I'll call the order of this board meeting of the Toronto board and as per safety briefing,
I rank us beyond our chief safety security and compliance officer.
Good morning, Chair McAllen, board members and distinguished guests.
So this morning safety briefing, just a reminder, we are located at the Doubletree Hilton Ontario
Airport uh 222 North Vinland excuse me Vineyard Avenue in lovely Ontario. The event of a fire alarm
activation we are all going to exit out the door take a right go out the exit into the parking lot
away from the building and we will stay there and until we get further direction by fire and or EMS
or the building security. In the event of an earthquake we're all going to drop take cover
wait till the shaking stops and do an assessment determine whether or not we're going to evacuate
at that point. In a situation involving First Aid or in your
requirement CPR, I'm going to be your First Aid provider. I will
ask Mr. Nadine Grossman to make contact with the front desk
security where an AED is located. And then finally, in the
event of an active attacker situation, we advise you to run,
hide and fight. And if there are any other questions, happy to
take them now. But that concludes this morning safety
briefing.
Thank you very much, Fred. Please rise and join me in the
Pledge of Allegiance.
Thank you.
Clark, can we have a roll call?
Certainly.
Director Waffner?
Here.
Director Dautres?
Here.
Director Marquez?
Vice Chair Chafee?
Right.
Director Nguyen?
Director Murphy?
Here.
Second Vice Chair Bergson?
Here.
Director Spiegel?
Director Middleton. Director Vargas. Director Tremblay. Director Engler. Here.
Director Barger. Director recording. Director Najarian. Director Solis. Director Hughes-Lesley.
Here. Director O'Connor. Here. Director Allen. Director Prasiato. Chair McCallin. Here.
We do have a quorum present. Thank you very much. Before we get public comment, I would like to
the city of Toronto. I would
for him to attend to get a deep dive
into what this agency is doing.
Welcome, Bob.
Would you like to say a few words?
I'm not prepared to say any words,
but no, thank you for the invitation.
Thanks for the introduction.
I'm looking forward to getting involved
and learning a little bit more about this
so I can become a really active feminist.
Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Madam Clerk, do we have any public comment?
I do have one written public comment and one request to speak.
Which would you like first, the written comment? Sure.
This is an email that was received Tuesday from John Perez.
Good morning, Metrolinq board of directors.
I am writing again to say you are not a dependable service.
Your OC and 91 Paris Valley operations are still repeatedly late
during the AM commute today.
Your 91 PV 701 train arrived to the Norwalk Santa Fe Springs
well after 619 a.m.
Due to the late departure and a delay in commerce,
we arrived to Union Station late.
The clock read 655 as I was walking through the passageway.
I again missed my 650 commuter express bus
along with my backup, the 657 a.m. Purple Line train.
Your train operators, onboard attendants,
and customer service reps still couldn't care
any less that we were delayed.
In fact, your operator and attendant made no announcements
when we were crawling through commerce
and your customer service rep was not even aware
that there was a delay with the train.
When are these repeated delays gonna end?
Anything you guys advocate for is meaningless
if your trains cannot arrive on time.
Regards, John Perez, Metro Link Writer.
Thank you, I'm made public.
Pete Sloose.
You have been 3-4 in all of these parties.
The one in San Diego.
On our stretch of track.
Let me start over.
I think so.
Every death is tragic.
Some are suicides, some accidents,
some the result of being under the influence of drugs
or alcohol, mental health issues,
or a combination of these.
None of these caused delays of over two hours,
one over three hours, and the other two over four hours each
for the passengers on board, and a cascading effect
for later trains in either direction.
Imagine if this was to happen on onboard reporters
or athletes during the no car Olympics.
Metro runs light rail train concerts,
can weigh in from 100 to 150 tons,
Reaching highway speeds through communities and has these incidents much less frequently while the breaking distance is much shorter than for a metro link train a main factor is that the light rail tracks have been protected from crossover trespassers and between crossing activity.
People are simply not present in the isolated metro corridor limiting trespassers who may wake make an impulsive or accidental actions.
Metrolink has not built such a protected infrastructure
and is not actively pursuing one,
even when the opportunity arises,
such as the Lone Hill to White Double Track Project,
though it is supposedly being funded
by our sales tax dollars through Metro.
When Metrolink was introduced
into our residential neighborhood,
passenger rail had not been running for over 40 years
and freight was not mainline,
but rather four shorter segments
used to address individual businesses.
The quarter had all been evaporated
and houses were built on either side of the rail
within spitting distance.
You would think that when Metrolink arrived,
mitigations would have been required,
but you would be wrong.
And we continue to reap the consequences
of not having built a safe infrastructure.
Our cities are not large.
Covina has about 50,000 residents and San Dimas 30,
but our penalty has been huge
and really needs to be addressed at this time.
There is no longer any real plausible deniability
for inaction when there is opportunity
given what has transpired.
It is incumbent on this board and CEO
to take decisive action to protect our communities now.
Going forward, we should require
using Metro light rail standards
and their same quality construction materials
between crossings for all non-freight mainline corridors
that admit to link services in established communities
when new rail construction projects are initiated,
starting with the Lone Hill to White double track project.
Again, I'd like to submit my comments for the record
and I once again urge you to take action
on this lingering and fixable safety issue
while we have the opportunity.
Thank you for your comments.
Any other comments Madam Clerk?
I have not received any other written public comments
or any other requests to speak.
Very good, thank you.
We'll move on to approval of the consent calendar.
Is there any need to pull any of the items or review them?
If not, can I have a motion?
No, we'll move it.
Second.
We have a motion and a second.
Any objections?
Any abstentions?
saying none. The consent calendar is approved. We're going to our regular calendar, transportation
leaders against human trafficking pledge presented by Frank again. Good morning, Chair McAllen,
board members. This morning I'm presenting on an item that's very near and dear to our hearts.
The subject is transportation leaders against human trafficking pledge. Next slide, please.
So, you know, this issue was addressed recently by the FRA, they approached Metrolink and had
a conversation with us and our CEO Darren Kettle and expressed the desire for Metrolink support
in signing a pledge against this particular act that is prevalent within the industry.
So for us signing this pledge, what it does is it allows us to work jointly, collectively,
think about human trafficking, provides engagement and leadership, and also raises public awareness.
The main goal of this program is to provide training to our frontline providers, whether
it's our conductors, law enforcement, etc., to some of these signs and symptoms that we see within
our industry to draw greater attention to it and ultimately reduce these incidents that were
occurring in the first place. So in signing the pledge, we become a signatory to transportation
leaders against human trafficking, um, again, which involves many other stakeholders. Next slide,
please. So we're going to play a short video and this is the training that we're providing to all
our frontline employees, uh, law enforcement, et cetera, to give people a great understanding
of some of the risks that we face when tackling this issue. Human trafficking is a violation
of human rights and impacts people of any age, gender, race, or nationality. Force labor and
and domestic servitude, also known as labor trafficking
in the United States, can be found in different industries
including roofing, instruction, agriculture,
hospitality, restaurants, and factories.
Indicators of this crime may include being under the control
of another person, doesn't speak up for themselves,
lives and works in the same location,
or is fearful of their employer.
Many labor trafficking victims and their families
are required to work off financial debt to their abuser, known as debt bondage.
Traffickers also threaten foreign national victims with arrest and deportation if they
seek help and confiscate their personal identifying documents as a means of control.
The transportation industry has an important role in the fight against labor trafficking
in rural, urban, and tribal communities.
frontline workers and members of the community can be vital resources to help identify both
domestic and immigrant trafficking victims. If you suspect signs of labor or sex trafficking,
please contact the National Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888 or text help to 233-733.
next slide please. Human Trafficking. So again, by the CEO signature signing this pledge,
we are devoting ourselves to educating our employees, our key stakeholders, raising awareness
of the threat that is presented to us by providing transit to these types of activities.
We are going to take measures to collectively reduce the impact of human trafficking by sharing
information, not only in this video, but actively working to combat these within use of law
enforcement and again some of this education outreach we've been conducting. Next slide please.
So currently what we are doing again we are working with our local providers,
LA County sheriffs, Amtrak etc. Amtrak conductors already received this type of training but we're
going to emphasize that all of our employees receive this training to help them understand
the signs and symptoms to be able to be recognized and next slide please.
Just to note some of our member agencies are already signatory on this type of pledge
Orange County Transit being one, LA Metro being another, we're looking at, as an example,
what Orange County has done, wrapped the bus to note human trafficking and their support of this
effort as well. We'll be also coming up with some marketing campaigns ideas to be able to emphasize
this fact as well. Next slide please. Again, LA Metro's signatory on the pledge, what it means to
them, and information on our website. We're going to look to mirror the same types of activities
with our organization. Next slide please. Noting what Amtrak has done, some of the
frontline training they provide, again provided by Amtrak police. Next slide please. So next
steps, this note said the CEO actually has signed the pledge supporting Metrolinx effort.
And also I do want to make note that the CEO is deeply passionate about this particular
activity and making sure we're committed to providing resource to combat this for us.
the first conversations that I had when I came on with Darren is emphasizing the importance of this
and committing our resources to actually combating this, determining where these
incidents are happening, if they're happening, and what we're doing about it. Next slide, please.
So that concludes this message. I'll be happy to take any questions of authority.
Thank you, Frank. This is a worldwide problem. I just recently traveled to the United Kingdom,
and it's interesting to note that you could go through the automated export thing as long as
you didn't have any children with you that were 12 or under. If you had children with you 12 or
under you had to go through and actually talk to the customs people or the border patrol.
So it's not only an issue here, it's an issue all over the world and I think it's a
very important program that we need to really educate everyone on. Any comments? Yes, go ahead.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. This said on there, this earlier this week, the Orange County Board of
Supervisors adopted a resolution recognizing January as National Community Trafficking
Prevention Month. I think that's why this item is here with us today. And it ends on February 1
as a national freedom day in between all these kinds of actions you're seeing are being taken.
And it's something that is happening in so many places. It's a sneaky crime. You don't know
what is behind closed doors so often, but it's a highness one because it takes personal liberty
way for commercial exploitation often for sexual gratification issues. And so I think what we were
looking at is the process at our level and this is a different education level appropriate for our
purposes is what we call a trauma-informed approach that integrates the pursuit of justice
and the provision of social services because there's a huge amount of trauma in this situation
designed to help victims escape and recover from the physical, mental, emotional, and sometimes
spiritual trauma that they endured. And so there's even a hotline to report this nationally.
We had an Orange County report on trafficking. We had some 422 victims reported in 21 and 22,
or 23 numbers aren't out yet, but our district attorney is very active in prosecuting these
things, but still just the tip of the iceberg. So I was glad to see the national hotline up there.
I'll just repeat it because you can report it nationally and action does follow. 888-373-7888.
So thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Are there comments? Seeing none, thank you very much,
Ryan. Thank you. Next we'll go on to our FY 24 financial results for the five months ending
November 30. Write us your revenue and operating results presented by Christine Wilson, our senior
manager of finance, Christine. Good morning Chairman McAllen and members of the board.
I'm presenting item 7b, the agency financial results for the five months ended November 2023.
Next slide please. This slide shows a ridership increase over the past 11 months.
As you can see, we are outpacing the forecasted amounts. We will talk about the detail
of this in the next two slides. Next slide please. This slide shows that our revenue is also
outperforming the budgeted amounts. Next slide please. Year-to-date Fairbox revenue was budgeted
at 1.4 million, I mean 14 million, sorry, or a 43% recovery. And I remind you here that we are
presenting comparisons to our fair box revenue performance in 2019, the last full year prior
to the pandemic. In other words, this year we have fair box revenue equal to 43% of the fair box revenue
for the five months ended November of 2018, which was FY 19. The actual fair box revenue is 15.9
million or a 49% recovery over and over the budgeted amount by 1.9 million. The student
adventure pass has contributed 1.7 million through the Fairvox revenue shown through
November by month. The SAP in October contributed 686,000. SAP in November contributed 1 million.
Next slide please.
This slide shows ridership performance.
Once again, performance is significantly over the forecast.
Next slide please.
Year-to-date ridership was forecast at 2.1 million or a 42% recovery.
The actual performance is 2.5 million, 38.7 over 38 and 387,000 over the forecast and
a 50% recovery. The student adventure ridership produced ridership year-to-date of 264,000.
Dividing that up by month, there was 107,000 in October and 157,000 in November. Next slide,
please. On to the operating statement. Total operating revenue through November is $26.5
million, which is 4.6 million over the budgeted amounts.
Total expenses are 115.2 million, or $11.1 million
less than budgeted.
These expenses are as accrued, not actuals.
Next slide, please.
Here you see the amounts of our past due outstanding
receivables as of November 3023.
some of these amounts have already been remitted.
Next slide, please.
This slide describes the Metrolinx available cash.
Our available cash has been below our $50 million threshold
for the past four months.
The board has been aware, made aware of this situation
as required by our policy.
We can report now that we are slightly over
the $50 million threshold at the end of December.
Next slide, please.
Arrow service.
Next slide.
This slide shows Arrow Fairbox Revenue for the year
at 89.2 thousand and ridership at 40 thousand.
We are still, next slide please.
We are still operating on a continuing resolution for Arrow.
Operating revenue is 94 thousand.
Expenses are 5.4 million or 2.3 million under budget.
Student adventure passes are not included here.
It took us a while to sort out
the Metrolink and Arrow variants
and Arrow SAP will be included in the December statement.
Through November, they total approximately $10,000
in revenue and 7.5,000 in ridership for Arrow.
That concludes my report.
May I answer any questions?
Thank you, Chris.
Any questions, comments from board members?
Seeing none, now this is a receiving file
and without objection, that's what we need to do.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, we have the classification
and compensation plan review.
It's also a receiving file presented by Roxanne Randall,
our interim chief people officer.
Roxanne.
Good morning, Chair McCallan and members of the board.
I am reporting on item 7c classification and compensation plan review final report.
And as you mentioned, this is a receive and file report.
Next slide, please.
Next slide, please.
Since 2022, Metrolink has been undergoing an agency-wide classification and compensation
study which was being conducted by the Segal Group, a HR consulting firm in conjunction
with the HR department, and they presented their findings during our January 12th executive
committee meeting. The presentation covered four areas, project overview, goals and objectives,
methodology, market survey findings, and recommendations. Next slide, please. I'm sorry, back to the
previous slide. The primary goal of the primary goal was to review Metrolinx
classification and salary plan and make recommendations to ensure internal
equity and external market competitiveness. The work was designed to
ensure that employees are compensated consistent with their job
responsibilities and that our pay structure is competitive with the
market. Next slide please. Segal met with the HR team to establish their guiding principles.
I won't read all of them but just want to highlight two and that is to ensure our structure
was internally equitable and externally competitive. Next slide please. Next slide please.
The methodology Segal used was to gain an understanding of Metrolinx goals, analyze
metronome current jobs and structure, do a market assessment by surveying comparable agencies,
develop the salary structure, and provide final results. Next slide, please.
This slide describes the Segal Evaluator Point Factor Job Evaluation Tool. Next slide, please.
This slide describes their market assessment process. The main thing to highlight is that
that Seagull survey 13 peer organizations identified
as either local competitors or peers.
They also use multiple sources of local private sector data.
Next slide, please.
Okay, this slide shows the actual agencies
that were surveyed,
as well as the published survey data that they utilized.
Next slide, please.
Next slide, please.
So this slide summarizes the information that they gained from the competitors.
And it shows the Metrolinx overall base pay as a percentage of the market average.
And you can see that at the top of the slide, overall market average.
The recommended market range is 95 to 105% of markets.
So generally speaking, as you can see,
Metrolink is within the recommended range.
Okay, next slide please.
Next slide.
I'm gonna skip over the next couple of slides
which show how Segal designed
and developed our salary structure.
Okay, I'm sorry, back one.
One more.
OK, thank you.
So key issues with our existing structure
that was found by Segal is that our existing structure is not
aligned with market conditions.
And it's difficult to explain to employees and manage
internally.
Segal recommended changes to reflect best practices
and ensure that it is consistent, easy to understand,
and aligns with current market conditions.
Next slide, please.
The changes include moving from 22 grades, as you can see here, grades A through V, next
slide please, to 18 grades, grades 1 through 17, with one grade, grade 11, having two ranges
A and B. Also, the new structure ensures a consistent 55% spread between the minimum
and maximum of each salary range. Next slide, please. The report also includes recommendations
to increase the salaries of 15 employees to address internal and external equity and with
an estimated total cost of just over $140,000. Next slide, please. So this concludes my report.
I just want to mention that there was a link to Segal's virtual presentation that was included
in the email with the board packet. It was about 25 minutes in length and offers insights
into their study and more detail than I have provided today. Also, the PowerPoint
presentation is included as an attachment. And the second thing I want to mention is staff will be
returning to the board in March for approval of the amended classification and salary plan
and market adjustments to employee compensation and this is in in accordance with HR policy number
2.1 section 2.0. Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this item.
Thank you Roxanne. Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you Roxanne for once again picking up the ball
and bringing this item before the board. The executive committee heard from Alyssa Dacasparis,
the more thorough presentation along with the Segal group. So thanks to Roxanne for picking
this up and taking it to the board. And a couple of different things. First of all, I think the
overall summary of the discussion is that from a market perspective across the board,
for the most part, Metrolink is fairly well positioned competitively. We have a couple of
agencies that we do have in Southern California that do have, bless you, do have higher salary
ranges than what we have, particularly LA County, Metro, and Los Angeles County. That is a reality.
I like to think, yeah, but we're a way better place to work. So that's our competitive advantage.
And so we just want to make sure that we lay that out there, that generally broadly speaking,
We are competitive. We do have private railroads that we have to make sure that we are sensitive
to. That's why the private data is in there, because we run a railroad and a lot of the
people that you see working at this agency would have those opportunities if the private
sector wanted to pursue our folks. So we need to stay competitive there. And then lastly,
Director Tremblay at the Executive Committee asked the very question about what's the plan
for those 14, 15 employees. And after a further reflection, I wanted to, as Roxanne indicated,
our plan is, in my book, we have 14 or 15 people that have been working out of class for some time.
And I do not want to draw that out any longer. So after some internal conversations, that's our
hope is to bring this back forward in March so that we also write that situation for those
folks that have been that have been working out of that classification out of that range
and make that adjustment sooner rather than later so that that action will be coming back before
the executive committee and the board at our our march meeting and with that Mr. Chair both
Roxanne and myself are available for questions. Thank you any questions or comments from
Board members go ahead. Thank you. Just a personal question because I wasn't here before.
Can you bring me up to speed on what was the reason that we went through this whole exercise was
that we were with people were leaving or just to get a good idea, a good snapshot? Good question
Director Engler. The board has a policy that says every five years we shall do a classification and
compensation study and so the calendar turned over in 2022 and here we are so that's the
basic the basic situation. Thank you. Any others? Seeing none this is a receiving file and without
objection that's what the board will do. Thank you Roxanne. Thank you. Next we have our January
legislative update also receiving file presented by none other than Jeffrey Dunn our director and
government and community relations. Jeff. Thank you very much. Chairman Callum, members
of the board. Next slide, please. Yes, as noted in your report, our community relations
team is reaching back to schools throughout the entire network to follow the initial outreach
we did this year, introducing our online virtual safety program. This provides best practices
and safety education to students attending school near or adjacent to our right of way.
Our effort this month refines and targets
appropriate personnel at every school in our service region.
Additionally, we'll be asking every high school
in our region if we would be able to locate information
regarding our successful student adventure pass,
allowing students to write our service for free
at their campuses, that's 5,000 schools
across Southern California.
These efforts underscore our commitment
to this large underserved demographic of current
and future passengers to not only introduce them
to Metrolinx, but to do so within the context of safety,
that is the hallmark of our service.
