Good morning everyone. I hope you had a good night. Breakfast was pleasant, as was our dinner last night where we had a good time being acquainted. And I think some people said of later than others.
So my pleasure to call the Metrolinx Board of Directors meeting to order. Start the safety breeding briefing by Hilary Concausi, our safety safety security and compliance officer who will give us a safety briefing or in a different setting. So let's hear.
All right.
Good morning Board Chair, Board Members. Today's safety briefing we are at the
Knott's Hotel located at 7675 Crescent Avenue in Buena Park, California. In the
event of a fire alarm evacuation we will exit the boardroom. There are two exits
that we can utilize. The one directly behind me will take us down to the
parking lot and then there's a exit all the way through the doors we came in a
little bit to the left of the room that we were in. We'll take the stairs down
out to the parking lot, which is, it would be, I believe, my direct direction
is all messed up, I think, the west by the pool. We'll go out the exits by the pool
and we'll congregate in the parking lot there, wait for further instructions. In
the event of an earthquake, we will take cover, hide under the tables, and
then wait for further instructions, wait till the rumbling stops, and assess the
situation. There will be hazards in the room, obviously there's chairs tripping
hazards with coats and I'm not coats but chairs and bags and that sort of thing
so just be mindful of those. And then in the event of a first-aid situation, I am
we do have emergency responders in the room that will assist and call
emergency responders if aid is needed. I'm AED CPR qualified as well as our LA
County Sheriff's deputies and there are there is an AD in the building it's at
the front desk will have one of our staff run and get that and then for
dialing 911 our sheriff's will contact 911 as well as Mac over here who's our
tech he will notify the hotel security and they will wait for the emergency
Responders and escort them upstairs and then in the event of an active shooter
we will utilize a run hide fight tactic and
Thank God we have some sheriffs in the room who are armed. So we'd be very safe if that should happen. Thank you
Thank you for the briefing. Appreciate it
Now if you join us with the Pledge of Allegiance
Winter Park house of our Susan Swanee one of my favorite council people will lead us in a pledge
Good morning. I'm councilmember Susan sony. This is my district here in Buena Park. Welcome
We hope you're having a wonderful time on behalf of Mayor Joyce on and vice mayor Connor trout who were
Unhappy that they couldn't be here with you this morning. I want to welcome you and hope that you come back often
Please join me in the pledge to our great nation
ready begin
America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Have a great day.
Thank you, Susan, I'm not sure we have a bag of goodies for you, but I'd like to have you
take mine.
You, we actually have another one for her.
No, it's kind of clear bags when you go to a sporting event, and you go through the security
they can look in here and it can easily go through.
So we got one over here.
Oh, you got one for you?
Yes.
Oh, come in right there.
All right.
Thank you for coming down.
I think that's very good.
And before the board secretary takes a role just real briefly,
so everybody's aware you do not have
to hit buttons on the mics for our meeting today.
But because of that, please know that your mics are always hot.
All right second point is just if I could ask anybody that has cell phones if you could
put those on silent vibrate that would be would be great and then for Metrolink staff
as your item is getting ready to be called up you should know what it is so please be ready to
approach the podium so that we can keep an efficient meeting. Mr. Chair actually board
Secretary, board clerk if you could call the roll. Director Nguyen, director Carroll, vice
chair Bergson, director Spiegel, yes, director Vargas, as in director Molina, yes, second vice
chair Tremblay, here, director Angler, here, director Barger, director Najarian, here,
Director Sandoval. Director Solis. Director Olson. Director Allen. Here. Director O'Connor. Here.
Director Presidio. Director McAllen. Director Wapner. Director DuTrey. Here. Director Marquez.
Chair Chaffee. Present. We do have a quorum. Thank you for the call. Now at this time we're
where we need public comment, do we have any commenters?
I have not received any written public comments
or any requests to speak.
Right, that item goes quickly.
Now we move on to our consent calendar,
which are items 11A through 11F in your binder.
Are there any of our directors who would like to pull an item
for separate consideration?
I do not see any hands raised.
May have a motion for approval of the consent calendar.
Thank you.
We can't see sorry.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries. Thank you all.
Now we go to a regular calendar and the first item.
By Christine Wilson our assistant director of finance.
We give us a mid year operating budget review.
Apparently an amendment goes with this.
review. Apparently an amendment goes with this. I like your hat, by the way. Thank you.
Good morning, Chairman Chafee and members of the board. I am Christine Wilson,
Assistant Director of Finance, presenting item number 7A, the 25 mid-year operating budget review
amendment. Next slide, please. It is a practice of metrolling to perform a review of the annual
budget at mid-year to identify any revisions that may be needed to the operating budget
as a result of changed circumstances. Next slide, please. Our review indicates that an
amendment should be recommended this year. Next slide. The amendment we are presenting
for your approval is driven by the following. Changes to ridership, changes to the service
schedule, a change to the cost of mobilization, and a member agency request. Next slide. This
This slide shows the details of the amendment staff is recommending for adoption by member
agencies and approval by the board.
The box at the top of the screen shows the budget by member agency as it currently exists
with revenue of $68 million, expense of $332 million, and a support of $264 million.
In the next boxes, we see the amendments.
The revenue adjustments consist of first a reduction of the farebox revenue based on
a re-forecast of that revenue by Sperry Capital KPMG.
Because the LC Top funding was not confirmed, the original budget forecasted student revenue
at a 25% discount.
This re-forecast takes into account that students ride free.
In addition to the most current changes in ridership trends, these changes reduced revenue
by $7.9 million. The second change to revenue is to include the Student Adventure Pass pilot
LC Top Funds and member support. This was not included in the current budget, once again,
because we were unsure of funding. Including the Student Adventure Pass funding adds $6.3
million to revenue. This produces a net revenue change of $1.6 million. The next amendments
relate to expense. First we have removal of four LAUS to Laguna Nagel trains
originally included in the optimized service budget. Next another adjustment
to optimized service the removal of 20 LAUS to Covina trains replaced by the
addition of 10 LAUS to Montclair trains. Next you see here at the request of SBCTA
the addition of costs for San Bernardino Sheriffs added to
San Bernardino County. This is funded entirely by SBCTA.
Finally, the negotiation of the mini bundle contract has reduced
the original estimate budgeted for mobilization by $2.5 million.
All of these amounts create a reduction to member agency
required support by $896,000.
The boxes at the bottom of the slide
show the amounts of the FY25 budget
if this recommended amendment is accepted.
The amended budget will have revenue of 66.4 million,
expense of 330 million, support of 263.1 million.
Next slide, please.
All the following slides show the proposed amended budget
by category and member agency, including the display of changes
to individual lines in the operating budget.
So we see here the revenue decreased by 1.6 million.
Next slide.
But continuing down the operating statement, we see the other changes to expense.
Next slide.
So we see the total reductions to expense are 2.5,
creating a reduction of $896,000 to member agency support.
Next slide.
That concludes my report.
May I answer any questions?
Director, is there any questions?
Your hands?
I don't know, there we go.
Yes.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mark.
For change of San Bernardino County
for the sheriff's contract,
it says additional funds for the sheriff.
So are we paying also LA County
or just San Bernardino County?
No, when SBCTA decided that they wanted to add the San Bernardino sheriffs to the line,
you know, they already have San Bernardino sheriffs on the arrow.
And when they decided they wanted to add the San Bernardino sheriffs to the rest
of San Bernardino County, they agreed that they would continue to participate in their share
of the LA County sheriffs that we all pay for.
Thank you, ma'am.
Thank you.
Any further questions?
See more hands raised?
I think this is modestly good news
where we have less revenue,
but the expenses are reduced even more
resulting in a net savings of nine tenths million,
if I understand it.
All right, do we have a motion
to approve the amended budget?
We have moved.
Beagle?
Moved and seconded.
Any further discussion?
All those in favor please indicate by saying aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Thank you for the presentation.
Now we need to talk about Redlands,
where I went to school.
So it's been resented by Hillary Kankasi,
our Chief Safety Security and Compliance Officer.
It's an amendment to the
Pastor Rail Law Enforcement Services Contract.
Good morning again, Board Chair, Board members.
Staff is requesting to authorize the CEO
to amend contract SB 593-23
to include law enforcement services
with San Bernardino County.
In October of 2023,
the San Bernardino County Transit Authority requested
to expand the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department
service coverage to the county line.
The amendment will add an additional cost
of $3,290,000 to the current contract amount
for total contract value of $5,591,000.
This also includes an additional $855,000 budget
to cover FY25 from April 1st to June 30th.
The expansion of police and security services
will include one detective, seven deputy sheriffs,
part-time sheriff, service specialist, one office specialist,
eight patrol vehicles, and part-time use of a pickup truck.
Next slide, please.
Under this contract amendment,
the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department
will provide security and police services
from Redwoods University Station to Montclair
and the Ontario East Station on the Riverside line.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department
will augment the current LASD law enforcement services
which will include the following responsibilities
such as fair enforcement, right-of-way enforcement,
trespasser enforcement, incident response,
working to establish MOUs
with local law enforcement agencies
and train writing and crime prevention activities.
Next slide, please.
That concludes my presentation.
If you have any questions, I'll take those down.
Questions?
Yes, please go ahead, Director Molina.
Thank you.
Are all officers in uniform at all times?
Yes.
Thank you.
Okay.
See, Director Marquez?
Thank you, sir, I appreciate that.
As far as training between the agencies,
I think it'd be trained together for emergency operations.
They will train together.
Yes.
We have several training activities
throughout the year that they do train together.
What kind of training are we talking about?
To be off, I have Captain Abby.
He can discuss the training more complete, I guess, in depth.
Good morning, board.
So we do cross-training.
They invite us to active shooter trainings.
and then we invite them to our active shooter trainings.
Though we're both cross-training
in case there's a catastrophe on the system,
we could both know exactly what we're gonna do together.
We also do training, de-escalation training together,
and any other trainings that they host,
we do participate, and all the trainings we do,
we invite them, but we are cross-trained.
Just one follow-up question.
Regarding communication between the two agencies,
is that an issue or concern?
No, no concern.
We meet once a week with the Metrolink team
and with LASD and with San Bernardino.
We meet weekly, we talk about any issues that are happening
and any concerns that come up, we mitigate it right there.
Thank you, sir.
And just to add on that,
we do do emergency evacuation training
with the local municipalities,
as well as coordinating it with LASD
and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
And as Captain Abby said,
we do have a lot of coordination,
daily communication between the two agencies
and we work hand in hand together.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Any more questions?
I have, Mr. Chairman, I'm assuming a radio communication
between the San Bernardino County Sheriff's
and LA County Sheriff's Department,
Bocky Talkies, or I assume they'll have
direct communication, both agencies?
They do.
These are an incident or?
Yeah, so we both share a radio communication.
So if there's an incident going on in LA County,
we'll know about it.
And if it's something going on in San Bernardino,
we'll also know about it
because we're sharing the same frequency.
Okay, frequencies perfect.
Great, Mr. Chairman, I just want to say this
on behalf of the Assembly County Transportation Authority,
we appreciate this agency's willingness
to consider the bringing on the
Assembly County Sheriff's Department
or our portion of the County Board.
And with that, I'll make a motion.
Thank you.
Is there a second?
We've been seconded.
Thank you, presentation.
And thank you, Sheriff, for the qualification there.
All those in favor, please indicate by saying aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
All right, now we go on to
the Press for Qualifications,
approval of pre-qualified contractors
for our SCORE projects,
and I'm presented by Arm Hackett,
our Chief Financer Officer.
Thank you, good morning Chair Tafee
and members of the board.
Our SCORE projects are essential
to serving the demands of our future writers,
achieving the authority's strategic service plans
and meeting the expectations of the service we believe
are required for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic game.
The authority desires to ensure
that all contractors bidding on score construction projects
have demonstrated their experience
in successful completion of construction projects
in railroad operational environments
with knowledge of railroad operational safety rules
and practices.
On March 29th, 2024,
the board approved the authority's approach
to advance with the request for qualifications
with the purpose of pre-qualifying
a pool of construction contractors
for the authority score program.
Only pre-qualified contractors will be invited to bid
on the major score construction project.
Next slide, please.
The authority received 13 submittals
in response to the RFN
the pre-qualifications of the contractors
consisted of a standard questionnaire,
financial statement forms,
and evaluation criteria with a uniform numerical
and passing score system for rating the answers
given by each contractor.
The authority's technical evaluation committee
scored the answers provided by the contractors
to the questionnaire.
Two firms did not meet the minimum passing score.
While the remaining 11 response contractors
met the minimum qualifications,
those 11 contractors are recommended
as the pool of contractors.
Next slide, please.
Thank you.
So staff recommends that the board
approve the pool of pre-qualified contractors
to perform general contracting work for the SCORE program
construction project as a result of the request
for qualifications number CM104-25.
And you'll see the list here.
And I'm sorry.
Oh, we did correct that.
In the committee meetings, we did not have it as mass electric.
We had it as just electric and that's number eight
on the list and that has been corrected.
So thank you for your time and may I answer any questions?
Questions.
Yes, Director Spiegel.
On the 11, is there an order that we go through
to call the services of the contractor that we're in need
or is it?
No, we put out a proposal and the 11 bid on it.
Okay, so each time you have to have a bid.
Yes, but we have that pool of pre-qualified.
So it cuts down the time of qualifying.
Yes.
It simplifies the bidding process.
Any more questions?
I see none.
This does not involve any expense at this point.
It's just simply pre-qualifying people
who do the work in the future.
May I have a motion for approval?
So I'll move, Marquez.
Thank you.
I'll move it, I'll second it in that case.
Any other questions?
Okay, I'll withdraw my second.
Seconded by Director Spiegel.
Here we go.
All those in favor, by saying aye.
Aye.
Aye.
And you pose a motion carries.
Okay, now,
Have the pleasure of maybe finding out what's going on in Washington.
You said that by Jeff done our.
Director government community relationships and so if you can figure it out, please let us know.
Good morning chair pleasure. I'm not sure if that will be universally agreed upon term, but hopefully we'll find something out today. So next slide please.
In local matters, as referenced in the report last month, Metrolink staff participated in LA Metro's Girls Empowerment Summit with an informational booth on Metrolink service and programs including the Student Adventure Pass.
The event was attended by 200 girls from area high schools providing opportunity for them to interact directly with public agencies and private companies in transportation and inviting them to explore careers within the industry.
In addition, staff also joined LA Metro at a community meeting on February 20th for the
Pico Rivera Regional Rail Station feasibility study.
Metro and the city are conducting the study for a potential new rail station which could
be served by Metrolink.
This meeting was the first opportunity for community members to learn more about the
connectivity benefits such a station would provide and a variety of comments.
Metrolink hosted an information booth to share details about our expanded service and the
discount passes that we offer to the community.
next slide. Turning to state matters. The budget committee hearing referenced in your
report marks the beginning of budget deliberations in earnest in Sacramento. Following the budget
introduction by Governor Newsom in January projecting an overall state surplus before
the impacts of the state wildfires were known. This juncture, I do not have a lot of additional
information to provide at the macro level on state budget deliberations, except that
I will note our CEO, Mr. Kettle, did send a letter to leadership and budget committee
chairs which I believe the board has received a copy of strongly encouraging
their consideration of direct funding to regional passenger rail from the
reauthorization of the state's cap-and-trade program legislation which
may move this year or possibly next year from a policy perspective funding of
regional rail has a strong argument for achieving the purposes of the cap-and-
trade program removing millions of vehicles from the state's highways and
streets and roads by carrying passengers who travel distances and in the process
millions of metric tons of GHG emissions from the atmosphere. We would like, as I
mentioned, a direct funding stream from the GGRF dedicated to regional rail as
well as the ability to share funds otherwise set aside for high-speed rail
where regional rail supports or provides direct connection to high-speed service.
This topic, among other revenue generating options, will be subject to
discussion at the board workshop later today. Our state advocates are with us and
will be on hand to give the latest in budget deliberations from lawmakers in
sacramento and to answer any related questions you may have of them at the
board workshop. To touch very briefly on bills mentioned in your report first
Metrolink has transmitted a letter of support for AB 394 the CTA bill
providing greater protections for transit workers and employees from
assault supporting a long advocated goal for the association and supported by our
legislative program. We continue to track AB 939, the general obligation bond bill
sponsored by LA Metro that would authorize the issuance of 20 billion
dollars in bonds to finance transportation improvements making four
billion available to inner-city regional and commuter passenger rail improvements.
Such funding would only be available for capital however not operating purposes.
The bill is referred to the Transportation Committee and the Assembly
but it is not yet calendared and its movement is uncertain at this juncture.
We will continue to track it closely.
Next, SB 30 by Senator Dave Cortese of San Jose, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee,
would prohibit public agencies from selling or donating decommissioned diesel engine locomotives
and other track equipment.
Staff is engaged with the office and committee staff and is working with the passenger rail
operators statewide to articulate some concerns with the bill, noting that it is overly broad
and advocating that certain exemptions be allowed, such as the sale of track equipment
apart from locomotives, which do not emit harmful emissions.
Metrolink does not plan to take position on this legislation at this juncture,
though it will keep you apprised of its status as it moves through the legislative process.
In addition, Metrolink has transmitted a support position to Senator Katherine Blakespear
of her SB 741. This is legislation referenced by Chair Chaffee
at the last board meeting that would be very helpful to give local governments
more authority to determine local emergencies
for the purpose of expediting permitting to respond to these emergencies. This would apply
to and be especially helpful for projects that improve the resiliency of the Los Angeles corridor
in the event of future emergency situations there. And finally, a bill not included in your report
that I wanted to highlight as it may have come to your attention SB 71 by Senate Transportation
Committee Chair Scott Wiener, which is a bill to make permanent CEQA exemptions for transit and
active transportation projects. These projects include active transportation, bus rapid transit
projects include including stations, light rail projects, and facilities to charge, refuel,
or maintain zero emission buses or trains. Currently, LA Metro and OCTA are on record
in support of SB-71, which was just amended yesterday. We are closely monitoring the bill
and will report to you when we take further action. Currently, the bill sits in Senate
Transportation Committee but is not yet calendared for hearing. Next slide, please.
In federal matters, as you know, the Congress recently passed and the president signed a
continuing resolution which extends FY 24 spending levels until the end of FY 25, September 30.
The bill sets overall base discretionary budget authority for FY 25 at 1.6 trillion dollars,
with 893 billion for defense and 708 billion for non-defense. This is about a 10 billion dollar
increase over actual FY 24 spending, most of it to the DOD. Under the bill, the annualized amount
for T-HUT appropriations, which is what is applicable to MetroLink, cuts about $3.1 billion
from the FY24 level, but this reflects essentially changes in housing receipts. It does not apply
to transportation, which stays at status quo levels. What it does apply to, however, is
earmarks. The CR strikes all FY25 earmarks from the House and Senate bills. This means
the earmarks noted in your report did not pass as part of the CR, and unfortunately,
neither did the $200 million of funding
that was included in the Senate Appropriations Bill
for Olympics-related transportation
and infrastructure purposes.
This brings me to the overall climate on the Hill
that I observed from my recent trip to Washington
advocating for Metrolinx Olympics needs
as part of the LA Chamber's annual Access DC trip.
This followed our CEO's introduction
of the same priorities last month
in his extensive meetings with our delegation on the Hill.
I was privileged to join 150 colleagues
business in the public sector advocating for LA and regional needs including preparing for the
Olympics and other sporting events such as the World Cup next year and two Super Bowls.
As part of the sporting events advocacy team, Metrolink was able to deliver its message of
need for support with LA Metro, the city, ports, lava, and other transit agencies and private
partners a consistent message of need for investment beginning now in 2025. This is
especially true given that the Olympics funding in the Senate Appropriations Bill was not part of the
CR. We met collectively with Senators Padilla and Schiff and individually with Minority Leader
Hakeem Jeffries and staff, Representative Julia Brownlee of Ventura and Representative John
Garimandi, who sit on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and senior administrative
staff at USDOT. Other teams blanketed both majority and minority appropriators from our
delegation and the messages delivered were clear we need federal help beginning now not later if
we are truly going to be prepared to host a successful games by 2028 there was from all
accounts bipartisan agreement on the need to do this and hopefully a viable vehicle will emerge
this year it is certainly a priority of the administration but the watch word from every
lawmaker that our group met with us was was uncertainty there seemed to be many things many
uncertainties of the actual impacts of things like tariffs, inflation, federal layoffs,
the situation in Ukraine, et cetera.
It seemed everyone on the Hill at that time was playing catch up.
But I do believe the message is being delivered and is heard on the Hill.
We will certainly do our best to be consistent on this regarding the Olympics.
Ms. Denneke of our GR staff sits on the CTA federal legislative committee and will be
going back next month with that delegation to press forward our consistent Olympics asks.
We will be back again in May at the annual APTA legislative conference, hopefully with
our electorate officials, to lead again on the issue, and of course, our CEO likely two
will be back again in June with Mobility 21, and whenever else, there is opportunity to
be impactful.
Finally, we have a group of advocates here from D.C. and from Sacramento that you will
meet and discuss with in more detail at our board workshop later today.
only the Olympics, but other important issues such as the Surface Transportation Reauthorization
Bill appropriations, and perhaps most importantly, their collective assessment of the mood and
priorities in DC, both on the Hill and in the administration, related to transportation
and rail from the folks who are there every day. So we very much look forward to that
discussion. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members. This concludes my report and I'm happy to
take any questions, if any. Thank you.
Director, is there any questions?
I don't see any hands raised.
So I'd just like to thank you for the report
and keeping an eye on us on Washington and Sacramento
for our benefit.
Really a challenging job these times.
So thank you for your work.
Thank you, Chair.
This is a receive and file item without objection.
It shall be received and filed.
Now we move on to item 7E, which is
our System Safety, Security, and Compliance Department
report of activities.
And we'll hear from Hilary Kunzall.
Good morning again.
So in quarter two, we've experienced a 34% reduction
in strike system-wide.
This includes trespassers, pedestrians,
and vehicle incidents.
Our approach to enforcement has been to saturate
right-of-way with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department
right-of-way team.
Based on data, deputies conduct
targeted enforcement along the right-of-way
during the days and times of the month
with the highest number of near misses and train strikes.
So our approach to anything we do is data-driven
and we review trends constantly to adjust for those trends.
Next slide, please.
We've broken down the numbers
or the number of law enforcement activities
conducted by county for the second quarter.
These include train rides, platform fare enforcement,
grade crossing enforcement, and right-of-way enforcement.
The total number of law enforcement activities
you'll see is displayed at the bottom row for each county
for a total of 6,202 law enforcement activities.
Next slide, please.
Reviewing our national database reportable incidents
for the second quarter, I'm happy to report
there were no major incidents during this time period.
Just to clarify what a reportable incident is,
a major incident is defined as an assault
to or an injury which needs medical condition
or medical attention.
A non-major incident is a verbal assault with no altercation.
And then a non-major physical incident is an altercation
that did not result in medical attention.
Next slide, please.
We've seen a slight increase in rule violations
from six to eight for the same time period as last year.
The compliance team has increased their field inspections
and continues to hold root cause meetings
working to reduce these events.
Some of the violations we've seen
are blue signal related violations
where an employee did not follow
proper blue signal procedures when securing equipment,
complacency, and where the employee
has lost situational awareness.
We're continuing to work with our contractors
to provide training, job aids, rules, reminders to employees.
And we've also increased our operational testing
to observe workers to ensure they're performing
their work safely.
Next slide please.
FRA reportable injuries continue to trend downward.
In second quarter, there was a reduction
from four injuries to two injuries.
So for the two injuries, we've had one slip, trip and fall,
and then one sprained strain injury.
Those were the two reportable injuries.
Next slide please.
With regard to training, our department continues
to provide safety education and training
to our employees, contractors, first responders,
and our law enforcement community.
For the second quarter, we've provided 84 classes,
training 2,249 participants.
Next slide, please.
This concludes my presentation.
I'll take any question.
Director, is there any questions?
I see no hands.
Thank you for the report.
It looks like it's trending the right direction.
Thank you.
Thank you for your work.
This is a received file item again that no objection.
It shall be deemed received and filed.
And we come on to the thing that we always look forward to,
our CEO's report.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
So I'll have reverb.
So just real briefly, board members, an update.
You have been hearing us talk quite a bit about
a modification, a change in the code of federal regulation
through FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration,
CFR 245 and CFR 246, which was going to require
a modification and certification
of other railroad employees
beyond what has been the case for some time,
engineers and conductors.
CFR 245 affects dispatchers
and 246 affects signal workers on railroads.
The FRA had promulgated its rule.
We were expecting the implementation of that rule
over the course of this spring.
There was a deferment, a partial deferment
to September of this year.
And then just most recently,
the FRA announced that using what they have,
they're going to relook at their rulemaking, one,
as it relates to CFR 245 and 246,
and then pulled off entirely through a program
they call enforcement discretion,
that effectively says we are not going to implement
our rule that we have established
until at the earliest March of next year.
So this whole concern related to,
that has been a big concern for us
and was going to impact us budgetarily,
has at least for the short term,
given us more time in relief
to try to address these two CFRs.
Our proposed budget that you will see over the course
of the next several months as we prepare to approve it
for the next fiscal year does still include implementation
of the CFR because it hasn't gone away.
It's just given us time to address it.
And for the Federal Railroad Administration
to take more input from railroads
who had some fairly serious concerns,
specifically on the 246 CFR,
245 was a little bit more manageable,
given the nature of dispatchers being our employees.
Whereas in 246, they may be our employees.
They could be third-party contractors,
they could be other employees.
So that one was an issue that's taken
a little bit more time and FRA seems to understand
at this point that it is not that simple.
So upside is, is that again,
the deadline has been extended by one year
and we will see what comes out of the ultimate rule
as they reconsider that CFR over the course of the next year
through the, I'll call it the standard federal process.
Just the last is, is because we're on the Arnold Hackett
embarrassment brain, is again, you were with us,
if you were with us last night,
we broke cake in Arnold's honor,
recognizing Arnold's tenure with us at Metrolink
is multiple duties.
course, we have seen him as our CFO in the last few years, he
served as the interim CEO before I came aboard, he served as the
interim chief strategy officer. And then he when he first
parachuted into Metrolink, some five or six years ago, he came
in as an IT consultant. Then CEO Stephanie Wiggins said, Hey,
Arnold, you have like three months you can come help us. And
We're recognizing him today as he gets ready to depart.
His last day is April 4th.
And he has assured me he's gonna have all of his to-do items
completed before that's the case.
So that's a good thing because the budget's on that list.
So I'm really pleased that he's committed to that.
So again, it's just, again, thank you, Arnold.
We appreciate your time here.
Your colleagues appreciate you as a person
in your time here.
and I know this board, I think,
for those of you members of this board
that have been around for a long period of time,
we have CFOs have come through
and I think our member agencies have appreciated
Arnold's approach to working through
the financial challenges that we have,
our finances as we present them and our budget,
and he leaves this agency in a better place.
So with ourselves, but with the five counties,
the five member agencies that are our biggest investors.
So again, Arnold, thank you for your service.
Mr. Chair, that concludes my report.
Well, if I might just continue with that,
we do have a resolution to present to Arnold,
wherever that is.
Join us over here.
See, you not only have a reputation in betroly,
heard about you Orange County.
So here is a resolution of the county of orange to accommodate just some of the stuff you've done
and so I'll just read the end of it. The airport being resolved, the Orange County Board of
Supervisors was hereby recognized that Arnold Hackett from outstanding career is dedication
to leadership and service. This is valuable contribution to the community and our deepest
strategy at best, which is what we can see.
And you see, it's not only metrally,
but you have to satisfy the people that came for metronome.
Those are our colleagues.
You've got to tell them that.
With that, we've come to the end of the board meeting itself.
Oh, I'm sorry, I don't want to leave my colleagues out.
I never know what they're going to say.
We move to board member comments. Do we have any comments of any board member?
Yes. Yes, please go ahead director Molina. Thank you for this opportunity. Last evening was was the
life goals. Great way to meet people and I'm happy to be glad to have you. So thank you for joining us.
Yes, director Marquez. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Real fast, our executive director does an amazing job.
I had a meeting the other day with a student from Cal State LA and she was complaining about the
elevator. So I called our executive director and the very next day somebody was out there working
on the elevator. I just want to thank you, Darren, for always being there for us. Appreciate it and
you made me look real good. I'll copy my job description. Director Marquez, thank you.
Thank you. More comments? All right. Seeing none, I think now we have come to the end of our meeting
We now move to our workshop, but that's not supposed to start until 10.
So I think we can take a break until then.
All right. We're, I guess, adjourned is that.
Not adjourned.
No, we moved to workshop.
Okay.
Move to that.
Thank you.
And did you want to start off there.
Also,
Oh, thank you.
Now, we come to our portion of the meeting, which is our special workshop.
And first, I'd like you to all know more coffee is coming.
So be patient.
And hopefully you don't have the jitters in the meantime.
So begin with a welcome, Mr. CEO, would you begin that process?
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board.
It has become, it's sort of been a Metrolink tradition
that once a year we gather, talk about various things.
We had to, of course, do a bit of a hiatus there
for a few years, but we're back.
And my thanks to Chair Chaffee and his lovely wife Paulette
for helping us identify this location.
So hopefully those of you that are arriving today,
you've had a good experience.
Those of us that were here last night,
again, we had really just a pleasant time.
So thank you for taking really a decent amount of time
out of your day and a half
for those of you that were here last night.
You will see in our agenda, a lot of different topics.
It's all gonna be fairly high level.
There's a few different reports back
from what happened, what this board looked at last year,
particularly related to Metrolink Reimagined
and how we started this transition
from being solely focused on commuters
to serving regional passenger rail
across all of Southern California.
I was just, and just a quick side note,
I was just having a conversation with a member
of the staff of our organization, member agencies,
about our ease of being able to get here.
