Good morning everyone in the absence of Chair McCollum I will be chairing the
meeting this morning as vice chair so I'd like to call the meeting to order
and if we might have our safety briefing from Frank Castellone our chief safety
and security and compliance officer Frank please proceed. Good morning
director Shafee members the board this is your morning safety briefing so in
the event of a fire alarm activation we're all going to collectively go down
the escalator, staged by Metro customer service, and wait for the all clear from
Metro security. In the rare event, we do have a earthquake. We are all going to get
down low, wait till the shaking stops and do an assessment of whether or not
we will evacuate the building at that point. If the situation arises
requiring medical attention, I will be your temporary medical provider and I
will request the sheriff's to contact both EMS and let Metro security know. If
If we do have a active attacker event,
we use the saying run, hide, fight.
And that concludes your safety briefing
for this Friday morning.
Thank you for the security briefing.
Appreciate it.
Are there any questions from any board member?
Seeing none, thank you.
We now proceed to our Pledge of Allegiance.
And I've asked Sam Bernardino alternate,
Javier Duketree, who's also mayor of Montclair
to lead the pledge.
And as we do the Pledge of Allegiance,
as we know, this is Memorial Day weekend
And it's the memory of American soldiers who died in war.
So let's do the Pledge of Allegiance in our honor.
Please join me.
At this point in time, we've come to, I'm sorry, roll call.
We better make sure we have a quorum before any further.
Madam Clerk.
Certainly.
Director Wapner?
Director Dutray?
Present.
Director Marquez?
Here.
Vice Chair Tafee?
Present.
Director Nguyen?
Here.
Director Murphy.
Second Vice Chair Burksen.
Here.
Director Spiegel.
Here.
Director Middleton.
Present.
Director Vargas.
Director Tremblay.
Director Chavez.
Director Barger.
Here.
Director Krakorian.
Director Najarian.
Here.
Director Solis.
Director Hughes-Leslie.
Present.
Director O'Connor.
Director Allen.
Here.
Director Preciado.
here
chair mccallan
we do have a quorum present
thank you madam clerk
now we come to our part of the meeting where we take comments on the public
and of course we have a request to comment
i have not received any written public comment
you have any of the here that would like to speak
please bring the slip forward and uh... this is our
general public comment time
where you may speak on items within the jurisdiction
and you are limited to three minutes. So, sir, please
state your name and we'd
appreciate hearing from you if you would.
Go ahead, please.
I am Donald Harlan. I see that there's a massive budget
on the line today and
there's several agenda items that I wanted to speak about.
Real quick,
Be careful with the fuel contracts, I know there's a fuel shortage or you're not able
to get it here, but have a petroleum expert make sure you check every bit of fuel before
they put it on the train, there might be an attempt to sabotage trains that way.
Also there's going to be an attempt to bankrupt Metrolink along with Metro and several other
government agencies by overbuilding green vehicle infrastructure, hydrogen or electrical
or whatever that is.
They want to overbuild it and then blow up the huge electric bill, bankrupt it, and then
sell everything in there or something like that.
Mostly people that are never allowed to own real estate or own things want to try stuff
like that.
So I would be careful not to spend too much money on EV infrastructure right now.
You might want to wait to see how the electric bill looks coming up because there will be
attempts like that.
Also I'm concerned that they present to the Metrolink Board fake grants or fake money
or fake judgments, fake settlements or something they say they won, they didn't, that's not
real.
They want to, there's people from all over, all political parties, all nations coming
over to the big venues trying to trick you guys
into spending money, that's not real.
I hope you guys do due diligence and check that,
not all those permits they're issuing
to build things are legal.
I was really worried about the at will employment agreements.
I know that you guys need people crazy and somebody crazy
to pick people up and there's a lot
of bad people they're picking up because they just need people
or whatever, but I'm really concerned about the safety
of these job contracts.
You know, there's people trying to play power games and stuff.
I don't know, maybe you heard a little bit about that.
I don't want them making shadow stocks and hostages
and all kinds of stuff over that.
I would never do that or allow that to happen in any
of the government agencies I own or companies like Metrolink.
And I want to also point out to you guys there's a person
that owns Metrolink and owns that property and owns the rails.
And it's not that Metrolink owns the rails
or the Southern California Rail Association owns that.
There's a person that owns that and you guys aren't supposed
to be building things.
They don't need a homeless program in Metrolink either,
Obviously several other things I I need to point out to you guys that I feel that
There's political people in there. Thank you, sir. Would you please wrap up?
Okay, I just I really care about Metro like I really do mean the best for it, and I don't want you guys to waste
I hope that
you guys
Keep things
On the legal side. Thank you
And as a reminder to everyone we'll be streaming live
To sure the recording can be capturing the audio request of it a member
Makes motions or seconds of motion to please announce your last name for the record
now come to a
Consent calendar which are 11 a through 11 L. Is there any item that a board member would like to pull from the consent calendar?
seeing none
That asked a member of the public if there any item a member of the public would like to pull from consent calendar
seeing
Motion we do it as a through L because you have M on this
Scriveners error. Sorry. It's okay. I just want to make sure that
Purposes of minutes that we get it. Yes, it will be 11 a through 11 L. I apologize
I think this was from before the revised agenda
And if once with that correction, I will make the motion I'll second it
There any objections or abstentions
Seeing none motion carries unanimously now go to a regular calendar, which has an action item
The at will employment agreement for a chief executive officer and presented by our chief people officer Elissa de Casparis
I am here on item 7a the second amendment to the at will agreement with chief of our chief executive
It's a recommendation to approve this second compensation amendment to the September 7th
That the authority pay our CEO an increase in annual base salary from
$355,000 on a three to biweekly basis affected today May 26, 2023.