Next slide.
Sorry, go back.
Briefly too, I wanna touch on our CEO's ongoing engagement
with elected officials throughout the network.
Mr. Kettle was scheduled to ride the Arrow service
with Assembly Majority Leader Emerita Eloise Reyes Gomez
in December, this had to be postponed
at the request of the assembly member.
It will be rescheduled to another time early this year.
Mr. Kettle also met earlier this month
with the LA council member and Melinda Padilla
to provide updated information
on some of the exciting activities in her district
and along the AVL and throughout the Valley.
We will too be scheduling in the near future
our next byline outreach meeting for the AVL line
with elected officials and station cities.
These meetings will likely occur in April
with the dates to be determined.
This follows successful outreach led by our CEO
on the San Bernardino and Ventura County lines last year.
will provide update to you as these meetings are finalized including invitations to board members
in whose districts the AVL line traverses. Now next slide. In state matters the big news
regarding the 24-25 fiscal year state budget is the projected deficit of the budget proposed by
Governor Newsom earlier this month is almost half smaller than the one projected by the nonpartisan
Legislative Analyst's Office in December. As had been widely reported the LAO last month projected
a potential $68 billion state budget deficit spread over the next three fiscal years. The
governor's budget trims that number to an estimated $38 billion instead. This is reflective
of revenue assumptions which are volatile and for which information is continuing to be assimilated
due in part to the extension of certain tax filings last year into November. These adjustments will
continue the first half of this year until the May revise is issued. When the state will know
with much greater certainty how much it has on the revenue side of the ledger to pass a budget
by June 15. Not coincidentally, Metrolink will participate in the California Transit Association
spring legislative conference and advocacy trip at that time when final budget decisions are being
made in the legislature following release of the May revise to help secure maximum transportation
and transit resources from the final budget to address our service capital and operational needs
for this year. Despite the projected shortfall of the just release budget the good news is for
transportation and for transit particularly that the 5.1 billion dollars of TIRCP and zero emissions
transit capital funding any or all of which is eligible to be flexed for operations in addition
to capital funding that is provided under the current budget agreement is not proposed to be
trend, suspended or eliminated, as it could have been. It's a reminder of that agreement.
Of that $5.1 billion, $2.4 billion was appropriated as a part of the current fiscal year 23-24.
That's $2 billion of TIRCP and $410 million of zero emission funding, with the remaining $2 billion
of TIRCP to be appropriated in the 24-25 fiscal year and $230 million of ZE funding in each year
from 2425 through 26 and 27. The governor is proposing that the state delay a portion of the
remaining TIRCP funding by one fiscal year so that one billion would still be appropriated
in the upcoming budget 2425 and the remaining one billion would be appropriated the following
fiscal year 2526. So essentially delays half of that by one fiscal year but it does not impact the
$2 billion of TRC funding that is appropriated in the current fiscal year. That the commissions
will have discretion to use for operational or capital funding as they deem appropriate.
We will provide a more comprehensive summary of this budget as part of your legislative update
next month. With respect to the Los Angeles Senate Subcommittee on Rail Corridor Resiliency
field hearing in San Clemente last month, I note from the report discussion that Metrolink did
provide a list of funded and unfunded score projects along the corridor to be included
among any of the priority projects the subcommittee may assimilate to recommend for further or
future funding. Also, members of the subcommittee did discuss, though they made no recommendation,
to modify the Losin governance board to include adding Metrolink to that board. Next slide,
please. In federal matters regarding the Reconnecting Communities grant application, Metrolink has
submitted to secure a federal match of nearly $45 million to go with the 54 million of state
grant funding already acquired to procure eight additional tier four locomotives which are the
cleanest commercially available. Metrolink was able to secure a meeting earlier this month with
FRA administrator Amit Bose in Washington DC with Metrolink director of planning Roderick Diaz
and special project senior manager of locomotive fleet and facilities Michelle Stewart who were
participating in the annual Transportation Research Board Conference in D.C. to discuss
this application among other topics. This unique opportunity allowed MetroLINK to directly address
with the administrator the importance of transitioning the Tier 4 locomotives
as much and as soon as possible to meet the interim emission reduction goals of California's
newly adopted end-use locomotive regulation. By far the nation's most stringent. While locomotive
Zero Emissions Technologies Development play catch up and continue to be tested before reaching
eventual FRA approval and commercial feasibility. This is a process that will take years even under
the most optimistic assumptions. Our staff discussions with the administrator were broad ranging
and also included future raise grant program submissions, intrusion detection technology,
the federal corridor ID program, as well as the Olympics. There will be follow-up with the FRA on
these issues and we will provide relevant updates to you as appropriate.
Regarding the Brightline West and California high-speed rail grants as
indicated in your report for three billion dollars and three point oh seven
billion respectively, these are obviously very exciting and transformative for
passenger rail in California and for Metrolink. The HSR award provides critical
funding for the 119 mile segment construction in Central Valley and the
Brightline West award, to paraphrase our CEO, makes high-speed passenger rail
Service to Las Vegas Reel. We look forward to working with Brightline, California High
Speed Rail and our federal and state partners to ensure their eventual seamless connection
to MetroLink. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not include the good news of the passage
by Congress of the extension of the continuing resolution to maintain status quo federal
funding until March 1st, when the first tier of federal appropriations bills, including
T-Hud, will expire unless a budget for the full fiscal year has passed or is extended
again by another stopgap funding measure. This concludes my report. I'm happy to take any
questions if you have any. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. As usual, very comprehensive,
Darren. Just one additional remark. It was announced earlier this week that Brightline West
has also now received an additional $2.5 billion in private equity bond revenues. So they're
continuing to fully finance that project. They've also announced preliminary work starting on the
Nevada side and the intent to move forward with the hiring of some 10,000 members of labor to
move the project forward. So they have a very ambitious schedule and they seem to be doing all
the right things related to funding the project. Yeah and their intent is to have this operational
for the 2028 Olympics.
Ambitious to say the least.
Ambitious, but also puts a little pressure on us
to be ready, right?
Other comments, questions?
Seeing none, thank you, Jeff.
We see you can file without objection.
That's what the board will do.
Darren, you're up.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Some brief chief executive officer remarks.
One of the items yet not on our slide deck,
but I wanted to share with the board.
You'll recall a few months ago,
we recognized an individual who was a track inspector
in Orange County who observed an individual
who was on the tracks and called it in,
actually went and tried to speak with the individual.
And it was someone who'd indicated
that they were going to attempt suicide.
Earlier this month, on Monday, January 8th,
on the Arrow Line, we had a conductor and an engineer,
just as they were getting ready
depart San Bernardino Transit Center. Notice the subject sitting on the tracks near the
Warm Creek Bridge which is just to the east of the San Bernardino Transit Center. Our
conductor engineer notified deputies who were nearby about the individual and they were able
to connect with that person. They noticed that the individual was was very very upset and she
She had told the deputies that it was her intent to commit suicide.
The female was found to be a juvenile and taken to Loma Linda University Hospital for
treatment.
Of course, the parents were notified.
So we will be making sure that conductor Guernsey and engineer Bachman are recognized for being
alert to the situation, making sure that the aero train didn't proceed down the tracks
and that the individual was successful in their attempt.
So just again, show us a little bit about what goes on
in our railroad and the people who are observing
what's going on around them to try to avert tragic instances.
Let's go on to the slide deck, next slide.
Okay, so everybody's heard about this.
San Clemente, I've had the privilege
of being your chief executive officer
for about two years and four months.
And this is the third time I've had to tell you
that we've had to close the tracks through San Clemente
due to landslide issues.
These bridge brands, this is just south
of the San Clemente North train station.
You can see what happened.
We actually had started,
we had observed this landslide taking place.
That is a pedestrian bridge that was built
by the city of San Clemente.
We started noticing a little bit of movement.
The city of San Clemente closed the bridge to pedestrians.
We instituted immediate slow orders of 20 miles an hour.
And then all of a sudden that bridge gave way even more.
And you can see that that material has pushed that bridge away.
And you can see the material that has now fallen
onto our tracks.
In the last 24 hours, there are two spans of that bridge
that have been completely removed by contract forces,
both ours, as well as a contractor in support of Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
So we've been working closely with BNSF as well as Amtrak.
We right now have those two bridgebands removed,
and we are going to be excavating that material away from the tracks.
And we will then see what is happening behind that material that's moved.
We want to be careful not to be we're optimistic that that by moving them removing the material, we will be able to restore service in relatively timely fashion. However, the engineers have not yet been able to get to the site.
On what's behind that landslide. So we are being careful to not to not make any commitments on it, but needless to say, what's interesting in this is that the Orange County Transportation Authority has done.
study that identified quote-unquote hot spots in the San Clemente areas, San Clemente,
Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano. That report was just produced published a couple of weeks ago
and shared this location was identified as one of the hot spot locations. So it is our intent in
working with OCTA to take this hot spot analysis because clearly they are very, they're absolutely
real and do what we can to try to get ahead of some of these items developing a package of projects
that will we can address these hot spots in a more proactive fashion versus the reactive
fashion that we've had to deal with in the last three the last three closures so stay tuned for
that but obviously it's alarming to see this and and OCTA has been an amazing partner in working
through making sure we protect the right of way. Next slide, please. Some really positive news.
Some of you have not had yet the privilege to meet Monica Craya, a member of our team.
She has been identified by Railway Age as one of what they call their fast trackers. Railway Age
is a publication of for both public and private sector railroads. Monica is our senior manager
for railroad and real estate services. She does a lot of our contract work as it relates
to working with the Freight railroads, Amtrak, LA Union Station, and she was recognized
for being one of those fast trackers nationally, 25 fast trackers under 40.
So really pleased about that. And her immediate supervisor, Paul Hubler,
handle the domination of that. So I'm very happy for Monica. Next slide.
Also in the spirit of just recognizing the great work of our team, I'm not quite sure why Justin
Fernelli has a smirk on his face during his acceptance speech here, but the Women in
Transportation Symposium Inland Empire Division recognized Justin with the Honorable Ray LaHood
award. Justin was nominated by his staff. Justin's got 20 years of experience in the freight and
passenger rail. You'll hear more from Justin later today during our workshop. He's been with us for
six years and he oversees our program delivery, our whole entire program delivery department.
Again, recognition of Justin and his great work. Really, it speaks to the support that his team,
his staff has for him. So congratulations to Justin on that. Next slide.
So some more positive news and a big thank you to our own chairman, Chairman McCallum for the
support. While this is not a done deal yet, the South Coast Air Quality Management District
Technology Committee has made a recommendation to the full AQMD board for a grant application
that we have worked on that will allocate up to 146 million dollars in total grant funding
for 12 tier 4 locomotives. You can see the price tag there at about 87.4 million and 2 zero-emission
locomotive vehicles. We right now at this point would have to go through a process as to what
kind of zero emission fuel that would be. It could potentially be hydrogen. It could potentially be
battery. We would have to go through a process. I'm going through a procurement for that. But our
thanks to Chair McAllen who not only sits on the technology committee at AQMD, but happened to be
chairing the technology. It pays to no people in high places. But that said, we put together
an application extremely strongly supported by the south coast air quality management district
staff and it was in fact upon their encouragement as we've been exploring this new zero emission
technology for locomotive hauled coaches which is our traditional fleet to pursue the zero emission
portion of this grant the nearly 60 million dollars we deal we are going to have to work on
matching funds for this. So it's not fully funded. It's somewhere between 75 and 80%.
So, and that just wants you to be aware that, of course, we will make it official should the
AQMD board make the approval on February 2nd. So thank you, Mr. Chair, for your leadership
and that and your advocacy. Next slide. And very briefly, we're going to do a video that we talked
about our December service suspension. I know all of our board members are aware of that.
Director Engler, just so you're aware, during the week of December 26th through 29th,
the first time in Metrolinx history, we shut down the entire system. And it was for good reason.
At Los Angeles Union Station, we have had an $80 million project to fully modernize
LA Union Station, all the tracks coming into LA Union Station, which of course is our hub.
We went from 1930s technology to 2020 technology. And the only way we could do that was to shut
down the system. At the same time, we took advantage to do other improvements throughout
the network while we had the closure. So that's a little bit of the background. And with that,
Vadim, if you could run the video. Or. All MetroLink train services shut down for the next four days
for cleaning repairs and upgrades.
Upgrades will be made to some 550 miles of track throughout Southern California.
The planned pause, which they announced a couple of months ago, will help
make services here more efficient, safer and faster for travelers.
Ahead of major events like the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games,
A big part of the upgrade will be replacing a nearly 100-year-old signal system at Union Station.
I like our trains to run pretty good, so I'm happier that they're maintaining them.
You can go to their website and get information about other options.
Service will be back up and running on Saturday.
Thank you. We had a very ambitious goal that nobody showed up to a platform expecting to find
a train. We weren't perfect in that. We did a pretty good job of communicating our message,
but we did a really really good job. So it's our customer experience team, marketing team,
communications team. You saw that we had we made news coverage across the region, social media,
and if people did typically show up at a platform, we had people there to meet them to let them know
what their alternative transportation options were. So we worked really really hard I think
overall it was a great success and how we communicated that closure. And then just lastly
some employee recognition again. Juan Robles with RSE Corporation. On December 29th we had a close
call, a safety incident during service suspension while we were working to suspension to work to
move some rail. The slides will show this, we had thankfully because of Juan's action,
Swift actually prevented bodily injury to a colleague. We've always said at Metrolink
safety is foundational. We preach that across the board, whether it's our employees or those
are our contractors. We all have to watch out for each other. And so while this work is being done
on the Antelope Valley line at night, you can see the top picture. We have equipment that was
moving rail. And thanks to one's very quick action, he notified an employee who was down
there, in the red circle, that rail was being moved, alerted into that, otherwise, you have
a lot of loud noise, a lot of activity going on, and that colleague of one's would very possibly,
likely been severely injured by the massive movement of rail. So your head has to be on a
was swivel on a railroad project.
Juan's was, and he ensured the safety of a colleague.
And after we're done here, Juan Robles is here today.
And Mr. Chair, I hope you will take a picture with us
and recognize Juan's attention.
I know you're back behind me, so I'm sorry about that.
If you could stand so people can recognize you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, that concludes my remarks.
Thank you very much.
Any questions of the CEO?
Very good.
We'll go on to a board member comments.
Any board members have comments?
A comment.
I just want to say thank you to our CEO.
There was a lot of excellence
that was highlighted in this meeting.
I think this by far has to be one of my favorite meetings.
There was so much goodness that was highlighted
from the budget, from where our projections are,
from where our actual is.
I remember a time when our numbers didn't look quite so good.
So I'm really happy.
And I know that doesn't happen overnight, and it didn't.
And it's the result of a lot of hard work from the team.
So thank you to the team.
Thank you for your leadership, Darren.
And then from all our staff members that were recognized,
gosh, on a national level from the women's organization
and then Juan, thank you for what you did.
That's huge.
That's more than just a team member.
that's somebody's father, that's somebody's spouse.
So thank you.
And just, I'm so happy to be here and welcome Bob.
We have an amazing staff
and amazing people who work for us.
And I thank you for pointing that out, really.
Really good to recognize all of those
that work at this organization.
And we hope to have a culture
where everyone is pleased to be working here
and enjoys it and is adequately compensated.
So yes, Peter.
Well, I just wanted to thank Council Member Wackner
who I consider to be Mr. Ontario
for welcoming us into his city, so thank you.
Thank you.
Hotel does a great job in presenting all the good food,
especially breakfast this morning,
the bacon and sausages were delicious.
Everything is small.
Or everyone who doesn't know,
I'm ribbing the CEO because he's fasting at breakfast
and didn't have any of that good stuff,
so I'm just rubbing it in again.
In the chairs comments,
I do want to say that the AQMD board
will definitely approve the zero emission
two locomotives as it comes before the board in February.
At the technology committee, I asked the 85 million
request for the other 12 locomotives is on the backup list
and I asked them all, how do we get it off the backup list?
and they know my interest in it.
And I'm assured that at some point
it will be 85 million will be funded.
So our job will be to find matching funds to go with it.
And I think that the award of the zero mission
Carl Warrior grant of 59 million will help us
get the matching funds we need from the federal government
for the Carl Moyer funds we already have received
several years ago, I believe.
And we've been unable at this point
to get the matching funds,
but having this new Carl Moyer grant,
I think will go a lot towards the federal government
recognizing the fact that we are serious
in getting to zero emission.
That's all I have.
And with that, this meeting of our board is adjourned
and we will take a little break,
10 minutes for a little comfort break
and reorganization out.
Thank you.
Job, but it's still technically a public meeting.
Thank you for the legal advice.
That's right.
We will take a 10-minute break.
Stay quiet and don't stop.
Why you can't do that for a separate.
Oh.
All right, thank you all for being here for us.
board before this workshop. I think we'll be hearing a lot of good information and discussion.
I hope we have a good discussion about the addings that are presented. And with that,
we'll get started and I'll turn it over to our CEO to make some remarks.
Yes, thanks, Mr. Chair. And again, good morning, everybody. And thanks again to the chair for
calling for the workshop and for Director Wapner hosting us in his city. So I will keep
my remarks brief. We have about four principal items that we're going to go through today
that are really key to Metrolink's future, immediate future, but also our longer term
future. And so I want to make sure we have particularly one item that we'll be starting
what we have coined Metrolink Reimagine.
It's how we look at ourselves as an agency
and the movement, the transformation
from being what we have been for 30 years,
a commuter railroad focused on commuters
and doing a good job at that
to an entirely different model that recognizes commuters
but also recognizes that there's an entirely different market
that we simply haven't worked to capture.
And frankly, it's the market that we have to have
to be sustainable.
It's great being a commuter railroad,
but you look across the country, systems like ours,
there's 30 of them in the United States.
They're all looking at, we have to be different.
So that will be a key part of the conversation.
And that is really about our future
because it also will then lead into some other things
like LA 28 and the Olympic games in Southern California.
But we wouldn't be starting in the right place
if we didn't say where we are today
as it relates to the nature of our financial position.
And so we're gonna lead with this discussion
about sort of our day-to-day finances.
You got a little bit of a glimmer of that
or a glimpse of that in Christine Wilson's presentation
regarding some of the cashflow challenges
that we've had in the last six months.
Arnold, our chief financial officer,
will go into a little bit more detail to say,
well, why is that?
Why has this become an issue?
And there's actually a couple of very good reasons
that Warren explaining.
So we'll talk about that.
We'll talk about a little bit of our budget development
for FY 24, 25.
And just, again, some of the things
as it relates to making sure we can continue
to be fiscally responsible
and being smart about how we run our system financially.
So, and then there's gonna be a segment also
about the SCORE program.
Again, Director Engler, you're gonna be getting,
this is, you were a chief of a fire department,
so the expression about drinking through a fire hose
is you'd probably appreciate more than anybody.
And so you will be hearing things
about our major capital programs
and how we're trying to expand our capacity
to support more of our trains
and both the capacity side
but also protecting the assets we have today.
And how do we make the get the longevity out of our system
out of those assets?
So you're gonna hear about all of those things board members
But with that, if I could, Mr. Chair,
I'm gonna go ahead and turn it right over
to our chief financial officer, Arnold Hackett.
And so Arnold, it's your show.
Thank you, Darren.
Good morning, Chair McAlvin and members of the board
and guests, Director Hughes, Leslie.
I was about to walk to the car after your comments,
but I decided to come back in here.
He wanted to leave on a high note.
No, so thank you.
Today I'll be focused on around our operating budget in the context of the agency's overall
financials.
And we'll talk about the overall budget.
You'll hear some of that from my colleague, Justin Fornelli, on the beta good repair and
score.