So my wife Carrie and I left Ventura County,
caught the train in Camarillo at our home.
We went into LA Union Station and we had a 10-minute transfer to the Orange County line.
We would not have been able to do that under our old schedules.
And it was this board who heard about the optimized schedule that we started down that
path in the winter of last year where we presented it to you and say this is what we think is
our future.
And we implemented that future in October and we had a few little bumpy areas and we're
going to talk about some of those items. We're going to have later today a representative
from BNSF railroad, the chair of the house, BNSF have a representative here and let's
all be in our good behavior if we could ask that. Because we definitely had a little bit
of a bumpy start with some freight interference and yesterday was another rough day but nonetheless
we're getting better. We talked about the elements that one of the other discussions
dedicated funding sources that this board said Mr. Kettle we would like you
and your staff to look at some of those things. So this agenda that we've built
is going to be a little bit of reporting back on on the activity of the last year
and then some of the things that we're looking at going forward and then you
have heard today just in general whether it was the board session or you will
hear about it because we're going to take a decent amount of time on
everything we're trying to do as it relates to safety at our railroad. There
as we say it's right at the top of our strategic business plan, safety is
foundational and so we have our safety team that will be here talking about
what we all can do better how we can be make sure that our railroad is as safe
as possible. So I again my thanks for you all being here I appreciate you
taking the time we'll look forward to a few hours of this discussion and yes
Mr. Chair, again, thank you, appreciate it. I wanted real quick shout out though to three
people in particular. Whole staff did a great job getting us ready for this, but our board
secretary, Michelle Pena, assistant board secretary, Sam Surda, and of course, Noelle
Rodriguez, our chief of staff, have done so much work making sure that this goes the way
it has gone. So my thanks to those those three members of the Metrolinx family team that have
put this together. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'm supposed to welcome you all again.
So welcome. And feel free to ask questions. That's what it's all about. It's a learning experience.
And I'm not going to say much because I'm not one of the people that knows what he's talking
about when it comes to some of these things, and I'm learning.
So, we now have our first presentation from OCTA,
one of my favorite agencies, which is where I'm from.
And Kelly Hart, you're on.
Let's share the wonderful things we're doing in Orange County.
Wonderful. Good morning Chair Chafee,
members of the Metrolink Board.
My name is Kelly Hart, and I am the department manager
for regional rail at OCTA.
A big thank you to Metrolink for having me here today to showcase one of our most significant
projects that we have going on right now in Orange County called the OC Streetcar.
The OC Streetcar is Orange County's first modern streetcar system that we are building
right here in the heart of central Orange County in the cities of Santa Ana and Garden
Grove.
The intent of this presentation is to really give you a good insight in how this transformative
project for Orange County came to be and most importantly its goal of how to
expand the reach of Metrolink and some of the densest areas within Orange
County. Next slide please. So the OC Streetcar is a project that really grew
out of the community's request for increased connectivity to the
Metrolink corridor. The project was developed through a commitment to the
people of Orange County who in 2006 approved nearly a billion dollars in a
sales tax measure, known as Measure M, to invest in providing first and last mile
transit connections to the Metrolink Corridor. Now this is an interesting
statistic that not a lot of people know, but given that two-thirds of Orange
County's population and jobs are within a four mile radius of the 11 rail
stations in Orange County, there was really strong demographic data that
supported this great first last mile opportunity. So big picture, OC Streetcar
is a four point one five mile electric street car connecting the Metro Lincoln
Amtrak train station in Santa Ana which is served by 64 daily trains in Santa
Ana thanks to the service optimization through some of Santa Ana's densest
residential areas the historic downtown and Civic Center home to our County
Board of Supervisors all the way up to Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove which
which is OCTA's busiest bus drought and main corridor through central Orange County.
The project is funded through a combination of local, state, and federal funds, including
a new start federal funding grant agreement that we received from FTA in 2018.
Next slide please.
So why Santa Ana?
So surprising to some when they think of Orange County, but Santa Ana is the fourth most densely
populated city in the United States among cities with a population greater than 300,000.
Additionally, this area houses one of the largest employment centers in Orange County,
second only to Disney, with over 40,000 local, county, state, and federal employees.
Santa Ana and Garden Grove were actually the lead on the project through the planning and
environmental phases.
community selected the alignment, the location of the station stops, and the technology.
And OCTA only assumed the lead once the project entered into design.
So all those initial decisions were kept at the local level, which we think really contributed
to the community investment into the project.
Next slide, please.
So I know this is a very busy map and probably hard to see for some, but really the gist
is to see the different color lines that are intersecting one another each color representing
a transit mode. So the streetcar route in blue will connect some of the county's busiest bus
routes as I mentioned earlier highlighted in purple on the map. These 12 OC bus routes record
more than 40,000 daily weekday boardings accounting for more than 30 percent of total travel across
the OC bus system. The green line represents our commuter and passenger rail services which serve
in Orange County about 200,000 riders annually. The City of Santa Ana has also constructed a
protected bikeway along part of the alignment shown in red, making it easier for residents,
commuters and visitors to ride their bikes safely through the community. And OCT is also studying
the OC Connect, which is represented in yellow, which aims to create a four-mile biking and
walking trail connection between Garden Grove and Santa Ana utilizing the old Pacific Electric
right-of-way which is right-of-way that OCTA owns. Next slide please. So this
project is really a great example too of a regional transportation agency like
OCTA that does not have any land use authority and a local jurisdiction
partnering to transform a community. So in conjunction with City of Santa Ana's
planning work on the project they also adapted a transit zoning code in 2010
which encompasses about 450 acres within the project area. The intent of that code
was to provide a transit supportive pedestrian oriented development
framework that has facilitated development in existing neighborhoods,
prompted reuse of existing buildings and mixed use development as a means for
improving livability, reducing vehicle trips, and lowering greenhouse gas
emissions. And the OC street car is a key transit extension that is essential in
connecting these new commercial and housing developments, and again in one of the densest
parts of the country. And these are just some of the major development projects underway in the
city of Santa Ana along the streetcar alignment, and many of them have been updated since then.
They are mixed use and include approximately over 1,400 in residential units and more than
50,000 square feet of commercial space and growing. Next slide. I want to shift gears a little bit and
and talk about the eight S700 vehicles
that have been built by Siemens in Sacramento
for the project.
The vehicles are about 90 feet long
with four sets of double doors on each side,
and they are fully accessible with low floor design,
which enables an ease of boarding for passengers
with mobility devices.
And the vehicles have the capacity
to carry about 211 passengers.
Next slide.
All eight vehicles are complete,
and they are in storage in Sacramento.
Some of these photos here, the top photo
is seven of our eight vehicles that are complete.
For those of you that may have traveled
to APTA Expo in Florida,
the Siemens took one of our completed vehicles
and shipped it out to Florida.
So a lot of people were able to view a vehicle there,
which was very exciting.
And then also a picture here of the operator cab.
So again, vehicles are all done, they're all ready to go.
And we do expect the first vehicle
to be delivered in late April.
So we are very excited about that first milestone.
I did wanna highlight a few notable vehicle features
that are unique to the OC street car vehicle,
all designed for the purpose of enhancing the safety
and operational efficiency of the vehicle.
The first is the street cars energy absorbing bumpers.
These are state of the art safety technology
that reduces physical damage to the vehicle structure
in the event of a collision.
Next, the vehicles will also have an emergency battery drive
to power the propulsion system in the event
a power disruption. And the last feature I wanted to point out is the GPS operated wheel loop system
and this system will help to ensure the optimal operational performance by not only improving
ride quality but also reducing noise and energy consumption. Next slide please.
So construction is over 90% complete. Some of our key activities completed to date.
Our overhead wire system is about halfway complete. All the track has been installed
in both the embedded half of the alignment which is in city streets as well as the ballasted
track which is in the PE right away that I mentioned earlier. And this is where vehicles
will be able to get up to 44 miles per hour which is unique to the system. And then three
of our four traction power substations are also energized and all the communication cabinets
have been installed at the 16 station platforms. Next slide. As part of the project we are
We're also constructing a 50,000 square foot maintenance facility along the alignment in
the city of Santa Ana.
The construction of this building is critical to the project schedule as it is needed to
accept and test all the vehicles.
The building includes approximately 12,000 square feet of office space, 37,000 square
feet of a shop and storage space for maintenance and service space, and a 3400 square foot train
wash building.
Note that as part of our space planning for this building, we did really want to ensure
that the size of the building was not just on our current fleet size of eight vehicles,
but should the service or the system be expanded in the future, it would be able to accommodate
a larger fleet size. Next slide, please. Just a couple more photos
of the interior of the building. Again, I mentioned with the force service base, safety
inspection pits, wheel truing machine, truck turntables, and bridge and monorail cranes
are represented in these photos. And these features are really based on ensuring the
efficiency of our maintenance function. While there were indeed significant
cost related to the procurement of these these pieces of equipment in the long
run it really allows us to maintain our fleet in-house and reduce the time of
vehicles not being in revenue service. These photos give you a sense of our
station platforms as I mentioned before we do have 16 in total with the majority
being side running and then a few our center platforms. We did do back in the
design phase extensive outreach to the communities who helped to inform the design process and
what the stations would look like. And the community feedback was really informed us
about the design, which was to protect folks from the elements. That's why you see the
canopy structure is fairly large. They wanted clear lines of sight in that open field for
safety purposes and clear signage for ease of writing. So this is, you know, project
Managers always love really complicated schedules,
so we'd like to make this as complicated as possible,
but the blue arrow there reflects where we are
as our current status.
We did receive our first milestone,
which we call milestone zero A,
which is the initial readiness of the MSF,
which allows us to begin accepting the vehicles,
as I mentioned, in late May.
The remaining construction milestones are to ensure
that the infrastructure is ready for our system testing.
And then for operations,
We are focused on all the startup documentation
so that we can be ready for vehicle delivery
and systems integrated testing,
then followed by pre-revenue and revenue service,
all leading up to the million dollar question
or multi-million dollar question of
when do we think we'll be ready?
And we are currently planning to go into revenue service
in April of 2026.
Next slide please.
So that concludes my project overview.
I know fairly brief and we have a very busy agenda today
but appreciate the opportunity to showcase
this very exciting project.
I'll be available all day if folks have
individual questions about the street car.
I'm always happy to answer.
Again, we are just super excited for this project.
Thank you to Chair Chaffee for his leadership
on the OCTA board.
This project has been a long time coming
and we really think it'll be a great deal of benefits
to not just Orange County passengers,
but all MetroLink passengers as well.
So hopefully we can welcome you all back
to ride the street car soon.
Thank you.
Questions?
I might add here that this connects and starts
with the Santa Ana Metrolink Station.
You can get on Metrolink a lot of places,
but it doesn't take you exactly to your destination.
This picks up from there, and it's
going along to have a lot of people
on a very busy corridor, which is even busier
once this streetcar gets into place.
I might add that if you have a Metrolink ticket,
you can ride one of our buses too with that same ticket.
So a lot of interface we're trying to do.
This is kind of experimental, it's expensive,
it's overdue actually.
We're glad that the completion is about here
and we think it'll be not only a transportation vehicle
but it'll bring about a lot of economic development
along this pathway, so thank you.
Thank you, Kelly.
Now we're not done with Orange County yet.
So we have some Orange County projects
and Erin Acevedo and Maria, she's here too, I think.
Yeah, she's in the back.
They give us a good dosage of those projects.
That's correct.
Good morning members of the board.
My name is Erin Acevedo,
director of state of good repair at Metrolink.
And I'm going to be talking about
our San Juan Creek bridge construction project.
Next slide, please.
The project is located in San Juan Capistrano, approximately three quarters of a mile south
of our San Juan Capistrano Station.
It is one of the largest projects that we're working on at Metrolink right now, probably
in the top five projects that we're working on.
Next slide, please.
The reason for the project is the existing conditions of the bridge that crosses the
San Juan Creek is that it was built in 1917, so it's 108 years old.
It's past its useful life.
We have major degradation of the piers on the existing bridge.
And we have a substandard load rating, which means we have to slow down freight trains
every single time the freight train comes over this bridge.
We've also had to make temporary repairs to the bridge to repair a cracked floor beam.
And so you can see here on the bottom right-hand, or bottom left-hand corner, that is the temporary
repair that we made that was made about a year and a half ago.
And it was really only intended to be there for three years, and we'll have this bridge
– we'll be cut over to the new bridge in the fall.
So it'll be right on time to remove the repair that we made.
Next slide, please.
The purpose was to replace the existing single track bridge and build the substructure for
a future bridge.
So what we'll do is we'll remove the – once we're cut over to the new bridge, we'll
we'll increase the construction
of the bridge, we'll increase
the existing bridge and build a
substructure for a future
bridge, we'll increase the
safety of the bridge in this
location, we'll increase the
load ratings so we no longer
have to slow down freight
trains over this creek, and
then we're building the new
bridge on a new alignment, and
so we're avoiding interruption
to existing MetroLink and
Amtrak service by building the
bridge on a new alignment.
Next slide, please.
Some of the challenges that
purchase right when the pandemic started, which
delayed things a bit.
We had very, very complex regulatory permits
and environmental challenges on this project, which
require us to do certain activities only
during the dry season.
And that dry season is from April 1st to September 14th
every year.
And so we had very complex phasing associated
with that dry season challenge.
We also have to close down the bike path
for certain portions and certain portions of the work.
And not only is the community concerned
with the bike path closures,
but also the Orange County Sheriff uses the bike path
for emergency services during rush hour periods.
And so every single time we have to close that bike path,
we have to coordinate with both the community
and Orange County Sheriff,
just to make sure that we're not impeding them too bad.
And then lastly, when we took this project to the board
back in December of 2023, we did relate to the board
that we had some cost escalation challenges
due to the rise in prices during the pandemic.
And, but those are mostly resolved now
and we've been able to continue work on the project
with not too many issues regarding cost escalation anymore.
Next slide, please.
So we finished our first dry season last,
first dry season worked last year. On the left there you can kind of see that's
how we left the new bridge in the river there with kind of those stuff ends
sticking out out of the creek. This summer we're going to going to be
completely fabricating that new bridge on those piers that were left there and
we'll cut over to the new bridge in October of this year and so the
existing bridge will be retired this October which is very exciting. We just
our retaining wall and then we're excited to start on Tuesday in the creek
again and get back going to fabricate that bridge. And then lastly our schedule
is on track as we previously reported to the board. Next slide please. Any
questions? Aaron could you explain as you said we had to address cost escalation
and as this board knows we don't have any of our own money. And so how did
we how did that get handled when we recognize that we have this critically important part
of the coastal infrastructure that needs to get replaced hundred years old plus at that
point it's yeah no doubt it's past its use useful life at anything over 100 years is
probably how did how did we how do we fill the gap what what occurred to make sure that
we were able to complete the project yeah we we were in constant communication with
with OCTA through this project.
And so when we put this project out to bid,
both MetroLink and OCTA expected a cost escalation issue.
We just didn't know the severity
of what that issue was going to be.
And so we, in partnership with OCTA,
made some decisions in regards to how we were gonna bid it,
how we were gonna address the budget items with our board
and where those funds were coming from.
This project has a cooperative agreement with OCTA.
And so when we awarded the contract,
we also updated that cooperative agreement
to address that budget gap.
And I believe OCTA got some new funding sources
to fill that gap.
And what was the amount?
Do you recall that?
Our budget for this is $56 million.
And we started at what?
It was $36, yeah.
Any other questions?
Right, thank you.
May I add, yeah, please?
I would just like to add a little bit along the corridor there we've identified some further hot spots that could collapse on the on the track as well there for and we have obtained funding but we don't have the permit yet from other among other places in the Coastal Commission.
So there'll be some further work or you don't,
we want to be preventative and proactive
to keep the train going.
It's also used by the freight train, that will track.
So it's an important corridor.
So sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
We now have Marie.
Oh, yeah, sorry.
Good morning, board and chair.
My name is Marie Leibel.
I'm the director of design, the metallink,
and I'm also the manager of the SCORE program.
SPOUR stands for Southern California Optimized Rail Expansion?
Close to the, closer to the mic.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you, Marie.
The projects are at a number of different elements.
We have new platforms on the passes, new tracks, signal upgrades.
And the projects I'm going to be talking about today is our BNSF SCORE projects.
Next slide, please.
So I would like to give an overview of those projects, as well as a description of each
of these three projects.
So the projects, they are located on Metrolink's ORNS, i.e. you will see, and the 91 PBL line
or PV line.
BNSF owns, dispatches, and maintains the subdivision.
received funding from the state to upgrade the bulletin interlocker and to
construct a third main track between Raymond to Edward and Edward Esperanza.
The project will improve the reliability and the capacity of Metrolink service.
Where Metrolink is responsible for the environmental clearance and BNSF would
be responsible for the design and construction.
Next slide, please.
As I mentioned before, we have multiple lines
through this area.
And both from Los Angeles down towards Orange and San Diego,
we have from San Bernardino to Orange County,
and we have from Los Angeles to Riverside and Paris.
The project location is shown there with a star.
And in addition to our passenger traffic,
there's a lot of freight traffic through this area.
The large amount of traffic that comes through this area
creates a lot of delays and conflicts.
And I believe it was mentioned before.
We just saw some of that yesterday
with canceled trains and delayed trains on Metrolink side
due to the tracks being blocked by freight trains.
The map on the left show, the three projects
and their location and their connection with each other.
These segments are all on BNSF railroad
and that's why we are coordinating with them
on the design and the construction.
Slide, please.
Maria, if I could real quickly,
if we could go back one slide, Sam, thank you.
So this may be something that certainly
long longer term board members are gonna be familiar with,
but we do have new board members in the room today.
And just so there's a little bit of an understanding
about the nature of our system and how we operate,
the segment between Los Angeles and where that star is,
that segment is what's known,
and actually the San Bernardino subdivision
of the BNSF railroad extends beyond where that star is.
But between Los Angeles and that star,
which is generally the Fullerton area,
that portion of the railroad is fully owned,
operated and dispatched by BNSF.
We operate our trains on it
by way of a shared use agreement,
and we pay for the privilege of being able
to use those sections of tracks,
but it isn't Metrolink owned,
unlike, say, the San Bernardino line,
which is owned by public agencies
and we operate on and we are the railroad
that is responsible for that.
As you go south from that star,
as you go, you can sort of see the orange and the silver,
that is where the line is then owned by OCTA.
So OCTA owns that and we operate, we work,
as you heard earlier from Aaron Acevedo,
we work collaboratively with OCTA for that segment
for, as they are the owner.
We continue to be the railroad of record though,
which is an important distinction, south of that star.
As you go east of that star,
you are saying in BNSF territory.
So the blue and the pink as you extend further to the east
as you go into Riverside County
is still fully owned operated by BNSF.
And so just for purposes of awareness,
where we're, as you get to this smaller map there
on the bottom left, this is where there's a whole lot
of stuff happening where you've got Metrolink trains,
Amtrak trains, and BNSF trains.
And you've got this sort of change in ownership
as you head south on that Orange County,
to the Orange County line.
The projects that Maria is going to describe
that include Fullerton Interlocker, Raymond to Atwood,
and then Atwood to Esperanza,
Those are all on BNSF territory.
So we need to work closely with them.
As you saw earlier,
we are doing the environmental clearance for those projects,
but BNSF, as the owner of the railroad,
will be doing the construction, design and construction
of what is effectively their facilities.
And over time, we will get some public benefit from that.
But it started with these projects again,
I just wanna make sure there's an understanding,
bit of the lay of the land as it relates to this where the start location is and just the nature
of the players that are involved and how the level of coordination that it takes place from
both the construction design and construction but then ultimately the operations. Thank you Maria.
All right thank you. Okay so this slide shows in a full-time interlocker. So on the left side
you see the current condition with the passenger in the blue and the freight shown in the orange,
and you can there's some conflicts that's marked with like red dots. As you can see there's like
those lines are crossing over each other and that's where we see some of these conflicts
and delays where freight and traffic passenger traffic are crossing over or have to run on the
same track. On the on the other side where we have our future condition, we are separating
freight from the passenger to move those, remove the conflicts or potentially move some of them
out of the junction. Next slide please. So we are completing environmental technical studies
at the moment and BNSF has started the design towards the 30 percent. We expect that to be
completed by the end of this year and we have a construction completion goal by the end of 2028.
And then we also working with California High Speed Rail as they are coming through Fullerton
Station as well so our project will accommodate the future high speed rail. Next slide please.
the two projects we have with third main track currently there's two tracks and we're going to
build a third one so just this slide really just shows the location it's right outside the
Fullerton junction and continuing towards corona and these two segments that affect our 91 and the
IEOC line. Next slide please. So the purpose of this is just like full-on analog is to separate
the passenger from the freight. So we have one track that's primary for freight, one track that's
primary for passenger traffic, and then we will have a track that is shared and is shared here
with platform on the south side and the project was also accommodate a future placentia station.
Next slide please. So the SEQUA NEPA environmental clearance is complete on both segments.
We are at 30% moving towards 30% design on the Raymond to Atwood. They're following the same
schedule as follows on Interlogger with a completion goal uh completion of the construction in
2028. The AdWords to Esperanza we are moving towards the 100% design and we uh have a goal
of completing the construction in 2027. So the overall project of these the overall goal of these
project is really just separating right away from from the passenger traffic so we avoid some of
these conflicts and see less delays of our trains. Next slide please. That concludes
my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Okay please go ahead. I have two
questions. One is when you were talking about Esperanza goals to be completed 2027 and then
Atwood in 2028 because they're designated separated can we put trains on those or do we have to wait
wait till they're all completed.
No, we will be able to run on that segment of the track.
The other thing is, Darren, I think it may be good
for particularly those areas that have use in the BNSF
that we don't have free reign and we can't control
when we have trains and that there's a slots.
Can you explain that to some of the new members?
The nature of the arrangements when Metrolink first formed,
we have what are called shared use agreements
with the two class one railroads,
both BNSF and Union Pacific.
In the case of the San Bernardino subdivision,
which is owned by BNSF,
we are limited on the number of slots
or the number of trains that we can operate
by way of the agreement.
There are also, included in the agreement,
prioritization that is supposed to come for passenger trains.
It's great to have the words prioritization in agreements,
but if you don't have either a carrot or a stick to enforce
when something doesn't get prioritized,
as we've somewhat encountered over the course
of the last six to eight months,
as we were doing our schedule change,
which just happened to be coincidence,
we don't have a way to enforce or push
or penalize or incentivize the freight railroads
to ensure that they do that on time.
So we have a couple of different elements
as it relates to how we operate in BNSF territory.
One, we're supposed to be a priority
and generally we have been over the years,
every once in a while something goes wrong.
And again, we're dealing with a little bit of a rough start,
or a rough patch right now.
But the other is how many trains we can operate on.
And so with the Atwood Esperanza improvements,
the new triple track that we hope to have in place by 2027,
That is supposed to, it gets a little,
I'm not gonna get too deep in the weeds
with our agreements with BNSF,
but we are gonna be making an argument
that the agreements that we originally entered into
with BNSF back in the early 90s,
that when this project gets completed,
we're supposed to open up an additional 12 train slots
along the corridor from Fullerton all the way to Riverside.
Now, there's a negotiation with the railroad on this,
and I think we're making some headway on it.
I don't know if we'll get the full 12 slots
because there was a sequencing
of how projects were supposed to move forward.
But we are going to make the case
because it's in the agreement
that we should open more slots
that serve really between Riverside and Los Angeles
and Riverside and Orange County.
So those are the two elements at all.
All of the arrangements with BNSF
are under this shared use agreement that we operate under.
And again, it has generally gone smoothly,
particularly as it relates to our on-time performance.
And now we're at the point where we're starting to see,
with our optimized schedule, a desire
to see more all-day service on a line that historically has not
been on the segment that goes from Riverside and into Corona
and then on into Orange County.
So we are getting to this point where
the plans from 30 years ago, we're starting to say,
okay, we're getting to implementing some of these things.
And the conversations we have with BNSF,
it's like, we didn't know what we were doing 32 years ago
when we're negotiating these agreements.
Great traffic has expanded tremendously in that corridor.
We wanna run more trains on the corridor.
So that's why the projects that Maria,
we're talking about, both capacity,
but also getting rid of the conflicts
at Fullerton Interlocker that we have documents,
we have correspondence from BNSF that say,
fixing Fullerton Interlocker is at the top
of their list of priorities.
And they need that because of the number of passenger trains
that we run through, be it ourselves or Surflaner.
So, and as new members, I am at your service
for more detailed information if you'd like it,
because there's a long history in it.
And so, yeah, it's there.
But hopefully, Director Spiegel,
did I capture some of the elements
you thought were important?
Perfect.
Okay, thank you.
Director Trimpey.
Oh, sorry, Dr. Trimpey, Director Trimpey, sure.
Yeah, thanks, Mr. Chair.
Maria, good presentation.
So if I'm understanding correctly, MetroLink,
We had CEQA and NEPA responsibility on these projects, and BNSF have design, bidding and
construction responsibilities for the projects.
And I'm just curious, assuming, and maybe I'm not making a correct assumption, that
there are differing standards that Metrolink, on the one hand, brings to design and bidding
and construction, what we have to live by, versus what BNSF to do, unless there are some
very common FRA standards.
Let me frame it this way.
What's been the greatest challenge in terms of working together on the design,
we haven't gone to bid yet,
but on the design side for us to date to try to meld the two cultures together,
I guess is what I'm the two entities together.
So since it's being as if railroad,
they design and build per their standards and not per our standards.
They will be the one that is designing it, building it, maintaining it.
So we are not really involved in any design decisions.
Um, we are working with them on, um, reviewing that design, but really we
don't have, we don't have a lot of saying in it.
So they live by FRA standards, but we have, we have input into that.
Good morning, Director Joseph, formerly chief of program delivery.
Um, yes, we do have input into the design that there are standards within
the FRA, um, ARIMA standards that, that basically all railroads meet.
Um, I think one of the key things that with coordination and touch
points that we're, we have with UNICEF have to do around the station locations.
You know, UNICEF does not really design stations.
And so that's where we've got a lot more, um, input and interest working
with the City of Fullerton, working with OCTA,
about how the customer path of travel to the platforms,
how those platforms are laid out.
A number of the platforms at the Fullerton Interlocker
are going to require great separated crossings.
So we're being very mindful about how passengers get
to the platforms, the signage, all those sorts of things.
Yeah, and I think that directly goes back
to what Darren was talking about a couple of minutes ago
in terms of the optimization for our customers.
Correct. Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Just to add, I mean, one of the things is from a speed
perspective that if you can design to standards that BNSF,
which is hauling mile long trains with massive weight
and everything else, our relative race cars
on the corridor, we have plenty of design
for what we're bringing our weight, our speeds,
that kind of thing.
And as Justin mentioned, you use,
as you said, ARIMA standards, right?
So the is spelled that out for those of us that are.
Okay, you're gonna put me on the spot.
American Railway Engineering and Maintenance Association.
And it's kind of the industry standard across the U.S.
and Canada for rail design.
UNICEF does have their own standards,
but the baseline are those ARIMA standards.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, that was a test.
I just wanna make sure you were on the ball side.
I don't know if you have any
questions?
I'm not sure.
No.
Okay.
Do you have any further.
Question.
So.
Yeah.
I'm.
Did you call us old timers?
Long-term.
Long-termers.
So, you know, clearly we have a.
A relationship with the freights where we're married, like it or not.
In many respects.
strategic meetings with them. Not looking only at a project by project but longer term
visions where we can both be helpful to each other and get their input as we, you know,
decide what we'd like to do and they listen to us and see what we'd like to do.
So we do have meetings, in fact, with BNSF, we had what I would consider somewhat of a
strategic meeting back in early February talking about what we're trying to look at as it relates
to the San Bernardino subdivision, including discussions related to incentives and penalties
about on-time performance, which don't exist, because what we want to get to is to be reliable.
We want to run trains, we want to be reliable, we want to be safe.
And so we have those conversations about how do we get to this point.
And to BNSF's credit, they say we have several different shared use agreements that do have
penalty incentive elements to it that were public documents.
So I mean, they weren't going to come right out and share them with us, but they did tell
us they were public documents, so it's a phone call away.
So we do have, I would say, more strategic conversations with BNSF because they're open
to those.
It's been more of a struggle with UP as we've tried to work through some of those items.
We've tried to get them on board.
We have a project, if I could, right now a planning project for our riverside line that
is being led by Roderick Diaz, our director of planning, and his team.
And we have just tried to get Union Pacific to come to the table about what improvements
would we need to do Los Angeles to Riverside on the Riverside line where
today we are capped at only 12 trains. That's the max we can run all day long.
We would like to potentially we see there's market there and it's been hard
to get them to even come to the table and have a conversation about what
improvements that we would agree might be appropriate for a public to fund so
that we can expand service and it's been more difficult to get their audience.
Like you're talking about sidings and double tracking.
Precisely, yes, triple track, yes, sidings,
that kind of thing.
And that just has not been a place
that they've been prepared to have conversations on.
And we're gonna continue to continue to push that,
but that has been a,
so that's not been for lack of an effort on our part.
And again, I think BNSF has been,
you know, a fairly good strategic partner.
Part of what matters with BNSF, of course,
BNSF is, is that is their transcontinental freight corridor
getting out of loss out of the Southern,
the South coast basin, they get up the Cajon pass
and then what?
And so it's important to them to have all of that
infrastructure in place as well.
So I think that there's a, there is that partnership
and they want to see that benefit.
They see, they don't want, they want to be good partners.
So we're working on a couple of different areas.
Yeah, let's keep working.
put on your charm offensive and we're in big trouble sir thank you Thank You
mr. chair um I know in San Bernardino County the transportation authority out
there we've been doing a lot of conversations with city of Barstow as
far as inland ports so my question is once that actually is established out
there and in other counties will that open up tracks back time director Marquez
Yes, again, conversations with BNSF, there is a huge sort of inland port type of concept
project in Barstow being developed by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, it's
called BIG, Barstow Intermodal Gateway, BIG project, and it is a BIG project.
