Alright, and the clock struck 12. Here we are. Welcome to a meeting of the Contract Operations Maintenance and Safety Committee for Metrolink.
Good to see everybody here. We're going to begin with a safety briefing. What does it mean when the alarm goes off, Frank?
That's a very good question, Sherwanter. So, in the spirit of alarms going off, and oftentimes as humans we become immune to them,
I'm going to switch up my safety briefing just a little bit and make it more specific.
I know a lot of times we get instructions, and I remember my time in school, the teacher
would tell us to do something, and it was just another thing.
But it really is for our safety.
If the fire alarm does go off, I would like everyone next to the building.
But I would also like the audience members and all the chair committee members to stage
in front of Pat's Horace Plaza.
So we can make sure that everyone's accounted for.
So don't run off and go home or go to lunch or get a coffee.
We want to make sure we have everyone together.
At that point, we're gonna interface with metro security
or first responders and we'll make sure
that we're either gonna go back in the building
or we're gonna exit the premises.
So I think that's an important thing to note.
We all wanna stay together
because we can't get an accurate head count
if people run off.
So I'm gonna ask that not only the committee
but folks in the audience as well.
Secondary that if we have an earthquake, an event,
obviously we're all gonna shelter in place,
get under a large object underneath your desks there,
frame of the door, et cetera.
We'll do an assessment to make sure
But if the building is subject to earthquake damage,
we're going to exit the building.
And again, we're going to stage in front of Patsaurus Plaza
as a group, do an assessment, and see
if exiting the premises is warranted, et cetera.
If an event of a first aid and or a situation requiring CPR
and a formally trained provider, I
am going to nominate myself to do that.
I will ask Jerry to contact 911 and also interface
with Metro Security Coordinated Response.
In the rare event, but in a fortunate reality bar,
life now, in the event of an active attacker,
I'm gonna ask you to run to a place
away from wherever the attack is occurring.
I'm also gonna ask you to hide in a place,
make yourself nondescript, don't get on your phone,
don't make yourself a parent,
until somebody from law enforcement comes and gets you.
And then obviously the last thing in that scenario,
fighting, not ideal, but if we're fighting for our life,
we're all gonna join together if necessary
do that fight for our life. So that concludes my safety briefing this
morning. Again, I think as everyone is aware we are getting exposed to another
atmospheric river. Please consider that in your travels. That concludes my safety
briefing. Thanks, Frank. Appreciate it. Michelle, I'm sorry I passed over your
housekeeping. Can you go over that, please? No problem. Thank you, Chair. Because there
are committee members participating via teleconference, all votes must be done
by roll call and each county will receive one vote. Although all directors
are encouraged to participate only voting members can make a motion or
second the motion on action items for those of you who are utilizing zoom we
ask that you use the hand raise feature so that the chair can call on you when
you wish to speak and as a reminder please speak into the microphone so that
the audience and the teleconferencing board members can hear you thank you
chair that concludes housekeeping
Okay roll call please. Director Marquez. Vice Chair Spiegel. Director Vargas. Present.
Director Chafee. Director Tremblay. Here. Director Barger. Here. Director Solis.
Director Allen. Director Preciado. Chair Wapner. I'm here. We do have a quorum present.
Thank you very much. Okay, public comment. Excuse me. Have we received any written
comments? We've not received any written comments. Any request to speak today? No
request to speak today. Very good. Thank you. That'll close the public comment
section. It brings us to the calendar. First item approval minutes. We have a motion on the
minutes. I'll move it. Thank you. Second? Try a few seconds. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Roll
call ball, please. Vice Chair Spiegel, Director Chafee, aye. Director Tremblay, yes. Director
Barger, chair Wapner, yes. That motion carried with Director Spiegel abstaining. Thank you
very much. Next item, Redlands Passion to Rail project and Andy is presenting.
Good afternoon Chair and committee members. Andy, you're the persistent director for
construction. So this is amendment number six to the cooperative agreement with SBCCA
SBCTA for the Redlands Passenger Rail project.
The Redlands Passenger Rail project arrow service is now fully operational however there
are certain additional items and improvements that require implementation to allow completion
of the construction and close out of that phase of the project.
So amendment number six provides a further $814,129 of SBCTA funding for the authority
support to completion of these tasks.
Next slide, please.
I beg your pardon, we're on it.
So it is recommended that the committee
recommend the board authorize the chief executive officer
to execute amendment number six
to the cooperative agreement
and the authority that will increase the funding
for the Redlands passenger rail project
capital construction support services
by $814,129 to a new not to exceed total of $18,107,680.
Are there any questions at all?
Any questions?
Any comments?