Are there any questions from any board member? Seeing none, are there any public
comments? I'm sorry, I should have asked for that first. Seeing none, may I have a
motion? Second, when? Move and second it. Any objections or extensions? Seeing none,
Motion carries unanimously
You want now to 7b sure I could just say thank you
You just have to work hard promise now we have a budget
Presentation by our senior manager of finance and Charlene Wilson. That's also an action item. Please proceed. Thank you. Good morning
Chairman Chafee and members of the board
This presentation requests that the board approve transmittal
of the proposed FY24 budget to member agencies
for their review and adoption.
Next slide, please.
This slide provides the result of research
on Metrolink sister transit agencies across the U.S.
who are experiencing similar or worse levels
of ridership recovery.
Next slide.
This next slide describes the challenges made manifest
by the reduction in ridership.
Next slide, please.
Before presenting the requested amounts, I wish to explain
that the proposed FY24 budget was produced
through a close collaboration of all areas of the authority.
The amounts were then scrubbed, reviewed, and presented again
to the organizational chiefs, the chief financial officer,
and the chief executive officer.
The revised budget was then presented to and discussed
with each member agency's CEO and their staff.
And the member agency advisory committee
and the member agency's CEOs.
Next slide, oh sorry, can you go back one?
The assumptions, shown here are the assumptions
to create the proposed FY24 operating budget.
They include in the area of service, service at the current level of train service, full
co-chair, which is still in negotiation, and aero service as a separate budget.
The revenue, revenue and ridership based on the lowest SPIRI capital KPMG forecast, no
fair increases, fair promotions, and the expenses are based on contractor increases
only as dictated by the agreements that we have in place.
No new FTE head counts, a 5% merit pool, no COLA, and for reporting, we will be doing
that monthly with a formal mid-year budget review, and Aeroservice will be reported monthly
also.
You see here the difference between the forecast used to create the FY23 ridership and revenue
as compared to the forecast used to produce the FY24 ridership and revenue.
As you can see, it is far more conservative and will prevent the kind of revenue shortfall that we experienced in FY23.
Next slide, please.
Next slide, please.
This is a summary of the proposed FY 24 operating budget.
Revenue is 52.8 million,
which is a 13.7 million dollar decrease
from the FY 23 budget,
reflecting our more conservative forecast.
Total expenses are 303.4 million
and increase from the FY 23 budget of 2.4%.
Number agency support is 250.7 million,
an increase of 20.9 million or 9.1%.
Our working capital request will be brought to the committee
with a recommended board policy and description
of procedural controls at the next meeting.
Next slide.
You see here the operating expenses,
actual or budgeted FY19 through FY24.
Next slide.
This stack chart displays the major components
of the 303.4 million of expenses
in the proposed FY24 budget,
including specifically maintenance away at 53.3 million,
train operations at 46.5 million,
and equipment maintenance including parts at 44.6 million.
Next slide, please.
This slide shows the amounts of funding provided
by member agencies, revenues and federal relief from the period FY19 through FY24.
Next slide, please.
This pie chart displays the proportional amount of support requested from each of the member
agencies for the proposed FY24 operating budget.
Next slide.
Now we'll do a review of the capital budget program proposed for FY24.
The request for state of good repair totals 126.3 million, an increase of 31.9 million
from FY23.
The request for new capital totals 20.9 million, an increase of 8.8 million from FY23.
It is important to note that the state of good repair amount covers only current needs
and does not cover any backlog currently estimated
at approximately 750 million.
There are two revisions to the capital program
which occurred too late for us to change the documents here
but which will be included in the transmittal.
There is 3.5 million in state of good repair projects added
at the request of VCTC Ventura County Transit Commission,
supported exclusively by their funding.
And 600,000 has been removed from the new capital program
as a result of a grant awarded to Metrolink
to cover fuel studies.
Next slide.
Go ahead to the next one.
The next one.
Here are the amounts requested for each of the two programs
from the member agencies.
Next slide.
Next slide.
These charts show the operating and capital support
requested by member agency with,
oh sorry, next slide.
These charts show the operating and capital support
requested by member agencies with comparisons
to the FY23 budget.
I want to also mention that the transmittal
that we will send will also be including
the four-year forecast for FY25 through FY28 for the member agencies review and approval
because they have now been completed.
Your packet also included attachments which provided operating statements by category
by member agency and by category by line with comparisons to FY23.
That concludes my report.
May I answer any questions?
are there any questions from board members mr. chair if I could before we
take questions just a place go ahead of quick follow-ups first of all I want to
make sure we thank miss Wilson and Arnold Hackett great work and about
getting the budget to this point in a really challenging circumstance given
the then again the revenue streams that we're seeing and ridership being what it
is so my thanks to all of our staff but certainly the finance team did a
exemplary job. I want to make two quick comments. First of all, when the board
convened in a workshop back in December, the board had given us direction to try
to budget towards a hundred percent fully restored service of our system to
pre-pandemic numbers of trains. As we worked through that with our member
agencies, there was some resistance to that full hundred percent recovery. So
the budget, as Ms. Wilson shared with you, is going off is built based on our
current service levels, which is about 85% or so of pre-pandemic service levels.
We do, however, have heard from a couple of counties that there might be a desire to see
more service back.
So what we're looking at doing over the course of, if there are member agencies that are
so inclined, I'm almost calling it a subscription service, that we would be able to work with
those counties and bring back additional service if that's the desire and the
ability to pay for it. So I want to share with the board that that was our way to
try to thread the needle between current level of service and trying to expand our
service for counties that would like to see that. The second is related to state
of good repair and there's a there was a fairly large increase in state of good
repair that is included in this budget and but that is in most cases being
fully covered through the IIJA, the new federal infrastructure package.
