Well, good morning everyone. It's my pleasure to call this very special meeting to order.
Let's start with our safety briefing by Hilary Consol, our Chief Safety
Security Appliance Officer. Make sure we're all safe in this building which is not our usual place to meet.
Good morning. Thank you. Good morning chairman, directors. We are located at Knoxbury Hotel.
as the chairman stated it is a different location than we're used to so just be mindful if we are
to evacuate the building we will be notified via audible alert there's two exits emergency exits
that we can utilize one is directly behind me if we take the stairs down we'll take it down
to the ground level when we walk out we'll go to your right or to your left i apologize
and we will meet in the parking lot if there's another exit in the hallway to your right we'll
we'll take those stairs down to the ground floor.
Once we get to the ground floor,
you'll hang a right and you'll come out by the pool.
I believe everybody came in through the pool.
That's where we were instructed.
So we'll go out that same exit
and then at least we'll meet at the same area
within the parking lot.
In the event, just again, be mindful though,
when you're evacuating, there's a lot of tripping hazards.
There are a lot of cords more than normal,
bags, chairs, that sort of thing.
so just kind of push them in if we have to evacuate.
Anybody needing assistance evacuating, please let me know.
We also do have emergency responders in the room
who will aid assistance in evacuating as well
in the event of a medical emergency.
Again, we have emergency responders in the room.
I'm also AEDC PR certified,
so we'll be performing those services.
We do also have an AED in the building
and predetermined staff who would dial 911
and retrieve the AED.
In the event of an earthquake,
we'll take cover under the tables,
take cover as best we can,
wait for the rumbling to stop
and wait to see if further evacuation is necessary.
And in the event of an active shooter,
we'll deploy the run, hide, fight tactic.
And just as another note of housekeeping,
if you need to use the restrooms,
the restrooms are through the door
that you entered to our left.
Thank you.
Thank you for the safety briefing.
And now it's my special pleasure to introduce
the Buena Park mayor, Connor Trout.
Connor is going to give us a special welcome
and then lead our pledge of allegiance.
All stand, if you will.
All right, good morning, everyone.
Connor Trout, mayor of Buena Park.
Right before starting the pledge,
just wanted to say, again, thank you,
and welcome to the city of Buena Park,
not only home to Knott's Berry Farm or Porto's,
where many of you are hopefully gonna stop by after,
but also the proud home
of the Art Brown Metrolinx station recently named.
For those who don't know Art Brown, no, he's not dead.
We honored him while he's alive, just got off council.
The station he fought for for 17 years, many years ago.
I know many of you have worked with him, came to fruition.
He was chair of this board, chair of OCTA,
and an eight-term mayor of Buena Park.
So thank you to everyone here for your support,
for that renaming, that incredible celebration
that we just had about a month ago.
Hope you can all stop by and check out the signage
of the Art Brown Metrolink Station.
Now, if you could, please face the flag
directly behind me, put your right hands over your heart.
Ready, begin.
I would like to thank you.
And that's what's happening.
So that you would follow the commissioner's stance.
We should never talk about it.
It is a goal.
The procedure does it for all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And now, Mr. Mayer, we can have some good news, staff.
If there's anybody who can tell me all about Metro Lane,
then hopefully it's something you can actually do.
It's a fantastic kind of a special thing
that has her name on it, but it's all secure in China.
Thank you.
Great job.
So Madam Clerk, would you call the role
so we establish a court?
Certainly.
Director Nguyen?
Here.
Director Goh?
Here.
Vice-Chair Burksen.
Here.
Director Spiegel.
Here.
Director Vargas.
Here.
Director Molina.
Second Vice-Chair Tremblay.
Director Engler.
Director Barger.
Director Najarian.
Director Sandoval.
Director Solis.
Director Olson.
Director Allen.
Director O'Connor.
Here.
Director Presiado.
Here.
Director McAllen.
Director Waffner, Director Dutray, your, Director Marquez,
Chair Chaffee, we do have a quorum present.
Thank you, Madam Clerk.
We do have a new director, Joy Lindes and Insanidis,
if you would take the highest for a few minutes
and let us know your history and background, welcome.
Thank you, Chair Chaffee.
I appreciate the opportunity
to say hello to everyone.
My name is Joy Lines.
I'm a Encinitas, City of Encinitas Council member.
And I serve on Losan as the Sandag representative.
And as such, I am here for my first Metrolink meeting.
So thank you for welcoming me.
Thank you for joining us.
And now, Madam Clerk,
do you have any public comment at this time?
We do have two written public comments
will be emailed to the board after the meeting. One is regarding the item 11k which is just the
capital program quarterly update. It's from Californians for Electric Rail that is expressing
their concern with the 300 million dollar budget gap detailed in the staff report and stating that
score represents a critical service expansion through capacity improvements. And then we have
a second written public comment from Grady U urging Metrolink to allow its website to make
the necessary changes to permit the Wayback Machine to capture Metrolink's website,
especially a snapshot of the upcoming January 26, 2026 schedule change. So those two written
public comments will be emailed to the board after the meeting. And we do have one request to speak
from a member of the public so I will call Grady you up to the microphone.
I'm here today because all heavy rail agencies in California are currently blocking their websites
from being archived by the internet archive. So this information is of immense public interest.
For example it's showing the schedule change in the lead up to the 2028 Olympics amongst
other things. So, I believe this is an inadvertent change due to a rise in web-scraping by
AI companies. A lot of websites have had to block on it access a lot more strictly.
But that's no reason for this agency to stop communicating with the public. Even if AI
companies scrape the website, it's very unlikely they will start a competing commuter rail agency.
and even if they did, it would not be the worst way to burn a ton of electricity.
So for that reason, I asked that the MetroLink board direct the agency to unlock the internet
archive so that the history of service can be preserved for posterity. I also hope that the
Losan and San Joaquin Joint Power Authority will also make this change so that
the history of commuter rail in California will be continue to be available to public. Thank you.
Thank you for your comments. And I'll see you. I'm not familiar with the issue.
Uh, Mr. Chair, nor am I, um, I don't know.
Uh, our chief technology officer, Kevin gray has familiarity with that, but.
Uh, rest assured we'll research it in the moment.
And, uh, when, and we'll try to ascertain what the situation is, um, and why we
have done that, um, there may be a good reason, there may not be, so let us do
some research and I'll report back to the board, uh, either via email or at
our next day, but thank you.
We'll look into that.
And now we move on to our consent calendar,
which happens to be items 11A through 11B.
Hey, would any member of the board like to hear
an item separately, or is there anyone from the public?
For approval of the consent calendar.
Second.
Okay.
And I hear none from the public,
like everyone said.
All right.
We have a motion, it's moved and seconded
that the consent calendar items be approved in one motion.
Is there any objection?
Seeing none, the motion carries
and the item and the consent calendar are approved.
Now we're jumping to our regular calendar,
which is the first item is 7A,
which is a IT staff augmentation services.
So we have a presentation for Kevin Gray,
our chief technology office.
Morning, Chairman Chafee, members of the board.
Yes, I am Kevin Gray, Chief Technology Officer,
and I understand I'll have to get back to you
on something here pretty soon.
But today I'm here to recommend the board award
a bench contract for technical support services.
Next slide, please.
So we currently use a bench contract
to augment critical roles supporting technology solutions
that are critical to Metrolinx operations.
Current roles that we leverage the existing bench contract
to augment include infrastructure support services
such as network administration, database administration,
software development and support, service desk, and others.
The current contract ends May 31st of this year.
Also, the current contract is missing roles
that are key to our strategy for improving
and advancing technology services at Metrolink
as we evolve the Integrated Digital
and Technology Services Department
from our historical concierge and commodity view
of technology services to becoming integral technology
leaders in technology innovation for the authority.
Next slide.
So we followed our rigorous RFP process
in partnership with and led by our contracts
and procurement department.
I wanna send a special thank you to Tammy Phillips,
who has been wonderful to work with in this process.
She's not here today, but I wanted to send her a thanks.
328 prospective bidders viewed the solicitation,
144 bids were received,
and 17 were deemed responsible and responsive.
The 10 highest proposers were vetted for final selection.
And then following interviews,
Following interviews by the selection committee,
the five highest scoring consultants
are recommended for the bench.
I personally feel very confident that Tammy led a team
that has provided us with a wonderful set of consultants
for this next bench.
And I recommend we award the contract.
Next slide.
Any questions?
Thank you, directors.
Any questions?
This is an action item.
I have a motion.
Move to move.
Move and second it.
Second.
Got a sample on the motion. I heard a second over here. Did you okay? Okay any further discussion I
see none any objection to approve the item. Seeing none the item is approved thank you.
Thank you. Well next item is item 7b which is a sole source procurement of what we call a C17520
locomotive engine and we have a presentation from Tom Chambord, chief financial officer.
Thank you, good morning everyone. So our F-125 fleet of locomotives is currently undergoing
a rehabilitation project. We have three spare engines on hand at the moment, but as we go
through this process we would like to have one additional engine as a spare, not only to help
this program but also just in case we have a service issue with an engine and we can respond
appropriately. Next slide. Caterpillar is the manufacturer of these engines but they have
authorized only Progress Rail locomotive to sell those in this area so that is why we have a sole
source procurement in this case. These guys take a while. There's a 54-week lead time
on these, so we really need to get these orders, get this order placed, because it'll take
a while before we actually see that. Next slide, please. The recommendation is that
the board authorize the CEO to negotiate and award a sole source contract to Progress Rail
Locomotive Inc. with a total not-to-exceed amount of $1.1 million for the purchase of
locomotive engine. Happy to answer any questions. Questions? Yes, Director Spiegel.
Yes, I'm still, I got over the little source, I understood that that was explained. But 54
weeks for one engine? Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of the parts for our F-125 locomotives have a
considerable lead time. This is probably the longest one I can think of, but many of them
can take six months, eight months, and so it's really hard to balance and maintain the
right inventory of parts for these locomotives. They're all kind of one-offs and unique to
the Progress Rail locomotives, the F125s. So we don't have a lot of choices for places
to go. So we're sort of stuck with those lead times.
So they basically don't do a large quantity. That's why the length of time, because they
don't store some of the parts.
Correct, correct. They don't they don't keep enough on hand. We're working with them contractually to get them to carry additional inventory for us so we can shorten some of these lead times on some of the parts. But yeah, that is
How many are we looking at overhauling over the next period of time.
Don
Well, COO, uh, Felipe is coming to the podium.
Just a real quick, there will be a deeper dive on some of these issues at the
workshop as well, talking about the parts challenges and that kind of thing.
So as as usual, director Spiegel is ahead of the game, um, and always the A student.
So, um, just be prepared for that.
So we'll go a little deeper into some of the parts challenges, but Dawn.
Good morning.
Don Felipe, chief operating officer for Metrolink.
To answer your question, uh, the, we have 40 F125 locomotives.
All 40, the OEM requires that they be serviced, the engine be pulled, sent to the manufacturer,
overhauled every 18,000 miles, which it roughly comes to about every four years.
It's approximately about $865,000 per locomotive, per engine.
All four have to be done in that time period.
So we need the spares in order to pull an old motor out, send it, put a new one in,
the locomotive running. Without those spares, we'll just be parking locomotives and have
really no available resources to supply for service. So that's the intent behind it. And
that's the process. Thank you. I'll wait for the workshop.
Any more questions? Please, don't pull back. It's an expensive purchase.
Move the item.
Been moved by Dr. Bergson and I hear all the trailers that you've done, that you enjoyed.
The workshop.
Any objections? Any more questions? Seeing none, the item is approved.
Thank you.
Now we come to our legislative update present by Jeffrey Dunn, our director of Government Relations.
Very good. Thank you very much. Good morning, Chair Chafee, members of the board. Next slide, please.
In state matters, I want to cover at a high level some of the early developments in Sacramento as we begin the second year of the legislative session.
At the workshop immediately following this morning's board meeting, you will hear from
and have opportunity to interact with Metrolinx state advocates who have joined us from Sacramento
to discuss these and other matters of interest as well as to answer any questions.
Beginning with the state budget, you are likely aware the governor did introduce his proposed
FY26-27 state budget earlier this month projecting a $2.9 billion deficit.
This is, in relative terms, good news, as the nonpartisan legislative analyst's office
projected in November of last year, the state could face as much as an $18 billion budget
deficit for the coming year, before significantly better than an expected tax revenue collection
in late 2025 cut that number down.
This underscores what we have seen before in prior budget cycles, where actual revenues
can fluctuate very significantly based on many factors in a given year, reminding us,
our advocates frequently do that of the yoga bear staying. Predictions are difficult, especially
when they're about the future. The governor has proposed a $348.9 billion balance budget
with $23 billion in reserves. This is up from the current year spending of $321 billion
and a $15.7 billion reserve. We're going to monitor this closely and keep you apprised
throughout the year, hopefully with a continuation of the trend of increased revenues by the
may revise. Two particular issues I want to draw to your attention are first the issuance of the
final report of the Transit Transformation Task Force, which was established by the Governor to
examine the state of public transit in California and look to the future to meet the state's
mobility needs in transit. One of our advocates, Mr. Mark Watts, whom you will hear from at the
workshop, was an appointed member of the task force to provide firsthand insights as to its
approach and deliberations to address the complicated issues surrounding public transit
in California.
The task force examined the pros and cons of both the revenue and expenditure size of
the leisure to put transit in a better place for sustainable growth to meet the resident
mobility needs for the future, including those who depend on passenger rail.
Thus, in 2026, we hope it will be the year the legislature will act to identify new and
sustained resources, particularly for ongoing operations needs, for which passenger rail
Rail does indeed suffer from a structural funding gap at state level, necessitating
our greater reliance on the member agencies to keep service operating.
Greater state operations funding is a universal need across modes in transit in California,
and a long-standing advocacy priority of Metrolink as directed by you in our legislative platform.
We will continue to seek a dedicated passenger rail operations funding source established
in law in 2026, and the work of the Transformation Task Force has been an important step along
that path.
The other issue I wish to draw to your attention is the State's Cap and Invest Program, formerly
known as Cap and Trade.
The State's Quarterly Emissions Allowance Auction Program providing substantial funding
to both incentivize cleaner operation from polluting industries in California while providing
the State with the resources to mitigate the impacts of their carbon-emitting operations.
Cap and Invest funds, among many other things, the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital, or
TIRCP, grant program.
billion dollars of funding since 2023 from which Metrolink has been the
recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in capital funding since 2018
and it also funds the low-carbon transit operations or LC TOPS program that
Metrolink has relied upon to offer its hugely successful student adventure pass.
The most recent auction held last November produced revenues of eight
hundred and forty million dollars which was roughly 150 million less than the
November auction of the year before keeping in mind these auctions are held
quarterly. Some of the decline may have been attributable to lingering
uncertainty concerning continuation of the program though the governor did sign
a 15-year extension that was passed by the legislature late last year. Part of
the terms of that extension was a redesign of the allocation of cap and
invest funds into a tiered system where these programs TIRCP and LC Topps among
others are funded only after certain other obligations including high-speed
rail are first funded. With potentially declining auction revenues, there is, of course, possibility
these programs could suffer cuts. The inverse of that is also true, however, with increasing
auction results, they could increase. Andrew Antwi, from who you will be hearing from
in the workshop, is an expert on this subject, and he can certainly provide insights on this
and other budget priorities, as well as answer any questions that you may have. For now,
though, the goodness remains that these programs are intact and the state's budget situation
appears better significantly than it did just a few months ago and we'll keep you informed.
Next slide please. In federal matters you will of course get a timely summary of the current
situation in Washington from our federal advocates at the workshop following this meeting.
It is good a good timing for an update from the experts with the passage yesterday of the T hud
appropriations bill as part of the final appropriations package which goes to the
Senate, likely for passage next week, and likely averting another potential
shutdown funding the government through the end of the fiscal year, September
30th. In general, the legislation is good news for Metrolink. The bill more
closely adheres to the earlier Senate T-Hud funding levels, which were higher
than their House counterparts in committee. In total, the legislation
appropriates $976 million more than last year's continuing resolution for
DOT discretionary programs. Notably, among these, the CRSSI program, this is a grant program that
Metrolink often competes for funding for qualifying projects, was funded at $100 million higher
nationally than current year levels. These numbers are encouraging given the administration
had previously signaled that substantial cuts to discretionary grant programs could be forthcoming.
Also included in the bill are the three Metrolink earmark requests that were adopted in committee
legislation developed last year. This includes the replacing of customer information systems
at Burbank and Lindale stations, the Arroyo-Simi Bridges Scour mitigation project, and customer
information system technology improvements and stations in the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita
Valleys. Regarding the Olympics and World Cup, the bill includes 94 million dollars for Olympics
transportation assistance, including transit planning, capital operations, operations
assistance and capital projects. For the World Cup, there's $100 million available for transit
agencies to support eligible planning, capital, and operating expenses for equipment and facilities
in host cities. The World Cup money must be apportioned no more than 30 days after passage
of the bill through the FTA, and we'll be working with Metro and our partners to determine the
apportionment of funding for our related costs once the bill passes. These funding amounts,
While welcome, do not address Metrolink's system security needs for the Olympic Games,
nor are they near adequate to support the needed operational and capital assistance
our agency will need to provide backbone transit service for the Games.
We will continue our advocacy for these objectives as other opportunities arise in the Congress
and from USDOT. Regarding reauthorization, we understand that the Service Transportation
authorization bill, which will succeed the IIJA set to expire this year, will in fact
include a rail title. There had been some uncertainty about that last year, and the
House T&I Committee is beginning to write this bill now. MetroLink has, on the advice
of its advocates, who can speak in more detail to this at the workshop, resubmitted its suggestions
for inclusion in the authorization bill submitted last spring when its delegation members on
the committee. These are representatives Julia Brownlee, Salud Carbajal, Laura Friedman,
and Robert Garcia. Representative Daniel Webster of Florida chairs the rail subcommittee that
will lead the markup of the rail title and we will work assiduously with our delegation
and the subcommittee to ensure that our priorities are considered and included. I will not go
into detail as to what these priorities themselves are as they all came from those directed by
you in our legislative platform for reauthorization but certainly we can discuss again in more detail
at the workshop if you have any questions about them. Likewise, our advocates can provide timely
assessment of the moving pieces related to reauthorization as well as Olympics advocacy
that we will continue to undertake this year and we look forward to that discussion. Thank you.
Happy to take any questions if you have any. Questions. I see none this is a receiving while
I don't want to thank you for the update. All right. We have a monthly ridership report also
including revenue and financial results for November 2025 being presented by Christine
Wilson, also known as the hat.
Good morning chairman Shafee and members of the board. Next slide please. This slide shows
system-wide ridership for FY26 by month through November with comparisons to forecasts. The
columns are actual, while the dark line is the forecast. Through November, ridership was
forecasted at $3.7 million or a 74% recovery. Actual ridership is $2.9 million or a 57%
recovery $830,000 people under the forecast. Next slide please. Now here we have the system-wide
farebox revenues by month through November with comparisons to budget. Once again the columns are
actuals while their dark line is the forecast. Through November farebox revenues were budgeted
at $22.5 million, a 65% recovery, while the actual fare box revenues were $18.1 million
or a 52% recovery and $4.4 million under budget. As you are aware, as a result of the shortfalls
in ridership and revenue, we have requested an updated forecast from KPM-Geesbury Capital,
is now under review. Next slide please. This slide shows system-wide ridership for each month,
this year, and last year divided into separate sections for unsubsidized and subsidized riders.
The brown columns are last year. The blue columns are this year. The darker colors on the bottom of
the columns are unsubsidized riders. The lighter colors on the top are subsidized riders. Once
Once again, the forecast is the black line.
Next slide, please.
This slide shows ridership information, this time by line.
The brown columns are last year, the blue columns are this year, actuals, and the green
columns are the forecast.
Next slide, please.
This slide is system-wide revenue as of November.
Once again, the brown columns are last year, blue are this year, and the budget is the
black line.
Please note that in each month, the baseline revenue increases, meaning paying ridership
increases.
Next slide.
This slide shows revenue by line.
Each column is through November.
Brown is last year.
Blue is this year.
Green is the budget.
