 We'll go ahead and call to order in the February 15th, and we're going to go ahead and speak to them. I'm just going to have to press. You have to press. Oh, there we go. There we go. Commissioner Peterson. Here. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Montesino. Commissioner Hernandez. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Here. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Here. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Brown. Here. Christine Brown. Commissioner Alternate Pegler. Here. Commissioner Rotkin. Here. And Commissioner Eats. I think he's on. Commissioner Eats is on Zoom. Great. Thank you. We'll go to item two, consideration of AB 2449 Just Cause requests. Do we have any? No. All right. We'll move on to item three, additions or deletions to consent or regular agendas. Do we have any additions or deletions? Yeah, our mics are on up here. We have to turn them on individually. There we go. OK. We have add-on pages and handouts that were posted to our website yesterday. Thank you. We'll move on to item four, review of items to be discussed in closed session. Thank you, Madam Chair. The commission has two items to discuss in closed session today. The first one is conference with labor negotiators. And the second one is conference with legal counsel existing litigation regarding the RTC versus Kajihara matter. The commission will receive an update on both items. We do not anticipate a reportable action from either item. And if the commission desires, you can take public comments on the closed session before we go in, and then we can adjourn to closed session. Great. Thank you. OK. In that case, we will open up any public comment on the items on closed session. Commissioner Brown, I see that Commissioner Hernandez was on the attendee list, and I believe he wanted to do an AB 2449. Oh, OK. We will, well, let's see. Let me make sure there's no public comment on closed session. Seeing none, we'll close public comment on closed session. And before we convene to our closed session, we will go back to item two on AB 2449 just cause requests. Commissioner Hernandez. I believe it's his alternate. Oh, there are both of you. OK, so do we just go ahead and move forward with a vote, or do we need to hear? You should state your reason. Yeah. Commissioner Hernandez, will you state your reason, please? Yes, I just called weeping. Correct. Medical. Great, thank you. And we need to vote to allow that. He has the right. We don't need to vote on that. OK, great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. With that, we are going to convene to our closed session, and we will return for open session shortly. Thank you. All right, we're still waiting for a couple commissioners to return. And I think we're also waiting for Commissioner Hernandez to return online. Is that correct? OK, thank you. Are we still waiting for our commissioners to join us online, or should we go ahead and get started? We do have a quorum, so should we go ahead and continue? Yeah, you do have a quorum. Do you think we should wait? You can resume if they'd like. OK. The others join. Actually, you should probably start with the AB 2449. Oh, there we go. Sure. I see Commissioner Hernandez has his hand raised. I think he might be over in the attendees, perhaps. OK, we will reconvene now to open session. And before we move on with our agenda, I believe we have an AB 2449 request from Commissioner Vanessa Kitos Carter, who joined a little bit late. So Commissioner Kitos Carter, will you state your reason for AB 2449? We'll continue the day off. For that reason, do we need a vote to accept the request or not? You know, let me take a look at that really quick. I'm not sure that that qualifies under AB 2449. I will check that. That would require a vote, though, if we do. Let me check. OK. Commissioner, the basis for the just cause exemption would be related to either an illness or a need for child care or family care purposes, or travel related to official business of RTC. And then the emergency circumstance is just limited to circumstances where there's a family medical emergency or family urgent issue. So those would be the basis upon which we could do it 2449. OK, so with that in mind, would that mean that Commissioner Kitos Carter could remain as an attendee but not able to vote? Correct, correct. OK, so should we ask Commissioner Pagler to return as her alternate? Correct, if that's unless Commissioner Carter can attend in person, which it doesn't sound like she can. OK. Commissioner Kitos Carter, have you heard the information that was provided about needing to request your alternate return? Yes, I understand. OK, thank you. Welcome back. All right, so as mentioned, we are reconvening to open session. And can we get a report on items to discuss in closed session? The commission did discuss the two items in closed session. There was no reportable action from closed session. Thank you. We'll move on now to item 8, oral communications. This is a time for any member of the public to address the commission on an item within the jurisdiction of the commission that is not already on the agenda. We will listen to all communication, but in compliance with state law, we will not take action on items that are not on today's agenda. We request that our speakers state their name clearly so that it can be accurately recorded in the minutes of the meeting. You will have three minutes, and we'll start with those here in chambers. Hi, welcome. Commissioner Chair Brown and members of the commission, my name is Jim Helmer, Ben Lohman resident. Caltrans has a strategic plan. It contains the goal to reduce all fatalities on California roadways by the year 2050. The plan states we must depart from the status quo. It states that we should not be designing our roadways to maximize throughput, but to focus on the most vulnerable users. Those are our pedestrians. It states we must partner with other agencies to reduce speed-relating fatalities and serious injuries. The governor signed into law AB 43 in 2021 that gives Caltrans by statute the authority to post a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit on a state highway in a business district. All local agencies already had that statute. I thought, finally, we will see some positive action in Ben Lohman and Brookdale to see the speed limits, posted speed limits reduced that would align to Caltrans vision. In December, I made public testimony to you for this cause. Caltrans was asked by Supervisor McPherson to coordinate investigation with the RTC to reduce speed limits. Last Friday, I received a response that I do not believe was well-coordinated with local officials and one that I believe falls far from the goal to reduce speeding. In essence, the response said Caltrans has hired staff recently and we are building up to perform a new engineering and speed survey in Ben Lohman to justify maintaining a speed limit of 30 miles per hour in downtown. And they believe there's no concern that the posted speed limit is unsafe. I get it. The annual totals of pedestrian fatalities in California have risen by 75% per year in the last 10 years. So we're 75% higher. Yet we have a goal to reduce all fatalities. Pedestrians make up about 20% of the state's total 4,000 fatalities per year. It would really be great to have a true partnership to achieve our common vision of traffic safety and reduction of fatalities and serious injuries on all California roadways. Thank you. Before we move on, I just want to make sure that things are running smoothly here. Do we have a timer going? OK, and I'm also seeing on my screen that it says recording paused. Does that matter? Do we need to be recording right now? Recording in progress. Great. OK. We'll continue with oral communications. Anyone else in chambers that would like to speak? Hi, welcome. Do we have two or three minutes just in case? Two? OK. Two. Thank you. I'm going to self-time just in case. My name is Barry Scott. I lived in Aptos, and I'm so happy to be here. My very first RTC meeting was in this chambers in 2016, I think, when the passenger rail feasibility study came back. I want to talk real quickly about the dangers of even thinking about rail banking. We should know by now that it's not going to happen. It would delay anything associated with the rail corridor. But I also want to speak to a couple of things, and this is by way of remembering the history so that we don't repeat it. I've been looking over past agendas. I remember that in 2018 in June when the contract with Progressive Rail was agreed to, there was a motion made by Martin City Miller to take $50,000 to study the Capitola crossing for a new bridge or for modifying the bridge. Later on, that money was never spent that way. Later it was taken and spent to study converting those bridges into a trail. How's that? In April of 21, there was a famous tie vote, whether or not to move forward with the rail business plan. I watched that video. I've read over and over again, and I mean recently. What happened there was commissioners were asking for more information, and I'll read from the minutes. Commissioner Alternate Schiffern made a motion, and Commissioner Rodkin seconded the motion to continue to turn the item to the next meeting and direct staff to return to the next meeting with responses to concerns raised by the commissioners with regards to the business plan. The motion passed on an 11 to one vote, and I don't need to name the names, but 11 to one said bring this back next month, May. It never came back. It didn't come back that year. It didn't come back until December of the following year. What did come back in May was a proposal, item 26, which was pulled from the agenda, but it would have directed staff to seek funds to study converting the, to include an interim alternative to the rail trail project. And here we are, still looking at spending twice as much to do plans for an alternate interim trail that can't be done, instead of spending our money on the rail, on the ultimate trail. So I just, I think the staff and commissioners for coming back to the ultimate trail project. Thank you. Thank you. I did hear that timer, right? Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Okay. Anyone else in chambers? Seeing none, we will go now to Zoom comments, and I can't see the list, so I'll need someone else to. Mr. Bryan Peoples. Hi, Mr. Bryan Peoples from trail. Now I have three items that are not on the agenda. First of all, I suggest on scheduling of this agenda item, item number 28, move in front of item 47. If the item 28 covers the climate issues, and we're seeing a lot of the damage that our coastal line is coming in, and that's a great item 28. And I think it's more a prep for item 27. Technically, I gotta notice that from this storm, along Park Avenue, where the railroad is about 20 feet from the Pacific Ocean, that a huge section fell into the ocean from this storm about 10 feet. So now there's about 10 feet that the railroad is to the Pacific Ocean. I don't know if that's true. Someone needs to be one of those fishing things. And then finally, I just wanted to thank RPC staff for adding our notice about the Southern California relocating the existing rail where we fill in, and it actually being continually being damaged by the storms. And so I really appreciate the staff put that after. What seemed to be the marketing material of the consultant doing the trade study. It really looked like marketing. They're trying to pitch an idea, but that's all. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Mr. Michael St. Mr. St. Yes. Okay, just trying to find the mute button. Good morning, Chair Brown and commissioners. Michael St. with Campaign for Sustainable Transportation and Aptos residents. Let's go back to September 13th, 2016, just prior to the vote on Measure D. This article is from the legal firm, GJEL, who are accident attorneys. Obviously, they see a possibility here on this measure for litigation in the future, and apparently they were correct. The article says the RTC and Caltrans have completed the environmental review process for a $600 million widening of Highway 1 to add HOV lanes and ox lanes, doubling the width of some segments to eight lanes. Unsurprisingly, the widening is very controversial. Proponents frame the widening as a way to reduce commute times for Watsonville residents who commute to Santa Cruz. Opponents point out those benefits will be temporary. More capacity induces demand for more congestion and that widening is not consistent with local, regional, and state sustainability goals such as SB 375. Caltrans also agreed that widening freeways does not relieve traffic congestion over the long term and may not help in the short term. The UCIS study and even Caltrans own EIR confirms this statement. Given Santa Cruz's housing market, it's reasonable to assume that new highway capacity will increase growth in Watsonville and therefore increase VMT and congestion until Highway 1 aligns reaches capacity. The question, how do we change and prevent bad projects? We must vote for political candidates who are ready to take meaningful steps towards curving carbon emissions and attacking climate change. Thank you for your time. Thank you. We do not have any other hands up. All right. With that, we will close oral communications and bring it back to our consent agenda. All the items appearing on the consent agenda will be acted on in one motion unless a member of the RTC or public wishes an item to be removed and discussed on the public, or excuse me, regular agenda. Yeah, go ahead, Commissioner Referson. Thank you. A couple items on the state legislation. I know that January 31st yesterday was the last time to act on a bill introduced last year. Do you know on this one on the AB semi-bill 817, allowing non-decision auxiliary committees to meet without going audio? Do you know if that's been continued or is it gonna be continued at this point? I know it's just yesterday. And then secondly, just so, there's been some real disparity between what our budget deficits might be in the state of 58 billion or 38 billion. And I just, I think it'd be good if we, it's a moving target, but if we had an idea of what impact that might be to transportation projects that we might be viewing if it's one or the other, that might be difficult to do because it's, like I said, it's a moving target and we've got a lot of discussions up in Sacramento before the budget's approved. Sure, I'll take a shot at that, I'll add a ladder and I'll leave it, Rachel Morconi to answer the former and also to tell me if I'm wrong on my answer. So as proposed, there's not an immediate impact to, or an impact to any of our proposed projects. The largely the transportation proposal is to delay funding that was appropriated last year to align with the cash flow of the projects that are actually selected. And so that's not an uncommon situation to be in where funds are appropriated one year, but by the time there's a call for projects, it's a whole another year and then those projects are gonna spend over maybe three to five years. So even to fulfill those commitments, we don't need all that cash upfront. The one notable cut was $200 million to the active transportation program, but that was designed to come out of the next cycle, not the last cycle where we here in the county were very successful. Also, a similar cut had been proposed in the past and in the legislature, it had gotten reinstated. So I would be optimistic that working with the legislature and all of our peer agencies who have similar concerns about that cut, that that would be reinstated as well. And then there was one part. Part, part, yeah. Assembly Bill 817 regarding open meetings and allowing our committee members to participate that would allow our committee members to participate virtually into meetings is a two-year bill. So it is moving forward this year. All right, any additional questions or desire to remove anything from consent to regular agenda? We have approval of consent. Second. We have a motion and a second. Do we need to take separate public comment on consent? Yes, the commission normally does accept public comment. So we have a motion and a second. We'll now open it up to public comment if there's any comment on our consent agenda. Seeing none in chambers, is there any on Zoom? None, okay, we'll bring it back. We have a motion and a second. I believe we need to do a roll call vote because we have Commissioner Hernandez online, correct? That's correct. Okay. Commissioner Peterson. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Aye. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Montecino. Aye. Commissioner Hernandez. Commission alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commission alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Aye. Commission alternate Pegler. Aye. And Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. That passes unanimously. Okay, thank you. We'll go now to our regular agenda item 23, commissioner reports. Any commissioner reports down this way? Yeah, go ahead. Yes, chair. On December 8th, I had a chance to meet with Dustin Earl from Clydeways. Clydeways is an electric autonomous pod car organization or I should say venture funded company, but they've been progressing rapidly and now have two contracts in the Bay Area, one with San Jose Airport to build a connector between Deirdre station and the airport. They anticipate being able to move 4500 people per hour per direction with that system. And they have another $450 million contract in Contra Costa County to build 28 miles of track and connect people to BART stations. I found the meeting extremely informative and at a minimum would suggest that other commissioners look into this emerging technology. And I think it might even be worth scheduling an item for a future meeting just to receive a short presentation just so we can, as a transportation commission, stay on top of emerging transportation trends. What's the name of the company? The company's called Clydeways. Thank you. Yes, go ahead, commissioner. I just wanted to say I met with them as well and was equally impressed and support my own suggestions that we really pay attention to what's going on there. I guess I would suggest that we agendize a short presentation for March or April meeting. Yes, sir. All right, thank you. All right, thank you. Any additional commissioner reports? Okay, seeing none, we'll go now to item 24, director's report. Good morning, commissioners. As you know, this is my first commission meeting. I just want to say how happy I am to be here and how much I appreciate the trust you placed in me. Just go over a few items. Last week, the final environmental impact report for the highway one auxiliary lanes and bus on shoulder from State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard and Coastal Rail Trail segment 12 project was released with findings of no significant impact. The final EIR is available on our website. An action related to this project will be considered under item 29 on our agenda today. This proposed project would construct northbound and southbound auxiliary lanes, extend the bus on shoulder facility by 2.5 miles, widen the highway one bridge over Aptos Creek and Spreckles Drive, reconstruct the north and south Aptos Railroad underpasses and include construction of approximately a mile and a quarter long segment of the Coast Rail Trail along the Santa Cruz County branch line between State Park Drive and Rio Del Mar Boulevard. The project is estimated to be construction ready in 2025. Commissioners were currently seeking public input on two projects through online surveys. The first survey is related to the project I just mentioned. We're asking for community input on the preferred bridge design for a new Coast Rail Trail bridge over Aptos Creek and Soquel Drive on the north side of Aptos Village. Community members are asked to watch a short video and take a quick survey to share their preferred bridge design. Both the video and the survey can be found on our website. The deadline to take the survey is February 9th. We also just released a survey seeking public input to help define the goals, targets and policies for our 2050 Regional Transportation Plan. This long-range plan will serve as a guide for future transportation improvement projects by assessing the transportation challenges we face now and those we'll face in the future. Community members can provide input to help inform the plan by taking a short survey on our website. On January 24th, our transportation planner, Amy Naranjo, presented testimony to the California Transportation Commission in support of our Regional Transportation Improvement Program. We're seeking the full programming of our target share of 8.6 million from the 2024 State Transportation Improvement Program. The proposal emphasized a fixed at first approach and a balanced multimodal transportation system. It included expanding the existing Soquel San Jose Road resurfacing project and introduced the Escalana Complete Streets, the Glen Arbor Road sidewalk and the Felton SLV Schools Complete Street projects, all of which were approved for funding at the December 7th RTC meeting. These initiatives collectively aim to enhance road longevity, accessibility, safety and connectivity while addressing the needs of different modes of transportation and community concerns. Commissioners, we're currently accepting applications for open positions on our three advisory committees. Public participation is a critical part of our transportation planning process. We encourage community members to apply to serve on one of these committees to help us build a vibrant, sustainable and equitable transportation system in Santa Cruz County. The Measure D Oversight Committee has openings for representatives from districts two and four. There are also a number of positions on our Bicycle Advisory Committee and Elderly and Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee. Representatives from across the county are being sought for these two committees. The deadline to apply for the Measure D Taxpayer Oversight Committee is February 15th. Applications for the other two committees are being accepted until the positions are filled and applications can be found on our website. We have received notices to proceed with three Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grants totaling $1.9 million. These will focus on rural highway safety and transportation demand management and coastal resiliency along the North Coast Highway One Corridor. The North Coast segment of the Coast Rail Trail, segment five, went out to bid on January 18th and is expected to begin construction this spring. This segment of the rail trail is on the county's iconic North Coast and will include seven and a half miles of continuous paved bicycle and pedestrian trail connecting Wilder Ranch to Davenport. It will also improve parking lots and add restrooms at Davenport and Yellow Bank Panther Beaches and improve the pedestrian crossing of Highway One in the town of Davenport. We continue to work with stakeholders who have joined our Transportation Equity Work Group to develop a Transportation Equity Action Plan. The plan funded by a Caltrans and USDOT Sustainable Communities Planning Grant will include an equity focused analysis of existing and planned transportation network and a public outreach toolkit that can be used by us and our partners to help more proactively engage and collaborate with equity priority communities. As a part of this effort, we'll be hiring a consultant to assist with diversity, equity and inclusion training for staff, commissioners and committee members this spring. There are a few staff announcements I would like to share with you. First, we're pleased to welcome a new staff person, James Falconroth, who started with the commission on January 16th as a communications intern. James recently graduated magna cum laude from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in communications and a minor in digital humanities. We also have staff attending upcoming conferences and trainings. Next week, senior transportation engineer Sarah Christensen will continue her participation in the California Academy for Regional Leadership. That's taking place in Monterey. And then on February 7th through 9th, Sarah and I, along with Chair Brown, will be attending the California Association of Council of Governance Regional Leadership Forum where we'll hear how regions are pioneering sustainable mobility, fostering economic growth and creating safe and inclusive transportation solutions for our state. And in early June, our senior transportation planner Grace Blakesley has been invited to the Netherlands on a study trip for Santa Cruz County transportation professionals hosted by Ecology Action. This trip is designed to provide first-hand experience of the Netherlands' world-class bicycle network where over 30% of trips are made by bike and to offer insights into long-term solutions and strategies being used to develop and maintain their facilities. Commissioners, that concludes my report. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Any questions? Nope, questions? Yeah, Commissioner Peterson. I just have a quick question. I was just looking online for the online survey soliciting input for the Regional Transportation Plan. Is that posted or where can the public find that? It's posted. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll go now to item 25, which is our Caltrans report. Good morning, Chair Brown and members of the Commission. First, I just wanted to say congratulations to the Commission for selecting Mitch Weiss as your Acting Executive Director. Acting Executive Director Weiss has a wealth of experience and knowledge and I'm certain that he will serve the Commission well in this role and we certainly look forward to partnering with Executive Director Weiss and RTC staff as you work to fill the role permanently. So I'm looking forward to this time. I have a few items that, a few projects actually that I'd like to highlight in Watsonville since you're in Watsonville today. We have three shop projects that are currently under development within the city. One of those is the Highway 129 payment project. This one is getting, we're in the right-of-way phase so we've completed the environmental work and we expect it to go into construction in late 2025 or early 2026. There is outstanding right-of-way elements that we're working through, but the scope of the project is to grind and replace the top layer of the roadway, restripe, upgrade existing sidewalks to high visibility striping, improving ADA compliance for curb ramps within the project area, widening the sidewalk in a few areas and also installing a rectangular, rapid flashing beacon at a pedestrian island at Brewington Road, Brewington Avenue, sorry. So that project is from Highway 1 on 129 all the way to Soxopuete's Creek Bridge. And the next project I wanted to highlight is we have a safety downtown safety pedestrian project and the location on that is on Highway 152 from the intersection of Main and Freedom to around Beck Street and it'll install curb extensions, upgrade crosswalks to high visibility striping, other proven safety counter measures in that area to calm traffic, increase visibility and enhance pedestrian connectivity. That project we're in the environmental phase as well and we expect construction in late 2026 or early 2027. And then the final project I wanted to highlight is the 152 pavement project that's on 152 from about Home Road near Highway 1 to just past Fallow Field Lane. And that includes a number of additional elements again to rehab the pavements and restripe but we're also working closely with the city to consider multiple crosswalks with high visibility striping, installing class four protected bike lanes in some locations, installing bicycle conflict markings at about seven intersections. And then reducing, we're even considering working with the city on reducing lane widths. So a road-dry it type of a concept in order to facilitate bicycle pedestrian to make it a more pedestrian friendly environment. So we're in the environmental phase on that one we actually will kick off the environmental phase in the summer of 2024 and we'll want to quickly come to consensus around the project scope. So we've already worked with the city in the previous phase but certainly look forward to refining and coming to conclusions around the project scope. So that one is a ways out because we're just beginning the environmental phase so we're targeting summer of 2031 to have that project constructed. So looking forward to coordinating with the city and RTC or others that are interested in any of those projects above, most flexibility exists in terms of tying down the scope on those last two. The thing that I wanted to highlight is director Weiss mentioned the sustainable transportation planning grants. We just closed the application cycle on January 18th for the next cycle. And so we did receive two applications within Santa Cruz County, one from the city of Watsonville, one from RTC overall within district five received 19 applications. So from here on out there'll be an evaluation process and then we expect official award announcements in late summer. And then finally I wanted to mention design information bulletin 94, DIB 94 was just released and it focuses on design guidance for complete street elements on the state highway system. So this has been on the development of this has been ongoing for some time. We had an internal and external review process that occurred in early 2023. And now the final version has just been released. You can find it online. And I just like to say that it provides increased flexibility. It really moves the needle I think in terms of complete streets elements and the flexibility that we have to design and construct those, but project context is really important and engineering judgment will always be important on these projects. So encourage you to look at it if you have a chance. And then finally, I just wanted to highlight a lot of ongoing coordination, especially on the route nine corridor, working closely with the city of Santa Cruz and the County of Santa Cruz on parking restrictions. This has come up at the board in previous meetings. So that work is ongoing. We're also working on pedestrian hybrid beacons that we're just installed on on route one and other things, certainly the speed zones. That's a area we're trying to work through. We are working on a study to be able to evaluate those on highway nine as mentioned by Mr. Helmer earlier. There is some additional guidance that's forthcoming through headquarters. There is a little bit of sort of process clarity that we're working through and that California MUTCD is currently being updated, which will provide final guidance on that. That concludes my report. Happy to take any questions. Thank you. Questions on this side? Nope, questions? All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. So, I'm sorry, Commissioner Brown. We do have Commissioner Hernandez online. Oh, my apologies. Yes, Commissioner Hernandez. Yeah, sorry about that. I kind of don't write what you said, Brewington. I was trying to figure out