It's ten o'clock. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the
Metropolitan Board of Directors for the
month of February and
Asked Frank Castellan to chief safety security and compliance officer to conduct our safety briefing, right?
So for this morning's safety briefing, I will emphasize the fact that preparedness and being aware of your surroundings are very important
Considering the fact that in the next 36 hours we're going to get a significant weather event,
I encourage you to be aware of your surroundings, have a plan, and just stay out of trouble.
So, if we're in the event of a fire alarm activation, we will calmly exit out of the building.
We will stage in Pat's Horace Plaza, do a headcount, make sure everyone's accounted for.
In the event of an earthquake, we're going to shelter in place, get under a large object,
30 object make an evaluation determine whether or not an evacuation is necessary in the case of a
Situation involving a medical emergency. I will be the one to render first aid. I will ask Jerry to call 911 and
In the event of an active attacker. We always say run hide fight and that it concludes my safety briefing
Thank you very much Frank
Victor
Prosciado, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?
Thank You Victor
I'm secretary could we have a roll call
director Wapner
director do tray director Marquez
vice chair chafee
director Nguyen
director Murphy here
second vice chair Burkson
director Spiegel
director Middleton
director Vargas
director Tremblay
director Chavez
director Barger
director Martinez
Director Crocorian
director Nazarian
director Solis
director O'Connor
director Allen
Director Preciado here chair McCallen. Yeah, we do have a quorum present. Thank you very much
Remember that we are recording this meeting. So if you're making a motion or seconding, would you please?
State your last name for the record
Madam secretary. Do we have any public comment? We do have two written public comments. So the first one
Is from Brian Yannity of the Rail Passenger Association of California and he submitted an email to
support critical Metro link projects in Orange County and requested that the board give them top priority to
the placenta Metro link station
Sarah siding extension Fullerton Junction interlocking project Fullerton Atwood Esperanza third track
Irvine maintenance facility and Irvine station improvements and also included in his email was a presentation and
Recommendations from rail pack so that will be emailed to the board after the meeting with his full email and presentation
And secondly late last month. We received public comment from Ms. Ladonia
Coteney about her safety concerns following an incident on the San
Bernardino line on Friday January 20th involving a fellow passenger's erratic
behavior. Ms. Coteney alerted the conductor and submitted her concerns to
our customer service team. Staff members and an LA Sheriff's Department
representative followed up with Ms. Coteney to address her concerns. She has
expressed her appreciation with the responses and his offer to assist staff in furthering efforts to ensure
Safety is foundational on our system. She asked that her comments be entered into the record at this board meeting
Her full comments along with the summary of action taken by staff will be emailed to the board
Thank you
Having no other public comment. We'll move on to our consent calendar items 12a through 12m
Is there a motion on those items? I'll move it Parker
Did want to pull?
Sorry, go ahead. I did want to pull 12
J
Of J
Yes, Jay, I'll move it with the exception of 12 J. Thank you
We have a motion in second for
Those items except for 12 J. Are there any objections?
any abstentions
Yes. I know I brought this up the last when it came out of the agenda in December, and
the executive committee did a receiving file, and I was just curious what the discussion
was, if it was just going to leave it as we are. I'm fine either way, but I just wanted
us to have an understanding of what direction we're doing.
Once I wasn't at the meeting, I will ask our vice chair to speak on that issue.
Well, honestly, there didn't seem to be much interest in it, and there was no motion for
a little discussion.
We simply passed on to the board to consider if it wishes to.
I move to approve 12J.
Is there a second?
I'll second it, Parder.
There was a motion and a second.
Any objection?
Any abstentions?
Stensions seeing none it passes
Get back into the agenda here
okay, we go on to a regular calendar of 7a a ridership and revenue forecast for FY 23 27 and
That'll be presented by hinting I clear our market insights and analytics manager. Good morning. Good morning
members of the board
This is item 7a with our latest ridership forecast
Before I describe the forecast, I'd like to have you take a look at this timeline for context.
The curvy line shows the number of COVID-19 cases in L.A. County since March of 2020.
I think this is important for context because we have learned during the pandemic that the number
The number of COVID cases and by extension the level of remote work are the most predictive
factors for ridership recovery.
Our most recent forecast from December of last year is shown to the right on this chart.
And you can also see the previous forecast from November of 2021, which is the basis
for our current FY23 budget.
And you may remember I presented that forecast to you at the December 21 board workshop,
and at that time things looked really good.
We had just come out of the search of the Delta variant.