Each column also shows breakout of passenger fare revenue, dark colors on the bottom of
the columns, and subsidies, light colors on the top.
that on every line base revenue is higher than last year. With the base revenue for the Ventura
line up 19% over last year. The Orange County and IEOC lines up 15% from last year. And the 91
Paris Valley line up 31% from last year. Next slide. These next slide go quickly, real quickly,
So make sure we explain the distinction because you look at those bars it looks like our revenues
are down but you just said paying customers full-paying dollars is up across the board.
Oh yeah, up across. Why is that? Why? Because it's a venture pass. Okay, there we go. I had to
give her a hint. She knows the answer to the question, but I just need to give her some help.
So board members, you'll recall the student venture pass was a fully subsidized program
100% for students. As we have had because we ran out of the grant that funded that program,
we had to modify the program to be a 50% discount for students instead of 100% discount.
We have lost some of that ridership, so we were not able to use that grant that had been paying
for that. So that's the explanation of the overall total high level line revenue being down a bit
because of the drop in that revenue stream of the Student Adventure Pass.
Yes, could you go back one slide? If you know, if you, oh I'm sorry, go ahead, yeah. If you notice,
those member agencies that had or lines that use the greatest amount of the
Student Adventure Pass are the ones that are the most different from this year. So you can see
Stanford, and D&L, for example, and the A-B line have an enormous amount of subsidy last year,
and that was the student adventure pass, and you see how some of the other lines are less affected.
But everyone, every single one as far as the base revenue, is up over last year.
Next slide. These next slides are individual lines showing the ridership by each month,
So you can review those extra leisure.
Next slide.
Next slide.
Okay, so now we're at the financial results for Metrolink.
Total operating revenue is 26.1 million under budget
by 4.2 million or 14%.
Total expenses are 132.8 million under budget
by 13.5 or 9.2%.
Overall member agency support is currently in surplus by 9.3 million.
The major categories that are under budget are shown on this slide.
Next slide, please.
Here you see the operating statement for Metrolink.
We are up 10.3 in fareboxer revenue from last year, but under by 4.4% after subsidies
as a result of the end of the student adventure pass.
Next slide. Next slide. So at the bottom here of this slide, we see that the member agency support is in surplus by 9.3 million. Next slide.
So pass due accounts receivable at November 30 or 47 million pass due and that's due to member agency subsidies uncollected at this time. One of these has already been received and the other should be received within the week.
Next slide. This is the available cash and as you can see it was 75.6 at November 30 above the board threshold of 50 million. Next slide.
Next arrow service. Next slide. This shows arrow ridership by month compared to last year into the forecast as the slide shows as of November, they have regained their student riders.
Next slide. This slide shows revenue. This year, last year in the budget. Although the ending of the student adventure pass has reduced revenue base ridership revenue has increased by 27% in November, compared to last year. Next slide please.
Arrow financial results show operating revenue at 204,000 under budget by 66,000 or 24% total expenses are 6.2 million under budget by 1.3 million or 18% support is 6 million under budget by 1.3 million or 17%.
Next slide. That concludes my report. May I answer any questions.
Director's any questions? This is a receipt. Well, I don't be afraid to ask any questions if you'd like.
I see no one asking questions that we will cover this more detail to during our workshop. Thank you presentation like your head. Thank you.
Now we're hoping to our CEO or
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have really no CEO report to speak of other than I want to congratulate the LA Metro board.
Director Sandoval yesterday on your unanimous action for the transit on the Sepulveda transit project. This is a, this is, that's a huge deal for LA Metro.
I saw that it was unanimous. The cool thing about that project, if you're not familiar with it, is that the one end of the, of the Sepulveda transit way
will begin starts at the Van Ays MetroLink station. So all of us that ride the Ventura County line
will have another way to get to the west side other than the 405. So eternally grateful to that
and then of course goes to Westwood, Los Angeles, the west side. So congratulations to the Metro
Board and your vote to that. It's a big deal. All right board members it's your opportunity,
if there's something you'd like to see in a future agenda,
have any comments about anything,
now's your opportunity.
We're all waiting for the workshop, I can see it, so.
And now it's my turn.
I'm gonna save my comments to the workshop itself
so we can move on efficiently.
No, I think we're ready to morph into the workshop.
Is that what we're in?
Okay, if you want to open it up or?
It's your opportunity, Mr. Chair, if you go ahead.
Yeah.
Okay.
Clearly, the chair and I didn't choreograph this very well, so by fact, Chair Chafee, please thank
you again for hosting us here and doing the workshop. It'll let you say a few words, and then
I'll chime in after you say a few words. I'm okay, I'm gonna open the workshop.
I'd like to start by thanking all of you for spending a day here. It's very important that
we not only learn about what's going on, but we know how to work together, not only with our board,
But if our staff and into a certain extent with the public that may have joined us as well
You know, my wife and I last year
Celebrate our 50th year together
So she knows a little bit about me. Maybe what do I need from time to time?
Jimmy book
how to hug a porcupine
Subtitle no, she's not the porcupine
And this is a subtitle easy ways to love the difficult people and your life
And uh, it discusses how people are sometimes like a porcupine
What does a porcupine do when it gets annoyed kind of puffs up and put its spines up?
Don't touch me be careful stay away
And people can be like that too
They're trying to time in in with various issues
So this little book which is an easy read
talks about how you deal with the porcupines that you may encounter. Could be in business,
could be an interpersonal relationship, might even be a child. Anybody ever have a porcupine child?
Probably some. And so, how do you deal with that? I want to
recommend that you keep your own quills in when you're dealing with a porcupine.
understand what the boundaries are for the porcupine and then be emphatic. You need to pay
attention and make your own likes and dislikes apparent. Again, to share. Always keep a safe
distance. Don't take it personally when you're dealing with them. There's an attack reflected
with kindness. So a number of issues in here that help you dealing with porcupines and establish
that better relationship. There's a chapter in here, a short one I like,
it's a porcupine within. Where is the porcupine within yourself? What do you do when you have
a porcupine irritating situation, put your blinds up? If you think about that in advance,
maybe you won't do that. So be kind to yourself too. None of us need to really be a porcupine
and not here. We're all here together, working together, and so it's very important. Now I have
an extra copy. So I have a special assignment for our chief of staff, Norella Rodriguez. In case
you don't have enough to do, I would like to make you the official librarian for Metrolink.
And if you would keep this copy handy, so anyone that wants to read it, it's a short read,
they can check it out. You're in China. And with that, there's a lot of materials we're going to
go through. And I think you all know that metric plays a critical role in our transportation
system. It goes through, I think we have five counties that help pay for it and it actually
goes through six counties in our connecting thing. And so the purpose here is to have an open dialogue.
however you feel. Try not to put your spines up but anyway let us know what your concerns are
because this is where we can deal with that. We can make Metrolink better and our relationships
better too. So I'm looking forward to indeed a thoughtful and very collaborative discussion
today and I appreciate your all engagement here together and the the region that we serve is very
important. And so, again, thank you all for being here today. And now, Mr. CEO, it's your turn.
Thank you, Chair Chafee. And again, board members, welcome. I think if I could, Mr. Chair, I certainly
never want to wind up my chairman, but that's such a brilliant idea for that book, How to Hug a
Porky Punch. I may make it mandatory reading for my entire executive team. We'll just do a book club
and go through it because I think it is too many times it's the world we live in,
whether it's with our external partners, internal team, our larger stakeholder, of course the public.
Quick story, many of you met my wife last night. We took the train down from Ventura County
yesterday. And we grabbed a quick lunch at Trax in LA Union Station. And we had our bags
and I dropped it at one of our counters, one of our ticket counters at Union Station and I
had a chance to speak with one of our CRR community relations representatives.
And you could just tell she was agitated. She says, I just had to deal with a senior citizen
who was screaming at me for 15 minutes. That sounds like a porcupine kind of situation.
And, you know, so how we handle those instances throughout, you know, personal life, professional
life, I think I'm looking forward to I think I can probably get 12 of them on Amazon at
a discount.
So, XLT, be prepared.
You might get a special post-holiday gift before for our next few meetings.
So as the chair was mentioning, we have a lot of items today.
Today's workshop, a little different than some of our others in the past, I'm going
say, really focusing on very much real-time issues that are impacting Metrolink. We will
spend a decent amount of time dealing with we've you have been peppered as you all receive our
emails regarding things that are happening on the railroad on the railroad on our seven line system
545 miles serving half the state of the population of California of California. It is not a small
operation. And a lot of things happen. Yesterday we had things happen. We have something happen,
you hear about it or see it. So you will spend some time on some of the real operational elements.
COO Felipe and his team will go through some things that we have dealt with over the course
of the last few months and how we're trying to make progress to improve some things.
you will hear from CFO Tom Shamber talking about the real financial challenges that we have.
Of course, our advocates are here. We have placed them intentionally at the beginning
of our agenda today to lay the groundwork of what's happening in Washington DC and Sacramento.
Because as Ms. Wilson just mentioned, the issues related to funding and financing our system,
Mr. Shamber mentioned it as well, is we're at gut check moment in so many ways. So you will be
hearing along those lines. And at the very end, because we don't want this to be so stark and
dealing with just in the moment, we are going to talk about this couple years may be a bit bumpy
as we work through some of the still coming out of COVID and the state budget situation,
not having state transit dollars,
not having federal transit dollars
to the extent that we might need them,
but we still have to keep our eye towards the horizon,
looking towards the future.
So we'll be talking about,
in spite of some of these things that are happening now,
we can't lose our vision to what we need to look like
10, 15, 20 years from now.
So we will finish with that,
that gives us something to look towards
while we deal with some of the stuff
that's kind of really capturing the immediate moment
of the challenges.
And we won't sugar Cocos.
So I ask that in the spirit of Chair Chaffee's
how to hug a porcupine, let's keep that
at least as a philosophy for our workshop.
And we'll work through it because again,
that's it will be some of that kind of discussion.
So with that, Mr. Chair, again,
My thanks for the great participation from our board today.
Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back over to you,
but we'll go through the agenda.
I think our first on the agenda is our advocates.
And so I don't know if, Mr. Dunn,
you're gonna introduce that, yes?
Yes. Okay, take it away.
Mr. Chair, with your permission.
Well, you don't need my permission.
All right.
It's more of the consensus here.
All right, very good.
I'm going to get on with the workshop.
All right, very good, thank you.
I want to start first with our federal advocates
in Washington, DC.
They're making their way up here to the table.
I'd like to introduce them to you first
before they get into their presentations.
I know we don't have an overabundance of time,
so we'll get right into that.
First our federal team, and then after that,
we'll pivot about halfway through to our state team,
and hopefully we'll have time for you
to have a robust question and answer.
The first person you're going to hear from is Rick Okolde.
Rick is the principal and owner of Potomac Partners,
national full-service advocacy firm focusing on transportation and related issues. Rick's firm has
represented for years OCTA and also SBCTA among our member agencies along with other public sector
clients in Southern California. Rick has tremendous experience in relationships in Congress and the
administration. He was especially pivotal in getting our CEO Mr. Kettle on the witness list
for the TNI committee rail subcommittee hearing a couple of years ago dedicated to regional and
commuter passenger rail. This marked maybe the only time in recent memory the subcommittee had
such a hearing dedicated solely to regional passenger rail issues and our CEO was able to
get the messages and needs of our agency into the official record. Rick also coordinated the recent
visit of representative David Rouser of North Carolina to Metrolink to ride our train and meet
our CEO. Mr. Rausser is a member of the TNI committee rail subcommittee, which will principally
write the authorization bill this year. Following Rick will be Chris Kerik, a principal of the
Caters firm, which is also a bipartisan national firm with particularly strong ties to California.
Chris was for years the least lead transportation staff and appropriations point person for Senator
Feinstein. Prior to moving to the private sector, Chris is a fantastic tactician and strategic
thinker with especially strong ties throughout California delegation. He also represents L.A.
Metro, the Port of L.A., and other partners in transportation. Chris, with Rick, helps to lead
our efforts and strategy in Olympics advocacy and also our appropriations efforts each year.
Finally, you'll hear from Don Norden and Genevieve Cowan of Blank Roam, a full-service law firm
and government relations consultancy in Washington with offices around the country.
Dawn is the dean of our Metrolink Advocates,
representing our agency almost since its inception.
A lawyer and former staff member
of the Senate Commerce Committee,
Dawn possesses deep understanding of rail policy
and has been personally involved in forming much of it
over the past three or more decades.
Genevieve, too, brings extensive experience
in transportation and tax policy from the Hill,
where she served on the joint committee on taxation,
leading legislative and policy analysis in these areas.
Don and Genevieve lead our efforts
to advocate at USDOT, FRA, FTA,
and with any regulatory matters.
Also, Don has killer seats at the Nationals ballpark
in case you ever need to go see a game.
All of our advocates work extremely well together
and our agency benefits from synergy they provide
where the whole equals greater than the sum of the parts.
Each firm will have five to 10 minutes
to talk about their work
and give assessment of Washington at the present time.
The conclusion will hopefully have some time for Q and A
prior to our state advocates presentation.
At or around 1030, we'll pivot to the state advocates
where I'll briefly introduce Mark and Andrew
at the conclusion of the federal advocates presentation.
Thank you.
Rick, the floor is yours.
Good morning, I'm Rick Foley, president.
I'm gonna echo what Jeff just said.
This team of advocates, I'm one of three,
is a diverse group of folks.
Everybody has their own set of strengths,
but we really work well together
and have been able to help deliver the message
that MetroLink needs delivered on Capitol Hill.
And we all get along, it's unusual.
And in this day and age, that team gets along so well.
So that's worth noting.
I also wanna do a shout out to the MetroLink staff.
The Metrolinx staff has always delivered very comprehensive,
powerful and effective talking points and policy positions
for us to execute up on Capitol Hill.
The team is, they don't need the porcupine book.
They're a great team to work with
and they're very organized.
We do weekly calls and which are augmented
when big things are going on with additional communications.
The team is great.
I'm gonna cover one of the major aspects
of the funding opportunities
and policy opportunities in Washington,
which is the highway bill.
It's usually a five or six year authorization bill
when it's on track, and it has been lately.
So the highway bill sets policy
and determines how the highway trust fund,
federal trust fund will be spent.
It's probably the biggest playground
for getting things accomplished that you need.
And in the case of MetroLink with its challenges on funding,
challenges with member agencies in a limited pool of federal funding, it's important to
have a very good strategy to approach this. This year you're going to see this bill is going to
follow the IIJA, which was passed in the heels of COVID. There was significant additional funding
offered net bill that that were meant to kick start the economy like one of the, you know,
several other bills that the Biden administration advanced.
Many of the funds were diverted to non-transportation issues, which has become
an issue of concern amongst certain corners of Congress and in the administration.
So you'll see, thanks.
You'll see this bill is gonna focus
on some different priorities.
The House treats this bill very differently
than does the Senate.
The House has all of its jurisdiction primarily
under the House Transportation Infrastructure Committee.
The Senate spreads the transportation jurisdiction
over three committees.
Surface is in environment and public works.
Transit is in banking and rail.
And aviation is in commerce science transportation.
So it makes it a little more complex in the Senate.
The House usually leads the process.
And the good news about this current set of leaders
that are leading the House Transportation Committee
is they have a real strong desire to be bipartisan,
which you're not seeing much of these days
coming out of Washington.
The chairman, Sam Graves, who we've had out here twice
to ride the Metrolink train,
is well aware of Metrolink and its policies
and what makes it go.
He understands the value in this community
Metrolinx provides. Also writing that bill is the highway subcommittee chairman David Rouser,
who we also just recently had out here last August. And he rode the train, he picked up the train in
the, what was it, Rancho station, we rode for about an hour and a half into town, into LA, and
Darren talked to the chairman at length. Jeff and I talked to his chief of staff. And in the words
of Darren, he had an opportunity to recognize the security issues and the cameras and the trains.
So Darren jumped on the issue like a cheetah, in his words, and was very effective in communicating
the need and the value of that to the organization.
So in my opinion, getting people out to see it,
educating people on the operation is important.
We've also been in to see
the chairman of the rail subcommittee, Daniel Webster.
Darren talked to him in person.
The staff has followed up with multiple meetings
with their staff.
And this is all before it was made aware
that there was gonna be a rail title in the highway bill.
Interestingly, every once in a while,
a good thing happens out of a bad thing.
And the shutdown pretty much slowed the highway bill's
calendar and they were trying to get it out of the house
in December, now they're targeting a late March,
Excuse me, Markup, and then vote on the floor.
Because it's bipartisan, you'll see a very strong vote
in the House, and that's good news
for what'll happen in the Senate.
So we're well-positioned, Metrolinx team has armed us
with good policy, we're ready to go.
We're ready to go, people know what we need,
and on a couple of issues that are very important,
like dedicated funding.
We have been strumming that tune
very significantly in the Hill.
So I'll leave it at that,
open up for questions after my colleagues go.
Good morning.
Thanks for having us out here again.
Really do appreciate coming out here
and being able to talk you all face to face.
My name is Chris Keerig.
I work at a firm called Caddish & Associates,
right down the street from Rick's firm.
So we all do know each other pretty well in DC.
I wanted to talk a little bit today
just kind of about the past year appropriations wise.
I do a lot of appropriations work for several clients.
I also work for LA Metro in DC
doing similar type of work.
We had, you know, it was an interesting year in Washington.
First year of any administration is always interesting.
And this one was really interesting.
A lot of, you know, kind of back, back and forth,
a lot of disbelief that we could actually finish
the budget year.
We haven't finished it yet,
but I think we'll get there next week.
We had this year with Metrolink, Metrolink staff
and some board members, we had three successful trips,
I thought, in February, in May,
and just this last month, in December,
with, you know, Darian and Paul Huber and Jeff,
and I think one of the trips had some board members
come out too.
It was good, you know, as much fun as it is
to bring you out here, it's better for our jobs
when you come back there.
So I really hope that we can continue that level
of engagement in DC, on the Hill,
and in the buildings as much as we can in the next year.
One of the things that I work on,
as I mentioned earlier, is obviously appropriation.
I know Jeff talked a little bit about it.
We are just giving you a macro sense.
We're going to probably finish up.
The House just passed six bills,
not all at the same time,
that will complete to the annual 12 bill cycle.
The Senate is, I was on recess this week.
They're coming back next week
if they can get in to DC on Monday.
And they will start the process
of loading up that bill for passage.
The current government funding deadline is next Friday.
So this is all timely.
And hopefully that will create a little extra pressure
to get this bill done.
Just so you know, by the way, background,
it's a six bill package,
includes also the Homeland Security bill
that had to be voted on separately yesterday in the house.
It did pass yesterday in the house.
That will be the problem.
problem part of the six bill package will be the homeland bill. In the Senate, remember you need 60
votes and it's going to be close. I think it'll pass, but it's going to be very close and there
might be a lot of shouting about it before it happens. I would probably look for that to happen
either Thursday or Friday next week. So again, we'll keep our fingers crossed. Just throw some
numbers at you. The overall spending total for this year is about 1.69 trillion dollars and just
discretionary only. It's a little bit slight increase from from FY 25 which was remember
was a continuing resolution for for the whole year. So that is one of the things the Republican
majority wanted to do was to kind of keep the spending in check not let it go up and they did
a pretty good job of doing that quite frankly. So within that within you know that 1.6 trillion
dollar number 6 9 trillion dollar number you know they did 12 annual appropriations bills including
the transportation appropriations bill which came out earlier this week also. As Jeff mentioned
earlier there is money in there for first time or appropriations dollars for the Olympics. It was
94 million dollars that came out of the conference. There's also 100 million dollars for World Cup.
The World Cup language has a kind of a rough formula attached to it. The LA area will get
around nine, nine point three, nine point four million dollars. How that is divided among agencies
in Los Angeles is something that will be, you know, will be seen. What happens, the Secretary is,
actually the fk administrator has a lot of discretion about how to allocate that money within
sub agencies in the area so we'll have to you know get a seat at the table and uh and uh you know
make our make our needs known um this will be the only funding i think that comes for the world cup
games uh we have eight i think seven or eight at sofi so we'll have to uh we'll have to figure it
out with our with our partners uh the olympics money this is the first time we actually had
olympics money secured again you know this has to happen next week uh 94 million dollars it's not
quite as prescriptive as the World Cup money is
in terms of who gets what.
So we've been working with our regional partners
to get as high a number as possible.
