As a reduced fare rider, you're automatically signed up for free balance protection,
so you won't need to worry if your card is lost or stolen.
It's free to apply at taptogo.net slash reduced fares.
In the event of a fire alarm activation, we will all collectively go down to the Metro Plaza.
We'll stage in front of Metro customer service and wait for further instruction.
In the event we have an earthquake, we're going to drop cover,
do an assessment whether or not we're going to evacuate at that point.
In the event, there's a situation requiring first aid
and or CPR, I will be your first aid provider.
I will ask Ms. Michelle Paney to contact Security 911.
And as a reminder, in the event of an active attacker,
we always say, run, hide, fight.
And finally, I'd like to conclude by saying be aware
of your environment, especially this weekend.
The sun is setting earlier.
We're going to have a bunch of ghosts and goblins running
around the streets, including children.
So please be mindful when you're out there.
Folks, going to be in costume.
I conclude this morning safety briefing.
Thank you, Frank.
I pledge allegiance led by our own Nigerian.
Director Wapner, Director Dutray, Director Marquez,
Vice Chair Chafee, Director Nguyen, Director Murphy,
Second Vice Chair Burksen, Director Spiegel,
Director Middleton, Director Vargas, Director Tremblay,
Director Chavez.
Director Barger.
Director Corcoran.
Director Najarian.
Director Solis.
Director Hughes-Leslie.
Director O'Connor.
Director Allen.
Director Presiado.
Chair McCallum.
We do have a quorum present.
Thank you very much.
This is public comment time.
Do we have anyone who wishes to speak to us?
We do have a request from Paul Hike to speak.
We have three minutes.
I'm going to sit on my second time at this board.
But in January in Orange County, we
are going to be doing a head count of our homeless.
And maybe we can get those encampments
that are on the railroad right-of-ways in that head count.
And I'm going to recommend that they,
when they're doing their head count,
find out what kind of work these people did.
Do they want to work?
Maybe we can get our homeless shelters to be where we bring them in.
They have a talent or a trade.
We hire them to work in the shelter to help run the place.
That way we can get them off the railroad tracks.
Not only that, I'm advocating in Orange County to make them all walk in, walk out.
Orange County, they don't.
Director Chaffee, would you be willing to come to the Board of Continuing Care at our next meeting?
You could come and at least address the board and let them know what you are.
I'm looking to, and Losam would love to have help and get members on their boards from this organization.
Thank you for your comments.
Any other public comments?
We have not received any other requests to speak or any other written public comments.
Very good. We'll go on to our consent calendar items 12A-12P.
Is there a motion on that?
We have a motion and second.
Is there any objection or any abstention?
Seeing none, that's a unanimous vote approving the consent calendar.
Under our regular calendar of 7a,
sustainability initiatives update our first quarter FY 24
presented by Lisa Colicchio,
our director of special projects sustainability initiatives.
Lisa.
Good morning Chair members of the board.
Next slide please.
The CARB and used locomotive regulation was adopted
and approved on April 27th at the CARB board meeting.
But subsequently, just recently, August 8th,
CARB staff released new modifications to the requirements
of the regulations that were actually much more favorable
to Metrolink.
I'd like to highlight a few of those for you today.
Number one, the regulation date has been moved back
to January 1, 2026, extending the original start date
by two years.
Two helpful reporting requirements were amended
and most importantly, air district level tracking
was removed and this is very helpful
because it was gonna be very burdensome for staff
to track and report along our 545.6 route miles
as we travel through multiple air districts.
And also, operators can provide emissions data using fuel
consumption instead of the prior requirement of megawatt hours
as that's not so easily readily available.
And thirdly, CARB staff will conduct a safety review
of operating zero emission equipment
when they do technology assessments in 2027 and 2032.
The main point I want to make today though
is there were no changes
to the alternative compliance pathway
and that still remains the most viable plan for Metrolink.
Alternative compliance plans are valid
for five year periods, so with this adjustment now
and modification, our plan would commence January 1, 2026
and then go through December 31, 2030.
This two year extension will provide much needed time
for staff to continue to pursue additional grant funding
and help close that gap to replace the tier twos,
locomotives, the last remaining 15 with tier fours.
And of course, Chairman Kellyn, a debt of gratitude
for all of your advocacy and support
along the last two years has been very beneficial.
Next slide please.
Earlier this month, we celebrated Clean Air Day
and one of the community events I'd like
to highlight for you is this art mural project.
So in collaboration with this University of Riverside,
the City of Riverside Arts and Cultural Affairs,
as well as CARB staff, board members,
the neighboring headquarters, and RCTC,
we painted this mural on the side of shipping containers.
And these shipping containers are used
to perform bike repairs for free to the students on campus.
But the exciting part of this project
is we used a very cutting edge technology,
brand-new of smog eating paint. So the photo catalytic properties actually
reduced pollutants when it's exposed to sunlight and so the size of this mural
has the same air quality benefits of 128 trees. While the focus of this project
was to bring awareness to improving air quality, these types of
community engagement and community investment activities really help to
to give Metrolink making a social impact
over and above providing public transportation services.
Next slide.
And now I'd just like to share a quick 20 second video
so you can see for yourself how the mural came to life.
And that concludes my report.
I'm happy to take any questions.
Good, thank you, Lisa.
Any questions, comments?
Seeing none, this is a receiving file,
and without objection, that's what we'll do.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Next we have our October legislative update.
it's a receiving file presented by Julie Neto.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Chair McAllen and members of the board.
Next slide please.
Starting with local matters.
On October 23rd, our CEO, Mr. Kettle and MetroLink staff
hosted a tour of the central maintenance facility
with Los Angeles Councilwoman, Eunice Hernandez,
who represents Council District One.