That's going to be where they want to try to get trains out of the basin and then do
uh, intermodal, more staging at this massive facility in Barstow. There is a
state funded project being proposed just outside of Victorville between
Victorville and Asperia, I believe that is going to be a another siding track
for on the BNSF corridor that then can stage before they come into the basin.
What we've struggled with in southern California is that BNSF has to stage
trains and they are sometimes having to stop them and stage them in busy corridors where we have all
of this you know mixing pot of stuff going on and the plan with what's going on in the high desert
is to have these places one where you have a lot of this of the of the staging and holding trains
outside of the basin where we have all this passenger traffic and then a staging track just
just before you come into the basin
at the top end of the Cajon Pass.
And that will again free up more space right now
where they're having to park trains
on main line in the basin.
Thank you.
Any more director comments?
I might add that one of the busiest traffic situations
in entire country is the 91 freeway.
And we can correct all of these things.
Our ridership is just waiting to happen,
really expand what we're able to do.
A great benefit to connect LA, Orange, and Riverside
and on out to San Bernardino.
So it has a major impact.
And I'm glad that we are working with Burlington North
and so progressively now.
And so that's, we're encouraging.
So thank you for your presentation.
Thank you.
Now I come to kind of a fun thing.
MetroLink reimagined optimized service update.
I think we heard a little bit about
how it could be optimized.
And so we have Eric Christler and Sabrina Davis, go on.
Good morning, board chair,
chief members of the board and welcome guests.
Today, Eric and I are pleased to be updating you
on our optimized schedule.
Next slide.
We're gonna walk you through the optimized schedule
improvements part of our recovery strategy.
will walk you through the implementation of that schedule and the shifts that we
made as a result. Next slide. Here I just want to reflect on ridership for the
past six years. Like other commuter rail agencies across the country have also
experienced ridership growth has been slow. In calendar year 2024 ridership
reached 7.1 million boardings or 58% of the record-setting 12.1 million
boardings in 2019. Although we've seen steady growth, now is
not the time to become complacent. And as such, we
wanted to explore solutions to improve our service and optimize
the limited resources that we have available. Next slide. So
it we also conducted research to understand the barriers to
ridership and explore more opportunities to influence more
people to take Metrolink. This latest study of potential riders reaffirmed and further
deepened our understanding of what influences potential commuters and non-commuters. We
learned that potential new riders prioritize flexibility, convenience, and scheduled reliability,
most of all. Next slide. Coming out of the pandemic, a new vision for Metrolink's future
was born, Metrolink reimagined. Like other commuter rail agencies, Metrolink initiated
a deliberate shift from commuter rail to regional rail. In February of 2023, the operations
department retained a consultant to develop a new service plan that would reimagine a
schedule designed to retain and grow ridership, capture new market opportunities, optimize
as efficiencies and prepare for the 2020 Olympics.
To walk you through this portion,
I'll hand it over to Eric.
Next slide, please.
So we implemented the up to my schedule in October 21 of 2024
and we'll talk about what that entailed.
So next slide.
I re-education on what we covered last year.
This is the data that we used.
It's streetlight data on the top left.
It's actually a company where we identified
the target locations where we'd see
the most vehicle ridership on the streets, actually,
to offset those people to trains.
The darker colors indicates
where individuals would ride from,
so areas such as Montclair, Anaheim, Santa Ana,
Burbank, Montclair, amongst others.
The dark circles there are the ones
that we really focused on for our midday off-peak service
as well as our peak service as well
for frequent service throughout the day.
Next slide.
This is an explanation of what a peak pulse schedule is
and the focus on connectivity.
So on the left, you can see the schedule
prior to the schedule change in October.
On the left-hand side, it's really connectivity by chance,
not by schedule.
We never really focused on where people
were going in the past.
When we brought in the contractor
and we started looking at the state rail plan
to align with the future of Metrolinx
as well as the 2028 Olympics,
we identified an opportunity to build in that connectivity
so that Darren could come down here to the board meeting today
and have that seamless transfer of 10 minutes.
So we went from 67 connections to 225 connections in LA alone.
That's not accounting for the mid-service connections
that we have built in as well,
but really LA being the focus of where we're building
in that connectivity in the hub of Metrolinx.
Next slide.
So the implementation and response.
Next slide.
In October 21 and 2024, we actually kicked this off.
We added 32 weekday trains
and then we spread service throughout the day.
The previous schedule, we were really focused
on those commuters that were coming into and out of LA.
And we spread that service out with those 220 connections
and the poll schedule that we just talked about.
Next slide.
On the first week, we average,
this is our average boardings for the first week.
We started off at the fiscal year, July 1, 2024.
we averaged 21,986 boardings for the full week
of the first week of the schedule change,
which was the highest that we had seen in the year.
Next slide.
These are highlighting some of our highest ridership days
on November 2nd, November 12th, excuse me.
2,399 boardings.
We also were able to service the Dodgers parade
with more than 42,000 people boarding our services
from Covina into LA.
The trains were completely packed.
We were able to also take our poll schedule
and modify our service to extend service
into and out of San Bernardino
as we saw that capacity constraint
throughout the day and people coming home.
We had a huge team out in the field
that was able to assist those customers
at the actual platform level
and help us identify where they were going to
in the evening.
So that poll schedule allowed us
to actually make those modifications on the fly
because we had this poll schedule
and these scheduled meet past locations in place.
And just to emphasize this point, I think we had the from the time the Dodgers announced we had two and a half days from when they said hey we're going to have a parade in downtown LA to how we pivoted to make sure that we could try to meet what we thought was going to be
very crowded conditions than they were.
And so there was a lot happening.
And because we had the schedule,
and if we had had our old schedule in place,
it would have been a disaster.
And because of the new schedule,
the way that we had our crew set up a variety of things,
we were able to do it,
not without a hiccup here and there,
but it was able, we were able to do something
that was not quite a Metrolink record
as far as daily boardings,
but in the top five of what we've had throughout
in our history.
Dodgers, go Dodgers.
Go Dodgers, go Dodgers.
Next slide.
And this is highlighting our focus
of what the schedule change was about.
It was capturing those off-peak customers.
And we can see here that we really retained
the bulk of our peak ridership,
we're down 1% year over year.
We had some bumps on the San Bernardino line
and with the freight partners,
we're on-time performance took a dip.
But we were able to retain that ridership,
boost that ridership by 60% on the off-peak.
And you can see we're actually starting to recover
coming into February of this year.
We're going above on that peak ridership again
as on-time performance improves.
And we implemented that schedule change on January 27th
to address those issues.
And we shouldn't just be...
So we recognizing through these actions
that the nature of the commute has also changed.
And while we say we saw a drop of minus one
on the peak ridership, the off peak was growth.
Well, a number of those off peak riders
our commuters, they've just modified their schedules
where they're going in for two thirds of the day
and then leaving not during the peak.
And so we have put a service level out there
that was something that was kind of brought about
out of COVID in this new workforce that we have
that is coming in for half day meetings
or that type of thing.
And the Orange County line is our best example
where we had a three hour window where we had no service,
maybe longer, three and a half hour.
On LA to Anaheim or Laguna Niguel,
now I don't think we have,
I think that the longest we go is an hour and a half,
two hours, two hours where there's a gap,
but otherwise we have hourly service on that corridor
so that you can have that connection during the off peak.
So that is something else that we learned
because we're finding out
how people are working differently.
Next slide.
So to what Eric was speaking to,
we can see the direct correlation between ridership
and on-time performance.
Because of the negative on-time performance impact
on our San Bernardino Line customers,
we did need to activate our Quality Service Pledge or QSP.
This is our commitment to our riders
for when on-time performance falls below 85%
in a calendar month due to issues within Metro Lakes Control.
we will offer them a 25% monthly pass discount in reparation.
In this case, the QSP commitment did not apply
to those lines that experienced delays because of freight.
However, we saw the same negative impact on ridership.
Next slide, please.
Because of that negative impact,
we worked in partnership with our member agencies
and decided to offer the 25% monthly pass discount
system-wide, and we did that in January and February.
It was just the right thing to do for our customers.
Our San Bernardino Line customers continue
to receive the discount this month in March,
as well they will in April.
Also, in February, we did see a 10% increase
in monthly pass sales as a result of this program.
Next slide.
On January 27th, we also implemented a service adjustment
to the San Bernardino line to address
the on-time performance challenges.
We adjusted our runtimes and meets across the segments.
We also transitioned the limited stop service
to a pulse schedule making all stops
while keeping the extension to downtown Redlands.
We were also able to optimize the arrow service
to create better connectivity to the MetroLink trains
at the San Bernardino downtown station.
and we reduced the frequency of the Covina to LA,
LA Union Station trains.
However, we were able to expand our footprint
for the remaining trains
and extend them to Montclair.
Next slide.
So to tell you why Montclair, Eric.
As far as Montclair goes,
we go back to our original data.
Where did we see the most people going to and from?
In our original implementation of the schedule,
we were looking at Montclair being the hub
of our extensions rather than Covina.
We just didn't have enough infrastructure
to actually go out there.
So when we looked at what was going on
in the San Bernardino line,
we addressed the issues with runtime
and meet past locations that were identified
with the challenges that we were seeing.
But more importantly, we heard LA Metro's concern
that we were not connecting to the A-line extension
in Pomona and future extension Montclair.
So we've looked at ways,
how can we actually impact the customer the most
and get them home?
And we're seeing a lot more bang for our buck
by going to Montclair.
And when the A-line connects here in Pomona,
some time this year, I think it's this summer,
we'll be able to service those customers as well.
Back to the green.
Next slide, please.
As a result of these changes,
the San Bernardino lines on time performance
increased to 92% and continues to hold strong.
These improvements also correlated directly
to a significant decrease in customer complaints
as expected.
Next slide.
Since the limited stop trains were converted
to serve all stations, ridership on those trains
has increased by 15%.
Next slide.
And we're also pleased to report
that the improved service reliability
contributed to positive growth
on the San Bernardino line overall.
Ridership has increased in January by 12%
and 17% in February compared to the year previous.
And now I'm gonna pass it to Eric
talk about the overall ridership results from the optimized schedule. Next slide please. We
wanted to provide an update on the original forecast that we presented to you last year for
ridership and then compare it to what we actually saw. So on the left-hand side the original
forecast is provided with the schedule change that we presented in I think it was February of last
year and then the post-schedule change we started this data October 21st when we launched the
schedule and we took it up about two weeks ago or so and we can see the number of weekday trains
that we operate. We have 10 less on the San Bernardino line that we implemented
on January 27th. We tried through the 30 trains on the Orange County line to break down those
two-hour gaps that we see throughout the day but with negotiations with BNSF to get approved we
had to reduce that by four to actually implement the schedule so we reduced that by four but
pleased to show that we are actually hitting our forecast as far as overall ridership
on the bulk of our lines for what the original forecast was.
Next slide.
And we'd like to end with where we stand
as far as commuter agencies throughout the nation.
On the bottom, the leaders in transit are on the East Coast,
but for the West Coast,
Metrolink is actually leading the charge.
We're at 60% recovery in January.
We've improved to 67% in February,
and we're looking at an improvement again in March.
That's 48 consecutive months
that we've seen continued growth throughout Metrolink
with recovering leading the West Coast
with recapturing our ridership.
And with that, next slide,
we'll open it up to any questions that you may have.
Well done.
All right.
Thank you, Eric and Sabrina.
And just a couple of points of emphasis.
Again, you know, we heard from Kelly Hart from OCTA
and what's going on with the OC Streetcar
and the connections that we're gonna have there.
There are several different projects
that support this regional rail system
that we are a backbone on.
and we talk about OC Streetcar,
we expect that to be a driver of ridership growth
for Metrolink.
We have talked over the course of the last several,
well, for several years,
the value of Brightline West and the high speed train
coming into Rancho Cucamonga.
Later this year, I think a tentative revenue service date
is June for A-line or Gold Line, as we know it,
on the corridor that comes into Pomona.
And with the level of service that we have today
and what we expect to have when SCORE is fully built out
on the San Bernardino line,
where we have half hour bi-directional frequencies,
Los Angeles to San Bernardino and a stop at Pomona
where currently Gold Line is going to be terminating.
There will be connection that supports people taking more
trains throughout this region because of that extra service.
So we have not really had a whole lot of that
over our since we were formed.
We have not had that rail to rail connection,
but it's gonna be very similar to what was,
where we, the only place else we had it was with Arrow,
where we had the service coming into downtown San Bernardino
at the transit center and a user of the Arrow train
going on the platform and catching a MetroLink train
to continue their trip.
So these are all going to be opportunities
for providing rail service beyond the commute
and serving discretionary trips
that have been something that we just,
it hasn't been our focus,
but the schedule allows for us to do that.
When you know you can catch a train every half hour
on the San Bernardino line,
and as we, or Antelope Valley line,
where we have this level of frequency,
And I'll remind Director Najarian,
when we launched the Antelope Valley Line pilot service
of what we were going to change as to the red,
it was like, this is a great schedule.
And it becomes something where you just,
you don't have to think about it.
You just get to, you know,
though you're gonna have a train every hour
or every half an hour.
And Vice Chair Burksen asked,
well, what's the pulse schedule?
So Eric, you can probably, or Sabrina, one of you two,
I was trying to explain it,
And it's just like, you just know it's repetition.
It's happening on a minute, on a time
where you just know that it's going to be there.
But maybe there's a little bit more
that you can, how you could describe it.
Yeah, so the pulse schedule is designed.
So I'm at Fontana, for example, and I show up at 220.
I know consistently that train will be there at 220.
If it's half hour service, 250, for example.
Every 30 minutes, you'll be there on a consistent basis.
more importantly for our transit partners as well as connectivity.
So we know that the bus or the connecting train down in Santa Ana, or
the aero train that we connect to in San Bernardino, we can align those for
consistent connections throughout the city as well as throughout Southern California.
Losan has also implemented this on their corridor for the same exact reasons.
It's consistent, reliable service at a specific time that a customer can show up
and just expect the train to be there.
So that's really the intent of what the full schedule is.
and I think one of the things that really speaks to it
and our San Bernardino line board members,
Director Dutre, Director Marquez, Director Allen,
all live on the San Bernardino line.
If they come into a committee meeting or a board meeting,
they know there's a San Bernardino line train
leaving on the 40.
Every hour of every day, it's leaving on the 40.
And then there's more service throughout the day
and the peak that actually reduces that to a half hour.
And if it's not on the 40, then it's on the 10.
And you just know that.
And so that's what we're trying to get to.
And we've made great strides through this phase one.
And as resources come about
and we're able to both have infrastructure
and operating revenues to do more,
I think that we're gonna see even better growth
and improvement.
Thank you, Eric, for that extra explanation.
Yes, we're a little ahead of schedule,
but we can take a break if there's coffee.
Let me see.
Yeah, we'll make sure, do you want to take a 10 minute break?
Yeah, we're taking a break.
We're a little bit ahead of schedule
and our next scheduled item is at 10 30,
but we might move that up a little bit.
So feel free to take a 10 minute break.
11, let's reconvene at 11 20 if we could.
We'll try to keep this train on time.
Oh, very good. We get out early schedule.
I don't think this is live.
We're ready to resume if we might take our seats.
And I think there's coffee back there.
If you didn't get a chance to have some, please go help yourself.
And then we'll resume in about one minute.
Thank you.
Our next topic is dedicated funding sources, and we have Lisa Colicino, who will lead us
in that discussion.
All right, so we're, we're asking, Lisa Colicchio is going to do a, that's okay, it's a tough
Italian name, I think.
So to do a presentation,
so this is just my way of refresher board members.
We were talking last year,
just some of the challenges that we have
as we try to mature our system
and that one of them that comes up
is just the nature of our financial structure
and particularly coming out of COVID
where we generally enjoy 40 plus percent
of our operating costs being covered
through the Fairbox.
And here we are post COVID,
and Fairbox is less than 20.
By the time we put other dollars
that come from other sources, we're close to 20.
And so there's been this question of sustainability
that we hear from our member agencies
because if we're not getting it from those sources,
it's coming from what I call our five biggest investors,
the five counties.
And Arnold Hackett and myself can show you the wounds
that we have from the conversations that involve
trying to work through an annual budget cycle.
And so when this was brought up last year,
directors at then chair McCallen and director Wapner
gave us a charge to once again,
let's get back to this discussion
of a dedicated revenue stream for Metrolink
so that it wasn't an effort that had to go through
of the five member counties on an annual basis.
Now there's a, it's far more complicated
than just us simply saying that.
And we did start down this path a few years ago.
Lisa's gonna touch on some of the research
we had done back then and then some research
that we've done as part of this most more recent exercise
and with sort of an ending discussion.
There's no action of course here,
but because of the nature of this,
We wanted to let you know what we found
and then I'll finish with some closing comments as well
to Lisa's presentation.
So just by, again, this is just to why we were here,
it was something that we were asked to do
and we continue to have conversations
with the member agencies on it.
So with that, Lisa, take it away.
Thank you, Darren.
Next slide.
Today I'll present the most viable options
from our analysis of dedicated revenue sources
and any of the initiatives presented
could be further explored upon direction by the board
and with concurrence by member agencies.
Next slide.
MetroLink has reviewed dedicated revenue sources in the past
working closely with SBERRY Capital Consultant in 2018.
Building on the original consultant report
and through additional research staff
has conducted over the past year,
we've identified nine potential long-term revenue sources
and organize them into three main categories,
based on dollar amounts that could be generated.
These are categorized into high, medium and low impact.
They range in funding from a billion dollars per year
on the high end to $5 million per year at the low end.
I'd like to point out that all of these funding initiatives
are at the state and local level.
However, the majority of these options
will require legislative action,
including some with voter approval.
We'll take a deeper dive into each of them
in the following slides.
So next slide.
California has the highest minimum sales tax rate
in the country at 7.25%.
Local government and transportation agencies
can augment the base sales tax
and use revenues to fund transportation projects.
Sperry Capital had analyzed this source
with calculations at a quarter,
an eighth and a 10th of a cent.
Projected revenue could be substantial,
yielding a range of 430 million,
up to a billion dollars per year.
However, this measure would require
two thirds super majority vote.
Next slide.
Before we go to the next slide though on that last one,
such a structure exists today in California. Caltrain, which is our sister agency in the Bay
Area that runs the peninsula. San Francisco to Santa Clara with the county in the middle.
San Mateo, thank you. It took a Bay Area guy to be able to tell me that off the top of his head,
Thank you. Have currently a three county regional sales tax measure approved by their voters. I believe it's a 10th of a cent. So they that structure does exist in California today, but it did as Lisa indicated it does require legislative action to allow such an effort to take place.
All right, thank you. Next slide.
Staff has examined the legislative modification
to the Transportation Development Act, the TDA of 1971,
to implement a non-ballot measure increase
of state sales tax within the member agency's
five-county region.
Similar analysis to the multi-county sales tax initiative,
calculations at a quarter, an eighth, and a 10th of a cent
could yield a range of substantial revenue
from 430 million to a billion dollars per year.
A benefit of this measure
is that it could be enacted legislatively.
However, it could face opposition
from other non-passenger rail entities
or opposition from raising taxes without voter approval.
Next slide.
There is precedence in California
for leveraging fees on rideshare entities
like Uber and Lyft.
In 2018, voters in San Francisco approved a rideshare tax
which is generating between 30 and $35 million per year in fees.
There are other cities as well that have implemented similar ride share fees,
including Washington, DC and Manhattan.
Using the population of San Francisco as a model,
if we impose a similar fee for our five County region,
there's potential to generate $700 million per year for Metrolink.
However, there's uncertainty on our legal authority
to impose such a fee.
Next slide.
Several agencies outside of California
do impose taxes on employers that are located
within the transportation service areas.
Oregon and Manhattan are listed here as examples.
Due to the size of our five counties,
a model assumed taxes ranging from a 10th of a cent
to one third of a cent,
which could yield up to $218 million per year.
However, our legal authority to levy such a tax is unclear,
and it would be subject to two-thirds voter approval.
Next slide.
Parcel taxes are levied locally and classified
to special taxes under Prop 13.
There's precedence as public transit agencies
within the state, including Alameda
and Sacramento Transit Districts, do levy parcel taxes.
The projected revenue for MetroLink, using the consultant model to levy a tax ranging
from $25 up to $100 per parcel, could yield an annual revenue up to $87 million per year.
However, our legal authority to levy such a tax is unclear, and it'd be subject to two-thirds
voter approval.
Next slide.
There is precedence from air quality management districts imposing fees on vehicle registration
to fund air quality programs.
Using the consultant model, a $4 fee on vehicle registration
in our five county region could generate $56 million per year.
However, there could be political reluctance
to fund another program under vehicle registration,
and it would be subject to 2 thirds vote by legislature.
Next slide.
The cap and trade program acts as a market-based mechanism
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
creating an annual cap on statewide admissions.
Currently, 65% of existing funds are appropriated to programs that include TIRCP and high-speed rail.
Staff recommends working with member agencies and other passenger rail operators in the state to seek a share of cap-and-trade revenues that would directly support passenger rail operations.
The potential share for Metrolink could be up to $22 million per year.
However, this will require legislation,
and there's uncertainty on how cap and trade auctions
will be perceived from year to year.
Next slide.
In response to Senate Bill 743,
member agencies and others are developing programs
to reduce VMT, vehicle miles traveled,
resulting from highway improvements
and other development projects.
LA Metro is poised to be the first agency in our region
to launch an innovative VMT mitigation bank.
The proposed I-405 Sepulveda Pass project lane
is reviewing VMT bank projects for offsets.
Staff is coordinating with LA Metro
to include Metrolinx service expansion in the VMT bank,
which could yield an estimated $5 million per year,
starting in year 2031,
and continue on for a period of 20 years.
While mental link service can net large reductions in VMT, our service operation projects do compete with other VMT mitigation projects in the region.
Passenger rail service has a really strong nexus to VMT reduction, particularly on congested highway corridors.
The legislation that authorizes managed lanes requires that excess revenues be spent on specific projects, such as rail systems within those corridors.
projected annual revenue from managed lanes is dependent on many factors and therefore the
estimated dollar amounts are unknown. But staff recommends continuing to explore current and
future managed lane opportunities. Next slide. As a comparison to MetroLink we've provided data of
dedicated sources for operating revenues that other commuter rail and regional passenger rail
agencies receive. Next slide. MetroLink receives 20 percent of funds from fares and other operating
income, while 80% comes from member agencies that include sales tax, FTA, and other pass-throughs.
Next slide. Caltrain receives 30% from fares, and while they have significantly reduced
their member agency support, that's mostly been replaced 60% by regional sales tax measure.
Next slide. Metro receives 27% in fares and 50% mostly from sales tax, with 21% still
remaining from COVID relief funds. Next slide.
Real quick, if I could, Lisa. So, METRA is the Chicagoland region, so for those of you
that are not as familiar with that, and just this is somewhat late breaking news in the
METRA region. So, as is noted here, they are still the Chicago area, so Chicago METRA,
so their commuter railroad, our sister agency. The Chicago Transit Authority that operates
the L, and then PACE, which I believe is their bus service in the area, they have just gone
on record. They're going to, they're going to be, their COVID relief funds will be drained here
shortly. And my fellow CEO at Chicago Metro announced to his employees earlier this week,
what could be significant major cuts and impacts on the Chicago transit system if the state of
Illinois doesn't take action to provide additional revenues to the point where they're looking at as
much as 40 I believe it was 40 cuts in service. So we are not alone in this struggle and we have
for all intents and purposes tapped out all of our COVID relief funds so we don't have that.
So what we then only have to rely on,
as Lisa indicated in the very first pie chart, the 80-20.
And that 80 is from member agencies.
So this is where Chicago Metro is today.
They potentially could be in a much more dire circumstances
in the not too distant future.
Thank you. Thank you.
Next slide.
And for regional rail examples,
MBTA that's in Boston receives 20% from fares
and the remaining 80% from state, local, and COVID relief.
Next slide.
And similar to MBTA, SEPTA in Pennsylvania
receives 21% from fairs and the remaining 79%
from state, local, and COVID relief funds.
Next slide.
So for next steps, we'd like to get consensus
on which dedicated funding sources Metrolink should pursue
both at the board level and with member agencies,
Taking note that some member agencies have raised concerns
that some of the programs mentioned today
do compete for funds they are already receiving
under the same programs.
While the revenue sources presented here
are in context to Metrolink,
they're not unique for our region.
Both MoveLA and California Transit Transformation Task Force
are also exploring similar revenue measures
that could provide greater funding
for communal rail agencies.
will be closely monitoring their progress.
And in the end, the juice needs to be worth the squeeze.
Revenue streams for potential dedicated sources
need to be commensurate to the feasibility
and time and effort required to achieve them.
Next slide.
That concludes my presentation
and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Over here.
I've got some, okay, thanks, Mr. Chair.
So Lisa, thanks for a good report
and thank you to Paul for putting this together.
I read it with a great deal of interest.
Is the juice worth the squeeze comment?
I think it's very appropriate.
So basically from my standpoint,
I've discounted the options
that are of very potential low impact,
including cap and trade and VMT mitigation
and managed lane fees,
because it just, it ain't worth the squeeze.
Putting aside for the moment,
parcel tax and vehicle licensing fees.
Just generally speaking, my view is that
there would be a great deal of pushback
relative to a multi-county sales tax
or a state sales tax TDA or the payroll transit tax.
And there are a lot of hoops that have to be jumped through.
One thing that I did focus on was the rideshare option,
which is very appealing in the sense
that there isn't competition between the member agencies,
as I understand it, relative to that source of revenue,
it may have a lower ceiling than, for example,
a multi-county sales tax, but it's got a much higher floor.
So in other words, it's got the certainty in it
and not the variability in it that the first option had.
But with that, I had a couple of questions
because I was unclear in the report on the rideshare fees.
When San Francisco did it, it indicated that,
the staff report indicates
that it's a legislatively authorized ballot measure.
Was that from the California legislature
or was that from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
acting on behalf of the city and county
to send it to the voters?
I believe it was local,
but I don't, I don't know, Darren,
if you've got something to add.
I don't wanna speculate.
I don't wanna, I, my recollection is that there was,
it was, there was enabling legislation
through the legislature,
not an action of the City and County Board of Supervisors.
We'll confirm that.
We thought it was sort of,
could we go back to that slide on that option?
Because I was really curious about a couple of the cons
on that, okay.
So the first con was our legal authority
to impose the charge and that would need to be researched.
If there was a, if there was doubt that we had that,
that we Metrolinx had the ability to move forward with that,
then we would need legislative authorization.
But then the question I had is,
is that something that ultimately goes to the voters?
Or can it be something that we would,
the Metrolink board with the consensus
of the five counties be able to utilize to do directly?
There are a couple of different options.
In San Francisco's case, it was an action of the voters.
There is a similar program that was established
through the Public Utilities Commission,
I believe that supports access programs
that the PUC set the fee statewide
so that to support access related types of programs.
So there are different ways to get there
either through the PUC enacting a fee or a voter approval.
Or you could have direct,
but there would be a third option too.
you could have to wreck legislative authorization as well.
Couldn't you not?
I believe to do so then there's a fee that would be a,
this is where I should let the lawyers practice law.
Mr. Del Rio, that was a point to you.
That the, because it would be a fee
that it would end up having to go to the voters,
in this case, a special tax.
So a two thirds vote would be required.
Well, and I'm certainly not the lawyer here.
I'm glad Mr. Del Rio is.
So, but I, it would be, this would be an option
that I personally now editorializing,
speaking for myself, that's all I can speak for,
is something that we look at closely
for all the reasons that I articulated.
It's not a, it's a non-compete scenario
where we're not competing with one another
and it doesn't have the same kind of pushback issues
that the other high impact, potential high impact
options contain and it has a it has a relatively good degree of certainty in
it in terms of floor and ceiling in other words a lack of the variability
from year to year so I'm hoping that we might be able to put this at or near the
top of the list in terms of looking at thank you mr. chair there any more
questions I'm sorry go ahead I miss someone does yes director Steven
speaker can see through the microphone if we're forced to look at something i think i agree
with mr trinity is that it is probably the best direction if we're looking at this
my concern is we are at a time that we are not offering the service we should be offering
and to ask voters themselves and tax themselves for a service a most don't use and b we don't
have a good reputation at this time. We all know that. It's been in the paper.
Metrolink has to have different issues. Plus, like we have half our county that has no metrolink
service. I think San Bernardino also has a northern part. I mean, when you have that problem
of not having the voters to even have access to it, why would they want to self-tax themselves?
And so I think there's so many downsides to that. And I think Ventura has had some
problems with getting a tax anyway. It has. Multiple accountants.
I mean, so you've got half of Riverside County, you've got half of San Bernardino County,
you've got all of Ventura County that would have challenges to support this. So,
you know, I think we should be working harder and trying to get that next 20 percent,
get gain back our ridership and boost it there. I don't know what it's going to take,
but working extra hard than just kind of waiting it out. I think we need to put more efforts that
direction on how we could improve and build the ridership. And once you know that's we could
build it up at least eight to ten percent. That's not a lot of money but on the low impact ones.
I don't know what that would cost as far as more energy spent but you know less than 20 percent
that coming from the ridership is pretty low.
Yes, Director Molina.
I don't have a question, but I have a comment.
In my city, we're in a transit system service area,
but we have no bus service.
We're a small little city.
And so I'm constantly talking to people
because I love mass transit.