I know the $94 million numbers are dropping the bucket
for what Metro thinks they need
or Metro Link thinks they need, but it's a start.
I know there's a concerted effort on the part of
several people to, including LA28, with LA28 cooperation,
to get a high number in the budget request,
which is probably gonna be due out next month.
So we'll have to wait and see how that goes.
With a strike of balance between, I think,
working together to get as high a number,
overall number as possible,
and then once we get as high number as we can,
then we kind of sharp elbow a little bit
in terms of who gets what,
in terms of what's available in the funding.
To that effect, our team here has been fantastic
about putting our needs down in a usable form.
I don't know if you've seen our budget request letters,
but they are very, very helpful.
Darren and his team, and Jeff and Anna,
and Julie who's not here have done a really good job
of making and Michael, which he did a really good job
of making sure that, you know, our needs,
and Paul, all too, not Paul, all too.
They're really good job of making sure that, again,
our needs are well-documented, easily understandable.
The delegation is reflected upon that,
And they were crucial in getting this funding
and that would be more crucial
getting more funding moving forward.
The bill also, as Jeff mentioned,
could include a couple of earmarks,
three earmarks for Metrolink
that again we worked with a broad swath of delegation,
Rick's firm and mine kind of blanket the delegation
with a bunch of requests.
And that's really the work of Anna Denneke
and Julie and the same team who really put together
some just really rock solid proposals for funding.
Never as much as we want,
but it's what we're gonna get.
And we'll be back again next year.
And I'll leave you just with a little bit
of just more budget timing.
The state of the union this year
is supposed to be the February 24th.
That's a Tuesday.
Usually the budget request comes out within a week
of that speed.
So we're expecting the budget request to come out May,
I'm sorry, early March.
That might move around a little bit,
but we'll see.
I suspect the House and FY 27 will pass all of its appropriations bills, probably not
at the level that the administration wants, but at a different level, which is what happened
this year, a higher level.
Unclear that the Senate will be able to do any of those things.
This is an election year.
There have been, as you know, significant changes in California in terms of, you know,
House districts.
That is the number one question I get from anyone not from California.
NDC is what's happening with Prop 50, what's happening with congressional districts.
So it's, it's as a new as is to us, it's even more new to them.
So again, we'll see but long, long, long short is I think at the end of this year, the end
of the fiscal year, remember the federal fiscal year and September 30, we're looking at another
continuing resolution, probably at least till after the election, maybe into the new year,
to allow the new Congress to pass this year's bills, like we're doing this year.
And we'll have to play a waiting game.
In some instances that delay helps us in terms of getting funding.
In some instances, it really doesn't help at all. But again, with the team working together and with
the MetroLink team, we'll do the best we can in terms of delivering the funding that we need.
Good morning. I'm Don Norton from Blank Room Government Relations. Jeff, I appreciate you
referring to me as the dean of the Washington Advocates as opposed to the oldest guy. So thank
I'll take the word Dean. I represented Metrolink in Washington DC for 25 years. My colleague,
Genevieve, in our firm has worked with me on Metrolink issues for the last five years.
You may recall she was at last year's board retreat. The third member of our firm's team
for Metrolink, Katie Catchell, is not here today. She was here at last year's board
retreat. She's worked with me on Metrolink issues for the last 20 years. So you add up my 25,
5 and etc. That comes down to 50 years of experience for Metrolink among the three of us.
A lot of stories to tell Jeff. We specialize in rail issues. Our practice tends to be national.
When I say rail issues, both passenger and freight, we collaborate a lot with the National
Rail Trade Associations, American Public Transit Association, Community Rail Coalition, Association
of American Railroads, which represents the Class 1s, the UP and BNSF. UP and BNSF also have their
own separate Washington DC offices. We know those people. If something comes up, we can collaborate
on, like the cargo theft bill that Jeff briefly noted. That's great. Win-win for both sides.
Sometimes there's agreement. Sometimes there's not. But knowing who the players are is what's
very important in the rail industry. And that's a lot of what we do. We also focus on the federal
agencies in particular, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Transit Administration.
One obscure agency, which normally has nothing to do with Metrolink, is the Federal Surface
Transportation Board, but why would we care about that? Well, the Service Transportation
Board, the STB, is the one who will analyze and decide on the Union Pacific Norfolk Southern
merger. So we're tracking that process very closely and reporting information to Metrolink
as it comes about. So Metrolink can analyze how this might impact Metrolink or not and
and see how the whole thing goes.
So that's a lot of what we do, the federal agencies,
the regulatory proceedings, et cetera.
Our firm is bipartisan, nonpartisan.
As Jeff noted, I was a former Senate staff lawyer.
Genevieve formerly worked
for the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
So since the income tax season,
if you have a tax question, don't ask me, ask Genevieve.
With that, Genevieve.
Passing the buck of sorts.
Yeah, so on that bipartisan note that Don noted,
we always have a saying at our firm
where there's no such thing as a Democratic or Republican
highway or a rail line.
That's probably why we all stick to transportation
in our portfolios, because there tends
to be bipartisanship there.
I know recently with the administration
terminating funding for the California High Speed Rail
project. It may seem like the bipartisan mindset is a bit more challenging with this administration,
but we would like to point out that we haven't seen anything or encountered anything over at
FRA or FTA in particular that's targeted against Metrolink. Actually, in fact,
there was already a win for California and 21 other states earlier this year. Last week,
DOT decided to drop their appeal of a November decision that blocked the agency from withholding
billions in transportation funding to states that refused to cooperate with the administration's
immigration enforcement. And then moving on to FRA and FTA, I won't repeat things you've heard in
the news. I'm sure you guys all tune into that, but we did want to make a few note of things that
are happening over there that do impact Metrolink operations and funding. So over at FTA with
Administrator Molinaro, staff numbers are down about 30% this year and what that means for
Metrolink and Metrolink's staff, grant staff report, there have already been delays and they're
getting worse in staff like contacting staff and being able to work with them on routine grant
processing matters and other routine staff level matters. Over at FRA with administrator Fink,
the staffing numbers are down about 15 percent and that can be reflected in the fact that
discretionary grant notices are severely behind schedule. So Chrissy hasn't even gone out which
which is one of their biggest ones.
And that's after the Biden administration notice
was withdrawn.
So they're very behind on that one.
The only one that's actually been issued
is the inner city passenger rail state of good repair.
So things are moving slow over there.
But I think it's also in a wider breadth reflection
of how the Doge rifts and early buyouts
have really been impacting the agencies.
And then I guess moving on, I just kind of wanted to follow up on Rick's comments about
Metrolinx reauthorization, surface transportation reauthorization requests.
I just kind of want to go over a few of their top ones.
As you all know, commuter rail continues to grow nationwide.
Unfortunately, the FTA formula funds were established when there were only six commuter
railroads and now there are 32.
So I think we all know funding isn't exactly sufficient to go around, especially for rail safety and core capacity expansion needs.
So, the following two reauthorization requests kind of aim at addressing this issue. The first one we want to touch on is expanding FRA grants eligibility.
eligibility. So right now, commuter rail projects are not eligible for FRA's CRSSI and federal
state partnership grant programs, where a lot of the funding comes from. The goal of
this request would be to open up new FRA avenues for funding for Metrolink and other commuter
rail. The next would be a dedicated funding pod for commuter rail. Current FTA programs
are inadequate, as we all know, and this request would establish a new program to provide passenger
rail modernization grants to specific commuter and passenger rail authorities, thereby addressing
this large gap in state of good repair funding and the backlog that is associated with that.
Lastly, just wanted to touch upon the request to update the FRA statutory terminology from
commuter passenger rail to regional passenger rail. As we were saying, commuter rail is growing.
traditional morning in evening out center of the city travel is no longer the only business model
and to reflect that would be this change in statutory language. I mean it's been evolving
for years you can see it in Metrolinx so um and thanks for having us we really love working with
the Metrolinx team you guys are fantastic and we love any questions that's about it.
Questions, please. We love questions.
I have a question, but my question might actually get answered more from the CEO, and I know that
we've got more budgetary workshop items, but it sounds like most of the federal and state budgets,
they're moving forward with receiving funding to MetroLink and eventually to some of the transit
agencies. How does that timing work when we are also facing conversations about budgets within
our our own system? So is it as it comes in hopefully it delays like conversation later
about 3% with Metro and things like that or is there a delay in that?
Director Presiado, that again, the advocates can weigh in as the timing is that there's not great alignment on timing. And just as a second point on the federal side, we do not see a whole lot of federal transportation dollars that can be used for operations and where our biggest challenge
is going over these next several years until there is another revenue for operations. That
will be it. So the feds have historically not funded the operational side. We will see
maybe some movement in through the reauthorization if a program can be put together. Rick, I'll
called the mentioned that we have been really putting our best effort forward to dedicated
operations funds for transit at the federal level, but it hasn't here to for our, though
that those efforts have not have not yielded any, any real positivity, but that's there.
So I think when we do get to the state advocates, I think that they're at the timing may be
a bit better aligned potentially um not yet based on the governor's budget as
currently drafted but on the federal side it it is not neither is there
alignment nor had there been an inclination on the side of the feds to
support transit operations i'll call it at the more local level
and i don't know if uh gresser rick if you have thoughts on that
no you're right on the money that it's hard to predict when that money flows
they can't keep to a calendar. The appropriations process has been at a
sink for the last 15-20 years so those are challenges. So on that funding level
you just fight for every dime you can get and you position yourself with policy
changes and earmarks and authorizations to get everything you can to run this
operation. That's what we see our job to be. And I appreciate that
because I know that when we talk about, oh, you're getting funding for the Olympics,
or you're getting funding for the World Cup, especially like later hours. But if our operation,
like would we even be able to fulfill that, if our operation costs are still there?
That may be the one distinction, is that the appropriations money that was just discussed,
that they're not the same, at least as far as we know, the same strings that typically follow
federal government federal funds are not in play and I think in fact the case was made we need
additional operating dollars because they're going to be operating services outside of our normal
schedules time frames expanded service and it was all about well two both operations and safety
security so we'll be making the case in in both instances the 94 million though chris is that
that's operations really it's not there's separate security correct applications happening correct
Yeah, the yeah, the two possible I talked about for World Cup and in Olympics operating is an explicit use of those ones made available which differs from the formula dollars. I think you're talking about formula dollars are primarily capital at the federal level. I think operating assistance was was ended. I think in the nineties. Sometimes Don probably knows. No, I'm just kidding.
It was was ended in the nineties.
There you go. 1987. I'm going to tell you where I was in 1987. You recall a couple of
COVID bills allowed for, I think it was a 10 or 12% operating. You could flex your capital
over operating. If something happens, you might see something like that again, maybe.
APTA has been banging this drum. The American Public Transit Association has been banging
the drum on the need for operating assistance for the last, I'd say 18, 24 months. Really,
think preparatory to the reauthorization bill that Rick was talking about. It's a tough
sell in DC right now in terms of getting operating dollars. We were successful again, I think
in the Olympics and World Cup because those are one-offs. There's a lot of reticence to
going back to straight operating assistance, quite frankly. We'll see if it happens, but
it won't be for a lack of trying on the part of us and really, quite frankly, the rest
of the industry altogether.
you very much. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Darren earlier, you shared with everyone
the historic day at Metro, which is the future of Spovita Line. And you might also be aware
that there was a second decision that was made about the sea line from the extent of
the sea line to Torrance. And my sense is that there's, well, there could always be
more money for expanding the infrastructure for more rail, more capital for the building of the
rail system. It seems to me that the one of the fundamental challenges is, well, you build more,
but who's going to pay for the operations of it? And so I'm curious, what's the rationale for
the federal government irrespective of party, to not fund operations. What's the, yeah can you
explain it? Because I know that every transit agency, typically in the state of California,
I could say Metro for example, serving as the chair of the finance committee, is that that's
when we talk about sort of the structural challenges, what's the rationale behind that?
Is that is that always been that way is it was there ever a time when there was a recognition that if you're going to provide more money and building all this infrastructure that you still have to operate the trains.
Can you speak to that.
Yes.
Originally the FDA formulas were set up that there was capital and operating the operating money became controversial.
based on concerns that some of the locals
wanted to build projects without really having enough ability
to pay for the day-to-day operating costs,
even though there was federal operating money
that still wasn't enough.
A former governor of California was president at the time
and his, you may recall,
And Mr. Reagan's, President Reagan's office of management and budget really clamped down
on this issue that we will help state and local governments on the capital side,
those upfront startup costs, but the day-to-day operations, OMB said they need to think ahead
and make sure they have the ability and the political will to fund them on a day-to-day
operating basis. And of course, that did did cull the herd
somewhat in terms of people wanting to start the projects.
Anyway, that's the background from a former governor of
California.
Yeah, if if I can just to put a little more context on that,
transit is always the redhead of stepchild when it comes out of
you know, dollars out of the highway trust fund, but just as
plain and simple. I think with this current administration, I
think one of their initial realization plans was to move
almost all transit. And we are considered transit back there
quite frankly, transit funding from the trust fund
to the general fund, which would be a non-starter
on the Hill.
But this doesn't mean that they won't talk about it.
But we are always having this battle every five years
to Rick's point.
We're having it every year and appropriations also.
We should pursue operating assistance
or any kind of either percentage of formula dollars,
but it is an uphill battle
just conceptually, quite frankly.
Thank you. Thank you for that. Just follow up question and then the, who has figured this out? I mean, who has figured out how we're building. It's great. I mean, when you look at the, our current system and I'm thinking particularly county but obviously more broadly regionally.
I mean, I love the fact that I can get on the Metro link and I can go to places all
over multiple counties.
I love now that I can get on the pull on the station and get all the way to Long Beach
or to get up and to go to somewhere else in the county.
But we know we have to operate the system who who who in this country has figured out
how to solve the operations issue.
Well, I think I don't recall which of the lobbyists mentioned it, but this has been
an ABTA top of the list for ABTA.
So the entire country is having to struggle.
Now.
And by the way, I raise it because, you know,
many respects we have to sort of look at this
at the 30,000 foot level, right?
We're all trying to run a system effectively.
You don't want train breaking down.
You want to be able to operate them.
And it concerns me because writers are depending on us
to be able to provide a efficient system,
a system that consistently runs on time,
that's dependable, that's clean, that's safe,
and it's a tremendous challenge for us
to be able to come up with the ability
to operate it in that manner.
Let me share just two quick examples,
and time will tell if they have, quote unquote,
figured it out.
This last legislative cycle in the state of Illinois,
there was a major action, a significant action
on the part of their state legislature
to fund transit operations in the Chicago region.
At beneficiary of that, of course,
is one of our sister railroads, Metra.
Then also in the state of Pennsylvania,
the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
received a significant augmentation by their governor.
They were dealing with some variety of issues.
So where it's getting figured out is at the state level
where you're seeing states step up,
which is something we have been pushing hard on,
and you will hear that from our state lobbyists,
about how we need state support to meet state goals
on the environmental side, emission side,
transit, equity, affordable housing,
all the important goals the state of California has,
transit meets them all.
And community railroad, because of the amount of miles
we take off, cars that we take off the highways,
we're at the top of the list
of how we can support state goals.
So I think I'm not gonna say we give up on the federal
government, this cycle may be a challenging one given
just where we are from a party perspective and the issues
that are out there, we need to keep it on our plate.
But I do think our opportunities right now,
we need to focus heavily on Sacramento.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Kittle.
Yeah, following up on your point.
It's a sales pitch.
It's a sales pitch on Capitol Hill.
There's a limited amount of transit dollars
and that's the pool you're coming out of.
And you're competing with a much bigger pool of money
for service, transportation dollars.
So it's a sales pitch and that's what you're good at.
That's what we're good at together.
We had Sam Graves, the guy that's gonna write
the highway bill in a helicopter.
And he landed that helicopter over at the port of LA.
And when he got on the ground,
he told one of your board members,
I didn't realize the complexity of the network here,
the congestion, where he's from, he's from Kansas,
or Kansas City, Missouri, he's from Missouri,
but Kansas City is the city that's closest to it
because Kansas City wants to build a rail lot.
They don't need one, these guys do.
And so we had then former chairman Bill Schuster
on the dais talking about Metrolinx and Losans ridership
and the community it's in, he says,
that's the solution for that community.
So we got to sell that.
We showed it to David Rouser, but he was out here.
He got on and a relatively,
We had them in helicopter in San Bernardino County
and the very far ends of the county in the desert,
and then he gets on a train and he comes right into LA
and he goes, wow, wow.
So we got to sell them
and we got to fight with a lot of other folks.
Everybody wants to build a cool new shiny train,
but everybody doesn't have the needs like you do.
So that's part of our sales job.
So we keep doing that and we keep pushing hard
and we'll win.
Thank you, Rick.
And yeah, yes, sure, all right.
Yeah, I hear here, absolutely.
And we certainly got the team to do that, I think.
And this is a good year to do it.
It's the reauthorization year.
So we'll definitely be pushing forward with that.
Also, I know our advocates didn't have a lot of time
to talk about it on this panel.
And we're going to have to pivot to the state advocates,
but Olympics will continue to be a priority for this year
As we know, it takes longer in rail than it does in other modes to put the systems into place,
particularly on security, but also on operational needs for the Olympic Games,
which we're going to be working on.
I know our CEO is going to be going back at least a couple of times with a couple of our board members
to press this point forward, and we'll keep the board informed.
Thank you very much, advocates.
We very much appreciate it.
I'll ask you to move on and we'll bring our state team up.
Thank you.
That was outstanding.
In state matters, while they're moving up,
I'll just tell you that we are indeed fortunate
to have two of the best in the business
representing us in Sacramento.
Andrew Antwi is making his way up with Mark,
his principal at Shaw, Yoder, Antwi, Schmelzer and Lang.
He represents more local governments
in transit and transportation entities,
public and private than I can count.
Included among these are LA Metro, the Port of LA, LAWA, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills,
and many others in Southern California and around the state.
And let me assure you, this is not a coincidence.
With Andrew, we have two, Mark Watts, who prior to becoming an advocate served
as Undersecretary for Transportation at the Business Transportation and Housing Agency
under Governor Wilson, Pete Wilson, where he oversaw Caltrans, the California Highway Patrol,
and the California Transportation Commission.
Mark also served as Chief of Staff
to Assembly Speaker Kurt Pringle.
He is among most influential voices
in transportation policy in California
over the past four decades,
and we are the fortunate beneficiary of his counsel.
Andrew, why don't you start us off,
and then Mark, before any questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a privilege to be here at the retreat.
My name is Andrew Antwi.
My background was laid out by Jeff.
Thank you, you used all the words that I suggested.
I would only add that it was also a staff
to the Assembly Transportation Committee
for a number of years,
lucky enough to represent the city of LA,
as well as the airport, as Jeff mentioned,
and LA Metro and a number of other agencies.
So we've seen the times in Sacramento
become robust and become lean.
And we're kind of in a tweener phase right now.
We're coming off robust years relative to the state's focus on investing in transportation, but we're pretty much now at the second year of a two year legislative cycle.
Governor Newsom is in his last term. He had his first in person address where he presented a state of the state speech.
to a joint session of the State Senate and State Assembly that was on January 8th. And that was the first time we've done that since 2020.
In prior years, the governor deviated from the tradition of an in-person state of the state address. And typically, when the budget is released,
the governor stands in front of the press and takes questions from various folks about different aspects of the state spending plan that he unveils. But
After the State of the State Address, the Director of the Department of Finance actually took the step of standing in for the Governor to respond to detailed questions about the budget.
The Legislature is also in the midst of some changes, especially on the Senate side. A new Senate pro tem was installed, Monique Lamone, Democrat from the Santa Barbara area.
She also announced some committee changes and leadership changes as she took home of that House. And so we see a new chair of the Budget Committee on the Senate side, John Laird from the Central Coast area.
Sabrina Cervantes chairs the Appropriations Committee as well as, and that's key for the Riverside delegation and part of the Metrolin delegation as well.
And then Senator Eleanor Gomez Reyes chairs all important Senate budget substitute with jurisdiction over cap and trade now cap and invest as well as transportation funding and energy funding and so
These details matter relative to kind of who's at the helm of some of the key committees that will pick through the governor's proposal and make decisions on what they think is appropriate, if not
Right now, the legislature is at a phase where they're clearing the two-year bills out of the House of Oregon that deadline is next week.