We shared information about our service and maintenance
that occurs at the central maintenance facility
and also the efforts that we've taken
to mitigate community impacts
related to noise and emissions.
So we strive to continuously improve
and reduce the impacts of the maintenance facility
to our neighboring communities.
And it was a good opportunity to share
and tour the facility with the council member.
We also hosted two Ventura County outreach meetings
along the virtual meetings for station cities
and elected officials along the Ventura County line
in October, one on October 17th and one on October 24th.
The meetings focused on different issues
that are of interest to our communities along the line,
including ongoing capital improvement projects,
quiet zone information, and also efforts
to expand and enhance our ridership
along the Ventura County line.
So we shared information about the Mobility for All program
and also the new Student Pass program.
It was a good opportunity to connect
with city staff and elected officials
along the line and to have good collaborative communication
on how we can share this information with the communities.
Also, moving on to state matters,
we would like to bring to your attention
to a proposed constitutional amendment
along with the legislative bills
that have been passed in the last session.
So your report has an updated bill matrix
to wrap up the legislative session.
But I'll focus a little bit on ACA 1,
which was passed by the legislature by two-thirds vote
and we'll go onto the voters in November of 2024.
So ACA 1 would decrease the threshold
for voter taxes related to housing or public infrastructure,
reducing the threshold to 55%
instead of the current two-thirds needed
in order to pass those ballots, those taxes.
So related to transportation, this is impactful to us
since it relates to capital project expenditures
that could be passed by the voters.
Also, in the bill matrix, we outline in detail ABA 1385 and SB 335, which are related to
Riverside County and Ventura County.
These two bills specifically relate to ACA 1 in future votes, so they increase the cap
limits that these counties can impose for future taxes to the voters by half of a percent.
So we'll be seeing more information on this as it moves along with the 2024 election cycle.
And next slide please. I'll touch as well on federal matters. So as you know, we were without
a speaker of the House until this week. So there has not been a lot of movement on the federal side,
but we expect that to move into motion this week
with the election of a new speaker
and also the continuing resolution that will expire.
So continuing resolution was passed
to go through November 17th
and unless appropriation bills
or the current fiscal year are passed by then
and another continuing resolution will need to be passed
to avert a government shutdown.
The new speaker has set an ambitious schedule for the House
to consider the remaining FY 24 appropriation bills.
Speaker Johnson has suggested that the House pass another continuing resolution into January
or possibly extending into April.
MetroLink and its partners, including the Commuter Rail Coalition and the California
Transit Association, have and continue to advocate for full funding authorized by the
bipartisan infrastructure law in the final appropriations bills, passing hopefully this
year.
This concludes my report, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you, Julie.
questions or comments. Seeing none, this is also a receiving file and without objection.
That's what the board will do. Thank you very much. Next we have the status of the
Olympic Games 28 preparation and coordination presented by Roderick Diaz, our director of
planning and development. Roderick. Good morning Chair McAllen and members of the board of
directors. I'm here to present an update of the LA 28 Games efforts. Next slide,
Slide please. As you recall, LA28 is in partnership with a slew of regional transportation bodies
in what has happened since last meeting. SCAG has joined the coalition to represent multi-agency
efforts in southern California. Next slide please. This is the Olympic service vision
that we had outlined for you before with 30-minute service bi-directionally on all segments
of routes connected to venues.
Next slide, please.
Most of the network improvements required to support that service vision are accomplished
through the SCORP phase one program and this program is on track by and large to be significant
complete by the 2028 games.
Next slide, please.
We are, however, working diligently to supply vehicles and vehicle fleet and fleet support
facilities to support the GAINS effort. We're pursuing grants right now to fully fund eight
of the remaining 15 existing locomotives. We have a grant application submitted to the
Reconnecting Communities Program to accomplish this with the match provided by AT&T.
QMD, we are exploring as well the provision of surplus fleet from peer regional rail operators
and have had two very promising conversations with peer agencies to this effect. We are
pursuing additional locomotives moving forward.
many more locomotives do we need to support games? We are, as Lisa alluded to,
we still need to replace the 15 MP36s. We have active efforts to replace
eight of the 15 through grant proposals. On top of that 15, we estimate that we
we may need an additional 13 train sets.
Train sets, cars plus the engines, right?
Yes.
That is why we are pursuing the surplus equipment from our sister commuter load agencies.
Next slide please.
Other coordination efforts are focused on items of long lead time.
We need to verify the sports program, if we're working on freight and goods movement, especially
coordination with freight railroads and trucking during the games period.
We're exploring the development of mobility hubs throughout the five counties, Southern
California region, and we're pursuing grants to support all of these efforts, both capital
and operating.
Next slide, please.
Moving forward, there are a couple of activities that we're focusing on.
We have just, LA 28 has just confirmed the sports program.
They have added five sports to the program as of last week, and that will lead to efforts
to come up with regional estimates of regional transportation patterns and allow us to understand
the extent to which our system will be used
throughout the day in the two-week period of the games.
We continue to pursue funding and grants,
both on the capital and operating side.
I acknowledge that operating expenditures are a concern
and Director Tremblay asked us to help
for more detail on this item.
We will be planning to bring an item
before the November board cycle to outline our approach
to seeking operating support during the Games period.
Also to that effect, we are preparing a letter
to the presidential administration
to outline our needs in the multi-year program
from now until fiscal year 28.
That letter.
The letter that Roderick is referencing right now
is under development and is being prepared
for my signature.
We'll have it.
It'll be a part of your packet
for the November board meeting,
so you'll see it firsthand.
Likewise, LA County Metro has also put together a letter
that has explained their needs for the purpose
of LA 28, the 28 games.