The California Department of Public Health forecasted a mild winter search of the virus,
And we had our surveys of corporate partners indicated that businesses were planning return
to the office in early 2022.
Little did we know that just a month later, we were all hit by the Omicron search, which
was many times more severe than anything we had seen until then, as you can clearly see
on this chart here.
And businesses that just a few months earlier had plans to return to the office, shelved
their return to office plans.
And really, ever since then, our ridership forecast and the office occupancy rates have
remained below our forecast, which clearly is one reason why Ms. Wilson's monthly budget
forecast have always been showing a variance to budget.
Next slide please.
For our new forecast, we decided to seek outside expertise from national experts who have prepared
similar ridership forecasts for other commuter rail agencies.
So in September, we retained a consultant team from Sperry Capital and KPMG to develop
both ridership and revenue forecasts through FY27.
Sperry Capital has been under contract with the authority to provide financial advisory
services and KPMG and the New York-based forecast team have previously developed ridership forecasts
for commuter rail agencies, including Metro North Railroad,
Long Island Railroad, TransLink and the Boston MBTA.
Next slide please.
Next I'd like to briefly go over some of the assumptions
that underlie the current forecast.
And some of those are actually adopted
from economic forecasts from Moody's Analytics.
First, there will be no recession in 2023,
but employment will not return to pre-pandemic levels
by FY27.
Gasoline prices, which we know are important factor
for ridership, will remain high all the way through FY27.
And most important, we will not see another resurgence
of another COVID variant and lockdowns.
Also, the forecasts are modeled on current fare levels
and service levels are assumed at 100%
of pre-pandemic levels.
Next slide, please.
Just a moment, Henning.
Yes.
Is that assumption of no recession really realistic?
I think it is even more likely now than it was last year when they developed the forecast.
I mean, now there's much more talk about a soft landing.
And again, Moody's is still sticking to their forecast of no recession.
So on this chart, you see the actual forecasts.
and there are actually three different scenarios
that they developed, a low growth, shown in red,
which puts the recovery at a 61% recovery rate by FY27.
Then there's a medium growth scenario, shown in yellow,
that puts us at a 79% recovery.
And the high growth scenario, shown in green,
with a 92% recovery by FY27.
And just for comparison, you also see the gray line,
which is our previous November 2021 forecast,
which actually put us at a 87% recovery in 27.
So here you see the three scenarios once again,
annualized in tabular form for each fiscal year.
And again, the ranges for FY24 recovery range from 45% to 52%.
And with that, I'll stop here and see if you have any questions.
Any questions?
Go ahead, Kathryn.
And I appreciate this.
So in terms of coordination with ridership forecasts
and our fiscal assumptions, are we putting together,
I mean, assuming you get medium growth, which I think is optimistic, but I think we should
shoot for this guy, how's this going to play out from a financial standpoint?
So Director Barter, my instructions to the finance team is we are working off of the
low forecast for purposes of budgeting.
I would much prefer next year to go back to our member agencies and say, hey, by the way,
We have a surplus because ridership bounced back much stronger than our low forecast.
So we are working off of the most conservative scenario.
And so the budget team is working on that line of thinking.
But that doesn't mean the charge to our marketing team is any less that we want to try every
option we can.
But that is, for fiscal purposes, that was the most prudent approach, in my opinion.
Thank you.
Did you have a question
Move faster than my hand. So I'm good. Thank you. So we're Victor I
Did the ridership recovery scenarios these percentages these are?
prior to the pandemic recovery numbers and not
Like the full the percentage compared to full expectancy of the usage, right?
The percentage is based on the pre pandemic ridership level, which would be FY 19
It's more of a just a comment I know
in years past
the
price of gasoline
Turned out to be quite a driver in our ridership
I'm going back maybe six seven years ago
And we we had this discussion and we talked about it in the board
but that doesn't seem to be the case now, right, because we've had these crazy prices, but we're not getting that
impetus into the system. Right, yeah, you're probably thinking back. It was just before the the great recession, 2008,
that's when we seen, you know, record spikes in gasoline prices. Of course,
now with inflation and everything, our current gas prices, you know, adjusted for inflation are not that high.
