I like the signs you guys put up front, the crossing.
It's all, yeah, it looks really great, really great.
It makes the...
All right, good morning, everybody.
I would like to call to order the marketing,
service planning and business development committee meeting
of the North County Transit for September 10th, 2026.
Before we begin,
I would like to inform members of the public
who may be viewing the meeting on the NCTD's YouTube page
that in order to make a public comment during the meeting,
you must connect to the meeting
by using the Zoom link provided on the agenda.
You must also register with the clerk
by sending an email to clerk at nctd.org
with the name or phone number
and which item you would like to speak on.
I would now ask Taylor Seawee to our deputy clerk
to call the roll, please.
Committee chair Martinez.
Here.
Committee vice chair Garcia.
Present.
Committee member O'Hara.
Committee member Joyce.
Present.
This completes the roll.
Committee member O'Hara absent.
Thank you.
And Taylor, will you please provide the safety brief
and review the evacuation procedures?
Yes.
In case of an emergency, I will dial 911.
In case of an evacuation, please take the stairs.
Do not use the elevators.
Once cleared of the building,
do not reenter unless cleared to do so by emergency personnel.
There are fire extinguishers and first aid kits
on each floor of the building.
There is a portable defibrillator on the first floor
and staff on hand trained on CPR procedures if needed.
This concludes my safety brief.
Thank you. Do we have any general public comments?
No, we do not. Okay, thanks.
All right, next, before we get into specific items
on the agenda for this meeting,
I would like to outline meeting protocols
to make this meeting as efficient as possible.
First, please hold your comments and or questions
until the agenda item has been presented.
And second, when that time comes
for the board members' comments and questions,
raise your hand and I will call on them
in the order they were raised.
All right, we'll go to agenda item number one.
The first item on the agenda today will be an update
on the status and safety and security
of NCTD's modes and facilities.
Karen Tuchowski, Senior Legal Counsel,
Regulatory Compliance, and Chris Carrillo.
Director of Security will present this item.
Karen and Chris, you have our attention, thank you.
Good morning, thank you.
Thank you, on behalf of Chris and I,
we do appreciate the opportunity to present to you all
and share information on our safety and security programs
as they are critical components of our overall services.
So we just wanna thank you in advance for your time.
I'm gonna go ahead and start things off
on the safety side of things.
I know you all are generally familiar with us here
in the safety and Office of Chief General Counsel.
So just a brief overview reminder on our staffing.
There are several of us on the legal
and risk management staffing side.
And then we also have our specific safety department
staffing new this year since we last presented
to you a year ago.
We now have a manager of safety compliance.
Mr. Devon Warmington has been with the agency
for several years and was previously in the safety department.
He's come back to join, and he is serving in the safety
compliance oversight.
And then to help take some work off of Lori,
he has also taken on responsibilities
of the SMS Safety Management System Executive Reporting.
And that's something that's required
under the Federal Transit Administration.
So that is new to the department,
and we're super excited to have him here to help support
our safety efforts.
Terms of overall program responsibilities,
obviously regulatory compliance
with all of the various different agencies
that have oversight and jurisdiction on our operations,
any required reporting for the NTD
in terms of safety and security.
We also have a very large component
of proactive internal safety audits
handled by our principal management analyst.
Every 36 months, she does 46 different
internal safety and security audits,
and that covers all of our bus and rail functions,
so it's very thorough and comprehensive.
And then, of course, the ongoing training
that we do provide in coordination
with the training departments
for the various other functional areas,
specializing in some of the safety topics.
So we thought what might be helpful
to talk to you all about this year
is some information on our safety metrics
and our tracking and our progress.
You see these in the quarterly reports that we put out,
and we thought it might be helpful
to provide a little bit more detail
and information about the goals and the performance targets,
as well as our progress and the efforts that we're making
to have continuous improvement in our metrics.
So on the federal transit administration side of things,
they have some specific performance target categories
that all transit agencies that are covered
under their jurisdiction have to adhere to
and provide ongoing tracking and metrics.
The list that you see here is the same list
that you see in the quarterly reports,
though it is synthesized a little.
And this, we're gonna start off here
as talking on the bus side of the house.
So the FTA covers both the bus operation side of the house
and then our sprinter operations.
I'm just gonna start with the bus metrics.
The first category that you see is major events
and that includes collisions,
be it with a pedestrian or vehicle
as well as any injury with hospital transport.
So the FTA does require agencies
to set annual performance targets
And again, we'd like these all to be zero,
and the FTA recognizes that you can never have zeros
for everything, and these are kind of like,
think of them as not to exceed numbers,
not necessarily saying, oh, we want to have
eight major events, no we don't.
But based on our data trends that are reviewed
on a three year rolling basis per the FTA requirements,
you go back and you set what you hope
are reasonable performance metrics every calendar year
seeking to try to reduce.
So this year, as you can see, our results
on the bus side of the house through July 31
reflect a total of 12 events against an annual target of eight.
And I'm sure that there's questions about that.
So we did kind of go back and want
to provide a little bit of extra context for you.
So of these incidents here, you see
that there is one pedestrian and 10 vehicle collisions, which
are the majority of the events in that category.