And they're reacting through initial hearings in each House of the full budget committee to review the proposal that Governor Newsom has put on the table.
and succinctly stated they have to decide if they buy what the governor is selling relative to
the revenue assumptions that are built into the governance proposal which when contrasted
against what the legislative analyst office the chief budget advisors for the legislature
push the envelope of credibility on exactly how much revenue the state will have in its state
general fund. The governor projects over a three fiscal year period 40 billion dollars more than
what LAO projects for state revenue. So if that's wrong the state is going to be forced to make
several draconian cut decisions. If it's right it's kind of a workload budget. If the governor's
proposal is correct and it really hinges on very aggressive projections of income to the state from
IPOs and stock options. And so we don't know. We're just at a place where the Governor made the
first move, as is required by the Constitution, and the legislature is now picking through it,
and the true up period will be in May. Roughly around the middle of that month,
the state does a update on the projected revenues. And then the legislature has about four weeks
after that period to develop a spending plan for the state and so we're reporting to you at a time
when what we know is what the governor's proposed and we don't know exactly how the legislature
is going to react. Right now on cap and trade, formerly cap and invest, we had an auction play
out in November right after Thanksgiving that came in roughly 150 million dollars less than the same
time in November 2024. We also have seen the structure that we've been living under
relative to cap and trade change. The legislature did do one thing that increased predictability.
They extended the authorization for that program from 2030 where it was originally scheduled to
sunset out to 2045. So that program is going to be around much longer and it's been a primary
funding source for public transportation. So that was good news. The bad news is the rules have been
modified. Transit was one of several spending categories that received funding off the top
and fixed percentages based on annual auction proceeds collected. That has been shifted over
to a new model where instead of fixed percentages off the top, so if you had a robust auction year,
we collected a robust percentage. Now we get fixed dollar amounts and the arrangement is a
tiered system, so there's a little bit of a contingency. Tier one, tier two, tier three,
tier one is a high-speed rail, one billion dollars off the top guaranteed annually, so then another
billion for Cal Fire operations costs, which is kind of a new draw on these proceeds, and then
The programs that we know and love, TIRCP and LC top are now set aside for getting fixed dollar
amounts and only if there's money left over after the tier one commitment. And so that brings in
uncertainty. And the governor's budget actually confirms that the projections currently are for
cap and trade not to generate the annual auction proceeds to fully fund the tier commitments.
And so if the governor's right, we're going to have to change our expectations about exactly
how much would be available for the transit expenditure programs that we've been relying on
year after year after year. This is under the new Cap and Invest program. The other thing that's
happening administratively, getting really in the weeds just only for a brief period,
is the auction rules. There are new floor prices and ceiling prices for people that come out and
purchase the credits, that will impact auction behavior, which will have an impact on exactly
how much these auctions collect. The thing about cap and trade every year at the state level
is that the first number that gets projected is based on very little data, is based on a model,
and as auctions play out on a quarterly basis, we see numbers come in and then you get a little
bit more of an informed projection on exactly what money will be available. So when you layer
on the new rules shifting from fixed percentages off the top to fixed dollar amounts based on the
kind of waterfall tiering, we're going into an era for cap and invest where we don't have prior
years to really compare and contrast in a reliable way. That being said, there is multi-year funding
commitments that the state has made. Originally two, the SB 125 programs, zero-emission transit
capital, and the competitive grants program for TIRCP. And there's two years left of funding
commitment, but the source of those dollars were shifted away from a commitment from the state
general fund to a commitment to cap and trade. And so with the uncertainty about cap and trade,
time will tell whether or not the state will actually follow through on the funding commitments
for those programs. Under the new arrangement for cap and trade, the legislature was slated to have
a discretionary choice of about 750 million dollars to go through the budget process and
decide how to spend the dollars. Governor Newsom says we think annual proceeds are going to be down
and so I'm proposing that that discretionary money be shifted to pay for CAL FIRE operations.
So that brings kind of a very stark choice for legislators to either go along with what the governor has proposed or adjust spending commitments downward going forward.
I'll stop there and ask Mark to kind of just chime in.
Well, you did a very nice job explaining the complexities of cap and trade, now cap and invest.
I don't have anything really to add.
anything really to add. I think the probably one disappointment is when we talk about the billion
dollars going into CAL FIRE operations, that formerly was general fund, state general fund.
So it's an offset and that's why there's a reluctance in the governor's office to bring
it back because it would make the beginning to get a giant shortfall get bigger. So I don't
suspect anybody's going to want to change that and put that back into play as part of a structure
that adds more for transit or other priorities.
So, it's, you know, the stark reality is we're stuck with the new world as it was defined,
rather than having the off the top that we had before.
We are now receiving, as Andrew pointed out, just the amount.
If it shows up, that we're dedicated in statute, but only if the money shows up.
So that's all I'll add at this point.
I'll also add that on the policy side,
there was a major bill, landmark bill, SB 79
by State Senator Scott Wiener, Democrat from San Francisco,
that established new land use rules authorizing development
housing within certain radius of high frequency transit stops.
And a lot of people think maybe commuter rail or subways,
but bus rapid transit lines count too,
if there's a certain frequency level of service.
This new law is creating a lot of debate
about exactly what the practical impact
will be on the ground for agencies
that are bringing new service online
and exactly how a city or county
that's gonna host a new station,
even if the station was already in the planning pipeline,
will react where they push for less frequent service.
So the land use rules that are available to developers
to build mid-rise housing don't get triggered.
There's also key mapping activity that has yet to be done
to draw out statewide in these counties
that have the frequency level of service.
You have to have 15 or more stations
that trigger the mapping that basically designates
the areas around within either a quarter mile
or half mile of a transit stop,
the type of development that would give folks
that want to build affordable housing
and mid-rise housing carte blanche to do so.
And so we're seeing transit agencies,
especially those that are expanding services,
deal with at least at a neighborhood level,
heartburn, perhaps city councils,
County Board of Supervisors, but it's early days.
The law technically hasn't even taken effect yet.
SB 79 winner is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026.
But if you have been to any community meetings,
you've seen folks in the neighborhood level
act like it's been the law for a number of years
and are even in some cases challenging CEQA documents
for some of these transit expansion projects.
So we believe on the docket for 2026
will be some level of revisiting the statute.
Maybe not to the satisfaction.
Some people want to say reverse the bill.
Others want to say put it off for a year, maybe two,
or exempt us, you know, leave it to the Bay Area.
There's kind of like a spectrum of suggestions
that are being considered.
But the author himself has already introduced one bill,
Senate Bill 677, which is moving slowly through the process
and has recently introduced a new placeholder bill
to look at what the author believes are reasonable changes
to SB 79.
And of course, you know, cleanup is always in the eye
of the beholder.
And so we're having a lot of early conversations
about exactly what's gonna happen and what it does.
You know, I think folks look at Metrolet stations
and determine whether or not the service triggers,
you know, the development at the service levels
that are currently in the pipeline.
And so I bring that one up, that wasn't part of the script,
but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't discuss that.
I could just pile on that issue.
I'm a planning commissioner in a rural county
in Northern California, Placer County.
And we just suffered the process you have to go through
with an SB 30, 1200 units in the county area
that only has 1200 people living in it now.
And so I can imagine that one outcome,
and I'm not sure if anybody started to think about this,
but I think in some of the rural areas,
they're gonna slow down site-specific zoning
that has growth in transit facilities
and transit spots to avoid having the effect
that Andrew just described.
So that's just a little aside based on my life experience,
but you've all been through it.
I now have been through it because I never expected to have to be through it, but I am as a planning commissioner, the mandate from Sacramento on how to get some of the housing done is just
It's unfettered terrorism almost the way it comes about with the Department of Housing coming through with letters threatening appeal. So I'll stop talking about housing and get back into transit.
I'm not sure if Andrew had completed what he wanted to, but I have a little topic to cover rule briefly.
Before I do, I just wanted to explain a little bit of a change in my representation for Metrolink.
At the middle of the last year, I was approached by a recently retired former
state senator, Bill Dodd out of Napa and North Contra Costa County. He and his chief of staff
had formed a lobby committee, but he couldn't lobby until January 1st of this year given the
revolving door laws, but they approached me and asked if I would be bought out. I said,
heck yeah. But I'm going to keep several clients as my primary clients within the new organization.
Metrolink obviously is close to my heart. I've worked on Metrolink issues dating back prior to
PTC and coordinating Governor Schwarzenegger's approval of the bill so that LA Metro could
do an AB 3090 advance at the CTC. So we've done a lot of things that have been very beneficial to
the lifespan of Metrolink over the years. So anyway, to bring that to a close, I'm now
partner or special counsel to Dodd and Siobhan, which are the names of the folks who founded the
the company. So it's the first time I'll be working on a, as a
lobbyist without my name on the doorbell so or the door doorway.
So it's a change in my life, but it's a good one. And I think
it'll give me much more support as a lobbyist than I have been
able to exercise in my less formal affiliations I've had the
last several years. So I'm looking forward to it. I know
Andrew will, if you're asked to say very nice things about
Senator Dodd. He was a great guy. He served on MTC in the
Bay Area. He will be a resource available with me if it comes to
something that is necessary that he's got expertise in. So it's
a broader, it's a broader more back to basics, lobbying
organization, and I'm very proud, proud to be part of it.
So as Jeff mentioned, I was a member, probably the only non
online, the member of the Secretary's transit transformation task force. That was put into
play in December of 2023. We held 13 meetings over the two years, 24 and 25. And it was,
I will say this, it was probably the best well-run, most rigorous, robust examination of any issue
and in particular of transit, transit operation, transit capital, transit needs that I've ever
witnessed in my life. I actually ran a couple of task forces when I was under secretary,
under under Governor Wilson, and so I know how those routinely go, new ribbon commissions and
the like. This was light years beyond, and I think it's really due to Chad Edison who was the
progenitor of the organization. And with his background at Booz Hamilton, he put that into
play. And we had a very rigorous examination, unfortunately. The outcomes and the answers that
were provided are not as robust and fulfilling as the examination process. Senator Blakeslee
said in a letter that there's a lack of concrete funding.
Waterdown recommendations, she's heard
that there were recommendations that were in play
that got overwritten by a staff and the like.
And the disappointment among the lawmakers is palpable.
They had expected that we'd be given a recipe book
and a menu for how to improve transit operations
in the state.
They've got a lot of great ideas built into it,
but the missing piece,
and I'll give Mr. CEO here a standing credit for,
when he saw that we were coming to a conclusion
and there were no recommendations,
we were directed to get a letter
and he did the letter, signed it,
we just distributed it, it's on the website saying,
Metrolink has already done this examination
of funding needs and we have a funding need list,
That's what we talked about last year at this same retreat.
And that list was provided and it resides now on the website,
but that was as much as we were able to get out of it.
So, I can't explain why the shortfall there,
but there is an area within the report
that I'll talk briefly about,
and that's transit development account,
or TDA funds, LTA, local transportation funds.
the report does look at some policy recommendations
in that area.
And basically they wanted to see or recommend
to the lawmakers that they improve the predictability
and long-term funding within the LTF,
but without an answer.
They wanted some of the recommendations for the TDA
in LTF, arranged from developing a new TDA working group,
which we've already had one of those
before the TTTF was formed,
and they produced no real answers,
but now they're recommending another work group.
I haven't seen any movement in that front,
but nevertheless, it's one of the recommendations.
They wanted to align, recommend in addition
to the local transportation fund,
which as a reminder, it's that quarter cent
that's collected within each county
that's now dedicated back into transit
and it's distributed by the RTPA or the MPO or the region.
The idea here would be to align LTF allocations
with LC top allocations
and or state of good repair allocation.
so I'm not sure how that's gonna work,
but that's one of the recommendations.
There's a number of other ones.
I'm not gonna go through every one of them.
They're in the report and I recommend it.
It's under section 1F4 for staff who's watching this,
but if you get the report out and go to section 1,
the subsection FA, or F4,
you'll have the list of the TDA improvements.
was nothing really worth highlighting beyond that, but nevertheless, the work went into it,
votes were taken, and that now resides within that report document.
One interesting aside I will make about the T-T-T-F, the task force that I've been talking about,
is that we had representatives from the legislative committee staffs. So both transportation
committees one for each house had members on the committee and they needed to stay back because
this was going to be a report going to the legislature so they couldn't be seen as influencing it
but nevertheless they were there for almost every single one of the hearings
when every single one of the meetings and the watch the votes get taken
it you know i think they're going to have their i have not spoken to him about this because it
it seems like it's not appropriate.
One last comment I'll make about the task force.
In line with concern about lack of a precise
funding recommendation,
I collaborated with a couple of the other members
and we took a trial run at a proposal
that would have doubled LTF from a quarter cent
to a half cent.
And it was basically tabled.
And it was very interesting.
Some of the large, large transit operators in the North
did not receive direct allocations
and they have to wait for MTC to dole out the money.
They opposed it and they killed that proposal.
The medium sized transit agencies
We're part of the task force and some of the smaller transit agencies,
rural transit agencies, very strongly supported it.
Just to say that we're going to double the LTF doesn't mean that we're going to remain the same
allocation process, which we didn't get to really go deeply into because I think we could have
rearranged the deck chairs to see how that second quarter cent would be allocated so that
organizations like Regional Rail like Metrolink and others could have received some money directly
rather than going through the standard TDA process but that wasn't even able to be aired as an idea.
So I still think my perch on that task force and just from my experience working on transit and
rail over the years that's probably the simplest way to get more money for transit is to get the
quarter cent doubled now how you allocate it different question could be you know could be
complex but it's the quickest simplest way i know of and it just it it felt it faltered so
my apologies for trying and failing but uh you you got to try and we did so i'll bring my
presentation to a close well it's early this year so maybe hope still exists are there any
questions from our board. Sandy. I was I was told by our chief of staff that we
do have a couple minutes here so we're we're if there is a question don't hold
back because you're ready for a comfort break we can figure that out. All right
then I do it. There we go. Got so many questions really but there's nothing really big I
guess the big thing is I know that Darren's going back with a couple of our
are board members. What else as a board can we be doing? You know the challenge is that some of us
in multiple boards that become competitive against the same funding and that is the challenge is
where's our allegiance? I mean obviously you've got to go back to your home board that puts us on
this board. But then just mix it in. What suggestions do you have for that?
It's always challenging.
It's always very challenging, but I think the answer is embedded in your question in some ways,
which is to lay the groundwork to the greatest extent possible to get on the same page,
especially with the member agencies. Metrolink's greatest strength is the
breadth of its delegation. It's bipartisan. We have legislators from across the political spectrum,
and in any moment where the iron strikes, lightning strikes, and we can get as many of those
legislators from these counties singing from the same songbook on what needs to happen,
it's very influential. It's powerful. I mean, some of it is out of our control, which is,
you know, what happens, you know, with the revenue trends. You know, I don't know that we can control
that. But being on the same page is a big factor. I think also keeping an eye on high speed rail
it's getting a billion dollars off the top. There's a commitment to a bookend funding
for the Bay Area in Southern California. That's going to play out over time. But I think that's
a very that's a big opportunity to have some of that investment in the shared corridor. We're on
the ground we are the service and we're going to be in Southern California for a number of years
because the dollars that have been made available are prioritized for the initial operating
segment between Bursette and Bakersfield and I think sometimes the legislators in the South
and frankly in this issue that some of the Bay Area feel like well what are we going to get
and there's an opportunity there to hold the administration's feet to the fire and
really underscore the need for bookend investments.
I don't have a great time.
I just want to say something, and I kind of feel the state's
biggest priority right now is the high school and some positives.
I feel like at the end of the day, we're being told,
you guys, locals, need to figure it out.
How you guys are up?
And no.
I have a special feeling for what I'm hearing here.
So I would add this, I think the biggest problem facing California is housing.
They've done a lot of bills in the housing area I alluded to some of them. They also know that transit for those large buildings that they're going to compel cities and counties to build transit is needed, whether it's there now or not, and in many cases it's not.
with the one I pointed out, there's no transit to it,
but it's gonna be 1200 units plopped down
right next to a freeway.
There's a chasm between what the legislature,
I'm gonna be critical, says we need to do,
and here's one way to do it, but to connect it,
they're not doing that, they're not providing the funding.
I'm at my wit's end on this particular puzzle piece,
because I've always thought that they would step up
and come up with the answer from the state,
whether the answer was two-sided,
partial state, partial local, or not,
they are just not taking it on seriously.
It's easier to mandate that you have to have so many units.
Oh.
So I'll stop there.
I think it's making an assumption
that if you build housing that's transit
and everybody's got the housing,
I'm going to use a transit and that's not real too.
Well, that's not a hazard.
But you do need transit.
Yeah, you need transit.
There, but not the sole answer.
I agree.
The public's going to use transit,
especially if they can't get to the destination
they want to go to in a short period of time.
That's a big challenge.
I think it's 20 AP, point A to B in a short period of time.
Mark, do you think that some of that is due to the fact
that some of those legislatures haven't
sat on these kind of boards that never served in a local level?
that truly understand what their decision making
and the consequences.
I mean, I know there's several,
even with the Riverside County,
and then you look at all the counties.
Many have never served on a local board.
They jumped right into being an assembly person,
and it just was really challenging
if you don't understand the process and what's going down,
nor have they tried to even understand our complaints.
I mean, we go up to there, we visit with them,
We talk to them, we write letters,
and it seems like they're really not wanting the answer.
They're just going through, oh, checked.
You know, I think there is a lot to that.
I also think that when I listened to
what the federal representatives talk about
bringing some of the new key stakeholders out
and showing them what's going on,
well, we don't get to do that very often
because everybody goes back to their districts here
in Sacramento, from Sacramento to their districts,
and they're fairly parochial about where they came from
because they don't have that broader experience
you're referring to.
Well, yes, thank you very much for your questions.
I think, Director Spiegel, especially the question
about what can be done further
and Andrew's response on the bookends,
absolutely high speed rail
and sort of playing out the bookend portion of that
which has been severely neglected for years
is an opportunity for this agency.
The other thing that I mentioned in our remarks
and that you have directed us is operations funding.
There isn't a dedicated operations funding source
for passenger rail yet in California.
There is the State Rail Assistance Program,
which is just minutely funded, which is very flexible
and we can use that money for operations.
We need more of that
and we need a dedicated funding source.
And that is something that's directly
something that the Transformation Task Force looked at, provided options for, was not able,
as Mark said, to come to an actionable recommendation.
But it's certainly something that the legislature will have before it, and it presents options,
pros and cons of each of them that we can explore further this year in going forward
to find the operational funding to relieve the need that we have to go to our member
agencies to fill that gap.
So I wanted to say, first of all, thank our state advocates and say to each of you that
all of our advocates have committed to hanging around here for a little bit after the workshop
so that if you think of questions or follow up to some of the things that they talked
about between now and then, they'll be around at the conclusion.
You can talk to them and get to know them.
Thank you very much.
All right.
So we thank you again, I want to echo Jeff's remarks.
So Mark, Andrew, Rick, Genevieve, Don, Chris, thank you.
We're gonna give everybody about five minutes
and then we'll ask everybody back
with a prompt five minutes.
We do run a railroad and we do wanna be on time.
We drive.
We get shot.
Yeah.
We get shot.
Yeah.
and show up.
Good morning everybody,
if we could have you get back to your seats,
we'll get started.
Any word on Laron so?
He told Darrin actually,
he just got like a point of the Vice Chair of A P O D
and today's the first meeting earlier.
Where are some of you?
Darrin, damn it.
It's like a sheep or you know all aboard. Let's go. What is it like a box lunch? And we're going to keep the meeting so after the next. Oh, there's two more.
Next, you should go pretty quick.
Be interesting how Philippe addressed operations.
So beautifully organized.
That's why we want this still good.
Again, so your place.
All right, so we're going to go ahead and get
started on our next session that we generally
have scheduled for 60 minutes.
It's actually a pretty deep dive into some
of the operational issues and challenges
that we have on a daily basis.
And some of the questions that board members have asked
over the years about what's going on here,
what does this mean.
This is a little bit more nuts and bolts
than what would normally happen at a workshop,
but we think it's because of the questions
that we've had over the years,
we thought it would just be,
it would be helpful to be able to sort of express
to you, explain to you
some of the things that just happened on a day-to-day basis
as we operate a railroad.