I grew up in LA, LA has mass transit,
but I'll tell you the majority of the people
that I talk to tell me, well, I would think about it,
I don't know that much about it. And so a lot of people are telling me that in my area that they're
not familiar with Metrolink and the connections to bus service and all of that. They're more
familiar with the Uber and Lyft programs because it's short term and it's affordable. But most
people are just telling me they don't know that much about the other mass transit systems. And so
That's a big area and that's a I think that for me that's a big issue too why why don't they know
more about these services. We all are familiar with because this is our passion obviously
and and and we're working towards solutions but that's that's a big question.
Vice Chair Orkson. So I noticed during the presentation many of the other states
that have railroad similar to ours are getting funding by the state. And of course our state is
unique and different but uh and and typically I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that most of the
asks from the state are for specific projects not to cover our general cost of operating.
And so I wonder if we start asking our state representatives about providing some funding
because you know we talk about it's five counties it's a big section it's all of southern California
and you know maybe the state should be coughing up some money to keep us going so that this
the county transportation commissions can concentrate on things other than paying a big
chunk of their yearly budget toward metro. So is that something that we feel we could pursue and
be successful or is that something that maybe we've tried and it just isn't in the deck of cards?
There's a lot to unpack in that question, Director Bergson. I will try to do just some justice to
to it. So it is not it is not unreasonable to ask the state. In fact right now Lisa alluded
to it just briefly in her closing remarks about the transit transformation task force.
So this is an entity that was created by legislation when SB 125 passed to give us to allow us
to limp along with state funds for operating. You're correct. We get a lot of capital dollars
directly to projects from the state and through our members we get operating dollars from
the state but it all goes through the members so it isn't dedicated to us. So the transit
transformation task force and we actually have a member of that task force that's going
to be that will be available for discussions later today and Mark Watts. Mark Watts is
one of our lobbyists in Sacramento and sits on the transit transformation task force.
And but they are having this very conversation about how does the state of California support
operating costs for transit, whether it's rail or bus or otherwise. They are in the
throes of that discussion right now. This is the hardest part of their conversation
is what does the future of transit operating funds look like? The Transportation Development
Act that dates back to 1971 was what helps support operating funds for transit dating
way back then. Those are actually state dollars. It's a state sales tax. A couple of weeks
ago we were at I was at the Mobility 21 Sacramento trip and Secretary Tokes
Omashakan and Caltrans director Tony Tavares were in attendance and I
raised this point with them. The state of California just adopted, approved in
January the state rail plan for 2050. It's a great plan with projects all over
over California, a lot of support, both for freight and passenger service.
And what I raised in this report was as great as that was, the one thing the state absolutely
missed in this report was how are you going to pay for the operations to support this
wonderfully great plan that you've developed.
And at which point I turned to Director Tavares, who also sits on the Transit Transformation
Task Force and I said Director Tavares who's also from the Southern California
region he was the District 7 District Director I said Tony you know the
challenges we wrestle with at Metrolink you've seen it you sat on our board what
are you going to do at the Transit Transformation Task Force to ensure
there's dedicated revenue to support passenger trains in California so
although I think there is an opportunity there as we saw through all of this any
any one of these juice worth the squeeze proposals is going to take some serious courage to deliver.
And that's what we hope to see and maybe Mark will be able to speak to that later about
what his sense is of the level of courage the state is going to have with real proposals
and not, you know, penny any stuff.
question and we are putting it back on the state. I'm just curious what kind of
a timeline are we looking at before we have to give some like direction also
some of these items you know we curious on what's more difficult than not by the
way director trampoline thank you for those questions I agree with taking that
option as well. It's just when would you have to hear from the board to give staff that direction?
You know this is the idea here was to get your feedback and so this is the start of feedback and
ultimately if we want to go forward we based on this feedback we can take a couple of items forward.
What we have been somewhat coy about in our presentation is that we are generally a consensus
agency. Five counties are who formed us and who we have to go to generally to say yes we're on board
from the annual budget process to long-term projects, service growth, and so on. We are
going to need five counties that say yes that is the one that makes us sustainable long term
and we need to speak with the leaders at the policy level but also at the executive level
of those five counties to get endorsement, consensus on anything that we are moving forward
to. If we have one county says, you know, we're thinking about that idea, I think then we have to
step back for a moment because again, we have five counties that support us. So that's Director
Presiado, the challenge, we can tee it up. I've heard at least some, hey, let's this ride share
concept we should explore it further, at least to start. And we can do that. We have some
good initial data on it. But I can't impress upon this board enough that if we're going
to do this, this is a message that goes back to five counties and say, we've been saying
we want Metrolink to be sustainable, we're not prepared to continue to be the one that
has to book the bill, you need to give them a chance to succeed. If we don't have that
from five counties, we're wasting our time. And, and that, that's just the reality of
it. It's just the structure. Forgive me for this for a bit. This is, I'm going to channel
when I come home and I'm having a martini with my wife in the evening. And we start
talking about our struggles we have at this agency. And I say, you know, we're 32 years
old as an agency. We were reformed and, you know, we started running service in 1992.
what, 33 years old now as an agency. And I kind of feel like we're still living
with our parents. And every year they give us an allowance. And that's what we
operate on. Thank God my son's 24 years old, he's out of the house and I'm not
giving him an allowance anymore. I don't want us to be that. We can't be that. And
not really serve this region. But it's gonna take that kind of, say, yeah, this
is it. And if we don't get there, we'll keep plugging along and doing the best
we can, because we have an amazing team of professionals at Metrolink. But we've heard
this time and time again, we need that commitment from the region. Our team's all in. This group,
people on that table, they want to do better. They want to do more. But it's got to be a
regional thing. So sorry, I got off on a bit of a soapbox. My apologies. Mr. Del Rio has
a question.
consistent with CEO Darren's comments.
We're waiting for that feedback and Metrolink Legal
will work closely with staff
to do the necessary legal research
to figure out some of the uncertainties,
but rather than exploring nine or 12 different options,
we'll wait for that feedback on one
or several different options,
especially Director Tremblay's interest
in the shared fee approach
and what the legislative requirements would be,
But we're prepared to do that legal work with staff
to bring more clarification on any particular option
that the board provides feedback on.
Thanks.
I think, Darren, you're correct.
It's five transportation agencies
that have at least subsidized this agency.
I think what needs to happen is that you should go back
to the CEOs, those five agencies, discuss this,
see if there is some consensus among the five.
And the challenge we have is go to the voters
I didn't ask for a voter approval,
two thirds not gonna happen.
And the challenges that passenger towns account,
it's not just transit, it's also buses too.
Bus agents are dealing with it.
So it's, I think at the end of the day,
what needs to really happen is you brought up there
and is the state needs to step up and come up with a plan.
You know, with a funding source.
So, but I think call back the CEOs
and it'd be nice to hear what they had to say.
Thank you. I appreciate the conversation today about this. As an agency, Ventura County,
that recently has been bloodied by going forward with proposals that require two-thirds vote of
the people. I think we should really keep that in the back of our mind as we look at some of these
proposals in terms of the ability to get it through the public. I appreciate Director
Trimble's idea of the tax on the rideshare because that seems to be less risky going
forward on the voters on the voters back. However, I also want to say that we're at 20% of our fair
recovery and I know that we have been trying very hard to recover that but the the if we can bring
that up on and have participation by our public on helping to support it directly that would be
way I would like to see us go as well. One of the slides earlier talked about the reasons people
are hesitant about using Metrolink and it was the convenience and availability of trains.
So I think if we work on that aspect as well, I know we are, to also this
constant income that we can produce by some sort of fee, that would be a way I would like to see us
perceived. That's direct. Sharon you made a an important statement and and I'll just throw it
out there that Riverside County has looked to we only have a half a cent sales tax and that's very
low for you know we've been the fastest growing we've doubled since 1990 in population we are still
on the top fastest growing counties we don't see an end to that in fact we're looking at doubling by
2050. Again, got a lot of dirt sale. So the challenge and needs for transportation are great.
We have done polls several years and had to pull out moving forward because the polls weren't
showing close enough, it was too much of a stretch to get the two-thirds. And then you're in direct
competition with the county. You mentioned that, that's why I'm bringing it up. It's still within
conversation in Riverside County. I don't know if any other county is talking about it,
but we just don't have the funds to finish the other transportation. And that's what I was saying,
is that I feel that our constituents would look more at expanding concrete, which is what Sacramento
doesn't want to do, but they will support trains, but they won't support expansion. That's what we
all are going into tolling. So, yes, it's through our competition and what the long-term desire of
Riverside County is, we even have the Coachella Valley, I've brought that up before, is looking
at doing their own in competition. So, it tells you how much need is there for transportation
as a whole. But I think that we'd have a challenge with MetroLink to those tasks.
I think, Director Spiegel, this is, you know, I do think that the elements that are being discussed
out of the Transit Transformation Task Force at the state level, and I cite the state rail plan,
and the state's goals of greenhouse gas reduction, the state's goals of access to affordable housing
and more housing, it is right up our alley. This is, that's our job. You know, our average trip is,
One way is 42 miles.
We take a car off the street.
That's 42 miles of VMT reduced.
And by surrogate greenhouse gas emissions.
This should be something the state takes seriously
if the goals really matter.
And so I'm hopeful that that will be a vehicle.
I think, you know, we will have to see what time tells us.
And again, maybe Mr. Watts will be able to give us
a little bit of a look under the hood
on what's happening there and what we might see.
They're looking at putting, what, another 7 billion.
And don't forget about the fuel, alternative fuel.
So things are, yeah, correctable.
Thank you so much.
I've got a question.
Darren, you sort of brought it up as far as the state
of California mandating either buses, freight trucks,
as far as reducing our greenhouse gases.
is your organizations out there that were basically,
because I mean, what are we going to have to do
in the near future?
I mean, obviously we use biofuel, I get that,
it is reducing greenhouse gases,
but I would imagine there's going to be a time
and a place in the near future
that there's going to be mandates to us too,
as far as going towards a greener fuel.
My question, are we ready for that number one, number two?
What are the expenses that we're anticipating in the future?
And if we have to switch to another source
for a vehicle locomotive?
My question is, as we move forward,
is there agencies out there such as AQMD that we can actually
get funding to help us move this system forward?
There's some question right now as it relates to
what the impacts are gonna be on our fleet
and our locomotives.
There has all been this discussion about a CARB rule
regarding in use locomotives and trying an effort
to go to zero emission, they've pulled back
because of some issues that happened in Washington DC,
approaching US EPA.
Our approach to this Director Marquez has been,
we wanna get our fleet to tier four locomotive status
with diesel, with renewable diesel
so that we do everything we can.
The challenge of course is that our system,
the technology simply doesn't exist
for major long haul locomotive type of technology
that's zero emission.
It doesn't, it's not out there.
the manufacturing sector isn't there.
So what we're trying to do under our strategy
is assuming that that's gonna be there
is by use of our tier four locomotives,
that buys us 20 or 25 years using that equipment.
And maybe the manufacturing sector
in the country will catch up,
maybe the freight railroads,
because really if the freight railroads don't go there,
there's gonna be no manufacturing sector
that says I wanna build a zero mission passenger locomotive.
It just isn't, it's just not gonna be there
because the market's not large enough.
So I think our strategy is let's deliver on tier four,
that buys us a long time
and then see where we go from there.
So I don't think that's as big an issue.
Our biggest challenge again,
is how do we operate our system long term
with a revenue stream
where we're not going to five counties every year
and saying, okay, here's what we need this time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A lot of thought I can see around the table
And I think the common issues with respect to our agencies
that support Metrolink,
and I think they're pretty much in sync on that.
Our next item is a briefing
by Burling to Northern Santa Fe
and Mr. CEO, would you introduce our speaker?
Well, I'm gonna introduce at least one,
but I understand there may be, oh, there are two others.
So the first that we're gonna introduce
is certainly someone I've gotten to know
over years in transportation.
long-term Southern California.
I'm going to introduce Lena Kent,
who is now making her way to the podium.
I'll let her introduce her colleagues from BNSF.
Just real quick, Chair Chaffee,
given some of the challenges we had with
our on-time performance as we launched a new schedule,
Chair Chaffee said, boy,
it would be great to hear from BNSF,
that they'd come here in person.
So Lena Kent and the team from BNSF will here talk about a few different things.
And I just, Lena, thank you for being here. You guys did not have to do this.
I made sure that I told my board, I said, okay, everybody be on good behavior.
We're all good partners. We play well in the sandbox. We have struggles.
So again, my thanks for you taking the time and as well as your, your, your colleagues.
Well, thank you, Darren. I appreciate you inviting us and I appreciate the board for
for giving us an opportunity to come in and talk
about operations and some of the challenges
that we've been faced with here recently.
I would say that we have had a great partnership
since MetroLink started, was founded in 1992.
We've been a big part of that I think with you
and working side by side as we try to move both passenger
and freight throughout Southern California.
So I brought my A team today because I know
that there's gonna be a lot of questions.
And instead of doing a PowerPoint presentation,
we thought we'd come in and really just give you
a little bit of information and then give you a chance
if you have some specific questions you wanna ask.
But Rich Denison, he'll come up first.
He's our general manager for the state of California
and he's over all of operations.
And then I also brought Israel Salazar.
He's our assistant police of chief,
assistant chief of police here in California.
And he also I think can provide some valuable insight
in some of the challenges we've been faced with
as an industry here, not only here in California
but in primarily in the Southwest as well.
So I'll start off with Rich.
I'll give him an opportunity to come up first.
Thank you.
Good morning.
I'd like to echo Darren and Lena's comments.
It's been a great partnership for 33 years
and that's been the entirety of my career
here in Southern California.
So I appreciate the time here this morning.
Obviously we struggled last year.
It was a record year out of the ports of LA
and Long Beach for our company.
Israel is gonna talk about some of the theft challenges
we had, but a lot of that, a lot of the challenges were really driven by staging in and out of
the ports of LA and Long Beach. Towards the end of the last year, we implemented a new
process where we won't bring anything down west of Barstow. We hold all that traffic
up up top. We do have one track that's that's local that we do stage trains in for the port
of LA and Long Beach, but that's a very dynamic business down there. We have to navigate long
shoreman windows. We can only spot pull trains during shift change or lunch breaks. And if
you can imagine that's a pretty big port you have two class one railroads and a contractor
that works down there so we operate about 20 trains a day in and out of that facility as does
our competitor so that's a lot of freight moving in and out of the ports of l.a and long beach so
we have to thread a needle and sometimes that can be challenging given certain circumstances so
israel salazar is going to talk about our efforts combating combating that but happy to say that
coming out of fourth quarter last year we're in that mid 70% on time range I
know that's unacceptable for you and certainly that's unacceptable for us and
that's something that we're accustomed to providing happy to report here first
quarter this year we're right at eighty nine point seven or eighty nine point
six percent I think really a tough day yesterday for a number of reasons but
largely driven by service interruptions that were out of our control but we do
have the right processes in place we did move our region Operations Center as I'm
sure you're all aware, last year, June, to our Network
Operations Center, we were one of the last divisions that still
dispatched our only are still dispatched our division. And we
did that out of San Bernardino. So it was a large effort to move
that dispatching team to to Fort Worth and join the rest of the
divisions and dispatching. That turnover went quite well, I
would say that was a huge learning curve and part of part
of our service issues as we roll over to new dispatchers that
need to be trained and learn the territory
and how Southern California really, really operates
because it's quite dynamic.
But we do have a solid set of teams
now that have undergone a number of training sessions.
And now they're holding regular positions.
So we don't have that turnover so you
can expect consistent on-time performance here going forward.
So with that, Israel?
Good morning, everybody.
Israel Salazar, 30 years, law enforcement.
Everybody just calls me Izzo, all of my friends
and colleagues, so very nice to be here.
I wanted to start out by saying thank you
to Orange County and everybody, all the representatives here,
just for our partnership over the years with Orange County
Sheriff's Department and a lot of the municipal agencies
that run through Orange County or make up Orange County.
So thank you for that.
We'd be kind of dead in the water without the help,
but we need it.
Just to inform you about what we're seeing right now,
and you've probably seen a lot of it in the media.
There's been a lot of publications and articles
and news media outlets talking about the crime
that exists right now,
the threat against the railroad in particular.
And right now we've got three tiers of threats.
The lowest tier, least sophisticated tier,
your opportunists, and quite frankly,
a lot of that is the homeless population,
which exists throughout our nation.
the second tier or your local gangs that will work in unison
with a certain amount of sophistication
to burglarized trains, steel product from containers,
stop trains, vandalized trains, et cetera.
But what we're faced with right now is something
that I haven't seen, 30 years doing this,
I did not see before five years ago.
We have hundreds, hundreds of cartel members
that are attacking our trains daily.
They're based primarily in Los Angeles.
They operate primarily throughout
the Southwest United States,
and they're made up of solely foreign nationals,
most notably from Mexico.
We are operating on multiple levels
as a railroad to combat this.
We have field efforts that are in place
throughout the Southwest United States
to include Orange County, a very important part of it.
We have ground resources, air resources.
At any given time, we've got Cessna's flying
throughout the Southwest United States,
monitoring from above, drone technology, you name it.
We're doing everything we can.
On the investigative side,
we're partnered with multiple federal agencies.
Very happy to report that we have reached 37 indictments
over the past 18 months with people serving sentences
at the federal level or the board of prisons
ranging from 10 years to life in prison
for their acts against the railroad.
So we take it very seriously.
I'll just end by saying thanks, open it up for questions.
But again, the broadest point I wanna make here
is that we need your help.
These people are not, our threat is not coming in by train.
They're not coming in by train.
They're coming across the border.
They're coming in from local communities
and they present a threat, not just to us,
but the local communities, all of you
and the people who surround you.
So anyway, thank you all.
And is there anything else you wanted me to touch on?
Yep, so this gave us that backdrop, thank you.
I just wanted to explain what transpires.
Our trains are anywhere from one mile to three miles long.
And the way these criminals act
is they cut what's called an air hose.
And our air brake system works different
than that of your vehicle.
So when you cut the air brakes,
the air brakes are charged,
that releases the air that applies the brakes.
They're cutting multiple air hoses throughout our trains,
which can take anywhere from an hour to three hours
to get that train back up and running.
So you can imagine when you have something
that's anywhere from a mile to three miles long
being cut and not being able to move for multiple hours.
And when that happens multiple times,
because these groups work in conjunction,
they may sabotage one train just for us
to focus on that train and hit a train that's
three or four trains back.
So now you tie up multiple miles of track.
So that's what's transpiring, and that's our challenge,
is we don't know exactly what they're after.
Sometimes we do.
There are certain products that they hit on a regular cadence,
but there are certain times that they don't.
They're just shopping.
They get some intel sometimes from somebody
that's working there, and they go off
to a specific product that ends up delaying
not just our passenger programs,
but certainly interstate commerce.
So there's a significant effort pointed towards this.
Israel talked about the 37 indictments.
That is the best of any class one in North America,
that we take this very serious.
We're employing every resource that we have.
We're deploying additional resources
to assist with what we have here in California,
along with asking the communities
to get engaged and involved,
because initially it was just a trespassing crime.
So now under the new administration,
we've certainly got some push towards that effort
and we're making some good progress.
It's not something that's gonna go away overnight.
It's gonna be with us for a while,
but as we work through this together
with our neighboring communities,
we hope to ratify this in the coming future.
I just wanna make one other comment related to the theft.
We did hear from one district attorney
who indicated to us, it's a property crime, who cares?
It's really not just a property crime.
This has greater impacts to not only our communities,
it obviously has impacted Metrolink
and the thousands of passengers that ride it daily.
It's impacted communities in terms of blocked crossings.
I will tell you, I see Supervisor Spiegel here.
We had a number of blocked crossings
that was also impacting Metrolink traffic in Riverside
as they were cutting our air hoses
as we went through that city,
obviously tying up road crossings,
preventing kids from getting to school.
It is much greater than a property crime.
And so as both Rich and Israel commented on,
we are starting to see some greater collaboration
on that front and some prosecutions.
There were times when we were arresting people
and they were out the same day
where they literally were not being prosecuted
and that should not be allowed to happen.
Israel mentioned Orange County.
I will tell you that it's LA County, Riverside County,
Orange County, San Bernardino County
have all been extremely helpful to us.
We most recently did a special train trip
where members of each one of your agencies joined us.
We got on and we did a confidential briefing with them
on what we were being faced with here
in our Southern TransCon.
And we've certainly seen a lot of help
from your various agencies that have been helping
to make those arrests and your district attorneys
who are now prosecuting.
So it is something that we can't let up on
and we will continue to put the pressure on
to make sure that these people are punished
for the crimes that they're committing,
not only on the property side,
but obviously to the supply chain,
to the passenger operations
that are here in Southern California.
With that, we can always open up at some point for questions,
but with that, maybe perhaps we can talk about
some other things that we're also working on,
Talk about some port operations.
I mean, Rich commented on just the record volumes
that we've been seeing out of the port.
I will also tell you that BNSF has been working
on a major project in Barstow
that will help from a capacity standpoint here
throughout Southern California.
Well, it'll be a place where we will be able to stage
and hold trains and not bring them down into the basin
until we're able to move them directly into the ports.
That project is on 4,600 acres.
will eliminate millions of trucks from our Southern California freeways and certainly help from a
velocity standpoint here in the basin. That's a project that we certainly could use all of your
support as well to push that project forward. It does have widespread support at the federal,
state, county, and local level, and certainly something we're excited about and all the benefits
that it's going to bring here to the region. So with that, we'll stop and then open it up,
if you have any questions for us.
Any questions from directors?
Yes, Director Molina.
Yes, thank you for your presentation.
It's wonderful to hear.
There's a lot of work being done with the federal government
to support operator safety for other transit systems.
Does that affect your operators for your trains?
I haven't heard any discussion about that
because I know all of the agencies are working towards that
and to protect them like the airlines
have protected their staff.
Is that anything like that an issue?
We have a regular training program
and certification process that we go through
and that has not changed.
They're required annually to recertify
either by a book of rules or some type of a simulator.
If that's what you're asking.
Well, I guess what I'm, I probably should restate it.
More on is there a need to, okay,
so there's a move to protect operators
of all transit systems for operator safety,
putting shields on the buses and so on.
Is that an issue for trains?
Is your personnel suffering from that?
And so would that be part of a push for BNSF?
Yeah, we have not.
Our locomotives are built in lined in steel.
They've got dual glass windows
that are potentially bulletproof.
We have not had any actions taken against our crew members.
In fact, when we go through some of these issues
with the theft.
Our employees obviously need to get off the train
to go inspect and see what's wrong.
As soon as they see somebody,
they're instructed to turn around
and go seek protection in the capital locomotive
and we let our resource protection
and local police department handle it.
So that's-
That's what I was thinking.
Okay. Yeah.
So we have changed some processes and procedures
just as a result of that.
Correct.
Director Tremblay.
Yeah. Thanks for your presentation.
And on the thefts,
I was particularly intrigued on the 37 indictments,
and these are cartels with hundreds of foreign nationals.
Are these indictments all local indictments
from district attorney's offices,
or are any of them on the federal level through DOJ?
100% of the 37 that I mentioned are federal indictments.
They're all federal.
Yes.
So are there specific prosecutors
or assistant U.S. attorneys at DOJ
tasked with these prosecutions, in other words, is there a dedicated unit coming, for example,
out of Central District to prosecutors to look at these?
Yeah, we're prosecuting through the DOJ, I just want to clarify, we're prosecuting through
the U.S. Attorney's Office in both Phoenix and the Central District of California, which
is out of Los Angeles.
Right.
So is there a team at the Central District of Los Angeles, a number of prosecutors who
are actually assigned specifically to this issue?
No, it's a work in progress, but we do have a point of contact at the Phoenix branch.
The Central District we have contacts, but we are partnered with HSI, FBI, and Border
Patrol in some cases, but no, we don't have a team dedicated to that.
I know there's some talk of that, but no, we don't have a pointed team, if that makes
sense.
Thank you.
introduction with the KAR at the federal level, they'll prosecute Class 1 railroad crimes.
Right, because they are federal crimes. Right. That's okay. And we're working towards that
right now through the administration in Washington DC, we just haven't got there yet.
Yeah, I know. Thank you. Just to compliment what you're asking, and Rich's point to his point,
at the state level, we do have cooperation in some counties, Orange County being one of them,
where we are seeing some stateside prosecution as well when a case doesn't meet the threshold
at the federal level or the evidence is not sufficient or doesn't reach their bar, we are
getting some cooperation. I can tell you San Bernardino County, for example, Orange County is
another one. We do have a court-appointed person who we deal with and file all of our cases with.
Okay, thank you. Which is great. Thank you. Did that adequately answer everything? Yep.
Okay, you got it. Yep. Okay, go ahead.
So to be fair, we had a mini briefing on the Barstow gateway before you came in. Can you tell us
how that's going to work? And of course, as a commuter agency, we're very much, you know,
dedicated to getting as much usage as we can in our shared use corridors. How will that work? And
will it free up some extra slots, I guess they call it, for our commuter rails on some of those lines?
Yes, it's two parts Leena mentioned the truck traffic this this project will allow evacuation of freight quicker off the ports of LA and Long Beach where we have an average of the six day dwell.
We expect this to reduce it somewhere in the three day type 12 on the westbound side where it benefits. I would say the San Bernardino Riverside area predominantly passenger trains would be on our block swapping yard will have the ability to bring in freight from the east and west and we talked about earlier.
I talked about threading the needle with the shift changes and those types of things. We'll be able to build
terminal sized trains
Specifically for each marine terminal. So that's significant because right now what happens is
some of our trains have something that might go to a terminal in Long Beach and some that goes to a terminal in LA and
One or the other can't take it and that causes delays
Especially if it's beyond the point of no return, which I would say is really west of Barstow
This will give us the ability to just build a train for a terminal that size and just rifle shot it right in
into the marine terminal. So we won't have that staging or delaying of trains to try
to meet those types of windows because we'll be able to go directly to a specific marine
terminal. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, yeah, that does. Thank you.
And I think, you know, as we all prepare for the Olympics, how do we increase that velocity
in a very congested corridor? And that project is one way that we believe we'll be able to
do that. If in fact we can get it online by that time period. I mean, right now, the draft
CIR for that project is scheduled to come out at the end of this year. Final will be
2026 and we'll start construction shortly thereafter and we anticipate opening it in
2028. That's if we don't have any delays. I would ask all of you who have a vested interest
in freeing up and ensuring some velocity improvements on that corridor, get with your state representatives,
help us push this project forward in a more expedited fashion. It certainly does. I will
knock on wood. We have zero opposition to that project. It is very something that it's even in
the state rail plant. Everybody sees that as something that's really going to benefit not only
the state of California, our region, the state of California, but the nation's supply chain,
but we need to be able to bring it forward, you know, in an expedited fashion.
I agree. Thank you. Thank you.
So my question has to do with a little bit more of the theft issues that you were talking about.
they're cutting air brakes which to me means that it's because your trains are stopped.
I presume that they're, are they able to get on a train that's moving?
Yeah, so there's a couple of things that happen.
I mentioned earlier that they may delay a train and hit the third or fourth train.
They can cut a track wire and cause a red signal.
They can get on it at origin when we're building the train.
They're very good at tucking themselves in the containers and hiding.
and then they'll just ride it and they may they may decide to stop it around Fullerton. They may
get a signal from whoever's in charge of this gang for the night that's robbing the trains.
They may wait until it gets out on the cajon sub coming up the mountain and hit them there and say
okay this is a good spot we've got our trucks in route hit it right there. They'll pop it there
and they'll multiple or they may even wait until it gets out on the needle sub in the middle of
the desert out there where there's nobody which happens often and we've seen it where they'll
wait and hit it when it hits Arizona. So there's really no rhyme or reason to where they do. They
have multiple ways of doing it though. If it was simple, it's just all we had to do is protect it
from this point, never stop a train. That'd be great. That's not realistic. We can't not stop
trains because things happen. Cars park on the crossings, run gates, get struck. But I mean,
there's all types of things that happen that stop a train, but it doesn't necessarily have to be
stop for them to make that happen. They're just reaching over and cutting it. They get a sawzall
with a blade on it about this long. It's scary what they do but they're hanging in between the
cars and cutting the arrows doing those types of things. So all the train might be doing 60 miles
an hour. That's exactly right. It's like riding a horse and being good at it. You can stop it
wherever you want, whenever you want. I'll just compliment what he's saying, burglary crews will
operate in three stages. The first stage is a couple of vehicles that are scout vehicles that
are looking for us. They look at the cops. There's very good looking. They check hotels, check
everywhere. The second phase are your workers. It's typically eight to 10 people with most
sophisticated hand tools. Hand tools these days are great. Milwaukee Tool makes some great stuff.
Grinders, you name it. Reciprocating sauce and they go to work on the containers and then the third
tier or the third wave is your pickup vehicles and typically an organizer and they can unload
a container and be gone hit a freeway in 10 minutes. They're lagging at it.
And they use box trucks and offload them. We've seen them unload a 53-foot container in about 12
and a half minutes. That's the way you get to load them.
So that's unfortunate that they can do this on a moving train. I was hopeful that the new
project up uh that that was just talked about could help eliminate that by keeping these trains
moving at full speed from Barstow into the port and back. Yeah it's certainly going to help with
that velocity will improve because again like I talked about the ports are our biggest variables
our terminals are our scheduled railroad the ports are the biggest variable so that will definitely
help with that but but we do have service interruptions we're an outdoor assembly line
right so there are times trains are going to stop but in terms of the overall absolutely and
especially with the expansion projects that we have planned to complement Barstow International
Gateway some triple track segments that are currently a bottleneck you look at Fullerton
look between Fullerton and Esperanza and then Esperanza to West Colton I mean those are all
things that are part of the the plan the long-term plan is something that's certainly needed
as we continue to grow and move freight across the nation but all those things will complement
each other to help with dedicated tracks for freight trains and dedicated tracks for passenger
trains. And I guess I'll just last thing on my mind is is there something that BNSF, you know,
the freight railroads can do? I'm sure you're doing everything you can, but is there some
quicker method of changing out broken parts or destroyed parts to get the trains back up as
quick as possible? I'm not sure if that, you know, if you have a quick release hose that you can just
snap back a new one in five seconds versus 20, 30 minutes. I don't know if that's part of your
plan or if you have things, because again, the longer your train sit, the longer our train sit
or vice versa if we have an issue. So I'm just curious if that's something that you guys are,
how you're working on it, what your future plans might be to maybe engage in technology if there's
there's some newer methods to keep things moving quicker.