Of those, five were deemed preventable.
So one of the things that we have been doing
is focusing heavily on defensive driving training.
And we started that first quarter of this year
where we were really able to get out
and do that defensive driving training
to all of the individuals, not just in bus operations,
but anyone else even driving non-revenue vehicles
and doing any significant driving for NCTD.
So we did see a definite decrease in events
after doing that.
So again, this is a cumulative year to date total
through July.
The other thing that we have been working diligently on
and just rolled out on September 1st
is a new safety assessment policy.
So safety points can be issued for different types
of occurrences within individual performance.
And that was something that we worked on diligently
over the last several months with the unions
because it does affect frontline employees
who are represented.
So with that just rolling out effective September,
we do also expect to see continued improvement
and obviously we're going to continue doing our training,
focus on safety presentations during the safety meetings
that are held in the various different departments.
So we are gonna continue to emphasize heavily
opportunities for improvement in these metrics.
The other item is the injury rate.
So you can see we had an annual target of three
And we had a total of 12 night passenger and three employees took a look back at these
numbers as well because again they are definitely higher than the annual target.
There were two deemed preventable and the rest were deemed non-preventable.
And on the passenger side there's a trend for whatever reason of individuals who tend
to fall asleep in the seat in the bus while they're on their route.
And then, unfortunately, they slip over and fall out while the bus is in motion.
And so I'm not sure what to do about that.
But that is where the majority of those passenger injuries actually came from.
So we'll continue to look for opportunities there.
But that's the trend in that area.
As it relates to transit worker assaults, we are trending below our annual target, so
that's very positive.
I'm not going to get into the details on that aspect in my portion of the presentation.
I will let Chris Carrillo talk more about that when she gets to the security portion
of the presentation.
And then the last portion is our system reliability, which is the goal for how many miles
between major mechanical failures.
And as you can see here, we're close on Breeze, very,
very close to hitting that annual target on Breeze.
Flex is a bit challenged.
Those are older vehicles.
We do have some newer vehicles on the way.
And I think once those get put into service,
we'll see a definite improvement there.
And then our lift obviously
were reasonably close as well.
Again, that fleet has a mix of some older vehicles
and some newer vehicles coming in.
So as the older ones get cycled out,
we will definitely see some improvement
in that area as well.
So the next area that I'm gonna talk about
is our Sprinter service.
So Sprinter is covered on the FTA side
as well as the California Public Utilities Commission.
I'm gonna start with the goals on the FTA side.
These categories are the same as the goals and the targets that we just talked about on the bus side of the house.
As you can see, we're trending very well on the sprinter side with the year-to-date results as compared to the annual targets.
We've had two major events out of a target, I shouldn't say target, I hate the word target, but out of the target of seven.
And then we've only had one injury against the annual target of three and five transit worker assaults year-to-date against the target of 15.
Our system reliability is also exceeding results.
So this is the only category where if the year to date
results are bigger than the performance target,
you're actually exceeding your goal.
So our target was to go 4,500 miles between major mechanical
failures and we're going 5,000.
And as you also are aware, this Brenner fleet is an aged fleet.
It's a unique fleet with some unique mechanical challenges.
So exceeding these results is a great kudos
to our mechanical team for being able to do that.
The CPUC side of the house has some additional compliance
goals for us, in terms of our roadway worker training
and compliance.
So roadway workers are the individuals
who are out on the right of way for forming work
within that foul zone of the track.
So they have some goals for employee training.
As you can see, year to date, we've
trained 135 employees and contractors.
Also have done a lot of inspections out there
in the field, making sure that roadway workers are
following the rules and regulations,
performing their duties safely,
and adhering to any of the requirements.
We had only one RWP incident, and that was a near miss.
It was not an injury or anything like that.
So continuing to focus on the training
and making sure that we don't have any more serious incidents.
So, I'm going to slide on over
to the FRA, Federal Railroad Administration,
side of the house.
You'll see that Coaster and Sprinter are listed up here.
And I know you just said Karen, we just talked about Sprinter.
So Sprinter's a little bit unique.
There are some aspects of our Sprinter program that we operate under a waiver from the FRA
where certain portions of the FRA regulations don't apply to the Sprinter operations
and they cover it under the FTA side of the house.
The safety program, the regulations under 49 CFR Part 270 are still applied to Sprinter.
They're not at all in conflict with anything that we do for the FTA.
Again, it's all about promoting safety.
So Sprinter may have a few more targets that we're tracking,
but in the end, it's really good that we're continuing
to focus on safety in these areas.
So not any concern there in terms of conflicts or anything.
So the categories that we have here
reflect goals for passenger employees or fatalities.
So again, you can see a lot of annual targets for zeros,
and I know a little while ago,
I said we don't expect there to be zeros necessarily for everything, but certainly passenger
and employee fatalities.
We do not ever want to see anything above a zero for that, as well as any passenger
employee serious injury or accidents requiring an independent regulatory investigation.
So that would be something that rises to the level like the NTSB coming in, very, very
serious incidents.