Next slide, please.
So the Metrolink budget consists of two components.
One of those components is the operating budget, and the other is what we call capital programs.
And the agency's operating budget funds our day-to-day expenses for running the service.
All costs required to expand train infrastructure and maintain a state of good repair are included
in what we call our capital programs budget. Our current fiscal twenty four operating budget
is three hundred and five point nine million. We did not bring back service to pre pandemic
levels. Next slide please. So where does Metro link get us operating funds pre pandemic.
we received approximately 60% of our operating funds, including support and grants from the
member agencies and 40% was generated from Fairbox and other revenues.
Once we entered into this sort of pandemic, these percentages shifted to almost 90% from
member agencies including the grants and the federal relief funds because those came not
directly to Metro Lane but through the member agencies. And 10% was generated from the farebox
and other revenue. So you'll see here we talked about sort of these two, our member agencies
And these two were generated from our fear box and other revenues.
And then as we start to enter the pandemic,
you see these three, including the federal relief funds like CARES, ARPA, and CRRISA,
came through the member agencies.
So there was a much greater dependency on the member agencies.
So by FY23, all of our federal relief funds had been exhausted. So by FY23,
at the end of FY23, there were no more federal relief funds. And in FY24, our budget reflected
the member agencies contributing almost 80%, including grants, but again, no federal relief
funds and our fare box of approximately 20%. So the heavy burden for Metrolinx operating services
had fallen squarely on our member agencies. Next slide. So this is the dollar version
of what we just reviewed. As you can see the member agency support had gone from roughly
about $144 million to $252 million. And our fare box revenue dropping from $100 million
to about $54 million. Next slide. So how are those operating dollars spent? So if you look
down at the bottom, 60% of our operating expenses are associated with training operations and
This includes operating the trains, getting people on the trains, fuel, ticketing, rail
agreements, et cetera.
About 19% is administrative expenses, including salary benefits, professional services, and
overhead.
And then yet another 18% that we call maintenance of way that included our track, our signals
and our structure maintenance.
And then last but not least, Don, the legal and insurance, which makes up about 7%.
Next slide.
So once the financial outlook indicates that we will remain heavily dependent on the member
agencies for the foreseeable future.
So prior to the pandemic, we received $7 million in Fairbox revenue per month.
we had that cash available to us on a weekly basis, a daily basis. And this was drastically
reduced, as you can see in this chart, to roughly about $3 million. So $4 million a month since the
pandemic, we were missing that we were getting. So in light of this situation, it's much more
imperative that we receive our member agency's support payments timely. And we shared over
the last few months that you heard Christine talking about earlier, that we had four consecutive
months of serious cash shortage falling well below the board mandated $50 million threshold.
And that $50 million is based on we, our expenses are about $25 million per month. Next slide.
I'm just quickly Arnold if I could chime in that $50 million threshold is if we're under that for three consecutive months. Yes. So that's the reason and once we got to the fourth. That's when we had to inform the board that we had to hit that period. So it's not on a monthly basis, but I'll over three months we are there.
And again, to Arnold's point, when you lose $4 million a month in cold hard cash from
Fairbox revenue, it shouldn't be a big surprise that you're going to have a bit of a cash
crunch at any given time.
So thanks.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Next slide, please.
So we have to continue to work with our member agencies to streamline some of the challenges
which we have these funding MOUs for some member agencies to process to prevent this
serious cash crisis and they because the MOUs in some cases are delaying our members agencies
funding to us because they have requirements from their board that they have to have these
documents in place these agreements in place before they can release the funds and in some
of the cases and we've been fortunate that LA Metro although they have an MOU they still
been able to provide the funding to us up front prior to the MOU being signed. Next
slide, please. So as we move forward, we were starting to talk about the FY25 budget development
and we're there. So we got your message. I got your message that we needed to get these
budgets done to the member agencies so that you had time to process them much earlier.
And so we have and we're doing that and I just wanted to share some of the budget assumptions
just to share those with you so that you can think about those as we're getting ready to
start having the meetings with the CFOs and the rest of the member agency staff and the
CEOs on the proposed budget.
So our service level, what our CEO Darren had us develop was we have two budgets developed,
one that looks at the current service level, and then a second one that will look at running
the current service level through the first quarter, and then the last four quarters running
the optimized service.
Don and Don Felipe will talk as to why we're thinking about not starting it on July 1st,
the revenue based on the updated Sperry Capital KPMG forecast that we have agreed to use.
Plans are no fair increases, new fair promotions, it will include the LC top grant funds or the
mobility for all will continue. We do have a challenge with the student adventure pass
that's funded through LC top through this academic school year which takes us to like
July. From there, we don't know if we have funding to support it moving forward. And
as you heard from Christine that's been a huge successfully program. Our expenses is
4% excluding many of you know that we have this mini bundle that's coming out, that's
looking at our train operations, what is it maintenance, vehicle maintenance and facilities,
combining those all under one contract.
So we have that.
And there's a mobilization charge for that
to get the whoever the proposal is up and running.
And it also right now excludes the optimized service
because we don't know which direction
we're going in currently.
Contractor increases as agreed to no new FTE headcount.
3% merit pool of 3% COLA. And then as you guys know, our
Aero service budget is a totally separate budget that is 100%
today funded by San Bernardino. Next slide. Next slide. So as I
previously stated, we had consecutive four consecutive
months of serious cash shortages falling well below the board mandated $50 million threshold.
And in October, we had less than $13 million of cash when our monthly operating expenses for FY
24 are approximately $25 million. Next slide. So these next few slides show the delay in receiving
our member agencies first quarter payments, even though the Metrolinx Service takes no
break at the beginning of a fiscal year starting July 1. So next slide. Next slide. And then
we'll go to the next slide. So right now I'm going to ask Paul Hubler, our chief strategy
officer to come up and to discuss the new federal and state funding available for rail
capital and operations, which may provide much needed financial assistance for.
And as as we're transitioning over to Paul to talk about some of the revenues that are
out there that we've worked very hard to advocate for the slides that aren't went through relatively
quickly was just the timelines that we're dealing with for the those mo us and getting
final adoptions from not all but some of the member agencies because again as aren't alluded
to, in some cases, the member agencies, they budgeted for it, and this is the particular
case with LA Metro, they budgeted the amount that's going to go to Metrolink.
We get that funding while we're working through the MOU.
Every board is different, and there's different processes, and so in some cases from a member
agency, we don't get that revenue until all the I's are dotted, T's are cross on an MOU,
and approved by a board, and it all depends on timing, and it takes time to get through
those MOUs.
that we're hoping to do this year is that we have those MOUs wrapped up as part of the
budget adoption process. So we get ahead of that. So we don't wait three and four months.
So that's where we're trying to go. We're going to be working with our legal counsel
and the member agencies to try to come up with a more streamlined MOU process. So we
aren't out there, in some cases, three, four, five months while we're still delivering service,
having the revenue from the agencies help support it, particularly in light of the fact
those slides earlier where we're 75% beholden really to the revenues coming from the members.
If we had that fare box revenue would be a different story, but, again, because such
a significant chunk comes from the members, that's why it's important to try to do what
we can to move that MOU process and then the revenues to Metrolink as quickly as possible.
all right Paul take it away thank you mr. chair members the board Paul Hubler
your chief strategy officer so what we wanted to call your attention to a sort
of Metrolink and the budgetary challenges that we face within the
context of the state funding and federal funding and I think we have good news
great news frankly to report on both fronts it's not going to solve our
problems but I think it's a tremendous assist both at the state level and the federal level.
We'll start with the state level first. That's the first bullet point, the SB125, TIRCP,
and ZE funding. Jeff Dunn touched on this when he gave you an update on the Governor's
budget preparations. We can go if we could just stay on that slide.
and essentially so the TIRCP funds are traditionally distributed, no this is my presentation now if we
could go back to that slide. So the TIRCP funds are traditionally distributed, they're first
they're funded out of the greenhouse gas reduction fund which is a California mechanism to auction off
emissions credits on an annual basis, and the state collects those funds and then distributes
the majority of it through a variety of programs. TIRCP is the key one. And that's typically
done through a discretionary grant process where you submit an application and you're
either awarded or not. For SB 125, what the legislature did was to take general fund surplus
funds and commit those through this capital improvement program with a provision that
for these funds only for the ones that are come out of the general fund revenues they can be
flexed to operations as well at the discretion of the member agencies that you represent.
So these are the amounts that are made made available by member agency. In total it's about
2.3 billion over a period of 4 to 5 years. So it's a significant amount of funding.
Metrolink helped lead the way in advocating for this. Your CEO was in Sacramento. We spoke
to the administration, to legislators, highlighting the fiscal cliff that could face us as well as
other transit operators with ridership not having recovered, the farebox revenue challenges that
that Arnold outlined for us,
that has a significant impact on us.
If you cut service, the traditional method of reducing costs,
you risk that you get engaged in a sort of death spiral,
where then you lose passengers
because the service is not convenient.
So the federal government stepped up
with the CARES Act funding.
Now we're happy that the state legislature
has pledged these SB 125 funds
that are available towards Metrolink. A number of member agencies are committing SB 125 towards
capital projects and we're particularly pleased that ORANGE OCTA is committing almost 250 million
over the next several years for Metrolink to help offset Fairbox revenue losses and a significant
portion as well for capital projects. So we're very pleased with that. This is at the discretion
of each member agency to determine how how they distribute the SB 125 funds. The second set of
funds that's at the federal level and again Metrolink along with our commuter rail partners
were key in advocating for an increase in those section 5307, 5337, those are federal code
sections that basically provide formula funds. So this is not discretionary, it's the federal
government. We report to the FTA every year the revenue miles that Metrolink incurs in
Southern California or accrues in Southern California. The FTA then has a formula they
distribute back to not to Metrolink but to the member agencies the funds that are attributable
for our service in in their jurisdictions and that those funds have increased from
Free bipartisan infrastructure law, the IIJA, it was about $120 million a year that was available
for state of good repair maintenance and operating uses. So it's increased from $120 million a year
to about $175 million a year for five years, the five years of the IIJA. So that's a 45 percent
increase. CEO Kettle has made his fellow CEOs at member agencies aware of this. And, you know,
the argument being that because those funds are attributable to Metrolink service,
the member agencies, and in most cases, they do pass those funds back to us. And we then
approach the FTA to draw the funds down. One member agency retains their FTA funds.
that's LA Metro, but they give us, in lieu of that, they give us local sales tax measure funds.
So we just wanted to present that to you. We're very appreciative of the partnership with the
member agencies, particularly on the SB 125 funds. And we look forward to the continued increase. We
just wanted to call your attention to the fact that in both cases at the state level and the
federal level with advocacy, obviously, they have stepped up and are providing additional funding
for commuter railroad service.
Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
And so this is sort of concluding
before I transition to, as we look at other areas
that we're looking at to optimize our service,
as we call it, but to basically revolutionize it
by also looking at the service that we provided
for the last 30 years versus what we should be providing
for the next 30 years, and then how do we start managing those costs?
But I don't want to end this without thanking you, the member agencies, for the ongoing
support that you have been giving us to keep this thing running, keep the service running,
and to work with us on ways to improve the service while also trying to reduce the cost
of the service.
So with that, I'd like to ask, are there any questions?
Board members, this is time to ask any questions
or just discuss it.
Chair, so guess what I'm hearing is that moving forward
permanently, we're going to go from basically 40%
of the revenue that was coming from fair services.
It's going to be 20%.
And then the 20% balance is coming
from the subsidies from member agencies.
Is that the future, basically?
Yes, as we work to continue to grow the ridership.
So the future is less dependent on fares
and more dependent on subsidies from the member agencies.
So my question is, is that,
I know there has to be one to five funds.
Obviously those funds eventually run out,
but how dependent are the member agencies
to sustain this going for the future?
Five years from now,
years from now, if fairs don't go back up? Yeah, Arnold, what's the answer to that?
I think generally, Director Dutray, I think that generally the way we're looking at SB 125
revenues, the transit sector all said we are dealing with the fiscal cliff, whether you are
at BART or Metrolink or OmniTrans or Pick Your Place, we are all wrestling with this fiscal cliff
because of the nature of the world changed a couple of years ago.
So SB 125 is, I'll call it a stopgap period to give us a chance to pivot to something different.
I mean, I don't think as the CEO, I'm not satisfied and I'm not going to settle for 12% barebox recovery ratio.
That is a recipe for disaster.
it is absolutely abdicating our role as serving public the public transit system. Um and now,
are we going to get back to 40% fair box recovery? That's probably a big ask, but I think with SB 125
and the federal dollars give us this opportunity is this is our chance to change. This is our
chance to transform. These are the resources that if we didn't have them, we would just muddle along
and be exactly who we have been for 30 years and never pivot. This is our chance to say
we're going to reinvent ourselves. We are going to get new riders into our system.
We're going to have people that take our trains for discretionary trips that are going a few
station stops because it's convenient. It's easy. It's regular. It's reliable. And our
case is that these are the resources we have to give ourselves a chance to see if Southern
California can do this. And we have about four years with the end game being LA28. And can we
successfully as a region change our mode split and actually recognize that transit is an absolute
viable option? If we get to 2028, and we don't have that, we've used these SB125 resources,
because I think you're right, these are temporary. And unless the state of California, now one of
the things we're only talking about here are the revenues and the expenditures. I would argue
anywhere that Metrolink is more than just about the money. We have statewide goals that are
critically important. Our job, we were, no, there is no, there's no public sector agency that reduces
vehicle miles traveled in the volume that Metrolink reduces vehicle miles traveled.
Our average trip lengths are 25-30 miles. Vehicle miles traveled as a surrogate for
greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Climate change. So we're addressing that.
Access to affordable housing. There will be conversations later today about how do we
provide those same folks that are working two days a week in downtown L.A. and happen to live
in San Bernardino or Paris or Riverside and our train is their option but they're only doing it
two days a week. They're only going in for six hours a day. This is going to be that chance
that we transform who we are and serve that and by the time we get to 2028 we have a service
model out there that actually supports that and we see mode split change that supports this and
and we see Fair Box Recovery grow.
But we also meet these other statewide goals
of supporting communities that are disadvantaged,
of getting people to affordable housing,
greenhouse gas emissions reduction,
VMT reduction, those types of things.
We have a mission to play in that.
We're a critical part of that.
All you have to do is look at SCAG's
draft regional transportation plan
that's under development right now.
And this agency plays a critical role
the success of that plan.
So I look beyond the dollars because I feel like I have to,
the agency has to, but I think we actually,
we have this great opportunity ahead of us to do that.
So I'm gonna look and then we have to deliver on it.
And if we deliver well, there's nothing to say
that we can't see that fair box recovery ratio
get closer to that 40%, then that 12%.
Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox.
Thank you. You know, this is a great discussion. Bigger question and one that we talk about
every once in a while, but we don't like to talk about is the whole financial funding
of Metrolink is not, it's really not that secure. Anytime you have a JPA dependent almost
100% on participation by counties, essentially we know if LA Metro pulled out today the entire
system is dismantled. Pretty much any of our agencies pull out, it's all done and I don't
think we can, at some point we really have to talk about a secure source of funding and
Nobody likes to talk about it
because it means additional taxes.
It means a special district means something like that.
But if we're really looking forward
to a secure source of funding for the future,
at some point we need to start having that discussion.
I don't know how it takes place or anything else,
but maybe at some point, you know,
we can have a staff look back at it
and some options they can bring forward
to how other agencies do it throughout the country.
I don't think agencies normally depend on a JPA
for 100% of their funding or whatever.
It may be 80% of the funding, exactly.
Another bigger question, no one ever likes to approach
because it's such a big question,
but I think we need to start talking about it.
And that's true.
We're one of the few when you look at the,
all of the agencies like ours,
that we don't have an independent source of funding
other than through the member agency.
But you know, the other thing is,
we talk about this, but Metrolink,
the system was on this trajectory anyway.
It was just, when were we gonna get here?
Because previous to the pandemic,
Metrolinx ridership and revenue were flat.
So the cost was still gonna be going up,
but the ridership and the revenue was flat.
And the data shows that.
So this is something transforming
and making this pivot, we have to do.
is where we can't stay on where we work.
Even if we go back to pre-pandemic,
the data shows, and I share that with the member agencies
when we talk about the budget, that we were flat
and the revenue was flat.
We were around $90 million, $100 million of revenue.
So this, so the pandemic accelerated these discussions
that needed to occur.
And they're now putting them in front of us
ahead of when we probably wanted to have the discussion.
But we were going to have this discussion.
And we were gonna end up in the same place
as to how do we transition Metrolink
from sort of the commuter and look for opportunities
to grow revenue and to grow ridership,
but also how do we maintain it?
when the rest of the world, this is a very unique model.
And I've gotten a chance to talk to other CFOs
from other agencies, and it all comes down to oops,
you don't have any of your own funding.
So we're having these discussions about
how do we get better at MetroLane?
And with my peers, and the discussion is,
we don't have other funding.
Oh, Mr. CEO, this is a very important item
that Alan has brought up.
And I've thought about it for a long time.
We do need a definite source of funding other than the JPA.
And I would ask the staff to work with,
whoever we have to work with, member agencies,
the legislature, we need to start looking at ways
that we can have a dedicated source of funding.
if that means legislation or whatever,
working with our member agencies,
we need to pursue that and we need to pursue it vigorously.
So I challenge you to start that process.
Cal is accepted.
Other comments?
Hello. All right.
First of all, thank you for the presentation.
I am happy to see it how we were able to rush now
or move forward a lot of the changes of MetroLink
because for me, it's exciting.
I use it casually while my wife,
many times I've mentioned she uses it recurrently
twice a week is her role.
And I also understand that in the city of LA proper,
going from its actual population
of three to $4 million a day,
but on a work day, going up to 10 million people
there in the city of LA.
It's what other steps are we gonna do?
I appreciate our social media team always.
I know I say that, but maybe partnering up
with organizations, LAUSD, LA County, LA Proper,
the nonprofit sector.
Are we gonna have to be more intentional
of going and having meetings with them
and maybe encouraging their employees of saying,
hey, if you use Metrolink or this type of source,
because those are thousands of employees
that could be using MetroLink
and we could increase that ridership back at least be more,
I don't know where we already are Darren,
by the way, I'm not trying to say you're not doing it.
But maybe having those intentional meetings
with some of these CEOs, superintendents and saying,
hey, you have a mandate and working with our state
saying that you will have a mandate
to lower vehicle miles traveled.
And we know some of your employees live 25 to 30 miles away.
How can we make Metrolink their use of service,
their best mode of transportation?
And we always talk about two LA,
but I know that, I mean, our trains
and the way we're changing is throughout the entire JPA
and service area of Metrolink,
in case somebody's going maybe from Pomona
out towards the Valley somewhere
or even Ventura Riverside back and forth,
but those that beat intentional
with our increasing ridership and vehicle miles traveled,
reducing that throughout everywhere.
I mean, there's a potentially 6 million people
that head towards that travel on our freeways every day.
How do we get them off the freeway and onto our train?
So director Preskeder, you're actually teeing up
a conversation that we're gonna have in a few minutes
regarding MetroLink Reimagined,
because those are exactly some of the things
we're talking about,
about connections, shorter trips,
getting people off the highways.
And so I'm not gonna steal the thunder of Don Felipe
and our consultant who's been working on this
for the last year about how we do make this shift
to something more than just that commuter.
We do have an extensive corporate partner program
that we're doing a lot of outreach
to the corporate sector.
And of course in Southern California,
public agencies provide a lot of incentives
to their employees to utilize transit,
in some cases purchasing and buying ticket,
paying for their fairs, that type of thing.
So there are those options that are out there.
We look for partners everywhere.