We have a motion?
I'll move it.
I'll second it.
Yes.
OK, thanks so much.
Appreciate that.
We're spending money.
OK.
I didn't want to spend your money.
We have a motion to second roll call vote, please.
Vice Chair Spiegel.
Director Chaffee.
Aye.
Director Tremblay.
Yes.
Director Barger.
Yes.
Chair Wapner.
Yes.
That motion carried unanimously.
Thank you.
Next item, design services with CME Valley.
Elizabeth.
Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee.
Next slide.
Sequoia Avenue in the city of CME Valley
has been identified for grade crossing improvements
that would bring the crossing
to current Metrolink standards.
The city has requested that the authority delivers
the design and construction phases,
bundling it with SCORES CME Valley Double Track Project,
which in total would improve five grade crossings,
making them quiet zone ready.
The project has been environmentally cleared
through CEQA and NEPA,
and the city recently secured 4.5 million
in state funding to help fund the project.
Next slide.
It is recommended that the committee recommend the board
authorize the chief executive officer
to negotiate and execute a design services agreement
for a not to exceed amount of $1.4 million
for the authority to lead the delivery of the PSNE phase
for the Sequoia Ave grade crossing improvements project.
This phase is entirely funded by the city.
A separate C&M agreement will follow
for the construction phase.
That concludes my report.
I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you, any questions or comments?
Seeing none, can we have a motion on this item please?
Tremblay move.
Thank you, appreciate that.
Great got the message.
And Karen's gonna second.
I'll second.
There you go, roll call vote please.
Vice Chair Spiegel.
Yes.
Director Chafee.
Aye.
Director Tremblay.
Yes.
Director Barger.
That motion carried unanimously.
on the capital, on the progress of the capital program including State of Goode-des-Pere and SCORP.
For the period ending December 2022, the authority expended 20.5 million in State of Goode-des-Pere
and 11.7 million in the new capital projects. Next slide, please.
update on a few projects in our portfolio, starting with the union station modernization,
procurement of switches, signal cables, signal houses and cables are complete, track contractor
finishing punch lists on CP terminal, and track contractor support from the signal contractor
began turn out a placement at CP mission. Next slide, please.
As for the Anaheim Canyon station improvements project, a new platform opened in January
and final station communication items
to be installed in April this year.
Next slide, please.
I will now just highlight a few of the graduates
on this slide, starting with a score.
The authority received an award of 107 million
from California State Transportation Agency
for Assimi Valley, El Monte, and BNSF follow term projects.
Also for the Bell Bank Junction Speed Improvement Project,
we completed signal work and cut over.
As for the Bombardier Car Rebuild Program,
Eight cars were conditionally accepted and are in service.
Four additional cars to be conditionally accepted
are later this month.
And also the authority secured a 30 million
in fiscal year 23 funding that would be used
to rehabilitate another 18 cars.
Next slide please.
As for the capital program risk,
no major update from last quarter.
So I would just like to highlight
that comprehensive risk adjusters are in place
for both SCORE and Bombardier Car Rebuild.
Mitigation plans have been developed
and then being tracked on a regular basis
to ensure appropriate contingency allocated
and maintained through the duration of the project.
Next slide, please.
This concludes my presentation,
and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
First of all, thank you for that,
and I want to publicly thank CalSTA
for the significant funding that they provided
to Metrolink, and I want to commend you, Darren,
and your entire staff on a job well done.
But one of the questions I have is the market and industry pressures are on project budgets.
It's not unique to Metrolink.
We're seeing it at Metro.
I'm sure we're all seeing it.
And the presentation notes market and industry pressures are occurring.
If we recognize that a project's cost is increasing during design, do we run it
through any value engineering or risk assessments to try to reduce the cost?
So I think, yes, this is the plan for those projects if they're exceeding the budget.
and we are now also doing a complete estimate
at completion for all the projects
to ensure we stay within the budget.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions, comments?
Mr. Chair?
Yes.
Yeah, and I apologize.
I don't know how to do the raise hand feature on this.
You're good.
All right.
A question regarding, it's on page 31.
It's the state of good repair report
for the Ventura County line track structures and signals.
It's an attachment A, page 31.
And there's a note under safety that on the Ventura sub staff
needs to arrange for clean out of homeless encampments
and sanitation of the site at several locations
prior to completing any work.
This could have an impact on the safety
and schedule of some projects.
And this is what I want to hone in on it says.
And I quote, staff may need to clean some sites
multiple times to protect the safety
of agency contractors and employees.
My question is this,
is this because of the potential reoccupation of the sites?
or is it because of the severity of the site conditions?