So we are all working collaboratively,
but in the case of the commuter rail side of things,
We thought it was important to go on record independently given the breadth of the service
area that we're going to be asked to cover.
So that letter will – you'll see a copy of that when it's completed in your November
packet.
Thank you very much.
Director Tremblay?
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And Roderick, thank you sincerely for all of your hard work and your efforts, and thank
you to staff for all their hard work and efforts.
This is something that I spoke to at the Executive Committee meeting.
So since I shot my mouth off two weeks ago on that, give me a minute if you will to sort
of frame the issue from my own personal perspective.
I mean what I say, thank you for all of your efforts.
I think everything that we're doing at the federal and state levels is absolutely appropriate
with our federal and state partners.
I am very hopeful that a couple of the other agencies that we may be able to procure at
at least temporary rolling stock from, that's great.
I'm mindful, particularly on the operational side
and the funds that we may need for this endeavor
and some from the capital side.
But my focus wasn't on that.
And we're making good efforts, you know,
in terms of those requests.
My focus is on the IOC and on LA-28.
What I want to know is, what monies are LA 28 and IOC going to be contributing to this endeavor?
Particularly from an operating standpoint because we're going to be going over and above
what we would ordinarily be doing with a burden, a concomitant burden on all of our transportation
commissions, all of our counties. Between, and I don't know what the money involved yet is,
But at the risk of being a little flip about it, between TV rights and sponsorships and licensing,
I can think of a figure that's roughly equivalent to a very popular TV series that's been streaming for a while.
This is in the billions of dollars that they are going to have available.
So I want to know, given the short-term duration of the games and our services being provided over and above
the level of services that we would typically provide,
and given the burden on our transportation commissions,
what funds are the IOC and LA-28 gonna contribute
to MetroLink and to Metro and other transit providers
to meet the additional increased burdens
because of the games?
I think the catalyst that really got me,
when I listened to this during the executive committee,
was the addition of the five additional sports,
all of which are wonderful sports,
including flag football, I think.
Okay, but the fact of the matter is
that that creates yet again another burden
on transit providers.
It creates another burden on our venues
and in terms of the services that we're providing.
So the bottom line is, what's gonna be their contribution
so that Metrolink and Metro and others
can provide services in a manner and in a scope
that IOC and LA-28 are requesting for the games.
In other words, if I go with your PowerPoint,
what do we need to do in addition
to meet this vision that they have?
So I want them to stand up to the bar,
or to use an old, since I'm old school,
belly up to the bar and say,
what are you gonna do for us in this endeavor?
We have our federal and our state partners
and we're very grateful
and we've got our SCORE program, et cetera,
but what are you gonna do for us?
And so I'm hoping that at the November meeting,
that we'll begin a conversation,
I know we can't do anything on today,
but begin a conversation with them
whereby we make a specific request to them.
I wanna know what they're gonna do.
Because I don't wanna be left,
I don't want our county transportation commissions
to be left holding the bag when the games are over.
I wanna meet those birds.
So that's just one personal perspective
from Ventura County, small-time player in this whole endeavor,
but I think it's an appropriate and a reasonable question
to ask from a budget standpoint.
Thank you for letting me vent.
Mr. Chair.
Thank you for venting.
You expressed what we're all thinking at this point.
Director Spiegel.
To go along with that, I was going to go down that path,
but another part to that whole conversation is,
How are we phrasing this to our normal riders?
They're going to get used to these more frequent routes
in the system, you know, every half hour
and then the other ones in RCT every hour,
which is, I couldn't even ride it during that time, you know,
not sit and wait three hours for a train.
So, you know, there's going to get that resentment
from those regular riders if it's going to be just during the
Olympic time and then it's going to go back so it goes exactly
what Mr. Tremblay was saying is that, you know,
we're doing this off Olympics, not getting compensated,
and our own riders may be angry at us over this.
I mean, I'm excited just to be able to ride the train again.
I mean, otherwise, I'd give up the entire day
because I can't get back.
But these are things we really have to have answers to.
And if we're going to put this in context to our riders,
that this is only for the Olympics, not you guys.
I mean, we've got to be careful in how we do all this.
Director Bergson.
Mr. Chair, just a couple things.
With the new sports being added, I
want to understand if that equals new venues and new routes.
It will include new venues.
Those venues haven't been disclosed yet.
It is likely that Dodger Stadium may be one of them,
since baseball softball is one of those five sports.
The venues haven't been disclosed to us.
What's important to remember, as well,
is that LA28 has committed to a cap
on the number of participants in the sports program.
So if these five sports are included,
there'll be a reduction in athletes from other sports.
It'll just be distributed a little bit differently.
And the other thing that I just think we need to understand
for budgetary purposes, and what we're going to be asked of,
is what really is the Olympic period?
It's not just the 15 days of the games.
It also, I presume, includes some period of time before,
whether it's for even workers being shuffling back and forth
for construction purposes or training purposes or testing purposes or whatever the purposes
might be, how long prior to the games are we expected to run this extra service, and
then same with after the games, that's off, that's it, everybody's done, or if, again,
this is tearing things down and that's their, you know, Director Tremblay's asking, we need
better information, better answers from the IOC and what they're going to ask of us when
those time periods are and of course all of the five member agencies who pay for MetroLink,
realistic budgets, way in advance and not just asking at the last second.
Those are kind of...
I'll just chime in real quick before you go.
Great presentation.
I love the slides.
Can we get a copy of those?
Thank you.
I was trying to take notes and I kept looking over here what he was writing.
right. Thank you very much for the presentation. I want to say I'm in full agreement with my
colleagues. Also just I remember what I wasn't even born during LA 84 and just my mindset
was damn it's a global event that only happens in certain rare areas at a time and I'll probably
never see it in my lifetime and so I'm very excited and happy to see it. I want to see
what else we can do while this happens, right?