We've also done that more recently
with the student adventure paths
and the universities and colleges.
That's been a big effort
as we were kicking off the Student Adventure Pass about,
and it just wasn't the students,
it was also faculty and that kind of thing.
So we don't leave any stone unturned.
And I think a part of this though,
is then you need to have service that supports that.
And that's good, again,
I'm not gonna get ahead of the next conversation.
What we're talking about,
what we could look like in the future
is service throughout Southern California
supports that kind of movement and not just the one that again is the white
collar eight to fiver kind of kind of concept so so stay tuned for that it'll
come out coming up shortly you'll get to hear more about some of these ideas
the other Ventura guy thank you speaking as the other Ventura thank you mr.
Two brief, actually I'm the one with the half a brand
and we now have an ultimate with a full brand.
So that's what we devote to this conversation.
Two brief observations and then a question.
The first brief observation is Arnold and Paul.
This is an excellent presentation
because I think it just crystallizes
where we are financially.
So I wanna compliment you on it.
Secondly, Alan, you hit the nail on the head
and having professionally represented
the number of JPAs throughout the years,
having a dedicated source of revenue,
from my viewpoint, preferably from Sacramento legislatively,
would be the preferred way to go
rather than continually going back
and placing this pressure on member agencies.
So I think you hit the nail on the head
for the challenge going forward.
Question is this, I know that since the fall,
there has been discussion on having,
on a working capital fund request
for $50 million for the member agencies.
I'm looking at this slide with respect to SB 125 TIRCP monies and then FTA 5307 monies.
What impact, and Paul, you indicated this was good news for us and I fully agree,
what impact, if any, does this news have relative to the availability of TIRCP funds on that working
capital fund request of $50 million to the member agencies knowing of course that we've got you know
it takes six months in terms of reimbursables and it's a strict cash flow issue and we don't have a
lot of cash reserves and it takes time for the grant reimbursals to catch up. What impact if any
does this have on that request to member agencies? So and Paul I would speak up is really the available
funds are with the member agencies so I probably don't want to be the one-day answer for this.
All right. All right. Well, I don't agree with you on this. I just want to pose the question.
Maybe I just leave it as a question. Yeah, yeah. Director Trumbly, I mean,
this is, those dollars discretionary by member agency, would they be available to be used for
the working capital program for many one of the member agencies? Yes, the SB125 dollars at the
discretion of the member agency could do that. In the case of Ventura, there may be some other
options that I know Arnold's exploring with BCTC staff,
but this would be one of those eligible expenses
to effectively use it as the contribution
to the Capital Reserve.
Okay, that places it in perspective.
Thank you.
Thanks Mr. Chair.
Any other comments?
Very good.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you, Arnold.
Thank you, Paul.
And so we're gonna go right into our next item here.
Again, it's, and we're right on schedule.
Our timing is, it's like we run a railroad,
perfectly on time around here.
I'm gonna turn this now over to our chief operating officer
who's gonna make a few introductory remarks
regarding schedule optimization.
And so I think you're all familiar with Don Felipe.
Dawn is also going to introduce,
and a lot of the presentation will be conducted
by Seth Torma, who's with Jacobs,
a consulting firm that Metrolink brought on.
But I want to introduce Dawn
to make some introductory remarks
about this nearly one year effort to,
we call it schedule optimization.
That's not exactly the sexiest terminology.
That's why I call it Metrolink Reimagined.
Not that it's any better,
but it rolls off the tongue nicely.
So with that, Mr. Flippy and Seth,
then the show is yours.
Thank you.
All right, thank you.
So we have this, this will provide answers
to everything you've been discussing.
So we're gonna leave the room, you know, everybody happy.
We listened to the board members, we listened to the member agencies.
For the last three years, we've all seen what COVID has done to the ridership and as you
just discussed, we're kind of leading towards an unsustainable area with funding.
So what we did is we, back in February, we, you know, set down and put a scope together
to try and look at what we can do as an agency from an operational standpoint to better,
you know, better ourselves today, better ourselves for tomorrow.
We looked at efficiency.
We looked at data and we looked at really reinventing ourselves so that we become, you
know, a regional railroad just as we are titled.
We've always been, you know, kind of coined the commuter service and that was what we
were very traditionally for 30 years.
But today we need to look at being more than just a commuter service.
We need not forget the 19, 20,000 riders that we have today that are commuters.
We need to be able to provide that same level of service if not better for them.
But we need to look at riders of the future that are looking for us to provide them a
level of service that we have not ever provided in the past.
So next slide.
One thing real quickly, Don,
I wanna make sure as part of your introduction.
Yes, as Don said, we started down this path,
we've put together the scope,
you're gonna hear more about this.
But it all stemmed out of a conversation
that myself and Paul Hubler had
with four of the five member agency CEOs
in a conference room in Orange County about two years ago
as we were wrestling with this question
about coming out of the pandemic
and what we were gonna look like.
and Anne Mayer, Daryl Johnson, Ray Wolf, Martin Erickson,
Stephanie was not able to be there.
All said, we need to look, re-look at this.
We would like you, Metrolinx, develop a scope
to find these efficiencies and optimize your services.
And it was music to our ears.
It was not something we were necessarily expecting to hear.
And we took that ball and ran with it.
And Dawn's team led this charge,
but I want you to know that as much as it was us,
it was done with the full encouragement
on the part of the four member agencies that were involved.
Stephanie, of course, has reiterated her same support
for that since then,
but that was a conversation that took place
and that really sort of got the ball rolling with this.
All right, go ahead, Dawn.
Next slide.
So this is what we've done in the past.
We've gone through this process of creating a schedule.
And it's really based off of individual lines,
every member agency, every line, building a schedule
independently, and then bringing that all together
to create a service.
And we want to change that.
We want to look at the system as a whole.
We want to build a schedule based off of the system
and based off of the data that is provided to us
through our consultant and through their technology,
telling us where we should be focusing,
telling us how we should be focusing
and not necessarily abandoning this
because there is benefit to all of this,
But this should not be our foundation.
Our foundation should be based off of data.
It should be based off what the passenger's needs are
and what we can facilitate at a high level,
the most efficient way.
And then these would filter in
to give us that additional information
where we could decipher how we make those changes
as we move forward.
So we embarked on this process with our consultant,
Jacobs and Seth, Torma will come up and speak to exactly how they got us to the position
we are today.
They also used a consultant, Deutsche Bahn, who is very popular within the transportation
industry globally.
They have a lot of history and background.
So the two together, along with the operating staff, we formulated this schedule and we're
going to walk you through what we could look like in the future and and how efficient we can be
and what that means not only for us as an agency but what it means more importantly for the
communities that we serve. So Seth thank you Chair board Seth Tormoth Jacobs. Next slide please.
That was part of Dawn's slide. That's right. We already talked about this. We did. If we
skip forward a couple of slides, we want to just start with the study goals. Really the study
started around centered around understanding the characteristics and travel patterns of today's
writers which have changed as we all know. Additionally, we wanted to develop schedules
that serve both the current writers but also look to capture the new writers that are out there
and maximize that. And finally, optimize the resources that Metrolink has. Next slide.
The schedules that we're looking at are operating under the existing constraints of the system.
So those include available slots on the network due to host road agreements, et cetera,
infrastructure constraints, as well as current crew availability and equipment related to the fleet.
Next slide. So the analysis is a data-driven process that starts with a robust look at the
market. What is the market out there? Who are the riders? Where are they traveling? When are
they traveling? And based on that data, we then develop schedules accordingly that really are
trying to maximize ridership and revenue and service while minimizing cost. And we did that
through really an iterative process to balance all of those to really develop and deliver an
optimized service. Next slide. So the first question we asked is, who is our writer today,
and how do they compare to the writer of the past? So as you can see, the past writer, about 80% of
those writers were either traveling to school or to work. This is a very commuter oriented
ridership. And today, those same riders reflect about 50% of the overall ridership, so it's
changed significantly. Additionally, what we also know anecdotally is that those ridership,
those riders that are commuting today, they need more flexibility in their work patterns
and in their availability of when they get to work and how they get to work.
Next slide. So we started by developing an understanding of each of those station areas
and an understanding of how many trips were coming to and from those station areas and where were
they going using big data, street light data which uses cell phone and other location-based data
to understand where people are traveling and where they're headed and when. I want to note,
too, that based on CEO meeting input, we're able to update that data and we're continuing to do so,
and so you can see that we've additionally updated the slide here to illustrate
the aero stations and the data that we've additionally obtained from that, based on
on that input.
So we took that data and we looked at an estimated
where would they use the Metrolink services
and Metrolink system.
So we can see here in red and yellow the highest ridership
segments or load segments.
And then in lighter green, the lower segments.
And what starts to emerge is an understanding of,
next slide, it will animate this core market
area of opportunity.
Certainly great ridership and doing well on service,
seeing the existing riders that are coming from places
like South Orange County and whatnot.
But here we see clearly a core market opportunity
for potential growth in new service.
Next slide.
So second question we wanna ask is,
well, when are those riders traveling?
And so starting in the AM peak,
This is a rider that's being served
and has been served well for 30 years.
This is a 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. weekday peak.
But what's interesting when you start to look at it,
next slide, is yes, the AM off peak, the nine to 12,
we see a similar potential ridership opportunity there.
So there's a market there of ridership need.
And in the PM off peak, similarly,
we see a potential opportunity as well.
And then finally, the PM peak, very similar patterns.
So if you flip to the next slide,
going back to those mid-day off peaks,
that 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.,
that market right there, those riders right there,
currently not being served by the Metrolink system,
that represents an opportunity to capture new ridership
if we serve those riders in the mid-day.
So this is a map that, again, based on the same big data,
and tracks where all of those trips
in each of those station areas are going.
So in red and orange are higher trip flows
and in lighter green and lighter colors are lower trip flows.
But one of the key takeaways we found from this data
is a surprising takeaway, an important takeaway,
is that 20% of all of those riders
are going through, or potential writers,
would have to go through LA Union Station,
which really indicates the great need
to facilitate easy transfers at the hub to high percentage.
So the three key takeaways from the market assessment
or analysis that really framed the schedule development
are here on this slide.
One is that there's a core market area
for potential growth.
Two is that the street light data suggests
a strong off-peak market opportunities.
And that three, about 20% of the total trips are running,
potential trips are running through Illinois Station.
So we designed our next slide,
our schedules accordingly around
those three main objectives.
One is to focus service growth in that core market area.
Two, to set a regular schedule
to serve the customers throughout the day,
to capture that off-peak market,
three to improve those transfer opportunities
at LA Union Station.
And of course, importantly, optimize the efficiency
of the system throughout, through that iterative process
that you see there, optimizing ridership
and revenue minimizing cost.
So if we, next slide.
So the first thing is on the left-hand side,
we can see a typical,
it's a clock face at LA Union Station
of what's occurring today with inbound and outbound trains.
And it's sort of all over the time chart there,
as you can see.
And on the right hand side,
we see what the new schedule delivers,
which I think you've heard the term pulse before.
But as an example,
if I come inbound on the AVL in green,
you can see that inbound arrow.
Within 20 minutes,
I can go and transfer to any of the other lines
We're on a train to get outbound.
To the other lines, and when we add that up.
We start today we have about 67 connections that are able to make throughout the day.
And under 10 to 20 minutes, but in the future, four times that amount of 237 connections under the new schedule be able to made. That's 90% of all trains would have the ability to make those connections in under 20 minutes.
slide. So let's just illustrate that example a little bit. So today, if I were to go from
Burbank at 826 a.m. to Tustin, it would take me over six hours. I could fly to New York,
and I did recently in less time. Under the new schedule, that same trip would take an
hour and 30 minutes, starting the travel time competitive. And then the next slide.
Similarly I'm coming from downtown Pomona, Van Nuys. I could fly back from New York in less time,
next slide, and under the new schedule we have travel time competitive service here of an hour
and a half and you could you could go on and on throughout the system to illustrate that because
we're using a system approach to developing the schedules that work together the center of that
system being LA Union Station. Next slide. So yeah please definitely thank you much.
So definitely a team approach to developing this and it's a lot of work over the last year.
So looking at the old schedule and this is pre-pandemic okay there's less service now
the peaks, but pre-pandemic this regional rail system is very commuter oriented as many across
the country have been with lots of service in the peaks as you can see those are trains,
number of trains on the y-axis that's time of day, lots of trains running in the peak. Additionally
you can see is we're not serving the midday market very well at all under that schedule
and we're really not utilizing the trains or the crews much during that midday as well. There's
lots of cost implications and efficiency implications related to that. Please.
I just want to emphasize that what he just said. We are not using crews and equipment
efficiently. Our schedules, again, when you're just building schedules,
all of these pieces, all of these other lines and the input from those other lines,
when you're building those schedules in that kind of piecemeal format,
you're just throwing resources wherever you need them. But when you get this system approach,
you start building out your system, building out your schedule, and then building out your
resources accordingly. And we are using today about 39 trainsets to operate our service of 142 trains
weekdays. We could cut down to five or six train sets to be
able to run 178 trains per day. That's dramatic. That's five or
six locomotives. That's 20 to 30 cars that I can now have in my
maintenance facility. I can give my maintenance personnel more
time to deal with all the maintenance issues. I can give
them more time to get the materials they need. I'm not
pressed to have 39 40 train sets out there. And under today's
current process, what we would do if we add service, just like
we've done in the past, is we would add more equipment out
there, we would just throw more trains out there, throw more
equipment out there, throw more crews out there, we would do this
anyways, crews and equipment would be utilized at a higher
so at a higher rate. This schedule says, no, don't do that. Give the customers more service.
Give the benefit of everything that we've talked about to this point, but don't waste your resources.
Utilize your crews and your equipment more efficiently. And that's what this does.
Go ahead. Perfect timing. Let's see the next slide. So you'll see here,
under the new schedule, that higher utilization of those trains throughout the day. So you're
So you're looking at each of the lines, a lot flatter service and a lot more service
throughout.
So we'll go through line by line in a moment here.
So here's the system-wide summary.
About 140 weekday train trips are occurring today, about 19,000 to 20,000 riders.
And under the new schedule, using less trains, you have more train trips at 178 trains a
day and you'll see a ridership range there.
Let me describe that for a moment here.
the ridership range of basically where you are today
to all the way up to 26,500 riders
through that new schedule.
Why is that range there?
It's a new market.
So we wanna address,
these are people that may not have ridden the train before.
Number two is, of course, those are commuters today
that really no longer because of the shifted travel patterns,
the shifted work day,
really can't get to them from work.
So they're there as well.
and then it will take time to build out that market
and capture those writers once the service is in place.
But there's the byline summary as well.
We'll go through the next slides.
One thing if I could just add,
maybe Don mentioned it while I was out of the room,
but the discussion about the efficiency,
what we currently operate now is our engineers
and conductors when they get to a location,
they may, we transport them to a hotel
and they sit in a hotel for several hours.
We transport them and then we pay for hotel space.
Not the best, oh, and we're still paying them.
So not the best use of our resources.
So what we're doing with this,
I'll call it flattened out schedule,
that sets service of it.
We're using those conductors and engineers
throughout the day.
We are not parking them in hotels.
We're not transporting them in hotels.
We're using them on trains.
What comes with this though, because we did talk,
we're still talking about service level here.
We're still growing our servers,
we're still running more trains.
And Don can speak this way better than I can,
but we get to a point where we time out our crews,
they only can run so many hours in a day.
So to deliver this service that we're talking about,
it will require some more crews, no doubt about it.
And that comes at a cost.
We run more trains, it comes with more fuel,
but we're also getting a whole lot more efficiencies
out of that and we're putting a far better product out there
speaking to how people can use our service
beyond the commute.
So I think that's one of the things
I certainly have learned this in my couple of years
about what do you mean we put engineers and conductors
in hotels for four or five hours?
That's what we do now.
And this doesn't completely change that
but changed it dramatically.
And I just want to make that point.
Thanks, Don, sorry.
And just real quick before I give it back to Seth,
I just wanted to comment on the ridership
the projections because you look at that and you say, well, that's not very good, right? We're at
19,000, you're projecting 26,000. I just want to say right now, there is nobody in this industry
that can predict ridership. If so, we would have hired them, other industry agencies would have
hired them and we would have found the magic pill. It's a guess. After COVID, everybody is trying to
find, you know, that balance, where, where is that ridership? How do we need to adjust?
So, so these are conservative estimates based on just what Seth talked about that there is
potentials out there and we have to go, we have to first provide them a service and then,
and then advertise that to them and get them on board with, with what we're trying to provide
for them. And, and I will say this, we, there is one thing we can guarantee with this optimized
schedule, and that is a more efficient service than this agency has ever had in 30 years.
We will be more efficient with train crews. We'll be more efficient with equipment. We will be more
efficient with our schedule, our transfers. Ridership, I believe, will come when we start
to become efficient and convenient, and so that is what we are hoping for, is the ridership,
but we cannot guarantee it. But if we're not going to at least put ourselves in a position to take
advantage of those opportunities, then we're just going to continue to do the same thing we've been
doing. Unknown call. So let's look at those efficiencies by line. Next slide here. So here
we can see the Antelope Valley line. And in bold are the new services provided, the new train trips
provided. Additionally, I just want to note, you can start to see the inner and outer zones here
through at Vista Canyon. You can see the the inner zone there and then out to Lancaster,
the outer zone as well. Next slide. And here you can see the reverse trip. And a key point in this,
this is happening today. This Antelope Valley Line Service, we got a bit ahead of it. This is
giving us a chance to test this out. This concept of the scheduling effort that we've put in place,
This started in October of 2023, so a few months in. And with trains throughout the day,
trains into the evening, into the night, more trains on weekends, we've seen an immediate
response from our riders. I think I've shared with the board in the last session that in a matter of
six weeks, we saw an 18% growth in ridership on Antelope Aveline. Now, yes, I mean, and again,
this is the reason we are able to do this is you know thanks in large part to LA Metro support
super uh uh director Kathryn Barger and um director Arne Jari and and and the Metro staff
who identified the funding to give this a chance to try this out so this is our
this is our first shot and right out of the gate it's producing so I just I don't want anybody
confused that this is not something that's not in place it is absolutely in place and it is working
actually better than we even thought it might.
So I'm looking at that's being delivered
with the same number of train sets,
but you can see that the utilization of those train sets,
that equipment crews is much higher, more train miles,
more station stops, more train trips,
and you can see a ridership range on that particular line,
but higher utilization of those assets.
And you'll see this again and again
for the coming slides for each of the lines that we see.
Next slide.
So looking at the VCL Ventura County line,
here you can see the change,
the proposed changes in service in bold
in the reverse direction as well.
Next slide.
And when we look at that-
Real quick, Seth, and this is the only place we do this,
if you go back on the last two slides, Angie,
in the case of the Ventura County line,
Currently, we have a code share arrangement
with Amtrak Pacific Surfliner.
So you can use a Metrolink ticket on any Surfliner train
on the Ventura County line
as if it was a Metrolink train.
So you see that level of service across the board.
It's far greater.
We had five round trips on the Ventura County line
because of the code share arrangement we have
with Pacific Surfliner.
And while we can't count on that always being there,
It is a revenue generator for Amtrak Pacific Serveliner
because they have available seats.
So they like our riders and we pay them for those seats.
So it's a benefit to them.
And it's a great improvement for our riders
to have this number of options.
And the Ventura County line at this point,
it's the only place we do have that opportunity,
but it's an important because it does provide
that extra level of service.
And if we see the line summary here,
Less train sets are needed to deliver that service,
but there's more train miles, more station stops,
or train trips,
and overall the ridership range you can see there as well.
So, higher utilization of that,
both that equipment and that crew, et cetera.
Next slide.