Our agency generates a significant amount of revenue to this region because of the train
miles that we operate, and based on that, we have seen a very significant increase,
something on the order of about 45 percent over the prior level of dollars.
So this is actually helping us stay on target with our State of Good Repair program, and
it's not coming out of what would oftentimes have to come out of member agencies, particularly
typically sales tax dollars or that type of thing.
So I wanted to make those two comments, and then of course Miss Wilson, our staff, and
I are available for questions.
Yes, Director Barger.
Thank you.
And I also agree, and I was going to thank the staff.
I mean, I know it's a tough job, and you have to budget based on, you know, limited means
as it relates to the ridership and all, and I think you've done a phenomenal job.
Thank you.
And then you kind of took the thunder out of what I was going to ask, and that is, I
know in L.A. County, we're looking at increasing service on the AV line, and I know that we're
dark in August, so my ask is that in October we do amendments to the budget for Metro.
If there's any way that y'all could crunch the numbers
as it relates to and reach out to Metro
and crunch those numbers to see what the dollar amount
would look like to increase on the AV line,
I would really appreciate it,
because I think we're not gonna meet in August, correct?
So we just, July's our last meeting?
That would be really helpful, because to your point,
I mean, we're willing to pay for it,
it's something that we're interested in doing.
We believe there is a need, but I need to know how much.
We will work with the finance team and our operations team.
Operations already has a heads up on this and we'll hope to have something for the July
sequence of meetings so you have some information on that.
There's other elements that go into it, but that should not be a problem, Director Barter.
Excellent.
And then I just have to say, I think part of the reason why this budget makes sense
is because throughout the year you do keep us up-to-date both on projections
and actual where you know the actual and all and and that really makes for this
budget I mean I I get it because throughout the year you've given us
those updates as it relates to where we what we projected where we are and so
again I commend you and your staff for the work that you do thank you thank you
Thank you. Director Spiegel. With the reduced ridership and the reduced revenues, a serious
problem. I know that this year, the member agency is working together and we're able
to cover it, but we've got to figure this out because long term, I'm not sure that we
can because we're not having any better in our aspect either. The state of the good repair
really is challenging that we're not able to do that.
We put it off year after year after year
and I think she addressed the fact
that that doesn't include previous.
That's what's even more scary.
And I'm not sure why we're not including that
because if it was already listed as a need and necessity,
why we aren't at least acknowledging it.
So I would like to have had that included somewhere
as maybe a footnote of what we're not looking at
So that we do have a total number of what we really have the needs for in good repair.
My second question is on this working capital loan, the $50 million, first off how was those numbers determined?
Those numbers are submitted, in fact, is Justin here?
They're submitted by the team in PMO.
Hi, good morning, Justin for L.A. Chief of Program Delivery.
Yeah, so our student repair program, we have gone through over the last couple of years,
we've created our Metrolink rehabilitation plan and it basically does an assessment of
all of our assets, kind of bottoms up, looking at their condition, age, that sort of thing.
And so what we've done is we've prioritized all of those assets and for the funding amounts
that we think that the member agencies can afford, that's how we kind of prioritized
the projects that we have as part of this budget.
Justin, I think what Director Spiegel's speaking to
is the establishment of the capital reserve,
the $50 million.
How did we come upon a $50 million number?
And I think that may be a Mr. Hackett question.
I think Christine was just having fun with Justin
trying to get him up to the podium.
Justin, thank you.
But Justin, thank you for that because that was.
That was the other part of the question.
That was the other part.
I moved on from that one, but thank you.
Good morning, Arnold Hackett, Chief Financial Officer.
So when we established our budget for many years
of the past, we've intermingled our operations
and our capital funds.
And that's not a good idea with also the policy
that at all times the board has directed us
as part of a policy to make sure we maintain $50 million
in the operation.
So it's not a reserve, but it's sort of just cash flow.
So, therefore, what we've been seeing is,
anytime you do a capital project,
there's upfront money that's needed
because the majority of our capital programs
are based on grants and it's reimbursement.
So, it's getting the money back,
but you have to put money up front.
So, that's what's driving it.
So, we tried to find the minimum number
that we could do to really keep our capital
and our operations separated
so that we don't have to come back here
and say we have a problem financially.
And a little further follow-up, Director Spiegel.
So the 50 million, we looked at what our construction program
is going to look like over the next couple of years.
If you actually, if you asked Justin to come back up,
he'd say we should have a larger capital reserve because we're
going to deliver that many more projects.
And it's just a good business practice
to not have to be using operating dollars
to cash flow your capital program.
So we identified 50 million.
We thought that was a reasonable last for member agencies and then the distribution of that 50 million is all based on
Track miles within each of the five counties so that was the original question okay, so so there we go the others
All right, sorry. It took us five minutes to get there, but in any event we I think we got there
so so let me get this right so that 50 million is not
set really to
expend for the capital projects is there as as
We spend it before we get reimbursed we have the money there
And then we're reimbursing that and then the next one we spend it on and they get reimbursed, so it's just kind of yes
Thank you
All right, I think director deutry had a question on the arrow project
The continuation resolution will be on the next board meeting agenda
I'm assuming on the Arrow project for the first quarter and then I know it's an SPCTA's hands, but is there a projection when
something will be coming back later on this year on the remaining of the
fiscal year for Arrow, any idea or you guys a question I should ask SPCTA?
Yeah, we're going to be working on that, but the plan is to come back within that first quarter.