I don't have the answer specifically for this one,
but Justin, for that, if you want to speak.
Yeah, good afternoon.
Justin Fournelli, Chief of Program Delivery.
Yes, I think in regards to that safety concern,
it is the reoccupation of those sites.
I think when we go through those project areas,
if there isn't an encampment,
we go through a pretty robust process
of removing the homeless encampment, cleaning up the sites.
And then as the work progresses,
There's times where work suspends for a little while,
we move to another location,
and occasionally those sites are, I guess,
re-inhabited by the homeless encampment.
Then follow-up question, Mr. Chair.
In those occasions, so we're not doing this multiple times,
is there some kind of priority by LASD on enforcement,
relative to trying to prevent reoccupation of the site?
For that too-
I'm concerned about having to do this again
and again and again and again.
So the answer to the question, does LASD prioritize
homoscemic cleanup?
Yes, there is an emphasis in prioritization
of cleaning up camps.
The difficulty is once these camps are cleaned up,
they're often reoccupied.
In conversations with other agencies, metro included,
that's something we're all struggling to manage
and deal with, is how do we keep people
from reoccupying these areas?
I can tell you as an entity, again,
we are partnering with Union Pacific Metro
to try to tackle these issues.
It's not just our issue, but yes,
we do attempt to prioritize areas where we're doing work
or these areas where we have a large number of homeless
because they do lead to trespasser strikes
in addition to impacting our construction projects.
Correct, that's ultimately what I was leading to.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair, thank you.
Thank you, Tony.
Any other questions, comments, Larry?
Thank you very much.
When you have these construction projects going on
and you're clearing out the camps,
is the sheriff's department involved?
If not, why not?
Yes, Chairman Callan, the sheriff's department is involved.
And we have sent out a list from our contractor
that provides our services for how the SNCAM cleans up
and LST is part of that process.
They are involved in helping clean up the system.
And that's where they actually perform their arrests
as part of that process to try to get a message across.
If I could, Mr. Chair, real quickly as a follow-up,
I know for my time in Ventura County that we also would have in the case of where we
had encampments in Simi Valley in particular, we would have Simi Valley Police Department
also participate and be there more than just to, mainly just to ensure that nothing went
wrong.
We had forces that cleaned up the encampments.
Law enforcement was just there as a, you know, I'll call it abundance of caution in the case
that was necessary and so in some of our local communities local law
enforcement is there to help and then LA Sheriff's Department obviously as well
in Los Angeles County but we'll take the law enforcement support any place we
can get it. I thought if I might follow up I thought LA sheriff was involved in
right away on all counties. They are and we use them in all places in some
communities because of the familiarity of the, in many cases homeless, they're
locals, they have a relationship with the local PD, and so that's value
added by having the local law enforcement participate. I have a
question on that. I know that our department has been wanting to clean up
homeless and other kinds of issues along all the right-of-ways whether it's UP
or Metrolink, even flood control from the county, and they're not able, Caltrans
So we're not able to do that without specific permission from the property owners
So do we have like a standing consent with all the local law enforcement agencies that they can go and do it
They need to do without having to permission every single time as it relates to a right-of-way. Yes, absolutely
We have the powers whether it's San Bernardino
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has the ability to arrest people and remove them from the right-of-way
As it relates to repopulation, I creates an issue or if it's outside of a right-of-way
We look to work with local entities or in particular Aero Service, San Bernardino
There's been some areas where we had consistent problems outside of a right-of-way
So yes, we tend to work with property owners try to identify situations, but it's it's it can be challenging
So I can send my officers in and they don't have to bother contacting l-a-s-d or Metrolink, right? That is correct
I don't know if anyone says those problems, but Caltrans
We want to go in there and clean up Caltrans will not allow our police department on the right-of-way at all
Okay, that's it.
If there's no other comments that's received
and filed that objection, that'll be done.
And finally, system safety and compliance.
You're up there, go.
That's a good thing, I'm already here.
Okay, good afternoon again, everybody.
Next slide, Jerry.
So this presentation represents our quarterly report
for safety security compliance.
And as you will note, in quarter four,
we did have a total number of strikes of 17,
system-wide of trespassers,
Comparatively to quarter four in year 2021,
we saw a decrease of approximately 23%.
Of note, last year, calendar year 2022,
we had a total increase of 56% system-wide
of trespasser strikes compared to years previous.
Next slide, please.
So again, represented on this slide,
you'll see that 2022 was a dramatic increase
in trespasser strikes.
The line below it represents our trend line,
and it's something we're incorporating
into our presentations, not simply just numbers
of how we compare year over year.