And I mean, as recently as in the last hour,
we have got messages regarding a mechanical issue
that is affecting us on one of our lines.
And so what does that mean?
And all we say is mechanical issues.
The operations team will be getting into some of those items
as well as some of the other issues that impact us.
So I'm not sure, Don Flippy,
who's gonna be running your show.
If you're gonna facilitate it,
I'm gonna turn it over to you and let you do your thing.
So folks, if you've all met Don Flippy,
our chief operating officer,
Don's been in the railroad business a very long time,
actually started with freight railroads
And has bounced around with the Public Utilities Commission, had been with the North County Transit District that was that handled the coaster commuter rail service and has been with us now for seven years ish. Yeah, there we go in a couple different capacity. So, Don, thank you.
As Darren's already introduced me, I do want to introduce Rod Bailey our deputy chief operations officer, Luis Caruscaros our deputy chief operations officer, and then Manny Vales is our director of mechanical.
Just here to support the presentation and then answer any questions that I may not be able to answer for you. So next slide.
These are just some definitions, common terms that we use.
I felt it would be relevant to give you guys,
give all of you a little more insight
into some of these terms.
I won't go through all of them, but I
would say that probably the most critical
through this presentation, the OTP distinctions,
raw, on-time performance,
what that means is basically, you know,
train leaving A, getting to B, any delays,
whatever they may be, that is calculated.
There's enough, there are no responsibilities
taking out of that number.
And then the responsible OTP is the measurement
of the things that we can't control,
weather, police activity, you know,
things of that nature that, you know,
are really outside of our control.
And you'll see that referenced in the report
as we move forward.
Next slide.
So this is the annual look back.
It is basically looking at January 2025
through December 2025.
And it's our performance metrics.
This comes directly from our dashboard.
We track this information daily, weekly, monthly,
and then of course annually.
The first box you see up there,
the raw on-time performance, that shows you an 82.9%.
Right below it, you see the green there year over year.
So comparing it to 2024,
slightly better, about 0.4% better than 2024.
The responsible on-time performance, 92.3,
You see that as slightly worse than 2024,
0.6% worse than 2024.
What really you're going to see the big jump in
is the number of annulled trains and terminated trains.
You can see there's a 104% increase in annulled trains.
And annulled trains, if you saw that in the definitions,
That's a train that gets canceled prior to its departure,
for whatever reason, and we'll go through this.
There are a number of reasons that that happens,
but that's the definition of an old train.
Terminated train is a train that's already left
and then runs into some issues,
whatever it may be, a mechanical issue,
a strike, police activity.
Whatever that issue is,
that train is typically terminated if it can't proceed on
or starts to get so late that it starts delaying
all the other trains around it and then will terminate it.
So you see that jump there on the annulled
and terminated trains.
Then of course the ridership that you see there,
average ridership weekday, average ridership weekend,
those are positive, they're increases compared to 2024.
And then delay minutes by line,
those are just highlighting the amount of minutes,
each line, the amount of minutes of delay
that took place on each line.
San Bernardino obviously being number one
running the most trains, OC line,
Antelope Valley, the Paris Valley, the IOC, Ventura
and then Riverside rounding the bottom out there.
And then the very bottom here is what you see
are the top five delays.
those are the top five delays that impact us in 2025.
Foreign line delays are a makeup of freight railroads,
Amtrak, Lo San, NCTD, all of those entities
amount to our largest delay type on the system.
Second would be police and EMS,
any type of emergency or response.
could be somebody needing medical assistance. It could be a vehicle that is near the tracks
or on the tracks. We have to call the police department to deal with that issue. It could
be an unruly passenger, fare vader, but really anything that's related to police or EMS activity
is tracked in that category. Then you see the mechanical delays at number three and
then trespassers. That is, we use that generic term there, but that is what we calculate
strikes with. So vehicle strike, pedestrian strike, trespasser strike, all the delays
are accumulated in that category under trespasser. And then congestion is something that we've
We've seen more of with not only the delays that you see up here, but with the change
in our schedule, the new schedule that we have.
We're running more frequencies, especially on Antelope Valley, San Bernardino lines.
We have more trains operating, and what that really, what happens is when you, not that
we haven't had delays throughout the inception of Metrolink, but when you run more trains
and you still have, you know, you're dealing with these delays, it starts to knock trains
out of slot and you start to see these congestion build ups. And so we have to make decisions to,
you know, annul a train or terminate a train so that we're not impacting the entire line
for the rest of the day. So that's just want to give you some explanation on those delays.
Next slide.
All the PowerPoint presentations are going to be sent to the board afterwards, so you don't need to,
but you're welcome to, but you don't need to try to photographically memorize this.
And then subsequently, you're going to line by line so you get the details of each line.
But just, you know, you can send that ahead of time, otherwise computers would have crashed
and Microsoft was already getting used to this, so you don't get it answered.
Thanks.
All right, and we'll just run through the line by line quickly.
I don't want to go through the same, you know, each category really want to touch on the top lines there raw on time performance little bit better on the San Bernardino than 2024 responsible a little bit better than 2024.
again terminations and annulments were worse than 2024. And then the top delays that you see on the
San Bernardino Line mechanical police congestion trespasser and signal. Next slide. This is the
Orange County Line, raw and responsible, worse off than 2024, number of null trains,
worse than 2024, a number of terminated trains better than 2024, and then our top delays on that
line, foreign line railroads, predominantly freight, police activity trespassers, mechanical,
and then crew-related delays. Next slide. Antelope Valley, all four on the top there,
worse than 2024, your top delays on the Antelope Valley,
police EMS, mechanical, locomotive, weather,
trespasser, and then late turns.
Late turns is basically a train because it's running late.
And then it gets to its final destination.
And it's already late.
And so, of course, you can imagine
that the train that it's going to be running back the other way
is going to be late.
And so that's where that terminology comes from.
And we see a lot of that on the Antelope Valley.
Obviously, it's our fifth type of delay
on that particular line.
Next slide.
Paris Valley, raw, a little bit better than 2024.
Responsible OTP, slightly worse than 2024.
And then, again, you see the annulments and terminations
worse than 2024.
Top delays for the Paris Valley line,
foreign line interference, police activity,
trespasser strikes, mechanical, and then crew related.
Next slide.
This is the IOC line.
RAW a little bit better than 2024.
Responsible, slightly worse than 2024.
And then a flip-flop on the annulments and terminations.
One's worse than 2024, one's better than 2024.
Top delays, foreign line railroads,
police activity, trespassers, mechanical and crew-related,
very similar to Parris Valley.
They see a lot of the same delays.
Next slide.
This is Ventura County.
All four across the top, worse than 2024.
Top delays, foreign railroads, trespasser strikes,
police activity, signal issues,
and then crew-related issues.
Next slide.
Riverside Line.
One out of the four worse than 2024,
and that's the annulments.
All of the other three were better than 2024.
Top delays, foreign line railroads, police activity,
trespassers, mechanical locomotive, and weather.
Next slide.
And then this is the Arrow.
The arrow, the San Bernardino line out there,
the Zemu, the DMU system.
Raw performance was better in 2024.
The responsible on-time performance was worse than 2024,
but we're looking at 99.7.
So I mean, take that with a grain of salt.
Number of trains terminated,
number of trains annulled, better in all cases.
top delays, police activity, foreign line delays,
signal, mechanical congestion,
and then the DMU's locomotives were the top six.
You have such a large number of delays.
How do you have the other type of performance?
Well, okay, so look at those numbers.
Look at those numbers, 535 minutes.
Go back a slide, go back a slide.
look at those number of minutes delay, 4,000.
So you're, it looks extreme,
but realistically it's very, very minimal.
Yeah, very minimal.
And then if you go over the year,
the year over year,
when you're looking at delays year over year,
we're in the like 30, 30,000 minutes of delay,
you know, just for one item.
So yeah, hopefully that answered your question.
Next slide.
So this highlights, as you can see through those slides,
the on-time performance is, you know,
there's some lines where we're doing better.
There's some lines where we're doing worse,
but not much worse.
But what you saw consistently through those slides
are the annulments or terminations.
Those really were the impacts to our customers,
more so than anything else.
And you can see here, this is a chart we put together
to kind of highlight the number of annulments
and terminations and what were those causes?
What caused the greatest number of annulments
and terminations?
And so you can see emergency personnel
was the leader in a nold trains,
followed right by mechanical.
and you can see, you know, foreign line strikes
and crew-related, but if you remember,
our top, when you're looking at delays,
our top delay was foreign line railroads.
Our second delay was police activity.
Our third delay was mechanical.
It changes for the annulments,
the annulments and the terminations.
So if you add up the annulments and terminations,
combine those, what's the number one delay
or the cause?
It's mechanical.
The number two cause is emergency personnel,
which stays the same actually from delay type
to this analysis.
Police activity, emergency personnel activity is second
regardless of what you're looking at.
But the mechanical jumps up to number one
and then your trespasser strikes goes to number three.
So there's a difference in the minutes of delay
that you see and the causes and the annulments and terminations
that you see and the causes.
There are some variations there, mechanical being the biggest
culprit for annulments and terminations.
Next slide.
So we want to kind of give you a little bit
of a little more deeper understanding of what
our challenges are.
There's really, there's three major challenges
that we have on this system.
Foreign line challenges are number one. Next slide. So this
this breaks down what is a foreign line when you say foreign
line, what are you you know, what are you talking about?
What are what are the the, you know, the measurements there. So
freight interference, that's just a freight train being in our
way. You know, simple as that, that's that they're blocking our
path to getting our customers to where they need to be. And that
that is the number one. When we talk about foreign line delays,
That's the number one reason.
The second is signal issues on the BNSF
for the UP or the NCTD.
There's some form of a signal issue
that is hindering our train from proceeding
either on time or proceeding at all.
Track work is number three, so they'll come in
and they'll have large track gangs
that perform extensive track work,
and we gotta work around that.
And it causes delays from speed restrictions
where we have to slow our trains to 10, 15, 20 miles an hour
to get through an eight mile stretch of track
because they've just done track work.
Or they're just doing some type of bridge repair
or switch repair and we just have to sit and wait
until that gets completed.
So that's one of the, that's number three, routing errors.
We see this all the time.
You'll see an Amtrak train routed in front of us.
You'll see a BNSF train that the crews may be short on time.
They don't have a lot of time left to work.
And we're supposed to run ahead of that train,
and they'll route that freight train in front of us.
And we get delayed because of it.
And so that's the number four reason
that we see delays on the freight lines.
And then the last is just one of the examples
I just gave you a passenger train, the ratting and passenger
train in front of us. So those are the those are the
measurements. Those are the five main reasons that we see delay
on the freight systems. Next slide. So these are just like I
showed you for us, we have a raw Metrolink on time performance
time and we have a responsible on time performance time. This
This illustrates the exact same thing.
It shows you what we operate.
So when they operate our trains on their line,
what is that raw on-time performance
and what is the responsible on-time performance?
Member responsible, meaning that you take out
the police activity, you take out a strike,
you take out any type of weather activity.
BNSF and UP aren't responsible for that.
So it gives them relief from that.
And then it changes that on-time performance
to reflect what they were responsible for,
but same measurements, same analysis.
And as you can see,
on the BNSF overall under the responsible OTP 89%,
you see 93% on the Orange County,
90% on the Inland Empire,
81% on the 91 Paris Valley.
And that is where we see a lot of delays
on the San Bernardino subdivision.
UP, 91% overall.
Ventura sub, they're very good on the Ventura sub.
95% on the Riverside sub, not so much, 88%.
And so these are the measurements.
These are the data that gives you a little more insight
and what exactly is the cause
and what's going on out on those lines.
We work with these freight railroads daily.
We continue to work with them at a higher level
to try to mitigate some of these delays.
I mean, at the end of the day, it's really this simple.
They are running a lot of trains.
We are wanting to run a lot of trains,
and we have to figure out a way
that that works for both of us.
It's their track.
Obviously they're going to have preference.
There are agreements in place
that allow us to operate on those lines,
but those agreements don't really say how
we need to operate on those lines.
And so it's really going to take
a collective effort from all of us.
I know I've committed to work with Sheldon from RCTC,
try to form a committee that can really just focus on
this issue, this freight railroad issue and how we can work with BNSF and UP just to find that
happy medium where both of us are, you know, getting everything we want and our passengers
are going to fill that, you know, in the reliability factor. So that's what we're
going to continue to do. We've written letters. Our CEO has written a letter. I've written letters,
but I think honestly it's going to be a collective effort of member agency staff,
Metrolink staff, help from our board of directors to have those conversations
and really not adversarial conversations, more meaningful understanding each other's needs and
understanding what each wants out of this relationship and how we can get there to satisfy our needs.
Yeah, I would imagine that communication is critical. Yeah, you have so many different
elements here are the systems, the communications isn't integrated. So when you meant you say,
a freight train gets out in front of you, and it slows you down.
What's what is that communication system look like? So, so we obviously, you know, we're speaking to
them, you know, in just traditional means, you know,
phone, radio, but we also have systems that are linked, you
know, digital systems through, you know, PTC integration. So
it's, you know, we can see up to certain points, what's going
on. We know, you know, trains are coming out of certain
locations, we're supposed to be in front of those trains. And
and then it gets to the point of transfer and we're not.
And so we understand to a certain extent what is going on.
And then we just have that phone conversation.
Hey, what happened?
As the question is, it would be great to be at 100%, right?
In terms of getting everybody to where they need to be.
We're not there.
And I'm particularly interested,
this will be a conversation later on,
is where are the opportunities for us,
for the things that we can't control
and obviously technology and communication technology.
So that's the reason I raised the question.
Let's just say we're averaging 80% at the raw level,
but our goal is to get to 83%, 84% or whatever it might be,
is that we as a board can see because we've taken this step,
these are the types of,
this is the kind of progress that we're seeing as a system.
I don't know if that is clear, but.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, you know, it, they're a business. Multi-billion dollar business. And, you know, I don't know how high we sit on their priority list.
You know, it's fascinating. So they move commodities, right? These are commodities that are made by humans and robots and automation.
They're more important than the passengers that are going from
from workplace to home to work.
Yeah, no, I know.
I think that's it.
I don't know where we sit on their priority list right now,
but I think working, you know, with Sheldon and I working to
get a committee together and having those robust conversations
with VNSF, maybe we can nudge them to move us up their priority
this. But at the end of the day, it's really about just, you
know, sharing the track and making sure that we find that
happy medium for both of us. But yeah, point taken about the
technology.
Vice Chair Bergson had some questions on this. Sure.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you going kind of into the weeds
in this. And one of the things that I was trying to or want to
understand a little more in depth is when you say freight
interference because there's a train stuck in front of us, two things come to mind. One,
our dispatchers, we have our dispatching team that dispatches our trains. When we're talking about
our dispatchers, what authority do they have in regards to how our trains are placed on these
lines? Because obviously some are owned by us and some aren't. I mean, is there a situation
here where our dispatchers are only dispatching a train to to
uh another person another company's territory and then
they have to come in from there I'm not sure I
understand that's great question and and that's exactly how you laid it out
so we our dispatchers will dispatch our trains
up to that transfer point which is their property
and and then they take the the the they being
either NCTD, BNSF, UP, they take that train from that transfer point onto their property and run it
however they see fit. And so that is an issue right there, just as you laid it out. We will
get that train to that transfer point on time. But what happens either from that transfer point
or on the territory is where we see, you know, the damage being done as far as on-time performance.
Okay, thank you for that clarification. Now when a freight train is interfering with us, to me, at least in my head, there's probably at least maybe more but at least two scenarios. One is that the train was vandalized last year at the workshop, they talked about how when they cut the airlines, the whole train stops for potentially an hour or two or whatever it takes to get that back up and running.
or is it that they just have, as you said earlier, too many trains on their line and they can't push things forward so they're blocking us. Well, it was a bigger experience. Yeah, that's a good question. So I would say that vandalism is absolutely a problem.
is absolutely a problem. Is it the biggest problem? Is it what we're seeing the biggest delays from? No, no, it's, it's, it's, you know, they're operational capabilities, the amount of trains that they're pushing through that corridor, you know, and, you know, there's, there's, again, priorities, and we, you know, we sit lower on that priority list.
And that is really, you know, why we see what we see, you know, that that again, there's there's opportunities for us to try to change that. And that's what we'll be doing moving forward. But, but at the end of the day, yeah, vandalism is absolutely a real thing, we experience it, they experience it.
I can't honestly sit up here and tell you that vandalism is the reason for all of our problems. So I don't say I don't see how the freight railroads could could say that my last thing, I wonder if there's anything we could do better.
I know there's a lot of effort to train our first responders to manage emergency situations with our trains.
But what are we doing for example, when we have a train strike and police have to be called in to deal with that are we engaged with them before that to the point where when they get on site, not only do they know exactly what they need to do, but they can do it expeditiously is there anything we as a as as an agency can do to try to train
to train the random officers who show up
to make sure that they can get that train back
on the tracks as soon as possible,
rather than potentially having to wait
for some other supervisors or some this or that.
Is there something we can do to try to speed that along?
That's the bottom line.
Yeah, well, I'll let our chief safety officer,
Hillary, speak to that.
Go ahead.
Yeah, that's a good question.
So that is a problem.
So what we've been doing is we've been working
with the local jurisdictions.
We have 46 MOUs with all the other law enforcement agencies
that we travel through.
So when a strike occurs,
especially with LA County Sheriff's Department,
our biggest stopgap right now is that they require homicide
to come out and investigate the scene.
So we've been working with their organization
with LA County Sheriff's Department
to expedite that process and the coroner as well.
So what we're looking to do,
what we're trying to get them to do is
when you call homicide to come out,
call the coroner at the same time.
So it's, you know, the coroner is already there.
So when homicide is done with the investigation,
the coroner could just take, you know,
take their, you know, start their investigation.
The other thing is we do have an MOU
with the LA County Sheriff's Coroner's Department
or the LA County Coroner that we take precedence over.
So we're pushing that, because there's been also a lot
of new officers who will get on scene.
And they're like, well, we don't know
if this is our jurisdiction.
We don't know if this is our jurisdiction.
So what we've done is all the officers have copies
of the MOUs electronically and papers.
So when they go to the scene, here's the MOU.
It's signed by their county, either their chief
or their sheriff.
And so that's been expediting it more so recently
than in the past.
I mean, in the past, there were some strikes
that it was like four, four and a half hours.
I'm like, that's unacceptable.
So we're getting them down.
We're not down as much as I want them down,
but we are working to get them down.
Yeah, okay.
That's all I had.
Next slide.
All right.
So this is just outlining, you know,
some of the things we just talked about,
some of the things we're gonna be doing,
you know, to continue doing,
to try to, you know, try to mitigate
some of the issues that we see on the freight lines.
Looking at trends and root causes,
track work windows and service impacts,
is there a way to coordinate that better with us,
with the freight railroads.
Looking at a schedule and runtime analysis
kind of lends to the technology aspect
that the director was bringing up.
Looking at that more so in a digital environment
rather than just a manual environment.
And then just working with them to have these discussions,
share the information, have these discussions,
what are you seeing, where are the impacts
the greatest for you, where are they for us?
How can we work through that and find?
I do believe there is an opportunity for us
to figure that out with both of those freight railroads
and just have those frank discussions.
And so that's what we're going to do as we move forward.
And that will be, as I said, we want to work with Sheldon has volunteered to be part of this and we want to we want to form a committee to really attack that that issue and and really just be solely focused on, you know, the freight interference that we're enduring.
So I have a question if I could. Thank you.
Thank you. This is a lot of great information. I really appreciate it. From a perspective,
I'd just like to try to drill down a little bit on the question about digital and understanding
where the freight is, kind of being more proactive about how the freight is entering our area
of control. I'm understanding we're reactive, and maybe we want to look at being a little
more proactive. So do we ever have any structure where we can collaborate with freight consolidators?
I know there's flock freight, I know them because they're headquartered in my city.
But they work to aggregate and make more efficient the movement of freight around the country.