So our targets in those three are all zeros.
doing well year to date. The only area where you can see we had any incidents
occur was in the passenger and employee serious injury and this was one incident
where we had a passenger who was injured de-boarding the coaster train. They were
taken to the hospital and treated and released so that's the only incident
that we had against those targets. The other things that we're looking at doing
are reducing employee injury rates year over year so these numbers might look a
a little bit funky, 3.8, but we took last year's target
and our goal is to reduce it by 5%.
So that's the mathematical calculation that we end up with.
So we are trending below, slightly below for that
and continuing to focus again
on just overall employee safety via training
and focus with our operational teams.
Reducing near misses and reducing trespasser strikes.
So we're doing well on these,
Here to date through July, as you can see, 70 near misses, and that's combined for coaster
and sprinter through the end of July, and then three trespasser incidents.
I want to point out on this particular trespasser incident metric that this applies only to
coaster and sprinter.
As you know, we have Amtrak, BNSF, and Metrolink who operate on different portions of the rail
line that we own.
We do respond to their incidences and we do other reporting and tracking for this specific
metric because they're not controlled by NCTD.
Those aren't counted in the results that we report on in this data that we share with
you.
Last thing I want to wrap up with is a little summary of our safety initiatives.
As you may be aware, September is rail safety month.
We have a variety of activities that we are performing to highlight the importance of
rail safety. Obviously rail safety is not a you know, one month activity. It's
something that we do promote year round, but we do try to emphasize and perform
additional activities during the month of september. So we have several
outreach events at different stations. We were out at Vista Transit Center
yesterday as candida this morning. I know we'll be at Solana Beach tomorrow.
We're also going to be doing a joint event down in San Diego at Old Town
with MTS later this month, or doing some pop-ups
at some of the local events as well.
I know we're out in Vista for one of their events
later this month, and then Oceanside,
the evening sunset market, we will be out there as well.
So trying to do a mix of things at our stations
and out in the communities.
We've also sent some reminders and safety facts out
to HOAs who have, we have contacts with it
or along our rail lines, trying to get them
help promote it to their to their residents as well and we have some videos that will be coming
out later this month. I'll encourage you all to keep an eye out for those. Our marketing team did
a fabulous job in coordination with our sergeant from our TCU team, Sergeant Burke. He did two
great videos really emphasizing the importance of safety along the rail lines and talking about the
things that their team do to help promote that. So keep an eye out for those that'll be coming out
later this month. We continue to partner with Operation Lifesaver, who is a national organization
promoting safety around the rail lines. We also have our internal hazard reporting QR code,
where employees can scan the code and report any hazards into us that way. We get most of our
reports one-to-one direct between employees and supervisors, which is great, but the QR code is a
helpful tool as well for someone to report information into us. I mentioned the defensive
of driving training a little bit earlier in my presentation.
And then we are also promoting and actively leading
the new Southern California Human Trafficking Awareness
and Prevention Coalition.
As I know you're all aware, this is a very serious issue
in many areas of the country,
but affects transportation and transit very significantly.
So we've done a lot of training and outreach already,
and we have some great partnerships
with the local Southern California transit agencies
and law enforcement, as well as partners
with federal regulatory agencies as well.
So this is an area where we're going to continue
to focus our efforts, really trying to make sure
that we can make a difference in our system.
And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over
to Chris Carrillo to talk about the security program.
Good morning, thank you for your time.
I will be going over our security program.
Just a high-level overview with regards to staffing.
We're doing really great.
Currently have 17 employees.
Nice control center technicians,
and those are the folks in the monitoring center
monitoring our cameras 24 hours, 365 days a year.
I also have just lost one to Coaster, but that's okay.
We like to see our employees moving on and moving up.
So I have five of the six positions
who are actively looking for that six
to fill in, hopefully, within the next month or two.
And then I have management staff.
I have Mark Webb, who's my manager,
who helps me follow up on investigations, download videos,
review, so on and so forth.
So we've got a great team within the NCTD realm.
Then, obviously, we have our superstars,
our sheriff's deputies, TSU.
They are also fully staffed, which is awesome.
They are vested in the well-being of our passengers.
So they do a great job of identifying people, addressing issues across the system, and I'll
talk more into detail in the next couple slides as to what they're doing.
And then finally, we wrap it up with Intercon, our contract with Intercon Security.
We are now going into our third full fiscal year with this group.
They have come a long way.
They do a great job for us at Oceanside and Escondido.
is staffed 24 hours a day and they are basically the eyes and ears for those two particular
stations on the bookends of Sprinter, as well as the bus islands and the facilities.
High level overview with regards to law enforcement activity and contact.
As you can see, there's been a slight increase.
And the slight increase is mainly due to the fact that the deputies are a little bit more
focused on specific areas such as trespassing, homeless encampments, and fare evasion on
all of our modes.
So what you're seeing is we're seeing them a lot more on our platforms and on our modes.
With the arrest, there is a decrease, and that's mainly because they are on our modes.
They are on our platforms and our stations issuing citations, contacting folks.
And I'd like to think that with the more visibility along our system, folks are less likely to
commit crimes with them there in addition to the CCIs and Intercon at Oceanside and
Escondido.
We really are continuing a focus on education and assistance.