We enacted some things in quarter three of last year
and quarter four, which were related to areas of focus
where we wanted to focus resources, in particular LAST.
So we worked with them very closely to direct our resources.
We also partnered with operations to assure
that we had adequate reporting of trespassers.
So we focused on some specific areas
that we saw a significant increase in strikes.
Vanizer is one area in particular where we asked staff,
asked our contractors to really focus on those areas
and tell us if we provide more law enforcement,
more cleanup, are we seeing an effect?
In those areas, we did see an effect and did see an impact.
So we noticed there's a trend line going down over the year.
We had an initial spike in September,
but overall we were trending down as compared to quarter one
the quarter two in 2022. Next slide, please. As it relates to rule violations, last year
we did see a decrease in rule violations, but at the end of last year we saw an increase,
which is a trend that's carried over this year, unfortunately. Specifically, some of
the things that we worked on to try to address those, root cause related to the work planning
and work windows. Oftentimes when we have work going on, there's an issue with rule
violations, there's some back issues related to multiple subdivisions, which may include
communicating with multiple dispatchers or the work as it was initially planned to when
it's executed. There's some changes in those situations lead to confusion and we believe
those are directly correlated with some of the rule violations we've experienced. Next
slide please. Last year we had a decrease in FRA reportable injuries, which is a positive
thing for us overall. We did notice at the end again, the end of last year and trending
into this year as well, we've had an increase unfortunately in injury and reportable injuries.
I do want to note though that our injury numbers overall industry wide are significantly less
than other properties of similar size. Next slide please.
Last year we did have an increase in regulatory inspections but along with the increase in
regulatory inspections we had a decrease in findings. So even though we did more inspections,
we actually had fewer things that we found
after doing those inspections.
So that's a positive number as well.
Next slide please.
Training last year, we had a significant increase
in our training, specifically focusing
on emergency responders.
I'll use Arrow as an example.
We worked with first responders to get them up to speed
on performing service, starting service,
and also in the rest of our system,
we had a particular focus on getting everybody
on the same page in different counties, different areas,
on how we operate as a railroad.
Next slide please.
That concludes my presentation.
I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Go ahead, Karen.
When we were talking about the strikes and our increase
and then down, what are the other systems?
Are they having similar strikes and those that are VNSF, UP,
that they're using the same lines as us?
All of our joint railroads experience the same increase,
significant increase.
I was back at a conference last year and I spoke to Metro in Chicago.
They also saw a similar increase.
Speaking with counterparts, Metro North and New York, they also saw a similar increase,
industry-wide.
So it's not just us.
It's everybody grappling with the same issue.
We could probably say anecdotally there was evidence that said post-COVID when people
stopped having funding for going to alternative housing, we saw more people occupying a right-of-way,
which industry-wide was the similar issue across the industry?
And do we go and break those down to if there's an individual that was either under the influence
or suicidal, or do we break down?
I know it's kind of difficult, but with the corners, do we break those down at all?
So when we do receive corner reports, we do get some information whether or not.
There's a determination made whether it's an intentional act.
up to the corner to determine if there's a suicide,
even if we as an entity and law enforcement go out and say,
hey, you know, this person was obviously had an intent,
that's a determination, a medical determination.
Contributing factors related to that,
we are actually getting ready to partner
with the University of San Diego.
They're going to do a study on suicidal behavior
on our system, looking at our data.
So we're going to get that information,
try to help us understand some of the factors.
We've also done in the past,
working with the University of Denver,
some training related to suicide prevention.
I think we talked about it in previous meetings.
But we do want to understand some of the factors
related to intentional acts.
And if we as an entity can do anything
to influence local community,
whether it's through outreach,
some of the things we're doing,
as you mentioned with LISD, focus enforcement,
see some of the contributing factors.
Any comments?
Good, Ray.
Thank you, sir.
Real fast.
If we were to map out all the strikes to the location,
are they like throughout the whole system
are there any specific areas as far as the strikes they are throughout the
whole system but a majority of our strikes happen in Los Angeles County
questions comments well good thank you very much it's receiving file if there's
no objection that's what we'll do during thank you mr. chair I have no
reports day last meeting either any committee comments well this is great
because I got a training like that was the other part mr. chairs I know you
Just real quick, I know the Olympics, before you know what they're going to be here, are
we going to have a status report in the near future?
Director Marquez, yes, the chair actually has identified our preparations for LA28 as
one of his key priorities, and as such he's requested before that we bring directly to
the board at our April meeting an update as to where we are with LA28 preparations.
You guys have anything out there in T.B. Lynn?
All right, thank you.
That'll do it.
Meeting's adjourned.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, everyone.
Have a good weekend.