e-comm meeting for the month of October and asked for a safety briefing from Frank Castellan,
Chief Executive Officer, Safety, Security and Compliance.
Right.
Good morning, Chair McAllen and committee members.
In the event of a fire alarm activation, we're going to evacuate the building, go down the
stairs and stage in front of the Metro customer service area in the corner of the building
and wait for further instructions.
If we experience an earthquake, we are going to drop and cover, wait for the shaking to
stop and do an assessment at that point whether or not we will evacuate.
In the event of a situation requiring first aid, I will be your first aid provider.
I will ask Ms. Michelle Pena to contact 911.
And we always say in relative reminder in the event of an active attacker situation
to run a Hyde fight. I also do want to point out the fact that today is a day globally
there's a call for a day of rage or action to take up arms. So we are asking folks to
be more aware of what's around them and report anything that seems suspicious. So remain
vigilant and please enjoy your weekend. That concludes this morning's safety briefing.
Thank you Frank, appreciate that.
Next we'll have a Pledge of Allegiance, please rise.
I see we have a Marine in the audience, is that correct?
Glad to let you're here and thank you for your service.
Appreciate that.
Next we'll roll call.
Vice Chair Chaffee.
Second Vice Chair Bergson.
Here.
Director Trembly.
Here.
Director Najarian.
Here.
Chair McCallan.
Here.
quorum present thank you do we have any public comment we have two requests to
speak I will call up Donald Harlan first and Donald I'll remind you this is
Metro link not Metro so please if you would your comments about Metro link and
not Metro thank you I'm sorry I meant to say Metro link when I said Metro but I
I meant both of them, but I understand your point
about that, I'll say Metrolink.
I wanna let you guys know Metrolink is fantastic.
I love Metrolink.
It's neat.
I like seeing the trains go by,
and I like there's guys on the train all the time,
keeping a lookout along the rails and stuff,
and trains are fun.
and I wanted you guys to start collecting evidence,
any forgeries, impostors,
documents, false documents or actors or illegal people.
It's not just to control the business of Metrolink.
It's to, the law enforcement is gonna need
to enforce those crimes and I'm going to pay them for it,
for each part of the apprehension, trial,
imprisonment, enforcement,
and fixing the problems and stuff.
I'm gonna go present that to all the different levels
of the law enforcement.
It's a real shame what's going on in the city
with the politics and the criminals
and they're trying to make deals for themselves.
That those things have to be done like that.
I need you guys to start collecting the evidence.
Be very careful.
You know, the chief of police isn't my friend
or the head sheriff isn't my friend
and sometimes going to those guys
is just gonna make it worse.
Or the inspector general is working for Trump or something.
I mean seriously you got to be careful who you present the evidence to and you have to be serious
and I'll be around as much as I can to push when I where I can and
knock people out where I can and fix things where I can.
I'm really concerned also about the fuel contracts in Metrolink.
I'm concerned because I have plenty of fuel myself for to give to Metrolink but
because of the conflicts with the real estate,
that's gonna be a big problem that money in Metrolink
may have been used for illegal real estate development
other than running Metrolink or other things
other in Metrolink, I'm really concerned about that.
There's people trying to cut themselves in for deals
to provide construction supplies and there's competition
all around the world and bad guys.
I want the best for MetroLink.
Thank you for your comments.
I'll call up Brian Thomas.
This is Brian Thomas, and I did understand
the difference between MetroLink and Metro.
And primary concern was Metro.
I think that I should really speak in every case
because we're in the same building.
I was assaulted on the 3rd.
And throughout that time, I've spoken
with various entities within this building.
I spoke to the LA City Council personally,
and I spoke with the LA County Board of Supervisors
personally, and to wit, nothing has been done.
Very severely injured.
My entire left leg seized up, as done by the private.
Other part is that the operator of the bus stole from me.
That's what this whole packet is.
I've been doing my own investigation,
and oddly enough, the video and audio of the bus
has been unable to be secured.
I've been pursuing this ever since then,
nothing has been done.