We do still have social services writing and stopping at several stations to help folks
who are in need of services, you know, to obtain their paychecks in order to get funds
to obviously hopefully get places to live and medication and so on and so forth.
But they're doing a great job.
I'd like to see probably this activity drop as we move through this next fiscal year.
Lawyering, this has been a tough issue with us with regards to especially at Oceanside
and Escondido with Intercon, the deputies, as well as CCIs and the control center technicians
using the cameras.
We really focused on how do we identify folks who are legitimately lawyering and even those
who are legitimate lawyering, how can we get them moving along, whether that means getting
on a fare or leaving our stations. We've seen crime drop drastically because we're
moving people along. They're accustomed to just hunkering down with this heat yesterday,
the last couple days. We've seen a lot of loitering just because they're just trying
to get out of the heat. But OTC and ETC continue to have the most incidences. They make up
44 percent. But if we really break that down, what you'll see is less crime, less disturbances
at those particular stations because people are not staying for extended periods of time.
We have increased emphasis on proactive patrols and encampment removals, supportive outreach
with TSU. Our homeless encampment program we have is we have designated deputies who
work with my code compliance inspectors identifying these encampments with MOW as well as our
train crews identifying them along the route. We're doing really good, particularly down
in the northern area. San Diego is a little more difficult. It's a little further down.
Some of those encampments are very large, so it ends up being where the entire team
has to go down there and help with these encampments. But we've gotten it down to about 24 hours
of when we get notified of an encampment to get it served. And then we have the 72-hour
process. And then after that 72-hour process has come and gone, these folks then are followed
up with MoW to clean up these encampments as quickly as possible, which is what you
will see with some of those trespasser strikes. The number has gone down, is really trying
to get these people moving along. We have seen an increase in the last couple months.
Above college, you will see a huge apartment complex going built out there. In conjunction
with Oceanside PD, they've been working real hard on getting these people moving. And so
you will see some increase in loitering because these folks are trying to figure out where
go next. So hopefully we can continue to work on that and getting these people moving along.
As far as some of the security initiatives coming forward, TSU and CCI is focused on bus routes.
We've been hitting those bus routes because I am fully staffed now. Five of the seven days a week,
mainly Monday through Friday, have a designated team on each subdivision and bus routes along
those subdivisions. And really what they're doing is driving the routes, identifying bus stops,
people who are loitering, committing crimes in and around those bus areas, and, like I
said, just getting people moving along. If they don't have fare, you know, obviously
we don't let them on the buses, and they've got to find some other means to get somewhere.
TSU and CCI, as I said, the homeless encampments, we're getting pretty good at getting these
encampments done within the 72-hour period. TSU has also been conducting a lot of fare
checks almost on a daily basis along both corridors. Sprinter, they really started focusing
on the fare evasion at the beginning of this calendar year. Those first several trains
that they pulled over, they got a lot of people off them trains, and as the months went by,
it's less and less and less, and we've been getting customer accolades with, you know,
getting people off these trains that are not paying fare, issuing citations. Obviously,
when they come across somebody who has a warrant, they'll take them in and arrest them for those
types of things, but we see less disturbances and less activity, criminal activity because
the deputies and our CCIs are being seen on these corridors.
Ordinance 3, we initiated last month our first bicycle enforcement with the deputies team
as well as contract security and our monitoring center.
Really just trying to educate first and foremost.
We do have public addresses systems that we try, but not every folk person who rides a
a bike is always going to listen to us on the PA system so we felt the need to really
have law enforcement to kind of help educate these folks for safety reasons as to why they
should really should walk their bikes in our stations and centers.
And then I just wanted to highlight we conducted our first full-scale exercise with Breeze
as they came in house.
This was utilizing one of our hydrogen buses in an Escondido Fire Department.
It went well.
We learned a lot.
and information with Escondido Fire Department and we look to continue to conduct more exercises
with first responders. And I think that's all I have if folks have any questions.
Thank you, Karen and Chris, for the presentation. Taylor, do we have any public comment on this
agenda item? No, we do not. All right. Now I'll ask our fellow committee members if they have any
comments or questions. Thanks for the presentations. Those are very
interesting. Going back to the safety all the way back to slide number slide
number three I'm curious what you shared our targets what what was last year's
And I'm assuming these are calendar year, right?
Yes.
Okay.
What was our, where do we land last calendar year, I guess, since our target is eight,
does that mean we were a little bit above that last year?
Yes.
Okay.
Was it above 12?
No.
Okay.
All right.
I'm just kind of curious that the only reason to ask is for just general context for these
kind of things.
And then looking at the security, what does the intercon security staffing look like at
our centers as, like how many folks are on?
I'm sure it shifts during the different hours of operation, but.
So there's a team of two at each, uh, Oceanside and Escondido for all three shifts.
So a day shift, a swing shift and an override graveyard shift.
And since the inception, it has made a drastic change in the way people operate at our transit
stations, particularly those two. Yes. Has there been a lot of pushback on the bike e-bike thing?