Like the fact that we'll be able to experience it,
the fact that I'll be able to experience it
through rail and other public services,
how many first-time riders can we attract to this
that can become long-time riders as well?
Because, I mean, I know that we're always talking
about how our ridership is down.
And I can't wait to have the opportunity to show them
our great conductors and teams.
You know, is our IT capacity for ticketing, like,
is it up to par so that we can make sure that one day,
hopefully, we can have this type of ridership
throughout the entire year?
Are the cleanliness of our trains,
the safety of our trains,
and I can't wait to be able to capture
as many riders as possible,
and with so much tourism coming into the region as well,
I want to be able to, later on here,
that those people had a great time,
and a great time on Metrolink especially, so thank you.
Thank you, Ray.
Depends on the work item for a long lean item,
such as vehicle procurement.
The drop dead date is close to approaching,
and we need to know what our approach is fairly soon.
For lead items such as the operating plan,
that will evolve quite a bit
until this spring before the games.
So there are various efforts,
such as security preparedness, information availability,
real-time information, and other initiatives
that will occur within the next four to five years.
We are fortunate that we were announced
the games in the same period as Paris was announced
the games for 2024.
They had fewer years to operate and prepare for the games.
and we have that same four years as a little bit of a buffer,
but we are eating through that time.
And so we're actively approaching an internal group
within Metrolinx to highlight and identify
all of the lead items and the lead times that are necessary.
This speaks to points that Director Spiegel and Director
and made as to the timing of all of these initiatives.
It has been the process for Score Phase I to support a 30-minute operation.
We are in active conversation, and this will be a good segue to the next item, the Service
Growth Development Plan to identify with the member agencies with detailed cost estimates
and detailed revenue estimates what the program for increasing service to meet that 30-minute
service, whether that is achieved before the games or after the games period, we will
no doubt need to ramp up and ramp down for the Olympic games and the Paralympic games
which occur one month after that ramp up and ramp down is a discussion to be had with the
member agencies to see if that ramp up continues or if it ramps down again and waits till demand
to go beyond 2028. Thank you Ray any other comments or questions? This is a
important item because you know if things don't go well we are going to be
blamed and the bus operators are going to be blamed and the games were sold on
no need to do anything because of all of the venues were available but they
forgot about the transportation needs and that's that's why the funding isn't
readily available for for it is because they didn't take into consideration all
of the transportation needs to have it a non car event if you will so you're
coming back in November with issues and we'll have regular updates on this as we
go forward I think it's important that we keep the board appraised of what
what the issues are and what we're doing to solve it. Thank you. This is a
receiving file without objection. That's what the board will order. Thank you Rod.
Next is our service growth development plan update. Rory Vaughn, our senior
manager of planning and development, will present the item. Rory. Members of the
board for the opportunity to give an update on the service growth development
plan. Since we're coming caught off the tails of an update on the Olympics, just
one to kind of put the two in kind of relation.
The service growth development plan is primarily focused
on what we want to do in the future,
independent of what the Olympics.
Think of it, potentially, if you will,
as what the legacy benefits might be,
what we might turn it on in service
in any given particular time.
There's a lot of synergies in the work product
and the efforts and considerations
that are intertwined between the two efforts,
but the service growth development plan,
we're really focusing on not what we wanna do
for two months, but what we wanna do permanently, if you will.
So the Service Growth Development Plan,
we gave an update several months ago
to quickly recap on what it is.
You're attempting to create a consensus plan
together with our member agencies
for metronome growth over the next five to 10 years.
That includes creating detailed operating plans
and financial forecasts,
trying to optimize with what we have
as well as position ourselves for growth
and to adapt to the changing world.
Next slide, please.
So in the May 2023 board update,
we gave an update on the market assessment
that we did as a part of this study.
Ridership is recovering, if you will,
more strongly than the commuter peak.
Probably meets or aligns with a lot of anecdotal.
We're also seeing significant untapped demand in the mid day.
We're also seeing significant untapped demand
in our station pairs that would require
more than one line to get to where you wanna go.
So in conclusion from all that, again,
there appears to be an opportunity to grow ridership,
to serve more markets, both time of day,
as well as geographic markets,
through how we structure, and design, and build our service.
Temporal markets are time of day markets.
And our focus in the long term is really is to focus
on adding certifications in the mid day and the off peak,
help increase our utilization of our fixed assets
and our semi fixed assets,
and achieving cost efficiencies
while serving more ridership.
opportunities to optimize by taking resources out of the peak and use that to
fill more mid-day or off-peak service, and we'll come back in the future with
different options for what we can do. When we're talking about the long-term growth, our focus
really is especially on growing the off-peak and not on growing the peak. As far
as geographic markets, again this is travel between station pairs that are on
different lines, oh sorry, next slide please, for these markets. Historically, and I've been
I used to do scheduling for the agency, our lines were scheduled largely independently
with trains coming and departing as they did, mostly inbound in the morning and out
in the evening and there was not a whole lot of opportunity, there still was not a whole
lot of opportunity for travel between our lines to get to where you want to go.
Is the idea of having these, not just easy schedules that you can remember and approach
for the trains that departs at the same time hour after hour after hour and we have implemented
these schedules on the Antelope Valley and San Bernardino lines, including as recently
as that makes it easier for the customer to access our service.
It also makes it easier for us to line these schedules on these different lines up so you
can achieve transfers between the lines.
Say all the trains arriving before Union Station, before the half hour mark, and then departing
Union Station after the half hour mark, you can achieve at that basic level of service
travel between all of those station pairs on all those different lines, very cost effectively.
There's an illustration of that on the slide here.