Here's the San Bernardino line, a note about this,
based on input on the CEO's meeting
that we had a couple of weeks ago.
you can see we've folded back in an express service
that's there today.
And you can see in bold the proposed service on that line
and in the reverse direction as well.
And if we look at it as a line summary.
Just want to point that out on that line
that West Covina, LA is a half hour service.
is providing hourly service, you know, further onto the line.
But this is something that the analysis showed us
that would be warranted or wanted by passengers.
So we have a half hour service
bouncing back from Covina to LA Union Station.
And then of course, we would look at once infrastructure
is brought up, you know, to the brought up
to what we needed to be as we move forward
in the next three, four, five years,
we can look at doing that type of service
even further out, but this is a big change
for our scheduling, this half hour service
from West Covina to LA and back.
So, excuse me, so does that mean that the service
from Covina into San Bernardino won't happen?
Those are existing lines, right?
So we would-
Or are those new lines being put in?
No, so what it is, is the service that you would have,
what we're referring to is the outer portion,
the inner and outer portion.
So the outer portion, you would have basically hourly service
from San Bernardino to LA,
but you're now going to get a half hour service
from Covina to LA.
So San Bernardino, the outer regions of San Bernardino
doesn't really lose anything.
You're still gaining trains, but the Covina to LA market shows that a half-hourly service
would be very, very beneficial to that, to our schedule and to those passengers.
So those are new trains.
Yeah, yes, sir.
All of them highlighted in bold text are all new proposed trains.
And so if you look at the line summary, to deliver that, all that new service takes less
train sets, but you get more train miles, station stops, and train trips out on that
line.
And as a result, an increase, a potential increase in ridership.
So looking at the arrow line, you'll see there's no bold on here, no additions on this line.
But what is notable is that this line has been sort of integrated and shifted so that
the transfers between arrow and the San Bernardino line all can occur within a 10 to 18 minute
window so that's that is embedded in the schedule that we're showing here to facilitate those
that connection and the transfers between those lines and you can see the resulting just no
changes the arrow line there on this summary slide. The riverside line here you can see
the proposed schedule out on the the riverside line next line less train sets as a result less
train miles, station stops and train trips with a modest or no increase in ridership range
all on that line. Paris Valley line, here we can see the in bold, the increases in service
which really mirrors both directions all day. It's less train sets to deliver that. More train
miles station stops and train trips as illustrating those graphics as a result a potential increase
in ridership. The IEOC line here additionally you can see the proposed additional train
trips in bold and then the reverse direction and then the summary slide. Less train sets
but more train miles station stops and train trips with a proposed or a potential increase
and ridership range. There's the Orange County line in bold again lots more train service there
provided. The resulting less train sets to deliver that service. But again more train miles stops
and trips etc. So that's each of the lines. So to summarize the conclusions of the study
Number one, as illustrated hopefully, the idea behind the schedules is to really understand
the riders that are there today serve those current riders but also address new markets and
the new market that's out there and the new potential riders. Improve efficiencies through
optimizing the use of those crews and those equipment with more train miles provided by
fewer trained sets, but finally an important note,
service planning methodology, it's data driven
and flexible for changing conditions
as the future changes as well.
Just real quick before Seth finishes,
I just wanted to touch on a couple of things
that were said in the previous discussions
that this also addresses.
There was conversation about Brightline
and how that's going to impact us
and how we need to be ready for that.
This schedule does that
because it frees up equipment for me.
I can now, once our infrastructure is in place,
I can now provide more train sets for more service
if that's the answer.
If the schedule says you need more train sets,
I have them available.
I don't need to come to you
and ask you to buy me 13 or 14 or whatever train sets.
I can say I have that in reserve.
It's putting me in a position
to not only deal with what I have today,
but to deal with what is coming tomorrow.
The Olympics is another issue.
There's going to be a need for the service.
There's going to be need for equipment.
We may need more equipment,
but if this schedule is in place, I have reserves.
I can plan right now.
I can start planning for what I'm going to do potentially
in that future with the resources
that I'm being able to save
by utilizing this optimized schedule.
You're anticipating my question.
I apologize.
So on a related note, the next slide is,
the schedules that you just saw are not only flexible,
but they allow for future growth as well
as new infrastructure comes online.
So the next steps are really applying this methodology
the near-term 2026 and long-term 2028 Olympic
schedules and coming back to y'all, thank you.
And just real quickly, so these schedules,
these have been daylighted most recently,
earlier this month with the member agency advisory committee
where they got a preview
and has been shared now twice with the member agency CEOs.
And we're continuing to get input on that and fine-tune.
Just so, Director Burksen, you're aware of it.
And Mayor Aspen said,
we wanna have a one-on-one to better understand
some of these things on Riverside County's schedule.
So we will continue to have those kind of discussions.
Because it does, some of this stuff may not be intuitive.
There you look at some things.
And there's a very good example on Riverside.
a couple of Riverside County lines
when you look at the potential ridership numbers
and there's some head scratchers.
It's like, why is that line not fatter?
I mean, the yellow and red, why is that the case?
And I can't get in and explain the data.
That's what we pay Seth to do
to have better explain these things.
But there are some of those types of questions
we wanna make sure we're responding to.
And because here we are, end of January,
we've had this out there
people getting a chance to digest it. So we will continue this. This is, you
know, we're not we want to move forward. We're excited about this service kind
of this, this concept. We're not going to be doing it tomorrow. We've got some
opportunity to further the discussion. So just be aware where we are going to
be making sure we have those conversations with the with the five
counties so that everybody is on that same page knowing what was behind the
thinking and then gather their input.
And as Don indicated or Seth indicated,
some of the San Bernardino line stuff
was already part of some input from SBCTA staff.
All right, thank you.
So when would we potentially be implementing
this new schedule?
Well, part of it is a condition of the budget.
And at some point, Arnold's gonna talk
a little bit about that.
Our hope is that we're in a position
to implement the schedule in October of this year.
We had a hope of maybe doing it sooner,
coinciding with the adoption of our budget in July.
There are a couple of elements
that were just briefly touched on.
As I said, or as was explained,
we operate with our conductors and our engineers
under contract with Amtrak.
They're supposed to provide us
with 81 conductors and engineers.
That's our current agreement with Amtrak.
They have yet to be able to provide that number of crews
for our existing service.
The schedule that you see presented today
requires 91 conductors and engineers.
So we have been having conversations with Amtrak,
letting them know that we're excited about this
and that I hope that our member agencies on our border
are as excited as we are.
They're going to need to provide additional 10 crews.
I think it's asking a lot to expect that both by July 1 and for that reason we're looking at October 1 and that you know they have heard loud and clear that that is our desire that that's when we would be bringing the service on this schedule online.
Again, we need this board our member agencies, because there is a financial element to this.
that we need to be prepared to to take on. And there is that risk. We think it's a good
calculated risk that gives us that chance for change. So when are we going to have the
look at what the financial impact can be? Shortly in the next few minutes. Right after
the break. So we're not we're not done with this issue? We're not done.
We're done. Okay. Are there any questions?
Any comments, questions at this point?
Go ahead, Alan.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You know, Seth, I don't know whether to thank you
or your computer, but that was probably the best money
I'm paying for a buck I've ever gotten from a consultant.
So thank you.
No, really probably one of the best hours
we've ever spent as a board hearing some of this stuff,
but my double question though,
Darren, if we're using less train sets
and we're putting people to work instead of sleeping
in a hotel, why do we need that many more crews?
Again, the probably the best question best answered
by our chief operating officer,
But in brief, the reason we need the more crews
is because if we're putting those people
in trains the whole time, those hours count
in their train service operations.
And so we timed them out earlier in the day.
So to continue to provide even just the baseline level
of service, we have to go later into the evening.
That's what requires effectively almost like,
it's not a second shift,
but more crews to meet that extra service.
So those, we're paying people to be on trains
which counts against their time operating trains.
Okay, correct Don?
Yeah, it's a 12 hour limit,
hours of service federally regulated.
So we obviously don't wanna run them up to 12 hours,
but the goal was to get the,
so not only when we talk about hotels
and what comes along with that is transportation,
The more we can get away from that, we actually save money there.
There is a savings, there is a tangible savings.
But in order to be able to provide this level of service to entice that customer to come
and utilize our system, it does, you know, we have to increase.
And so we have to, it's requiring 10 more crews.
Any other questions before we get into the financial?
Yes.
Okay, that's first workers.
Forgive me, but is this on?
Yeah, that's all.
I couldn't absorb those slides in one second intervals.
In respect to the Paris Valley Line,
it's for me to leave downtown Paris
and get to Union Station is two hours and seven minutes.
Was there projections on improving that timeframe
from the Paris Valley Line, the actual runtime?
So, yeah, because I have a beautiful clear view from my office, City Hall, and I see all these trains going by and there's nobody in.
And it's amazing I saw one of the slides showing that I had more riders who come from the PBL than the riverside line down at the.
I don't see that but that's my conclusion I'm not the brain I'm not set, but I just I split I when I actually come down to our meetings when so once in a while.
I actually drive all the way to San Bernardino to get onto a San Bernardino train to get
to the Union Station as opposed to my own train station and own city.
So were there any projections or anything that answers the Paris Valley line?
Yeah, so the, and I just want to make sure I'm clear on your question.
You're speaking not to the amount of trains, but the time it takes you get from Paris Valley
to LA.
You did an analogy of improving times and early on in your slides, you improved a heck
a lot of service and benefit. Yeah, no, no problem. The good question. So, so the only thing that
we have to improve the infrastructure, we got to, we got to make the, the train tracks that we're
operating on faster, you know, be able to do higher speeds. And so those projects and the things that
we're doing, not specifically, you know, to the Paris Valley, but in general, those projects that
we're doing will help us improve speed and improve efficiency as far as operating times.
Our engineering department is here, they'll talk about score projects and some of the other things
that they're doing that will help us, again, add to the efficiency that this is projecting
to be quicker, you know, to be to be our whole goal is is really as the slide that says showed
on the transfer, you know, going from six hours to an hour and a half that that's convenient and
that's enticing to the to the passenger, right, because we're now competing with with the vehicle
and that's the goal too. So to your point, we need to be able to compete with the vehicle
be a better option than the vehicle. And if we can get to that point, who's not going to
want to take the train? Exactly. So we can get that done by this week and I appreciate it.
Well, and just to add to this, one of the complications of the 91 Paris Valley line
or the IEOC line is that more than, well, certainly 91 Paris Valley line,
two thirds of that is run on Burlington Northern Santa Fe territory. So we have to work within the
in the parameters and, you know,
Eric Chrisler and Rod and Serge do an amazing job
of working with those freight,
the class one freight railroads.
But that does add an element to the challenge of scheduling.
And then just part of it, it's just a long distance.
I mean, there's just a long way to go.
The thing about the San Bernardino line again,
I think one of the benefits and why you might do that
is because there's so much service.
It's a fully dedicated line for our purposes.
and so we don't have to deal with the potential conflicts
that come with the fact that we share it
with the freight railroad.
Yeah, so we need more crews to run the trains.
What about the stations themselves?
So there'd be some need for digital staffing
because of the additional stops coming by along.
No, there's really nothing that we see
that would warrant us to staff the stations
any more than we already do.
essentially what you're going to make this easier
for customers.
There isn't, you know, when you want to take a train
on the Orange County line or the San Bernardino line,
it's really just that first introduction
and then understanding that you're now going to be
basically on an hourly service.
And so I can just show up at a station,
you know, whatever that clock face hourly service is
and catch my train.
So it's really the upfront education,
putting this out to the passengers
or cut to new customers, potential customers,
getting them familiar with what we are now proposing to do
or will eventually do if you guys approve that
or give us the okay for that.
Educating that passenger,
it's not really about somebody at the station guiding them
because this is going to be,
when you talk about a clock phase schedule,
It just becomes simpler.
You're not looking in a book trying to figure out,
you know, what time is this train gonna be here?
What time does it get to LA?
What time do I gotta catch my next train?
It, everything aligns.
You're basically just working off of 1205, 105, you know,
205, 305, and as a customer, the first time you use that,
the first time you experience that,
that's very easy to remember.
It's very easy to utilize.
So I don't think we're gonna need much, you know,
to look at or to staff stations more.
I think what we're gonna need is to,
when we move forward with this,
is to push that education and that promotion out
to those people so they understand what it is.
Thank you.
All right, Al.
Thank you, Larry.
I think the other thing my colleagues on the board
have to think about is putting our hats on
as local on transportation authorities.
The more increased service from Metro-Link,
that means the more increased service
from our transit agencies to make that connections
between MetroLINK and transit.
So we have to prepare for that at home as well
as what's going on here.
And hopefully during you and your staff
are keeping up with our local transit operators
to make sure they're aware of what's coming down.
Director, that's a super important point.
And the way that we're looking at doing with this schedule
is that currently we have scheduled change
oftentimes twice a year.
We're hoping that when we launch this,
we're doing a single schedule update a year,
which is communicated across the region,
which makes it much easier for our local transit partners
to align their schedules with what we're doing.
And that has been,
honestly, that has been a real challenge for us.
We do what we can,
but when you have this frequent a change,
it's hard for them to keep up with us.
So we do it once a year,
it's gonna, the clock face schedule
is gonna have to really simplify that.
Yeah, the clock face schedule makes it a lot easier
because they, just like Darren said,
they can adjust their services to meet that.
They know, you know, again, to the point of the customer
that the director was talking about at a station.
The transit agencies are gonna be just like the customer.
They know when our trains are running,
they know when they need to meet them.
Thank you.
Dawn, correct, I hope.
Good, great job.
And anytime we can get efficiencies, I think,
in our systems, it's a good nod to you.
Breaking those times down was pretty illuminating.
Very, very great.
If you can put up the Ventura County schedule,
and I just, this is a point of clarification for me.
I think we were adding basically one more route at midday.
I think I noticed on that it actually doesn't get
into Ventura County.
That's correct, it's Chasworth.
So what would be the reason for that?
Or is it ridership just doesn't support it?
Well, really there's infrastructure constraints there
or constraints related to the number of slots available
that go all the way out.
We're using all six slots that are available
in the schedule that you're seeing here
to get all the way out to Ventura.
And if I could intervene, Seth.
The market analysis actually did show
that the bulk of the ridership
on the Ventura County line actually starts in Chatsworth.
So those midday trips are primarily students
and people that are commuting to and from LA
from Chatsworth as opposed to going up to Moore parks.
So when we look to balance the schedule
and the crews and the equipment,
that's what worked best with the market analysis
that was put out there.
Thank you for the clarification, appreciate it.
And I come to this more as a consumer of the trains
because that's my experience right now at this point.
The competition is really with automobiles, as we all know.
How are we working to get the schedule,
get people downtown LA, but also make that last mile?
Connections easier for folks?
And I think Commissioner Wapner talked a little bit
about that.
How are we making that connection so that we go door to door?
That's a great point.
And that is exactly what our hope is with,
when we talk about efficiencies,
it's just broader than what we focused on
in this presentation.
It is the ability to connect
with the other transit agencies, LA Metro,
Ventura, San Bernardino, Omnitrans,
all the different agencies.
So having one schedule change a year,
having clock face schedules gives a much better opportunity
for the other transit agencies,
the dozens of transit agencies that are along our system
to align with us and be able to provide those connections
that are needed for that last person last month.
All right, so I think this pretty much puts a wrap.
So this was all the good news side of the conversation.
Because invariably in the last five minutes,
we're gonna say, okay, what's it gonna cost us?
And that's why Arnold gets to come up to the podium.
You have the opportunity to be the bad guest.
The speaker before lunch.
So, with all the great news as well, so.
I do wanna set the stage for this.
So, the optimized service is a component
of the overall MetroLink FY25 budget.
So I'm not gonna be sharing the FY25 budget.
I'm gonna be talking about just this optimized component.
We do have the budget completed,
but now there's some additional changes
of not starting July 1 to looking at it starting October 1.
So we've gotta go back and rework the numbers again.
So, next slide.
So, this is a look at the Sperry Capital KPMG ridership forecast
for not only the current schedule, but the optimized schedule.
And we don't expect, and we shouldn't expect,
an immediate ridership increase due to the optimized schedule.
It's going to take time.
And they project it's going to be at least a year before we really start
to see because you got to tell people. You got to tell them again. You got to even tell
the existing writers that things have changed. Next slide. So we did look at the KPMG Sperry
Capital writership forecast along with the Jacobs forecast and you can see they're relatively
close depending upon, you know, how optimistic we want to be in that situation. Next slide.
Real quick, though, Arnold, so we want a couple of real quick things here is, you know, this
new service that is going to be a bit more expensive, but far better product, why are
we going to do that if you see ridership that looks changes that are really flat based on
where we are today and where we are and where we could be?
And I think it's part of this is I think that, you know, we want to be conservative.
We certainly have learned that conservative forecast means that we have a better chance
of being successful with that. But what we've learned real time is that with the Antelope
Valley Line service, not overnight, a matter of six weeks, we saw 18 percent ridership
growth. That may be bullish across the board, but it shows us that you put the product out
there. Maybe we'll do better than forecast. But one of the things we on the staff side
have learned is that we want to we've used KPMG. That is our our source of truth for
the purposes of forecasting. That's out there. And we thought full disclosure, they gave
us this number, we're going to use that number. What we what we've seen real time in on the
annual ballot line is it's outperformed that. So, as Arnold continues his presentation,
just keep that in your in your thought process about how this might look in the future.
All right, Arnold. Thank you. Sorry. Next slide, please. So when we look at the FY 25 over all operating budget drivers that are in there that are regardless of whether we do the current service or the operating services are dispatching cause are operating
the facilities maintenance, security marketing,
station maintenance, maintenance of way,
or administration and services, insurance and legal.
And then there's this mini bundle mobilization.
Now that's a one-time cost, but in the FY25 budget,
it's sort of in there.
Not sure what happened there.
That's a $10.3 million estimate
just for that one-time cost
that will show up in the FY 25 budget.
So these are costs, whether I do the current schedule
or the optimized schedule that we have.
And those increases associated with these
are included in there.
Next slide.
So as we look at some unique drivers
around the optimized versus the current schedule,
and we still need to scrub.
Don and I were still working with his team
on some of these as we look at this, but roughly between 13 to 14 million dollars will be the
component for optimized versus the current schedule. So the additional cost for the optimized
will be about roughly 13 to 14 million dollars. And it's in, we said we needed additional crews
and you can see the layover and the crew transportation those costs come down as Don
had talked to the equipment maintenance we're seeing some savings there but of course our
fuel cost is going up because we're we're running more trains our rail agreements because we're
utilizing tracks that don't belong to any of you the member agency so we've got to pay every time
our train runs across those back.
Arnold, can you just stay close to the mic if you could?
OK, oh, sorry.
Yeah.
So, and again, these numbers exclude,
remember that one-time mobilization cost,
if we move forward with the mini bundle.
And this is our estimate that that's
going to cost us about $10.3 million.
Next slide.
And so finally, what I wanted to be able to share was,
and this will give some indication of sort of the cost going up. The optimized service
increases LA Metro's miles about 16% over the current schedule. OCTA's 21, 22%
over the current schedule. RCTC's 18.5% over. San Bernardino's is going down, but this didn't
include us putting back the express train, so it might neutralize it off or be just a
little bit lower. And then as we as we showed you Ventura, there's not really new service
added. There's just some movement there stayed neutral of 0%. Um, so that's what I have.
And hopefully by the next board meeting, I'll be able to come back director and share the
actual FY25 budget, but I wouldn't do that prior to doing our commitment of sharing it with the
member agencies, CFOs, and the member agency staff and the CEOs before I bring it and to this form.
Great. Well, thank you, Arnold. One of the things just to bring the board's attention.