I think I was at the center when one of those happened. I heard a very unhappy biker. Yeah,
I mean we get some folks who are identified by our monitoring center and you know we'll conduct a
public address the system and they generally people don't like to be called out on that.
but we do our best to send intercon just to reiterate again from safety purposes,
we want people to walk their bikes on those platforms. So yeah, you're always going to get
some pushback. And then just looking at the loitering section, you said there was a 9%
increase. Is that a 9% increase in enforcement? Like was 9% increase in the tickets that were
were given for loitering or what is that reflective of?
So we don't give, from a perspective of intercon security
and code compliance inspectors, we do not issue citations.
There have been citations issued across the district
by the deputies for our chronics.
I will say that that 9% increase,
if I were to peel away chronics, meaning folks
who are consistently day after day coming and staying
in our stations, that 9% would be gone.
So that's where we have the deputy step in
and address these folks.
And if need be, we'll issue citations.
And that has helped particularly at some of the stations
like Oceanside, Carlsbad Village, Encinitas,
and Escondido and Vista.
So, but the 9% is an observed case of learning?
Like how is that reflected?
It's observed, contacts.
Yes, it's total, yeah, contacts.
Okay, so anytime one of our folks makes contact,
they'll either mark it down.
Yes, as a lawyer.
Oh, it's okay, that's what I'm at.
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
Okay, and then you would probably expect
ETC and OTC to have higher percentages,
considering that's where we have people staffed, right?
I mean, if we had people staffed at some of the other ones,
we might have hires there too.
Yes, and yeah, it's so I'll use the coaster side.
As an example, in Sanitas,
we see a lot of loitering on our cameras.
And so because we don't have someone stationed
there 24 hours like we do at the other stations,
it's a matter of getting a body there.
During the day, if we can get the code compliance
to make contact and if we don't get compliance,
then we'll call the deputies,
or if they're not available,
we'll call whatever jurisdiction law enforcement
to assist us to get these people moving along.
Okay, as you said, it's very complicated.
If you're moving people out of one place,
they end up to your other place
because these are our free public serving spaces.
So I appreciate your work, thanks.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Actually, I thought overall,
this was a really positive report.
I was curious, you read into the numbers
and you always have to kind of trigger them out,
but on the, I think it's slide five,
which you don't need to pull up,
but the serious injury, was that the guy with the dogs?
Yes.
that was even even that was a really unique scenario where I'm not sure if the
rest of the board members or committee members know that the gentleman was he
was either in the train and his dog wasn't and he was holding the leash
train began the doors closed we had to move or it was vice versa and he got
dragged along and so really unique injury so you know it needs to be on
here I think you know it speaks to where we're at to get to a number that has to
get on here is I'm gonna call a freak accident but an out-of-the-box accident.
So I think it's a great report. I did find in reading this earlier the I'm
gonna lump in coaster, sprinter and breeze as all are fixed routes and it
was interesting to see the obviously the reliability there's but the numbers
across the board seem to favor those routes over our flex and our lift routes.
So does that be accurate?
I'm sorry, I wasn't exactly following the question.
So overall, these numbers are positive.
It seemed to be most positive on the breeze, the coaster,
and the sprinter, as opposed to the other roads.
The other types of modes.
In terms of the reliability or safety and security?
Reliability, safety, security, they all seem to be kind of
being towards that.
Breeze, we saw a good move forward in reliability
just from the standpoint that we had for a period of time
last year we had newer buses in the fleet
when we had hydrogen fuel.
The one thing that we really suffered from post-pandemic
and even in the pandemic was we had a lot of vehicles
that were considered body on chassis.
So the chassis we were unable to acquire,
they were going to first responders first
to build ambulances and things of that nature.
And so we really had to make a shift
to almost like a Ford Transit or a Mercedes Sprinter type van
to sort of manage the fleet.
What we saw as a function of that
was we had to keep our larger vehicles, our flex vehicles,
and some of our lift vehicles longer
than our usual five to seven year timeframe.
And what that really did was is we had,
if anybody's ever had a nice diesel engine
in a big truck, it goes out on you periodically.
And that's kind of what we experienced in that department.
But the maintenance department did a good job,
I think, trying to get them back on the road
as soon as possible.
We've since seen in this past year,
the continual replacement of those vehicles
with either the new Ford Transit vans.
We actually did get some new body on chassis
that just came in, I think a couple weeks ago,
they're sitting a lot over in Escondido right now.
So we'll see those numbers trend up pretty quickly.
That's great, and it sounds like the,
you're aware of the challenge,
and you're doing the work to make sure that
the, say for flex where it's reliability is 12,000,
isn't 10,000, you're doing the extra work
to make sure that that number gets up as high as you can.
So I appreciate the explanation, thank you.
Again, great report.
Vice Chair Garcia, questions?
Yes, thank you.
Thank you for the report.
Why are you yelling at me?
I know.
Why am I doing that?
Thank you for the report, really.
I enjoyed it.
To hear all the changes and everything that's going on,
and it's paying off.
Now it's too low.
It's paying off.
just the feeling at the different transit centers and stops, it's different.
And I think that speaks silently volumes of all the work that you're doing. So thank you very much
for that all three of you and everybody else that's in the middle of that and those that are on the
ground actually having to have those interactions. A couple of questions on the injuries on the
passengers? Falling asleep and falling out of the chair is a
couple of things. Is that just falling asleep or are they under
some kind of an influence?