I'm here today, I was speaking with Seth Beach,
of the Assurance Company,
who's the senior insurance officer,
who knows that you guys were in here.
I thought the board of directors,
but in either case, I still wanted to speak
because everybody tells me, thank you for your service,
this, that, and the other.
Yet when I try to get justice,
I'm denied at every turn, and I'm just perplexed.
That's the reason why I wore this uniform today,
to let people understand that, you know,
I love my country.
I was in the Army as well as the Marine Corps,
going both branches.
For all this to be happening now that I'm at the age of 61
is really ridiculous.
I have all the documents right here.
I don't know what else to do.
I've been in this building so often,
people know me by name and face.
Yet, this happened July the 3rd,
this is the middle of October.
And I'm still without compensation for my losses,
for my answers.
This is going to be heard, that's.
Thank you, thank you.
Good luck.
And I did let you speak on Metro because of your service,
and I hope it's resolved as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
I have not received any other requests to speak
or written public comments.
Thank you.
We'll go on to our regular calendar.
Six layers approval of meeting minutes
for September 8th Executive Committee meeting.
Any need to modify them or pull them if not?
I'll move the minutes.
Najarian.
We have a motion and a second.
Madam Clerk, would you call the roll?
Vice Chair Chafee.
Second Vice Chair Burksen.
Director Tremblay.
Yes.
Director Najarian.
Yes.
Chair McCallin.
Yes.
The motion carried unanimously.
Thank you.
Next we have a discussion on the self-insured retention
presented by Ray Barrera, our senior council risk manager,
and Jeff Forgione, associate general counsel.
Forgione or Forgione?
Is that your election, Mr. Chairman?
I want to pronounce it the way you want it.
Forgione, as usually.
Forgione, Forgione.
There's an internal disagreement in the family,
but I do forgione.
Forgione.
So good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee.
Jeff Forgione, associate general counsel,
good to be with you.
I'm kicking off the presentation on this item,
which was a joint effort between the legal department,
including Ray Barrera, our new senior counsel
and risk manager, as well as the finance department
and Mr. Arnold Hackett, our chief financial officer.
Also with us remotely, I believe,
is Philip Titley from Price Forbes in London.
Philip is our principal point of contact at Price Forbes,
our long-time London broker through which we access
the Lloyds of London insurance market.
We have just a few slides for you,
after which we're happy to answer any questions.
So Angie, can we go to the first slide?
So as should be well known to you by now,
the operating general liability tower
is really the centerpiece
of the Metrolink insurance landscape.
Among other things, it ensures continued operation
in the event, God forbid, of a major accident.
Within the operating general liability tower,
as with many of our insurance policies,
there is a deductible, what we refer to
as a self-insured retention, or SIR.
It is presently approximately five million.
It has been at that level for the better part of a decade,
almost a decade, as indicated in the committee report.
Given the size and complexity of the OGL Tower,
as we call it, I'd like to invite Ray to the podium
to describe at a high level how the tower works,
and he'll share with you a visual depiction of the tower.
Ray?
Thank you, Jeff.
Good morning.
The slide we have up now is a good demonstrative
of the general liability tower.
It consists of a base level of insurance coverage
down at the bottom, the primary layer, $20 million
in excess of the $5 million SIR,
followed by six levels of excess insurance.
It's intended to provide uninterrupted insurance coverage
up to the total amount of $347 million,
with the $5 million SIR included there.
The total amount of the tower is influenced
by Congress's federal liability cap
on passenger liability claims.
The broad overview, next slide.
Thank you, Ray.
The third and final slide,
we'd like to explore briefly two topics.
How SIRs are set, and at least two options
for funding SIRs in the future.
So as part of the annual renewal process,
you will recall that Bill Garrett,
which he did for more than a decade,
and as Raymond will do in the coming months,
the risk manager's responsible for marketing
the insurance program here at Metrolink,
working with our insurance broker partners,
Marsh and Price Forbes,
to market the program to interested underwriters.
Now all aspects of insurance levels and coverage
and costs are considered and explored
with the market participants, including SIR levels.