Several stations, LA, of course, being the most obvious candidate because we have the
most lines there.
We're also looking at other places in the system such as in Riverside.
So collectively, these strategies that we're pursuing in these different scenarios try
to achieve both cost efficiencies and ridership growth.
So growing train miles, adding more service while drawing down our cost per train mile
and increasing the productivity of those train miles
through serving more markets
and thus increasing our ridership
to make that kind of transformation very efficient
and very effective.
Really helping to transform us from being a quote unquote
commuter railroad to being a regional railroad.
There are opportunities for optimization
in both the short, medium, and long term.
You've seen some of the previews actually coming into play
as recently as this week.
Coming back to the board and the committees
over the next several months.
as we're also working with our member agencies
on working through those different scenarios
and putting them forward for consideration.
Questions, your comments?
Director Bergson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Question that I have.
Conceptually, it sounds great and wonderful,
but then the reality strikes me
that we don't own all of these lines.
Union Pacific, BNSF, they own most of the track.
And Riverside County owns track.
what is the buy-in by them are I mean if we add a bunch more train sets and
times and schedules and we adjust what we want the way we want it are
obviously are impacting freight and Amtrak how does that all how's the
synergy gonna work together I mean I can see the Olympics every the eyes will all
be on you know Southern California and I think the railroads will be amenable to
what is the discussion taking place as there have been involved in those, are they on board,
are they showing some kind of objection, where are we with that whole area?
Without getting too much into the weeds about that, you're right.
We have different operating agreements on different segments, whether it's segments
that are owned by our member agencies and administered
by Metrolink or whether they are owned by a freight railroad
and we operate using the rights that we have
under different agreements.
Some of those agreements have room to add service.
Some of those agreements do not.
And some of those agreements have room
to add some of the service we want,
but maybe not all of the service that we want.
So that's definitely a known issue.
There's been historically a bit of a chicken-or-the-aid
question of do you go to them knowing what you want
to negotiate or do you negotiate and then not knowing what you want and then play with
what you have.
And so the direction we've been taken largely is to try to figure out what we want so that
we can then more productively go into those negotiations to determine what it would take
if anything is necessary in terms of negotiations to make that happen.
We have had numbers of conversations in the past with the BNSF about our growth.
There's a desire to go into that in more detail.
We can probably come back with Monica in the future with more detail on that.
I don't want to speak for her.
With the Union Pacific, that historic has been less because of just the nature of that
relationship, although that has also changed somewhat in the last, maybe, a year.
And so that is definitely a key issue.
And as we try to bridge from what we want to do or where we are today to what we want
to do to actually doing it, all of those details need to be lined up, as well as things like
like fleet and financial funding for an increment in service, et cetera.
So those are all details that need to be worked through.
And this plan is a part of working through that.
Presumably as this continues, you'll be-
Director Najarian.
Thank you.
Can you go back to your slide with all the arrows and the destinations again?
So what you're saying is these are minutes after the hour.
So starting from the top, 10-15, 10-17, and let's say I came in from Antelope Valley
at 10-15, an optimal – and this is an optimal – is this ideal, is this reachable, or is
this sort of, you know, a computer spitting out what the best connection table would be?
So this is this is based off of the work we've done on scheduling in terms of where we can make
schedules work that are cost effective for the individual lines in terms of you know effectively
operate the service from constraints where the single track on those segments are or not
okay so let's say it's not like saying it'd be great if everything came in in a five minute
period wouldn't that be wonderful this this is kind of a trying to constrain this to reality
So this is more reality based, as opposed to a computer generated...
This is...
That's oversimplifying it.
But this, in terms of, like, what's going on under the hood on the operations side.
But this is from the service that we're trying to offer to the customer.
And we think and hope that we will be able to offer the customer what we'd be aiming for.
And of course, currently we don't have a lot of trains arriving every hour, on the hour, from Antelope Valley.
well Metro is just I think funding that that we're going to have something similar to that but
but then we don't have let's say I want to go to the ocean side take the Orange County line
we don't have a regularly hour based correct on the Orange County line but if there was funding
you're saying this is possible so can you get us uh aside from the you know the issues with
tracks the UP issue and the other freights. How much would this cost
assuming that the lines were available? I mean I think this is great I mean if we
could it's very makes sense there isn't a lot of wait time between changing
trains but what would it cost? I know Metro added that hourly service is going
pay for the the animal Valley service but the entire system if it were to be
construed like this at some point can you let us know what those costs would
be so we can set that as a target maybe to try and get get the system running
this way yeah so the service plans that are in underway right now that we hope
to be coming back to the board and probably in several updates on because
There's, frankly, there's a lot.
We'll go into those different scenarios
of how the service looks like.
Part of the idea behind this scheme is that
you might not necessarily have every line operating
in any given particular hour.
Like at 12 o'clock, you might have a line
that's not operating in that hour,
or it's not operating yet in whatever year that is.
But if the structure is set up this way,
whenever it is operating, the connections are possible.
and then as you fill in those connections,
you just have that synergistic effect,
almost exponential effect kicking in,
and you get much more bang for your buck
as you add that service.
Mr. Chair, if I could just real quickly
respond to Director Najarn as well.
So, we are already working on
what we're considering our best,
our optimal under the constraint system
that we do have today.
To Director Burksen and Spiegel's remarks,
On the riverside line, we have constraints on slots.
So we won't be able to do as much as we would like to do.
We have some limits.
But we will be back before the board.
And in fact, the finance team right now
is running a finance model based on a scheduling
structure very similar to what we've
done for the Antelope Valley line on other lines
where we can get as much out of what we have out there today,
whether it's actual track infrastructure,
the capital capacity, or the capacity that we are limited to
based on the freight railroad
saying this is how many slots you get.