Now they're private. And so I just don't know if there's a mechanism for us to,
if we really want to understand the knowledge that's out there about efficiently moving freight
around the country, can we kind of jump beyond the freight rail itself and engage with private
entities to understand that better and be proactive? Yeah, I think that's a great idea,
great opportunity. I think, again, they are looking to move their freight on their tracks.
we are looking to operate on their tracks. I think to your point, the better we can understand them
and their needs, the better we're going to be able to, you know, get in a cooperative position
with them to satisfy both of our needs. So yeah, I think that's a great idea, you know, and that's
something that we will definitely look at is, is there an opportunity to bring somebody else in to
help us understand what those movements are, how those movements are being made, what they're going
to need in the future so that we can, you know, maybe design a schedule that is least impactful
to them. So yeah, great point. Thank you. All right. Yeah, I definitely don't want to tell you never,
but yeah, I mean, we we definitely have impacted them. But I mean, if we're, you know, we're putting
putting it on a, you know, it's just the reality of it is,
I have a locomotive and, you know, five, six cars.
The opportunity for me to impact a freight train,
you know, just, they're far less.
And so I, to your point, yes, we do impact them,
but it's, you know, it's a lot more,
it's a lopsided argument.
yeah i i would defer to our legal but um as far as i know the way that that agreement is written
no i would say no that there isn't anything that they've done outside of that agreement that we
could hold them accountable for punitively matter of fact i if mr del Rio can correct me if i'm
wrong I don't think there's any punitive language in those agreements at all we
have explored this particular BNSF with an incentive penalty type of program
the current shared use agreement for the San Bernardino sub subdivision does not
have anything and in fact there's a there's a reference that we can't impact
what's known as quality freight service which is not defined so we do have a
conversation. We are having conversations now with that there
seems to be some willingness to have that. So we are going to be
approaching BNSF and seeing if we need a little bit get that in
place.
Got to try.
Thank you. Good question. So next, we'll just touch on one
aspect. You've heard, you know, kind of what police and emergency
personnel delays are. We didn't want to go into every single
detail of that because I'm sure you're all familiar with that. But what we did
want to do is touch on one item that that we have been impacted by, you know,
pretty severely. It does not make up the totality of this number. It is a just a
percentage of this number. But there is something that we can do about it. And
so next slide.
And so this just gives you, again, some definitions
within the section here, subdivision, materials
management, vandalism, just so that you are familiar
with what those mean.
I won't go over them in detail.
But vandalism for the point of this particular slide
or these next few slides, the acts that damage tamper
with, deface, interfere with, or destroy railroad
infrastructure or equipment, including assets critical
to safe and timely train operations.
Next slide.
So right-of-way vandalism in 2025, 154 incidents
across all eight subdivisions, 92 unique locations impacted,
over 45% crossing-related, so they're
vandalizing our crossings, 40% at control points,
Control points are basically areas
where the dispatcher has control.
There's usually a switch there.
There's wire that somebody is looking to take from us.
68% of these activities occurred
on the Valley of San Gabriel and Ventura Subs.
Next slide.
So this breaks it out how many events took place
on each subdivision as it relates to your member agencies
and your lines.
And you can see that the Valley, St. Gabriel and Ventura
are the bulk of that pie.
These are the areas that, you know,
kind of like our top, our hotspots.
And as you can see,
nine streets been hit nine times.
And when I'm talking about this, they are coming in,
They are typically they are looking for wire, copper wire.
They are coming in and they, you know,
they are not clean or neat about this.
They are just ripping wires out and it is devastating
not only to our passengers, but to our contractors
to try to come in and fix everything that's been destroyed.
And so here's the locations, our contractors,
this is the pictures that you see
are some of the examples of what they do.
They come in and they'll just rip out wires.
Next slide.
Here's a, this is inside a signal house.
You can see they just cut wires
and just start pulling stuff out.
And in these signal houses, I mean,
you have so many wires and leads that are coming in,
feet being fed in from all the different, you know, the switch,
the, you know, the crossing, the, you know, the fiber,
everything that we have coming into these signal houses,
they're just going in and just ripping stuff out. And so it is
an uphill task for these, our contractors when they come in
after one of these, these vandalisms have been taking
place. Next slide. And I do, I do want to touch, go back one
slide. I think that touched on, so these are some of the things that our contractor is doing.
They're really, Herzog is our track and signal contractor, and they are, have gone above and
beyond in trying to limit this activity. Now granted, it is not going to go away just because
they've done these things. We've been working with our safety and security department,
Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, you know, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department,
to try to help us mitigate these. But our contractors, they've done some things that are,
you know, really that you just don't see. I mean, they've used environmental blocks to just basically
sit on some of these pull boxes so that it takes a little more work. Like if we get called out to
have to deal with the problem there, we got to make sure we have the right equipment to move
these environmental blocks so we can actually get to the vault. But it is helpful in preventing
some of this stuff. There's a there's a whole list of things that they've done, you know, just
just trying to find our own way to mitigate, you know, through these circumstances. Next slide.
Yeah. Oh, go ahead. The problem that I think I could say,
cities are facing, obviously, we're facing, have we ever advocated for stiffer,
These different penalties to those who are doing this because I can just tell you it's costing our city hundreds of thousands of dollars and
We ever advocated from from the Metro link when we go out and we speak to folks in Sacramento about that very issue.
And is there a value in doing that is in our legislative program this year to okay, first time.
Mr. Dunn, Jeff or Andrew, do you recall Jeff is,
I think Jeff must be watching a ball game.
No.
Director Sandoval was asking the question.
We are going to be, we're advocating
for stiffer criminal penalties for copper wire theft
and that kind of thing at the state level.
How long has that been in our platform?
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Can you give us a menu of options that we can choose from on the penalties?
Yes, yes. Well, because you have to advocate for stiffer, but stiffer if you get into the details that 15 to life. I mean, just, just something that is, this is costing us a lot of money.
There's also federal legislation going right now
that we are signing on to.
So I forget what the AQUA, I don't recall
what it stands for, but it's an organized crime
type of conversation, because it's organized,
in many cases, it's organized crime that's behind.
Theft on trains as well as vandalism.
And there is a bill that was just passed
or it just went into effect January 1
with regarding the scrappers.
the scrappers. So we've been, we have LA County Sheriff's Department going around to the local
strap, you know, the scrap agencies that receive the scrap that letting them know that if they do,
you know, obtain or buy, purchase a large number of wire, you know, that they can be held
accountable as well. So we have our LA County Sheriff's Department scanning the areas and
doing that, especially around the areas that Don has identified. Ninth Street's really bad.
and it's the same thing with LA the LAPD. A lot of nice streets in LA or LA? In LA yeah.
Thank you. I guess they don't want me to speak. So I appreciate Mayor what you're saying as a
mayor of Paris. We're we're getting ripped and raped left and right and especially our street
lights but when you say advocate we all it's not just matter we as cities, counties, we all need to
to be up there advocating for this problem.
And you sir just hit an I'm retired cop
or a lot warner as well.
And yeah, it's a shame that you have all these rules
in place and yet they're still being scrapped.
You know, the scrappers don't care.
They just want to get their money
or the material and make even more money.
So, but yeah, this is one of those tough ones,
but thanks for bringing that up.
Yeah, very good question.
Our point.
All right, next slide.
So this is the part here we talked about at the beginning,
our annulments and our terminations,
and we saw this huge increase.
This is what is impacting that the most.
Next slide.
So we have, these are our top challenges.
The F125 fleet, you know,
reliability and useful component life, aging fleet.
So we have a lot of vehicles that are Bombardier cars,
are MP36 locomotives, are pH 59 locomotives,
are Rotom cars, they're all getting older.
I mean, this F125, everybody talks about it
as a new locomotive, it's eight years old.
It's most a third through its useful life.
And so it's not new anymore.
And we're experiencing what happens
when something's not new anymore.
Material shortages, depleted inventory,
cannibalization of fleet, I do wanna point out
that the cannibalization seems to be something
that has been a long-term practice for Metrolink.
I don't know all of the history,
but it definitely started years ago,
I would say at least a decade ago,
and it has impacted some of our vehicles.
I mean, we have vehicles that are just shelled out.
They're just completely stripped down.
Our chief of project delivery has a project right now today
to bring those vehicles back into a state of good repair.
Just about a dozen vehicles
that they can't be fixed by our maintenance team.
They have to go to a refurbishment program
to be able to be brought back to life, so.
Next slide.
This is our locomotives.
Just wanted to, you know, point them out to you.
The F125 on the left,
that's the, you know, we have 40 of those.
That's the largest part of our fleet.
The MP36, we have 15 of those in the middle there.
And then the PH59s, we have five of those.
And so you can see when they were purchased 2017,
delivered in 2017, the F125s through 21,
the MP36 delivered in 2008, 2009.
What's important about that is
that was a refurbished locomotive when we got it.
It wasn't a brand new locomotive.
It was refurbished and then sold to us in 0809.
And then, you know, now we've used it for, you know, 15 plus
years. And it's, you know, it's, it's in dire need of a
refurbishment. And then, of course, the, the pH 59. Next
slide. One of the complex, you know, one of the difficulties is
the complexity we have, you know, as you just saw, we have
three locomotives. We have three, the bombardier cars, we
have three series of those cars. And then we have a rotum cab
car and a rotum passenger car. You know, it it's it's not
something it's a challenge. It's not something that we can't
deal with. Ideally, you would like to have one or two pieces
equipment that you you know, from a parts perspective from a
maintenance perspective, it's easier to deal with. But that
does that does present a challenge when you have that many
vehicles, you're ordering, you're having to order that
many different parts, you're having to train mechanics on
that many different pieces of equipment, because they are not
all at the same, you know, we hear that from vendors, we hear
that from manufacturers, it's the same. No, they're not. They
are way different. They have way different parts, they have
different needs. And so just is one of those challenges. Next
slide. As we talked about the age of the ruling, you know, the
fleet, you know, the MP 36 is 17 years old, again, that's the one
that we purchased as a refurbished locomotive. So it had
already went through part of its life, got refurbished from
somebody, and then they sold it to us. And now we get, you know,
we have 17 years on it. The, the 39, the f59 is, we have five of
those, you know, they're 33 years old. That's typically what
FTA considers past its useful life. Rotom cab cars, 14 years
old. The Bombardier, those are the three series that I told you
about the Gen 1, 2, and 3. You can see 32, 28, 23 years old. We
are very grateful. Our again, our chief of program delivery,
and his staff have been, have a program to,
they've been refurbishing those cars, those Bombardier cars.
They have 88, or 81 out of the 88 have been overhauled
and the program is going to pick up, I believe,
the rest of those Gen ones and Gen three, right?
Yeah, Gen three.
So we will have our,
almost our entire fleet of Bombardier cars refurbished.
So that is, we're extremely grateful for that.
next slide. The F125. So let's talk about the F125. You know,
the F125 and I and I definitely don't want to, you know, talk
negatively about the locomotive locomotive is great. It has it's,
you know, it has a lot of pluses. There's a ton of
horsepower, it can move cars. It, it, it's reactive, it's
responsive. You know, I've driven our operated locomotives
trains most of my career, that vehicle is what we would
consider, you know, going from like a pickup truck to a Porsche.
It is, it is a, its responsiveness is great. Its
technology is great. But with that comes really big
challenges. It is very, very needy. From the from the
standpoint of maintenance and overhauls. And and so you, you
know, we don't have a lot of history on this vehicle, they're
the only 40 in the country. So there's not anything that we can
lean on, like, Hey, how long did this last? Or Hey, what did you
guys do for that. We're learning as we go. It's been a
learning program for the last eight years for us, trying to
figure out, you know, what we know and what we, you know, can
do for this locomotive. We've had critical failures. We have,
we've, we've had another member agencies have, y'all have seen
the text messages that go out. We have a fuel manifold that has
failed. It wasn't supposed to fail for another four years.
It's, it's, you know, just failing across the board. And
it's catastrophic. When it fails, the entire locomotive
shuts down, there are no lights, there are nothing. It's done.
And, you know, of course, it doesn't choose to fail in a
double track area where we can, you know, work around it, it
chooses to fail in the single track area that impacts
everybody. And so our passengers, this is what our
passengers are enduring. They are seeing, you know, this, you
know, themselves, and it, you know, again, the annulments,
terminations, those are real, those are increases, and those
are, you know, primarily related to our mechanical woes. You
know, the the OEM has given us guidance. Unfortunately, that
guidance, sometimes we don't know if they know more about this
locomotive than we do. It doesn't, doesn't align, you
know, there's things that they tell us and help us with that
are very useful. There's things that they tell us and help us
with. I think they're just, you know, taking a shot in the dark.
And so we're having to work through that process. And I will
say, one of the graces that we've had is Alstom. Alstom has
been just a pillar of strength for us as it relates to this.
Alstom is doing things behind the scenes that nobody here
knows about, that they're not getting paid for. You know,
they're they're working, their engineering team is out here.
They, they, the fuel manifold, perfect example, the fuel
manifold, the manufacturer told us, Hey, so we can help you out.
Alstom went back, engineer to fix. They worked with the
manufacturer tried to get the manufacturer to let them
remanufactured this part. Manufacturers said, no, we don't
want to do that. So Alstom said, Okay, well, we'll find a fix.
We'll work around you. And they did. And you know, they created
a mounting strap that they believe will help with the
vibration that is causing this failure. And this is just one of
many things that Alstom's doing. Alstom didn't ask for a dime.
Didn't ask for a penny.
They did this on their own.
And so I just wanna make sure that it's understood
that Alstom has done nothing but be a good partner
and work hard to support us.
And then we get to the F125 engines and overhauls.
It's nice having these new locomotives,
but here's the repercussions of that.
It's 18,000 hours or miles, hours, I'm sorry.
Which is about four years you got to overhaul the engine.
Our previous locomotives you could go anywhere
from 10 to 20 years before you had to overhaul the engine.
These overhauls are $865,000 to pull that engine out,
send it off to Caterpillar and get it overhauled.
You just voted on an item to purchase a brand new engine
for $1.1 million.
So what do I do?
Do I pull it out and overhaul it and save
maybe $150,000 or do I just buy a new one and put it in?
But these are the things that we're challenged with.
These are the things that you were challenged with
from a financial standpoint.
These are the things that our passengers
are challenged with.
And so this is the F125 and it is a challenge.
Regulation, why this engine that has a four year
versus a 10 to 20 year, is it graduation based?
No, I think it's the technology,
the technology that is used,
trying to be cleaner,
trying to have more technology incorporated
into this locomotive sensing the sensors
and I guess the proactive approach
of trying to know what this locomotive is doing
and what you can do to maintain it,
I think are the largest drivers behind that.
And then, you know, it's 40.
It's the only 40 in the United States.
It feels important still.
Yeah.
I think real quickly,
there's only one other maker manufacturer
of a tier four locomotive.
It's Siemens based in Sacramento.
Generally, much of the Caltrans has purchased Siemens tier
four cleanest burning diesel locomotives in the United
States.
Both of these apply, our F-125 and the Siemens charger.
Don talked about it.
It's the nature of this technology.
Cleaner burning locomotives is great for the environment
and everything else.
But the Siemens chargers are experiencing
some of the very similar failures.
Different manufacturer, different motor, different things.
But the design is similar enough.
They're experiencing some of the same to the point
where the state is looking at purchasing additional chargers
so they have spares in their fleet
to be able to not have to end all or terminate trains
in Northern California.
So there is this element of transitioning to somewhat,
I'll call it high performance, the high technology locomotives that the industry is still figuring
out. So I think that that is that whether it's our our 40 F125s or however the the chargers
that were we're in this a little bit together as it as the as the industry evolves gets smarter.
Yeah, thank you. Next slide. So material shortages. You know,
the this, this is extremely difficult for us to, you know,
our, our materials department, you know, they are trying to get
these parts, there's long lead times. You know, sometimes the
parts aren't available, sometimes the parts take, you
you know, 54 weeks. And then they, you know, they just keep
getting dates, keep getting pushed back. And so this, this
is a, a huge problem for us moving forward. In the short
term, this is something that we need to address and, and as an
agency and, and get our hands around and, and, you know, get
it, put a good solution in place, because as much as Alston
our contractor is working hard as they can
to try to find solutions and try to manage,
you know, the things, the challenges
that are in front of them.
If we don't have parts for them,
if we're not giving them the basic essentials,
it's really an uphill battle for them.
So this is something that we are working on
and we'll continue to work on to, you know,
find a solution to our parts issue.
Next slide.
So Vice Chair Bergson raised during our briefing the fact that the CEO had, as you saw in your
board action earlier today, the CEO has signing authority for purchases up to half a million
dollars and we had a long list and Director Bergson said why this long list and why so
many sole sores?
Well it goes back to what Don's talking about.
Was that you?
I'm sorry.
I'm giving you credit for something that Director Spiegel did?
We both did.
We both mentioned sole source.
I talked about the list she was talking about.
Right.
We're in the same thing.
Just give director Steeble the credit.
Thank you.
The point in this is that we have in the last six months,
Tom Shamber, who's our CFO,
who leads, oversees our procurement department.
We have really accelerated our purchasing of parts
that are generally only able to be accessed
through a sole source.
So we are making progress on that.
We're not out of the woods,
but we have identified it as a root problem
that we're making progress on dealing with,
we're not out of the woods, but we'll continue on it.
But it has been an area of focus for us
for the last six months to get some of these purchases made
to get our inventory evaporated.
Yeah, thank you.
Hold on, I'm sorry, Todd.
You keep talking about Austin,
and I'm sure that they're a great partner,
but one of the reasons I supported them
is because they're the world's largest railroad operator,
whatever you guys told us.
Can't they use that leverage
and getting these in part to get the things moving?
I mean, it seems like they'd be a big player.
Yeah, we have an option in the contract
to execute, if we wanna execute,
to give them the ability to take over the parts
and manage that.
But we still have to go through that process
and discuss, you know, that more moving forward,
but that is an option for us.
And yeah, they are, they're a global company.
They, you know, they are more than capable
of helping in this situation, but I don't want to.
Yeah, well, and as it is, Director Wapner,
they have tried to use some of that leverage at this point,
goes back to they're trying to make phone calls too,
which was the company that when they were trying to work
with it declined to work with them.
You just mentioned it, Don, I'm sorry, I'm catching you.
Caterpillar.
With Caterpillar directly.
So they are making efforts in that regard,
but wasn't successful in that instance.
Yeah, I mean, we internally manage parts.
It's not any outside entity.
there's no contractor that manages that for us.
We as an agency manage parts.
We made that decision 10 or 15 years ago.
So it's, you know, that's something that we have to,
as an agency figured out, do we want to continue that
or do we want to look to, you know,
a contractor to help manage that for us?
Next slide.
The cannibalization, I touched on this.
You know, again, this cannibalization
incidentally started when we decided to take over parts.
So we're talking about 10 to 15 years ago
when we took on parts,
I'm assuming that this was a practice
to help subsidize the maybe lacking inventory.
I don't know all the history of it,
but it's been something that we've practiced
for quite some time,
and it's done some damage to some of our fleet.
It just deteriorated our fleet.
And so, I've given direction to our contractor
that that is not a practice we wanna continue.
Again, our chief project delivery
has got a project to bring those depleted vehicles
back into service bring them up to a state of good repair and then moving
forward you know if we can you know focus on our our parts department and
and and getting that parts program just the resources and the stability it needs
you know then we can we can move away from this cannibalization entirely and
and just focus on you know the the routine maintenance that needs to be done
and next slide I think this is the last slide just kind of our key takeaways I
I will say, with all of these challenges,
we definitely see a path forward.
We definitely see ways to get through all of this
and to bring the best service to our passengers,
make this as affordable as possible for the member agencies
and then work as best we can with the members
our partners like at BNSF and UP.
But there's nothing here that we're bringing to you
that is something that we can't deal with
or that we can't fix.
It's more of just transparency
and letting you know where we are and what is going on
and what you've been seeing, this is why.
And there's a plan to move forward
and mitigate all of these issues, so.
Thanks Don. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
A lot of, a lot of information that
I'll finish it if you have a question or anything.
On the top five items that you said were issues.
When you say the emergency services,
I know that strikes you, you went over that.
How much of it is safety versus health related?
You let us know later or?
Well, when we're talking about the police,
the EMS and police data,
that delays, number two, it's a whole host of issues,
but they're well outside our control.
We're talking about they could be an unruly passenger
on the train, a fare evader on the train.
It could be a passenger that needs medical assistance.