And as a result of that months-long process,
the most economical proposal is then brought forward
to the board with available market alternatives
for approval, not later than June 30th.
And that's because our insurance year is coextensive
with our fiscal year.
And so the policies are bound and become effective
July 1st, the first day of our fiscal year.
As for funding options, you can see the two
that are put forward there.
The downside, of course, of establishing some sort
of preemptive reserve fund is that the funds may sit idle
for hopefully many years unless and until
there's a major incident.
The second option arguably provides
a little more flexibility in responding to the need
to fund an SIR since, generally speaking,
multi-planar mass tort litigation
that follows a major incident generally takes years
to resolve.
And so you do have, even in the absence of a pandemic,
as we saw with the Oxnard experience.
So you will, member agencies will have
at least a few budget cycles took to marshal funds
for whatever relevant SIR is needed.
So Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,
we'd be happy to field any questions,
including to our subject matter expert from Price Forbes,
who I believe is on the line.
Thank you for that presentation.
I ask that this discussion be brought before us
because of the Oxnard budget issue
that we just all faced,
and I agree that we shouldn't be putting
large amounts of money into a fund
that is going to just sit there for a long period of time.
But I do believe, personally,
that we need close communication
between the lawyers of any major incident
that's going on and finance.
And in those, that collaboration,
we ought to be able to identify
if we've got a major event
that's gonna take three or four or five,
eight years to resolve
that could potentially exhaust our SIR amount,
and that over, through those discussions,
you might have three or four or five years
to prepare for funding that SIR.
And it would, I believe my view is that
it would be appropriate to,
to in several budget cycles,
to put in money that would cover
that risk that we have.
So it's not a one-time large amount for each of the member agencies.
And that's what I would like to see, and I'll open it up for discussion.
So my kind of take on this whole concept is all the member agencies kind of got hit
with a big burden because of the Oxnard settlement.
It wasn't in the budget.
That was the big key takeaway is that we need to, you know,
at least have some kind of number in the budget or reserve,
even though it may be money sitting
in a bank account collecting interest
and not doing anything.
At least if we had some amount of money in there
to cover what we perceive might be coming
for that next year's budget, it would be better than not.
I also look at the flip side, at least in my head,
I'm thinking, well, if we were to provide a budget
that says we think it's gonna cost $10 million
to settle lawsuit number 12,
and so we put that money into the budget,
we don't wanna give our,
the amount we might intend to pay away
because that hasn't necessarily been settled on
or agreed to, so we don't wanna like,
put the right exact amount like our maximum,
but we definitely need to have some amount in there
so the member agencies aren't bombarded with
this large sum all at one time
when they weren't expecting it because it's,
you know, we all sit on a member agency.
We all know how our boards work.
I'm with RCTC and when Metrolinx budget comes in,
it's a big discussion item and RCTC's always supported it.
the committee members, but when you bring it back again in mid year and say hey we
made a mistake or there's some lawsuit or there's something it's tough it's
tough for for RCTC and I'm sure it's just as tough for every single other
member agency and so having a better way to capture that ahead of the budget is
is something I think you know we need to focus on and I'm not sure how we get
there exactly, but those are kind of where my head is thinking of a direction
that that would be suitable to obtain those kinds of... I agree, I think the way of
resolving some of this is to have close coordination between legal and finance.
That there be, especially at budget time, discussions, meetings, one-on-one with
Arnold and the lawyers and our executive directors so that we can see if there's anything in
the future that's going to require, we think might require expenditure of our SIR and could
we incrementally fund something over two or three years to cover that.
Any other comments or questions?
anything in TV land mr. chair yes go ahead I agree with your comments that's
it for my portion of TV land thank you well I appreciate you agreeing with me
anything else yes mr. chair yes go ahead so you know I guess the I guess the
question is how many times in the last 20 years have we had to draw down the
self-insured retention or pay out the self-insured retention. You know Oxnard
and then Chatsworth and you know maybe Glendale back in 2004. So if something
like this happens every 10 years then would it be would it be logical then to
ask for a 10-year contribution from the agencies to reach that 5 million, of
course you don't know when an accident is going to happen that's going to drain
that, but at least we'd be putting some money away and it would be somewhat
consistent with the number of times that we've drawn it down in the past. That is
one approach that that is recommended yeah that's number two right that's
number one where you well it's a combination the the problem is that if
it's going to take a long time then you've got all that money sitting there
idle but but that is something that can be done over an eight-year period also
Mr. Chairman, I can answer the first part if you'd like.