The first quarter?
Or to approve an entire budget for the whole fiscal year.
Okay. And I would, my two colleges spoke, yes, this is a very good budget. I want to
commend staff for all the hard work, keeping the especially on the Finance Committee updated
on the month reports and where we're at. And obviously, you know, we're not at the fire
yet if you want to call it. So hopefully, you know, we'll get through this budget here
And then hopefully there's some promising news coming down in the future in terms of revenue
and maybe our costs will be less.
We'll see.
Thank you.
All right.
I see another light on.
Please go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
A real fast, a couple of questions.
First of all, thank you for doing an outstanding job on the budget.
My question is, I represent SBCTA.
And my question is, I notice I ride the train at least three times a month.
And ridership improves every time I get on the train, so I'm happy about that.
But I want to be able to justify to SPCTA how we break down the cost per each agency.
So any data that you might have, I'd appreciate it.
Second thing is, is I know the Olympics are going to be here before you know it.
Are we sort of getting ready for that as far as future budgets or even this budget?
We know there's going to be a capital cost there.
So when are we going to start adding that into the budget?
Director Marquez, yeah, we'll, again, the Olympics are a little over five years away,
which might as well be tomorrow, the way we feel at this point.
The work that's happening in the SCORE program on the program delivery side is well underway.
That's what's going to give us our ability to have the bidirectional frequencies, the
30-minute frequencies that at minimum we need to have for the Olympics.
We still have the questions of equipment.
We do not have the capital dollars for that.
We may already starting to pivot to looking at sister agencies who might have spare equipment
to do that.
The operating funds, we will be working with LA-28.
The expectation at this point is that when an individual buys a ticket for an event that
a portion of that ticket price will also allow them to effectively revenue that comes to
Metrolink for operating purposes.
I know that will fully cover that, but there are also, there's also been legislation
introduced in, at the federal level, Senator Padilla, as well as Congresswoman Brownlee,
have introduced legislation that is looking at operating funds to support transit during
the Olympics.
Now, we're a ways away from that, but it has been introduced, so we have some traction,
And but fortunately on the operating side we're a couple years away, but we need to
start now getting the support so that again we get that federal support in 2028.
I see another light on.
Just a quick question.
Ms. Wilson, I think it was one of the very first slides that you showed a comparison
of other agencies and what percentages they were at.
Can you bring that up?
I was trying to make a couple notes on it.
Okay.
Second slide.
Second slide, okay.
I just wanted to see the slides so I can make my notes.
Well, it's here because it was on my notes, too.
There's an agency at 77% back.
Does that mean I'm not looking at any of the California ones
or that well done?
That's the Long Island Railroad in New York.
And I think what we see in those top three or four
are all Northeast Corridor, very accustomed to rail,
have been for decades.
So you have New Jersey Transit, you have MBTA,
that's Boston, Long Island Railroad,
and then Metro North, also New York,
and SEPTA is Philadelphia.
So that is, again, regions that have been very accustomed
to using regional rail for purposes
other than commute trips also.
so that's i think why one of their driving factors
i do know that m bt a
has just also recently introduced more midday service
i think you're seeing that with a lot of similar age agencies to us about more
more midday service driving some writers new new ridership
so that's a little bit more
anymore questions from board members
cia
none
uh... i would be remiss i didn't ask the clerk if there are public comments on
this item we have not received any written public comment on this item and
are there any speaker forms that have been turned in and there are none all
right other quest here for action is that we approved transmitting the
proposed fiscal year budget the consideration adoption of member
agencies they're being asked to contribute substantial funding likely
they'll all hold their own hearings on this before their respective boards may
have a motion. Did Ray move? Is there a second? Is there a second? Any further discussion?
Any objections? Abstentions? Seeing none, motion carries unanimously. Thank you for your reports.
Now we come to our May legislative update. Senior manager of our government relations,
Alex Davis. Thank you, and good morning chair and directors. This week, the agency continued our
outreach and building relationships in the communities that we serve. Staff held two
meetings this week with elected officials and community members along our San Bernardino line.
That's the first line that we're outreaching to of all of our seven service lines. During the
elected official briefing, we were joined by Director Preciado, staff on behalf of Director
Barger, and officials from the cities of Laverne, Upland, Rialto, Baldwin Park, Claremont, and Ontario,
well as staff from six legislative offices and cities. In preparation of the
community meeting, staff reached out using the online platform Nextdoor, sent
emails and mail to over 500 community members, businesses, community groups, and
first responders. During the meetings, we listened to and provided information on
community interests, including quiet zones, maintenance of way, right-of-way
concerns service recovery and safety. In Sacramento Governor Newsom released the
FY 23-24 May revise on May 12th. The governor's January budget accounted for
lower revenues that created a 22.5 billion dollar funding gap. The governor
presented several cost containment measures and reductions to balance the
budget. This included a reduction of general fund resources to the transit
inner city rail capital program or TIRCP from 2 billion each year to 1 billion in fiscal
years 23, 24 and 25, 26 via a population based formula. Additionally, the governor delayed
350 million in grade separation funding among other actions. The governors may revise raise
the deficit to 31.5 billion. The revise does not propose any additional cuts to transportation
and retains the reductions proposed in January,
which totaled $2.7 billion.
While the governor did not include
additional operations funding for transit,
the administration is continuing discussions
with the legislature and holding legislative hearings.
The governor has also proposed a administrative package
of infrastructure streamlining measures,
which will be considered by the legislature.
CEO Darren Kettle, and supported by strategy office staff,
joined the California Transit Association
Spring Legislative Conference on May 15th and 16th.
We amplified the California Transit Association request
to provide transit operations funding statewide
and to address fiscal need.