So you will be hearing this as we start developing
the budget because we're looking towards this model
that we've now launched with the Antelope Valley Line
to do what we can for the entire system.
There are gonna be some questions of cost
and that's what Arnold's team is working on
as we speak, as it relates to cost.
The other element of that of course though,
is what are the revenues that we're gonna see
because we expect to grow ridership
because we put this type of service out there.
So that's the other thing that Arnold's team is doing.
We're going back to KPMG, Sperry Capital,
who gave us the forecast that we're operating under today
and saying, okay, we're gonna be something different.
What does that ridership look like?
Which then drives some revenue.
So the cost is not fully the burden
of the member agencies, and actually, we're finding,
through this optimization, savings in a number of places.
May not be savings that covers the entire cost,
but we're definitely finding savings.
So there's a few moving parts and all that,
and the board will be hearing this in great detail
in January, so that we have time to spend
a little bit of effort with all of the member agencies
about what this new approach is gonna be,
because there will be some absolutely appropriately questions,
particularly on the cost side.
So we want to make sure we have both those numbers nailed down
and then the board will be hearing about it in full
with this scheduling concept in January.
That's good.
I look forward to that.
Thank you very much.
Other comments, questions?
Seeing none, thank you, Rory, for the presentation.
Very enlightening.
This is a receive and file and without objection.
That's what the board will order.
Next we have our law enforcement activities quarterly update presented by our normal presenter
on safety, Frank Castillo-Allen, our chief safety security compliance officer.
Welcome back, Frank.
Good morning again, Chair McAllen, board members.
So, next slide, please.
So, my presentation encompasses Q2, Q2 law enforcement security updates.
What I wanted to do initially is draw your attention
on a risk tool that we developed.
As you know, last year we had a considerable number
of strikes, results of trespassing, pedestrian strikes.
So we looked at what are things we could do
to better understand where our areas of priority should be.
So when we focus on engineering, education, and enforcement,
we wanted to develop a tool that takes all the data
with the trespassing, right, and chem and cleanups, et cetera,
all the activities we're doing and try to categorize those
and prioritize those.
So last year and into this year,
we've developed a risk tool
to identify some of those factors.
So when we talk about where we should do outreach,
when we talk about where we should do enforcement
and if we're successful,
this tool represents some of those things
that we can capture and be able to prioritize now
and in the future where we should focus our activities on
to see if those activities are successful
at reducing these events and incidents.
Getting into some of the numbers, Q2, 2023,
We had a total of 18, both trespasser and pedestrian strikes.
Last year around the same time, we had roughly 23 events or incidents.
So we had a, this represents a decrease of 16%, trespasser strikes and a 40% decrease
of pedestrian strikes as compared to last year this time.
Next slide please.
So looking at some of these numbers, you can see a significant increase from Q2 of 2022 to 2023.
This really represents the change in our law enforcement model, the partnership that we developed with our
Metrolink Bureau for Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
This time last year, I was still new in my role, and what we did was really essentially sit down together ourselves, our sheriffs, our conductors,
our allied private security guards, and do an assessment of where we were at.
Some of the things we were lacking clearly was de-escalation training.
At this point in time, last year, we had a lot of conductor assaults, a lot of unruly
passengers, fare evasion, things like that.
So one of the key elements we worked with with our sheriff's department was to develop
this de-escalation training, to really sit down with our conductors on a regular basis
with our sheriffs and work through not only the issues and the concerns, but identify
where the problems were so we could thereby direct law enforcement activities.
This included an increase of right-of-way enforcement, post-pandemic, and let me just
that after the pandemic, you know, we really, during the pandemic we were keeping our folks
off the trains and that includes the sheriffs. So we dramatically increased the number of
train rides, we dramatically increased fare enforcement on the right of way. And you'll
see the numbers represented and the dramatic increase both in train rides, platform fare
enforcement, grade crossing fare enforcement. And those really result in, so this time last
Last year, we had a total of 43 reported crimes, now we have 33.
Last year, at this point in time, we had roughly 1,200 trespassing, reports of trespassing,
trespassing incident.
Now we have 1,000.
What that means is essentially our activities are successful keeping folks off the right
of way, not only reducing trespassing numbers or trespassing strikes, but also activities
that keep people from coming back.
Our sheriffs also helped support us with the 43 MOUs we have with local police departments
and law enforcement providers.
The past year we had a security summit which brought a lot of those entities together to
have conversations.
So essentially we really increased our communication.
That's why we've been successful and that's why these numbers have dropped.
Not only drop, we've been able to sustain them.
Coming up in the future, you're going to hear us talk about some innovative tools that we're
going to be getting actually next month which are mobile AI cameras.
So we will be able to deploy those also as the deterrent but to understand these reports
of trespassing and the things that are not reported to us in certain areas we've had
incidents and events.
So these are some innovative tools along with this risk ranking that's going to help us
prioritize where our limited resources can be put to and then we can understand if the
things we're doing are successful.
And that concludes this quarter two law enforcement security update.
I'll be happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Frank.
Director Spiegel.
You know, some numbers aren't quantifiable, like the feeling of passengers by just seeing
law enforcement.
There is a little more of that safety, that sense of security.
You can't quantify it in those numbers.
And you also aren't taking the count.
We may have only had those, you know, not a significant difference in the number of
incidents.
But if law enforcement wasn't there, there probably would be a higher increase than what
it was the previous year anyway.
So there's unquantifiable things, and I just want to say those unintended consequences
really was going to benefit us a lot.
That's a good point, Director Spiegelman.
Something also important to note that's not represented in these numbers, we also increase
the number of armed security guards on the trains or lines we have issues on.