Sure.
So your legal department goes back to 2012, and my recollection is we've only had two
claims that have exhausted the self-insured retention.
One is the Oxnard derailment in 2015, and the next year in 2016, we had a case in which
a young lady was very badly injured trying to board a train, and it was probably the
the most serious passenger injury, surviving injury
in our operating history.
And that did, I think, just meet the SIR level.
Prior to that, Director Najarian is right.
I believe there were at least three incidents.
Buena Vista in 2002, the Glendale derailment in 2005,
and of course the Chatsworth disaster in 2008.
And although we weren't here, almost certainly
with Glendale and Chatsworth, those
would have exhausted the self-insured retention
because we had scores, dead and injured,
and likely in Buena Vista as well.
I believe there's one fatality there.
That was in a one seven-year period,
but in the 15 years since then,
we've had only two, I believe,
and again, one was the derailment
and one was a passenger injury.
Well, hopefully we won't have a need
for the, you know, a major incident in the future.
pray to God that that doesn't happen. But I think which is prudent to plan for
some way of funding it if it does occur. I think we, the committee has sort of
agreed that we need some incremental funding of the SIR, whether it's what
period it's over, to be able to build up the what we might consider our
our liability would be, and I would encourage Arnold and
Executive Director and you guys to figure out what we're going to do and how to do it.
Very good, we will. Thank you Mr. Chairman, thank you members of the committee.
Thank you very much, appreciate it.
Next we'll go on to item 6C which is a contract for market research services.
action item presented by Henning Eichler our senior manager of market insights and analytics.
Go ahead. Thank you, good morning Mr. Chair, members of the committee.
Metrolink relies on outside research firms to support our market research initiatives.
Contract SPS 520-21 is a bench of four market research firms.
The contract was awarded by the board in December of 2020 for a base term of three years, and a two-year option.
The base term expires in December 10 of this year.
For the past three years, the research bench has supported a wide range of market research initiatives.
These include brand awareness studies.
Those are surveys of the general population
to research awareness of Metrolink
and their perception of our service.
They include our potential rider study,
which researched preferences
as well as perceived barriers to ridership.
It also included fair policy research
that has supported the launch of new fare products such as the 5 and 10 day flex passes.
And finally, of course, it includes our Metrolink rider community, which is the online research
panel that supports ongoing customer research.
To continue these research efforts, staff recommends exercising the two-year option
and increasing the funding authority
from the original funding authority of 900,000
during the base term, by 600,000 for a total not
to exceed amount of 1.5 million.
Thank you.
Any questions, comments?
Seeing none, this is an action item.
Is there a motion?
Move the item.
We have a motion and a second.
Madam Clerk, would you call for a vote?
Certainly.
Vice Chair Chaffee?
Second Vice Chair Burksen?
Yes.
Director Tremblay?
Yes.
Director Najarian?
Yes.
Chair McCallin?
Yes.
That motion carried unanimously.
Next we have a status of the Olympic Games
2028 preparation and coordination
to be presented by Roderick Diaz, our Director
of Planning and Development.
Roderick good morning. Good morning, Chair McAllen and members of the committee. I'm here to present a periodic update of the status of preparations for the LA-28.
As we had presented in prior meetings, we have our primary planning coordination is through what we call the Games Management Executives, as an array of organizations used in front of you.
We have, as an addition, the Southern California Association of Governments, given their role
in regional coordination, rate, and regional programs that affect the entire region in
5, 6.
Our Olympic vision, as we had presented in prior meetings, is to promote 30-minute bi-directional
service on all segments of lines that are adjacent to Olympic venues and one hour service
on other segments. This is primarily accomplished through the next slide, the SCORE program,
a capital program that we're pursuing here at Metrolink. By and large, the SCORE program
implementation is on track to meet the needs and to support the Olympics vision of service.