We've employed rapid responders.
So we have folks that are out on the territory
that are fitted with air hoses.
A conductor for him to walk back
and make a repair could be ours.
We have people in trucks that have every part
you can imagine for a rail car
so they can repair it expedited
and expedite the movement, right?
The issue really becomes when there's multiples.
It doesn't matter how many parts you have.
they cut seven air hoses, it's going to take some time to get those repaired because you have to
unscrew them and then screw them back in. That's really the way the system works. They're already
a quick release, but I mean really it's a simple glad hand that just comes together and clips,
and that's all it takes. But once they cut it, you have to unscrew it and then screw it back in.
We have a team, unfortunately, we've had to spend that kind of money and do those things
because of what's transpiring here in California.
Yeah, I have one more question. Yes. It's not a stupid question.
Is there a trend or items that are that they're targeting to steal, or is it just opportunity
and and are is are the list the contents public information?
This thing's not a long to commit, don't forget about it.
Go ahead, go for it.
Yeah, any target, primarily high-value do.
They want stuff that has a screen of them.
But they will steal primarily high-dollar electronics,
high-dollar clothing.
We see a lot of high-dollar shoes
that were built in the favorite target.
You might have seen that used here recently.
But high-dollar stuff, they can be moved on the black market
quickly, and they prefer stuff that
that doesn't have serial numbers.
It does.
A lot of the time, well, anything might help.
They pass over things like low-value flow rate,
things like that, and they will shop
until they find something that's the areas
that screen will do a shop.
Any other director?
My comment is, we need to be supportive
of the Barstow project, and I don't know.
We should agendize that at a meeting
so we can take a formal position.
I'm not sure if that's the case.
I'd like to do that at our next meeting.
That benefits us tremendously as well.
But we'd like to be supportive of that.
And of course, once we do that,
we'll turn loose our own lobbyists
to help out on that as well.
Thank you.
Like to thank you all for coming and joining us.
We hope we can meet in more times and places
and work together on everything that we are doing
on the board over there.
At this time, I think our secretary would like to speak.
Well, we'll go ahead and give them their proper
goodbye first, if you want.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I know, we're right on the stretch roll.
I'm gonna go ahead and excuse our board members first,
back to the Skyline Bee Room to grab the lunch boxes.
We do have four different types of sandwiches available,
vegetarian, chicken salad, turkey, and Italian,
and they're all labeled.
I know it, I get down at that.
Oh yeah, did I look shocked?
Oh, these are rich families.
You were sending them down.
Well, I wasn't.
I failed miserably.
Give me a picture, that was all I was gonna take.
No, no, no, no, I blew it.
Darren, hand it to me and I put it settle down.
Go ahead.
No, I got to forgive.
I'll do this.
I'll take it with him.
Because you got to be on the verge.
You got to be capping it.
I can be.
I can be.
I can be.
I can be.
I can be.
We were trying to snap on the way home.
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
I can sleep on the train.
You need to go.
Okay, everyone.
This is a working lunch.
So it's more than your jobs and need to work.
We're gonna have a presentation now on our safety clinic.
So we look forward to a good safety briefing.
More than that actually, it's a clinic.
Hope so, I think we're gonna squeeze a little juice actually.
So let's see if we can get there.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm very fortunate to be presenting now
and on about 30 minutes from now.
So thank you for scheduling me during lunch, Noelia.
That's great.
Definitely appreciate that.
My name is Eric Smith.
the emergency manager for Metrolink. I've got about 36 years on the railroad now. No, the
axles were not wooden back then. It seems like it, but it's been many, many years for most of that
time, including on day one on Metrolink day back in 1992. I've been connected in some way to Metrolink,
so I feel honored to work in this role now, where I'm able to use all of the different
experiences I've had over the years as a mechanic, as a locomotive engineer, as a conductor,
as a manager, as a trainer, to kind of bring all that experience together to talk about
emergency management today. So I'd like to share with you one of our values. Safety is foundational.
You heard Mr. Kettle say it today. Everything we do demonstrates an appreciation for quality of life
and every act values the lives of our employees, contractors, co-workers, customers, and communities.
And I think that statement, that value is especially true when we're dealing with
with emergency management and emergency situations.
At a time when our customers and our employees
are the most vulnerable,
that's really when they need the most help.
So that's why this role is so important
and so vital for me.
We're gonna go through some of our procedures,
some of our policies today.
We're gonna touch on a little bit of everything.
We're gonna try to give you an understanding
of what our plans contain,
what our policies are, what our philosophy is,
some of the things that we do in emergency situations,
and how we advocate for our customers and our employees
at all times, right?
I heard it said earlier today that we carry precious cargo.
That's very true as well.
You know, we deliver kids to school.
We deliver older kids to college.
We even deliver CEOs home at the end of the day occasionally.
Like to bring them into the office once in a while as well.
So it's definitely precious cargo.
Grandparents, aunts and uncles,
moms and dads going home to pick up their kids
in the afternoons.
That's one of the reasons why what we do is so essential.
So when it comes to safety,
One of the first things that you need to know
if you're gonna be riding Metrolink trains
or in service to Metrolink is the number to call
when you see suspicious activity or illegal activity
or anything that concerns you really, right?
So the number you call is right here.
It's our security operation center.
We call it the SOC for short.
We like our acronyms at Metrolink.
The number is 866-640-5190.
That is probably the most important number you need
for Metrolink because that number can get you a hold
just about anybody on Metrolink just by making that call, they can either make the report for
you or they can get you connected with the person that you need to get a hold of. But they have it.
Do a lot more than Colin, me in the moment. Call me after and then we'll take care of it,
please Eric. Yeah, that that's the critical number and it's every, you will, you can't
miss it on our trains. Yep. It's posted in several locations on our property, at our stations,
in our facilities, also in several locations on the train itself. You can see one of the decals there
near the doors on one of our Metrolink cars. It's also posted on the back of, if you have that green
or blue ID card, it's on the back of the ID card as well. So everybody that's got this badge on them
has this phone number with them at all times. And I will also close this little section with,
if it's not already in your cell phone, it probably should be. Anybody who is on the Metrolink property
especially if you are connected to us the way many of you are,
you're going to need to call that number at some point.
Some of us call it more than once a week.
So definitely put that number in your cell phone
so that you have it handy.
And again, that is probably the best and quickest way
to get what you need, whether it be law enforcement
help, first responder help, or somebody
to call Darren for you and have him call you back.
All right, so it should be saved in your cell phone.
So I'll give you one more second to look at the number there.
I'll give it to you afterwards if you'd like,
or you can look in the back of your card there.
All right, the next thing I want to talk about,
this is probably the second most important number.
This is a photo of the sign that we have right over here,
the blue and white emergency notification sign.
This is actually a nationwide mandated system
for railroad crossings.
Every railroad crossing in the United States
has a blue and white sign similar to this one
that has the emergency phone number to call
for emergencies at that crossing, okay?
It's very important that you have to have
The phone number for that crossing,
because they're all connected to some individual railroad,
right?
So on Metrolink, and the reason I brought the sign with us,
is that I wanted to stress that our signs are
about three times bigger than the BNSF sign,
than the Union Pacific sign, than just about any other railroad
in the United States, even LA Metro signs on the light rail.
These signs are even on the light rail.
The sign does have our phone number.
It has the owner of the railroad,
usually is posted somewhere on the sign. It has the street number or the highway
number or the name and then at the bottom you're going to see two unique
identifying numbers on the Metrolink sign for that specific crossing. The
first one is the California Public Utilities number for that crossing. The
second one is the DOT number for that crossing. If you call that number at any
crossing, you look for that sign, it'll be on the right hand mast of the crossbuck
and that number is going to get you in touch with the person that can get the
railroad shut down for you. That's why that number is so important. So we've
seen a rash here recently in the United States and it's probably a YouTube thing
more than anything. People will film the train hitting the vehicle in the
crossing but they won't call the number of that's the phone numbers right there
in front of me as they're filming so that's very important. In fact there was
a fatal accident on the Union Pacific in Pecos, Texas last December where many
people were filming the incident, filming the accident, but failing to call the
number that was right there posted in front of them. So that number is
different than the SOC number? That is a different number than the SOC number,
but they are basically in the same room at our dispatch operations center.
They're all basically working in the same realm. They're all minutes, seconds
away from being able to talk to the dispatcher and shut the railroad down.
This is actually our crossing malfunction hotline, or our grade crossing hotline.
but they are very close to the SOC, very close to the chief dispatcher, so that's
a good point as well. One of the reasons that we share this information about the
blue and white sign so much is our welcome to Mr. Kettle just a few years
back, right? It's about three years ago now in Pacoima near Whiteman Airport. We
had an airplane crash land on a crossing nearby the airport. The LAPD acted very
quickly they were there within seconds they pulled the pilot out of the plane
alive and just a few seconds later we plowed through the plane at about 75
miles an hour so it was not not a great welcome for our CEO but that was kind of
a learning experience for you right it kind of taught you what the path forward
is going to be about right yes the quick side story was a Saturday morning if I
remember correctly the news got out some of you were recall recall former chair
of Veteran Links Board, Bryan Humphrey, who worked for LA Fire, or I think still does.
He calls me on a Saturday morning. He says, Darren, one of your trains just hit an airplane.
And I am new to railroading. So I'm thinking, how the heck did our train get up in the air
and hit an airplane? And so then, of course, we found this all out. And if you do, if you're
curious about it as Eric said there is video of this it is it was the matter
of seconds that the first responders were able to pull the person the pilot
out of the plane it Hollywood would not have been able to build it do the time
of any better worse has the case may be so yeah that was a that was part of the
introduction to this to the realm excellent so yeah well as we learned
anything can happen on Metro Lincoln that's another reason why emergency
preparedness is so important, right?
And it's actually, if you go back before Metrolink,
it's actually not the first time that an airplane has
been struck by a train on the Losan corridor.
It actually happened in the 60s down there
where the Irvine station is today.
A jet fighter landing at El Toro crashed just
short of the runway, and a Santa Fe train hit it.
So it can happen again.
So just keep that in mind.
So another way to get in touch with somebody that
can give you some help if you're involved
in a situation on a train where you need some assistance
is the passenger intercom system.
Every car on Metrolin, including the aero equipment out
on the Redlands extension, has a passenger emergency intercom.
This intercom is usually located near the doors.
So if you make your way to the doors on whatever equipment
you're on, you'll find it marked there on the wall.
There's a button to push.
You push that button, and that's going
to put you in touch with the engineer.
The engineer is then going to be able to contact the conductor
and say, hey, there's somebody in car 638 that needs some help.
Can you go to car 638?
So that's another great way to get a hold of somebody
should you be involved or need some quick assistance
on a Metrolink train.
The car number is posted there right next to it as well,
so you can give that information to the engineer.
And of course, our conductors, we generally
have one conductor on board, five to six cars.
You know, they're walking back and forth.
They may not always be exactly where we need them
at the right moment.
So having that intercom is probably the quickest way
to get the crew member to you in whatever car you're at.
And I'll go back to the SOC for a second as well.
If there is an issue on the train,
they're also going to reach out to the conductor
and let them know which car you're in
and let the conductor know that they need to head to that car
to assist that person as well.
Any questions about the intercom?
All right, we'll keep moving forward.
So onboard the equipment, and I'll go back.
In the early 90s, there's a series of passenger train
accidents that really don't have great outcomes as far
as the response part after the effects, right?
So there's a few big ones in the early 90s.
We won't go over those now.
But that leads the FRA to understand
that there's a need for passenger carrying rail.
It's been particular to have some form of regulation
that will say, hey, you guys need to have a passenger emergency
preparedness plan, something that
will kind of set the tone for what you do for training
for your own employees, what we do for the equipment,
the standards we have for the equipment,
the emergency equipment that we have on board the trains,
but also the training that we give to the firefighters,
the training that we give to law enforcement.
So that becomes a regulation back in 1998.
Brian Humphries was a big part of that.
I was actually a conductor at the time,
and I worked with Brian Humphries as an Amtrak employee
to develop that first series of training
that we did on that regulation.
So his heart has been near and dear to this as well
for many years as well.
But so that law goes into effect
in the early late 90s at this point.
And we begin to do a lot more training.
We begin to do a lot more talking about this kind of thing
and planning for it.
But as a result, some of the things that happen
is we end up with a regulated amount of emergency equipment
on board the train.
So we have today, by regulation, we have a pry bar.
We have a first aid kit that is sealed in shrink wrap.
and I'll tell you why that's important later.
And we have auxiliary lighting,
and we have fire extinguishers located
in several places throughout the car.
Many years ago, we had sledgehammers and axes,
and we found that those were not necessarily something
that it obviously wasn't a part of the regulation,
but it obviously wasn't something that we wanted
to get in the wrong hands on board the train as well.
So we got rid of those things,
and we're down to just what's regulated on there.
Looking up at the photos,
you see the stainless steel locker up there.
That's on the aero equipment.
All of that emergency equipment is
contained in that little box there near the door
on the aero trains.
The equipment on the legacy trains,
or the Metrolink trains, is usually
located near the restrooms.
The fire extinguishers are on top level and bottom level
on each end of the car, but the other emergency equipment
is located near the restrooms pretty close
to where that passenger intercom is.
So we also have auxiliary lighting on board the train.
We do that in a couple of different ways.
We have a flashlight that's with the tools
that the conductor can access, or the passenger
can access an emergency.
We have battery-powered emergency lighting on every car.
That lighting is intended to last for about 90 minutes.
We actually do check that about every 180 days or so.
We will take that car in the shop.
We'll take it off power, and somebody
will sit there with their watch and see
how long the lighting stays lit, right?
So that's another way of protecting passengers.
Should there be a loss of power or some type
of an emergency.
But we also have, because of the regulation,
we have photo luminescent markings
on the floor of every car.
You can kind of see it in that aisle photo there.
Little bit of a dark photo.
But you could follow those glow-in-the-dark strips
on the floor to lead you out of the car
if it was filled with smoke or if it was completely dark.
It's gonna take you right to the exit door
very quickly, as a matter of fact, too.
No detours on that route.
All of our signage onboard the train
that deals with emergency procedures
or equipment is also photo luminescence.
So it's going to glow in the dark for some time as well.
And that's all part of that regulation
that we just talked about, having those things in place.
So it's important to know, like I mentioned,
that we do a lot of training.
Our conductors are obviously going
to be trained in everything that I'm talking to you today about.
But they also get some hands-on training
for how to use some of those tools,
how to communicate with the dispatchers.
That's a little bit more hands-on than what we're doing today.
but they're obviously well-trained.
It's very important to understand
that they are going to be the railroad incident commander
until a person like myself from SCRA arrives
or another Metrolink officer arrives.
We use the incident command structure
just like the military does,
just like the fire department's do,
just like law enforcement does,
so that we are setting up our scene
or setting up our incident and managing it the same way
that the first responders are gonna manage.
We want to be speaking the same language.
So that conductor has some training in incident management
and being an incident commander, that's
kind of what they're doing all day long.
The conductor, I like to think of them
as the captain of the ship.
They get to walk around with the fancy suit and smile a lot.
And they're actually in charge of everything.
The engineer is the smart guy.
He's actually up front, sitting in the seat,
making the train go when the conductor tells him
to make it go.
But the engineer I always thought was the smarter guy,
because even on a standing-only train,
he definitely has a seat, or she definitely has a seat.
So they also have much of this same training.
When we go back to that auxiliary lighting for a moment,
even the regulation even calls for anybody
who's a crew member on a passenger train
to actually have a flashlight on their person.
And they have to check that flashlight every day
before they go to work to make sure that it works.
And all of these things get added to the regulation.
Those are all things that were discovered
in those accidents in the early 90s
where we had shortcomings, the things that we needed to fix.
So whenever there's a situation on a train,
your first chance, we already talked about calling the SOC,
but you could also seek out the conductor.
Sometimes you might have to walk a car or two to find them.
They might come past you at some point in the trip,
but they're gonna be in uniform.
They're gonna be the subject matter expert
on that equipment.
They're gonna be able to help you
with just about everything.
I sure hope they could, that's their job, right?
But just keep in mind, they're well trained.
They've got all this stuff under their belt,
and it's definitely not their first rodeo on Metrolink.
They've been through this more than once.
Even after they've only been here several months or weeks,
they've already experienced some of this stuff
and have experience with it.
All right, so keep in mind that our sheriff's deputies are also
out there.
They do ride the trains.
They also perform the law enforcement functions
on board our trains.
They do some work on the ride away as well,
but they also receive this training.
In fact, I had the pleasure of completing
their annual training or their bi-annual training just earlier this week, so we had several
of them and the dog in class making sure that they were prepared to address all of these
issues that we're talking about today as well.
All right, the conductor is also going to be the person that decides whether or not
evacuation is necessary.
In most cases, staying on the train is going to be the preferred way to handle any type
of incident.
We do not want to leave the train if we don't have to.
The only time the conductor is going to make that call is if staying on the train is going
to mean a continuing threat to life safety by staying on that train.
In most cases, that first choice would be to move the passengers from one car into another
car on the train that is safe, if that's the case.
We've seen that with – we had a gentleman not too long ago, many years ago now, I guess,
on the Pacific Surfliner that had a weapon.
Passengers notified the conductor.
The conductor quietly evacuated most of the folks from that car, got them into the other
parts of the train, and then locked the doors on both sides of that suspect.
He ended up being barricaded in there for eight hours, but the people were safe in the
other parts of the train.
The conductor was thinking quick, and they managed to get the passengers safe without
necessarily leaving the train right away.
They eventually did, but that's all part of the training, knowing when is the right time
to leave.
Why do we stay on the train?
We could have a number of things wrong outside of the train, down power lines, damage structures,
fuel spills.
There's anything outside that train could be an unknown environment.
We're going to make sure that we evaluate that first.
The next option, should we need to leave the train, would be to go through the side doors.
The same doors that we came in on, those would be the doors that we go out.
We don't like to do that until we have help in place.
We generally are able to get somebody to the scene fairly soon.
And when we need to make that call, if we've got the time,
we're going to do that when we have plenty of help in place.
The photo in the middle there is from a minor derailment
that we had right about 3 o'clock in the afternoon
back in 2015 at Union Station.
The train was upright.
It was completely derailed.
But we had power.
We had air conditioning.
We had restrooms.
There was no need to evacuate the people immediately.
we stayed there until we got all the folks
from back then at Gateway,
from headquarters were able to come down.
We basically made a human chain
from the train to the platforms.
It snarled up traffic for the rest of the day,
but we like to do things in a controlled way
as much as possible.
We don't just jump into things.
We think things through, we evaluate the risk,
and we decide the best ways to do those.
The last option is gonna be to go
through the emergency windows,
and I'll tell you why that's the last option.
This is a decal on some of the trains.
It's posted in most of the equipment as well.
There are emergency evacuation instructions
posted in the lower level of most cars, all cars actually.
And then we also have this on our website,
this graphic as well.
It tells you how to remove emergency windows.
It tells you how to open the doors without a key.
There's a couple ways to do that.
Let's talk about windows first,
since that was the topic we just left on the other slide.
So to remove an emergency window,
First of all, they're all marked.
There's about 18 of them, I believe, in every car.
They have red handles at the top of the window,
at the top of the pane of glass.
You pull down on those red handles,
and you remove the rubber gasket from the window.
At that point, the window can be pulled in towards you.
It weighs about 70 pounds.
It's safety glass.
It's got the Mylar coating, much like an automobile.
It's going to shatter into about 10,000 pieces,
but it's going to hold together for a time being, right?
But in most cases, when you're removing that window,
it's not shattered, that's a good thing.
You're gonna pull that window in towards the car
and lower it.
So the only way that you're getting out of that car
through the window is to kind of hang out the window
and drop down.
Or if it's on the cars on its side,
you would have to climb out.
But going through the windows is not ideal.
It's not gonna be the greatest way.
But it is an option for us.
And it is well marked all the way throughout the car.
Firefighters are also trained how to remove the windows
from the outside.
They don't have the red handles,
but they do have tools.
And at each window, there's a decal
that gives fire departments instructions on that.
And I'll talk more about the firefighters in a minute.
To exit the train in an emergency, make sure it's stopped.
That's always good.
You can open the doors with a safe.
There's a safety pool on the inside near the door
and on the outside.
It's covered with a plexiglass panel that's very scored.
It's easy to break.
Customers do it all the time.
You kind of tap it with your fist.
You pull on the ring, that cable will release the doors from the motor, and you're able
to very easily open the doors with your bare hands.
It takes it off that motor.
There's no more resistance, and you're able to leave the crane that way.
We train firefighters on that as well, especially the outside one as well.
Any questions on those methods of evacuation?
All right.
We've got some special circumstances on Metrolink that we do like to talk about with everybody.
We've got two out of six tunnels on our system that are about a mile and a half long, 23
feet tall, 16 feet wide, a mile and a half long.
So there are some issues with these tunnels that we need to talk about, and the regulation
says that we will talk about that with our responders, with our crews.
First of all, there's really only one threat to our life safety if we're stuck inside the
tunnel on a train.
Does anybody want to guess what that hazard would be, what that threat would be?
The diesel exhaust gases, as long as that diesel engine is allowed to run, eventually
we're all going to get very sleepy, right.
So we want to make sure the crews know if they should become stuck in a tunnel.
One of the first things they're going to do is to make arrangements to get up to the
locomotive and shut off the emergency fuel cut off so that we don't have the exhaust
gases continue to fill the space, right.
So that's the first thing we do in a tunnel.
Those tunnels that are over a thousand feet long are two out of six, almost a mile and
a half long.
We've actually added some mitigations to those tunnels.
We have lighting that can be turned on by the dispatcher in Pomona at the dock, the
dispatching operations center.
So when the call comes in that there's a train stuck in the tunnel, the dispatcher can turn
the lighting on.
It's extremely bright.
I just got some photos of it yesterday.
It's all LED lighting now.
It's just been upgraded.
But it's like daylight in there when those lights are on.
That's why they're not on all the time.
I can also turn those lights on from each portal.
There's a lock box.
in the field can go out there and turn the lights on manually
from the actual location.
We also added a radio antenna a few years ago now as well.
Prior to that antenna running the length of the tunnel,
we did not have radio communication from the train.
So if somebody had stalled in the tunnel,
somebody would have had to walk out with a radio
to actually make the emergency call.
So when the regulation took effect,
one of the first things we did was add that radio antenna
so that we never lose communication
with the dispatcher.
Couple of other things that we're concerned about when it comes to emergencies we have what we call flyovers
We've got four of them that qualify as a flyover the photo here on the right is the redondo flyer flyover about two and a half
Miles south of Union Station
This is our Orange County and our Paris Valley line and the Amtrak surf liners operate over this flyover
This takes them up and over the Union Pacific or the Alameda corridor as well as the LA River
This structure is elevated obviously because it goes up and over
But it's also very very long probably about a mile and a half long
I do not want to have to evacuate
300 people and walk them on that little walkway to solid ground if need be I'm gonna stay on the train and wait till I can
Remove the train through some other means or have firefighter assistance to get us off of there
Not a great place to work from so we're gonna avoid that we have three others to talk about
There's actually two in El Monte one on each side of town the Rio Hondo flyover takes us off of the ten freeway and into
El Monte station and then there's one on the opposite side of town that takes us up and over the Union Pacific and
gets us set up to head to Baldwin Park and Covina and then also over the Union Pacific and the
the San Gabriel River so a very long structure there as well
And then there's one in San Bernardino that takes us over the BNSF that keeps our trains moving bridge
So those flyovers are actually designed to keep that traffic fluid, so we do need them.
They're a necessary evil. Nobody wants to take 300 people off and walk them to the other end.
Another trouble spot we have that would be trouble would be the Ten Freeway.
If I had to evacuate a train on the Ten Freeway, where am I going to go, right?
So in our plan, we have a plan that says we will contact the CHP and we will shut down the toll lanes, sorry,
and we'll shut down the toll lanes and we'll work that way and get those folks off the train that way.
Thankfully, that has never happened.
We have had some incidents out there,
but it didn't require evacuation.
So we work real hard to get down that fast stretch
of the San Gabriel subdivision.
That's 79 miles an hour running down the freeway,
which is a lot of fun when traffic is stopped.
We've got one more unique hazard
that I wanna talk to you about,
and it's not really necessarily a hazard,
but it's something that's very unique
to the Metrolink system.
The Zemu, the H2 flirt vehicle from Stadler,
the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in the United States.
It's currently going through testing and certification
out in San Bernardino.
It'll be running soon, we hope so.
And it has two things that no other railroad has,
lithium ion batteries and hydrogen fuel, right?
So there's some things that go along
with those two things that are not always real desirable.
Like if hydrogen catches fire, you can't see the flame.
If lithium ion batteries catch fire,
they burn until they're done.
So we have done a lot of training
with the fire departments out there
to make them aware of this vehicle
and all of the many, many, many, many safety features
that have been engineered into this vehicle
to make it absolutely safe.
I'm not even nervous about it.
There's so many safety features on here
that I don't think it's ever gonna be a concern,
but that doesn't mean that we don't prepare for it, right?
We have trained about 190 firefighters
in San Bernardino County, the Redlands Fire Department,
And we even trained Colton because our facility at EMF,
the Eastern Maintenance Facility, is actually in Colton.
That vehicle has to go to Colton occasionally
for some servicing and inspections.
So we made sure that we touched Colton Fire as well
with this vehicle.
Again, it's gonna be probably the most looked at vehicle
in the history of rail traffic by the time
all those certifications are done in the coming weeks.
But we look forward to getting that service running.
And again, all the firefighters in that area
are prepared and know what to do,
and know what features have been added to this vehicle
to make it as safe as it can be.
Any questions on that?
Good, I'm covering things well, great.
So, we talked about training firefighters.
We do a lot of training,
because training equals preparedness.
Not only do we train our employees,
we reach out to the first responders
because the regulation says we will,
but it's the right thing to do.
This is actually a moral responsibility in many ways.
We do a full-scale simulation exercise once a year.
I'm gonna tell you more about that in a second.
We do equipment training.
Last Saturday and tomorrow and the following Saturday,
I'll be in downtown Riverside.
I'm doing about 200 Riverside City firefighters,
bringing them onto the trains,
giving them everything I'm giving you,
but actually letting them climb onto the trains,
see and feel, pull the window out,
know what it's like to get on and off,
know what it's like to walk through the equipment,
walk through the locomotive.
There's always one firefighter in every group
that wants to blow the horn,
So if you get any complaints, it's the firefighters
this weekend.
There's always one.
And I can usually pick him out before he even says anything.
I'll know the guy that's got the really big 10-year-old
smile on his face as he's walking up to the train.
I try not to miss any opportunity
to talk to a firefighter.
That middle photo there is from the rail fest last year.
A couple of the Montebello Fire Department guys
dropped one of their trucks off for display.
And I said, hey, guys, come over here.
Let's learn about trains.
So we took care of that day.
The top right photo there is the Colton Fire Department with the ZEMU and the DMU on a
special trip to EMF.
The one above there with all the fire vehicles lined up alongside the trains, that was from
Rail Fest a couple of years ago.
We took the opportunity knowing that we would have equipment on display for Rail Fest on
the weekend.
We brought the equipment in on Thursday, Friday, and we trained a lot of LA City firefighters
and LA County guys on the equipment those days.
We got the San Bernardino canine photo there.
They came out last year, probably about 40 dogs
worked the equipment, did several exercises
on the equipment.
Lower photo on the left is our own San Bernardino
sheriff's doing some active shooter exercises.
They did that at a San Bernardino county led event.
We talked about cross training of the San Bernardino
and LA County sheriffs.
They definitely share in that.
And then the bottom photo is our,
I believe it's Redlands Fire,
taking a look at the hydrogen fuel cells
on the XEMU.
We do a lot of active shooter exercises.
San Bernardino does a really nice exercise.
It usually takes two days to do it.
We bring them on to the legacy equipment.
We bring them on to the aero equipment.
And then they bring in an SBCTA bus.
And they go through different exercises like stations,
work through all those different scenarios,
and really are working hard to prepare themselves.
We did that twice last year, so they got four days of active
shooter training in San Bernardino.
We just completed the LA Sheriff's Department
active shooter training.
We do that right at our facility in Pomona.
We actually bring a train to our Pasadena subdivision,
the track that the BNSF uses to get to Erwindale.
And we park it right outside our back door
and we're able to spend the day
going through multiple exercises there.
We did about 110 officers just a couple weeks ago
at that exercise.
We're really focusing on the SWAT teams are great,
but the SWAT team isn't the guy that's gonna be there
when the train stops at a station,
and the nearest officer gets called
from going on the disturbance call down the street, right?
So we've been focusing with these exercises,
bringing those regular guys into the mix.
You know, getting them the familiarity with the equipment,
getting them to feel what it's like
to go up and down those stairs,
and have those high back seats,
and have that suspect kind of in hiding
and waiting for them.
We're really focused on that,
especially as we lead up towards the Olympics.
that's kind of been the focus with both LA and San Bernardino
to get those regular officers out there.
We did an exercise in Moore Park last year
and they needed to volunteer for the suspect, the shooter.
So Mr. Kettle happened to be there.
So I volunteered him.
I still have a job.
I was surprised, but he did a great job.
He didn't hurt anybody and they didn't have to shoot him.
He surrendered pretty quick, but that was fun.
And that's all part of that.
Having fun while you train is always great as well.