The data that we have shows that they just fell asleep.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, sometimes I've gotten on public and I'm
tired.
Yep, good question.
You know, so I was wondering about that. And I remember in
some places there are seat belts for available for the passenger to put on.
Do we have those?
I don't remember.
We don't on fixed route.
We do in some of our smaller vehicles, depending on NCTD Plus, for example.
It's a requirement before the driver can pull away to be buckled in.
Lift and flex also have some opportunity to do that.
Coaster Sprinter does not, I can tell you we also have no sleeping policies on
coaster because they have asked me to wake up when I was riding to the airport so I was in
violation of our own sleeping policy on coaster. But it happens. On breeze it's a little tougher
because they're just plastic seats. We have some restraints in the ADA area for wheelchairs and
mobility devices and sometimes if people get on there with bikes and they're in the ADA area
will strap them down just to make sure they don't fly around but the seats themselves do not.
Okay yeah and I was asking so my comment really doesn't apply that we continue to educate our
writers that they need to put on their seat belt right but after a very long time and a requirement
we a lot know I put on my seat belt but a lot of people still don't put on their seat belt so
So anyway, okay, I had about that.
E-bike policy, thank you for that.
Yes, our e-bike riders need to get off
and walk their bikes on our platforms.
And yeah, no one likes being called out
especially in public like that.
But I think that there's slowly will be a change
as the cities are implementing our own e-bike policies.
And there's one kind of generic one
that the county has and a test that's going on.
And I think a lot of the cities are getting,
coming together with that.
So I think as we continue educate our riders,
I certainly hope that it has an impact for us
because it is dangerous to be riding your,
I mean, I wish people would get off their bike
and walk it across the street.
You know, because you see a lot of near hits
because somebody is clear, and then all of a sudden,
two seconds later, they're right there.
So thank you for that.
And then I have a personal experience
to share that is related to the defensive driving
for our bus drivers.
In Escondido, we have right at Quince and Valley Parkway,
right where our transit center is,
right across, there's a construction that's going on.
And for a time, and I don't know if it's still like that
as of today, because I haven't driven by there today,
there's fencing that doesn't allow the driver coming
on Quince heading south to see Valley.
Valley's a busy street.
So you come to the light, you stop, and you start inching up.
Our buses have the right to go into the right turning lane
and go straight.
They don't have to turn.
Well, I was there.
I inched up.
Traffic was coming.
I was waiting.
So I wouldn't get in an accident.
And one of our bus drivers decided
that he was going to start honking at me until I moved.
And I was like, yeah, I ain't going to get in an accident just
because you want to move, right?
So I wonder if there's some kind of a patient's training
that could go along or something,
particularly that you can't see, right?
Because it's covered.
I just couldn't see the traffic coming.
So there was no way I was gonna pull into traffic
so he could be happy because, you know.
So anyway, that's my personal experience.
I hope that we can add a portion of patients
in the driving part, I didn't want to get off
and find out who it was, because I was in a hurry
to go to Panera, and I needed my morning coffee.
But anyway, I think that I understand they're on a time,
crunch and maybe they were ready later or something,
but still, to be honking, honking, honking, honking,
and I'm like, this is me?
We typically have a no honking policy,
unless there's a couple reasons for that.
It's industry standard, partially because
it's supposed to be used as a last resort,
as a warning device.
And what we found when we, and in our current setting,
we do a lot of service to school.
And I think occasionally kids get confused
about yellow bus versus transit bus,
and they'll get off the bus
and they'll try to walk in front of a bus.
And we've seen in the industry issues
where a driver would honk at someone
standing in front of the bus, because they saw a car coming,
and it would make them jump out into traffic because of that.
I can attest to the fact that our deputy chief operating
officer of bus is one of the most patient people
I have ever met in my entire life.
And she will absolutely ensure that we are putting out
the patient's protocol.
She probably wasn't driving the bus that day.
So in addition to the defensive driving training,
we also have customer interactive training.
And a lot of that is geared toward interactions
inside the bus, but there also was a component
about how to comport yourselves in traffic.
We are working on rolling that out to every single operator
at both of our yards in Escondido and Oceanside,
but we will definitely make a note that patients
with other vehicles is important.
I mean, there was no way that I could just
turn into traffic.
So that's my comment, and I'll be quiet.
I think that was the last one,
because the food smells really good.
I know, it really smells good.
I will say I agree with you.
That's an interesting spot.
My daughter works at the Dutch Brothers right there.
And so I'm in the area between being at these stops,
and I go to Escondido Transit Center pretty frequently
on my way home.
So every time I sort of pull around the back way
and come out toward the transit center where
that construction's on the right,
I get very nervous when I see a lot of cars stacked up
to make that right turn, because it's pretty much a blind right
to all of that area down there.
So we appreciate that feedback.
We'll get it out to the operator.
Thank you.
All right, I just have a couple of quick questions.
On the safety metrics, I think it was like side three,
the one thing that stood out to me
was the transit worker assaults.
Looks like there were 13 with the goal of 20.