The board may recall that we did receive a two, I believe it was a $2 million grant
to implement a fuel efficiency program that looks to be able to save us somewhere between
10 and 12 percent on our fuel costs. That is not factored into the next year because it's not going
to be fully implemented because it's a combination of both technology as well as training of our
engineers but the that does anticipate a fairly healthy chunk of savings and fuel efficiency.
Not the first year benefit but it could drive future year budgets as it relates to that because
Because again, that fuel cost will then,
by the, of the optimized service, will come down a little.
So that's just wanted to make sure we got
that little plug in there.
Mr. Chair, that concludes the morning session for us
from a staff perspective.
There may be questions related to those slides
that Arnold just presented.
Yeah, Larry, just a couple of questions.
I know we're running late.
Maybe you can get back to this later.
One, it shows a decrease of $1.8 million
in equipment maintenance.
I don't quite understand why it's gonna cost less money
to increase service.
And then on the slide that you showed,
I think it showed a decrease of 1.8 million.
I believe it was 1.2, 1.2 million.
And it's because we aren't gonna have
to run as many train sets.
So we don't have to maintain it.
So if we're going from that 38, 39 down to 35,
Alstom, our contractor currently,
we're not paying them to maintain them.
paying to maintain fewer trains. And the other question, I need another explanation is twice
San Bernardino is losing five percent and on miles. I don't quite understand that either.
So if you look at here, so we had, and when we did these numbers,
so when we did, when we use these numbers, we had taken away the express train and things like that,
but now we put it back. So it's going to, it's going to change a little.
It'll be closer to zero than anything because it really has been, there's very little change
on the San Bernardino line, other than bringing back the express train. And I think that there
may have been one less one-way trip, not a round trip, but one less one-way trip in the optimized
schedule that so that reduces train miles between Montclair and San Bernardino on on what would have
been just the regular service. I think it was just one one-way trip. We did express service before,
we did have San Bernardino County stations but not all of them. I think it was like Rancho and
Upland to a skip. We're not planning on doing that kind of an express. We will be. Yes, it's uh it was
Rancho, um uh it's San Bernardino Rancho, San Bernardino Depot. So you skip, we don't
Don't go to the transit center. San Bernardino Depot, Red Shekuka-Munga, Montclair, Covina, Cal State LA, LA-US.
You expressed train, are we not going to go into Redlands?
It goes to Redlands. Yes, it starts and originates from Redlands.
Any other questions? If not, we will have a working lunch and we're scheduled to be back
at 12 45 on the agenda, but we'll be sitting here eating. The lunch is behind the screen.
Thank you. As everybody is getting ready to gather for lunch, I just want to make sure
There may have been a quick plug to our dispatching crew that are in the room. Eric
Christler, Rod Bailey, Serge Marquez, I think Don may have, did Don, did you introduce them at all?
Did we lose Don? Anyway, he's getting lunch, yeah. I'm the one that hasn't eaten. I should be
the first one online. The reason I want to call their attention is you'll recall, this board will
recall that during the I-10 fire, we were asked to turn around and start operating new trains
in a matter of very, very short order. Mr. Crisler, Mr. Marquez, Mr. Bailey,
put new service in in less than 36 hours that follows that service between Los Angeles and
Covina bounce back. We were able to do that because of this schedule work that we'd already
started and the credit goes to Eric and Rod and Serge for I mean literally within 36 hours putting
out formal four additional round trips on the San Bernardino line to recognize what happened
with the five you know in support of trying to get commuters that did not want we would encourage
them to take the train so I want to make sure we acknowledge their their great work.
As I said before our staff is excellent and testing wonderful.
and hungry and hungry so i'll have the board go back first just so there's a little like fewer
well go ahead and reconvene our meeting and uh the lunch was uh a lot more than uh i needed uh
but certainly not more than derinated feel better since you didn't need breakfast
With that wonderful baking and sausage stuff.
So I want to thank
Rotel. Rotel is doing a great job of taking care of all of it.
Well, the whole hotel. Appreciate it. With that, we'll go ahead and reconvene.
And our next subject is the score and state of good repair.
Yes, thanks, Mr. Chair. We're going to ask Justin to go into his presentation. Before
he does, though, I want to make sure I have a couple of thank yous. I want to make sure
that we recognize the Dean Grossman, Angie Gudinas and Michelle Pena, our staff who put
all this work together. The Dean has been the man behind the curtain with all these
presentations and Angie's been clicking through everything. And of course, we all know the
the work that Michelle did in coordinating all of this,
everybody's schedules, calendars, hotels,
lunches, the whole thing.
So my thanks to the three of them,
I hope you all help me in recognizing their efforts.
And then as Justin comes up,
he's going to go into both again, the score,
talk about state of good repair,
but I would be remiss if we didn't recognize,
as we talked about earlier today,
And we showed the video about the system closure
that we had at the end of December, that last four days.
And it rounded out what was an $80 million project,
took over three years.
And that was all under Justin's leadership
and his team for the success on something
that took something that's a hundred years old
and brings it to modern day standards,
did it on time, on budget.
And in fact, the portion of Union Station,
the project of what was taking on
at the throat of Union Station did a,
we actually had a, his team had a completed
a day ahead of schedule.
So on that four day schedule.
So again, great work by the program delivery team
across the board.
I'm sure Justin will acknowledge his people,
but he's the leader of them.
And I just want to make sure
that we recognize that great work.
because that also is going to help our system immensely
over the foreseeable future
because of how we've been able to modernize that system.
So thanks, Justin, appreciate it.
Thanks, Darren.
I think that's a great segue.
I do want to acknowledge I have Aaron Acevedo
and Liz Lunn here.
Aaron is responsible for our rehabilitation program
and was the leader behind
the Union Station Modernization Project.
and then Liz Lon is leading our SCORE program.
So I think I'm tasked with keeping you guys all awake.
I didn't go next door to see if I could borrow
the karaoke machine and they wouldn't let me use it.
So I'm just gonna have to go through and be engaging here.
So again, thank you, Justin from LA Chief of Program Delivery.
What I'm gonna provide you is an update
of our capital program.
So next slide, please.
I think the flagship capital program
that we have is our Southern California
Optimized Rail Expansion Program.
That's better known as SCORE.
And that's the $10 billion vision
to expand Metrolink service within our service area.
That service would be on our core segments
up to 15 minutes bidirectionally
and then 30 minute bidirectionally on the outline areas.
And that obviously is gonna provide more connections
for our riders, a better opportunity
for people in more economical housing
to get into city centers, those sorts of things.
And so that's really the big vision of what SCORE is.
Next slide, please.
So of that $10 billion vision,
we have currently secured 2.4 billion.
And that makes up essentially around 20 projects
that are littered throughout the Metrolinx system.
And that's really our phase one program
which we're working on right now.
majority of that 2.4 billion has been secured through the state of California through the
transit and inner city rail capital program but we've been able to actually use those funds as
local match to leverage other federal funds so we've secured FRA grants and FHW the federal
highway administration grants as well to advance stay good repair projects and then also to add
to the SCORE program itself. The scope of the projects span everything from double tracking,
you know, adding capacity to our track, to modernizing our signal system, improving the
block spacing, improvements to stations, maintenance facilities, and even some rolling stock as well.
Next slide, please. So of the phase one schedule, and I apologize this is a bit of an eye chart,
but I think that the main point here is looking at that red vertical line and the outlier there
is the Olympics. And really that's what the goal is for our phase one program is to get
a majority of these projects done in time for the Olympics so that Don can further leverage
the optimized schedule that he's laid out. And you heard him mention it several times
of the infrastructure that we need to further expand the service. And that's what the score
phase one is going to do. So you can see here that the bars in green are our early start projects.
These are projects that needed little or no environmental clearance, didn't really need
right away acquisition. So we've been able to accomplish quite a bit of those. And I'll talk
a little bit more about those here in a little bit. The projects in blue are other projects
that are a little bit more traditional that need a little bit more design, environmental clearance,
a lot of right away right away acquisition that we're currently working on. And then down at the
at the very bottom is the Link US project in yellow
that is led by Metro.
There's a couple of projects.
You can see that span beyond the Olympic timeline.
Balboa Canyon and Lancaster,
those are all projects on the Antelope Valley line.
Those came online in 2020,
about two years after most of the other SCORE projects,
this phase one projects were funded.
So we're a little bit behind on those.
We're trying to make up the time,
really with the goal again of meeting the Olympics.
We do have a bit of a funding gap on those AVL projects that we're going to have to work
through.
Next slide, please.
So just to highlight a couple of the early start projects that we've completed.
First is the Burbank Junction Speed Improvement Project.
This project is located, obviously, in Burbank.
It's basically we're coming north out of Union Station.
This is where the lines deviate.
One goes to Antelope Valley, the other goes to Ventura.
And so really, this is basically a reconfiguration of the track, the switches, and the signal.
And it's really to allow faster speeds through this location, and then even more importantly,
additional capacity.
We can run more trains through this location.
And that project budget was at 19 million.
It's been completed, and we're just doing a contract closeout this time.
Next slide, please.
Another project that we finished up on would be the Avery to Song signal re-spacing, and
This is in South Orange County,
spans about eight miles from up in Dana Point
through San Clemente all the way down
to the county line with San Diego.
And really this was again,
a modernization of our signal system
and adding or changing the signal spacing.
So when we operate trains, they operate in a block.
And what we've done is created more blocks, smaller blocks.
So what we can do with that is we can actually run
more trains through this segment of track.
again, increasing the capacity,
increasing that demand for more service.
Budget of 6.3 million
and this project has been completed as well.
Next slide please.
So this project, the Mabardier Car Rebuild
is still ongoing and it's gonna be ongoing
for a number of years.
This project is a little bit of unique
in that it's bundling the SCORE program
with our state of good repair program.
We have 23 out of service cars
that were funded through the state through the TIRCP funds
to bring them back into service.
And these are Bombardier cars
that were either damaged in accidents
or because of deferred maintenance
had to be taken out of service.
And so these funds are really bringing those cars
back into service.
It's gonna provide us with, again,
the opportunity to expand trains, to add more trains.
As Don mentioned, we've got the ability now
with the optimized schedule of five additional trains.
Well, these additional cars help us to add
to that additional service
once we finish the score phase one projects
and are able to add more trains.
We also have 35 in-service cars
that are going through their midlife overhaul
as part of this.
Budget is at 88 million right now,
but this project's gonna continue to grow.
We're planning for this next fiscal year in 25
of asking for more funds to continue this program
to refurbish and rehabilitate the Bombardier cars
that are in service.
And that's probably gonna be going on
the next couple of years. I don't know if any of you have written in our refurbished cars that
they're very nice, totally gutted seats, floors, the trucks that they run on. Each seat has a
independent outlet for laptop or your phone. And then I think Lisa is probably most excited about
this, our customer service, that we are able to incorporate our new branding into the refurbished
cars. So excited about that. Next slide, please. So, you know, I showed some of the accomplishments,
these have not come with challenges. And as I mentioned previously, we do have a funding gap
in aggregate for the score phase one program of around $300 million. A lot of that is on the AVL
projects. So we're working with Metro, we're working with other funding partners to identify
different additional funds, but we're also going through the process of value engineering,
see where we can make some cuts to bring these projects in in time for the Olympics.
We're also seeing construction cost escalation. I think that's a real constraint for us.
Escalation, there's been supply chain issues. We are factoring those into our costs so that we can
plan for those and try and address those as they come up. And then workforce constraints,
you know, skilled labor is has been a problem. It's going to continue to be a problem. We've
seen this on some of our projects. What we're doing to combat this is we're engaging with
the contracting community. We are reaching out to pre-qualified number of contractors.
We want to get contractors that are familiar with working around the railroad and kind of
as an advertisement to let them know of these big projects that we have coming on board.
We're also looking at alternative delivery methods to help with that as well.
And then finally, community outreach, you know, we there's projects that where we've
had community pushback, I think most notably is down in Orange County with the Orange County
maintenance facility, the city of Irvine filed a lawsuit against that project.
We're working with OCTA to work through that lawsuit and I think things are looking better
on the up for that project that we'll be able to advance that as well. Next slide, please.
So some of the key activities for this calendar year and goals is to basically wrap up the early
start projects, the construction closeout on that, pre-construction activities for other
phase one projects, basically that's finishing and acquiring the right-of-way, start early utility
capacity relocations. And then, as I mentioned before, advertising and the IFBs for contractors
to start bringing them on board. We're hoping to, not hoping, but we are planning to have
the complete all of the final design for the AVL projects. And then again, continuing the
community engagement and outreach. Next slide, please. So that's our SCORE program. And what
I'm going to transition into is our State of Good Repair Program, which I think is just
is important, if not more so important. And what I like to say with with regards to these two
programs is the SCORE program, because it's going to expand service, it attracts riders,
it attracts, we'll provide that service people want, you know, they can find out that okay,
I can use the train to get there. State of good repair is what keeps up. State of good repair
ensures we have a safe system. And I think more important for our riders is it's reliable,
that they can trust us to get to where they want to go and be there on time. They can get to work
on time. They can trust us to get home. They can get to their kids' soccer games. So I think that's
why the state of good repair program probably is as important or, if not more so than our score
program. Next slide, please. So, you know, the term state of good repair gets thrown around quite a
bit. To define that, the FTA defines that, that, you know, an asset performs as intended. It doesn't
posed an unacceptable safety risk and that life cycle investment needs are met. So that's the
technical term. But really what is state of good repair? Again, it goes back to that it ensures
safety of our system and that reliability. And we see this day in and day out. So this, the picture
here to the right is a section of track on the Alab Valley line. And you can see that little wow
out in the track. What we call that technically is a thermal misalignment or a sun kink.
And what has happened in this location, we're battling a couple of things here. This occurred
in September of 2020, where there was some very high heat, extreme heat events up in
the Antelope Valley. And so obviously, as you probably all know, when steel heats up,
it wants to expand. The problem we had in this location is because the track bed was
not in a state of good repair, it wasn't able to contain that stress. Normally, if we've
got track bed that's in a state of good repair, it'll keep it aligned. Well, that didn't happen.
And so what the concern was here is when we had an AVL train heading down the mountain,
the engineer had to throw that train into emergency to stop it before going through
this location. Because these types of sunkinks, even though it doesn't look dramatic, can
derail a train and put it on the ground. Pretty significant. So the board acknowledged engineer
Carlin Howler back in September of 2020
for his actions of identifying this
and being able to stop the train in time.
The problem with this though, is that it's not a great surf,
it's not a great issue for our passengers.
That train was stranded there for some time.
And that's where the cost effectiveness
of implementing a state of good repair program,
having our rehab program established
is we found it six times more efficient to do that
versus an emergency repair.
And in addition to that,
it's obviously very impactful to our customers.
When you have these emergency breaks,
you've got people on the train that are stuck.
You have a ripple effect throughout the rest of our system
where you're delaying trains.
In addition to that,
if we don't have assets in a state of good repair,
just the day-to-day maintenance costs go up.
You have to send out crews more frequently
to inspect and maintain switches and signals.
They fail every once in a while.
Maybe it might not affect a train service,
but you've got to dispatch,
Dawn's got to dispatch his right-of-way folk
to go out there and address that.
So those costs drive up our operating budget.
And so really, I think this comes down to
that you're gonna pay for state of good repair
sooner or later, and unfortunately,
when you have to do it later, it's much more expensive.
Next slide, please.
So what are we doing to address our state of good repair?
That's where the Metrolink Rehabilitation Plan comes in.
Or the MRP.
The MRP comes out of the transit asset management plan.
So back in 2016, the FTA required that every operator
that receives federal funds
have a transit asset management plan.
So we do, we've met, we're in good standing with the FRA.
But what we realized in going through that TAM plan
is that it wasn't robust or detailed enough
for us to be, to use it to action projects
and to figure out prioritize projects
of what do we need to tackle.
So that's what basically spurred on the development
of the Metrolinx rehabilitation plan.
So we published, worked on and published
the first MRP in 2019,
and we were currently working to wrap up the MRP 2.0.
And so this is essentially a deep dive
of all of our assets across the railroad.
and its condition, its performance and its age.
And what that does is it really allows us
to then prioritize these projects,
figure out what do we need to be really focused on
with all these competing assets?
Where do we put our money
to address the major safety concerns?
Next slide, please.
So coming out of the MRP 2.0,
what we've found is that we have a backlog
of almost $830 million.
and that we need on an annual basis around $134 million
just to maintain kind of the status quo.
If we are funded over the $134 million,
then we start chipping away at that backlog.
If we're funded under it, then we're adding to it.
So next slide, please.
So historically, and this is a graph
of kind of showing the funding
going to our state of good repair program.
The line going across at 3.5% escalation
is that annual need.
So you can see here that historically
we've been underfunded on the state of good repair program.
I think last year FY 24, we met that needed amount.
I think some of that has to do with availability funding
coming through SB 125 and CARES acts.
There was additional funding available.
The dark bars show either special projects
or grants that were secured.
So in FY 19, that was a special project,
the San Juan Creek Bridge, which we've just kicked off
construction on replacing that bridge.
And then in FY22, that is the FRA's
federal state partnership for state of good repair projects.
I mentioned previously, we were leveraging SCORR
to secure more funds.
That's what happened there.
That was for a state of good repair projects
on the Ventura line using the semi-valley project
as seed money to secure more state of good repair funds.
So, I think the takeaway here is, you know, the continued advocacy, looking for additional
funds to help us with our state of good repair.
Next slide, please.
So, as part of both our state of good repair program and our SCORE program, we are looking
at ways to modernize our assets.
And so, what I want to do is go through a couple different projects where we're being
able to do that.
Next slide, please.
So, the first one, as Darren mentioned, is the Union Station Modernization and Rehabilitation
project. Again, this is a three-year project, a budget of $67 million, and it was completed
on time and on budget. And what we did here is, this is for all the tracks, what we call the
throat, all the tracks going into and out of Union Station. We replaced every track infrastructure
throughout the throat here. And what's fascinating about this, we actually pulled pieces of rail,
date stamped 1921. I've come out of here. And I'll pose this question to you. Do you guys know
when the Union Station was constructed? What year? 1939, very close, 1939. So, you know, the builders
of that were already using kind of reused rail in the rail yard. So, we were very much in the need
to replace that infrastructure. I think what's actually even more exciting about this project,
though, is the signal modernization, where we took 1930s era relay technology and replaced
it with modern microprocessor technology. And so the great thing about this, you know,
the tracking infrastructure was for the reliability, the signal upgrades is going to increase our
throughput through the throat. And I think a big part of that too, is when we have a
hiccup in the throat before, if you had to send out a maintenance crew, you had to shut
down the entire throat. All tracks were affected. You couldn't run any trains in and out of
of Union Station, so it could be very impactful.
Now we're able to break this up into zones.
So if you have a switch that's not working properly,
you dispatch the maintenance away crews,
you isolate that switch and you're still able to run trains
in and out of Union Station.
So again, on time, on budget, and this was the focus,
the culmination of this was the focus of that
December 26 to 29 outage.
We were able to accomplish a lot of other
state of good repair and maintenance projects.
I think you saw the video earlier today.
And then with Lisa Bear's team,
the outreach I think was quite successful.
Next slide please.
So this modernization project,
for engineers we love our technical terms and acronyms.
So your WCNS wireless crossing nearside station stop
doesn't make a whole lot of sense for lay people.
And actually when I hear that, I'm like, okay, don't get it.
So it's smart crossings.
And what this is, is it's a safety improvement,
but it's also kind of a good neighbor improvement
for our station partners.
And what this is is that normally with our older technology
that was kind of a freight-based system
is as a train would pull into the station,
the downstream or grit crossing gate would drop.