So that layered enforcement, that layered communication, communication or conductors
in law enforcement helps us know to where to put those resources.
They feel comfortable in approaching the sheriffs and that wasn't a relationship that was necessarily
in place when I first got here.
And other questions, comments?
No.
Thank you very much Frank for your presentation.
Thank you.
This is a receiving file without objection.
That's what the board will order.
as always our highlight of our board meetings
and other meetings, the Chief Executive Officer's report.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, that never gets old for me, thank you.
So, it's been a busy October, it's been a really busy October
and it's, so we got a decent amount to share,
so bear with me on this, let's go to the next slide.
So, first off, as was mentioned a couple times today,
We did launch our Student Adventure Pass program earlier this month, students, while it was
primarily targeted to college students, we're also working with high school age students,
but the community college, technical schools, where with a valid ID, they sign up for our
program.
It is a pilot program, it is grant funded, it will only be in place as long as we have
funding for it.
But this new program has been tremendously successful and already we have over 10,000
new student mobile accounts on our system.
And if you'll just bear with me, I'm assuming that everybody is familiar with Instagram
and direct messaging and that type of thing that comes from Instagram.
So we launched this program and on my Instagram account, I had a message, direct message drop
in sometime in the middle of the day and I'm going, I'm not even looking at it, whatever.
I got home that evening and I said, oh, that's right, I had this message to my personal Instagram
account and it reads as this, hello, I'm not sure if you are the daring kettle I am looking
for, the CEO of Metrolink.
I know this is a bit weird to receive a random message from someone.
But there was one day I was riding the train and I was studying with my two friends for
an upcoming exam.
You approached us and asked us a few questions about if it would be nice if students could
ride Metrolink for free and we all said yes immediately.
I remember how you smiled and said something about how you remember the struggles of getting
to school and studying and you wanted to make it easier for students.
I'll be honest, when you first said that you were the CEO of Metrolink, I didn't exactly
believe you.
It doesn't look like one, right?
Because there are a lot of crazy people who lie about things.
So I googled you, and well, you weren't lying.
But I seriously wanted to say thank you, because even though you could have lied, you actually
made it happen.
For that, I'm saying thank you so much, this is going to help me more than you know.
Have a great day.
So that's the kind of responses that we get.
There's only one person who heard me read that, Elisa Cunningham, who handles IT for
us, I had to share the story because she has a college student at home as well.
So nobody else has heard that.
So this has caught everybody by surprise.
So anyway, student adventure pass is a great success.
We're tweaking a few things.
We learned a few things in this first couple weeks about how we need to make some adjustments
in the program but and we really want to try to really push people to the mobile app application
rather than going to ticket machines, it just gives us better data so great news about student
adventure paths. Next slide. You should have the board will recall that earlier this month
we had the great California shakeout that we participated in and you're all familiar
with the fact that we, again at Metrolink, we like to be at the lead of technology.
We were able to using our PTC system, able to connect with the United States Geological
Service to, for when an earthquake occurs, it'll send a message of some form to our engineers.
We participated in this year, and we told all of our riders at whatever time it was,
10, 20 in the morning or something thereabouts on that day, 10, 19, okay.
All right, there we go.
We told all of our riders that we were going to have this.
We had shake alert.
We had an earthquake happen.
Our train slowed down.
I am going to shout out to Luis Carrasquero, our deputy chief operating officer, who was
the leader of our agency that put this program together to the point, again, where we are
the first in the country to have it. It's a major safety improvement. And it was, again,
linking PTC, a massive investment on the part of this agency, to even have more value added.
So, again, a really great opportunity for us to be a part of the California, the great
California ShakeOut, and we got a lot of publicity nationally for our early earthquake warning
system. Next slide. And earlier this month also we were able to myself, director
Barger, director Najarian and director O'Connor and director Hughes Leslie all
participated at the opening of the Vista Canyon Metrolink Station, the fourth
Metrolink Station in the city of Santa Clarita. And while we were excited about
announcing that. Of course we also were announcing the start just this week of
the new Antelope Valley Line service, a tremendous expansion in the amount of
service we have on the Antelope Valley Line. Going back to the conversation that
we had with with Rory Vaughn about sort of the reinvention of who Metrolink is
and how we're going to provide service throughout the day and into the
evenings every place that we can. The Antelope Valley Line, again fully funded
by LA Metro is also fully owned by LA Metro which makes sometimes the increase of our
service that much easier. Similar to the San Bernardino line where it's all under public
ownership. So great news again related to Vista Canyon and the Antelope Valley Line
service. Next slide. Before you leave the slide. Yes. I see Marcia there, was she happy?
For the most part, yes.
I was certainly, she voiced some concerns about making sure that all stations in the
City of Santa Clarita stay open.
So I did hear that, but yeah, she was, she was, again, Marcia is a huge champion of our
service and is very excited about the additional trains on the Antelope Valley Line.
So she was quite pleased.
So I'm really pleased to be able to share this news starting November 1st.
This has been something we've been working on for a while now on the segment of the Pacific
Surflanger line between Los Angeles and Ventura, on the Ventura County line.
Currently we have two trains in each direction that are code share, which means you could
use a Metrolink ticket to ride and ride a Pacific Surflanger train with our, with a
Metrolink ticket.
We'll be executing an agreement to be effective November 1st where all five round trips on
the Ventura County line that are surf liner trains, you'll be able to use a Metrolink
ticket expanding the amount of service we have on the Ventura County line by using capacity
available on the Pacific surf liner.
So really pleased for the options that will be made available for those users of the Ventura
County line, both in Los Angeles County and in Ventura County.