It could be somebody that has stolen the vehicle
and parked it on the tracks.
it could be a police officer chasing somebody
onto the right of way and now they need to shut down
the tracks because they don't want their deputy
or their officer to get struck by a train
whether they're dealing with this situation.
So that's what the preponderance of those delays are.
They're all those activities
that are kind of outside our control.
The strikes, we tabulate those separately.
So, there's just a variety of factors.
Yeah, it's really not a railroad item that we can address.
It's more of an, it's what happens around us
working in a robust populated environment.
To make sure that it wasn't like,
One of the major factors always for our transit agency
is making sure that we're safe.
And so if you're saying that it's not a large factor
of that, then that's appreciated.
Yeah, no, no, absolutely not.
It is unrelated to our safety and performance.
It's really an outside entity that impacts us.
Definitely.
And Victor, our customers tell us we're safe.
That's the most important thing is that
when we don't do our onboard surveys,
that is one of our high points
is that we're recognized as safe.
Now, some of the issues that they,
our customers feel safe.
Now there are things that happen around the railroad
that are difficult, but our customers feel safe
at a very high level, percentage level
of their satisfaction is safety.
By the way, great presentation.
Most of my other questions are already answered
and to you and your team, thank you very much.
Thank you, appreciate that, thank you.
Question on the F125, all these products.
I don't know if they have a limit.
That's why.
The question I have is, are we looking at
going away from the F125 in the future?
Are we going to go buy 39 new engines in the future?
Would I still be at a value?
I mean, since I've been evaluated by staff here,
is there a future F125?
You know what?
I am not the board of directors and I am not the CEO,
but from the chief operating's opinion standpoint.
No, we need to work hard
and we need to figure out the best solutions
for us moving forward.
We need to work with vendors,
we need to work with our contractors,
we need to work with the manufacturer of the vehicle
and get it to a point where we are more reliable,
more sustainable, and we're not,
the cost impact to you,
the board members and member agencies,
is as limited as possible.
But going out and buying 40 new, whatever tier fours,
whatever that brand is,
I don't think that solves your problem.
I think that just, you know,
you're gonna have a whole new list of different problems,
you know?
And we're learning.
I mean, we're learning as we go
to a degree with these F125s,
but I'll also remind the board
that we've received two different grants,
one from AQMD and another
from the state of California to replace 12 of the 15 MP36s
with new tier four locomotives.
And there is only one manufacturer in the United States
that makes those Siemens that's had its own challenge.
At least we have other experience throughout the country
with Siemens product.
So we will learn from that, but it's really not replacing.
I certainly from the CEO's perspective,
We're gonna keep learning on the F125 and get better.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
Okay, nothing to do with trains.
It really has to do with your staff
and just sitting here and feeling your angst, frustration,
but just your passion and your care
is very compelling.
And I just want to commend you, Don.
Because sometimes you're in a job.
It's just a job, and it's just a vocation.
But this is really like an application
because you care deeply about Metrolink, our passengers.
And so I just want you to know what comes across.
And we appreciate it.
I think I can speak for my colleagues that we absolutely
appreciate your care and concern and your desire
to want to make it a better system for our riders.
So just please thank you for that.
But I appreciate it.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
In the transit business, I know the FTA has a program
where, on a regular basis, they help
fund the replacement of buses.
I'm assuming FRA does not have a similar program.
There is not.
No, short answer is no.
We will receive funding from our member agencies
through grants for capital purchases.
but there's not a bus replacement, a train replacement,
locomotive replacement program.
I appreciate the presentation.
I mean, it really gave us good background,
but at the end of the day, we have a broken system.
Is there a number as to what it's gonna cost
to get it to where it needs to be?
It's being evaluated as we speak.
We don't have that yet because partly, as I said,
we're learning.
Who knew about we were gonna have this fuel manifold problem
that we didn't expect for four years from now.
So I think that's part of this, is getting smarter on it.
So stay tuned.
That may be a topic of conversation
for our next board workshop.
I'm just trying to have a better understanding
of where we are longer term.
No, I know normally, I don't like pay as you go, right?
Usually you have a capital replacement fund,
you put a little bit in every year,
projecting out what the cost is gonna be.
Why isn't that we don't include that
in our budgeting process?
Well, I think we look back at one of the challenges
we've had with parts in general.
We have constrained budgets, capital and operations.
We go to our member agencies and do what we can,
but it took us quite some time to get the capital reserve
so that we had a working capital fund
in working with our member agencies.
So it takes time and it's conversations like this
that I hope when you go back to your boards
for which you sit on here, that you help share this message
about what it takes to run a sustainable
regional passenger rail system.
You are our best advocates.
This was an education for you guys as much.
Justin, it looks like you're approaching,
so you got a question or a comment?
I was just going to add to, I guess,
regards to the cost for state of good repair,
pertaining to the Metro Museum of Social Security.
And you're gonna raise a comment about repair.
Anybody that knows Justin knows that he sleeps on a pillow
that says, SGR.
Thank you, Darren.
Thank you.
SGR.
Thank you.
I guess just to expand what Darren was saying, the work in progress of figuring out what
it's going to cost.
I think we reported this out at the last workshop that we did, but our MetroLink Rehabilitation
Plan, it's basically our state of the good repair program that we're updating.
So right now we've identified a backlog of just under $900 million, and that's not just
locomotives, but that's across all of our assets for everything.
So what we've done to kind of look at what it would take to chip away at that backlog,
it's around $150 million annually that we need to be spending.
The last couple of years, this board and our member agencies have partnered with us to
meet that threshold.
We need to, again, that's just to maintain the status quo.
That's not really chipping away at the backlog, it's just not adding to it.
So that's, you know, as part of our budgeting, as Darren mentioned, to address our state
to go to repair is our capital program.
Okay, thank you everybody for your attention on this one.
Again, it was a lot of nuts and bolts,
but this is what we experience
and the operations team experience every, every day.
I'm working to try to make sure we're running a,
running a good railway.
So thanks Don, thanks to Todd, Louise,
Daniel, and the whole ops group.
So thank you.
We're starting to get a little bit behind schedule,
good when it comes to railroading. At least trying to get our passengers to places on
time. So we're going to quickly go into our next section on budget development and finance.
So Tom Shammer is, am I doing this correctly, Lillian? You're looking at me like I'm not
sure if I'm doing it.
Yeah, you're kind of doing it correctly. So yeah. You're on the right track. No pun intended.
So we're actually moving right into the time
where it's lunch.
We wanna continue the conversation during a working lunch
so that Tom can get into somebody mentioned numbers.
We've got the numbers guy on deck.
Well, but we wanna keep the schedule moving.
We are behind, but we're gonna make it up.
And even if we don't make it up,
I'm loving as the geek in me the conversation.
This is, these are real conversations
that are important for us to have
and for our team to be a part of with each of you.
So what we're gonna do is Michelle Pena
who I think is now positioned over by
where the box lunches are.
I would ask the board to go first
to get their box lunches and then come back
because we wanna start the next phase of the agenda
right away and get us back on track,
followed by with our executive team as well.
Please go because you're on deck for answers.
And then our advocates and then our four or five MAC members
and then the rest of our audience.
Could you please take up the back end
so that we can keep on track?
And then the portion of Tom's presentation,
let's keep it going if it's okay with you
on questions as it goes so that they're timely
and hopefully we'll keep this also on track,
if that makes sense, okay?
Well, we won't wait till the end.
Thanks everybody, enjoy your lunch.
We'll see you back.
So, that are at the table.
I think we're missing only Director O'Connor.
She'll join us again.
So, good.
going to ask the audience. I'm
going to ask the audience if you
uh have a seat but most people
don't know.
And at this point, we're going
to turn the discussion over to
Tom Shamber. Tom is uh our
chief financial officer. He's
uh been in the role now uh both
official status the last few months now and it's his first budget and what a way to start
your career as a CFO going into what may be the most challenging budgetary times
Metrolink has ever experienced. So with that intro, my apologies Tom.
He signed on the dotted line, so he can leave it.
All right, Tom, take it away.
All right, here we go.
Hopefully this is an okay lunchtime topic.
I don't know, this might be kind of hard to take in
while you're eating, but...
So yes, as Darren mentioned, this is my maiden voyage
as the captain of our annual budget process.
I've been with Metrolink for about nine years,
so it's not all new to me,
but the Metrolink finances certainly take on
on a greater significance for me now.
Want to thank our advocates this morning
and for Chief Operator, Officer Don Flippe
for sharing some things with you this morning
that dovetail right into my presentation.
So with that, we're going to walk through
our financial realities, and then I will talk briefly
about how we're applying that context
to the development of our FY 27 budget.
Next slide.
Next slide. We've clearly heard concerns from the board and from member agencies about
Metrolinx financial sustainability.
Fair revenues are not recovering as quickly as we'd hoped.
Operating and capital expenses continue to rise,
and that's not unlike your household budgets.
We're all experiencing that across the country,
personal and business.
So, we understand that there's limits to your resources.
So, we've made a slow but steady recovery in the first few years after COVID.
You can see the up, up, up, and then we sort of flattened out in FY24-25.
I will point out there are two bars for 2026.
The first bar in the dark blue is the adopted budget for 2026.
The lighter shade of blue is the re-forecast that we are still vetting.
We have a re-forecast from KPMG Sperry of our ridership and revenue.
We're validating that, but just to give you a sense of the magnitude of the adjustment,
it flattens us back out, right?
It actually takes us down just a tiny notch from FY 25 actuals.
I think a good portion of that has to do with that student adventure pass.
We had a good deal there.
We had grant funding that provided that money.
So that probably explains that difference.
So you can kind of call it flat.
Okay, so again, just to mention a little bit more
about that new forecast.
So I think coming out of COVID,
that model was built very specifically coming out of COVID.
There were a lot of unknowns.
The world may be developed afterwards a little differently
than everybody, or I don't know how anybody even imagined
how it was gonna go, but we have a lot more history now
and understanding of what's going on.
Where KPMG, Sperry looked at the factors,
the economic factors, and applied those
in regression modeling and determined the weight
of the influence of each of those factors on ridership,
very complicated modeling.
They also customized the model for each line
to try to capture the nuances
of the regional factors for that area.
So we're hoping that that's going to give us
some much more reliable results going forward.
Next slide.
So here is a look at our operating expenses
trended over time.
We start with FY19 and we end with the FY26 budget.
That's a 46 percent increase over the course of that time.
As I mentioned, everybody's experiencing this,
but it's concerning.
Probably a lot that can be said that's buried into
each one of these fiscal years that might explain those increases.
But just to take up for instance, in FY26 we started the new contract with Alstom.
And we were with Amtrak, we had a contract for many years, and that locked in pricing
at a certain level.
When we switched over to Alstom, that was a new competitive bid.
Basically those services got marked up to market, right?
We got the best deal we could get from that competitive procurement, but that was still
a $7 million annual increase over what
we were paying Amtrak.
So when you talk about those annual expenses increasing,
there's a good example of why that happens.
And on top of that, we had mobilization, right?
Any major transfer of services like that
is going to come at a cost as well.
Fortunately, those are just periodic.
they're not ongoing expenses,
but those can create some blips in the data as well.
Next slide.
And here's what really matters to all of you.
It's what do we need from you to plug the gap
between those sort of flat revenues right now
on the ridership side and those increasing costs.
That's a pretty staggering number on there,
104% increase from 2019.
It's, we understand that and this kind of ties into what we were talking about earlier in the day.
We need state support, right? We can't, the member agencies can't carry it all. We need to find other sources of revenue. We had pandemic money for a while. That's gone. So
we definitely got a challenge ahead of us.
Okay, what's next slide?
So here are just some things to think about
as we think about our finances and our budget process.
Just help you wrap your head around the post COVID reality
that we are all working under.
Obviously the alternate work schedules
that were implemented during the pandemic
have stuck around to a large degree.
In fact, I took a peek at the CASL Keep Statistics
on office occupancy, which we used to share with you
quite a bit coming right out of COVID.
But I was curious what those looked like now.
We're still only at 42% office occupancy in LA.
So those numbers have stayed down.
On-time performance, Don talked a lot about that.
It obviously correlates with ridership, right?
We know there's an impact.
So we're, we're very mindful of that.
And, and Dawn unloaded all of those issues, um, related to what's
driving those performance issues.
Parts takes money, right?
We, we need, we need those spare parts and that's, that's got a price
tag associated with it as well.
Um, so in October of 2025, we marked our one year anniversary of the new optimized
schedule. And I think things are going well. We have kind of the offset of the on-time
performance issues, maybe dampening a little bit the impacts that we might be seeing on
the optimized schedule. So once we get those under control, hopefully we'll see that turnaround.
But it's also important to note, even as a separate bullet, we told you all it's going
to take a while, right? The optimized service is not going to turn things around overnight.
We're one year in. We got at least a couple of years to really get that new ridership
market, that midday market, whatever, catching on that we're there, we're reliable, and they
start using our service. Okay, next slide, please. I already mentioned this, the inflationary
pressures on prices, but it's also important to know that roughly 60 percent of our operating
costs are fixed. It doesn't matter how much service we run. Those costs are those costs.
We have 500 and what you say Darren, 46 miles of track, 45 miles of track that need to be
maintained. Whether we run, you know, 100 trains over them or 10 trains over them, those costs
are still fixed.
We have unfunded federal and state mandates
of various sorts.
And this is where the state needs to step up
or the feds need to step up
if they need us to do something more.
We've heard from member agencies,
your local sales tax measures
aren't necessarily hitting your projections.
And so that's sort of a double whammy for you, right?
We've got our costs going up in your sales tax measures,
you know, not performing the way you expected them to,
to meet the needs of Metrolinx.
So that's not good.
State, again, state funding,
they've got great visions for regional rail,
but they need to put the money behind that
so we can deliver that kind of service.
Already mentioned, the COVID relief funding
has been exhausted.
And the other big one we always talk about
is we have no dedicated funding source at Metrolink.
We're totally hands out to the member agencies,
which isn't a comfortable place to be.
We'd like to not have to do that,
but we brought you some options
at last year's board workshop.
There's a lot of ways that we could look at this,
but it's gonna take some additional conversation
at some point to see if we can make any of those work for us.
Next slide.
OK, so let's now talk about kind of the general structure
of our finances.
And then we'll do some comparatives and some trending
so you can see where we've been, where we're going.
Next slide, please.
All right, where does the money come from?
You can see that enormous dark blue part of the chart there.
That's member agencies.
that's almost 80% right now in today's reality
with ridership where it is.
Fairbox is 14% that includes subsidies.
So that's not just what the rider pays
when they buy a ticket,
but it's also any grants, member agency funds,
whatever that might subsidize that ridership.
So very, very, very notable.
Next slide, please.
All right, where does it go?
Nothing too shocking here.
We got the bulk of the money going towards train operations,
that maintenance of way,
that fixed cost that I was talking about, 18%.
We've got admin and we've got some insurance and legal.
I'll point out that this chart is excluding
the Alstom mobilization from FY25.
It's a little bit of a blip on the radar
in terms of this presenting our just standard
kind of operating statistic.
Okay, next slide, please.
All right, bear with me.
This is a busy chart, but it's interesting.
Ridership recovery in comparison
to other systems across the country.
We're the red line in that chart.
So we're kind of just barely in the bottom half,
but you'll notice the trend is very similar
across all of these agencies.
there was a rise and then in like 2024,
everybody started flattening out a bit.
So I'm not gonna make any conclusions about what that is,
but it is interesting, we're not alone in experiencing that.
Next slide, please.
All right, so this is interesting.
Let me give it some context.
This is the fare box recovery ratio.
It's the ratio of writer, paid, fares,
offsetting our operating costs.
The source of this data is from
the Federal Transit Administration's
National Transit Database.
It is a nationwide, standardized,
mandatory reporting database.
And I only put it up here.
Everybody's always a little bit curious from time to time.
Well, how are we stacking up with the rest of the country?
What does it look like?
These are some of our peer agencies
that we oftentimes look at.
You can see that our fare box recovery is 11.6%.
You've got these other guys going way out all the way
to Metro North at 36%, almost 37%.
I just think it's important to take this in context
because as a wise man sitting at the table over there
has always said, you've seen one commuter railroad,
you've seen exactly one computer railroad.
They are all very different in their characteristics,
population density.
You know, in Southern California
we have a car culture we're fighting, right?
They're used to transit back East.
Size of the system, we've got 545 miles of track.
Taltrain, I don't know, it's 70 miles?
What is it?
It's not, it's 60.
It's one straight shot, 60 miles.
It's a very different animal when you talk about the cost
of maintaining the system.
Next slide, please.
All right, so this is in contrast to what I just showed you.
I gave you the NTD picture a minute ago
because it's standardized.
It was a way to get you apples-to-apples comparisons
with the other agencies, even though I just told you
you can't really get apples-to-apples
because all of these agencies have their own nuances.
but this is Metrolink's Fairbox recovery ratio
as we calculate it and we report it all the time.
So these are the numbers you should be used to seeing
is there's that dreamy 34% back in 2019
on Fairbox recovery.
It obviously plummeted in 2021.
And again, we started creeping upward.
So our ridership growth was keeping pace
with the operating cost increase.
we flattened out again.
So we obviously got to get that up as best we can.
It's a simple equation, right?
But the top is fair revenue.
How do you increase fair revenue?
It's either riders or fair increases.
Certainly not advocating today for any kind of fair increase,
but we last raised fares across the board in 2013.
So it's been a while and we have systems back East
just in the last month that have raised their fares
4% or more.
So that's one way, more riders, higher fares,
combination of both, whatever.
And then the bottom number is our operating costs.
And so cost containment to the degree we can
is the answer there.
So don't have an answer for you
but it is something to think about.
Okay, next slide please.
So again, we're gonna hop back to NTD data,
standardized database.
What does it cost per passenger mile
for Metrolink service?
That's a little bit freaky.
We're up there at the top, right?
Dollar 82 per passenger mile, everybody else below.
But again, it's those distinct characteristics
between the systems.
Next slide please.
Here it is as Metrolink reports it.
It's in our annual budget book every year.
You can see this history.
And it's very much like everything else we saw.
We had a very low operating cost per passenger mile in 2019
because we had 12 million riders, I believe, that year,
almost 13, somewhere in there.
And we're now, you know, we had this great trend.
We have gone down consistently.
But we're sort of at a plateau again at this point.
Next slide, please.
All right, so now we're gonna show you
how we're taking all of that real-world reality
and putting it in context as we develop the FY27 budget.
Next slide, please.
Okay, so here are the assumptions.
Yeah, sorry.
and I think we do have things where I understand.
We are here, I think, for the first time
billing these for the next month or two.
We're going to have to develop two distinct funds.
One is a budget that was built off of a scenario that
was, I'll say, handshake agreed to by the member agencies
last year, where there was a recognition that we believed
at the time that revenues would track to such a point
that we could anticipate about a 5% year-over-year increase in member agency support.
So, along with some requests under Scenario 1 from, in particular, Riverside County,
for some additional service on the 91 Paris Valley line and the IEOC line, so Riverside
to Luden and Miguel, and then a little bit of extra service on the San Bernardino line,
one train all the way to Redland. So there'd be two trains, two roundtribs to Redland.
Earlier this month, I received a letter from OCTA's CEO, Darryl Johnson, advising us that
after actions at the OCTA board meeting where they did a review of their revenue forecast
for their sales tax measure, they were going to put us on notice that for our fiscal year
the 26-27 budget, the member agency support that OCTA would be able to provide for 26-27
would have to be somewhere in the order of a 10% reduction in the member agency support
that they provide this year.
So with an acknowledgment that to be able to do that recognizing the inflationary elements
that Tom referenced earlier that we're generally not that far out of whack when it comes to
expenditure side, it's been a revenue challenge for us, that we are going to,
there would be a recognition that there may need to be service reductions to
get to that reduced member agency support from OCTA. Now we're a system.