We do something we call roll call training.
I will go out to the individual departments.
We've got about 42 separate local law enforcement agencies
that are on our system.
And I will actually go to their sign up times,
their shift start times.
And we'll go through the basics.
The 20 minutes or so of this will hurt you,
this will kill you, don't do this, call this number.
All the basics about how to deal with a Metrolink incident.
We like to do that when we have an incident in the area that
Maybe it didn't go as well as it should have.
And then I reached back out to them and said, hey,
I'd like to come and talk to you guys and kind of brush you
up on a few things.
So we do that as often as we can.
We did total first responders and law enforcement last year.
The training number was 1,060.
We touched over 1,060 law enforcement and firefighters
with this type of training last year.
And we're on that path this year as well,
especially starting off this year with Riverside City Fire.
We've got a lot of things with the zemu coming up
that we're gonna have to do just to make sure
that we've checked all of our boxes.
So lots of activity coming up.
Hopefully you can come out and be a part of that
at some point.
We do, are required by that regulation I've talked about
to have a full scale simulation drill
somewhere on the system.
And what that means is we go through,
we set up a scenario,
something that's likely to happen on the Metrolink system,
which could be just about anything.
We haven't done the airplane yet,
but we did that in real life.
But we set up a scenario
that's something that's actually plausible, right?
Something that could happen on the Metrolinx system
and we go through all of the motions.
We have volunteers from the community join us as passengers.
We reach out to some of the CERT teams
out in the local areas.
We have our own employees volunteer
to come and sit on the train and be a passenger
and be rescued by the firefighters
when they come onboard the train.
Last year we did Paris.
We did a vehicle strike that happened,
the vehicle happened to have hazmat on it.
So the BNSF worked with us on that scenario
and we had to evacuate people from the train,
we go through windows, we do all of the things
that we normally would do in a real life situation
so that we're prepared and practiced for this.
As we get up closer to 2028,
these drills are gonna become a lot more focused on,
okay, it's 2028, we're at Arctic,
what do we do if there's an active shooter
as the train is coming to the station?
How are we gonna handle that?
So I'm looking forward to being very creative
with these drills as we get closer to those big events.
And again, we have to do that annually
somewhere on the system.
We try to move it around a little bit.
It's been kind of focused on the eastern end
of the system lately because of,
that's where the growth has been.
But we are definitely interested in going to any community
that is willing to host us.
We'll figure out how to make it happen.
With those victims on the train,
those volunteers, I like to reach out to the employees
so that they can get a feel of what this is like too,
so that they have empathy for these types of events
when they're happening, but we do reach out
for those volunteers and we do have to have them
have injuries, fake injuries of course,
but we also have other stuff that we throw
at the firefighters like maybe a little bit belligerent,
maybe a little bit upset about the circumstances.
We try to get as real life as possible.
In the regulation, it also calls on us
to have at least two of those volunteers
have to be portraying somebody or somebody with disabilities.
It's very important, knowing what an important part
of our market that is, that we are practicing
for how we will service the folks with disabilities
on the train in emergency situations.
There are some very specific things
that firefighters would need to do to help them evacuate.
We want to make sure we're prepared for that.
One of the things that I'm going to add to this year's drill,
we've been focusing a lot about all of our employees
and everybody on Metrolink understanding the indicators
and the signs of human trafficking.
So one of the things that we will add this year to the drill,
one of the victims will give the signs or the indicators
to the responders that she or he is being trafficked.
And we're going to hope to see
that there's an appropriate response there
as part of that drill.
Whatever that drill is, we'll throw more stuff on top of it
because this is Metrolink and anything can happen, right?
So any questions on the drills or the simulation exercises?
Yeah, you were talking about evacuating people out of areas.
Yes, I believe that's all pretty well set in place.
We actually came close a couple of times.
We had some discussions when the station fire occurred.
Would we be able to get trains to the University of Redlands
and start to move people out of that area quickly?
And we are prepared to do that, I believe.
I don't think there's any,
I don't know if there's any formal arrangements made,
but I think we've always been prepared to do that.
We did it after the LA freeway fire, not too long ago.
We set up emergency service on some of our lines
to help assist with some of that traffic congestion
that we were gonna see as a result of the 10 freeway
being shut down south of downtown.
It's certainly something that we're able to do.
A little bit of notice, we can bring 20,000 extra people
into Dodger World Series Parade.
So we can certainly evacuate people in a hurry as well.
And I have been on some discussions with Simi Valley.
Simi Valley is in a unique location
because there's not a lot of ways in and out.
So we've had some tabletop exercises with them
on how do we get people out of Simi Valley in a hurry?
And of course the trains would be a great way to do that.
And we also, you're going the other direction,
I think, right?
So we do, yeah, so we do have arrangements
that if we have to, you know,
cause we end up with trains for different reasons
having to be stopped.
Obviously, these are some of the most significant
and serious, but in this case we do have,
we have contacts with all the transit agencies
in the region.
Our first goal is to try to provide alternate transportation
using public transit resources.
So contacting a bus agency.
Now the challenge, of course, in this is that
all transit agencies are struggling
with having enough staff and equipment, their own rights.
So our communications team,
that handles that activity.
First order of business is to call the local transit provider
and try to access equipment that way.
If they don't have it available, we use other approaches.
When you have something major like this,
we've generally seen our transit agencies
or we contract with a private bus company
if we need to bring something in.
I mean, it's a pretty extreme circumstance,
but it is at our disposal.
Well, I was concerned about,
Just my grandkids were involved in a traffic accident
on the exit, Edewanda and the 60 freeway.
It was a very busy interchange.
And so all the track, they were in the intersection,
three cars, now all cars were totaled.
So all the traffic was stopped.
Not even emergency personnel could get in.
So what do you do in that case?
Do you walk everybody to a safe place?
So when we can, we do like to get passengers off the train,
especially if it's gonna be a lengthy investigation.
We have to take a look at thinking about evacuation.
It's technically not evacuation if we're leaving by choice,
but we do evaluate, is it safe to detrain?
Can we get vehicles or things to the area?
So we had a strike a couple of weeks back
with a vehicle near that area down off of Van Buren,
where we did bring in Ubers and Lifts
to take the folks off of the train,
but we have to really evaluate,
is it actually safe to do that?
And then even then, in some cases,
not everybody is gonna be able to leave the train.
So we have to really take a look at all of our options.
Everything is on the table,
but definitely getting them away from areas
where they're gonna continue to be in harm
or they're gonna be delayed longer than they should be
is definitely one in our bag of tricks for sure.
Thank you, thank you.
All right, so we talked about fire department training.
Obviously, we've done a lot of work
with San Bernardino County and Redlands.
here they are pulling a window out of a DMU,
out on the Arrow Service a couple of years back.
I already mentioned that it was over 1,000 participants
in this type of training last year.
We hit all five counties.
We were in every corner of the system,
and we are always striving to do that,
to kind of find the next outpost where we can get to,
to get some training to them.
So if any of your areas would like to have me
reach out to them, I'm more than happy to.
I already did Covina PD just recently.
I was just gonna, that's the question I was gonna ask you.
One of the major issues that you indicated
what teams take a while to get to where they're gonna go.
And the most nine times out of 10,
the first responder is gonna be a single officer
or a couple of officers on scene that have to take action.
And I'm suspecting that's exactly what you're doing.
working with a lot of the local agencies along the rail system for sure and handling that
just a really great presentation. Thank you sir really enjoy. Covina high 88.
All right so yeah we've hit all those areas and we are focused on that we did some roll call
training with Covina PD in September and the reason we did that is we were going to be turning
trains at Covina much more frequently and I wanted to make sure they were aware that hey you're going
you're gonna see a lot more stuff going on
just up the street from the station.
So we went out there and reached out to them
and did that for several shifts in a row.
And then the follow-up to that is we struck a vehicle
at Lark-Ellen earlier this year,
or the vehicle struck us, I'm sorry.
The vehicle actually hit the side of the train.
And as soon as I showed up, they say,
hey, it's the safety guy.
We know what to do.
And I said, can I open that other track?
And they said, sure.
So that's another reason why we do that roll call training
is because we get that face-to-face familiarity.
we get them comfortable with what needs to happen,
that there's people on these trains,
that there's people that need to get people
to ballet practice and to dinner appointments
and CEOs that need to get home.
We wanna make sure that they know
that there's a face on those trains
that we wanna get those trains moving again.
So that's been a big help too.
Once we have that initial training,
once we have that dialogue going,
it just makes it so much easier
when you arrive on the field and they know what to do
and they know that there's priorities that we have
that would be very helpful for them as well
if they get that train moving.
So that's a big reason that we do that roll call training.
So what do you do if you're on a train
and you have that situation that you need help, right?
So the first thing, just like getting on the airplane,
we don't have any stewards or stewardesses,
but familiarize yourself
with the safety features on the train.
Look for that poster on the lower level of the train.
It's got all the evacuation instructions.
Look for the emergency door pulls.
Look for that intercom.
Find all of that stuff beforehand, right?
That's with anywhere.
Like I've been looking at this door all afternoon.
I even looked out the window to see where that door goes.
But find your exits, know where they're at.
Make sure you're familiar with everything.
If you have any concerns, call the SOC, okay?
Just like my dryer, we've got one SOC.
I'm sorry, Security Operations Center.
Had to throw a dad joke in, Darren, sorry.
Thank you.
So we have one sock, call that number,
they're gonna get you in touch with the right people,
whether it be law enforcement, firefighters,
the conductor, the CEO, maybe.
Yeah, so definitely do that.
And then always, always, always listen for instructions
from the crew.
Follow those instructions, okay?
You know what to do, you know what to look for now.
Wait for the high sign, right?
The conductor's gonna charge, they're the captain of the ship.
They're gonna tell you when it's time to evacuate.
They're gonna tell you if it's safe to stay on the train.
They're gonna tell you what's going on.
They're gonna tell you what you were doing
to get you moving again, but remain calm, right?
We've learned over 33 years, we'll eventually get there,
it may not always be when we want to,
but hopefully it's gonna be safe.
And that's really how this all ties together.
Our job is to get people to where they need to be safe,
on time when we can, but most importantly, safe.
And I thank you for your time today.
I'm gonna give you some time back,
maybe we can get, stay on schedule.
Oh, sure, question.
I have a very important question.
And you started to address it, and said you'll come back to it.
OK, did I miss it?
Go ahead.
Why the plastic wrap?
Why the plastic wrap on the?
First aid kit.
Oh, yeah, I did miss that.
So in one of those accidents that I told you about,
in the early 90s, it was in Hyder, Arizona.
It was an Amtrak train.
There was a saboteur that went out and separated the rail.
The train did exactly what he intended it to do.
This is a cold case, if you probably
remembered if you were around when the wooden axles were
around.
But the train derailed in the middle of nowhere,
2 and 1 half hours by helicopter for the first responders
to arrive.
They were on their own that long on a moonless night
in the middle of the desert.
The passengers that were able to help
were assisting one nurse who was a passenger
on board the train with the triaging of the people that
were injured and administering first aid.
They would bring her the first aid kits,
and they would open them up.
and they would have a band-aid and an alcohol swab,
maybe a smelling salts, something like that.
They weren't complete because the items were being used
and nobody was ever restocking them.
So nowadays we seal them.
If they get broken into for a band-aid,
that goes into the box and we bring the sealed one back
and we take the one that's unsealed
and we make sure somebody actually checks it.
It's got this, this, this, and this and we keep them sealed.
And I know when I walk through a train,
When I'm auditing, when I see the sealed first aid kit,
I know that it's complete and I know that I'm not going to take that to somebody
doing emergency response and have them say, what are you bringing me this for?
It's worthless. You know,
I want that kit to be complete all part of that regulation and make sure that
we're prepared.
Make sure that we're minimizing the negative outcomes of our customers,
even on the bad day.
Thank you.
Anything else?
I do want to say I have new badges for everyone
because of the issues we've been having at LA Metro,
our SOC issued new badges.
So I do have those today that I'd like to give out to you.
And I just checked and it does have the SOC number
on the back.
All right, it's very small though, right?
It's very small.
All right, well, thank you for your time.
I'd love to see you out there sometime.
I'm out there a lot.
Say hi, I'm easy to recognize.
before you leave, I have a comment.
I think at some point in the past,
I've asked for this training for the board and whatnot,
because now Eric, I can tell you
from my firsthand experience, I don't know,
a couple of years back at LA Union Station,
you were doing a tour that you've just been explaining
to LAFD and I joined in after one
of our MetroLink meetings.
And I saw the whole thing taken out the windows,
push this button, if this happens, push that.
And then it dawned on me, well, what
happens if a board member or somebody is on a train?
And what do we do?
I would be looked like the Deere in the headlights.
I don't know what to do.
If I hadn't had that one class that you taught,
I would have zero knowledge.
I have a little bit of knowledge now.
So I thought it was super important
for all of us to kind of be on the same page.
If an earthquake happens and or a train hits another train
and the engineer and conductor both are out of commission,
what can we as, you know,
MetroLink representatives in essence, what can we do?
So having the phone numbers, that's an important thing.
But also the, if there's a fire on board
and the conductor can't get to you,
How do we get out?
So knowing that there's these red handles to pull
or knowing that there's a lever by a door,
yesterday, probably most of you wouldn't have known
what to do.
And hopefully now this little bit of training for us
gives us just that extra edge
where we can be a productive assistant, so to speak.
Not to take over any responsibilities of first responders,
but certainly in an emergency,
it gives us an extra bit of knowledge
as to how the system operates.
And I would also follow up by saying,
let us know when these courses are going on.
I know you have in the past
and I would certainly encourage all board members
to at least participate at least once to go through
and do the actual going through.
It only took maybe an hour, but you learn so much
and you see where these devices are located.
you actually get the impression it's not,
this is nice classroom setting,
but I also encourage us to do it in person
and maybe that's something that could be arranged,
but I certainly appreciate it.
You just wanna blow the horn, huh?
Well, I haven't done it.
I admit I've been in the engine compartment a couple of times
but I have never pushed the button.
And I do have the grin though.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So one thing that we have been doing along those lines,
We give this training to every SCRA employee,
every contractor.
That's not required by the regulation,
but we do that because we don't know
who the first responder is.
It could be any one of us.
So it is important to share this information
and to share it repeatedly.
It's not just a one-time thing, right?
We'll see you soon, right?
Thank you.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Now what we've been waiting for
is the Olympic readiness.
That's what we just did.
I'll pay attention and Rory bought.
All right, well, as the team comes forward, there's DK, there's Rory.
I know manuals around somewhere so we just wanted it again.
We're this is level setting about where we are as of March 28,
three and a half years away from the Olympic torch being lit.
And sort of how we're trying to approach this
as this quickly, as this, as the games quickly come
really right around the corner.
So with that, DK, you're up, pick it away.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is DK.
I manage for Rolling Staff Engineering in Metrolink.
It is very a pleasure to meet you.
Eric Smick, my good colleague,
actually did a good job the previous slides.
I hope I can make it as good as is.
So today we, myself, and then my two good colleagues,
we present the 2028 Olympic Readiness Program.
We have three subjects to cover in this presentation.
The first one is learning stuff program presented by me,
myself, and the second one is the service capacity planning
by manual, and the last one is the game service scenario
by Rory.
Next slide.
The first one, the first subject is a rolling stock program.
What I'm going to present is about how we metronink,
we support our 2028 LA Olympic event
with the metronink rolling stocks.
Next slide.
We own total 318 rolling stock,
which is the train with the rolling wheels underneath.
This table here present the types of the rolling stocks
and the quantity of each type.
One look, for us to run one single metronic train,
there must be two rolling stocks equipped in there.
The one locomotive on one side
and the one cab car on the other side.
And there are multiple trailer cars between.
The reason is because the locomotive has a huge engine
to provide a train, a power to move,
whereas the cab car on the other side
provides a train, a control to move
using the power from the locomotive.
We have a 60 locomotive in three different types.
MP36 in the middle and 59 PHR are represent repower
and both MP36 and F59THR are tier two
and as you guys already know, F125, tier four locomotive.
And we also owns, we also have only one,
we also have a 57 cab car, you know, only one type,
which is the rodent cab car.
And then for the trailer car, we own 201 trailer cars
and it are two different types,
road trip trailer car and the Bombari trailer car.
As you may know, we have ongoing project
to refurbish those Bombari car.
318 rolling stock that we own,
however, 31 of them are in out of service condition right now.
This is challenging to us.
Next slide.
So we have set two goals to support the 2020 LA Olympics.
The primary goal is to repair all auto service cars or auto service rolling stocks as soon
as we can.
This is to maximize the availability of our rolling stocks before 2028 Olympics.
Our secondary goal is to refurbish in-service rolling stocks.
This is to maximize the reliability and customer experience of our rolling stocks.
For these two goals, we have created five projects.
Next slide.
Right, these are the five
Olympic readiness rolling stock projects.
The first three is for the primary goal
to repair all other service rolling stocks
before the Olympics.
And the other two on the bottom is for the secondary goal
to refurbish in-service rolling stocks.
We are going to rehabilitate
all 31 auto service rolling stocks
with the three repair projects
and also planning to refurbish 151 rolling stock
with the two refurbishment projects.
Couple of things I wanna highlight for this project,
the second one, the project number two,
Oxnard Excellent car and the Rotem auto service car rehab
is for the 19 cars for the four, 19 auto service car
And four of them actually experienced the Ochsner accident
back in 2015.
Late last year, we did a very thorough inspection
on the structure damaged by that accident.
And we conclude that the damage actually are repairable.
The other thing, the other project I wanna highlight
is the project number three,
MP36 locomotive repair and rehab.
As I said, we have a full auto service locomotive
on the MP36.
And our plan is to shift those four
out-of-service locomotive first so that we can ensure
we have all 15 locomotives operable before the Olympics.
The other project I want to highlight
is ongoing Bombari Record Review Project,
the project number four over here.
This project is to refurbish 30 years old Bombari car,
not only providing 15 years of the life cycle extension,
also improving in safety system and custom experience such as a new rubber flooring, LED
lights, door stalker detection, 100, 100% full vinyl seats, virus bacteria killing UV light air
quality system, and new restroom which actually resolve your smell problem, etc. So as of today,
that project as of today we had a 47 cars delivered to us and they are all running for the service now
next slide so we have all these good projects in active to achieve those goals but the most
important question is how how are we going to complete them especially those in auto service
condition before 2020 Olympics so that we can support this important event by providing as
many available rolling stacks as we can. We had inspected every single out of service rolling
stacks as doorfully as we can to understand the works required for the repair and how long it
takes to complete the work. Based on the inspection and analysis on those findings, this slide
presents our estimate completion date for those five Olympic readiness rolling stack projects.
Though we will have the risk factors to manage down the road, we are expecting to complete
the wars before 2028, LA Olympics. Not only rehabilitating or 31 out of service cars,
but also refurbishing 151 in-service cars by then. Next slide. As I mentioned earlier,
our expectation is to have all out-of-service rolling stock repaired so that all .318 rolling
stock here available for equipment team to use during the 2028 Olympics. This is all I have
for my subject. Thank you for listening to my presentation. Now, I want to take a moment for
any question you may have and then hand it over to my good colleague Emmanuel Valis, a director of
the equipment team who will present their service capacity planning. Any question?
I don't want to sound negative but we've had experience of having dates of when
we've gotten purchase. I'm not so much the rehabs. I'm just concerned when you've got a June 28 date
whether they're going to really be here for the Olympics. There's an awful lot that are April and
June. And I have high concerns of that.
There are justified concerns. Um, you know,
one of the things that we've looked at is again,
there is a cost of all this overhaul and rehabilitation member agencies have
been pretty supportive in helping us with this, but this does come at,
and some elements of making sure we have the dollars to actually do it. Now,
DK is, um, has, uh, he's, he's stayed on our contractors.
There's procurement elements, that kind of thing as well.
But a big part of our ability to make this all happen is making sure we have the resources
to do it.
So we continue to work with the member agencies.
And then once our contractor who is doing the overhauls on the Bombardier cars, from
the time they leave our possession to the time we get them back and they go into service,
what's the timeframe for a single car?
I do not have that information on the top of my head.
So if you allow me, I'll get back to that.
Yeah, but Karen, you're absolutely right.
I mean, this is, it's the big,
we look at this and said, you know,
as we've looked towards LA 28,
and we've kind of figured at this point,
we're not going to get any new equipment,
and it's going to be hard to take equipment
that is elsewhere in the country and drop it into our system.
The point is, how do we make sure we have everything
we have ready and be realistic in a timeframe?
So we have that that is a key area of focus
and we're gonna do the best we can
and hopefully it will be enough,
but we've had good support.
We just need to keep driving it
and pushing our vendors to deliver on schedule.
Thank you.
Do we have, if I can ask,
I know there's been quite a bit of talk over time
over the last few years about purchasing new equipment.
We realized the timing isn't there,
but there was also a lot of talk
about borrowing equipment from the rest of the country.
And you're just making comments
that that may not be as easy as we were hoping
that it would be.
So my question would really relate to
if we assume all of our equipment is operational
for the Olympics, is that enough equipment?
So there's a, first, Brian, that's a great question.
Here's the thing.
Emmanuel is gonna come up and he's gonna talk about
where we actually store and maintain.
If we have all of our equipment there,
we are gonna be pressing the envelope on our ability
to actually do what we need to do
just with the stuff that we have.
So, I mean, we are gonna be maxing out every place we are.
And so I think that's a great segue for both Emmanuel
and then for Rory because we also have limitations
on train slots from the freight railroads.
And we're gonna have to have them give us permission
to run trains on portions of the system.
So we have a sort of that built-in limitation
between how we were able to maintain equipment
and do all the things we have to do,
even if we have all of this.
Now, there are some recent news that's happened
in the last couple of weeks.
One of our sister railroads in Minnesota,
it's called North Star.
They are looking like they're probably going to be going out
of the commuter rail business,
and they operate the same MP36 locomotives
and Bombardier cars as we do.
they only have like, I think a total of five sets, but that's something. So we've already
placed a phone call to find out what may be available there. But we are going to be have
other constraints besides just the equipment. It's our ability to service it. So maybe if we
could, if there aren't any, go ahead. Well, my question to you, the 37 refurbished cars,
that time period that they've actually went out of service. So my question would be in the future,
we anticipate X amount of units maybe could be out of service within the next year or two years
prior to the Olympics. So this auto service actually cars had a specific reason why you
went to the auto service and the most of the reason is because the the part being degraded
over the years and the the most risk to actually manage the this project is to actually procure
those parts. My imagination and I need to work with my team. If we have a sufficient part in place,
then I'm sure it's not a speculation, but based on my analysis and experience with the rolling
stuff, if we have a sufficient amount of spare parts to protect the rolling stuff in service,
I think it's not going to be as many out-of-service rolling stuff right now in the future.
So then my question would be the second question, are we going to start building our supplies for whatever we might need in the future?
We're going to start buying and getting ready as they do break down.
My role is to deliver the project.
And then that portion is as my good colleague of the material control department.
So moving forward, I will just I will have a good coordination with those team to so that they can have a good sufficient amount of the spare parts to support.
Thank you, thank you for the good points.
All right, Manuel.
So Brian, I don't want to look, there's
going to be more answers to your question.
I think what Manny is going to share
is going to help inform some of the other just challenges
we have out there.
So go ahead, Manuel.
All right.
Hey, thank you, TK.
Good job.
All right.
Good afternoon, members of the board.
My name is Manuel Vias.
I'm the director of maintenance and equipment
here at Metrolink.
Next slide, please.
I'm going to go over a few things.
we're gonna, it's mostly gonna be informative.
We're gonna talk about our rolling stock
and our servicing capabilities at CMF,
which our central maintenance facility,
our Eastern maintenance facility and our outlying points.
Although it won't be as fascinating
as road cartel members operating on our trains.
Next slide, please.
So this is our system map.
We have eight locations
that our legacy equipment lays up overnight.
So we keep trains in Ventura, Lancaster,
central maintenance facility which is between LA Union Station and the Glendale Station.
We have the Eastern Maintenance Facility which is in San Bernardino and we keep trains at Oceanside
which is on Camp Pendleton Base in Stuart Mesa and Riverside and Paris. Next slide please.
I'm going to go through the stations. These are some of our outline points. I'm going to discuss
what some of our capabilities are. I'm going to convey the difference between four and a six car
set what I mean by four and a six car set is having four trailer cars or four or five or six
car sets and how much that changes and how we serve our capabilities to service so this is a
picture of the East Ventura outline point location we currently keep two five car sets there that
lay over every night that gets serviced and come back down in the morning we could store a maximum
three, four car sets, but if we were to have six car sets, that cuts our capabilities down to only
being able to store two six car sets. East Ventura, we have dump stations and watering,
but we don't have fuel, but trackside fueling is possible. And so we, our team had gone through
an exercise to look at all of our Outline Points locations to determine what we would need to ramp
up service for the Olympics. And so we made these, this chart, and we went through this planning
exercise so that we can log what we need. So once the schedule comes out, depending on what it's
going to be for the Olympics, we know where we can store trains, what sizes we can store,
which locations, and what servicing needs we're going to need at those locations.
Next slide, please. This is our more park location. There's currently two five-car
sets that lay over with our current schedule. There's no water or dump facilities available
more park. So when they lay up at night, the restrooms get serviced back at CMF when they
when they come back down in the morning.
Trackside fueling is possible
if we can access Poindexter Avenue
and install an entry gate.
If we were to store six and five car sets there,
if we keep them at four car sets,
we can store four four car sets
and we have the capabilities
to bring a fuel truck in to fuel them.
Next slide, please.
At Lancaster, we currently keep four five car sets
that are assigned, but we have the capacity
to store four, six car sets.
There is no fuel there, but track site fueling is possible.
And we do have dump stations along the main line
and the siting for Russian servicing capabilities.
Next slide, please.
So this is our CMF, our central maintenance facility.
I've seen some faces that have come down for tours
when you guys come down.
So look forward to seeing you guys again.
This is our service and inspection.
So our trains, they pull in.
We can fit in service for six car sets.
typically our sets right now are at five car sets.
So four, four car sets simultaneously,
we can fit two on each track
and we have the servicing capabilities
to service both sets on each track simultaneously.
If we get any bigger,
we lose a little bit of a velocity through the yard
because we have to spot a set off and then move back up.
As you can see from that red X,
that's basically our last servicing station
for water and sewage.
Next slide please.
the equipment gets serviced, it moves into our storage yard, so.
Back one slide. Oh, I'm sorry. You're good. I'm going to say good.
So our central maintenance facility, after they go through our service inspection for
fuel, water, and dump, they head over to the storage yard to get staged, where repairs
and air tests will happen. Depending on the size, each track is different, but we can
accommodate 13 to 15 train sets at the central maintenance facility storage yard. Next slide,
Keller Yard right outside of Union Station. So you guys see it when you guys
ride the trains and you go by. We currently don't keep anything there. We
have some old cars that DK's team is working on rehabbing already over there.
But there's four tracks and we can fit six-car sets in that track. So Keller
Yard is gonna be dynamic when it comes to the Olympics because we have servicing
capabilities there minus fuel but there's plenty of room to bring in a
fuel truck. So you know thinking ahead this is probably gonna turn into a
Uh, service in facility around the clock for the Olympics.
Next slide, please.
This is a tell track right outside of Keller yard, where we could also store
one car or maybe two, four car sets, uh, no fuel and no, uh, dumb stations there.
But track side servicing is possible.
Next slide, please.
This is our Eastern maintenance facility.
Uh, it's quite large.
We have water and dump facilities are available in the service inspection tracks.
Fueling is also available on the tracks.
Each storage track can accommodate two six car sets, three, five car sets, or three, four car sets.
And then total storage capacity at EMF, depending on your set sizes.
We were running six car sets that drops us down to 12.
But if we had smaller sets, we could fit up to 17 at our Easter maintenance facility.
Next slide, please.
Riverside on the north side, there's a three, five car sets that lay over here every night, but we can accommodate three six car sets. Each track has six dumb stations for restroom servicing to additional six car sets could also be staged on the platform.
But there'd be no restroom servicing capabilities tracks I feel on is also possible. Riverside downtown south. We have one five car set that currently lays over in Riverside and
We are limited to two five car sets.
to six car sets, we'd have a fueling issues,
and they would, the equipment would foul each other.
Next slide, please.
And this is South Paris.
Currently five four-car sets laid over
every night in South Paris.
Each track's constructed with 10 dump stations.
If we did have two six-car sets that attract,
we would have to re-spot to re-service
because of the only having 10 dump stations.
We could fit a total of five,
four, five or six car sets.
Next slide.
This is a Stewart Mason.
So this is on Camp Pendleton.
We have a MOU with NCTM, which allows a maximum combination
of nine locomotives and 30 cars.
They do have some constrictions over there.
The maximum number of six car sets possible
will be five that we'd store over there.
But they only have one location for servicing.
So it would take a lot to cycle through there.
So we'd have to look at remote servicing capabilities.
Next slide please. This is the El Toro site in Irvine. It's undeveloped site with street access. When we had the landslides we started servicing equipment out of here. It's located railroad east of the Irvine station between the Elton Parkway and Bake Parkway.
And it's a capable accommodating for six car sets. Next slide please.
I'm going to go ahead and touch on a few key points.
So funding needs, that's been the big question.
What will our funding needs be for the Olympics?
It's solely dependent on what the schedule is
and how hard we're running our equipment.
Once we understand the schedule and how many miles
we're going to be putting on the equipment,
that's going to help determine where we start
laying over equipment, how much manpower we're going to need,
and what type of remote servicing capabilities
we're going to need.
I think I heard the question was asked about materials.
I think that's my biggest concern is making sure that we start purchasing material as
soon as possible to keep the equipment in service and our out of service equipment,
get that back in service.
One of the things I think about is, and one of the challenges that we run into is, as
you know, our F125s, they're obsolete now.