Additionally, we reiterated the benefit
of Metrolinx solutions for congested corridors application,
which requests 46.5 million to replace eight locomotives
with tier four equipment.
On the trip, we met with Assemblymember Juan Currillo,
Senator Newman, Senator Archuleta,
Assemblymember Murasuchi, CalSTA Secretary Mark Tollefson,
and the Office of Assemblymember Bennett,
Rubio, Senator Menjivar, Assemblymember Gibson,
and policy committee consultants.
In D.C., Congress and the administration
or continuing negotiations around the debt limit.
At this time, it is being reported
that there is a compromise that will lift the borrowing
through fiscal year, excuse me, through calendar year 2024.
It includes a possible rescission of unspent COVID-19 funding,
including those for public transportation purposes.
Staff also shared information with key legislative offices
regarding Metrolinx RAYS and federal state partnership
for state of good repair grant applications.
We have outreached to more than 20 key delegation offices
and received positive support from the offices
of Representative Napolitano and Garcia
on our RAISE application and Representatives Aguilar,
Levin, Steele, and Senator Feinstein
have outreached directly to the Department
of Transportation regarding our applications.
Additionally, Representatives Levin and Steele
have made calls regarding
our federal state partnership application.
Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Any questions?
Director Spiegel, please go ahead.
I'm referring back to your comment on the COVID dollars.
Do we have anything that's out there that may be pulled back?
We do not.
We have fully obligated all of the COVID relief dollars
that have been assigned to Metrolinx.
So we're clear.
So we're clear.
Is it spent?
For the purposes of the federal government, yes.
We're all, I mean, I'm sure every agency
and the agencies that we represent is really up in the air
because there's a lot of dollars that aren't spent
and depending on who you talk to,
how they're looking at it, that's my concern.
So it's kind of like in a doubt, spend it.
Correct.
We are well positioned.
We had made that decision a while back.
FTA has, for all intents and purposes,
we have spent their money.
That's how it works on FTA lands.
Is that ARPA dollars too?
You just put it through the dollars.
Yeah, yes, we have there's there's yeah, so we broadly classify all three of the covid relief packages as covid relief money
So it's all yes, go ahead director padre
I don't did you touch on the inner city rail?
Quarter id program because I know that the state has included that
Um, and as part of what they're they submit, I guess an application. Am I correct?
That's correct. The state led the submission to the Federal Railroad Administration for submissions to the corridor ABD program,
and MetroLink staff coordinated and facilitated information sharing with this state in identifying MetroLink corridors.
Excellent. I think that's an exciting opportunity that we hopefully can work together on. Thank you.
Thank you.
Any more questions from our board?
Seeing none, again, I'm going to inquire of our clerk.
Do we have any requests to either written or speaker form requests?
We do not.
And there are none.
Okay, thank you.
This is a receive and file item.
If there's no objection, it'll be ordered to be received and filed.
Now we come onto a service growth development plan update presented by Rory Vaughn,
our manager of planning and development.
Please go ahead.
Morning, Director and members of the board.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present today.
Today I'd like to introduce the Service Growth Development Plan and also give an update on
some of our early findings coming out of it.
The Service Growth Development Plan builds on the work we've been working on for a few
years now on what we are, what we can be, and what we want to be in terms of our benefit
to the region and the service that we provide to our customers.
Those things include building on the strategic business plan and the work that we've done
as a part of the SCORE program.
Building on that work that we've done before,
there's a few things that we wanted to do.
One is we wanted to sharpen our pencils
in terms of our financial modeling,
our operations modeling, resource requirement gathering,
and our market research to make sure
that the plans and proposals that we put forward
are really solid that we can trust them
and stand behind them.
We also wanted to make sure that we really updated things
to reflect that we had this little thing called COVID
that happened that has rocked our worlds a bit.
and it has wrought some significant changes
in the marketplace and how people travel around
and when they travel around,
and how frequently they travel
or how frequently they choose Metrolink,
and we wanted to make sure that we were,
as we were in the budget process,
accurately reflecting those trends
and making sure that we were not being too optimistic
or too rosy about everything returning back to normal.
And through all of this and in close collaboration
with our colleagues internally
and at our partners and member agencies,
trying to establish a strong actionable and consensus plan.
The service growth development plan
is not strictly looking at the service for the Olympics,
it is looking more at a kind of broader long-term
what we want to be and what we want to continue to be.
But as you might imagine, as we're talking about things
like, say, half hourly service on this line
or that line or whatnot, there are strong synergies
of what we're talking about with the Olympics.
And it would be our hope that whatever we do
with the Olympics could be supportive
of what we want to become,
what we want to do in the long term.
So we expect to come back to the board in September
with a much meatier update
and ultimately wrap this whole project up in the fall.
There are some project parts of it
that will come faster and earlier than that.
As we alluded to before,
we are looking across the time horizon
from the short term to the medium term
towards the long term of where we want to be
and what we can be and what we need to be.
We also want to make sure that we're pulling forward any wins that we can pull forward to the short term and that we take action on them.
So as a part of that, we're looking at some short-term optimizations, things that we can pull forward that maybe we can implement, say, this year in a schedule change that is constrained to our resources, constrained to our crews and equipment and financial resources that we could pull to attract ridership and better position ourselves in the marketplace as well as looking at things that maybe we could do with a little more money if there was an interest in that.
So that will come earlier than the whole thing, coming all together at the end.
So that's an introduction to the Service Growth Development Plan.
I did want to spend the rest of this presentation sharing some of the updates, or sorry, sharing
some of the findings that we've found as we've looked at the marketplace and how it's changed
over the last several years and what it looks like today.