We're a five county system, we go into six counties, so what happens in one
county cannot be isolated. So if we're looking at different lines where all
member agencies contribute and support, if we're going to look at a reduction in
service, I needed to have a conversation with member agency executives from the
other counties. So I had a conversation with Aaron Haik, the executive director
of RCTC, and he said, well we're committed to what we generally agreed to
last year of a 5% year over year increase and in fact we still do want
these extra trains on these two lines so we want to be held harmless to be able
to allow us to grow our service because we think that's what's going to grow
ridership. San Bernardino line a little bit similar the impacts aren't the same
because there's only so many trains that generally connect into Orange
County from San Bernardino but a small connection nonetheless. So what the team
has done and we're working on right now as we are developing a scenario under
scenario 2 that recognizes thus being put on notice by OCTA that we there for
budgetary purposes we need to be looking at a 10% reduction. Tom mentioned that
60% of our costs are fixed. So if you have 60% that is always fixed, where are those
where are we going to find reductions? And that is where and Darryl acknowledges there
may need to be service reductions. And so we're going to work through that, please know
that these are conversations that are happening amongst the your leaders from RCTC and OCTA
the staff level, but in the meantime, while we are working through those challenges, and
they are not simple, we are going to have to work towards a sort of a budget that is
looking two different budgets, which the finance team loves, I say sarcastically, right, Christine
Yeah so it is it is a real it's a it's a real challenge for us and it's going to
be something that really challenges the Metrolink system as we try to work our
way through it and so this has been daylighted with the other member agency
CEOs across the board and we we will be working with ACTA staff to lay out
where we think we can go and see how we get to something that recognizes the interests
of all member agencies, that'll be the next probably two to three months as we work through
it.
It's not a simple exercise.
So Tom, I've got us through the service levels discussions of Scenario 1 and 2, so you don't
need to repeat that.
So if you could go into the other budget assumptions, we can deal with that.
and if there are questions as it relates to scenario one
and scenario two after Tom finishes this slide,
I'm happy to try to address those,
but why don't you put all to be aware
what we have in front of us.
Great, thank you, Darren.
All right, so moving on on the revenue side,
I already talked about the forecast by KPMG Sperry
with those new recalibrated models.
We will have no fair increases and no new fair promotions.
And we'll keep the student youth discount at 50%,
just like it is currently in FY26.
On the expense side, we've generally
requested that cost increases are at no more than 3%,
unless mandated by existing contracts
or by a regulation of some sort.
We are taking a 33% reduction
in our training and travel budget this year.
Still no new head count.
Merritt and Cola, 2.5% for Merritt and 2% for Cola,
which is slightly less than it was for FY26,
and no special trains.
At this point, we do have the World Cup
coming at the end of the year.
We're in discussions about what that's going to look like
and whether we would need
to provide additional service for that,
But no decisions have been made there.
But those could creep up at some point during the year.
Okay, next slide.
All right, the timeline for the budget.
We began back in September.
In December, we collected the requests
from each of the cost centers.
And we're looking at those right now
and figuring out where we can squeeze a little bit more out,
figure out if there are any initiatives in the budget
that maybe aren't mission critical for FY27
that we can push off into a future year.
Early February, as I said,
we've got that SBIRI forecast
that we're just validating right now,
so we'll be able to daylight both the FY26 re-forecast
and the FY27 new forecast,
and we'll start circulating our draft
amongst the member agency CFOs, CEOs,
and also the member agency advisory committee.
From February forward until adoption,
we will give you monthly updates to the board
and to the MAC.
And by May 1st, as always, we will transmit a budget
to the member agencies for their review and adoption
for approval.
And then on June 26th,
we hope to have a board adopted budget for FY 27.
Okay, that's all I have for you.
Thank you for your attention through the presentation
and for your engagement on the topics that are raised.
And look forward to working with all of you
and to the member agency staff
to bring this process to a close.
Happy to answer any questions.
Permian, John?
He's got it, yeah, here we go.
Okay, three different questions.
The first one is, in the cost factor,
You already talked about the old part, the cannibalization.
And when that gets turned around, I mean, maybe a process,
will that be less costly because we'll have less trains
failing, annulling or whatever?
Yeah, the reliability of the trains is a big deal, right?
And it's costly for Alstom to have to go
and take a part out of one train just to put it
into another train to keep them going.
So yeah, there's a definite impact
to those parts availability and parts on hand.
But there's a lot of things you have to balance
with materials as well.
There's a cost.
We just saw it this morning on engines and $1.1 million.
And so we're trying to control our operating costs,
as I just mentioned, to bring those stats up
to control these costs for our member agencies.
And that's just one of those ones where, if we scrimp there,
we pay for it later, right?
And so, um, we've got the budgetary constraints.
We've got space constraints, warehouse constraints on how much inventory we can
carry, um, we have the unpredictability that Don mentioned with these F 1 25 is
we don't know what parts going to fail.
When it's really, it's not like these have this long history that we can do
forecast models on spreadsheets and know what's coming next.
These things just catch us out of the blue and all of a sudden the
fuel manifolds go out and we have a run on that part and we don't, we didn't
necessarily stock up on that one.
And then you get to the manufacturers, those OEMs,
they have these huge lead times.
So it's a real conundrum, but we're working on that.
And then OCTA giving reduction in financial support,
you said 10%.
So is that really gonna be 15% since that won't be the...
Director Spiegel, it is a complicated equation
because we also, if we're looking at service reductions,
we also likely lose revenues from those riders
that would be on those trains.
So there's not a simple answer to that.
And so we are working through that,
that is part of the analysis that we are developing
that we're gonna be working with OCTA staff.
So there's full understanding
of what this does mean for them,
But also what it will mean for the other member agencies, given our all-share formulas that
distribute fixed costs that currently are maybe absorbed out of OCTA's service levels
that if dropped transfer those fixed costs to other member agencies based on our all-share
formulas.
So I will spare you the pain and the headache
of trying to understand how all that works,
mainly for my own purposes, because it makes my head hurt.
That's why we have Tom and Christine.
But so you are asking the right questions.
We don't have answers just yet, because it's complicated.
Thank you.
Sure.
Yes?
So it's the money we were talking about earlier
from the federal government associated with the World Cup.
How does that trickle down in any way
to be beneficial to us?
You take that one.
So, this is somewhat hot off the presses.
I think one of our advocates mentioned
that it looks like based on the formulas
that the LA area would receive about $9 million.
We have to figure out how that gets distributed.
Next on our agenda that we'll be abbreviating,
by the way folks, we were gonna push off
the last item on the workshop agenda
to next month in February.
So we will be finishing with Olympics and World Cup,
and we will talk very briefly about the scenarios
and how we would be able to do it.
We do not, Metrolink does not need $9 million
for the World Cup in Los Angeles,
but we do have some needs,
and we'll make those points for the World Cup
to try to collect some of those dollars.
Do you have entirely filled out
our recovery commitments?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if we can go back to that trend,
the Metrolink trend there, right there, right?
We were at 34%, right?
So that was ridership driven, right?
Our fare revenue was a big number.
I don't even remember what the number was.
We've been living in a different reality for so long now,
but yeah, we had the fare revenue
to offset those operating costs.
And so we don't have the fare revenue,
but operating costs march on.
so right so yeah again this is the national transit database they have a standardized
formula by which everybody has to report their statistics they all have to use the same
the difference is this one doesn't include subsidies these numbers are based just on what
the passenger pays for their ticket the metrolink slide we include our subsidies that's part of our
for fair revenue?
A combination of ridership recovery, riders, and as Tom indicated, the last time we adjust,
if we did any fair increases, whereas our other agencies have, that accounts for it.
It's riders and fair amount.
Yeah, it's a fairly simple formula.
That we used to receive, yes.
And actually, in many of these sister agencies, they're equally significantly lower than their
their old fair box recovery.
So COVID, not just in the mouth.
Well, I understand COVID is not just in the mouth.
I will see what the next presentation is about.
People that have a problem here is,
if this consumer bond has gone up and we had a plateau,
they have a sustainability issue.
That keep his old needs.
And which in his entire state advocacy is so critical.
Oh, yeah, that's important.
Well, we got...
I thought it would be a sad day to avoid what I call the transit death spiral.
Yeah, but I mean, yeah, that's so if you want to let somebody you'll have an emergency show
an emergency make it happen.
You have a big fire and everybody wakes up and well, we got to fix it now, particularly
as well.
Yeah.
Actually, you're segue.
Since we're going to go into the Olympics, unless there are other questions, are we good?
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
So thank you, Tom.
Welcome to being the chief financial officer.
Go back and so now we're going to call up Michael Litchy, Michael's director of special
projects focusing on major events uh olympics and world cup and so michael with no further ado and
no greater introduction take it away all right thank you darren good afternoon board uh so yeah
happy to be here today to provide an update on uh some of the work we've been doing here at
metro link the last few months to help prepare for these large uh international sporting events
coming our way, both the World Cup and the Olympics.
Next slide.
So this slide is a slide we start every internal meeting with
to keep top of mind how many days left until these events.
The more days that count down, the more anxious I get,
and I think a lot of our staff too.
So we're less than six months out, 140 days
from the first match of the World Cup
coming this summer, this June.
And now under 1,000 days, 900 days left
until the opening ceremony of the 2028 games.
We also have a couple other events down at the bottom
that while they won't have as major an impact
on the Metrolink service are also large events
and by any city standards having a Super Bowl
in your city is a major event,
but in comparison to the World Cup and Olympics,
not as big a deal as those two events.
And then we've also had the Dodgers World Series parade
just recently for the second time.
And I'll touch on that at the very end
into the presentation. Next slide. Next slide. So starting with the World Cup, just a very high
level overview for those of you who aren't familiar. The World Cup will be taking place at venues in
three different countries, Canada, the US, and Mexico. In the US, there'll be 11 different host
cities, including Los Angeles. It will be the largest World Cup in history, both in terms of
the number of teams and the spectators that are anticipated. And the projections that we're
receiving right now for the LA region is about 150,000 additional visitors over and above what
would normally be expected during the summer coming here specifically for the World Cup.
Next slide. So this slide lists the match schedules for the eight matches that will be
held in Los Angeles. All the matches will be at SoFi Stadium, which those of you who are familiar
is in Inglewood, which is not close to our MuchLink service area, but I'll talk about how we're
We're bridging that gap working with our partners at Metro.
So the information we'd been waiting on for quite a while
was finally released back in December,
and that was what times the matches would take place.
We knew what days,
we've known what days the matches would take place for all,
but not what times.
And obviously that impacts our service plan.
So you can see the times and the dates of the matches here.
The matches that are bolded indicate matches
where we don't have sufficient service
with our existing Metrolinx schedules
to be able to transport people to and from those matches.
For the most part, we're pretty good inbound
at the beginning of the match to get people to LA
and then to SoFi Stadium.
The problem comes in more on the return trip
for the later evening matches to get people home
from Union Station in LA, back to their origin point,
we would require either some special trains
or in some cases holding a train by 30 minutes or so.
And then as you can see,
there are a number of Sunday matches,
which we have a lower service level on Sundays.
So some of those matches would require additional trains.
However, there are three matches that are not bolded there
that we do have sufficient service.
We may need to look at capacity,
but we have with our existing schedules,
enough trains to adequately serve those matches.
Next slide.
So we're continuing to get more details
about the World Cup each week.
They're slowly trickling in, not as quickly as we would like,
but we are in a number of different meetings.
In fact, this morning before the board meeting,
I was on a call with all the US
and Canadian host transit agencies.
So we have a monthly call to talk about the issues
that each transit agency is facing.
And funding is one of the number one issues
that we're all facing as well as getting details
on exactly who we're expecting,
how many people from where, when.
So we're not alone in trying to resolve those issues.
But a couple of things we do know about the matches in LA,
the capacity for each of the eight matches
at SoFi Stadium will be about 78,000.
Unlike the Olympics, which we'll talk about next,
there will be parking available around SoFi.
However, it will be significantly less parking
than is available for a normal NFL game
or Taylor Swift concert,
just due to the security parameters.
But during the Olympic games,
there will be basically no public parking
available around most of these venues.
So because of that,
we are expecting a significant number of people
to utilize transit to get to the venue.
As I mentioned,
SoFi Stadium is not near a Metrolink service area.
However, Metro will be running a direct shuttle,
very similar to what they do for the Dodgers Express
that will leave directly from the Union Station.
OCT will also be operating a shuttle
from the Arctic Station in Anaheim,
which will provide a direct connection
from train to the stadium and back at the end of the evening.
And those are the boardings that are projected right now.
However, I'll caveat that by saying
we haven't really received nor has Metro
a lot of detailed information from FIFA
about projected demand for transit
or where those people will be coming from.
They so far have not released any ticket sales data
that might indicate where in the region
people are coming from or staying.
So we're continuing to press on that
as that will help us refine our service plan
and make sure that we're putting resources
where they're needed.
In addition to the matches themselves,
which obviously will have a big draw,
we do expect that the Fan Fest
that are planned around the region
will also create a significant increase in demand
for Metrolink.
The challenge again with that in terms of information
is we only know at this point
where one of the Fan Fest is gonna be
and the dates and times of that Fan Fest.
And that's the first five days of the tournament.
There'll be a Fan Fest at the Coliseum in Expo Park at USC.
And right now they're expecting about 40,000 people
Each day of that fan fest, it will be a ticketed event, but tickets will be about $10 so much more affordable than the thousand dollar plus going rate for World Cup match tickets.
However, we do know there will be fan fest somewhere in the region, the rest of the 39 days of the World Cup. We just don't know where yet. And we won't know until that's announced on January 28th.
That differs from some other host cities around the country where there's only one location for the fan fest which
Will run the entire 39 days a lot easier for planning
La decided to do it a little bit different
So we're working with that and trying to get as much information as we can
We do expect that there will be a fan fest at Union Station Metro has put in a proposal
With FIFA to get that approved if that's the case
We're gonna be working closely with Metro not only to ensure that our existing passengers have
An easy passage through that event to get to their trains and do what they need to do
But also looking at how that might impact our demand because if there's an event at Union Station as we saw with the Dodgers
Match link is a very viable and attractive alternative to to get to that event
next slide
So I think it was discussed a little bit earlier in terms of a service plan again as as we're continuing to get information
This is going to evolve
At this point what we're planning and looking at on in cooperation with our operations team is
How we could serve those eight match days with that shuttle from Union Station Arctic as well as the fan fest that we know about
Which is the one at the Coliseum. There is some overlap between the match days and the fan fest
So we don't have to operate as many days
But we've put together some
preliminary service plans
We're going to be betting those through with our operations group to ensure that we would actually have sufficient equipment given the challenges you heard earlier
To operate those extra trains the one bright point in in when we would need to operate special trains is
That they're mostly in the later evening and on weekends when we actually do have a little bit more flexibility on the equipment side
To be able to operate additional service as opposed to in the middle of the day on a weekday
We are also coordinating with Losan on co-chair opportunities to ensure that
we're aligned in terms of the service they're planning to provide and how it
aligns with ours. Next slide. In just one last slide, it was raised earlier there is some
federal money for World Cup security, about 625 million through FEMA, that we are pursuing
working with the LASIC, which is the host committee for the World Cup, as well as Metro.
So we've identified a little under a million and a half insecurity needs
that we'll be pursuing funding through that FEMA federal funding.
And we are also working, Hillary and his team are starting a threatened vulnerability assessment
that is starting this month that will help to inform our
tactics during both the World Cup and the Games. Next slide.
And just one last note on the World Cup before I move on. As was mentioned earlier by our federal
advocates, there is $100 million in federal funding potentially as soon as that bill passes.
So we'll be working very hard to try to access a portion of that funding to offset operation costs
that we may have to run additional service during the World Cup. Next slide. So moving on to the
Olympics, these first couple slides just give a very high-level overview of what we're expecting
for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. And if I could, Michael, real quickly. So again,
And as Noelia said, we're gonna be sending out
all the slide decks here.
So recognizing an interest of time and where we are,
why don't we skip to the slides that are most relevant
that the board needs to hear about today.
These are just topical at the moment.
So take a look at this one
to better educate yourself on Olympics.
Yeah, just setting the stage for the Olympics,
the most relevant point here is the events are gonna start
as early as 8 a.m. as late as 11.30 p.m.
so that will definitely impact our service offering
during this time.
Next slide.
Again, just some high-level facts about the games.
Next slide.
So this, I think many of you have seen this slide before.
This is overlaying our Metrolink service area
with the venues, which are in blue, the Olympic venues.
And as you can see, the Metrolink system
is really going to be well-positioned to serve
a lot of these venues, not just those in downtown LA,
but also other venues that are within walking distance
of a Metrolinx station like in Anaheim at the Honda Center,
or very near like Trestles Beach and Pomona, Fairplex,
where the cricket competition will take place.
Next slide.
This again, you've seen at a previous board meeting,
so I won't go into detail.
These are high level goals for Metrolinx role in the games,
which the board has seen and approved.
Just two points to make here is safety and security
are always gonna be paramount for us.
So we're working, and we'll be working very closely
with our security team to prepare incident response plans
and do drills, looking at increasing awareness
for our staff and volunteers about threats,
human trafficking, issues like that.
And then also ensuring that Metrolink
is gonna be accessible to all during these games,
both people with physical needs,
as well as language barriers to make the system
as easy as possible for everyone
to navigate during the games.
Next slide.
These are some game service scenarios we've put together in coordination with the team
at Jacobs Engineering that's been assisting with our games readiness efforts. We've previously
been focused on what's called the gold scenario here, which is basically looking at what the
maximum amount of service we believe we could provide with the infrastructure and the rolling
stock or equipment that we believe will be in place by summer of 2028. Since then, we've realized
is that funding may be an issue.
So we've looked at some other scenarios,
the silver and bronze,
of if we didn't have the operating funds
to operate that highest level of service,
what else could we do
with a more limited amount of funding?
Yes.
All right.
Next slide.
I don't have been too subtle.
Sorry, yeah.
I thought I was going fast.
Again, service plan that we've looked at 30 minute service
on our key lines.
Next slide.
Funding Outlook, I won't dwell on this one too much.
This is the bright spot,
and you've heard already from our federal advocates
about some of these numbers.
So we do have some hope that we're gonna be able to get
a fairly significant amount of federal funding
to offset the costs during the games,
and we're gonna be working very closely
with our Olympic Ad Hoc Committee.
Director Wapner has been helpful already
and will continue to be in advocacy efforts in D.C.
and with LA 28 as well.
Next slide.
Next slide.
This all not covered because you heard about this already in preparation for the games. We're trying to get all of our equipment locomotives and rail cars rehabbed
Ready for service. Next slide. Some before and after glamour shots of our mambardier cars. Next slide
And next slide. The last thing I wanted to cover was we are working right now with LA-28 staff on a term sheet for an eventual MOU between Metrolink and LA-28
that would outline our very our respective rules and responsibilities. I think this is something
that the board has indicated an interest in in the past. So one of the chief things I'll call
out here is that we we are planning to be very clear that Metrolink and its member agencies will
not be responsible for shouldering the cost of additional service during the games beyond our
baseline service level that we're operating today. But we'll continue to be working with the ad hoc
committee on that, and bring that back eventually for the board's review and approval.
Next slide. And the final slide I want to leave you with is from the Dodgers World Series victory
parade, just end of last year. All of our staff was out in the field, and it was really a great
run-through opportunity to test some of the policies and tactics we're looking at for these
other upcoming major events. And we had a lot of great lessons learned and a lot of happy customers
on crowded trains, but who got where they wanted to go and had a great experience with Metrolink.
So that's what we're looking to build upon for these upcoming events. That concludes my
presentation. Quick question. World Cup. We'll talk Olympics right now. Concerned, it said $74
per state. We have two locations in California and we're requesting only $1.4 million.
Right. So that funding is not just for Metrolink security, but for Metro, for the security around
the venues. So it's it's overall okay so that's just for the trains and not I mean technically
if you've got two venues then you'd cut 74 and a half kind of a thing so when I heard one point
point what are we talking so I just want to confirm that yes thank you Michael yep sorry to have to
have had you accelerate through that but you know it's it was a sprint to the finish if you'll
You can forget the sports, bad, bad, bad joke.
Vice chair Burksen though,
he's gonna take over for a couple of things.
Just given the two second warning
that I have to close the meeting out.
So on behalf of our CEO and the entire Metrolink team,
I appreciated what we saw and learned today.
And I know that the rest of the board members
appreciate what staff does for us
for the agency and we look forward to working through the logistics and the problems throughout
this next year and in 2028 so we can be ready and shine as we come up for these major events
and with that I guess unless somebody else has any last comments we'll go ahead and adjourn
the workshop and see everybody at the next board meeting.
Thank you and again thank you everybody for being here appreciate you taking the time.