So that was disturbing to me.
And I think there should be none.
So if you could, whatever you could share with us,
I'd appreciate.
Yes, so, and I apologize for not touching based on that, we've seen a drastic decrease
in transit employee assault and mainly transit employee assaults that are misdemeanors meaning
they're less violent.
We've seen a drastic drop in that.
A lot of that stems from de-escalation training when we onboard people, myself or Mark, getting
in front of the front line employees and explaining them, you know, it's not worth getting into
an argument with someone that could lead to a physical assault and really identifying
these individuals who are committing these assaults against our employees and having
our employees understand that they have a right to prosecute and I think that's the
biggest thing there is that people need to be held accountable.
We have, even though it's still a high number and certainly we would like none, we have
no control over what individuals do. Whether we do the perfect de-escalation process, some
of these folks are just mentally unstable and just cannot control themselves, unfortunately.
What we can do is teach our employees on the right processes on handling these disorderly
passengers, and that's our big push. So if we can do that, we should hopefully see less
and less of these. We'll never, never have any.
The definition of assault has changed slightly
over the past couple years.
I think there's been, specifically in this administration,
there's been a very hard push on restoring law and order
on public transit.
And so one of the things that they have changed
is the definition of what is an operator's assault.
It now has expanded to be at least have major, minor.
Now they're all kind of sort of in the same category
and they include anything from a full assault
to a verbal altercation that an operator deems
as an assault, a verbal altercation that someone on,
like a TA or a TO would deem as an assault,
and that we have to report every one of those now
to the federal authorities, and we should,
we've always taken care of them in the back office,
but now they're a little more out front
with how we have to report those things.
And I applaud our employees,
I think they've done a good job in sort of being
that moment and trying to figure out what that means for them. But I think
we're definitely seeing a decrease in major assaults. What we have seen a
little bit of an uptick in which is difficult for us to deal with and I'll
give a lot of kudos to the school districts are students. We continue to
have issues at transit centers with large student gatherings that are
creating disruptive behavior or fights. The police departments in the school
districts have been very good. We have a no I mean we we've had a long-standing policy here
and pretty much anywhere else I've worked where we don't kick kids off the bus for liability
reasons. So when we see those issues that come up or they get reported to an operator we essentially
have to pull the video and go back to the school district and have them identify the student and
deal with that internally and if it meets the level of an assault we can't involve
law enforcement or the authorities on that. School districts have been phenomenal helping us out.
They're dealing with the same thing on their own properties,
but anytime we send them something,
I think they've been very quick to help us out with that.
And when we identify routes where we seem to have some
of those issues that pop up more frequently,
the TESU group will go out to that route
and make sure everybody's sitting on the bus
and moving along quietly.
That seems to be pretty-
So a follow-up question to that, Ben.
If there's a major assault on a bus, can a bus driver,
Does he or she have quick access to,
yeah, I'd like to get sherrifs or yeah, we.
Have to be careful here, we do have a way on the bus
for someone to immediately contact dispatch
and then at that point everything that is happening
in real time on the bus can be heard by dispatch.
We're careful how we tell people where that is
because usually what will happen is they'll activate
and then try to deescalate while we're waiting on someone.
Usually 99% of the time the operator is able to call us
and say, hey, there's a problem that's escalating.
I need to get somebody out here.
We give our operators full authority
to be able to pull the bus over if they need to.
If they feel it's necessary to pull the bus over
and get off the bus, we've asked them to do that.
In fact, one of our protocols most times
in those situations are pull the bus over,
open up all the doors and just remove yourself
from the situation, you know, don't intervene
unless there's an immediate danger to a passenger
and you feel safe enough to intervene on that.
But they do have the ability to get a hold of us
so that we can help get someone out there right away.
That's good to hear.
And then my second question was on the homeless
and the encampments.
So moving them along, I agree with Board Member Garcia.
They just go somewhere, I mean, or choice.
You said that, yeah.
They do go somewhere else.
Do you ever partner with social service
to see if any of them would be willing to seek housing?
Yes, the deputies from time to time
do bring social services not necessarily
on the right of way, but to the homeless encampment.
So when they make contact with these folks in the encampments,
they'll usually give them a date and time
to meet them at a station so that they
can apply for these services.
OK, great.
All right, anything else?
You sure?
OK, I just want to thank you both for your work,
and I just think that the quality of care
that you're delivering is really admirable,
so thank you, and I just wanted to thank Sean again
for his leadership,
because things just keep getting better around here,
and I appreciate it.
Thank you.
You're doing great work, thank you.
All right, so this was an informational item,
so no vote is required.
Our next item, item agenda two,
will be a summary of the performance and service trends observed for fiscal year 2026, and
this will be Yoni, there I go, Chula Kuva, you're being kind.
So Yoni will be presenting on this item, and you have our attention.
Awesome.
Thank you.
I'll be providing an overview of the FY26 Service Performance and Trends.
In alignment with board feedback, I'll also focus specifically on the effects of service
changes that were implemented in FY26. Starting with BRIS, ridership remained
relatively stable with a modest increase of 2.9 percent compared to FY25. Some of
the largest ridership gains were seen on BRIS routes 101, 303, 309, and 332.