Next slide, please.
What is critical, however, is the addition of fleet for Olympics capacity.
We have a target of 13 additional train sets to pursue.
We are pursuing grants to fund the replacement of eight existing locomotives through the
Federal Reconnecting Communities Program to complete the funding that was already gathered
for those eight locomotives.
And we are pursuing some positive discussions related to surplus wheat from pure regional
rail agencies.
Those are turning out to be promising avenues and we hope to reach resolutions fairly soon.
Other coordination efforts, next slide please, are related to the sports program, great and
goods movement, mobility hubs, and grants. Admittedly, the discussion right now with
the games management executives is largely on capital and long lead items. We'll be getting
into operational strategies fairly soon. Moving forward. Next slide, please. The next steps
are to confirm the sports program and service needs for spectators and workforce. L.A. 28
has just put in a petition for the addition
of five additional sports to the sports program,
and that will affect the number of new venues
that need to be served.
We continue to pursue funding and grants,
both on our own and in cooperation
with the Games Management Executives,
and we are beginning to negotiate capacity
during the Olympics period with freight host railroads.
I'll be happy to answer any questions if there are any.
Thank you, Roderick.
Questions?
Comments?
Mr. Chair?
Go ahead, Trevley.
Roderick, thanks for that progress report.
And I'm going to ask a question that is not
intended as tongue in cheek.
I understand the SCORE program, and I
understand our pursuit of grants for train sets, which
who have identified as a critical need.
I noticed that LA-28 is not included in the list
of the games management executives,
which causes me some concern.
But my question is this,
what amounts, if any, are LA-28
and the International Olympic Committee
contributing financially to Metrolink
to assure that we can provide these transportation services
in the manner and in the scope that LA-28 and IOC
are requesting for these what are short duration gains.
In other words, is LA-28 or LA-28 and the IOC
contributing any funds toward this endeavor?
And if not, why not?
Mr. Chair, I'll go ahead and field Director Tremblay's
question.
The short answer at this point is no.
LA28, nor is the International Olympic Committee providing
funding for mobility activity related to the LA28 games.
They are, to your other question regarding
is LA28 part of the games mobility executives,
They are the convener of the Games Mobility Executive, so they're absolutely in the room.
They have championed with the Games Mobility Executive's efforts to try to secure federal
funding and there's a long list, Director Najarian can help speak to this as during
his time as chair at LA Metro convened a special committee to identify the needs for LA 28
and it does include MetroLink projects related to both infrastructure as well as equipment.
That list continues to be out there in circulation but at this point we have not seen support
from Sacramento or Washington D.C. for the projects that are on that list but we continue
to pursue that.
I will just remind the committee that we are reminded at the Games Mobility Executives
that when L.A. 28 was awarded the games it was awarded the games based on what was called
a no-build scenario and that was generally thought about as being venues but it has also
been used to say well the infrastructure that is being put in place in Southern California
will be adequate to cover the needs for mobility come summer of 2028.
So we have had a bit of a headwind as we have worked to try to get funding on the capital
side.
As we get closer to the operating side there may be a glimmer of hope as both US Senator
Senator Padilla and Congresswoman Julia Brownlee have introduced similar pieces of legislation
in D.C. that can help fund operating expenses or may help fund operating expenses associated
with the transit systems whose responsibility it will be to move Southern California.
But at this point, we've really not seen, in spite of efforts with various grants, we've
not seen success in those grant applications, even when we do cite the fact that we'll be
responsible.
We MetroLink, but also LA Metro, responsible for moving those millions of people in that
summer.
Well, Mr. Chair, if I can follow up, and Darren, thank you very much for that comment.