I think that it will be very informative to understanding the strategies that we are working
on and developing for our service points.
So to get started, we have to address the elephant in the room.
Not because this presentation is going to be a presentation about recovery, but because
our ridership is less than it was before the pandemic before, versus what it was in 2019.
These numbers are a little bit a few months old, but the story still stands for about
40-something percent below what we were before the pandemic.
And that story is not the same across the day and across all over the times of service
that we offer.
Our peak commuter service time periods are quite low.
You can see up on the board, depending on the two main ways of measuring it, you're
either a little bit below or a little bit above 40 percent recovered.
That's where most of our service is historically because we've historically been a commuter
railroad that serves a white collar office commuter.
But if you look at service or ridership at other times of the day and other times of
the week, it's recovering much more strongly.
Our midday, for instance, ridership is on a sheer absolute total numbers basis recovered
over 50% and on a ridership per train basis is recovering closer to 80%.
You may recall from the budget update that slide about how different agencies were performing
and some of those agencies that were performing more strongly had more of that midday service,
more balanced profile and wireless ridership profile than a quote unquote commuter railroad
would.
So, this is just kind of a baseline that there is, we are seeing market recovery out there
and we're seeing particularly strong market recovery in the mid day, but a large percentage
recovery on a small number is still a small number.
So, we have to ask, well, are there people in significant numbers traveling in the mid
day?
Very quickly, this next slide was included just as a kind of a key or reference point
for the previous slide for those
who are maybe reading this presentation from home
and without the benefit of my voiceover.
But here on this slide, we are,
to answer that question before
about are people traveling in the mid day,
we got street light data.
And if you're not familiar with street light data,
what street light data is, is cell phone data,
anonymized, aggregated,
we don't see the individual personal stuff,
we just see the aggregate information.
showing, measuring all purpose and all mode travel
across the region.
This chart here shows travel of more than 10 miles
between our station pairs,
within two miles of our station pairs.
So really the kind of market that we can serve quite well.
And you'll see that there is a fair amount of ridership
in the mid day.
The mid day market is about two thirds the size
of the commuter peak period,
which means we still do have a commuter peak.
But there's a lot of people traveling in the mid day.
There's a market there to serve.
Let me go to the next slide.
All the boxes on this chart represent individual trains
that we offer.
And you'll see that we have a big gap in our midday service
where, say, in the 12 o'clock hour or the 1 o'clock hour
system-wide across all of our lines,
we may have only two trains departing anywhere
in the system.
And so even though there is a midday market out there,
we're not serving it particularly well.
And to say that a little bit more positively,
there's an opportunity to serve it better.
This next slide shows another thing that we've found
that we see as an opportunity,
looking at that same street light data
and on where people are trying to go.
And about two thirds of all the trips
between our station pairs are served by,
or can be served by a single line.
And those are the kind of things,
service that we are serving with our existing trains
operating the schedules that they do.
but about a little over a third of the market,
almost 40% of the market is traveling
between station pairs that require a transfer
between lines to get to where you wanna go.
We have a lot more station pairs there
and it's a smaller percentage,
so it's on an individual basis, a smaller thing,
but an aggregate basis is actually quite significant.
If we could tap that market,
you could see a growth in ridership
at the same level of service of up to 60% increase
as of the kind of the synergies between lines, if you will.
So those are some findings that we thought were interesting.
The opportunity to better serve the midday market
and off-peak market.
The opportunity to better serve cross-line travel
through structural, timed, integrated transfers
between our lines.
And so as we come back in a few months to share
the findings or the plans, proposals that we're working on,
you will find those themes,
the themes that we are presenting,
that there's this midday opportunity
and there's this opportunity
to promote travel between lines.
Are there any questions?
Any questions from board members?
Yes, go ahead, Director Marquez.
One of the graphs that you showed,
if you can go back to it, it's on weekend travel,
and I believe it was coming back almost 60, 70%.
And my question on that is why?
It seems like the percentage is quite high there.
What are we doing different on the weekend?
So I think what's happening here is not so much a function of what we are doing, as it
is what the market is doing, in a slightly different way.
We are seeing people who are, life is returning to normal for many people.
They're going back and going on trips, they're going to the beach, they're going to downtown
L.A., they're going to wherever they might be going to, a museum, a university, etcetera.
seen a big kind of lag or change versus before is in the commuter peak period, where things
like remote work or hybrid work schedules or I'm carrying this increasingly more people
who are coming back on the train, schedules where they come into the office whenever they
have a meeting otherwise they stay at home. That phenomena is huge now, and it was very
relatively small before the pandemic. And just to give an illustration of that, if you
You have a bunch of people who are working five days a week and they now work from home
one day a week, which they didn't before.
That right there is going to be a flat 20 percent reduction in your ridership during
that time period.
And so that's why the morning and evening slots, the commuter period slots are lagging,
if you will, versus recovery in the midday and the weekends.
One of the questions I should have followed up with is, what are the fares on the weekend?
Are they a little bit cheaper?
Just professional information for me?
They are.
a 10-dollar weekend day pass, also a holiday pass on holidays,
that provides system-wide travel.
And for most station pairs, it's going to be cheaper
than buying a round-trip ticket.
Director Perciato, please.
Thank you very much for the information.
I have a question on this before I make a comment.
When you do a weekend and you see the 60% recovery, which
is fantastic, does it help that we?
I didn't please correct if I'm wrong,
that we have less service,
because it says riders per train,
so if we do less service or just pack more with more people,
does that help or how does?
Yeah, so in the case of the weekend,
our weekend service is almost the same
as it was pre-pandemic.