In February 2026, we completed the weekend standardization of bus schedule
service along with the elimination of BRIS route 323. As part of this change,
routes 311, 313, 315, and 325 were modified to maintain access to key
destinations and mitigate potential transit gaps. From March 2026 through June
2026 following the service change total ridership across those four routes
increased 9% compared to the same time period in FY 25. The total ridership
gained on those routes was 27% greater than the ridership previously carried
by Breeze Route 323 during the same time period.
This indicates that not only the ridership was redistributed to the surrounding routes,
but that there was also a general increase as the routes now provided improved service
to key destinations, including ones that weren't previously serviced by transit.
Also in February 2026, flex routes 471, 472, and 478 were eliminated due to low performance.
With this change, the total revenue hours associated with Sorento Valley Coaster Connection
Services decreased 60%, while ridership decreased 30%, indicating that we were able to reduce
service hours while retaining a larger share of the ridership.
Average daily ridership also increased on the two remaining coaster connection routes
seen on the map on the slide, with the $473 increasing by 30% and the $479 increasing
by 10%.
For the remaining flex routes, including 371, 392, and 395, total ridership grew 14% between
FY25 and FY26.
For Sprinter, there was a significant focus in FY26 in improving reliability.
Mechanical failures decreased by 50%, and loss of service was significantly reduced.
Another kudos to Rail Mechanical.
Work on infrastructure modernization continued to advance.
At the board meeting later this afternoon, there will be an in-depth presentation regarding
modernization. The APCs, the automatic passenger counters, were recertified for FY26, which
resulted in a change in methodology limiting the ability to make a direct ridership comparison
between FY25 and 26. However, the ridership for Sprinter has remained relatively steady over the
past fiscal years. For Coaster, the October 2026 service change was the first significant
restructuring of the schedule since 2021. This change shifted trips away from the traditional
peak periods and provided more consistent frequencies throughout the day, better aligning
service with current travel demand and feedback that we had received from the public.
Overall ridership increased 14% compared to FY25, with mid-day ridership in particular
increasing 36%.
Weekend ridership increased 18%.
These trends suggest that the revised schedule better meets our transit riders' needs by
providing service when they are more likely to travel.
For NCTD+, the VISTA zone launched in FY25 near the end of FY25 in May, making FY26
the first full fiscal year where both VISTA and San Marcos were operating throughout the
year.
Riderships stabilized during FY26 with trips split fairly evenly between the two zones.
Average wait times increased from 13 to 17 minutes as demand grew in VISTA.
However, these wait times stabilized at approximately 17 minutes throughout the second half of the
fiscal year.
In Vista, 21% of our trips connect to or from a Sprinter Station, predominantly at Vista
Transit Center, and San Marcos, approximately 12.5% of those trips connect to or from Sprinter
Stations.
And I'm happy to answer any questions.
Wow, all good news.
Any questions or comments?
Anyone?
Sure.
Sure.
Really great comments.
Taylor, do we have any public comments?
We do not.
But I let the record show that committee member O'Hara
arrived at 1110.
I thought it was 1135.
Thank you for that.
All right.
Now may I speak?
Yes, you have our full attention.
All right, wonderful.
So thank you so much.
This is great news.
And it's always tough to have to cease operations of routes.
And people begin to look at, OK, what are my options?
And you're obviously doing a very good job of figuring now
what service is the best and been
able to increase ridership with that.
So I just wanted to point that out.
We've all seen it, heard it,
but I just wanted to say thank you.
Anything else?
Yeah, I think I kind of echo those sentiments.
I think it's been, there's been enough discussion
about adjustments and the challenges of those adjustments
and it's great to see these come back.
I'd be curious to know if we look at,
it seems like from what I did in short research,
these are actually pretty high standard results
or high rating results if you compare us
to other transit districts.
So I think you should feel really good about this.
Congratulations.
Really good news.
I mean, it proves that strategically it works.
And we don't have anything to say.
That means it's like perfect.
So thank you for what you do.
Good presentation.
All right.
Thank you.
There is no required vote.
It's informational only.
Do you have any other comments or questions
from any of our committee board members?
You look like you're chomping at the bit.
What's that?
No, no, we're going to report.
OK.
So the data that you just presented,
will that be presented to the full board?
The full annual topper, which will include a PDF detailing
all of it in more granular detail
will be shared with the board and later this calendar year.
All right.
We can add that as a presentation as well.
I just think, you know, there was so much discussion.
It was painful for us to make those decisions,
but the result is really positive.
I think we should learn from that.
And I think the whole board would appreciate
that information sooner rather than later, in my opinion.
I don't know what my.
I think so.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you very much.
All right, so with that, our next scheduled meetings,
regular board meeting will be today.
Executive committee board meeting will be October 13th
and October 22nd for our board meeting.
Before we sign out.
Sure.
My fellow committee members have seen me in these meetings
messing with the arms of the chairs we sit in up here
and whoever got these new chairs I want to say thank you very much.
It has made this meeting much more enjoyable. Thank you.
Yeah, they're very nice.
Thank you everyone. I will call the meeting adjourned.