the other thing is that in you know in the past decade or so fuel efficiency has
Improved much and plus we have many more electric and hybrid vehicles on the road. So the
the share of wallet that goes into transportation specifically and
Gasoline is less than it was maybe you know 10 15 years ago
Director Tremblay. I have I have a couple of comments. Mr. Sheriff. I can
Could you go back to the slide on assumptions and hitting I know we didn't really look at this at the bottom the bottom bullet
but it's the return to office and
Those assumed office occupancy rates which are sobering
Between this slide that shows
Fares are held constant at FY 23 levels our revenue service miles are at a hundred percent pre-pandemic levels
Yet our return to office. Let's say even we had a medium-case scenario best case. I agree with you
I think that's optimistic. There's really two observations. I want to make one is that
if you
assume that
gasoline prices
Together with occupancy rates are critical. We have at least a five-year sustained period where we are going to have
extremely difficult financial circumstances out through at least 27 so
The way I'm approaching this is I'm looking at this from a five-year standpoint now and and this is really sobering news
it's also
I
Also appreciate though because this is coming from a third party which verifies our concerns that we've been voicing
for months about the difficulties coming up and if anything it helps us in the
second observation it helps us in our advocacy to get some help from an
operational financial standpoint from Sacramento I can't these slides are
exhibits one and one and two respectively to me in a presentation to
transportation officials in Sacramento to say this tells our story better than
anything else and we're going to be in a sustained difficult period for five
years so I really appreciate the work that has been done in this and the fact
is it's now coming in through a third-party verification it's not just
Metrolinx saying it we've hired very high quality a very high quality
consulting firm to make these make these assumptions for us and and even these
These are best-level assumptions.
Revenue service miles at 100 percent, Ferris Hill constant at FY23.
What do you do?
What do you do?
So, anyway, thank you for letting me make those two editorial comments, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Trimly.
Right on.
I agree totally with your comments, and it certainly will bolster our efforts in trying
to get something done in Sacramento.
Knowing that, and I'm sorry to interrupt,
but knowing what you just said,
I'm sure it's not unique to Metrolink.
So I'm sure you're talking to your colleagues.
So maybe this is our opportunity together
because we've done the leg work
in terms of the assumptions,
getting a coalition together to begin planning that seat.
So you got your direction?
I don't know.
Other comments, questions?
Any none?
Thank you, Henning.
Appreciate it.
Next we'll go on to, that's a receiving file
and with no objection that's what we will do,
this board will do.
Next we have FY 23, second quarter financial results
presented by Christine Wilson,
our senior finance manager.
Chris, good morning.
Good morning, Chairman McAllen and members of the board.
I am presenting this receiving file item, excuse me.
Next slide please.
This slide shows our ridership performance by quarter
through the second quarter of FY 23.
The black line is the FY 23 forecast
on which the budget was constructed
and the green boxes are actual.
As you can see, we have a shortfall.
Next slide, please.
This slide shows that same information
except presented by month so that you can see
what each month has been during this fiscal year.
Next slide, please.
This slide shows the kind of improvement
that we've managed to make
from the beginning of the pandemic
all the way through the current month of December.
So you see here that we have improved
but we seem to be stalling out now.
Next slide, please.
This slide shows the farebox revenue
over the first six months of FY23.
Our budget was 22.1 million or a 57% recovery,
while the actual is 15.2 million or a 39% recovery.
A shortfall in FairVox revenue of 6.9 million
for the first half.
Next slide please.
This slide displays ridership
over the first six months of FY23.
Our forecast was 3.4 million or a 56% recovery,
while the actual is 2.5 million or a 42% recovery,
a shortfall of 883,000 riders for the first half.
Next slide, please.
This concludes, I also want to mention
that we are on track for the FY24 budget timeline.
That concludes my report.
May I answer any questions?
Thank you, Chris.
Any questions, any comments?
Director Treble?
supplemental comment if the items in the prior agenda item were exhibits one and two for Sacramento
This is exhibit three. It's a very simple story
Thank you for the chance to make my supplemental editorial comment
This is a receiving file and without objection, that's what the board will do. Thank you Chris
Next we have our customer experience quarterly update presented by Sabrina Davis our interim director of marketing and partnership
Members of the board this is the quarter to update for the customer experience efforts that span through October through December 22
Staff celebrated the October 24 launch of the new Metrolink arrow service
with a ribbon-cutting event in partnership with SBCTA
on October 21st, featuring Congressman Peter Aguilar,
along with Board Chair Larry McCallan
and Vice Chair Doug Chaffee,
who is also a University of Redlands alum.
On the first day of Arrow's service,
the combined efforts of SBCTA and Metrolink
earned 32 mentions by SoCal media outlets,
totaling approximately 14 million impressions
with an ad value equivalency of nearly $13 million.