We made a few tweaks,
but effectively it's the same level of service,
which is why you see the ridership per train
and the ridership in total being about the same.
Where you see it different is say on the weekday,
sorry, the midday on the weekday where most of the trains that we have not brought back
are midday trains, and so the total ridership is suffering because of that.
There's a whole complicated interplay of factors about our people.
Some people are moving from a train that they would have ridden, but it's no longer offered
to a train that we are offering, and there are other people who are just not traveling
because we're not offering a train at time during that slot.
On the weekend, though, that's not really a phenomenon because it's about the same.
We do find in our work that the level of service is a very large driver of ridership, which
makes sense in the sense that if you're thinking about riding mentionally, and I've talked
with so many people who even show up at a station wanting to ride the train, and then
when you explain to them, we'll know actually the next train going where they want to go
is in three hours, they just turn around and walk away.
And so if you don't offer the service that people want in order to ride what they want
to do, a lot of people don't ride. There are some people who will, absolutely will, but
there's many people who won't.
I think that's great information. I mean, especially when, you know, people are trying
to figure out what to do on a weekend and they're limited on the amount of dollars that
they want to spend, and time as well. Like riding into LA on a Friday night, I actually
just did it this past week. It was fantastic. Talked to a couple people at the location
And I went to, they're like, oh man,
that traffic must have been horrible.
I rode the train.
It was nothing.
And so just offering other options and opportunities,
especially like on the weekend,
sounds like a great deal in conversation of,
is this opportunity that we're missing in ridership
and potential revenue.
And by the way, actually one more thing is,
I was gonna take a whole group of people
over to the Cheech, because I know it is driving it,
and there's a ton of cars going over there,
And that museum show was fantastic.
But our first option was like, let's look at a weekend service.
And there was not one.
Thank you.
Director Spiegel, your light is on again.
We're observing that.
We have a way track, and I know I've asked this before,
of how much of our ridership decrease that hasn't come back
is due to remote working.
And then if we have corporate partnership,
if we can reach out to them to find that out.
in their industry, just really curious if we're going to keep trying to go after this,
if in fact part of that is because of the lack of the necessity of writing because they're
working from home.
We do have some information, but he's the expert not I on this.
Good morning Henning Eichler, Senior Manager of Markets Research and Analytics.
I can tell you that the biggest decrease we've seen in ridership was among commuters.
If you remember in April, ridership was done.
Many of those commuters have come back.
However, we will – I don't think in the foreseeable future we will get back to the
level that we have seen commuter ridership simply because I think hybrid work, work-from-home
is going to stay.
We're tracking the office occupancy rates in our region, meaning how many of the employees
have returned back to office work.
It has been hovering around nearly 50 percent, so not even half of the office workers have
returned yet and for the last months actually since the beginning of the year, it hasn't changed.
If I could real quickly follow up, I think there's a really good surrogate that pre-pandemic,
what was it, Henning, nearly 70 percent of our riders purchased monthly passes. Those were
commuters going four and five days a week and I think our number right now is something on the
order of 38. Yes, we're actually about 38 percent. So again, we've seen an increase in monthly pass
usage, but again it's still way below where it used to be.
Those are commuters.
I mean that's the commuters that we've lost and I shouldn't say that we've lost them.
We have lost them to 5 and 10 day flex passes because they're coming in a day or two a week,
but as Rory indicated, we lose one day of a 5 day a week rider.
We have just lost 20% of our ridership in that one individual.
So that's the challenge we have with commuters.
Years ago, for some of us who've been on this board for a while, we really pushed the emphasis
of the corporate sponsors, corporate partners, and maybe we need to revisit that.
Because the first and last mile is always the biggest challenge, but if we revisit that
and see if we can capture some of that for new writers because everything has changed.
This last five years has been a dramatic change in society as a whole and maybe we need
to put some energy if necessary even dollars back to that corporate partnership program
because that was where a lot of that started was with those corporate sponsors
and getting their employees to ride.
Sabrina Davis, our acting director of marketing partnerships, that's music
to her ears, I think.
Sabrina, you wanna touch on that?
Yes, ma'am.
We do active outreach to a lot of our corporate partners.
We're especially looking at opportunities in newer regions.
We do need to have the service that supports
getting people to and from work as well.
We're still fighting some organizations
who haven't returned to work,
like Henning said about the office occupancy rate,
But we're also looking at working
with transit oriented developments as well.
The regional connector at Metro will give us
more opportunity for the corporate partner program as well.
So we're digging into it for sure and focusing on it, yes.
You are going to those transit oriented districts,
the TODs, and looking? Yes.
Yes, we're actually currently working on a partnership
with Lewis Group, putting together an agreement
to promote, cross-promote, and encourage ridership
from those developments.
Please go ahead.
Just to say, yeah, reading that there
are a number of corporations and businesses that
want to get folks back in the office.
So if this can be an incentive for those businesses that
really want to get their workers back,
it would be great to tap into that.
I wanted to comment on the time transfers.
If we can really get those time transfers going,
that can be a real game changer.
I remember I was on a study tour in Switzerland,
and just remember standing on a platform, train came in,
folks got off, the other train came in, folks got off.
Some time later, can't remember quite the number of minutes,
another train came in, people got on.
Another train came in, people got on,
and suddenly the platform was empty again.
And it was just quite incredible with those time transfers,
how efficient that was and how that can really
make a difference.
You know, people not having to wait two hours or three hours,
but to time those transfers would be great
and would pick up more riders.
Not just, I think not just those riders that you show
on the gap, but other folks might start thinking
about using the system.
So I hope we can get to that.
Thank you.
Any further comments?