And as the train sitting there in the station,
that gate would sit there,
sometimes it would start to pick up,
and then as the train pulls out, that gate drops again.
And the problem with that is that you have people sitting at that in their cars, sitting at that,
and they don't see a train go by. And, you know, it's, it's frustrating. It can back up traffic
through city centers. But then on top of that, people start doing really silly and stupid things
like driving around gates. And so that's where it becomes a safety issue. So we've developed this
technology in partnership with SPCTA as part of the Redlands passenger rail project for the
aero service. And so what I'm going to show you is kind of a cartoon of what this, and this is
building upon our PTC system. And it basically is a smart, again, a smart crossing that talks
to that downstream crossing. So what you can see here is this is kind of a standard, what it was
like before where you have the train pulling into the station, both West Street and East Street,
the gates drop, gate picks up at East Street, and then as the train comes out of the station,
that East Street gate drops again. Just what I explained before, right? With the smart crossings,
The next slide please. Using our PTC system, the PTC knows that this train is going to be
stopped at the station, so it doesn't engage that downstream crossing. And then as the engineer
disemporics and loads passengers, he punches a code into his radio, and notifies, hey, I'm
ready to start leaving the station. It engages that downstream crossing and allows the train to
move forward. Next slide. So on top of this, we do have express trains. We also have freight
trains. So the system's smart enough to know through PTC that that train is not going to stop
at the station so it can't hold up that downstream crossing. It needs to drop it as well. So we have
implemented this on nine crossings on the Revlins passenger rail project.
Been quite successful. It's service proven now. And so we've identified I think 47 other crossings
throughout our system and these are prioritized ranking based on incidents that we've had,
tracking incidents based on amount of vehicular traffic at the crossings, lanes, that sort of thing.
And so, we've been able to secure an FRA Trissy grant to advance this technology on the crossings
highlighted in yellow. And I think the key thing here was that we wanted to work with our member
agencies that everyone got, you know, some of these crossings implemented. But in addition to
that, we are also, any state of good repair project that we have of rebuilding an existing crossing,
we're implementing this system. And then Liz, with the SCORE program, we're in the SCORE projects,
is also going to be implementing this. So it's a nice little value add again. It's a safety
improvement and then a good neighbor for our member agencies. Next slide, please.
So finally, what I wanted to close with, and it has to do with some of the climate change
challenges that we're going through. You know, the board in, let's see, I'm sorry, in March of 2022,
approved the Metrolink Climate Vulnerability Assessment and the Adaptation Plan. And based
on that, that's been kind of the framework for us to include design criteria changes in our design
criteria manual to address climate change. As part of the MRP 2.0, we look at climate change
in a per asset basis of what do we need to be, you know, certain assets, as I mentioned,
the trap workup in, in Antelope Valley, do we need to be keeping a little bit better eye on that?
And do we need to replace in it sooner because of those high heat events? You can see with these
photos, the one in the upper corner, that is on the Antelope Valley line. That was from a mud slide
occurring shortly after the fires that occurred up there. So that's all from the burn scar. And so
you can't really tell from the photo, but that culvert is actually when it's
in working properly about 20 feet high from the bottom of the bridge going down. So that's all
mud and debris that's come down. So those are some of the challenges we're dealing with in regards
to climate change. And then obviously here at the bottom is the Cypress Shores landslide that in
partnership with OCTA, we've been dealing with for the last couple of years. As Darren mentioned,
we're cleaning up another landslide that we've had in San Clemente, and then that work is ongoing.
So I do want to just want to thank the board for your leadership and your advocacy for
Metrolink and the projects that we've been advancing and I would appreciate you guys to
continue to do so that we can so we can secure more funds for SCORE and our state of good repair
program. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much Justin for a good presentation. Comments, questions from board members?
all we need is money, right? That's all we need. Yeah. Not instantly, right?
I'm happy to spend it for you. I do. I do want to have the question. It kind of, it kind of goes
back a little bit from things we talked about earlier, but so here's my question. With the
upgrade to the signal system that we did at Union Station and all the tracks and talking recently
today about the optimized schedule. The pulse scheduler, whatever it was called.
It showed a bunch of trains coming into Union Station all at the same time, I think like six
or eight. And so, you know, overall, do you see any issues with us having that kind of frequency
in and out of our stations, especially Union Station? Are we going to be able to, can that
many trains come in and out simultaneously as as shown in that schedule is is that you know is the
state of good repair going to be able to handle that volume and that that's kind of the overall
question based on today's topics. Sure yeah it's a great question I think for union station in
particular I think a big part of why we're able to do that clock facing schedule is because of
this modernization which is great and then you know we the the state of good repair that was done
within Union Station as well, it helps to for that increased throughput all of those trains coming
in and out at the same time. I do want to mention that that Union Station project is a precursor to
LinkUS. A lot of the infrastructure that we built there will help support the run-through tracks of
once they're constructed and when we even have more trains you know running through Union Station as
opposed to just the stub-ended piece of it as well. And just to follow up on what Justin's saying,
the run-through tracks we want to make sure that people understand what that means. That means
that right now we have stud-in tracks. The tracks come in, you go in forward, you go back out.
The concept of LinkUS is that there will be a bridge that is built over the 101 freeway
and reconnects with the mainline rail corridor heading south towards Orange County. So not a
small undertaking by any stretch of the imagination. So that is it. The other thing though,
just as it relates to I think we have 12 platforms, 12 tracks served by platforms at
LA Union Station. So we have ample capacity to do what we do under the optimized schedule.
Obviously with the run-through tracks, the ability, the amount of throughput you can do,
so you're not having to go in one way and reverse back out way more. We can operate way more,
but certainly with what we're talking about we have the capacity within the existing footprint
and operational structure of LA Union Station. Thank you.
Great presentation Justin. To go back not on the state of good repair but on the SCORE program
we have about if I understood correctly we have about a 300 million dollar aggregate
funding gap or project funding gap. Question is what do we have in the way of applications
grants or otherwise to make a dent in that? What is pending right now?
Paul I would have to let Paul take that on with what's pending right now, but you know,
there's a big part of this is we're having continued conversations with the state of California,
CalSTA, about the TRCP program. What other, you know, I think annually they, or by annually they
release applications or calls for projects. And so that's part of one of the funding sources
that we're looking for but I'll have to repel in the upcoming grant pursuits.
Comments or questions?
I was going to respond about the the grant pursuits. So for the Ennil Valley Line projects
that have a funding shortfall, it's roughly 200 million dollars. We're collaborating with LA Metro
on a joint grant application that would actually be a regional grant application for a new
EPA program. It's called the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Program. So we would be submitting
the Antelope Valley projects for that. We'd have to seek NEPA clearance for the projects
in anticipation being awarded. And that funding shortfall is about $200 million on the AVL projects.
So we're moving forward with that. The grant application is due in April.
Okay. Thank you. The current administration has a lot of climate change related funding
opportunities. So I know at AQMD we are trying to go after that money from the standpoint of
climate change when we really want to use it for pollution reduction from our criteria pollutant.
That's always an opportunity those funds are there or after director O'Connor.
And then building on that with the state emphasis on policies on climate change and VMT reduction
as well as the federal government you know those we need to continue to pursue those sources for
funding because we are achieving that we are hoping them achieve those goals so
we also need their help. And again, as we learned earlier about what the cost will be to the agency
to run the expanded service, but that expanded service is what's going to draw more people out
of their cars and more people into using public transportation. And just on the side, the Union
Station was commissioned in the early 1930s and it was designed by Parkinson who did design Los
Los Angeles City Hall, and that was the site
of the old Chinatown.
And so the Chinatown was moved to where it is now
in Los Angeles, a little north of Union Station.
But again, that was the old Chinatown
and it was displaced by Union Station.
So just a little bit of history.
Thank you, Pam.
Any others?
Well, thank you very much for your presentation.
Very instructive, thank you.
Next we have LA 28 Olympics.
Yeah, so a lot of what you've heard about today
is all in preparation to a degree
to support what we as a region are going to host in 2028.
Paul will go into this presentation.
There are a lot of transportation partners
trying to get ready for our roles
and moving millions of people in the summer of 2028,
both for the Olympics and Paralympics.
Paul will go into this.
He's been supported by Roderick Diaz and Rory Vaughn
on his staff, who have also been supporting me.
I do sit on what's a group
that's what's called the Games Mobility Executives.
It was formed as part of in the establishment by LA 28
of the these principal transportation players
with the interest of our roles
and being able to support mobility for the games.
Most recently we've had discussions at Mobility 21.
I think most everybody's familiar with Mobility 21.
It's the public sector, private sector business group
that supports the transportation mobility
in all of Southern California,
and they have elevated the role
of supporting LA-28 mobility to their level.
In fact, it's part of the discussions
of both going to their Sacramento delegation trip
in February and as part of the agenda
for the Mobility 21 trip to Washington.
So there's this strong advocacy push
on the part of both public agencies,
like ours, LA Metro, LADOT, Caltrans,
but now we also have the weight of the private sector,
chambers of commerce and companies of Southern California
to support our efforts on the advocacy side
both Sacramento and Washington. So that I think it's important to note and the last
thing I'll mention as we've continued and of course Director Trembley and
Director Wapner are now part of our Metrolinx ad hoc committee as we
prepare for 2028. We did have a meeting with the ad hoc committee a week or so
ago and one of the things we continue to find out is you know we have been
frustrated in some cases of not getting a lot of information from LA 28. We are
not the only ones that have that frustration. One of the things we've
heard more recently is that, um, let us just get through Paris and then all of
attention, all eyes will be on Los Angeles and then we're gonna be ready
to go. Um, so, um, we would love to them have a little bit more attention paid
to us before the Paris.
But that's kind of been part of the mindset.
And working with our, in particular, Metro,
we're really trying to, we've really tried to focus
on how we get the advocacy with Sacramento and Washington.
That's sort of where Metro has been the lead.
And we, of course, are right there with them.
So with that introduction, I'll turn it over to Paul.
He can work through his slide deck.
And then we have, there's also some comments
that came out of the ad hoc committee
that was held a week or so ago.
All right, Paul.
Thank you, Darren.
If we could go to the next slide.
So the reason why I'm doing this presentation
is because I oversee, as part of the strategy office planning
and government relations grants, railroad services,
which negotiates our agreements with the freight railroads.
And so that's sort of full.
The Olympics planning sort of falls squarely
within the purview of the strategy office.
What I did want to let you know, as Darren mentioned,
the games mobility executives meet.
Those are the CEOs of the transportation agencies
that are expected to help implement the Olympics.
They meet every two months.
Metrolink staff now regularly meets about three times
a month now with LA-28 staff and with the staff of LA Metro,
part of the COVID crisis.
In order to coordinate planning
for the game, the tempo of the
meetings has stepped up.
And as Darren has suggested,
you know, the LA 28 staff are
looking towards Paris, but
they've also indicated to us,
and I wanted to let you know
this, that they do want to
initiate with us in the first
where Metrolink would provide,
would be expected to provide a baseline level of service
to be determined in 2028.
And then if there is service that specifically targets
spectators and workforce,
and is above that baseline level of service,
that's what we would be discussing with LA-28 staff
in terms of coming to some sort of an agreement
that they would help fund that service.
they are going to reach this type of agreement
with LA Metro because LA Metro is in the midst
of trying to borrow roughly just over two times,
twice as many buses as they currently have
in order to meet the surge in service for the Olympics.
I did wanna just quickly walk through this slide.
So the Olympics are in July of 2028.
It's a roughly 16-day period.
Then there's a two-week pause,
and then there's the Paralympics.
The Paralympics is gonna have fewer spectators,
but it's still gonna be a busy time.
Between those two competitions,
there's 800-plus events
and then held at over 80 venues.
This will be a car-free games.
It's been so designated as car-free.
That's what the planning is anticipating.
London was the first, 2012 was the first car-free games.
What car-free means is that they will not provide parking
at the venues for spectators.
So the parking may be provided for those with disabled,
you know, with handicap placards.
It'll be provided for credentialed participants
in the Olympics, but not for spectators.
That's the plan, at least for now.
And that's what they're proceeding on.
And that's what they implemented in London.
Of course, London, a much more robust transit,
public transit system than Los Angeles,
but we are planning.
That's how we've commenced with this planning
or continuing with it.
So you see the number of spectators,
three million spectators,
each spectator expected to buy,
to purchase tickets for about four cents.
So 12 million tickets, half of those 3 million spectators
are forecast to become from outside of Southern California.
LA28 right now is in the midst of negotiating contracts
with hundreds of hotels in the LA region
to try to accommodate their workforce,
credentialed folks, et cetera.
They're also negotiating with venues on venue agreements,
Concerning parking, traffic control, that sort of thing.
In addition to the spectators 100,000 workforce,
volunteers will be asked to help out with the Olympics.
And then what that leads to with a car free,
plus that number of spectators and workforce
is that there will be a public transit daily demand peak
of about a million additional daily boardings,
500,000 game spectators.
So going to and from, so a million boardings.
And we put that as comparison LA Metro currently
has 950,000 daily boardings.
So we're talking about twice now.
And Metro has a fraction of that,
just under 20,000 daily boardings.
So this is gonna be a vast number of folks
who are gonna be expected to arrive at the games
via public transit or Lyft or Uber or some other means.
The difference with the games is that the games will be going on, you know, what we see here are the weekday boarding peaks for LA Metro from natural link.
These high service frequencies are going to be required seven days a week.
Now, I should say that that is a peak, and we're told that that peak is typically about midway through that 16 day period, because that's when you start to have the metal games where the people are competing for this.
or the athletes are competing for gold medals
and that sort of thing.
And that's when attendance starts to surge
at the Olympics events.
So it's not gonna be 500,000 throughout the entire period.
That will be the peak.
What is being developed,
and this is under the leadership of LA Metro
is a game's living model,
it's transportation demand model
for how folks are going to be using,
spectators are going to be using the transit system
to get to and from these venues,
or frankly, the roadways as well.
Our planning staff is working with the consultants,
it also happens to be Jacobs,
that on strengthening the regional rail aspect
of that model, I just want to make clear,
we've not been told that of any specific ridership
that's particular to Metrolink. So Metrolink will be expected to carry X number of riders per day. We've not been informed of that. We're working with modelers to try to get better handle on that as the games are become more better, more organized, I should say. Because they've announced venues, but they're still negotiating agreements and they've not released a sport or competition schedule. So with that, we can go to the next slide.
Again, for when we look at our network in the context of the Olympics, LA Union Station,
Anaheim are those that are closest to the largest sports venues that are planned to
host competitions.
And then LA Union Station connects to major venues via Metro, bus, and rail.
And on the bus, I just wanted to call out, I've already mentioned the LA Metro is seeking
to borrow buses for their supplemental bus system.
So LA Union Station, I would imagine,
would be a major hub for that
in addition to temporary and permanent mobility hubs
that LA Metro is planning throughout Los Angeles County.
We're working with LA Metro staff as well
to encourage the inclusion,
and they will be included,
of some potential Metrolink park and ride hubs as well,
which I'll show to you on the following slide.
Just to finish out this slide,
the Van Nuys station also offers connections
about five miles to Sepulveda Basin,
which is anticipated to host the equestrian events.
That will go to the next.
So these are the park and ride facilities
that have potential to serve as park and ride facilities
during the games.
the large encircled stations, Santa Clarita, Fairplex,
Fontana, California, Speedway, and Anaheim,
in addition to having large station parking lots,
have adjacent parking lots that are very large.
In the case of Santa Clarita,
in excess of 2,000 parking spaces.
And these, we've initiated discussions with LA 28 staff,
these stations as well as the stations that have the smaller circles could serve as potential
park and ride lots. The challenge for us is that, and we'll see in the next couple of slides,
that we're not going to be able to step up given certain constraints. We may not be able to step
up service on certain lines. So that may make these park and ride locations less attractive.
But on the other hand, there will be transportation demand management plans put into place during the
Olympics that will encourage folks to telecommute if possible during the Olympics. So we may see
our traditional ridership drop and the Olympics related ridership rise during the period of the
the Olympics. That we can go to the next slide. Increasing the service capacity. We wanted
to outline this just to highlight the, again, we've not been told by LA 28 how many folks
were expected to carry during the Olympics, but we want to, for planning purposes, we
put together this chart to show what is our maximum capacity given our existing network
and then the state of the railroad capacity.
And what it is, is this is with passengers not only seated,
every seat full, but passengers standing as well.
If we operate one train an hour
with a four-car train set
all the way up to an eight-car train set,
you can see both the train capacities
as well as the daily capacity,
assuming 18 hours of daily service
during the period of the Olympics.
So we can go from 13,000
where we could carry 13,000 people a day,
all the way up to the maximum
if we're operating on 30 minute headways
on that far right bottom right block there.
55, just over 55,000 passengers a day.
So what this offers us is the opportunity to search trains.
And I would note that for the eight car train sets,
We did operate those as holiday trains.
So we have the capability to operate eight car train sets.
There's some complications in certain stations
because the platforms may not be long enough.
And so there'd be some operational changes
that might have to be implemented.
But, and then the ADA ramps as well.
We may have to have portable ramps,
but we can operate eight car train sets.
That will go to the next slide.
So what we examined here were three operating scenarios
in the context of where we are
in terms of the infrastructure capabilities
as well as our fleet capability.
The first scenario is if we use the full use
of our existing fleet,
if we fully use our existing fleet,
we can offer half hourly service up to Santa Clarita
on the AVL, and then on the SPL out to San Bernardino.
We note that that would help support Brightline,
assuming Brightline is finished in time for the Olympics.
So that would really be a critical component
of what we'd be able to offer there.
On the Orange County line, we could offer hourly service.
Although if you count Surfliner in into that service,
that would then offer about two trains an hour.
And then this is also important to emphasize
these conditions and these conditions apply
to all three scenarios.
They sort of cascade down to all three scenarios.
So the first conditions that we maintain
are 15% spare ratio.
That's the percentage of the fleet that's allowed
to be out of service at any one time for maintenance.
And then at the score phase one,
AVL and SPL projects are completed.
The issue was discussed of the challenge
completing the AVL projects which currently have a funding shortfall but we're like I said we're
working with LA Metro and we appreciate their collaboration on that to try to seek federal
grant funding to complete those projects and then the other issue is that the fleet and the crews
are available. The crews particularly a challenge of as we've heard even trying to get to the
optimized level of service that we're proposing for next year let alone getting to this level
of service in 2028. Now the advantage is that we've got time for them to plan for this and this may
also the availability may also be subject to the mini bundle procurement so if we have we may have
the same contract and we may have a different contractor we've put in that contract document
the procurement document that we anticipate will the need for a surge in service during the olympics
So the contract will be aware of that. And then finally, that OCMF phase one or similar
facility is operational in order to allow this so that you can provide some maintenance on the
Orange County line to these more frequent trains. And if OCMF is not available, and we heard from
just in that there's been a lawsuit now initiated by, I believe, the city about the O.C.M.F.
There is the opportunity. This would still have to be planned out for a temporary facility
possible in Irvine, which I'm told is something we've used in the past for the daily servicing
of the train sets. So we'll go to the next scenario. Scenario two is if we add some,
We take some from those spare trains that we typically hold back, and if we add that
to the active fleet, so we temporarily, the assumption there is we temporarily reduce
our spare ratio to 10 percent instead of 15 percent, we could then increase the Orange
County line service frequencies to half hourly to Irvine.
Now that would be subject to, and this is a discussion we've broached with BNSF, that
be subject to negotiation with BNSF to to exceed the current 50 operating slots that they allow
are subject to existing agreement on their portion of the Orange County line.