No one else is making them.
Progress Rail has pretty much shut down that division for the F125 locomotive.
So as these things age,
we run into issues obtaining the material
for those F125s.
And one of the biggest issues is that,
and here's the difference between the freight side
and Metrolink.
The freight side, you have a huge core pool
of locomotives and equipment.
There is no core pool
for any of the rotating equipment engines.
So when we remove a part from the locomotive,
we have to ship it out to get repaired to come back.
So, in order to be viable for the Olympics,
we got to open up those checkbooks.
So, we got to work on a funding,
making those, getting those funding requests in
so that we can start slowly purchasing the core materials
because they have long lead times.
They're not made for other equipment.
A lot of that equipment that's on the F125
is proprietary to the F125 as well.
And we're going to also be coordinating
with the capital teams overhaul contractor
ensure that the, in the event, I think the question
Ms. Spiegel has asked is if it's not done in time,
we're gonna make sure that we have a gap in between
so that we have as much of equipment availability
back at CMF as possible to support Olympic planning.
Next slide, please.
One of the action items that we have on mechanical
to help increase equipment availability
is to perform the preventative maintenance ahead of time.
We have a three week window for the Olympics.
So six months out, we're gonna start pulling in
maintenance as early so that we don't have any equipment
in the shop for preventative maintenance only
due to regulation due dates.
Total train set sizes are gonna depend
on our train sizes needs.
I think ultimately mixed car counts are gonna be optimal
to ensure higher ridership lines
such as the San Bernardino lines
equipped with six car sets.
Lower ridership lines get equipped
with the four and five car sets.
And just to show if everything's in service
our capacity could be for the Olympics when it comes to rolling stock availability. If we have
four car sets, theoretically, we could build 57 train sets. I know we have 60 locomotives,
but we have 57 cab cars in stock. If it was five car sets, it would drop that significantly down
to 48 train sets. And so adding a car, just one car doesn't seem like a big number, but you do
that 48 times, that depletes almost a quarter of your fleet. And then if we had six car sets,
that's 38 train sets with 190 coaches, 38 cab cars. And I'll hold off, we'll wait up here,
I'm going to pass it on to Rory because he might have, he's going to go through his presentation
and then we'll answer questions because some of those questions might be on his. Thank you.
Thank you Manny. Good afternoon, my name is Rory Vaughn, senior manager of planning and development
at Metrolink and having spoken about what kind of equipment we have available and how we might be
able to service it and use it. I'm going to get more now into what could we do with it.
So last year we shared three scenarios at the workshop and then this year we'll share
three scenarios as well which are effectively updates from last year, reflecting developments
since then as well as our understanding of what options remain on the table and to change
metaphor is you know what options have left the station already. Next slide please. So first for
context, this is a map of the Olympic venues as we understand them today. The venues are still in
flux. Some are locked down, some are not, but this is our best understanding of what they stand today.
You'll note that most of them are located centrally in the LA basin,
serviced by the LA Metro network, and then primarily connecting to our system at Union Station.
There are some venues elsewhere, notably in Anaheim as a non-confirmed but
suspected venue that is expected to have a decent amount of attendees to that
venue, but there are venues elsewhere on our system as well. Not on this map, but
worth noting is that it's our understanding that the LA Committee has
booked nearly every hotel in the Anaheim area that is three stars and above for
media purposes and similarly has booked a great number of high portion of the
hotels in the central LA basin as well for games uses. What that means then is
that there's gonna be a lot of people coming to Southern California for the
Olympics and most of the hotels that they're going to be finding are going to
be outside of this the central areas and they're going to need to find in the
surrounding counties and surrounding regions and they're going to need a way
to get into LA and that's something that we can really provide given the nature
our network. Next slide, please. So this then informs our service strategy and the service
vision that we have for the Olympics. We can't add a ton of service everywhere all at once.
So our strategy then is to add service on the three main axes that we connect people from
the surrounding regions into Union Station, to the north, to the east, and to the south.
Here you see the Santa Clarita where there's the potential for a very large park and ride facility.
San Bernardino and then Orange County, hopefully down to Irvine and Laguna Gal, where there's
facilities that we could turn our trains at. The hope is to get each of these three axes up to
half hourly service and that corresponds to the second scenario that I will share in a moment.
But before then, it's the first scenario. Next slide please. So this scenario, similar to what
we shared last year describes what we could do if we can get all the equipment
that DK mentioned earlier back into service and in a good state of repair
that we can use it and use it in a way kind of our normal level of leanness of
operation. With this we believe that we could get two of the three lines up to
half hourly frequencies and then the third up to hourly. This does require a
a few things. One of the things it requires is that the SCORE phase one
projects, particularly on the San Bernardino line, need to be complete for
this level of operation to work. We do need to use our outline points in our
yards in a different way, in a more intense way, than we have in the past. And
then also in the case of the additional service that we're offering, there will
be need to skip some station stops in order to deliver this level of
frequency in a reliable way given the constraints that are out there in terms of single track,
double track, et cetera. Next slide, please. The second scenario then corresponds to what
we could do if we could have more of our train sets in service at any given point in time.
So as an example, if we can schedule or if we can perform preventative maintenance work
That we would have normally done during the Olympics period accelerate that beforehand so that we don't need to take sets out of service during the Olympics just to take care of normal scheduled work.
That means we can have more train sets in operation and to give an important time of our set that we are our pool that we own and with that we believe we could deliver half hourly service and all three axes.
This also would require the negotiation of additional significant number of additional temporary slots on the BNSF during this period.
Um, this is what we're working towards. This is our goal. This is, as you might notice,
a bit of a stretch goal. We think it is possible. We think it's plausible. But this this is
not a business as usual path to get here. Next slide, please. Slide three, then, is
what we could do if we could lease or borrow or beg or steal additional equipment sets.
important to note here that at this point the only thing we're really talking about is really onesies
and twosies left on the table and this is going to be the biggest change that you might notice
versus what we shared last year. At this point we don't believe it is viable for us to bring on
board a large number of equipment from some other railroad and there's certainly not enough time to
buy anything and so we're largely limited to what we have already that we can bring to bear for the
the Olympics and a few, again, onesies and twosies
that we might be able to field as well,
for instance, if we can borrow a set from our neighbor
down to the south, but nothing of the scale
we've talked about before.
If we can, and this, again, it's a possibility,
but we can't bank on it,
there are some things we could use it for.
One, we could use it to ask some additional service
on our other lines, or we could use it to
implement surge trains to deal with expected
surges of ridership that we might see,
given the venue schedules.
Or we could use it to increase the consensus length
of our existing equipment,
getting back to the point Manny shared before about
there's this trade-off between the number of sets
you can field and how long those train sets are.
So again, we're still looking into these options.
There's not a lot of these options left,
but we are still looking at them.
And if we are able to make something work there,
that might be able to help us.
But one of the key takeaways we wanted to share as an update
versus last year is that the hopes that we had before
have perhaps been able to get a bunch of additional equipment
into our system for the Olympics.
At this point, does not look to be viable.
That being said, we can still potentially
do a lot with what we have.
And hopefully, this Olympics will be an opportunity for us
to share and to demonstrate the significant value
that we bring to the region and can bring to the region,
but to do so on the world stage in 2028.
So thank you for your time.
We'd be happy to answer any questions you might have,
not only about what I shared here today,
but also my colleagues as well.
Thank you very much.
Sorry, so to hand up the pieces, oh John does that.
I'm just going on, you sent me a lot,
what score projects, I should know this,
but what score projects need to be completed?
Yep.
There's the Rancho Cucamonga siting extension project,
the El Monte project was a portion of that scope,
and then the Merengo siting extension
on the other side of the 10 freeway.
Those are the three items that are really important
to deliver that half-wheeler frequency,
especially because they tackle
that constraint we have along the freeway
where that's one of the really key bottlenecks
that we need to give ourselves some more wiggle room on.
Thank you, sir. Since LA, I guess in LA Orange County, they block down hotels. We thought about doing that, like say in Riverside County, maybe San Bernardino County, where we come up with some sort of agreement with these chains to basically closest to our stations, just enhance our services.
We haven't done anything like that directly. Director Marquez. You know, how LA 28 has handled this is they've sort of broken up there. Who's attending these games by subgroups.
So these are items around the sort of the central Orange County area was all done in recognition of media and friends of the games.
I kind of what we look at is, I mean, generally speaking, it's been an L.A. 28 operations probably is outside of our purview about those types of things.
What I see on the San Bernardino, I think where we're going to see on the San Bernardino line, it's going to be such a large.
driver of of service need is I think that we are going to have a there we're going to have a lot of
Inland Empire workforce that's going to be supporting volunteers supporting the games because
you want to work the games as someone who lives in Southern California I think that that's where
we're going to see it both on the San Bernardino line and to the degree we can provide service
on the on the 91 Paris Valley line so coming in from South Riverside County into through Corona
and back into Los Angeles.
So that's where I see where we're going to,
and I fully expect that what has not been booked by LA-28,
because that was LA-28 that booked
those three-star hotels.
People just coming in are going,
so that's gone inventory.
So they're going to be looking elsewhere.
And I think the Inland Empire, Ventura County,
Santa Barbara, San Diego,
that's where we're going to start seeing tourism come in
and start booking it.
People that are just here to watch the games,
not because they're parts of the games
or friends of the games?
Well, again, just to follow up,
we have a lot of nice places in San Bernardino County
that basically could conducive to the Olympics.
And all in the same, to promote our services
if we were to work out some sort of an agreement
with the hotel chain and other cities.
Okay, let's talk more a little bit.
I want to get a better idea of where we fit in all that,
but we should, you know, the Olympics are,
I've said this multiple times,
The single biggest legacy we're going to leave for L.A. 28 from L.A. 28
is people have come to Southern California and they were able to use public transit
to get where they need to get and actually change the fabric of this region
because people say, hey, I can use trains to get around.
But we don't know better do a pretty good job at it.
And that's what this was, is like at least a start
in trying to show how we can do it.
That's true.
Is the Olympic committee going to planning on maybe wrapping
or painting any of our cars for the 2028 Olympics?
Director Molina, right now the Olympic LA 28
and their organizers are really focused
on LA 28 and themselves.
And Director Trumbly just had a chuckle
because I think he's going,
Darren just called it like he sees it
and we've experienced it.
No way Jose.
I don't expect to see that.
I do not expect, right now here's the thing
And where we may see some benefit is if large LA 28 sponsors want to do something where
they would maybe potentially fund by wrapping our locomotives, you know, we have pick your
company and it's, you know, I think Delta is the airline.
Well, if you have our trains wrapped with, you know, giant billboards, all the stuff
like that may be an opportunity.
On zero cost scenario one and two, what is the cost?
Folks, do you guys have a, do we...
Ball park.
So Rory, I mean, that's on our scenario too,
our stretch goal.
Let's go with that number.
Cause that's what I'm shooting at.
I was gonna say, I don't think we have costs now
that are, I'm comfortable sharing relative to that.
We do have numbers that we have shared
as of, I think a year ago,
that were not court-mapped to these scenarios,
but was more of an outside envelope in the-
But we know based on our $300 million ask
that we have sent to both Secretary Omashakan
as well as the Secretary Duffy from USDOT
where we have about 200 million in capital
and 100 million in surge to get to what we see
as being able to have all of our equipment ready
and then be able to run as many trains,
the full amount of service that we can.
So it's a rough order of magnitude,
a little over $300 million as of right now.
Now-
That includes scenario three.
That includes, no, that's scenario two.
Scenario three would include equipment
that comes from elsewhere.
And that is a, we don't have a ballpark on that.
How does the bus coordination with our bus partners?
So LA Metro is generally the lead agency
as it relates to most all the bus network
that we called it, the borrowed bus.
So I don't know if that's the term in Vogue right now.
Bottom line is there's an extra couple of thousand buses
to our LA Metro family who's here.
May you correct me if I'm wrong on that?
But a couple of thousand buses that allows that
the spectator and workforce network
to then move all over to venues
generally in Los Angeles County.
And then there's a role that OCTA will have to play
as it relates to the Orange County and suspected venue
of Anaheim for some of the service there.
But I think the bigger part is that
there's also gonna need to be all that bus transit
that gets people to our stations
if it's in Orange County in particular.
And I think what we can't have lost in this,
Rory alluded to it, we are slot capped.
We only have so many slots in Fullerton to Los Angeles.
total we are allowed 50, five zero slots.
The scenario two, scenario is I think 84 slots in my-
I think it's 90 something, I think 84 is,
I think it's in the 90s.
Okay.
I can check, but.
You know, 30 to 40 more slots than BNSF gives us today
on an already crowded railroad,
as you heard from earlier today.
So that's, that is the thing that we're working on.
We're spending a lot of our time in focus.
We have a couple of those projects
that Maria Leibel shared earlier today.
If we can deliver that, BNSF thinks they can accommodate
our extra need in slots.
But if we don't have the Fullerton interlocker complete,
BNSF is not gonna open up, I'm not optimistic.
They're gonna say, okay, you can go 50% more slots
than you have out there today, plus.
So that's the other factor that's driving so much of Olympics readiness is where we
are when it comes to infrastructure track infrastructure capacity.
You wonder why I don't sleep well at night sometimes.
No, that's okay, no, I just turned the color of red wine.
I know that's what I do.
Thank you.
We're going to be events.
We know we finalize that how many events we're going to have and where they're going to be
venues venues have not been fully established.
In fact, I saw there is supposed to be some major announcement today.
I think it's LA City Council was voting on a venue some new venues and where sports will
be at new venues. And I did, we did hear because we have insider knowledge by our chief of
staff, you know, all the Rodriguez that Pasadena, the Rose Bowl has been confirmed as a site
for the semifinal and final of the soccer. But they're still, they're still, still not
all settled. Based off of a presentation that was given this morning, I think there's six
or nine sports that they're still looking for venue for,
something like cricket,
flag football, I forgot some of the ones.
Yeah, I think last I heard is the cricket
and flag football maybe at where LFC plays.
But yeah, this is one of the hard things
about planning for this is that we still don't have
venues confirmed.
When do they plan on finalizing?
I have no idea.
One of the things that they said,
director Spiegel is that they have a set date so everything needs to be completed by that date already. I forgot what the effort was. Well, and to add to that once the venues are finalized, these schedules will not be finalized till sometime thereafter because that will still be in flux probably until the year before. The double secret probation. We don't know. I think it'd also be important to that.
they're looking to identify like parking areas
since every venue will not be allowed to be driven to
since the Olympics will only, it'll really just be them.
And then they're looking to find those parking lots
or spaces and then pretty much just use shuttles
to the venues.
But I wonder how that relates to Metrolink.
Will we be getting the same attention
with shuttles for example?
I believe that many of our stations
will be those mobility hubs.
people will have to get there either by bus or personal vehicle.
And yeah, we'll have to work with security. That's obviously a critical element.
That's another part of our Olympics ask. Um,
but I look at stations like Montclair, which is a very large, um,
location for parking, those types of places. Pardon.
Absolutely. That may be
maybe we should promote this as making America great again in the federal step
up. You better do it soon. It just is so many things they're all known. It is very hard.
So thank you, gentlemen, for all the work. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Now we
get a 10 minute break. What do you like more? No, I was just going to say if we're if we're
rolling and we want the lobbyists, right? Lobbyists are next. I was going to put some
chairs up front. I was going to put some chairs up front for them. So if you just want to
I am going to break.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen,
let's get going to conclude our seminar here.
There's more to learn yet,
and we have a special panel coming up.
Yeah.
Maybe they can help us figure out
what's going on in DC and Sacramento.
I have a clue, you know, gentlemen.
and ladies, you're on.
Thank you, Chair Chafee, good to see you.
Guess what?
We saved the best for last.
Thank you very much to the board for suggesting
that we bring our advocates in.
I know we have a legislative update every month
and you get to hear a little bit of what we're doing
and what's going on, but it's always best to hear it
directly from the people, directly involved.
And that's what we have here today.
I feel very fortunate that we at MetroLink
have the people that we do representing us in Washington.
What we're going to do today to get it all kind of covered
in the hour that we have together,
we first have our federal team up here
that are each going to speak for about five minutes
on themselves, their firms, what they do for us,
how they see things in Washington right now.
And that will leave another 15 minutes or so of Q&A
for you of them before we bring up the state team
so that we can hopefully get through this
and get most of your questions answered
by the end of the time we have here today.
I will say the advocates will be hanging around afterwards.
If you have further questions
or you wanna meet them personally,
please feel free to do so.
So without further ado,
I'll just start with introductions.
First here we have Chris Keurig,
who is a principal with Kaddish Associates.
Chris for years worked for Senator Dianne Feinstein.
He was lead on transportation and appropriations efforts for the senators, as well as other
legislative efforts.
For us, likewise, he helps us out tremendously on the Senate side, our relationships there,
as well as on the appropriations requests that we have, and also with Olympics-related
advocacy.
To his immediate right is Dan Feliz, a principal with Potomac Partners.
I know some of you know Dan from his other representation efforts.
firm represents OCTA and SBCTA among others and has for years. Dan and his firm are instrumental
with us with the delegation members, both appropriators and our delegation members and
leadership on TNI, the Transportation Infrastructure Committee in the House, which are a committee
of jurisdiction, and also likewise reauthorization and Olympics related advocacy. The two ladies
adjacent to them are with Blank Roam, they are Katie Cachill and Genevieve Collin. They and their
colleague Don Norton, who couldn't be with us today, have been with Metrolinx since inception.
they interface directly with FRA and USDOT on regulatory matters that affect our railroad
and have been with us basically since the agency was formed and so we're very very pleased that
they're here as well. What we're going to ask them to do is each firm to spend about five minutes
telling you who they are, a little bit about what they do, a little bit about what they see in
Washington with this new administration and this new Congress as it relates to transportation
and passenger rail, and then at the conclusion
of all of their presentations, just open it up
for the floor and you guys can ask them anything you want.
All right, so without further ado, Chris, you're up.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Thanks for having me here.
As Jeff mentioned, my name is Chris Keurig.
I work for a firm in DC called Caters & Associates.
Mark Caters was Senator Feinstein's chief of staff
for many, many years with Jane Harmon's chief of staff
before that, and so we've got a lot of hill experience
We started the company in about 2008.
And Metro Lake was one of our first clients,
as a matter of fact.
We also worked for, just so you know,
we've also worked for LA Metro,
doing a lot of their appropriations work in DC.
We also worked for the Port of Los Angeles
and the airport, LAX.
So we have a lot of history in Los Angeles,
a lot of experience working with representing
Southern California in general in DC.
and we like to working very closely with you all.
I think I know some of you from your day jobs
and so happy to be a part of the team.
And it is a good team, Dan and Genevieve and, pardon me,
and Katie can speak to their own bonafides,
but the team's been together for quite a while.
And I think we've been effective in what we're doing.
We were brought on again in 2008, 2009,
really to deal with PTC.
I've been with you all ever since that time,
most recently working on just a little earmarked projects,
things like that and Olympics funding,
funding for transportation with the Olympics,
which I'm sure we could talk about in greater detail later,
it's really been a struggle
on the appropriations front for the Olympics.
I'm sure you've all experienced
both in terms of Metrolink and your other jobs
that dealing with the LA-28 is more challenging
than it probably should be.
And that's been reflected,
I think a lot of the frustration and lack of movement
on Capitol Hill is kind of due to some of those dynamics.
I'm happy to talk about those at some point or otherwise.
Just to give you a quick little brief update,
what's happening in DC, it's a lot of changes,
a lot of new things going on.
We're fortunate in that Department of Transportation
is one of the first agencies,
they got a new secretary confirmed quickly.
The second round of confirmations that are occurring
are going to be our DOT agencies.
I think FTA nominee Paul Inaro had his hearing yesterday.
McMaster is going to have his hearing next week.
So they're clearly moving on DOT priorities.
The new administration realizes it's important
and they're getting it done.
So that's a welcome development.
Other agencies just have the secretary
and his immediate staff and no one else.
So we're fortunate on that front.
On the Hill, we've had some changes.
We've got six new members who are delegation.
Well, seven, if you can't shift,
we have six new members of our delegation.
five of brand new Cisneros has been here before,
so he's familiar with Metrolink.
We had a good series of meetings with Darren,
came out with Anna last month,
and met hopefully not at all, as a matter of fact,
and Dan was instrumental in interranging
many of those meetings.
We worked very closely with him and his operation
to cover everyone, and we also have a new center.
For the first time in a long time,
We have two senators from Southern California,
which is a nice plus,
and we look forward to working with Senator Schiff.
Schiff and Padilla are both on,
it's probably the Environment and Public Works Committee,
which again, not terribly relevant for rail,
but they will pull the pen when time comes
to do administration reauthorization.
Most thing we'll talk about in a few moments
there in the minority,
but we'll have to wait and see how that bill unfolds.
A lot of questions have to happen,
have to occur, you have to get answered
before that bill moves forward.
And then, oh, lastly.
So the big legislative to do in DC right now
is what's called reconciliation.
If you really want to get into reconciliation,
I'll sit in the corner and we can talk all about it,
but really it's the main focus of reconciliation
is to extend the 2017 tax cuts
and do other prioritized spending, things like that.
This will take a long time.
I know the speaker and the internal leader
and the White House are eager to get something done
by Easter, it's not gonna happen by Easter.
They might get a point first step done by Easter.
Now they're talking about Memorial Day.
Senators are talking about, you know, August
or maybe even September, which is,
if you've ever worked with a Senate before,
it is very odd brand for them.
Why do anything hard today when you do it tomorrow?
But so we'll see what happens.
And then on the budget front,
we're expecting the budget requests
or at least some version of the budget requests
to come out at the end of this,
at the end of next month, April 28th is a target date.
that will really kind of kick off the FY26 spending cycle
that we usually work in.
We've been very successful, good effective so far.
Julie Nadeau on Jeff's staff has really done a fantastic job
putting together all of our earmark requests.
When we were able to kind of revisit the Olympics funding
that we lost in last year's FY25 bill
when they converted that to a CR,
we'll be able to pick up those conversations again.
So we're really, this is the last bit of session
right now occurring before we really get into the nitty gritty on on the budget
front and with that I will ask Dan to come up and take a seat. Good afternoon my
name is Dan Felice. As mentioned I work for Potomac Partners with Rick Akalday
and Adam Cross who couldn't be here with us today. They are back in DC working on
those community project funding requests and CDS requests for the Senate. So our
firm we were founded in 2005 mainly focused as a transportation firm. Some of
Our first clients was Metrolink and OCTA.
We also represent SBCTA.
When we started in 2008,
soon after the Chatsworth accident in September 12th,
what came out of that soon after,
at the waning days of the Bush administration
was the Rail Safety Improvement Act,
RISA, which mandated positive train control.
When we started in the 111th Congress,
We had a Democrat Congress, House and Senate,
and a newly minted Democrat President.
So it wasn't unlike what we're faced today.
Again, our mission, namely back then,
MetroLink was, I would say, on an island.
We were one of the few supporters
of that positive train control mandate,
which was very controversial.
And we immediately went to work with your great staff
in trying to convince some of those reluctant,
mainly GOP members that this positive train control
was a good thing.
And I think we were very successful over the years
in making sure that implementation
of positive train control stayed on track
and Metrolink being one of the first
and BNSF who was here earlier today
being one of the first freight rails.
Transitioning over to Congress.
I'm an internal optimist glass half full kind of guy.
I guess that comes from my submarine days
where you have to be a bit of an optimist
when you submerge 18,000 tons of Fighting American Steel,
you gotta believe that you're gonna be able to surface
or be expensive fish food.
So things that make me optimistic today,
one, you got a great team.
As Chris mentioned, we've all worked together for 20 years,
very bipartisanly, we coordinate a lot.
I think that it drives a lot of success.
You've got a great team here.
The staff does a great job in getting us the information
and communicating your priorities.
It's a finely tuned instrument,
and we're here to play at your discretion.
So we're always looking forward to conversing with you
and getting your priorities.
The other thing that makes me optimistic,
as you probably recall,
in the first Trump administration,
one of their priorities was infrastructure.
And they came right out of the box very early
with a big package that they wanted to press forward.
Mr. Trump's a builder.
He thinks you get a lot of bang for your buck
with transportation infrastructure specifically,
including ports.
We think we're gonna see that again.
So part of what he also wants to do to help us
is streamlining.
And when I say streamlining, that's project delivery.
So making sure that these environmental rules
are in place that allow us to build quickly,
to procure the things we need quickly.
Time is money in construction.
I think this administration gets that
and they're gonna try to help us and incentivize us
to make sure we do things quickly and when we need them.
I also think another one of their priorities
is going to be the Olympics.
Mr. Trump was out here with a round table
regarding fires in LA,
And he actually did mention the Olympics
during that round table.
And I think he wants to take some ownership.
So that gives us a little wind at our back
as we go forward, as Chris mentioned,
with some of these Olympic ass,
specifically in the appropriations process.
From my perspective, the appropriations process
has been broken for a long time though.
I mean, we have been operating on continuing resolutions
and omnibus bills for a better part of two decades.
That's no way to run a railroad.
I think a lot of people in Congress recognize that.
It certainly doesn't give you guys the certainty
that you need in terms of your funding.
And that's really where the
Surface Transportation Authorization Bill comes into play.
It's also known as the Highway Bill.
In recent past, in the 2012 MAP-21 bill,
they actually did include a rail title.
And a lot of that rail title was trying to address
what they did in the ARA Bill
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
where they had a bag full of money for high-speed rail.
And they had to redirect some of that money
in that highway bill to make sure,
because there were a lot of states that raised their hand initially,
Texas, Florida, that they couldn't deliver.
So California was a great beneficiary of that.
And unfortunately, where we're at today is still no high-speed rail.
That's one that the administration's going to take a look at.
Secretary Duffy did a press conference at Union Station,
where he said he's going to be performing
a pretty in-depth audit of some of the things that are
going on with high-speed rail.
I would say for us, again, what we've always said since 2008
is you really want to focus on the bookends.
That's where the ridership is.
That's where folks like Chairman Schuster
wanted to make sure there was requisite attention paid
funding wise for places like in Southern California
and San Francisco.
And I think, and from my perspective,
I'm an eighth generation California,
I think you get a lot of good benefit
in building up this transportation ecosystem
in Southern California.
There's a great population growth out here
and it's a great economic driver,
not just for the state of California,
but for the country at large.
I will probably just conclude here then
and happy to take any of your questions later,
but yeah, going forward, I think it's appropriate
that we're here at Knott's Berry Farm.
If you really want a good assessment
of what it's like in DC, you can just look out the window
and see that rickety wooden roller coaster out the window.
That's sort of what it feels like in DC all the time.
I think the only difference is we got no seatbelts
in Washington DC.
So some people are gonna fall off.
I think I see it as our mission
to make sure MetroLink does not.
And I think we're gonna be successful.
I think you'll all be smiling here very shortly.
We just gotta be patient.
I'm very happy to be working with this team
where I've note, I will note that a lot of people
as these Trump executive orders come out
and some of the legislation by tweet,
we've been very patient and it's important not to overreact.
A lot of these have already changed.
A lot of things have already been rescinded
and they're adapting and they're listening.
So as long as we're doing our job
and making sure that your voices are heard
in Washington DC, we will be successful.
So thank you.
Good job, Dan and Chris.
Hi, I'm Katie Catchell,
Principal of Blank Room Government Relations.
It's really a partner equivalent.
With my colleague Don Norden,
who couldn't make it here today,
We've supported Metrolinx federal advocacy
since the early 2000s, 2001 for Don and 2005 for me.
And Genevieve here, also a partner equivalent at Blank Roam
has four years of Metrolinx service under her belt
and all ready to go.
You wanna just quickly jump in?
Yeah, sure.
So my original tax experience started with energy
and tax policy.
Now that I've been with Blank Room for about eight years now,
I've expanded into municipalities
which then include infrastructure, transit,
and rail as well.
All right, thanks Genevieve.
So I'll just start with a little background
in how we're navigating the new administration.
Then Genevieve will provide some examples
of the work we do for Metrolink
and updates to ongoing projects that we're working on.
So our firm is separated from,
or distinct from the other firms
is that we are a nationwide firm in many different cities,
and we have railroad and transit particular expertise,
specifically interfacing with the US Department
of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration,
and Federal Transit Administration.
And we're regularly involved
with the Association of American Railroads, AAR,
which, as you know, represents the Class 1s,
as well as APTA, American Public Transportation Association.
We also work in the Washington DC offices
of the Class 1 railroads,
Each class one has an internal GR shop, much like Metrolink,
and they're based in Washington, DC.
And we have regular interactions with folks in the UP and BNSF.
And we can serve as a vital communications link
with those class one companies and in their government
relations offices in DC.
So all to say is that these professional networks are
really helpful in identifying opportunities and threats,
common, as well as build and work with coalitions to achieve
federal outcomes. We're pros at navigating the new
administration, and this one's no different. Every four years
this happens. We've got friends and acquaintances at DOT, FTA,
FRA, and we're making new. We look forward to assisting
Metrolink in building a relationship with all these new
folks. For example, David Fink was nominated as FRA
administrator. He spent a long career in the short line rail
industry which we are a part of. And this week, as Chris mentioned the Senate Banking Committee
held a nomination hearing on the former representative Mark Molinaro to lead the FTA
former New York upstate Republican transit friendly we think. So that we'll be looking
forward to working with him. Next week, Sean Duffy, Secretary Duffy will testify Senate EPW.
Chris mentioned that you have two senators on the EPW committee is very important.
We're also tracking all these executive orders and how they're infiltrating into DOT and
the resulting memos and as Dan mentioned, reviewing those programs.
They are looking at high-speed rail, they're looking at everything.
So we're working with Metrolink to get ready for reviews of past, present, and future grants
that may be possible.
They are targeting high-speed rail and specific things
in the EO, such as electric vehicles and climate change.