This is going to be a pilot for eight months.
going to test it, see how it goes, and get some more data. And my hope is, is that we
can show that there may be opportunities to expand this also Los Angeles south into Orange
County as well. It's been something that we've been talking about. There's not as much capacity
on that segment of the line, and so we're working with Surf Liner to, as they try to
grow and bring back some of their service, that if there is capacity, we may be able
to do the same thing on that portion of the line again from Los Angeles down into Orange
County.
So stay tuned for that but really good news for those that use the Ventura County line
as making sure you have again using any ticket not just a monthly pass.
Next slide.
We've been talking quite a bit about this just as a reminder you'll be hearing more
and more about it as we come closer to the date.
We have a major project at the entry point into Los Angeles Union Station.
You all are all familiar with the major rehabilitation work we have been doing on all the tracks,
signals, switches.
We have one last major portion of the project that's going to require a four-day shutdown.
We identified December 26th through December 29th to close down the entire system because
So many trains go in and out and through LAUS.
In doing so, we're also going to be working
on some other projects throughout the network
while the system is shut down and working
on some equipment needs as well.
So we're going to take advantage of these four days to not just work
on elements at Union Station where we're going to go
to this entirely new signal technology that will allow
for far greater reliability as going through LA Union Station,
but also some other projects at the same time.
So you will be hearing more about this and in fact,
the communications plan is going to be shared
with the MAC and all member agencies
and of course the board will be receiving full information
as well of what that package looks like.
Recognizing that it's a significant undertaking
on our part and we want to make sure people
have adequate time to plan.
Next slide, I believe it's the last slide.
So just real quickly on my thank you slide,
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention at the very end of September I attended with a number
of our staff, the Mobility 21 annual summit in Orange County at Disneyland Hotel and one
of our own board members received a very important recognition.
That would be Director Alan Wopner who was recognized for Lifetime Achievement Award
at the event.
So congratulations Alan to that.
Thanks to other board members that attended the event as well.
Victor Preciata was there.
I think Pam was there.
We had quite a contingent, so thanks to everybody for attending.
Mr. Chair, that concludes my report.
Thank you very much.
The student pass thing is very exciting to see what that's going to accomplish for us.
Any comments or questions?
To the CEO, yes.
Can we just get all the slides sent to us after each meeting?
Sure.
Absolutely.
It's our pleasure.
I don't know if anybody else cares, but there's some things I want to go back and relook that if I wrote it down right or heard
It right. Yep. Well, we'll absolutely do that. No problem. Thank you. My pleasure
There are comments or questions of the CAU
Mr. Chair
Hey, just a quick question. Did you go to APTA?
Yes, we were at yes, that's correct. Thank you. Well, did you happen to see the Zemu by any chance or Zemu?
Zemu is that that sounds like an animal of some sort
I just figured that we have a few board members here that might want to brag on that before I own so
Yes, I was there absolutely yes, sir and took it for a spin a very very brave
And I figured that again there might be representatives from the SBCTA that might want to trump at that great opportunity
Well, I didn't attend the apta and so I didn't see it in person
But if the pictures show interesting train wrap that was used to give shirts to the people
Yeah, there's it is it will definitely be distinguished on the corridor. You will know that it's the hydrogen
Multiple unit that's on the aro line when it goes by no question about it
It's back in
or we'll be back in testing that
probable and
line and hopefully on the San Bernardino line.
Anything else on our CEO?
Board member comments?
Seeing none, go ahead, Dr. Strickland.
Just a reminder and maybe a question for future years,
I think that we need to look at Veterans Day for what it is,
and that is for our veterans that are
alive, that are with us.
Memorial Day is when we memorialize those that have
In the past, do we do free rides for veterans on Veterans Day?
I'm seeing my customer experience team going like this, so the answer is no.
I think that may be something we want to look into for future years.
I think that just for one day, in honor of veterans, I think that we don't give tributes
to those that allow us to meet here, make decisions that we're making and not being
dictated to, and everything that we have that we take for granted, and there's somebody
out there protecting that and we aren't giving them the homage that we need to
be doing so thank you. As a veteran I think that's a great idea. I'm sorry I
also want to announce we had the groundbreaking for the West Valley
Connector project with this NSPCTA project and what's important about this
is the second BRT we're gonna be building in our county and it's connecting two
counties that starts in Pomona at the Metrolinx station there it runs through
Ontario hits the airport goes by the arena of the mills eventually to the Rancho Cucamonga
Metrolink as well so it's linking together at least two Metrolink stations and eventually
Fontana as well as that.
So it's really good to get that connectivity between the rail and the bus and everything
else that we have in there as well as the airport so we're really happy about moving
that forward and those are all going to be electric buses as well.
That's a good project that just started and a lot of money, but it's going to benefit
the community as well as, like you said, the connectivity between the Metrolinx stations,
et cetera.
Any other comments from board members?
Go ahead.
First, Director Wapner, I'm very excited to be your neighbor and part of that project
right there.
much for announcing that. And Director Spiegel, I fully support what you mentioned, and also
seeing maybe if we can have a year-long, maybe even a discount for veterans, so it's not
just a one-day thing. But I do want to say just happy Halloween, everyone, and please
have a great time. I can't wait to see you next month, and I can't wait to see any pictures
of maybe some director costumes.
No, I'm just kidding.
I already have it on Facebook of me.
Oh, excellent, excellent.
Please share with us when we get a chance.
I appreciate you all very much.
Thank you, and thank you everyone.
And we appreciate you.
Thank you so much for your comments.
I have no closing to your comments.
We have a closed session.
Would you read us in the closed session?
Thank you, Chair.
Yes, the board will now go into closed session
under items 11a through f as described in today's agenda. Thank you. We'll adjourn
in the closed session. Thank you. Fine Heritage Square Station. The facility is
open Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Learn more at metro.net slash Lost
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