So a real success in terms of earned media.
Next slide please.
We continued to celebrate the new arrow service
with riders by hosting a community event
at the Redlands downtown station on October 29th
and the tacos and face painting were a hit, certainly.
Next slide please.
On October 26, 2022, we proudly celebrated
our 30th anniversary and the launch
of the new Metrolink logo and branding guidelines.
Next slide, please.
As part of that anniversary effort,
we offer customers a 30% monthly pass discount
during that quarter.
Initial results were strong and a more in-depth report
will be forthcoming to the board next month
on the results of that campaign.
Next slide, please.
As part of our holiday destination campaign,
we were pleased to revive our longstanding partnership
with the Tournament of Roses
to offer early morning service on five of our seven lines
to get people to the Rose Parade.
Performance was exceptionally strong for the urine media
with ad equivalency of almost $15 million.
Next slide, please.
Finally, last but not least,
we made some customer experience improvements
related to the opening of the new arrow service
and updates on the website related to ticketing
and discounts.
And I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Any questions or comments?
Seeing none, thank you very much.
It's a receive and file, and without objection,
that's what the board will do.
Next, our chief executive officer's report.
Always the highlight of any meeting.
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
And so before I get to a couple of comments that we'll have on the slide deck, just in
response to some of the questions today about what we're doing on the advocacy front regarding
our fiscal cliff, frankly Metrolink is the poster child of the biggest challenges probably
anywhere in California.
We have been very active with the California Transit Association and we are participating
on subcommittee of California Transit.. California Transit Associations.. Transit Operating
Fund sub-subcommittees. There's a recognition of that. But.. and so we have stayed active
in that. We have continued to actually increase our advocacy team by.. I think I'd mentioned
through the.. at our committees. When working with Mobility 21.. Mobility 21 is identified
It is one of the four priorities of that organization,
so we have the private sector engaged.
And then just as recently as Wednesday of this week,
I met one-on-one with the Assembly Budget
Subcommittee 3 chairman.
Budget Subcommittee 3 is transportation specific,
and the chair is Steve Bennett, Assemblymember Steve Bennett,
who is someone I've known for a better part of 15 years
as he was on the Ventura County Transportation Commission
when I was serving as executive director,
where we highlighted these challenges.
And I think one of the things that's out there,
this has become so real due in part to the fact
that we also no longer have COVID relief money
that has been helping us get through these last few years.
Four of our five counties no longer have COVID relief money
to provide to us.
So it becomes that much more real.
And so that adds to the challenge.
So rest assured, the government relations team and myself see this as, I mean,
we always say, you know, safety is foundational at Metrolink.
It is the one thing that is our guiding star but followed so closely as our ability
to operate our system and so know that that is going to be something that is going
to be constantly at the top of my priority list.
So just wanted to follow up on that.
One other quick follow-up, only because we have only been back
in person for a couple of months and I wanted
to make an introduction of one of our new chiefs,
our chief technology officer.
I don't believe the board has had a chance to meet yet
in person, Alyssa Cunningham, Alyssa is here,
Alyssa Cunningham is with our new chief technology officer.
she came to us from the Dallas area rapid transit program.
And she has been, she has been having to go back and forth
to Texas for the last seven months
because she has a high school son.
If you know anything about Friday Night Lights in Texas,
there was no way she was missing her son's football game,
nor should she.
And, but the season is over.
They had a very successful year and she is now the proud mom
of a Division I scholarship football athlete.
So.
University of Texas, Permian Basin.
There you go.
So it's a growing Division I program expanding.
Sort of the Texas schools are all doing this.
I mean, heart of the problem is high school football
in Texas, they have bigger stadiums than some colleges do.
But nonetheless, UTBB is where her son, Kevin,
going to be attending. He's a safety linebacker. If you ever want to watch his huddle video,
the guy can absolutely light people up. He is a very, very good football player.
Well, welcome. Welcome, Billies. We're glad to have you, and thanks for coming to California.
One other announcement on the front of our Chief's team. I'm very pleased to announce
that we have offered, and then we have an acceptance for a new chief experience officer.
Many of you will recall Jennifer Vedas, who had been with MetroLink and followed Stephanie Wiggins
over to LA Metro. Lisa Barr will be joining us. Lisa Barr currently is employed by Cubic.