So we're also anticipating and tracking
a deregulatory trend, so Republican administration.
So we're looking at project streamlining,
as well as other things like that delay of the dispatcher
certification and employee signal certification,
things like that we can expect.
But at the same time, we have Vice President J.D. Vance,
who was again the Senator from Ohio,
who was there during the East Palestine crash.
So we think that rail safety is still gonna be in play.
With that, I will turn it over to Genevieve
to talk about our projects.
Sure, so we were asked to give an example
of us working well with Metrolink
and coming up with a win for you guys.
So a few years ago, Metrolink wanted to retire
several locomotives that still technically
had useful lives.
This action would have required a proportional repayment
of the FTA funds used to buy them.
But that could be overturned by a waiver from FTA.
So Metrolink had been working with the FTA regional office
trying to get this waiver.
And it was about three years, I believe,
that nothing was happening.
It was just stagnant.
So our team and the great Metrolink team
here, worked together on kind of a bifurcated approach where
we got legislation into the House IIJA that
clarified the FDA could give this waiver.
They can anyway, but it was just here
it is right in front of you.
And then simultaneously worked with FTA headquarters,
specifically the chief counsel's office
and the executive director.
We explained the situation.
wondering why the regional office was dragging their feet and then within a few weeks there was
a letter that gave the waiver which saved MetroLink about two million dollars and then also as well
set a precedent so should MetroLink need to do this in the future it's right there you can just
refer to it. We were also asked to discuss the rail reliability cap we've been monitoring it it's
In issue, obviously, the statute does not mandate that commuter rail agencies carry liability insurance up to the cap.
It only applies directly to Amtrak and other federal passenger service, but as I'm sure everyone knows, many agencies are contractually required to maintain liability insurance to the cap because of negotiated access to access and vendor agreements.
So you have to deal with it anyway.
The cap is scheduled to be adjusted in the first quarter of 2026.
It's looking based on CPI that will be around $400 million.
So, but then another one of the biggest issues with that is that when this comes out in a
federal register, there's about 30 days to react to this and find the increased insurance.
So there are many organizations, APTA in particular, the commuter, sorry, I lost where I was.
The commuter rail coalition is also looking at putting this in surface re-auth, extending
it to maybe around 90 days, which gives people, which gives these agencies a longer period
of time to round up that insurance, make sure that they have it all the way up to the inflated
cap. So happy to answer questions. I think us giving the example of the FTA waiver shows that
we not only have the ability to work with you all to craft amendments and that sort of thing,
but also work with agencies that on fixes that may not need legislation in particular.
And so that can come in handy, especially when there's gridlock in Congress. And I don't know
I don't know if you've heard of any of that lately,
but yeah, and just wanted to say thank you for having us
and it's been lovely working with your team.
Thank you so much, Genevieve.
I can just say, I was so glad that Genevieve
brought up the FDA waiver issue
because it has been something that we had gotten
absolutely no traction with whatsoever
with the regional office in terms of being able
to get that waiver.
Genevieve is correct.
We were prepared to pay $2 million
of federal interest penalty
for essentially doing the right thing,
which was retiring older, dirtier, rolling stock
for cleaner rolling stock.
We were gonna have to pay this penalty
and working with blank brown,
we were able to get that waiver secured so that we don't.
And as she said, establishing a precedent for the future
as we continue to hopefully retire rolling stock.
Another thing that I know Dan didn't mention,
but I wanted to just bring to your attention to,
Again, just because it was so unusual,
a little bit over a year ago,
our CEO had the unique opportunity to appear
before the rail subcommittee of the TNI committee,
which is the principal committee of jurisdiction
that affects what we do here.
And it's a unique opportunity,
not something that very many people ever get to do
in their career.
As it turned out, the committee chair had a rule
that he only wanted three witnesses for any hearing.
and as it turned out for that particular hearing
due to the great work of Dan Feliz and Rick Acosta,
they had four and that fourth person was in fact our CEO.
So hopefully we'll have additional opportunities
to appear before that body in the new Congress.
So anyway, I see that we do have some Q&A time here,
so I'll stop talking now.
If you have questions of our advocates, please feel free.
So thanks for the good presentation.
I've got three questions for you
and they're really focused on Chris and Dan.
Number one, and all of these is with regard to Olympics funding.
Number one, could you assess the degree of bipartisan support in the House
and Senate generally for Olympics funding, especially among the appropriators?
Number two, could you assess the degree of bipartisan support
in our Southern California congressional delegation among any appropriators
as appropriator?
And number three, is there a cheerleader in the administration, whether it's at a Secretary
Duffy's office or otherwise, that can help promote the Olympic funding that we need?
Sorry I asked you, you know, three separate questions, but what's a lawyer for, you know,
compound questions.
Yeah, it's in no particular order.
On the administration front, no, is the answer.
So I think the biggest cheerleaders.
Little closer.
You're, you're.
Thank you, thank you.
On the administration front.
No, probably the biggest cheerleaders actually
the president Trump and he's the things that he said.
I, we will see how serious they are
when the budget request comes out at the end of next month
about including funding for Olympics related costs.
Traditionally, the administration has funded
security related needs
and they have accounts established for those needs.
There is not a transportation account
that they're gonna be able to fund,
plug money into to cover either cost that we will incur
or even cost at the World Cup
or any kind of transportation related cost
to any kind of national event like this.
We had worked on that in the FY25 bill,
the Senate had about $200 million in it
and created, most importantly, from my perspective,
created a new account that we could then just plug money
into as the Olympics drew closer,
that was dropped when they passed the CR,
the continuing resolution, the year on Tuesday,
to revisit that again in FY26, we've already asked, one of the things Metrolink has done a really good
job of is identifying our costs, not only what, you know, the funding that we need,
but really a schedule for how that funding would roll out. So, I mean, you know, things in DC,
as I'm sure everywhere else, you know, nothing happens until it happens, and then everything
happens all at once. So, I think we're in a good spot, I think, in terms of where Metrolink is,
in terms of people knowing what our needs are,
knowing, you know, again, our capabilities of spending
and things like that.
And, you know, I have run,
running anybody who said, who said no,
but it's more of a general lack of enthusiasm
for the Olympics, quite frankly.
The Biden didn't want to touch it at all.
The Trumps have been more receptive
and that's, you know, due to some of the work that,
you know, that LA20 has done directly with the president.
My concern, quite frankly,
is when we get below the president,
is that same level of enthusiasm is still there.
He said nice things about us.
He says lots of things.
So we will have to work on that and work with the horses
that we have to try to have that funding materialized
at some point.
Go back to other questions about delegation
and the appropriators.
We have two appropriators, and they're
both in the minority party, Aguilar and Torres.
I've spoken with them most personally about the Olympics,
and they're generally supportive,
I think when it comes down to brass tacks, how you do this.
It goes back to my earlier comment about
we don't have an account to fund.
So I think logistically it's difficult.
There are a lot of other things that are easy.
So it kind of gets a little bit of a short shrift sometimes.
So I think if we're gonna do something meaningful
at 526 it'll have to happen there.
So that's where we'll be really focused.
Darren had, I guess I had a great trip out last month.
I think this came up in every meeting was Olympics funding.
No one said no, right?
But I think people are just trying to figure out ways
to say yes.
I forgot Ken Calvert.
We had a good meeting with Ken Calvert
that Dan arranged, generally very supportive.
But again, I think it's up to us to figure out
things for them to do that that can help us.
Yeah, just to build on what Chris is saying
with the bipartisanship in the house.
You have Mr. Cole,
who's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee
from Oklahoma.
a Chickasaw Indian. They're actually scheduled to have an Olympic game in Oklahoma. So he's very
well aware of of the ask that was in the Senate bill. He was generally very supportive. He works
very well with his counterpart, ranking member Deloro from Connecticut. The again, as I mentioned,
the appropriations process is always front and center in these partisan battles. There's a lot
of things that get wrapped up in these bills, in these poison pill type provisions that
end up sinking one bill or another, which is why they have to package them together
in these omnibus or continuing resolution type approach.
Just to transition over on the authorizer side, I'm very hopeful.
Mr. Graves came out, Sam Graves from Missouri came out very early and said that he wants
to work in a bipartisan way, what they call a big four agreement. That's where he gets
with his ranking member, Mr. Larson, and the two subcommittee chairman. That'll be instrumental
in that bill on the highway subcommittee, Mr. Rouser, who's from North Carolina, his
chief of staff, by the way. McCormick, her husband is deputy chief of staff for Mr. Duffy.
So I'm sure there's going to be some communication from his committee with the C-suite over at
USDOT regarding some of these major programs that were very concerned about
and focused on for surface transportation reauthorization. But I
think that process will will proceed. They're already starting to have
hearings, talk about some of the issues that are going to be coming up. A lot of
the funding that will come in there will tangentially touch Olympics needs. It
generally isn't a vehicle where you see a lot of Olympics type programs in it. And that's
usually just because of timing. It's a five-year bill where it usually aligns, is not around any
particular Olympics with the last one being in LA and then Salt Lake with the Winter Olympics. But
I think that you could see some some effort with those authorizers on trying to find as Chris
mentioned accounts that we could target for Olympics funding. I think most importantly though
and I think we heard it earlier is making sure as we go forward with with Olympics type asks
is that we're very focused on what we're asking for. I have not seen an administration in my 22
years in Washington DC advocating that is very fond of operating money. There
just isn't any in FTA. That's not something Congress likes to fund. They
like capital projects. So this goes back to kind of a larger point that I've made
to a few of you in different settings here. You must really be cognizant of
what you're asking for now. That's one of the changes that we're adjusting to.
things we are asking for two years ago regarding climate regarding tier four
electric vehicle active transportation those are coming off the table in the
federal level those are things you could still ask at the state level but from a
federal perspective we have a lot more needs that we could still ask for so I'm
not saying that the pie is necessarily shrinking for us it's just our approach
and being flexible to say now we can go after capacity enhancement or some of
the things we heard about earlier that would benefit us and making sure we're
we're partnering with the 800 pound gorilla in Washington DC and that is a
class once so as long as we got a lot of their support behind us I think a lot of
these can come together and that may may include getting some of these capacity
issues addressed. Thank you. Thank you. Director questions. I'm not seeing
in. Sorry, that
sure, sure. If you could do a quick question. Is there a question? I know,
we have actually pictures right there. Yes. When you talk about like, there's
money for capital projects. What's what some of that spoken in with some of
that Darren, will you then be able to buy or ask to see if
they can fund some of our score or, or some of our outstanding
CIP projects that we have seen if we can send that as a
package over?
We what generally speaking where we have the where we are in need
of additional funding, I think our better best opportunities
are going to be at the state level, the the dollar amounts
that we're seriously seeing out of earmarks. There's some
different things Victor. The when we're going through the
various discretionary grant programs, there's a lot that we
don't qualify for. And right now, I think it's risky to be
counting on much FRA discretionary grants out of DC.
They're pulling a lot back already, where we do have
opportunity and Mark and or Andrew on the next panel will be
can speak to that where I think we have opportunity to fill in
some of those gaps, where we have bad cost escalation
on score are gonna be through Sacramento
is probably our better, we'll have a better opportunity,
less competition and our projects are already known there.
If the competition at the federal level
is gonna be so fierce that our chances just aren't great
for the relatively small dollars that are out there.
Okay, thanks.
The only thing that I would add to that
to those in the reauthorization bill,
we're going to be really advocating strongly
all across transit for maintenance of the funding
that has been provided in the IIJ.
There was a significant plus up in formula funding
that we receive that all transit agency receives.
So in this environment where there's a lot of talk
about cutting and reducing, we wanna hold the line
on those historic authorized levels in the IIJ going forward.
And I know that'll be something
that we're gonna be working assiduously on
as well as the Olympics.
Thank you.
Are there further questions for our federal advocates?
Just a comment.
I know this has been asked and answered,
but the president did say he was excited
about the LA Olympics and I'd hope you'd find a way
to weasel into his office
through your great techniques of lobbying to remind him.
Absolutely.
Yeah, Director Allen, not two days,
less than two days after the president made the remarks
about the importance of LA 28,
we fired off a letter to Secretary Duffy saying,
the president was here and said this,
this is what we need.
So that is our approach.
Two days, it felt like it was like two hours.
That's how things work in DC, two days.
I will say it is a goal of ours hopefully
to get into the White House or the executive office
this spring to talk about this very subject.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Your state is...
Yeah. All right. Thank you, everyone. All right. Thank you.
While our state lobbyists make their way up, it's really a pleasure to introduce both of them. You know, I've been doing this a number of years, and I will tell you that we are extraordinarily well served.
In Sacramento with the two gentlemen, you're about to hear from Andrea Antwi. My immediate right here is
a principle with the firm bearing his name,
Shell Yoder Antwi.
They are, if not certainly one of the preeminent firms
in the transportation advocacy space,
statewide Andrew himself,
in addition to representing us,
represents many cities and transit
and transportation entities in this state
and even nationally, including among others,
LA Metro, the ports, lava, city of Santa Monica, many other
cities, local governments, very, very fortunate to have him
representing our interests and developing synergies with these
other entities that he also represents when we go forward for
for our for our relative asks. Mark Watts, the gentleman on the
end is has been, I refer to him as the Dean of transportation
advocates in California for decades. He has had his
fingerprints on essentially every significant piece of
transportation legislation practically that has passed in
this state. He also is CEO, Mr. Kettle referenced in the
earlier revenue report, he sits on the transport transportation
task force that is looking at all of the appropriations that
be made going forward into transportation in the in the coming years that can hopefully secure some
dedicated operational funding for commuter rail and for metro link i know it's certainly a goal
and so he can speak directly from the horse's mouth on that as they continue their deliberations
so without further ado i'll turn it over first to andrew you're up board members good afternoon
It's been a rare treat to allow us to be a fly on the wall if you guys have this really
informative session. For those of us that are in Sacramento, kind of taking the marching orders and
chasing votes and dollars for this agency, just to look at how you guys huddle internally and
do some mid and long range planning is a very good opportunity. So I'm grateful to be here.
I'm Andrew Antwi. My firm, as Jeff mentioned, is Chariot or Antwi.
Schevels are in line. We just keep adding last names. We'll one day come up with a new brand
or logo. We'll probably pay someone through the nose in order to help us do that. I focus on
transportation issues and other issues. I started off as a legislative staff and I worked for 10
years for the Assembly Transportation Committee. This tall guy with blonde hair would come
lobby me on transportation issues. His name was Mark Watts. I joke that he's forgotten
more than I've learned on transportation and his responses will make you think I forgot.
Focusing on what the environment is like in Sacramento, there's been a significant amount
of legislative turnover. We have, especially in Southern California, many new members,
And for the first time that I can recall, we don't have a leader from Southern California.
Tony Atkins, this leader of the Senate, hailed from San Diego, and she's no longer there.
She's making her bid for governor.
And so the leader of the Senate's from Northern California.
The leader of the Assembly is from the Central Coast.
And that is kind of a thing to take note of as someone who works the Southern California
beat for a number of agencies.
Jeff mentioned some of the clients we represented our firm.
They include LAX, the Port of Los Angeles, LA Metro,
City of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica,
West Hollywood, a number of other agencies around the state.
And so as we look to see what's possible,
I'd start off by saying that transportation
is not a big area of focus in Sacramento right now.
Governor Newsom started off the legislative session
calling for a special focus session
on Trump proofing California.
He wanted to have funds set aside for legal challenges
for all the things that they feared would happen in DC
that threatened California priorities.
And shortly after the governor released his budget
as he required to in the constitution on January 10th,
wildfires broke out.
So then the special session was expanded
from Trump proofing to also include wildfires.
And that's what legislators have been focused on in addition to figuring out where the bathrooms are and kind of what the priorities are in the transportation area of the budget that the governor did eventually release for public transportation funding.
We breathe a sigh of relief because money that was appropriated in a multi-year commitment was retained.
And the governor had a little bit of good news in projecting that the state was going to actually experience a moderate
Surplus and there's been pretty drastic fears that the Bob is going to fall out of the state general fund given some of the
Warning signs in the economy and so the fact that the legislature has forced itself to build a reserve
for economic uncertainties allowed
Most of the funding commitments over multiple years to be retained and for public transportation
You can divide the budget process into two phases
before the May revise and
After the May revise so the real question here is what happens after the May revise?
Will the numbers hold up that the governor projected in January or will we see warning signs and bad revenue trends?
given the
average income of property owners and homeowners in the Pacific Palisades that now have
Relief they don't have to pay their property taxes or income taxes to October at the earliest
We're gonna see some downward trends and general fund revenue patterns
at the same time you have
Champions for of transit funding that even if it's not the hot topic of the whole body are focused on issues including
Senate Budget Chair Scott Wiener, a freshman senator, Jesse Arreguin,
Mark Gonzalez and others on the assembly side who are pushing currently for a $2 billion
shot in the arm of operating funds from the State Journal Fund for Public Transportation.
There's been a letter writing campaign amongst colleagues and so far so good.
It's not, you know, we didn't get half the body to do it, but enough legislators
put it on the agenda if things hold up. And so that's something to look forward to.
I think there's some questions about how those dollars would be divvied up,
because there's a lot of press in the Bay Area about BART and Muni having operating struggles.
And so the question is from Southern California, what form are they going to use if you score the
money? And TBD. We'll see how that works out. But we're also focused on some longer term
proposals. There's a freshman assembly member from the Glendale, Pasadena area.
Nick Schultz, who's proposed a $20 billion general obligation bond for public transportation.
Metro's pushing that idea. Mr. Schultz is taking it on. There's some support from former assembly
member Laura Friedman, but it has a long way to go. The legislature actually has been kind of
productive on general obligation bond authorizations two ballot measures were
went to voters and were approved one at ten billion dollars for climate related
investments and the other at another ten billion dollars for K through 12
schools and some community college funding some people argue that that's
about as much as we can put on the credit card as far as borrowing goes and
And so the prospect of another $20 billion proposal
is a challenge.
The other consideration in the legislature
is the housing advocates feel like they are next in line.
In fact, you've seen some efforts by housing bond advocates
to kind of try and elbow folks out of the way
because they felt like they should have been approved
in 2024 when those two other bond measures were approved.
And so we're focused on trying to make sure
transportation conversation continues to be relevant and to hold on to what we've been
able to retain so far as far as the fiscal cliff investments. There's also devil in the
details on exactly what formulas get used to distribute those dollars. And I would say
the legislature is more focused on streamlining. Democrats in both the Senate and the Assembly,
especially given the significant turnover, felt a little bit chastened by the election
especially with the approval of measures like Prop 36 and frankly, the national conversation about a lack of affordability, especially in a state like California.
And so any proposals that increase cost of living, they're not rushing to approve those.
They're moving very slowly and deliberately.
And right now, I would say the affordability conversation is focused most prominently on energy issues.
But frankly, anything that impacts household bills will be long, slow debates.
And so as we try and kind of introduce these conversations about states stepping up and making investments, it's within the context of the turnover.
The fact that North-South balance is a little tip more towards the central part of the state and the northern part of the state.
And our funding issues are on a precipice of the news bad news. And we're waiting for the May revise to see what funding commitments will stick and which ones may fall by the wayside.
I'll stop and just leave the rest for questions and ask my colleagues.
Good afternoon and thank you for having me here I think I can sit down because you covered everything I was going to.
That's not actually just a little bit about me. I've had a very important career to me
where I started off the Caltrans spent eight years there went to work in the legislature
headed up the ways and means in the budget shop for transportation budgets and the budget
in general as the staff director of the Republicans. After that I spent some time with some friends
of Orange County. I was 150 gals, chief of staff when he was speaker. In addition, I
enjoyed a couple years working for Pete Wilson, the governor at the time, who appointed me
as undersecretary. I do have a broad base of policy, budget, administration activities
related to transportation. Probably one fun thing I did that helped launch a lot of interest
in regional rail throughout the state was when I was working as Under Secretary, I was able to
negotiate with the Southern Pacific Railroad for money that was promised them in Prop 116
to make improvements on their rail system in Northern California. That gave birth to the
capital corridor and a capital corridor as a regionally run program taken from Amtrak and
That then gave birth to a more formalized low sand and the San Joaquin corridors,
but my activity is limited simply to the capital corridor.
So I've been working on rail issues for years and years and years,
and I very much enjoyed when I left the government opportunities to join a nice
little lobbying firm headed up by Will Campton, another Orange County person,
who was at one point the LCTA's leader, and then DJ Smith who was also very well known. So I've had
a very enjoyable career and I'll just go through a couple of other items. One I'm going to talk
about one thing we did for MetroLink more than a decade ago, but it was in the wake of trying to
get the PTC funding pulled together, you know, the positive train control. Metro was ready to put
money on the table to accelerate the program. But they didn't want to take the risk of putting
the money into the contract and not having the state money that was available out there back
filling and being available to them. So under legislation that we chased that I basically did
coordinated on the very day that Metro was going to act to get the governor to sign the bill. So
So we were able to call in to the Golden Palace and say,
hey, the money's on its way, you can move forward.
So that was very, very gratifying activity
that I was involved with.
I will say, I don't think we should underestimate
the interest of the 35 or 36 new members
in the affordability issue.
they should bring the leadership into making requirements
or imposing requirements on every legislation.
You gotta think about affordability
before you launch that bill.
And so I worry that the affordability issue
is going to be somewhat supreme as a policy backdrop
as we try to move forward.
And I'll turn now to the transit task force.
as we try to move forward and come up with funding
for transit operations.
So the Transit Transformation Task Force
has conducted eight meetings to this point in time.
It started off about a year ago.
I just got a notice this morning from the secretary's office
about the next two meetings in April and in June.
They have gone through every single way
of trying to bring efficiency out of operations,
procurement processes, all those kind of things that a good well run organization needs to
have as tools or even the authority to use as tools in some cases. But we are now turning
the page and getting close to dealing with transit operational funding as a task force.
the task force is comprised of mostly organizational members, advocacy groups that have a large
stake, not as operators are not involved in operating transit, but as trying to influence
the change in California, to gravitate to more, more transit access and more transit
use in the state. So it's, it's fun to be in those meetings. There's about a two dozen
and folks. At this point, I went back and reviewed the memo that was done for
number eight meeting was two months ago. And what they do what I what what the
process has been is they would write a memo and say here's what the problem is
and here's some ideas. Bring it to the task force and have the task force
thrash through it and try to come up with these are the things we think are
highest priority. So that's been done. So there's been no real active progress on identifying the
specific ways to raise operational funding, just some of the the backdrop like what you need to
have as a good tax or as a good revenue base. So I'm looking forward to to the next two meetings
where I think we'll get down to, you know, the nub and really try to put together some some
really good thoughts. There had been some thought of cap and trade consistent with what your
organization has suggested. The reason cap and trade would work is that the authority for the
auctions for the emission credits expires in 2030. The state has used the receipts in the transportation
portion of the revenue fund that comes out of the auctions to fund and take a long lead time look
at major projects. That's how the score was able to get a 1.3, 1.8 billion dollar allocation
several years ago. It's a multi year allocation based on the assumption of how much money was
going to come in each year and it's roughly about 4 billion a year for the entire state.
So with the prospect of an extension in 2030 you would be the secretary's office would be able to
continue to do that long lead time funding of projects and continue to feed into the transit
and inner city rail program. However with as Andrew pointed out with a great number of new folks
coupled with the challenge to be looking carefully at
affordability, continuing a new continuing existing formula or
revenue basis into the future. The minute they get to
Sacramento is a daunting task. We went through this to a
degree when we did SB one together a couple years ago, the
big transportation finance package. There were a lot of
people who were very nervous. And it took a lot. It took a
year and a half actually to get to the point where we were able to get the votes on the
table. So cap and trade will come into play absolutely as a funding source that we can
compete for if there's the will to do the extension this year instead of next year.
So I think kudos to the your your CEO and your staff for getting out there in front
of this whole bandwagon and saying, hey, we need this, we need it now and we have these
problems down here. So I think that's as much as I think I'll cover right now. I would add
two last funny things, I think are funny. Last night I found out that when I worked
in the legislature in the mid 80s, that I worked for the leadership on the Republican
inside. That was led by Mr. Felice's father. So we were
working together and I you know, I never never in my wild dreams
would think I was sitting next to his son. So good to meet you,
sir. And I think that's I'll bring it to a close. I don't
want to go on to too many remembrances. Thank you very
much.
So Jeff, just let me remind you as you take questions that we
had a 3.30 ish time and time. So I was it. Yeah, just heads up.
Please. Are there questions?
Board members have questions, please.
So I think you may have been thanks for the presentation. I
think you may have been here this morning, or maybe not when
we were talking about the various dedicated revenue
sources or funding options. And one of those was the ride share
option. Could you, you know, in addition to cap and trade and
others, could you assess for us what you believe is the current
attitude of legislative leadership, relative to
utilizing that as a revenue source?
I might because I actually fought against it on behalf of
General Motors at the time that bill was passed. But then the
bill was presented to a client that I have now. So we were very happy with the TNC tax.
That bill was a one entity bill and it was pushed very hard by the chairmen of the budget committee
at the time from San Francisco. Do I think there's a chance to expand that? I do. And I will also
make the observation that the find list that Ms. Kalichio put together of different concepts,
dividing it into high, medium, and low. When I did take a look at the memo I mentioned from the
task force, it looked like they copied her memo, not word for word, but in terms of a framework,
listing many of the same kind of ideas, not as many as she pulled together, but many of the same
ideas, one of which was the TNC tax. So I think there this is something that may emerge in the
next two, three, four months with the next two meetings of the task force.
I'll certainly make sure it gets into play at this point in time. I have one last comment,
that's why I wanted to grab the microphone. I think as we go, as this organization goes forward,
one thing I would recommend as an approach, now that you have the the hard homework done,
is take a few, take more than just some of the, how do I say it? I would recommend taking the middle
group, put a task force together here, bring us in, and try to figure out how to do a multi-layer
revenue package. Don't put it all in one type of revenue. That's where I think we could,
you can see it, you know, get kicked to this curb, but if you could put together three, four
items that all work together, you can do a smaller amount for each one,
but they build to the proper amount. And Andrew will backstop me on this. That was the theme
behind SP1. We had rich fee, we had a gas tax, we had diesel tax, and several other kinds of
taxation to get to the five billion annual number. And
believe me, there was no bleed at the levels we did. But it
would have been a failure if we got much higher in any one of
those other taxes. So I like the model, I'm suggesting it. I'm
not going to push for it. But I'm suggesting it's an idea
that you go next step with a team that looks at a group of
revenue.
Thanks. Just one small additional thought. One of the
challenges towards trying to replicate that authorization that Mr. Phil ting secured for
the city and county San Francisco is that San Francisco already had the taxing authority
and the bill just provided that authorization for San Francisco to pursue the surcharge through
state legislation for Metro League as a JPA we would need the authorization and really that
taxing authority on top of that. So that's a bigger policy change relative to trying to
clinch revenue like that on an ongoing basis. It's more than a bank shot. It's kind of like a
two-step process. And so that would be part of the challenge in trying to pursue authorization
like that in Sacramento. And I saw that it was a very robust option on the calendar,
on the menu of options that you guys discussed.
And so I'm not saying we can't do it,
but I do like Mark's idea of having multiple options
and going at it that way.
So to recap a little bit from the discussion
that we had earlier, our CEO, we've already weighed in
and we started the process on cap and trade.
A cap and trade very likely will move,
whether it's this year, possibly next year,
for the reason that Mark mentioned the fact
that the authorization for cap and trade
is going to sunset by 2030 if it doesn't.
Now it's going to be a big food fight for that money.
There's a lot of interests are going to want to divvy that up.
But for the reasons we've talked about,
commuter rail does have a very strong argument for that.
So we'll definitely pursue that.
With respect to the ride share,
of course, that's something that the task force
is going to continue to look at.
And Mark can be a mouthpiece for that need there,
But those are two of the options, as you noted,
that we can look at very strongly for future funding.
Are there other questions?
I know we're coming up on our time.
I just wanted to also say and to emphasize to you
that all of these advocates that you've met here
for the first time, Chris, Dan, Genevieve, Katie,
Andrew and Mark, they work for you.
So if you have questions, if you have suggestions
through Mr. Kettle, we stand here to work for you
and to try to put into place the legislative platform
that you just adopted in January,
but we're also here to listen to your suggestions
or to answer your questions as we move along.
Every legislative session kind of has a life of its own.
We couldn't have predicted the wildfires.
We couldn't have...
There'll be things that happened between now
and the end of this year
that we are not contemplating right now
that will likely happen in influence decisions
in Sacramento and in Washington.
So as you have questions,
if you want us to answer them
or if you have suggestions for us,
I just wanted to highlight that we're here for you,
every member that's spoken to you today.
So thank you very much.
Well, thank you for joining us.
I appreciate your continued advocacy and RV app.
Suggestions you're ranking.
Is that it?
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any final?
No?
No?
Okay.
Just a thank you for everybody taking this time.
Yesterday and today, it means a lot to us
that you took the time to be here and fully engaged.
So on behalf of the full staff, thank you.
and then on behalf of me to the Metrolink team,
the staff that are here that have put so much work into it,
thank you.
Thanks to our member agencies who have had staff here
that continue to be, as much as we work together
and we have to be in sync,
and it is something that we do together and we do it
in not always the perfect harmony,
but ultimately we get to a pretty good song at the end.
So it's a thanks to the member agencies
for taking the time to be here as well.
So thanks to, I know I've seen, well, everybody's been here.
So my thanks to all five counties for sending, sending staff.
Mr. Chair, I too would like to join in thanking all of you.
What makes things work is the relationships we have.
I think this experience last night and today helps build those relationships.
And it's a pleasure to work with all of you and staff as that gives us a good
feeling and they understand better what we're doing and where we need to go. So
thank all you for coming. We look forward to another workshop next year.