I guess I've never been involved in putting on an Olympic Games financially, fortunately,
probably for my sanity. But when I think of the extraordinary amount of money that is
going to be going to L.A. 28 and the IOC for television rights and tickets, et cetera,
and at the same time we're being told that L.A. 28 is asking for an additional, or adding
additional sports for additional venues and that we need additional train sets in order
to service what LA-28 is requesting. I think it's a fair and a reasonable question to ask
LA-28 and IOC what are you doing to contribute to the efforts that to our efforts to put
on the games and the financial burden that is being imposed upon residents and taxpayers
within Southern California. I would hope that from a policy standpoint, we would consider
approaching LA-28 and IOC with some specific requests for assistance. And I may be the
lone ranger on this one, but I felt the need to express my concern at this point regarding
and this issue.
So I'm not asking for our specific discussion
or motion on this today,
but I really would hope that we could discuss this
at some point in the future,
perhaps when we have more time.
Thank you.
I agree with you totally.
Yeah, so just recently Metro has sent a letter
to the Biden administration, and exactly raising the points
that you all have raised.
We understand that through the DOT and Secretary Buttigieg
that they have assigned several senior officials
to work with Metro and Caltrans to specifically
could identify infrastructure,
even though we weren't supposed to build out too much,
and operational funding.
So we're hoping that they also appoint
a White House coordinator, we're requesting such,
to work directly with us so we can all get pulling
in the right direction.
So we're working to those, you know,
to that extent to get funding, obviously it's money,
to get the money for, as you said, train sets,
any other infrastructure,
as well as operational funding to make that happen.
Very good.
Obviously, this is a topic that we've got five years, right?
Less than five years, too.
And if we need to buy something,
procurement takes a lot longer in some cases.
Obviously that's a good move if we get the DOT and the White House involved, but I agree
somehow we've got to get the attention of the IOC and other people that could provide
money for the things that are needed to provide the transportation that's going to be required
to get not only the workers to the venues,
but all of the customers that want to come to the games.
So thank you very much for the update.
Any other comments, questions?
Mr. Chair, if you'll forgive the expression,
this is not a one-way street.
In terms of the expectations of the IOC and LA-28
as to the level of services that are going to be provided,
they have to be realistic.
We have to be realistic from a financial standpoint.
So I would appreciate it if the chair,
we would add this as an agenda item for the full board
to discuss at the appropriate point in the near future.
So we could have a discussion as to this item.
I agree with you.
Anything else?
Yeah, Mr. Chair.
Let me just indicate that I've sent that letter
to our CEO just now.
Hopefully he can distribute that.
The request for funding is going to be in the 2025 budget, and I fully agree with having
a standing agenda item for the Olympic issues that we're going to be dealing with.
Good.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Roderick.
We'll now go on to our service growth development plan update presented.
It's a receiving file presented by Rory Vaughn,
our senior manager of planning and development.
Rory.
Thank you, good morning.
Good morning.
We're going tight on time,
so I'll try to be quick about it.
So I'm here today.
Well, it's an important topic,
so don't give it short shift.
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
I'm happy to stick around.
So I'm here to give an update
on the service growth development plan,
which, as you may recall from our last update
at the beginning of the summer,
is an attempt to create and achieve consensus plans
for our growth and our transformation as a service
over the next five to 10 years,
looking at everything from the short term to the long term.
So next slide, please.
As you may recall from our, that last update
where we shared our market findings
that we did at the kind of the onset of this project.
And just to kind of really quickly recap,
three big findings that inform what we're moving forward with. One is that even though
recovery continues to lag, where we'd prefer it to be from the pandemic impacts, we are
seeing much more strong recovery in the off peak, midday, the weekend, etc. Basically
every market that's not the traditional peak office commuter. We also are seeing a significant
amount of, in terms of quantities, not just, you know, percentages, but significant quantities
of untapped demand in the midday that we think we ought to go after.
We're also seeing similarly a lot of untapped demand for travel between station pairs that
require transferring between lines, that are not on a single line, whereas today our system
is largely focused towards single line travel.
So to kind of recap that market assessment, our conclusion is that there appears to be
an opportunity to grow ridership by serving more temporal time of day as well as geographic
markets within our existing system.
Quickly, in terms of serving more times of day, the focus we're proposing is to really
focus on adding service on the midday and the off peak to increase our utilization of
our existing assets, so it's more cost effective to add this service.