It's a company, an international company, that deals with fair media and website-type stuff,
that technology side of the world of what customers experience
in the technology side so she'll be joining us at the end of March
and she'll be coming on board and that I'm really pleased to share with the board
and all of our chiefs are here it rounds out we have a full
team of chiefs now at Metrolink so I'm gonna be really pleased and none of you
guys better go anywhere anytime soon
tell Stephanie that I was, yeah no doubt
Alright, so on to the slide deck real quick if I could, we had a really great day, transit
equity day, we had a press conference on February 2nd, we were joined by Chair McCallin, Director
Najarian serving in his capacity as Chair of Metro, Stephanie Wiggins and I spoke along
along with a few other people talking about Transit Equity Day and then had free rides
on the Saturday that followed where we so close to a record out of pre-pandemic, we
got to nearly a little over 19,000 riders, of course our record is Earth Day when we
had a free day where we had 20,000 riders, but we really had a very successful Transit
Equity Day activity and my thanks to the Chair for taking the time to coming in from San
in San Bernardino County to participate in that.
Next slide.
And it's just, you know, February's a great month
where we get to talk about our ridership and our customers.
Again, I want to thank a number of our board members
who participated in Customer Appreciation Day.
Jerry, is this the only slide I have for this,
or is there a second one?
There we go.
So we had, of course, the chair came in
and we did events at LA Union Station,
but we wanted to make sure we were all over the region.
thanks to board members who did make it a point and actually elected officials
who weren't even board members who attended events throughout Southern
California. We had our directors Trembly and Chavez, Director Wynn, Director Allen
joined us in Covina, and I'm not going to remember the individual from North
Virginia, he's an LA City Council member. John Lee, thank you very much. And it
I was like, oh, is this such a popular event
that we're going to have people that aren't even
on Metrolink board coming out and sharing in the fund?
So my goal next year when we do this event
is we get somehow, some way, we get full representation
from all five of our counties and we get somebody
from Riverside County to join us.
Um, but it was, uh, we passed the chair and myself,
uh, Director O'Connor was at LA Union Station
with us passing out candy.
saw if you could go real quickly, Jerry, back to the prior slide, you could see all of the
participants there that included Metrolink staff, board members, and what we were doing greeting
passengers as they were coming down the tunnel at LA Union Station. Where they truly, you can just
tell they really, they felt appreciated. And I thought it was just, it was a very good event
and it was, we had a, we have a great time doing it. I could go on for hours on this, but I know
I know the chair has a train to catch.
So I will leave it at that, but it was a great event.
Next slide.
So we had this great opportunity to reopen a station,
what's called the Anaheim Canyon Station.
It's a new track and a new platform
in Vice Chair Chafee's Supervisorial District.
And I hope we have a quick video that we want to share.
So if we can run the video,
span that up, Jerry, for us.
So that is the new and improved Anheim Canyon Station.
It is a SCORE project
and is primarily served
by the Inland Empire Orange County Line.
So you saw one of the individuals from Metrolink
who was part of that project
and Katie Thorpe, our senior project manager
for that project, she's here.
That's Katie.
And she led our team across the board
and again, just a great type of work.
You see all that goes on in these types of things
and it'll improve.
As you can see, obviously having double track
and two platforms are gonna create capacity
that we need to continue to grow our service.
So any of that, wanted to share that with the board
And this is just one of many other SCORE projects
that will be coming up in the future.
So Mr. Chair, I think that concludes my CEO's report.
Thank you.
I can take questions.
Vice Chair Chaffee had some comments.
Well, thank you for the beautiful work.
It's greatly enhanced the area
and should attract more ridership.
And that video is fabulous,
the way it integrated all the subjects
and what was going on.
Wonder if I have a copy of that.
I'd like to share it with the Anaheim City Council.
I think that would help promote ridership among other things.
So thank you for the great work.
Other comments, questions?
Seeing none, we'll go on to board member comments.
None, well, just a comment.
I noticed in that video that there were several women
involved in the project, and I think that's great that we've
got women in leadership positions.
Also, the double tracking is something
we need to obviously do more of throughout our system
to be able to get the head ways that we need.
And I want to thank all of the board members
who showed up here today on such a nasty weather day,
in person.
It's important that we get together and look each other
in the eyes and just socialize somewhat.
So thank you very much.
With that, we have a closed session.
Mr. Attorney, would you read us in a closed session?
Yes, thank you, Chair.
The board will now go into closed session
on items 11A, 11B, and 11C as described in today's agenda.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll adjourn into closed session.
As you call the meeting back into open session,
ask our attorney to report out.
That way, we're adjourned.
Thank you.