if that's what was happening there on Brewington. Yes, happy to clarify. That is a rectangular rapid flashing beacon in a pedestrian island. We'll be installed on East Lake at Brewington Avenue. Thank you, so happy to hear that. So many residents wanted to run there. Great, thank you. Just a quick process question before we move on. I see we did have a public hearing scheduled for time certain at 10.30. Should we move forward with item 26, our presentation on transportation projects in the city of Watsonville? Yes, yes, we can take it anytime after 10.30. We just can't take it before 10.30. Okay, great. We'll move on now then to item 26, presentation on transportation projects in the city of Watsonville. Good morning. Yes, there we go. Am I good? Good morning. My name is Murray Fons. I'm assistant public works director and city engineer for the city of Watsonville. I appreciate the opportunity to present to the commission today. Thank you for squeezing me in before the next public hearing. I'd like to introduce or I would have introduced public works director Courtney Lindberg. She wasn't able to attend today's meeting in person. She has a conflicting appointment, but I believe she's doing so virtually. The last time Watsonville had a chance to make this presentation was late in 2020. So I will share with you some of the projects we've completed since then and look ahead at what's coming up. Next slide. Watsonville has completed a number of road reconstruction projects on its major arterials as well as some storm repair, striping and road maintenance projects. At last night's American Public Works Association Monterey Bay Area chapter meeting, Watsonville received two project of the year awards. One was for repair of storm damage on Grizzly Flats Road. This $168,000 project repaired an unpaved roadway which provides access, sole access to about half a dozen residents. The road was washed out during the new year storms from last year and the city completed the work within three months. One of the things that the city did was initially install a temporary pedestrian access. It was not the zipline that you see in the upper right hand corner, but the residents did use that for a time. The city put in a temporary pedestrian bridge and then later completed the project which allowed full access for the residents. The second award the city received was for a $4.3 million reconstruction of Freedom Boulevard that included over a half mile of roadway, pedestrian improvements, a new stoplight, a new bus pullout, as well as accessible pedestrian signals at four intersections. This project included $1.5 million in state transportation improvement program funds that had been awarded previously by the RTC. Next slide. Two new traffic signals were installed. One at airport and home road, which was funded through Highway Safety Improvement Program funds and another at West Beach and Ohlone Parkway using developer fees. Next slide. The city has completed several pedestrian and bicycle safety projects using major D funds. These include flashing beacons, curb ramp upgrades, separated bike lanes and neighborhood traffic safety improvements. There were two projects that were funded through Active Transportation Program or ATP grants. One was on Lincoln Street, which included pedestrian and bike facilities as it passes through Watsonville High School and included the logo of the Wildcat, Willie the Wildcat there, shown in the lower right corner. The other was construction of the first segment of the rail trail, segment 18 phase one within the city of Watsonville. The city is currently standing down on further projects on the rail trail awaiting completion of preliminary design that's part of the current zero emissions passenger rail and trail project. Next slide. Watsonville has used major D and ATP funding to finance pedestrian and bicycle safety programs in partnership with Ecology Action and Bike Santa Cruz County. These include providing bicycles and helmets for first time cyclists, hosting bike camps and providing pedestrian and bicycle safety training in local elementary schools. Next slide. Watsonville has been successful in using major D funds to secure grants. In 2022, the city was awarded a $6.9 million ATP grant to provide pedestrian and bicycle improvements and safety training at eight schools in the southern part of the city and within the downtown area. The safety training and design is underway with construction scheduled for the year 2025 slash 26. The city partnered with Santa Cruz County and other local agencies and nonprofits and received this, a federal safe streets for all grant. The city will use its portion of the funding to update Watsonville Vision Zero Action Plan. Watsonville also secured two state sustainable transportation planning grants. The most recent will examine high collision corridors within the city, conduct public outreach and then prepare preliminary plans on one of the corridors. An earlier planning grant assisted with preparation of the recently adopted downtown Watsonville specific plan by focusing on improvements within the downtown area that would benefit all modes of transportation. This planning grant allowed city staff to work with Caltrans to identify improvements that could be made to the portion of state route 152 that passes through downtown Watsonville and contributed toward Caltrans identifying a state highway operations and protection program or SHOP project that will address many of the specific plan goals. Next slide. Director Eads mentioned the three SHOP projects that are currently underway in the city of Watsonville. I'd like to report that the one of the benefits to obtaining planning grants is it creates an opportunity for local agencies to dialogue with Caltrans and allows for further improvements in Watsonville. We have three highways that run through town so it's a vital importance for us to do so. He mentioned that one SHOP project known as state route 152 rehabilitation goes through the city core itself and it will, we're planning that it will include a first of its kind road diet. We're looking forward to how that will make the city's downtown core area more appealing to residents by improving pedestrian access as showed from these slides taken from the downtown specific plan. The other two projects include the $17.1 million CAPM project on Highway 129. It will include pavement preservation, improved lighting, sign replacement and bicycle and ped facilities and then the $4.6 million downtown Watsonville pedestrian safety project with its enhancements in the downtown area. Next slide. Future pedestrian and bicycle safety projects include several that will benefit city and county residents. This slide shows a series of trails that will eventually link up with one another. One is construction of a bicycle and pedestrian facilities on Harkinslew Road between Green Valley Road and the entrance to Pajaro Valley High School. This includes construction of a pedestrian bridge across Highway 1 and is funded by an $11.7 million ATP grant secured by the city. Another project is the Lee Road Trail, which will extend from the high school driveway to the future rail trail where it crosses Lee Road. The first phase of the Lee Road Trail project is currently in design and it will extend from the high school to the Santa Cruz County Land Trust, Watsonville Slough Farms property where the Land Trust is developing a system of trails and pedestrian amenities that create public access to Hanson Slough. The third leg of this trail network will be the rail trail. Next slide. This year the city will construct the Green Valley Road improvements project as shown on the screen. The cost will be $4 million and includes a recent $1.8 million award of regional transportation improvement program funding provided by the RTC. Improvements include reconstructing the roadway, improving substandard pedestrian facilities and providing bike lanes where none currently exist. Last year Watsonville residents approved Measure R, a citywide sales tax that includes funding for road projects. In anticipation of this funding, Watsonville is conducting a request for proposals to hire consultants to prepare a five year pavement maintenance plan and a pavement program manager to implement the plan. The city anticipates the plan being completed later this year with implementation to follow. Next slide. This being Watsonville, I want to bring to your attention that tomorrow is World Wetlands Day, a day when we celebrate the wetlands within the city of Watsonville. Please join us and our partners from Watsonville Wetlands Watch on Saturday, February 3rd from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Strew Slough to do wetland restoration work. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there comments or questions from commissioners? That's excellent work. All right, we'll open it to questions from the public. Any members of the public wish to comment on the presentation? Barry Scott in Haptos. I just wanted to thank everyone for the work that's being done in Watsonville. We know that a lot of great trail work has been done in Santa Cruz and beyond and we have seen the half of Segment 18 done and I hope that the city and with help from commissioners and staff can speak to the owner of the property of the depot at Walker Street where a little bit of the parking lot needs to be used, I understand, in order to complete Segment 18 so that the trail will go all the way to Walker Street and not end halfway. Thank you. Good morning, my name is Lowell Hurst and I do live here in Watsonville but in the second district for a supervisor portion of Watsonville. I want to thank Mr. Fons for his focused presentation on improving safety and transportation opportunities and environmental opportunities in Watsonville as well. You know, as you came here today, I'm sure that you saw what was happening on the other side of the freeway and it might have been backed up a little bit and it wasn't just weather, it's a daily occurrence and so we're really glad that you could be here today and we're glad to hear of the improvements that Caltrans is providing and that you're providing as well and so thank you very much for supporting the real needs of Watsonville and assisting in the development and growth and the better standard of living for all of us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hi, good morning, my name is Aurelio Gonzalez. Excuse my, I just came from the dentist so half my mouth is kind of... But anyways, thank you for being here and again, I'd like to thank Murray for his presentation and looking for out for the city of Watsonville and making the improvements that are necessary for the future needs of our communities. Our community is going to be continually growing so the needs are going to be there even more. These trails and these rails and the diets of the roads are going to be necessary to be able to make it a pleasant area to live in continuously, right? Because our density is going to increase just like the city of Santa Cruz is doing. It's just going to happen and there's nothing going to stop it and I hope that some of you guys rode your bikes here today. You can ride down Freedom Boulevard if you're really a bike enthusiast. So on that though, but I'd really like to see the Lee Road project completed. I think that's a really important project for the city of Watsonville because it would make a complete circle around Watsonville and it would make it a safe avenue for our kids, especially to go to Pajaro Valley High. So thanks for all your work and your hard service. I know how tough it is to be sitting there in those positions. I really do miss it a lot, but I'm still here and you should see me a little more often. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you very much for coming to the city of Watsonville. My name is Trina Coffman-Gomez and I do really appreciate having you come to this community and for our staff here in Murray to provide us with those updates that this community needs. It's a mixed blessing when we have congestion with traffic when we're seeing improvements. So all of us in the community here when we're seeing those cones that we need to make sure that we're safe when we're out there for the employees that are doing a lot of the hard work for us. We're very grateful for having the money to be able to get many of these projects together. It's been a pleasure having served on the RTC in the past and looking forward to a lot of the projects that you're working on here to make our community safer. So thank you again for coming and having the ability to present this as well as the other multimodal projects. I think one of the concerns also with Lee Road is also we're seeing the Chanticleer overpass and we can't say that it couldn't happen any quicker to get the one that's over for the Green Valley for our youth over at PV High School as well. So if we were to say we want those on the bucket list at the top, those would definitely be a couple projects we'd like to see move forward in our community here. So thank you very much for coming and moving forward on a lot of the projects we're doing that benefit our community here. Thank you. Thank you. Any additional comments? Any online? Yes, we do. Rick, Longenotti. Good morning, commissioners. I just wanted to appreciate the City of Watsonville and Mr. Murray-Foss for leading the effort for Vision Zero. Watsonville is the first community in the Santa Cruz County to adopt Vision Zero, which is the international movement to achieve zero serious injuries on account of traffic collisions and is badly needed in Watsonville. It's California Office of Traffic Safety, ranked cities on a basis of serious injuries in the most recent year available. That was 2021. Watsonville ranked second worst in the rate of serious injuries to pedestrians out of 105 cities of similar size. And consistently, Watsonville is also way up there in injuries to bicyclists. Mr. Foss just showed a slide of Freedom Boulevard in which it's obvious that riding a bike on Freedom Boulevard is not safe. There are four lanes for vehicles and no bike lanes. There are sharers drawn on the road so that the intention is that bikes will share the road with vehicles. Don't let your children ride on Freedom Boulevard. I think the point is is that even though Watsonville is motivated to achieve Vision Zero, it's not gonna happen without money. And I think later in the agenda, it'll be apparent that we're spending money on the wrong things and an expansion of highways that will not provide congested injuries. So this is a caution that every dollar spent on useless highway expansion is a dollar that could be spent for safety. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Michael Sate. Mr. Sate, there you go. Yeah, I'm here. I'm having issues with the button. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I'd like to second Rick Longinati's comments. He's right on a lot of things there. I also appreciate Watsonville's efforts. I think they're one of the more progressive cities in the Santa Cruz County. I'd also like to go back and have a question about oral comments was not offered or I should say public comments for items 23, 24, 25. And I believe they usually are. So I'd like to hop back to 23 really quickly and thank Commissioner Koenig as well as Commissioner Rotkin for having a meeting with live ways and kind of listening to what they have to offer and also appreciate Commissioner Koenig wanting to put it on a future agenda item so we can also have other alternatives to look at besides just a train. Once again, thank you for all the hard work everybody's doing and thank you for your time. Thank you. Nancy Falstich. This is Nancy Falstich. I live off of Green Valley Road near Pinto Lake and I direct Rehenderacion, part of Valley Climate Action and just incredible to hear all of these improvements especially for bike access and pedestrian access around the city. So important to make it easier and safer and more convenient for people to get around without cars. We know that's so important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And again, I'm personally happy about the Green Valley Corridor which has felt very dangerous to attempt to get out there on a bike. So thank you for all this great work. Thank you. John. I'm dealing with a leak in my house real quick. My kid's showing me but I would like to just second the incredible work that Watsonville is doing in their community right now. They are the most forward-thinking jurisdiction in our community in particular, right-sizing the lanes on many of their roads, building actual bike lanes which include barriers. Sheriffs are just terrible, terrible things. And in general, turning their road, which is the main road going through their town from four lanes to two lanes, that's just gonna bring so much investment to the community as happened in Lancaster, California over the last decade. I'd like to talk about Vision Zero briefly. Many people think Vision Zero is a pipe dream that it's something we are aiming towards but will never achieve. The city of Hoboken, I believe, left the two weeks ago achieved seven years without a traffic or pedestrian fatality this January. So Vision Zero is very real. We can invest in our communities in such a way where we bring wealth into the communities, share the roads with all users and most importantly, keep our neighbors alive. So please continue all this excellent work and thank you for your time. Sean? Gothenville is a great example of what happens when you put your child to students first to keep them safe, give them navigable routes and to give them some sense of license for themselves and having trails is important because paint, paint is not infrastructure. Thank you. Thank you. That was our last speaker. All right, thank you. I just wanna make a remark on something that was mentioned during those public comments that there was public comment overlooked on items 23, 24 and 25. While legally public comment is required only for items we vote on, it is our practice to allow public comment on all items. So I do apologize for my oversight and it will be allowed moving forward. We'll move on now to item 27, a public hearing on zero-emission passenger rail and trail project preliminary purpose and need and we'll start with the staff report. We're just waiting for your mic to come on. One second, there you go. Green, all right. Thank you, Commissioner Brown and commissioners. My name is Riley Gerbrandt. I am Associate Transportation Engineer of your staff. It's a delight to be here before you today to speak on the zero-emission passenger rail and trail project. I'm the project manager for this project and we got a presentation today on the purpose and the preliminary purpose and need statement for this project. The only action today is to hold this public hearing to receive this presentation and if you wish to provide input on the preliminary purpose and need statement. That is provided in the agenda for reading and it is attachment to the staff report. We also have two handouts for this item. We have the open house flyer and the project fact sheet flyer. To set the stage for the presentation today, I wanna provide you with a little bit of background on the Santa Cruz branch rail line and give you some context within Santa Cruz County. The Santa Cruz branch rail line is a continuous transportation corridor that goes throughout the county from Pajaro in Northern Monterey County to Davenport North of Santa Cruz. It's been a continuous facility since the 1870s with current freight and passenger excursion services. The branch line provides a unique opportunity for Santa Cruz County and the transportation needs of the residents and visitors of the county. Transportation investments along the branch line can support and improve equitable, multimodal transportation in Santa Cruz County. And with this vision, the commission purchased the branch line in 2012, bringing it into public ownership. And over the course of the next decade, the commission completed several planning studies, including the 2015 Rail Visibility Study and the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis and Network Integration Study in 2021. Your commission directed staff in 2022 to solicit proposals for a project to bring passenger rail on 22 miles of the branch line as well as to complete development of the remaining segments of the coastal rail trail between Santa Cruz and Pajaro. Through this process, the project contract was awarded to HDR Engineering and the project kickoff occurred last October after successfully securing some funding from Caltrans through the Tursep cycle six and getting those approvals in place. Next slide please. The zero emission passenger rail and trail project proposes new high capacity passenger rail service and stations along 22 miles of the branch line from Pajaro, just south of Watsonville here, to Santa Cruz. It also proposes 12 miles of coastal rail trail, segments 13 through 20 from Real Dunlaw Boulevard through the community of La Selva Beach to Watsonville and to Pajaro. As well as the Capitola trestle reach, segment 11 phase two. So the project aims to take advantage of this publicly owned ride away to provide passenger rail service and 12 miles of coastal rail trail. It is, the vision is to bring connectivity with for Santa Cruz to the greater region and integrated inner city travel options. Next slide. The project concept report is anticipated to be completed in spring 2025 and will define evaluate and develop a project build concept to be advanced into subsequent phases. Following completion of the project concept report, the project will move into preliminary engineering and environmental documentation. And then after project approval, we'll move into ride away and final design. Next slide. The first milestone of the project concept report is here today. It includes developing a preliminary purpose and need statement. And I'm gonna read from our read here. The preliminary purpose and need documents the needs and constraints that drive the development of transportation improvements in the study area. Summarizes the priorities in the development of alternatives and establishes the fundamental purpose of the project. The preliminary purpose and need provides a foundation for the development of a formal purpose and need for the project during the environmental phase. The project development team consisting of the city's representatives of the cities of Watsonville, Capitola and Santa Cruz as well as representatives from the consultant team from the Santa Cruz Metro and from Tamsi as well as RTC staff participated in developing the project purpose and need statement over the past two months. The project development team's input was really critical in developing a project preliminary purpose and need statement that is inclusive of the needs of the various stakeholders of the community. And on January 11th, the project development team recommended the preliminary purpose and need statement that is before you win this item today. Next slide. So on this slide and then on the next slide I'm gonna be are the preliminary project needs and purposes. I'll read from them from the preliminary person needs statement that's in the agenda item today. So the recommended preliminary purpose and need statement includes the identified needs of which this is a summary. The currents of the needs, the current state of Santa Cruz's transportation infrastructure is strained and unable to effectively serve the community. The existing transportation network is insufficient to support a stronger local economy, improved environmental and public health, improved equity and better quality of life. The primary project needs are summarized as diverse transportation needs are not fully met and slow travel chance of times. Deficiencies and roadway travel and insufficient alternative travel options. Vehicle mild travel and reduction mandates and greenhouse gas emission reduction mandates. And finally missing linkages and safety concerns on existing bicycle and pedestrian facilities in Santa Cruz County. Next slide. The preliminary needs bring us to the fundamental purpose of the project. And I'll read the critical elements of the constitutive elements of the project purpose. Provide increased access to give convenient, accessible and reliable public transport travel options. Improve transit connections to community activity centers supporting the local economy and providing better access between housing and jobs. Integrate with plans for future land use. Reduce travel transit times and improve transit system reliability. Enhance bicycle and pedestrian connectivity and safety. Promote alternative transportation modes to increase overall transportation system capacity and reliability. Improved health and reduce mortality. Provide a critical link between the cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz and communities in between as an alternative to congested roadways. And lastly reduce vehicle miles traveled and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Next slide. Okay, sorry for reading those but wanted to make sure we got them straight. Now that we have a preliminary purpose and need statement that kicks off a period over the next several weeks of public engagement as the project development team and the project team really wanna hear the input from the commission, from the community and from stakeholders. We're committed to meaningful public engagement throughout the project's life cycle and community participation is vital to aid in minimizing impacts of the project while meeting the needs of riders, pedestrians and bicyclists. And in order to hear the many voices in our community we have scheduled various engagement opportunities over the next several weeks. We have information on our project website which is sccrtc.org slash zepert, Z-E-P-R-T. We have stakeholder briefings. We have a virtual open house that kicks off through our web project website that'll kick off next week. We also have in-person open houses the following week on February 12th and 13th. Those will be in both Santa Cruz and Watsonville. We're also gonna be presenting to city council meetings and to meetings of our various agencies and partners. And the feedback that we received during this time will inform the project needs and purposes through the ongoing project development. Next slide. And these are the future milestones for our project that you'll see on the screen. We are here at the beginning, the first milestone of the project concept report where we are delivering the preliminary purpose and need and providing this project look ahead. The next milestones are gonna be aimed for summer. Conceptual alignments will be presented for the project and we'll be discussing the different zero mission vehicle types. And as a note, the project name has been changed. Could have been the preferred community alternative from the TCAA was the electric passenger rail. But in order to broaden the opportunities for the project to capitalize on newer technologies and merging technologies, it's now zero emissions passenger rail and trail project. Following that we'll have in fall 2024, the refined conceptual alignment will also be talking about presenting station layover and maintenance facility locations. And then starting in winter, we'll have the draft project concept report and providing next steps for project development. To get engaged, you can sign up for our mailing list through our project website. Following project development, I've been visiting the website, you can also participate in the open houses both virtually and in person. Next slide. Should have been in a thank you side, but we missed that. So thank you. I and other staff are available to take your comments and questions also to receive your input. We also have Mark McLaren who is from HDR. He's our project manager from our consultant team who's on Zoom with us if there are questions that we need him to participate in. Thank you. Thank you. We'll start with questions from commissioners. The question, okay, we'll start down here. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you, chair. Thank you for that report, Riley. Somebody on your staff was nice enough to give us a heads up for the city of Scots Valley that you will be doing what you just described coming before our city to explain and promote this project. As kind of a preview, what are you gonna say to Scots Valley and for that matter, San Lorenzo Valley and how this actually helps district five? Right, so you're mentioning that obviously the branch line doesn't go through Scots Valley, it doesn't go through Highway nine. So it doesn't have a direct benefit to users that would travel from SLV, the Valley, or from Scots Valley. Obviously there will be benefit to those who would come down into Santa Cruz, Capitola, Watsonville to use the passenger rail service if they want to connect from one of those locations to other areas along the branch line. There's also the passenger rail services intended to connect to the California State Rail Network to provide inner city travel options from any of those stations to areas throughout California. So if you wanted to travel to Sacramento, wanted to travel to somewhere on the Central Coast, even LA, you could connect to the network that way. You could ride the bus down to Santa Cruz, get the station to the station there and connect to the State Rail Network. So there's gonna be those benefits for the users, for the residents of Scots Valley and San Lorenzo Valley. Sarah, did you wanna add? I would just add that our approach to getting input on the project is inclusive to not just the areas that the project goes through. So we will be soliciting input from all the jurisdictions in the county, including Scots Valley. And I would add that also there's the trail. So the project is not only the passenger rail service, but also the trail, the coastal rail trail. So by providing the missing linkages on that continuous network, there's options for residents as well. All right, thank you. Oh, okay. Commissioner Jenny Johnson. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. Thank you for the report. Could you please unpack a little bit and speak to how this concept report relates to the full EIR if we were able to find funding for the full EIR eventually? In particular, what are you doing in this concept report that will actually benefit that EIR? Is that part of that EIR? Something you don't have to redo if you go and find the 20 million for the EIR, that kind of thing. Right. Thank you. So the project concept report is a part of the environmental documentation process. This early phase, it was task one of four of the environmental document. So we're taking this first phase of the work to go through these early concepts, to look at the alignment alternatives that we have on the branch line to take public input on those alignment options and the different vehicle types, refine those down to a concept that would then go through the environmental document, through to the end of the EIR process. And lost my train of thought there, but did you want to add? It's just, we're doing a little bit of legwork early to better scope the project from an operational and infrastructure standpoint, and that's going to give us a really good foot to stand on when we fully fund and move into the EIR preparation. Yeah, thank you for those answers. My favorite collection of prior conversations with the team here, the ROTC team, is that we will have enough of the project scoped or we'll have better and more definitive answers regarding costs, both in building and operating the system, better and more definitive visions of some of the challenges we have along the rail line in terms of possible imminent domain, that kind of thing. We don't own the entire rail line, we know that, and other kinds of physical challenges that will have costs to them. So I just want to confirm that that's what we can expect when we get the concept report back, that we're going to have a much better foundation for making some good decisions moving forward and spending more resources moving forward. Right, so yeah, the intent of the concept report is to answer a lot of those questions so that when we get to the end of the concept report, there's information for commission and the community to determine what it is that the community wants to achieve and how achievable is that. What are the constraints that we have on the corridor? What are the impacts? What are the holdups to moving the project forward? Obviously it's not gonna address all of them because that's what the environmental document phase does, but it gives us a lot better idea of what it is that we're gonna be looking at so that as we step into the environmental documentation, we are much more aware. Yeah, well I think that's important. Just want a couple more comments and then I won't take the floor up anymore. I think up to this point with the four prior studies, we have gotten enough data and enough information where however you land in the community and on this commission on the feasibility of this project that those numbers and those parameters have been argued depending on your point of view. And what I'm really looking forward to and I know Commissioner McPherson is a concept report that really allows us to discuss the facts so that we have factual, non-argumentative information that is gonna allow us to make a good decision moving forward. And that's what I'm hoping we're gonna get. That's what I'm hearing you say and I'm hoping that that's what we end up with. So thanks very much for your time. Welcome. Thank you. Additional commissioner questions. Commissioner Schifrin. Just a short clarification. You mentioned the project development team and that it was going to include, that it included representatives from the cities, but you didn't mention the county of Santa Cruz. Is county staff on that committee as well? Yes, that was an oversight. Yes, the county is definitely involved. Okay, thank you. I would just clarify one thing about project in need. Project in need is a concept under the National Environmental Policy Act, not CEQA. The similar thing under CEQA is a project description and it might be helpful to think about what this process is doing is defining the project and the project description will be the element of the CEQA document. The purpose in need will be the first element of any NEPA document that, so the words can be a little confusing, but I think that we tend to be more familiar with the CEQA words and I think thinking of what this whole process is doing is really sort of expanding on the definition of a project description to look at not just what the project is in terms of what it's of, then can look at the effects on the environment but what the cost and feasibility issues are as well. Thank you. Yes, go ahead. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Grubrant for the presentation. It's definitely a beautiful vision that's laid out in the initial statement that you've shared with us and the presentation that you shared and of course the much work that this commission has done before. I think we have to keep in mind that in general people choose how they're gonna get from point A to point B based on one of three things. What's gonna get me there the fastest? What's gonna get me there the cheapest or what's gonna be the most convenient? And I see some initial effort to outline that in this purpose statement. I think what I would like to say ultimately if I either directly in this statement or the question part of what I'm getting at here is is it gonna be defined somewhere else in the document? But just is more specificity, right? So I mean, it's great to say we need to increase transit travel times between, I think the specificity is between the city of Watsonville and Santa Cruz or the city of Capitola and Santa Cruz. It's great to say that. What are the transit travel times now, right? I mean, I look at my phone, it says I can get from here to 701 Ocean Street in an hour and 15 minutes. And that's of course, including the walking time and the wait time. I think we need to outline that level of specificity because it'll tell us whether or not we've actually designed a successful solution that meets the goals. If the travel time on the train is going to be an hour and 30 minutes, we haven't actually improved transit travel times. If I can currently get there on the bus in an hour and 15. Same thing with cost. I mean, I think it was good to mention that in the document that we ultimately want to reduce the costs burden for households of transportation. We get to understand well, what is the average cost people are paying now and are we actually going to be able to reduce those? So again, we have to design a successful solution if someone is only or households only paying $250 per month to maintain an extra vehicle, but it's going to cost $300 for someone to ride the train every day to their work. Then we have to design a successful solution. So that level of specificity is going to be necessary to make sure that when we have something, we know it's actually going to be of value to the community. And I think it'll also be necessary to have that level of specificity because ultimately, if this work is successful, we're going to have to turn it into a marketing campaign to get the community to back some kind of funding measure to pay for it. And the more we can say, you know, hey, this is going to knock 30 minutes off your daily commute or it's going to save you on average $100 a month on transportation costs. Those would all be great selling points. I mean, we can achieve them. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, please. Well, I have two questions. Can you hear me? No, we can't. That wasn't one of my questions. My first question is the title that still includes the word rail. Does that preclude us from discovering other kinds of ZEV and whether or not they'd be applicable for the project? What's ZEV? Zero emission vehicles. I don't know the answer to that question. I would say that at this point, we're moving forward with the concept report building off of the transit corridor alternatives analysis. And I would, the transit corridor alternatives analysis looked at different modes. That was really the purpose of that. And so we're moving forward with the locally preferred alternative from that planning effort, which is. So I understand it's locally preferred, but going back to Supervisor Koenig, we got to ground it in reality. And if we're going to flyways here to present to us, is there going to be a waste of time or they're going to be coming to an audience that's willing to integrate their information into our future solutions? Thank you for that input. I think we're all we're all ears here. So this is just the beginning of the process and you know, staff's been pretty adaptable over the years. So we will continue to do so. And then for my second question, the word constraint appeared on slide two and it never appeared again. And so in the public forum and other conversations is the word constraint going to come up? Because what we've seen in the time I've been on the RTC, people get very excited, like my kids before Christmas when they generate their Christmas list. Then we sit down with them and say, hey, mom and dad have a budget, the Christmas list shrinks. So will the word constraint be part of the public dialogue as we go forward? The constraints of the, of the branch line. In your second slide, you articulated in the purpose amongst the goals were understand the constraints. Correct. Will that word be reappearing as we engage the public? For sure. Yeah, there's constraints on the corridor. There's constraints on the project. We are going to be discussing that with the community and receiving input. And I don't want to be difficult, but getting everyone excited about a blue sky infinite budget project isn't going to do any of us any good. And I wanted to reiterate what Sarah said too, one of the main things of the project development team in answer to your first question is we definitely are here to hear. We've been tasked with this project to look at this concept of a project to identify in these early on, what are the constraints? What are the needs? Look at we have and how do we get to that vision? That will probably change over the course of the project. As we encounter those constraints and difficulties and we'll work together with the commission and with the community members to work through that to get to something that the community supports and the commission supports. Appreciate it. And I'm really looking forward to this process. Commissioner Reckon. We're in the process of developing a alternative that will make it easier to get around the county and all the other benefits that I'm on to coming talked about. It's possible that we'll get pretty far into this process and discover either it's too expensive or it doesn't provide the benefits or that glideways has a better alternative that'll throw every two thirds of what we've done out. I wonder why we're doing it. But I don't, I think this commission made the right decision to proceed in studying rail as an option, figuring out where the sidings have to go, where the stations are going to happen, how does the train have to be realigned, what are the, well, all of that cost in the way of procuring additional right away if we need it and proceed on that path in the hopes that we're not just doing something totally silly. I mean, it makes sense to move in this direction. Something could certainly come along that would persuade us that this has not been the best way to go and that we really should have been looking at and I don't think the glideways proposal doesn't, it's not exactly rail it runs on but it's kind of like rail, it's a fixed route, let's say system but it's more like a hangs from stuff or it runs on the side of something. But I don't think we have any choice but to proceed in seriously studying this and getting what Jenny was talking about as far as options. What will the cost be? What are the constraints as Robert's talking about them? Those are critical things to find out and people are, I think, appropriately some of them skeptical about whether this is all gonna work out. Some of us are excited. We're welcome to that range of possibilities here but I think we're moving in the right direction. Frankly, this first step doesn't give us very much. It's very abstract and vague. Let's get started. We were repeating what we've been talking about for five years now at least. So it's not a meeting where let's get at it because there's total controversy in it. No, we want something like this meeting these kinds of goals. This is the purpose of the project and so forth. So if we're sitting here thinking this first step is gonna clarify all these things. No, it's not. It's the first step of defining what we're up to. The later steps get very real when you start to figure out well, where would the sidings go and do we have the right of way or what would we have to knock out of the way to make the three sidings for a two way traffic thing to work? There's a lot of stuff ahead of us but I think we're on the right path to study that and get some real answers that allow reasonable people to say, no, it's too expensive or no, it's expensive but we can make it happen, et cetera. Yeah, and we'll definitely be engaging with your commission. Has those nuts and bolts come through and we get to talk about those specific things. So we'll be coming to you guys frequently to present those to you and get your input and feedback. Thank you. Any other commissioner questions? I just have a couple brief questions. So the first is your slide mentioned in your next steps that the draft concept report and next steps for project development would be expected in winter 25. I'm assuming that's like January of 25, not December of 25, is that correct? So the draft is gonna be coming, I think at the end of 2024. Okay, so it is, it's winter of this year slash early next year, not late winter 25. And then the final concept report gets finalized over the winter basically and then we finish it in the spring. Okay, perfect. Okay, I think that was the main question I had just to make sure that everyone knows when to expect that project concept report coming. Although I do want to stress, of course, Glideways is welcome to come present and I think it's important for us as a commission to receive information on emerging technologies. This project update is on the passenger rail and trail project. And so the idea, I would caution us from assuming that we can turn the passenger rail and trail project into a different project because in that case, it's a different project. We'd have a different report. So the idea of putting alternatives within the rail and trail project report doesn't make sense to me. And as Ms. Christensen mentioned, that alternative analysis was already done. So any other options for us as a county, I think certainly we should know about not necessarily alternatives, but all of our options. But I do think that it's important for us to realize that this is a report on this specific project and that's what we are considering. If there's no additional questions, then we will open it up to public comment at the same. Thank you. So we're gonna open the public hearing now and we will start with those in the room. Yesenia, are you doing the timer or is that gonna come up on screen? Awesome, thank you so much. All right, you'll have two minutes and your timer will be up on the screen. Welcome. If we could have those online to go ahead and mute themselves. Thank you. All right. Good morning. My name is David Schwartz. I'm a candidate for supervisor in district two. This is my first time attending a meeting here and I apologize for that. I should have been here much sooner. Looking at this project, I have a number of issues to bring up and I don't have a particular order because I did not prepare this earlier. I prepared it as I was listening. The first thing I wanted to point out is in the brochure and the fact sheet, the third paragraph, the end of the third paragraph, it says that in a 2015 study, sorry, it was a 2021 study, they identified a preferred alternative for electric passenger rail. Now, did they say that electric passenger rail was the preferred alternative or is there something else? I just have a question that maybe somebody will answer at some point. Number two, I'd like to see a map of the 22 stops in the rail system. You guys are talking about 22 stops. You're talking about getting from Watsonville to Santa Cruz. So if you're going from Watsonville to Santa Cruz and you're stopping 22 times, is it really gonna save anybody any time to get to Santa Cruz? Second, or third, there's a gap in the trail in Watsonville. Why is that? It's almost a mile. It must be the slew or something so we have no way of getting the trail as a continuous trail like everybody says it is. Number four, you guys mentioned in one of your EIRs that you're not gonna do a rail system unless a railroad company comes forward. Do we have a railroad company yet? Have we determined the maintenance costs for this? There's a lot that we need to do here and I think we're getting way ahead of ourselves because we haven't even identified the way to own the right of way. We don't own it. We just own the right of way. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hi, I told you I'd be back. Anyways, good to see you guys again. There was some questions on time and what's gonna happen, right? And it's interesting, right? Because we talk about time and we want to always be there quickly as promptly as we can because every minute counts in our life. Sometimes if you take a train and let you distress yourself, right? Time doesn't matter then. So you're doing something healthy for yourself which is gonna pay out more in the long run. Also the other thing is that they brought up the Scotts Valley area folks, how they benefit from this. Well, we go back in history in the voting, all residents, all voters in the county voted for Measure D and then all voters in the county voted to purchase the rail for transportation. So that included the whole county. The one thing I do want to say is, emphasize this Davenport. We talk about disadvantaged communities, right? Davenport is one of our most disadvantaged communities within our county and then the most disconnected community within our county. And we tend to forget about them. The rail system for them would be really beneficial actually, a little town like that. And it'd be really beneficial we could start a rail from that point to Santa Cruz. So we could start using, utilizing that rail, not just for tourists, but for that small community, it really needs to have access to the greater portion of our region. So it is, we've been working on this for many years. There's probably gonna be some of you, there's still gonna be on this board, like Andy, Randy and like, come 10 years from now. So we'll have good guidance and good history. But otherwise, I think this project, as we're moving forward is important, not for now, but for the future. Let's not think about tomorrow, but let's think about our grandkids, right? Let's think about the disadvantaged people in the community that can't see, have disabilities. They need to have mobility and different types of mobility and transportation. So let's not forget about everybody in the community from our most disadvantaged folks to our most privileged folks. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hi, thank you. Excuse me. Appreciate all your work here. And I just want to, excuse me. So I think that, I really appreciate this report. I really appreciate that the RTC is moving forward with this. My name is John Hall, by the way, I live in Santa Cruz. I think in addition to goals and needs and constraints, you also need to look at challenges and I say that specifically because sometimes things that we might think of as being constraints are actually challenges. And it's important not to sort of put a full stop thing as a constraint when it might be a problem to be solved. And I want to echo the last speaker's comments about the future because a lot of what was said in the report, and I appreciate the detail and the points made in it, was about present needs, present concerns. But we are talking about a solution for the county of Santa Cruz and the region that is going to be here 50 years out, 100 years out. The, a terrible decision was made in the 1940s to close the rail tunnels that led from San Jose to Santa Cruz. And we now suffer the consequences of that with the horrendous Highway 17. Let's not make that kind of mistake again. Look to the example of Seattle as a model for things that happen as a result of what you do with their right light rail system that they've created, they have inspired development, they've inspired a kind of vitality along places in the rail system that were more abundant before. There are new developments, retail and housing developments along the route that are helping to create a more cohesive region. And that's really what we need in Santa Cruz. Thank you. Yesenia, does this timer have an alarm on it? Yeah, I can't really see the timer. Yeah, no, I just want to make sure that we can, we all have kind of a general idea when time is up so that I don't have to keep interrupting everybody. Yeah, no worries, thank you. Good morning, Chair Brown and commissioners. My name's Matt Ferrell and I'm speaking here today on behalf of the Friends of the Rail and Trail. And I'd like to open my remarks by reminding ourselves that in 2012, we purchased the rail right away from the state of California. And they demanded that we make a promise to pursue rail as part of that effort. And I think this study is a follow-through on that promise to the California Transportation Commission. And those who have a question that, what they've proposed in the past that we return that purchase price to the state so we no longer face that obligation. I think that's irresponsible and I think we should proceed with this study. I live in the Seabright neighborhood. This remedy would be a great benefit to me and it would be benefit people in San Lorenzo Valley and other portions of the county that aren't close to the rail line because it would improve the connection between our transit system and an efficient, un-congested rail line quarter. Thank you. Thank you. I just should correct me. We bought it from a private railroad company. It was funded by the state but we actually bought it from a railroad company. Hi, welcome. Hello, good morning. David Van Brink, City of Santa Cruz. Public transit is good. This is a long-running project. This particular project has had some delays. Some were acts of God, storms and climate change and the like and some of these delays are carefully strategized by opponents. For example, by repeating questions already answered like, is it rail or let's pull out the tracks and knowing that delays increase the cost and then harping on the cost. But despite all that, progress continues. I do look forward to easier connectivity with the rest of the county through the bike trail and eventual rail connection. I live on the west side and I'll probably take the bus back after this. I'd love to have easier frictionless access to Aptos and Capitola and Watsonville. Right now I'm reluctant to go to those places unless it's just necessary. And of course, connecting to Amtrak for longer journeys is very exciting. I do travel by Amtrak whenever possible. Public transit is good. Thank you for your works. Thank you. Hi, welcome. I welcome, sure. I wait till Commissioner Koenig and Ms. Virginia Johnson come back to hear my public comment. You can get back in line if you'd prefer, but we do have a quorum, so public comment will continue. I'll wait. Hi, welcome. Hello. Good morning, my name is Alexandra Fisher. I'm here to voice my support for building the Zero Mission passenger rail. I've lived in the city of Santa Cruz almost my whole life and I've watched as Highway 1 traffic just get slower and slower by the day. Santa Cruz is going to keep growing and the more people that come, the worse traffic is going to get. I went to Columbia University for college and living in New York and using the subway so frequently has made me very excited for this amazing opportunity. We have to build our own train system. It is so freeing to not have to worry about parking and traffic and paying for gas and auto insurance. Santa Cruz is some of the highest cost of living in the country, helping people not have to go through the expensive process of buying and maintaining a car will help lower that cost. Santa Cruz is also unique because our rail corridor is full of so much beauty. Not only will the rail help the people who live in the community by reducing their commutes, but it will also act as a tourist attraction that highlights the natural beauty we have in this area. Having the train will also help preserve our natural environment by reducing the number of cars on the roads and the amount of emissions we produce. It will help us move away from infrastructure that is designed for cars and not people. Santa Cruz County is going to keep changing. Building the rail helps ensure that we will be building a more sustainable and equitable future for all the people who live here. Please build the passenger rail. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, welcome. My name is Ava and I live in Santa Cruz and I just wanna ditto everything she just said and also support what Aurelio Gonzalez said. For me personally, I very much look forward to a passenger rail, zero emission and I also will use the bike trail and I really would love to be able to ride from where I live to Watsonville and take the train back because I'm not that strong of a rider. But my one concern, I have many concerns, but one is Santa Cruz is proposing all kinds of development and much of that development is not gonna have parking. Hardly any parking at all is required now. So that means people need to be able to get around from Santa Cruz to Capitola, Aptos, Watsonville and Davenport and how are they gonna do that? Not everyone's gonna ride a bike. Not everyone will have a car or will want a car and there needs to be a way to get around. As for visitors, if it's expected that we're gonna have a luxury hotel with very little parking, what are those people gonna do there? Are they gonna go the boardwalk every single day or they're gonna wanna explore our beautiful county and a train is a way to do that and it'll also take those visitors to those other communities. So I think that's a big plus and it's also gigantic plus for climate change. So please continue with this project and I look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hi, good morning. My name is Lori Rubio. I live here in Watsonville and I totally support the rail trail and I'm just gonna cite one example. There's a few, there's more I can say but this is what I wanna say today is on the weekends when we wanna go into Santa Cruz or Capitola or just get out and go, the traffic is horrendous. It's a parking lot and it's not just from the Watsonville residents wanting to go visit Santa Cruz and beyond. It's from visitors that wanna come and visit our towns here. Totally support that. That's wonderful. That's, we live in a beautiful place. So the rail trail would be perfect for people coming and I say that it's visitors that are coming to visit so they're coming from Highway 101, probably from Monterey and beyond coming to visit. So they get to about Watsonville and they're stuck in the parking lot to try and get to their destinations whether they've taken their children to the beach or any of the beaches. So it would be really beneficial if they could park in Watsonville and take the train, take their bicycles with them on the train right around wherever they wanna go, stop at any of the 22 stops that are proposed. But I just wanted to point that out. On the weekends, every weekend, it doesn't matter, tourist time or whatever, it's all the time now. We are sitting in a parking lot on Highway 1 trying to get to our destinations. The train would be beautiful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Not sure I really wanna do this, but my name's Tony Ruby. I live in Watsonville. And I would love to take a train to Santa Cruz and Davenport. Wouldn't that be awesome? I just wish it could be built sooner than like 10 years or something. It's like, we built the Golden Gate Bridge in four years, the Hoover Dam in four years. It's like, here a hundred years later, we can't build it. We already got the tracks. I know they gotta replace some of them, whatever, but let's get this thing built and everybody'd love it. Thanks. Thank you. Hi, welcome back. Hi, good afternoon. Hi, my name is Tina Andrietta. I live in Aptos, close to the tracks and support Coastal Rail Trail. Many of my friends live in Watsonville and South County, and they work in Capitola, Santa Cruz, and they support zero-emission passenger rail. I understand 80% of the boardwalk in Costco employees live in Watsonville and South County, and they want zero-emission passenger rail. It benefits them. We are part of the California State Rail Plan. 73% of the voters at the most recent Greenway Measure D voted to continue forward with keeping the tracks. Also, the Coastal Rail Trail offers unique opportunities like after-school classes, internships, summer classes, and jobs that would greatly benefit our youth. Don't forget Watsonville and South County residents. Don't forget our youth that want zero-emission passenger rail service. Earlier, we had a young person speak here, and I know she represents the majority, the vast majority of students that go to UCSC, the high schools, Cabrillo College, so we can't turn our backs. I'm a senior, and we cannot turn our backs on our youth, so please continue moving forward with the Coastal Rail Trail. Let's get this finished. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Thank you. My name's Sally Arnold, and I'm a Santa Cruz resident, and I have some things to say about this, but I also feel like they need to respond to a couple of things that have come up in conversation here. I'm really grateful that Chair Brown pointed out that we already did an alternatives analysis and already selected zero-emission rail for use on this corridor, and we don't need to go back and redo studies that have already been done, as other people pointed out, that kind of is a delay tactic sometimes to increase costs and then say, oh my gosh, it's expensive. And that doesn't mean that something like Glideways might not be very useful in our community. There's a lot of other parts of our community that need good transit, besides this particular rail corridor. So absolutely, let's keep hearing what other new alternatives are coming up. And also, I have to say, I live on the West side, and all those improvements that are being done, say, on Highway 9 to help the children get to school safely, I'm not going to use those. That does not mean I oppose them. Just because I'm not gonna drive on this pavement in front of your house doesn't mean it shouldn't get paved. We live in a whole community and we need to be thinking about what's good for all of us, not just am I personally gonna benefit from this particular project? With that in mind, I just want to say, the presentation by the staff person was really clear about many benefits of this project. The rail will provide access to economic and educational opportunity, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to improve the development patterns in our community, and therefore limit the spread of suburban sprawl, and those are all, you know, and preserve our open space. Those are all excellent needs that our community has that this will meet. I also want to point out maybe a less obvious need, and that's about social integration. You know, right now, first of all, we need to face it that there's a de facto segregation in our community between Watsonville. Anyway, we'll all be able to get together easier and better if we have a rail. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hello, my name is K.G. Muramoto. I am from Watsonville, California, and I just want to turn to back up all what the previous people said about all their comments, and I just wanted to say yes, I'm in pro rail and trail, because honestly, it's not only a historical, it only helps preserve of the historical rail line and that's been there for over a hundred years, and it also, and not only is it, I'm sorry, not only does it help people get around faster or faster than cars in the long run, but with the rail and trail, people can get their exercise or move around communities in a much faster way in the long term, and really there is no excuse it was for delay, delay, delay, for the rest of the world honestly has light rail and we were still debating about whether we should or shouldn't for the cost, but when the majority of the county voted it overwhelmingly reject the valid initiative to rail bank the line, and I think the results are very clear because I think the results are very clear of the will of the voters have spoken, and it's time for, personally I think it's about time before action, thank you so much. Thank you, hello, welcome. Don Redmond Watsonville. Yeah, I'm not hearing anything about the horrible state of the road, which are very dangerous for monotrack vehicles, which is bicycles or motorcycles. It would be very nice to be able to sit on a train and run from Watsonville up to Santa Cruz to have import, et cetera. Also I think that it would be very beneficial especially in dangerous circumstances for the mountain community, be able to get another route out of the mountain community if there's a problem. I know when the last fire occurred roadways were clogged so from running down from Felton down to the boardwalk would be I think a beneficial thing. Anyway, we shouldn't be, the voters have already said they want the rail so let's get off our backsides and get it done. Thank you, hi, welcome. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Paula Bradley, I live in Capitola, I support the proposed preliminary purpose need statement and moving forward with the rail trail project with the locally preferred alternative, the zero emission passenger rail. This provides the greatest benefit to Santa Cruz County residents. It is the only alternative to gridlock on our roads which continue to worsen. The most efficient equitable way to move, the most people is public transportation, specifically zero emission light rail. In 2021 we saw that there is a clean energy train that can run on the existing tracks if the planned repairs were made. For the last century we've subsidized highways and solo vehicles and disinvested in public transportation. We are suffering the consequences of that choice now. I am one of the 74% of Santa Cruz County residents that voted for keeping the rail and the trail and I disagree with the short-sighted minority who propose using the rail corridor as a trail only which does not benefit the most residents. I'm a cyclist and the fastest way to get a trail built is to move forward with the approved rail trail project. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Thank you, Barry Scott from Aptos. I want to speak to the preliminary purpose of need statement later, but first I can't believe that we, I need to say this, there's a rail line outside, it's an active rail line. It's a freight easement all the way to Davenport. We need to respect that. The RTC is still in a contract that began in 2018 to restore the entire line to Class I freight service. So when I see discussions about literally PRT and Glideways after we've had so many studies that each came back with increasing certainty that the right thing to do is rail. When I think about other counties that probably wish they had a rail line even if it needs fixing so that they could address climate change and equity and congestion and smart infrastructure, it's shocking. This is a rail line. It needs to stay a rail line. If you don't want to do passenger rail, then keep it as a freight rail line so that we'll have some resiliency, which takes me to the next point. On the project in need statement, I think it's very well written, a great start. I think there's opportunity and I'm glad Sally brought something up to mention something about the cultural possibilities bringing together diverse communities, but also, and this folds into the next topic, the climate adaptation and vulnerability assessment, looked at two pieces of infrastructure, the state highway and the rail line. And we cannot understate, overstate the importance of that railroad to the future for evacuations, for recovery, for resiliency, and I'll just end with the Coastal Commission recognizes that as well. So we need to keep the rail line a rail line, period. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hi there, Lowell Hearst here and I do live in the Green Valley Corridor. I'm not living adjacent to the rail line, but as was said earlier here today, it's a beautiful vision. It's a beautiful vision. And so why don't we move forward with a beautiful vision and make it a beautiful reality? You know, it was talked about the future, well, you know, and also, this is substantiated by the past. Thousands of people in the last hundred years have traveled on this line and so it is doable, it is feasible, it is connectable. And I think the bulk of the population wants to support diversity and transportation. They want to support alternatives. Let's get moving, let's do this, let's get it done. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Hi. Hi, my name is Joan Speckard, I live in Live Oak. I live about a block from the rail line and I like along with 73% of voters in Santa Cruz continued to support rail trail, ultimate trail. I think it's important, my kids, my grandkids come from Washington and we bike on the street, it's not safe. I would love to be able to take them a block and get on the rail trail and ride. They're great little cyclists already and I would love to have a passenger rail, zero emissions, where we could go to the boardwalk, we could go to downtown Santa Cruz, we could go to Capitola. There are times, every day, seven days a week, there are times that I will not go to South County because the traffic is horrendous. So let's move this forward, it's already been supported by 73% of voters. Let's get it done, thank you. Thank you. Yes, thanks for bringing this to Watsonville so we have a chance to share and be before you on the comments here. We have direct and indirect benefits. I know that there was a comment about why, what benefit does Scots Valley get out of this? There's direct and indirect. It means that we're relieving some people from the traffic in order for those Scots Valley residents to be able to get on the road and they're not as quite as congestive when they are out there doing their delivery in that particular modal of the vehicle. We have the community support, which is evident. We know that already. We also know that we have a growth that's going to be happening here, our expectations are, we may not alleviate what we've got on Highway 1, but we have to do something because it doesn't stop the expansion of the population that needs to still have the ability to transport and move around this county. So having that alternative will relieve that as we grow as a county in population and people that are being transported around. Indicated also just recently, I think last week, the smart train was one of the business models that was used as we were studying this feasibility and they have exceeded their capacity now. So they have actually been expanding quite exponentially, not only in passengers, but I think in the location. So we can see that that has worked in other communities. I think there's about 45 miles on their line or so. So we have other examples of where this has been successful. We do know that it takes money and I think also we may be seeing some things at the state level that will alleviate the two thirds requirement for transportation and housing situations. If those items were brought at the state or we were able to bring it down at 55% of the vote, that might also provide us with an opportunity for the kind of funding that this would need incrementally that we know because it's not going to be 100% overnight completed. So there's a planning process and all of that needs to be thought and considered in the projects with whatever level of phase that we're in and we'll keep comments that up. Thank you. Thank you. Any additional public comment here in chambers? Seeing none, we'll go down to Zoom. I see that we have 10 people on Zoom with their hand raised, 11 people on Zoom with their hand raised and I will ask if there are any others on Zoom that are looking to speak during this public hearing to go ahead and raise your hand now. So we have an accurate idea of how many speakers are remaining. Mr. Longinati. Thank you. Commissioner, I really hope that the consultant and those of you who are working on developing this project will consider the, but I think it's the major challenge to passenger rail that was brought up in the rail transit feasibility study in 2015. And that study estimated daily boardings of people traveling on the rail line and they estimated a scenario of Santa Cruz to Aptos that there would be 4,700 daily heat day boardings. That number climbs by only 300 daily boardings when the train goes continues from Aptos to Watsonville. And I think what the issue is is that the train goes into the southwest corner of the city and everybody else who lives in any other neighborhood of Watsonville will have to travel south. So if I live in the Rolling Hills neighborhood of Watsonville, I'm probably gonna get in my car and drive north to Santa Cruz rather than travel south to catch the train. I think that the consultant really needs to address this in some effective way in order for this project to be successful. I was pleased that the purpose and need statement said that this should connect activity centers. It needs to go where people wanna go. And to me, that means that the metro station and the train station should be at the same place instead of a few blocks apart. There needs to be a spur to Cabrillo College. There needs to be a bridge across highway one to Cabrillo College. The train goes right by Cabrillo only on the other side of the freeway. That's one of the main destinations. Certainly worth the investment. There needs to be a spur for the Pacific station in Santa Cruz. If I'm representing LABO, I'd make sure there was a station at 7th Avenue and at 30th Avenue. So these are the challenges to actually attract ridership successfully. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Michael St. Mr. St. Yes. Yeah, there was no unmute, but I had to go down and do it myself just to give you the information there. Yeah, I'd like to thank Commissioner Quinn for asking my question, which was, would we waste our time with glideways? And I'm hoping that's not the case. This presentation's talked about development and project alternatives. And he also mentions things about insufficient travel options and our big scope of this transportation project. An example of that would be highway one Oxlain project is considerably the way of alternatives. This is one of CFT's biggest complaints about EIRs that are developed by Caltrans. I know this is not developed by Caltrans on this study, which is possibly a good thing. Also you have alternative options that are required by CEQA guidelines as well. We totally appreciate you recognizing the need to study future new technology for the rail trail corridor. We will look forward to the process. I'd like to add just three advantages of looking into public rapid transit or pod car development. PRTs are non-stop travel everywhere. There will be no stops for where you wanna go. It's direct. PRT can be up and running in five years. And I think I saw a graph that you put up on the presentation that it's gonna be eight to 10 years just to get to construction on a train project. Also the fare box on the PRT system covers maintenance and operations of the system. I don't think that's possible with a train. I did attend the December 1st pod car conference. I learned a little bit and I'm looking forward to Glideways to even learn a little more. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Nancy Falstick. Welcome to Lake Rock with Green Valley. And the main point I'd like to make is that we really need to think forward and get ready for really massive shifts in not in just the climate but the ripple effects that's gonna have on the whole world. And that I would heavily wait the need to reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions given the climate emergency that we're in. Really requires paradigm shifts at many levels and many parts of our society. But certainly particularly including transportation, you just really need to get people out of cars, out of single drivers, especially in cars. And to speak to the amount of time it might take, I would say traveling by a train gives you back time because you can have productive time that could be working, that could be sleeping, that could be doing craft projects and things like that. Whereas if you're driving yourself in a car you have to be, at least we would hope, people would be highly alert and just focused on the driving. And our organization Rehanadasion started out with a survey back in 2017, 2018. And when we mentioned the possibility of train service along the coast, people in Watsonville, the majority 75% had never taken any kind of public survey before. People were really amazed and just kind of looked at us. Could that be possible? That would be amazing. So I just wanted to bring in that word from the public. One last thing about a train is the ability to put bikes, a lot of bikes on a train and then use that as a connector piece of transportation would be excellent. Right now the buses do have that option but with only three spaces on a bus for a bike, you don't even know if there's a variety of stops if there'd be room for your bike. So that makes traveling that way difficult. Thank you in support of moving forward with the lecture. Sue Reiner. Sue, we'll come back to her. Johanna Lighthill. Good commissioners, my name's Johanna Lighthill. I'm an outcast resident. I think that there's been too many rail studies. None of the prior studies have educated that there's a need for passenger rail service in our community. In 2019, the UCS determined that the bus on shoulder project would provide a faster north-south commute than rail in 2021. The Transit Corridor of Alternatives Analysis estimated a low rail ridership that more people would use a trail than the train. And most importantly that the bus system would provide more frequent service to more people for less money than rail. Yet despite the bus's advantages, consultants concluded that rail was the locally preferred alternative. So here we are again with another study and I believe that with the same consultants, I do understand that many in our community have interpreted the failed measure, gene measure as an indication that voters want rail. But we should be clear. Voters think that both rail and trail together are available within the corridor because they've been told this previous. But the two together is something that has never been studied. So this is something that does need to be addressed. But commissioners, at what cost? I think we can recognize that there are some critical issues that will determine the feasibility of this project. A few of these include eroding cliffs, easement and rideaway issues, funding and most importantly safety. But it appears that with the current plan and the proposed scope of services listed, many issues won't be addressed until after having spent $26 million or more to develop a plan. The California