635 million, but then additional dollars to also maintain becomes a huge liability. You know, the benefits, they're going to take too long to implement, they're going to be too limited and they're going to be too small. So the bottom line is an investment in the rail is not fiscally responsible. So where is it, you know, we go from here? So I would ask that you receive all this input. And you know, are we all on the same page? No. I think someone mentioned earlier there's only a small community that is opposing the rail. I've been trying to keep a tally here and I think it's actually slightly leaning the other way from the speakers thus far. So do I agree? No. But collect the input and decide what makes sense again. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Will Menchine. I live in Santa Cruz. And I wanted to point out, well, first off, many, many people have spoken about many particular items that are in this plan and there are a lot of good things in this plan. My big concern is that the plan comes down to four scenarios that in the final analysis most of the benefits of each of these four plans are more or less within the noise when compared to the baseline or the no-build option. And I think Piet elegantly pointed out that that's largely a result of the electrification of transportation. So if you do nothing but just electrify vehicles, you get this tremendous benefit over time. But I'm actually more concerned about what was not in the study at all. What was not in the study was actually a fair analysis of a truly optimized bike and pedestrian system operating in the rail corridor. That was really what was supposed to be done as part of Measure D's analysis of a trail-only option. But quite honestly, the RTC's version of trail-only or the staff's version of trail-only is really kind of a generic thing that is not intended to really look at what the true optimization of that corridor could be for active transportation. A second major disconnect, in my opinion, is the idea of using HOV lanes without considering HOT or Express. There's a lot of discussion about this so-called traffic conduction principle. But the reality is, and this was brought up over and over again by people at the Innovators in Transportation series, that if you change the way lanes are used, you change the outcome. So essentially, if we had three lanes and one of those lanes was a dedicated transit lane that was operational for people, paying a toll and using it any time of the day, you would have a mechanism, essentially, to apply congestion pricing. And you effectively have a guideway for the next generation of electric buses, battery electric buses, which are here now. They're actually being made in California. And essentially, I believe there will be electric trains as well. The real issue with trains is the fact that they're on tracks. I've been pointed out a number of times tonight that if you have tracks in the middle of the corridor, you limit greatly what can be done with new emerging technologies. And so that's really the issue. There easily can be transit and a much, much better bike and pedestrian path than is envisioned currently in the Monterey-Bake Sanctuary Scenic Trail master plan. I mean, we could really actually have the best of both. There's the potential to have low speed, limited speed, limited like a e-bike, but doing things like trams or eventually the kind of thing that's been described with personal rapid transit, operating in those multi-purpose lanes. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. I appreciate all the work that you've done and all the work that staff has done. Thank you. Before you start, I know Ms. Bilsich is going to be a speaker, but is there anybody else who's sitting down who's going to be a speaker? I got Ms. Bilsich. She'll be the last speaker, which are the three more people. Please, good evening. Good evening. I hope my voice holds up. I'm Janie Soido. I'm a Watsonville native. I appreciate having meetings in Watsonville and in the evening. I really appreciate your wanting to get our input.  My dad and my uncle were tearing down houses in the Morrissey area to make room for Highway 1. They used that lumber to build a chicken house that still stands in Uptaus. I can't support new massive expansion of the highway. The destruction of more homes and more neighborhoods and induced traffic is a little more than I can bear. I support the preferred plan. Watsonville needs as many options as possible. A trail only does nothing for the working people in Watsonville. It does nothing for the people in Santa Cruz who need to connect to Pajaro. I encourage the commissioners to approve the preferred plan on December 6th, so that there's no delay in moving forward with applications for funding to move these projects forward. We need to build something. We need to get moving. A little personal message to Mr. Dondaro. I saw a meme recently. It said, what do you call someone who's happy on Monday? The answer is retired. Congratulations on your retirement. And I'm sure you'll appreciate it. Thank you for sharing that. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Tom Fredericks. I live in Felton. And I just wanted to also offer support of your and the hope that you'll vote for the preferred option. I too hopefully can live long enough to enjoy another option on the rail line. I live in Felton and the idea that the rail could actually connect with the Roaring Camp line someday is just beyond perfect for me. So that's all I wanted to say. I wanted to be counted as a yes.  Or at least it'll feel like it. Good evening. Good evening. Nancy Billisich. I'm with Watsonville City Council. But right now I think I'm just talking on behalf of residents, not the council per se. The council, we had a plan and I agree that the capital corridor is really important. I think, you know, it's in San Jose. It's going to be great when it gets to the Watsonville Junction in Pajaro. I can't wait for that. I think I take the capital corridor frequently to go to Sacramento and be nice to have that expansion. And I think people will be able to go to Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Jobs, the whole thing. It opens up. It's really great. I have to tell you that I supported Measure D. And I still think that Measure D to me and to many meant the expansion of Highway 1 because that's the immediate solution. However, that being said, the train's great. I would love to see a train. And I think, but not the big diesel. I know we have that for our freight and we need that for our businesses here. And we can't forget them. If we need that, we have to have it. But that little video we saw, that's great. Something like that. Let's think about the future. I think it would be great to have a train. I want it all. Money, I don't know where we're going to get the money, but we always figured out. We have to be creative and kind of look at different things. But the road for people now, it's an immediate need. Every day people get on Highway 1 and they are to