It still costs money, but it's more cost effective to add this service, and we can serve a lot
more markets than we're currently not in terms of time of day use cases that we're not currently
serving.
And we're really not focusing on much growth at all during the traditional commuter peak
period because of, again, everything we're seeing in the market trends.
Next slide, please.
In regards to serving more geographic markets, again, we're not proposing to expand the metering
network and go, you know, into this county and that county and over here and over there.
There's no tunnels to Catalina.
And so the way we're proposing to serve more geographic markets is by linking our lines
together through systematic regularly repeating time transfers.
So there's an example on the slide here of Union Station, where, for instance, whenever
a train is operating in an hour on a line, that train would arrive at Union Station before
the half-hour mark and then leave Union Station after the half-hour market such that you could
transfer from any line operating in that hour to any line operating in that hour.
And since we're talking about flatter, regular repeating schedules across the day, not having
all heading one direction in the morning, one direction in the evening, you have these
systematic structural time transfers, not on accident once or twice a day, but repeatedly.
So if you have, say, two lines that are operating at an hourly frequency across the day, you
have that connection every single hour throughout the operating day between those station fairs
on those different lines, and that allows us to serve a lot more in markets and use
use cases with just the service that we otherwise would have had if it was just coming randomly
into the station. To give a sense of the scale of that benefit, flattening the service across
the day without taking service out of our peak, so say more of a medium to long-term
kind of timeframe, we're looking at, depending on the details of those assumptions, something
in the 70 to 80 percent increase in train miles to accomplish that. But with that kind
of a service you can achieve a tripling
of the geographic markets that you're serving in terms
of the station pairs that you're serving.
So we're serving a lot more station pairs per mile
than if everything was just kind of disconnected
and discombobulated.
Next slide please.
So we'll be coming into the future with the details.
We're still working through these details both internally
and with our colleagues at our member agencies in terms
of the staff to make sure we're really, and we're trying
to achieve consensus which means sometimes we have
to check a bunch of boxes as we go along.
But these future scenarios are intended to be very cost effective
and ridership effective as we try to transform from being what we were,
a commuter rail service to what we want to be a regional rail.
So as we're increasing train miles, we're driving down our cost per train mile,
we're accomplishing more by way of service, who we are servicing
with the train miles we're operating.
And collectively that allows us to increase ridership cost effectively.
And we think there are these opportunities in both the short, medium,
and long-term. We're looking forward to returning to the committee and the board with those
scenarios in the future, in your future.
Very good. Thank you, Rory. Questions? Comments? This is your receiving file. Thank you very
much. Thank you. Can we, uh, sustainability initiative and the legislative update forward
to the board? Certainly, Mr. Chair, your prerogative.
Without objection, we'll take 6F and 6G to the board.
And since our committee time is over,
seeing no objection, that will be the order.
Now to the highlight of our meeting,
always the Chief Executive Officer's report.
With the lead in on the time, this will be brief.
Again, successful clean air day last week, 26,000 riders,
over 26,000 riders, which blew the doors off of our prior record by more than 5,000 riders
in a day.
We launched Student Adventure Pass this week.
It's going very, very well, and saw students on the train this morning, and my conductor
on my train lets me know that the kids are really, really appreciative of the new availability
of the – be able to ride our trains at no charge, and just a reminder to the committee
that that is grant-funded, so we are still receiving revenues for that.
So Valley Line Service starts, the additional new service starts on October 23rd.
All of this is, you know, going back to what Rory said is, you know, it is part of our
service growth development plan and we're putting it in play now.
So good things forward to come as we move through that.
One last thing, my thanks to Director Najarian who spoke on Metrolinx's behalf at the Doran
Street announcement of the federal funding from the Federal Railroad Administration.
38 million dollars received by LA Metro provided by the FRA to build a grade separation project.
So thanks, Director Najarian, for carrying our torch on that one.
I do appreciate it.
My pleasure. Thank you very much. Any committee member comments? Seeing none, I have no additional
comments. We'll stand adjourned. Thank you, Mr. Chair.