Chair, President, Vice President.
Please go ahead.
I think our mission's changed, you know,
the old days of commuting.
That's how it got started, back in 1990,
I'm correct, because we're moving commuters
and the world's changed.
We still have, I think, an important mission
because we gotta give the public an option
to move without using an automobile.
And there's obviously still a need out there,
and I think there's growth.
And I think, obviously, how you get people
to use the train more often is convenience.
More trains, more reliable.
Of course, the other issue is how do you pay for it all?
We get there so I think as we try to figure out what this crystal ball the future looks like which is very cloudy right now
The question is is you know, I believe there's a need I think mortars want to use trains
It's just it's all about convenience and again, how do you pay for it?
Other comments the board seeing none
One last inquiry. Are there any requests to speak?
They're not not. Okay
This is another receiving file item as there is no objection the item will be deemed
Received and filed now the report all been waiting for from our CEO update
I think and I certainly want to talk about maybe the San Clemente issue. We are going to talk a little bit about San Clemente the
Constantly moving target of restoring service in San Clemente. So let's go to the next slide Jennifer
so on cue San Clemente service update it is we
Have been working with the city of San Clemente who has a contractor out on site
They have been doing grating work along the slope
in San Clemente we are
Our operations team has told me that we are moving our trains down to
Oceanside starting this afternoon, and we are hoping to get good news
From both the city of San Clemente's contractor as well as our own geotech
Geotechnical consultants that we will be able to safely operate trains tomorrow morning
Our marketing team has already put together all the social media components
Our conductors will be informed as to how we are going to accept tickets because again
This has been a moving target, so we haven't even been able to get our ticket machines
up and operating correctly, we're simply going to accept tickets if you're going south
of San Juan Capistrano.
We are working closely with Pacific Surfliner.
They have a few other moving parts because they go all the way down to San Diego.
They've been using bus bridges over the course of the last few weeks, and actually even back
when the earlier slide had taken place, they were using bus bridges, so they have a few
other moving parts.
We're fortunate in that we simply need to transport our crews either to Laguna, Nagal,
or all the way down to Oceanside.
So we will know more this afternoon.
We'll have more certainty this afternoon, but being the eternal optimists and the progress
that has been made, Don Felipe, our chief operating officer, informed me this morning
that we are going to move our revenue service trains down starting this afternoon so that
with the start in revenue service tomorrow.
Under our normal schedules that you would have
on Saturdays, Sundays, and of course,
Monday is also, Monday's a holiday as well,
so we'll operate a weekend service,
Saturday service on that day.
So that's where we are on San,
I sure wish I could have come in with greater,
absolute certainty on this.
I was feeling really, really good
that I was gonna be able to share a border alert last night
saying hey we're gonna be running in Saturday.
And so I'm giving you the update today
that hopefully later today I will be sending you
a board alert that we will be running on Saturday.
And if there is still that risk
that after we do all of this analysis
and our geotext don't feel safe to say
that we can run passenger service
because there's still risk of landslide,
we will only operate if it is safe to do so
and we have a green light from the geotext.
So I'm, like I said, we're gonna light a candle
service tomorrow morning. Again Memorial Day service, thanks to
Director Dutray and recognizing Memorial Day at the holiday on Monday, so we will
have our Memorial Day service, our Saturday level service on Memorial
Day and there is a ten dollar holiday pass, again that allows you to grow
throughout the system with that ten dollar holiday pass. And then the next
Next slide. I'm really pleased to remind the board that we are going to have the summer
day pass coming back starting May 30th through September 1st and it will allow an individual
to purchase a pass that will take them anywhere in the system for $15, go anywhere in Southern
California on weekdays. So please, we will be getting that social media packet out to
you also over the course of the next few days so you can send it out to all of your social
media contacts. We'd appreciate you sharing that news, as of course Metrolink will be
doing as well. Next slide. I think that's it. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy to take
questions for you. The slide that talked about Memorial Day service except Riverside Line,
what is the schedule for the Riverside Line? Who could help me with that one? Okay Sabrina,
Scott.
What we do on the six holidays where we offer the $10 holiday passes, we offer Saturday service
because the riverside line does not offer weekend service.
There would not be service on the holiday.
Any further questions or comments?
All right, thank you for the update.
Now we come to board member comments.
Are there any board member comments from anyone?
Chair, I'll be happy to speak.
Please go ahead.
Thank you.
As I mentioned, I had the opportunity
to be right on Friday,
and I just wanted to give a great shout out
to the conductor of that train.
She saw my badge and she said, what is it that you do?
I told her I sit on the board.
She didn't really understand what we do on the board
until I started to explain a little bit more.
But I think it really clicked when I told her
that contract negotiations happen and we look at that.
But what was really amazing was
when we started talking about safety,
when we started talking about safety,
she told me just the interconnection,
how some of that works.
She said the chief of police of Upland calls the train,
lets them know that there might be something happening
at the next stop.
and then there was a security person with her on the train,
but she said, I wanna make sure that I go over there
and take a look separately without the security guard,
just to make sure, well, first I have to identify
if they're on the train, even at all,
or just on the platform,
and she also just doesn't want anything to escalate
if there's no reason to it, but they both do their rounds,
and it was just a fantastic conversation,
and so to those train conductors,
but by the way, while she's having a conversation with me,
she's on the walkie and moving stuff around,
Amazing amazing amazing great shout-out to them. So, thank you. Thank you any further director comments
Seeing none now we move to my comments
I simply want to wish you all a memorial day and please remember those who sacrifice their lives in fact
I want to enjoy the meeting in memory of those who gave their lives
Serving to protect our freedom. We are adjourned. Thank you