And then the final scenario is the most ambitious one and this was the basis for a letter that we
sent to the Biden administration in December requesting multi-year funding in support of this
this effort, and that was that we would lease additional trains. If we leased additional trains,
then you can see the service increase half hourly to on the Ventura County line to Van Nuys,
hourly trains to Moorpark, and then where the Antelope Valley and the Ventura County lines come
together, you would have 15-minute frequencies between Burbank and LA Union Station. This
additional train sets would also allow us to add the service onto all of our lines. Obviously,
the Riverside Line would again be subject to negotiation with Union Pacific and then to
potentially surge trains. So you have even greater frequencies during particularly periods
of particularly high demand. Again, the conditions outlined there, the previous conditions I've
I've already outlined plus that we would here maintain
a 15% spare ratio.
And then we would have to leasing trains
is not as easy as borrowing buses.
You know, buses that you can simply borrow.
You can, as long as you have the operators,
they should be, you know, they're interchangeable within,
they're easy to integrate within your existing fleet.
For trains, the trains often are somewhat tailor made.
They're produced to specification for each railroad.
And there are some differences between trains
in terms of the electrical connections
that then provide power from the locomotive
to open the doors on the trains,
the air conditioning, the intercom system.
So there's some differences,
and that's what we've reached out to two
of our sister agencies,
Metra in Chicago and Caltrain up north,
and started discussions with them
and gotten equipment lists from Caltrain
about what they have available.
So we're trying to see if that would work
within the context of our fleet.
There are other issues as well, crash energy management.
We operate under crash energy management
for the cab cars at the end of the train.
Some of the other operators don't have that.
And then there are other issues
with platform vehicle floor height.
So there's a lot to work out, essentially,
if you're gonna be borrowing or leasing trains
from other operators.
But as you can see,
that would allow us to significantly increase service.
With that, we could go to the next slide.
So we've prepared, this is the cost estimate I referenced
that we sent into the Biden administration in December,
where we costed out all of the aspects
this is. This is the length of
that scenario three. I just
presented to you that assumes
13 locomotives with 78 gallery
trailer and cab cars, shopping
yard expansion. We would need
to do that in order to
accommodate these additional
train sets because CMF would
not be is pretty much at
capacity. So we would need
Um, the relocated flat for station platforms from LA to Anaheim that would, um, our railroad
modeling has shown that that would help allow more passenger trains beyond the 50 cap.
Um, and that's, those are obviously significant capital projects.
So we have total capital costs of 544 million.
And then the operational surge in 2028 of just over $100 million, including it's a six
month period of ramp up and ramp down, six months on either side of the Olympics.
And so for a total cost of $651.9 million.
I wanted to make it clear that this was our most ambitious ask, which we presented to
administration. We're continuing to advocate for this but make it very clear that this was not
staff's intention to ask the member agencies to pay for this in the event that we've not even
secure the I just want to reassure you we're not able to secure federal support. We're going back
to something that scenario that might be more feasible one or two. So I just wanted to make
make that that very clear. And we're still developing this is the one cost
one scenario we have the cost estimate developed for. We're working on
developing cost estimates for scenarios one and two. It was asked if we could
provide member agency breakdown for these cost scenarios. We can't at this
time this would take it's very complicated given the formulas that are
involved. So we can't provide member agency breakdowns for this and in any
case, this scenario in particular, we were not intending to go back, go to the member agencies
to ask for assistance with. If we could go to the next slide. So this is a staff's attempt to
identify a path forward for what we've been doing in terms of our planning efforts. And we're, as I
mentioned, we're going to develop cost scenario, cost estimates for scenarios one and two, and then
then assess the viability of all three scenarios.
The third scenario, again, depends very much
on the ability of the Biden administration
to come forward with some sort of proposal
related to the Olympics.
We're not the only agency that's asked for funding
from the Biden administration.
LA Metro has put in a similar request.
And we're going to continue to be advocating
for that and meeting with members of the administration
as we initiate advocacy during the spring of this year,
advocacy trips to go and meet with DOT staff
and on the Hill with our legislators.
The other bullet is we are commenting on LA-28 staff
has developed a games mobility and transport plan.
So this is their plan for how they're gonna move spectators,
workforce, athletes, other credentialed officials
during the Olympics, and they have to prepare this plan
and present it to the International Olympics Committee
to offer the Olympics Committee assurance
that this is being planned for,
and that all will move smoothly.
And so we're commenting on that
because that does define a role for Metrolink.
It has identified the possibility
the park and ride lots that I've presented to you,
as well as the opportunities to move spectators
and perhaps workforce, maybe workforce
through something like the corporate partnership program
that marketing has with corporations.
You know, if LA28 was willing to enter into that kind
of an agreement, then we could move forward on that.
And then we have to refine
the transportation demand model as well.
and I already mentioned this at the at the start of the presentation determine the parameters and
open negotiations on a service level agreement incorporated within an MOU with LA-28. This is
something LA-28 staff has offered to us. They want to initiate it the first part of this year and so
we're going to push forward with that. We intend to meet and this was something the ad hoc committee
It's really encouraged MetroLink to do meet with LA28 to discuss available budget resources,
continue the advocacy. I already mentioned that. Grant opportunities, like I said, we're partnering
with LA Metro on a significant grant opportunity there. And then LA28 has submitted marketing
proposals to us to where that might present an opportunity for us to generate some revenue.
And then the final bullet point is not an insignificant one, fair approaches and partnerships.
I would point out that in Paris, for instance, they are doubling the price of the metro passes
during the period of the Olympics. They're going to all four euros, but for a weekly pass for the
region, it's 70 euros a week. Now, I'm told this is less than what we typically charge.
Our charges are based on station to station,
so it's a distance-based charge.
But this is a model that we could possibly consider.
And if, in fact, our trains are packed to the gills
during the Olympics, there could be substantial revenue
realized by charging those folks who
are traveling on our trains.
The other aspects, I just wanted to quickly
on the grant opportunities. I mentioned the EPA grant with LA Metro. We're
waiting to hear from a Reconnecting Communities grant in February. That's a
federal grant for the additional for the replacement locomotives and then the
state TIRCP. We've heard a lot about TIRCP, the Transit and Inter-City Rail
Capital Program. That is a real lifeline for Metrolink that they expect to release
next month. So we should have an opportunity to compete there as well.
And if we could go to the next slide.
This is the final slide. This was the ad hoc committee members of your ad hoc committee.
Directors Trembly and Wapner asked us to put together a slide to present to you a sort of summarizing that what they jointly agreed would be important goals for the ad hoc committee
for Metrolink and then the approaches that they suggested.
So, as you can see, there's a number of revenue streams
from LA-28 that are identified.
I would know LA-28 is gonna have a budget
of just under $7 billion.
So, they are gonna be raising substantial revenue.
Most of that, two-thirds of the total revenue, though,
is expected to be received in 2027, 2028, and 2029.
This is sort of back loaded.
I'm sure as these revenue streams start ramping up,
that's when the revenues will come in.
And then two thirds of their expenses as well
are expected in one year in 2028, obviously for the games.
Any funds left over from what LA 28 raises in revenue,
in terms of revenues and excessive expenses
will go towards a legacy philanthropic effort
to encourage sports competition among youth
they're on the
website.
That's the website in the Los
Angeles region.
And then we have asked for a
meeting with LA 28.
We've been directed to their
government relations staff.
And so we're going to put
together, we've been asked to
put together a list of
questions that Metro link or
the ad hoc committee might
have, send that to the
slide. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Director Termly.
Well, Mr. Chair, I do have a few observations, but not so much questions. Is that okay?
You're the ad hoc committee. Chair, I'll show it.
First of all, Paul, I really want to compliment you and staff for all the time, Rodder, and
everyone, for all the amount of time that you've been putting together on this. It's
a very good presentation. I think it encapsulates a lot of what we've been concerned about.
I went back and looked at our December 8th meeting and realized that I had spoken for
nine minutes and 22 seconds. And I realized that was some abject horror. So I'm not going
to repeat that exercise today. There are a few things that I think bear some repeating.
Um, first of all, I think it's really important that we keep our eye on the
ball relative to what we think are our anticipated capital and operational
costs will be under, under any of those scenarios and on the operational
side, I don't think that's dependent upon scenarios per se.
That's 100 and almost 108 million.
Um, and just an operational and putting aside the capital costs.
Um, uh, in our ad hoc meeting, uh, director Wapner took all of six seconds
to say what I had a hard time coming up with in nine minutes and 22 seconds,
let's say, and when Alan said is, well, they're asking Metrolin to assume a huge
risk and that's it in a nutshell, but the primary risk, um, that I think we, we can,
we have all these advocacy efforts.
We have the the grant efforts, but I think where we ultimately need to take the effort is to say, look, we want you LA 28. We're looking at you LA 28.
Don't look at the federal government. Don't look at this. Don't look at Sacramento. Don't look at anyplace else. You have a $7 billion budget for these games.
We are looking to you to make us whole so that the burden doesn't fall post games on our five member agencies and our taxpayers.
And remember the earlier slides in this meeting today, what those potential deficits are for our five and where we're going structurally with respect to our five member agencies, all for a 12 to 14 day games period.
period. And all those folks will then leave will have economic benefits derived on it.
But I don't want to be left holding the bag. So I think the real focus should be my view
is to say to LA 28, make us whole. And there are ways to get there through licensing and
merchandising and ticketing and other transactional vehicles.
And you can offset all.
You can offset against whatever we get from the federal
government, wherever we get from grants,
wherever we get from other sources.
But we want to be made whole.
And the committee, it's fair to say the committee talked
about this in terms of the two goals.
If you could put the goals back up on the board, Paul.
These were our two goals.
And I guess, Alan, what I would ask for.
and chair, what I would ask for is that we,
is that the board say, yes, we agree.
We'd like to have some affirmation.
Yes, we agree with these goals.
And my other editorial on this,
because I'm rapidly approaching,
I think either the three or four minute mark
is to say, make us whole.
That should be the approach.
So now gonna yield.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, yeah.
My job, Tony, I'll tell you the way he retained himself
then restrained himself just now, that was pretty good.
I'll tell you what really fires me up
is I'm offended by the assumptions that LA20 is making
that we're gonna step up to where they want us to be
without telling us what that means and how we get there.
Just a couple of comments.
One, you talk about parking at the speedway.
There is no more speedway.
And by 28, it's gonna be a bunch of industrial buildings.
Don't think about that as a parking lot.
ain't going to happen. I think the other thing we talked about is while we're accommodating the
additional ridership, we don't want to inconvenience or lose the existing loyal ridership that we have
and my fear is that if we all of a sudden double or triple the fears because we want to capture
the Olympic, we're going to lose the folks that have been loyal to our system for many years.
So really going to find some way that we can selectively increase fears if that's possible.
we talked about adding the fares to the price of an Olympic ticket and they pay for it that way so
I'm not sure about that question for you are they going to have to go through any kind of a sequel
process during this thing because they're having a huge impact on our local environment have you
heard anything about that I have not Darren I don't know if you have or Roderick no I'm not
I'm not aware of them I mean I don't know if I want to raise the question but you better be prepared
just in case that question is posed out there I haven't heard anything about it I can't think of
any event that's had more of an impact on our environment than something like this region-wide.
We'll ask about that. It's a good question. Yeah. And as Tony stated, we don't want to get stuck in
the middle of these funding opportunities. We don't want LA-28 saying, we can go seek this grant.
Someone else says you can go talk to LA-28, all this other stuff. I think when it really comes
down to Tony's, we actually need a contractual agreement with LA-28 that this is what you're
you're expecting, you're gonna have to pay for it.
I think we have some leverage.
I don't think there's any way they can mandate
that we provide the service that they want.
We can come back and say,
hey, you're not gonna pay us,
you're not gonna get the service.
I don't know how that works operationally.
I don't think it's gonna come to that.
But I think that one thing is Tony and I are gonna
pretty much demand that we meet face to face
with decision makers over there,
not government affairs kinds of people.
And what we need to know is that we have a consensus
of this board that moving forward,
We're gonna be fast charging and we don't turn around
to find out there's no one behind us.
So we're gonna make sure that you folks all support
what we're trying to do.
Our job is to refine all these issues being thrown out
and some policy issues we can bring back to the board
and discuss in a policy manner.
But really when we confront,
and let's say when we meet with LA28
and we make the kinds of demands we're talking about,
we need to make sure that all of you are gonna support.
Obviously we're not gonna present
any kind of formal proposal,
but as we have these discussions,
We need to know that you folks are standing behind us.
And I don't know whether we actually need a vote
at some point or just a consensus
that you support what we're trying to do.
But I think Tony and I need some way of verifying
that when we speak on behalf of the board,
we're speaking on behalf of the board.
Any objection to what Alan has presented?
No, Mr. Chair, I was going to move it to make a motion
that we all support the two goals
that they have up on the screen.
The item wasn't posted for action.
so not to take over Don Del Rio.
I said hello to us, consensus.
But what we can do is the ad hoc committee
is going to continue to meet regularly.
I think what, from a staff perspective,
we wanted to hear feedback.
The ad hoc committee wanted to hear feedback
from the board today.
We go back to the ad hoc committee.
We also are going to have approached L.A. 28.
It was all somewhat passed over it,
but there was an acknowledgement
of this service level agreement
that was relatively new information
that includes support for additional funding
for that period of the surge.
At least that's the way it's been telegraphed.
So we have a little bit new information.
We bring it back to the ad hoc committee,
get a little bit more structure in here,
bring that then from the ad hoc committee to the full board,
we're then open action so that we're all
knowing where the board position is.
That would be staff's recommendation.
I understand we don't need a motion.
We can't take action, this is a workshop.
However, anyone wish to express any concern
with the approach Alan brought up?
Go ahead, Ray.
I have a concern, but I do have questions.
And my questions are, and it sounds like
we're really not going to know until after the Olympics
in this 2024.
But as far as how many events are we realizing,
by just realizing how many events
we're gonna actually have
and where they're gonna be located.
So I think that's really important
till we get that information
to really truly figure out what the true cost is for us.
So to me, that's important.
I think the whole thing comes down to
we're not getting the information we need.
So the attention could take terms of funding,
but I agree with that on the approaches,
We need to, in essence, a contract with them saying,
here's what you want us to do.
And this is what we're going to pay for.
If they don't pay for it, we don't do it.
And just one last question.
Depending on how many events and if we need more equipment,
is that something that we're going to consider?
Are we basically looking at borrowing the equipment?
As in Paul's scenarios, we have a couple of different ways.
I mean, if we could just have everything the way we wanted it
and based on what we think we know,
we would have said we needed 13 additional train sets,
arguably brand new, whatever,
that could have been like a legacy
from what the Olympics brought.
But that train left the station.
It takes too long to produce that kind of equipment.
So we have this concept of where might we borrow
or lease from other agencies that has its own complications,
just because as Paul indicated,
the nature of the way our train systems are configured,
we're all kind of different.
So you can't just drop a train that operates
in Northern California in the Caltrain system
and plop it into our system.
It just, they don't work that way.
So one of the things that we're looking at
through scenarios one and two is what can we do
if we fully max out the equipment we have that we own,
that we control, that we know how all the parts work.
And that'll give us an idea at least of what we can do.
I think that's probably about as much as we're gonna be able
to hope for at this point,
given how fast the clock is ticking.
As it relates to the question of venues,
we have been told point blank by LA 28,
they have not budged on this.
And we understand that Paris was asking the same question
four years prior, trying to get information about venues
and what sports, the IOC will not report that out
until after the Paris Games is complete.
So we're somewhat in a bit of a bind in that regard,
but it does, we also understand that announcements
comes very quickly after the games
that are gonna be in the summer of 2024.
And again, there are venue changes occurring
as we speak right now that are being considered
That, so there is this, we are in this period of time
where it's a waiting, we're in a bit of a wait
and see kind of position.
Thank you, sir.
Are there comments or questions?
Go ahead.
Oh, it's always a challenge
to negotiate service agreements,
but having like many of the folks around here
have done it over the years, you know, there's always,
even though we don't know precisely at this point,
And I don't think we need, we shouldn't have to wait
till after the 2024 Olympics.
But there's a way to try to figure that out
and to model that.
And then we can, we ought to be able to reach an agreement
that has a floor and a ceiling
and some increments in between, I think,
from a transaction and from a drafting standpoint,
I think you could do that.
It's tough because if LA-28 is saying to us,
hey, you gotta reach a baseline service agreement
I'm like, well, you haven't given us the data
to really allow for that yet.
There's another way, there's a workaround on that,
which is to do some modeling
and go for a floor ceiling approach.
So it's not an insurmountable issue.
I guess it's what I'm trying to say from a legal standpoint.
It would be my view.
I don't know if anybody else shares that,
but we can still move forward on conversations again,
but with my hope saying the board
is accepting of goal one and goal two,
and my own personal, you know, make us whole.
I just wanna mention, go back again to the risks
that we're talking about.
The risk we're taking is if we go out
and lease these train sets,
if we go on contract at Amtrak to supply us, if they can,
that many more crews that we're gonna need,
we're making that contractual agreement
with where we're doing business with.
If for some reason we get half as many riders as we expect,
we don't get the fair return that we expect to get,
we're stuck with that bill.
So we gotta make sure somehow there's something
that's in place that can make sure we get paid
what we need to get paid for the money being put out.
Other?
Paul?
Thank you.
Good job.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, that brings us to the end of our workshop.
I want to thank Darren, you and your staff
for the amazing work you've done in putting this together
and all the information that you provided,
I think was very successful in keeping us informed
of all the issues in front of us
and presenting the potential schedule.
I think that was something we were all looking forward to.
And I think excited about implementing some of that
because it gives us a lot more frequency of service
in many areas that we need.
But I do want to thank all of the staff,
everyone on our staff for all of the work that you do
from a daily standpoint and all of the work you've done
in putting this together and the presentations
and everything, well done.
I appreciate all of that hard work.
Thank you so much.
Darren.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And on behalf of the staff, thank you for the kind words.
I do wanna, we have one individual who's not here
and wasn't able to be here today,
who also did a massive amount of work
to make sure we were prepared.
We had this presentation ready to go.
a lot of effort that went into working with Michelle
and that's Noelia Rodriguez,
chief of staff who's not able to be here today.
She put hours and hours and hours
into getting this presentation scheduling coordinated.
And I think the preparation that the team put into it,
I think played out in the way that this was presented today.
Noelia really was the one hurting cats in a lot of ways.
She and Michelle getting everybody ready to go.
So my thanks.
I do know, at least I think I do,
Noelle is paying attention online right now.
So she's probably blushing.
Yep, there it goes.
I just got a text message and said it right here.
So, yes, my thanks in that.
Thank you all for being here and taking the time.
We don't get the kind of time to really dig into this stuff
and lay it all out there.
And I appreciate you taking the time
be here and attentive and that you clearly care about Metrolink. I mean it can be really easy to
mail it in, show up to a meeting, eat bacon and sausage for breakfast in the morning and call it
a day. I looked around the room and everybody was here and attentive and paying attention and
hearing what our staff had to share so thank you for that. We have obviously a lot of work to do
and but you know 2024 is going to be an amazing year we got I mean this is going to be this very
well could be a year of transformative change if we pull off some of these things and put us in a
position to be ready for 2028 and all what's in store in the future so it gives it makes me you
know I'm energized by that so I look forward to getting through this year getting through these
next few months getting a budget putting a schedule out there that people say this is why I'm going to
going to take a train. And then just, you know, the future is
super bright. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it. And
appreciate you, John.
Thank you. Thank you all for attending. They were doing
they're going to be sent out. Wonderful. Right after this
meeting. So you'll have all those charts to peruse. Look at
the eye charts closer. So all of you have a great safe weekend.
Thank you very much for being here.
We're adjourned.