Public Utilities Commission has jurisdiction over rail safety. Please contact them to see if they'll both fit. Please consider whether you can address critical issues first and then re-evaluate whether it's necessary to spend the significant amount of money in time. Thank you. Thank you so much for your concern. Sue Reiner, for those of you online when it's your opportunity to talk, there should be a prompt that asks you to unmute yourself. All right, we'll try again with Sue. David Dean? My name is David Dean. I live in Live Oak. I would like to express support for building passenger rail or public transit. Is the commission aware of how expensive it is to own a car? The Bureau of Transportation's... Did we lose David? Hello? Oh, there you are. Yes, we can hear you now. Okay. The Bureau of Transportation's statistics tells us that it's risen to over $10,000 a year to own a car. It would appear that Commissioner Koenig is unfamiliar with the costs of car ownership as he is with the cost of public transit. For the record, a metro monthly pass is only $65, not $300. I would encourage commissioners to actually use public transit for a month and understand how difficult it is to get to appointments on time and because traffic impacts buses so badly. The train doesn't suffer these problems because of traffic. Its schedules are dependable. And commuting is only one of the advantages of passenger rail for our community. It would be much better for tourists to come by train than by car. This rail project is also important to me because I will choose train travel regardless of time or expense because it is far more environmentally friendly than air or automobile. It used to be possible to buy an Amtrak to get from Santa Cruz to Chicago if you didn't mind leaving at 5.30 in the morning. This early morning bus has been canceled by Metro. So now the only way to get to a train for travel is to get a ride to either Salinas or San Jose. It is an amazing to have the ability to go from anywhere in the US to then come to Santa Cruz and tourism will definitely be impacted. One last thing is that gadgets that don't use rail are a waste of time and money. They're not public transit. They're just a private capture of our public funds. Thank you. Thank you. John. Hi, I'm John from Santa Cruz Strong Towns. Look us up. I'd like to talk about something that I don't think has been mentioned today and it's the idea that we need an approach that emphasizes resiliency of result over efficiency of execution. So American's obsession with efficiency is a byproduct of the Great Depression in World War II. This was the time where we faced very specific existential threats. So we centralized our economy, our businesses and our government and we rapidly transformed the continent. It was amazing. But now governments tend to cling to this hierarchical model of efficiency, that efficiency is always what we should prioritize. While businesses, of course, have been forced to adapt to flatter operating structures, this has happened for one simple reason, folks, innovation. Efficient systems tend to resist change. The inertia of efficiency overwhelming the painful feedback that spawns innovation. If you resist change in the private sector, you lose ground and people who are willing to change and innovate, they will surpass you. In a bigger sense, this is an application of Darwinianism. Success has never really been survival of the fittest, but survival of the most adaptable. We need to fine tune our systems for efficiency of execution or those systems will lose their adaptability. Or when we fine tune, that's my guy, Jack. I'm reading the Preparatory Marks. They become fragile when we focus on efficiency and they're prone to failure. They're prone to failure because they lack resiliency. A strong kind of approach that recognizes success over the long term, we cannot measure our success through master twos and efficient processes. It will never actually give us the human space outcomes we want. Success is built slowly and incrementally over time. That's all I have to say, thank you. Elizabeth Madrigal. Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I live in the Seabright neighborhood within the city of Santa Cruz. As a car free resident where I need to go and when I'm able to get there, the shift by how much traffic there is on any given day as this ultimately impacts that I'm able to plunge of us. Having the opportunity to take the train throughout our county would greatly benefit countless community members, especially those of us who have no other option but to rely on public transportation. This would personally be a godsend for myself. As I commute to San Francisco twice a week on public transit, which as you can imagine takes quite some time to get there and to get back in the afternoon. Again, I'd just like to reiterate my strength support for building the Syro Emission Passage of Rail without any additional stalling. Thank you. Thank you. Brian Peoples. Hey, this is Brian Peoples with Trailnail. We included a letter that's included in attachment with this which basically highlights Southern California continues to shut down indefinitely their train along the coastline, their existing rail line. And they've actually are now putting together plans and spending millions of dollars to relocate the rail line in line. So the idea of Santa Cruz coming along and putting in a new rail system, brand new rail system, billion dollars along the coast, tearing down historical trestles, capitol trestle, hidden beach, sea scape. It's not gonna happen. And we're wasting time in opening up the Coastal Corridor as a transportation resource which is basically what Guy Preston recommended years ago. Railbank, pull and recycle the rail and use that corridor today as a transportation resource which basically means paid it. You haven't even went to the Coastal Commission and we already know they've already declined walking van Risa upgrades. They've only given us a temporary trail up north. So the idea that we're in the trail, the trestle train tracks go through a federally protected wetland parking slip. There won't be a train going through and for us to continue to misguide the public to think that they're gonna have a train one day that goes 60 miles an hour. Now the biggest obstacle with the Coastal Commission, one of the biggest is beach access. When you have a train going 60 miles an hour through our community, you're gonna need fencing. And so that's gonna prevent people getting to the beach and that's gonna be one of your biggest problems. So please continue to move forward with the trail as soon as possible. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Michael Loick. Thank you. I'm Michael Loick. I live in Felton, California. And I would like to point out that as the planning continues to proceed that you work closely with our other transportation partners such as Santa Cruz Metro to ensure that transfers from the zero emissions system to the Metro for students and staff and faculty to get to the UC Santa Cruz campus to be as seamless and efficient as possible. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sean, Sean, can you hear us? You should be able to unmute yourself. All right, we'll come back to you. Diane D. Yes. Great, I'm a resident of the County area near Santa Cruz and I just wanna point out that as a cal-train commuter for many years up the peninsula over the hill, I enjoyed gliding by traffic all the way up the peninsula to my job and home again with a short walk before and after at both ends, it was wonderful. I could get things done as I sat there on the train watching the people in traffic. I know that costs will go up for this zero emission rail project, so I really hope that you will expedite this process and I know our population is growing and it's gonna keep growing. So we're going to need passenger rail in the future and that's what we should all be thinking about. The population will be way too much for roads only, not to mention the environmental problems with that. We are very, very lucky to own the rail corridor. It's here and we should use it. Many other cities are clamoring to how to figure out to do this without owning the corridor. I like other numerous supporters who have spoken today, urge you to move this along and please don't throw in any other delays. I really appreciate the time to speak. Thank you, bye-bye. Thank you. Sean, can you hear us? Yes, we can hear you. Hello, am I being heard now? Yes, we can hear you. You can go ahead. It's nobody said that this hasn't been studied and there's a need for it. There's segments built in several cities in Watsonville too. You can go and look at it. And I hear a lot of people saying how they know how this is going to be developed, how it's going to end up. There's not going to be stops where it's needed. A lot of expert citizens calling in today who seem to want people to think they know better than the people who are building and funding this. You know, this has been well planned out and it's well funded. And you know, Bright Peoples knows that there is a federal limit on how fast freight can go through the city. Okay, it's nowhere near 50 miles an hour. He knows this. A lot of questions have been brought up today that, you know, if you show up to these meetings, also if you go online, they're available to the public. You're going to see that these questions have been answered. You get people like Supervisor Koenig and Brown and people who will say while there are former freight customers in chambers, there's no customers for freight. We don't have any customers. And then they have to speak up again. Yes, you know, we're here and we're here and we're waiting, you know, for service. Now, if you don't have to build a branch to go over the highway to get to Cabrillo, there's these things called shuttles. Thank you. We have a phone number with the last three digits, 915. Eugenia, can you remember? Oh, yep, we can hear you. Go ahead. Thank you. I did unmute and then I was prompted to unmute. So I apologize for the delay. This is Becky Steinbrunner. I wonder why the community of Davenport is not included in this rail zero emissions passenger rail and trail project. I know that the trail is being funded up in that area, but why are we not including Davenport and the North County areas in the rail? I think that it's important to extend the rail service up to Davenport. It is considered a disadvantaged community. And we do not know what will happen in the future at the CEMEX plant, former CEMEX plant, where the rail goes right to it. It could be developed into a myriad of things. And it should and could be served by passenger rail, as well as the San Vicente Redwood and Pitone Coast. So please amend the project to include Davenport areas. And I want to point out that this rail project is part of the state rail plan and likely can receive some funding. While I'm interested in the glide cars, I think that those could be very good shuttles vehicles for places connecting to Cabrillo College and UCSE if that level of service is needed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Brett Garrett. My name is Brett Garrett. And I appreciate that the rail corridor project has been renamed to allow possibilities of newer technologies other than just electric passenger rail. As most of you know, I've been a long time advocate for personal rapid transit as a possible alternative instead of or in addition to railroad transit. And it fits in with the, I'm sorry, let me say that again. Personal rapid transit can accomplish all of the goals that are stated in the project purpose that is being discussed in this agenda item. In most cases, personal rapid transit can make these goals better than a passenger rail. For example, to improve transit connections to community activity centers supporting the local economy and providing better access between housing and jobs. Personal rapid transit can do that with fewer constraints. It can directly serve community activity centers such as Cabrillo College and downtown Santa Cruz, which passenger rail cannot reach. I am really pleased that the RTC has obtained the website domain named CEPRT.com, which happens to stand for zero emission personal rapid transit. Contrary to popular belief, personal rapid transit does not require removing the railroad tracks. There are ways you can do PRT and keep the railroad tracks using temporal separation to allow PRT most of the time. An occasional freight train could get through by shutting down the PRT overnight, for example. I really want to thank Commissioner Koenig for proposing a light-wise presentation for the RTC. I'm not sure if you can see my Zoom icon, but it shows me sitting in an actual first-generation light-wise vehicle two months ago at the Podcar City Conference in San Jose. Their production vehicle will be a little bit larger than the one shown, but anyway, the technology is not just theoretical. The library is real. They have a test track in Concord, where a new member of the RTC would be invited to experience this technology. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll try Sue Reiner, who will be our last speaker. Sue, can you hear us? Sue? All right, so with that, we will go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the commission for discussion. As far as I am aware, there's no vote on this, but we are able to provide feedback. So we'll start down here. Any discussion, comments, questions? Yeah, Commissioner Brown. I just want to thank the RTC staff and the project development team. Many people have spoken to the need for coordination among different agencies and the complexity of this. And so I want to say that the project development team comprised of all of our local jurisdictions and representatives of the RTC have done a really phenomenal job of pulling together a very concise, what's the term, I can't remember the official term of what this document is, project needs. Thank you. Sorry, there's different terms for everyone, but it's really, it reflects, it's very clear. It resonates, at least for me and with the constituents I speak with about what the needs are. And it reflects an ability to come together to kind of deal with that complexity in a way that will help elicit public, I hope, elicit public engagement about how we move forward, not whether or not we are gonna move forward. Every time this comes to our agenda, we have that conversation and what I'm really looking forward to seeing and was so pleased to see today in the slides and also in the document. We have a timeline now. We have people who are working together who are gonna move this forward. We will come back and have the ability to make decisions as Commissioner Johnson, Alternate Johnson, suggested based on some real information. So I just wanted to say thank you because you all have been very patient with your piece of this. And so I'll leave it there. There's so many things I would say about what we've done and where we're headed. I'm not interested in re-litigating the question. I'm interested in getting us to a plan. So thanks so much for all of your work and leadership, the staff level. Thank you. Commissioner Schifrin? Yes, thank you. I just wanted to talk a little bit about how the need is going to be determined in the study. Normally it's population projections that are taken from AMBAG. One of the realities that local governments are facing now are demands by the state to provide lots and lots of housing units. And there are differences between the population projections and the number of housing units that the jurisdictions that are along the corridor were going to be expected to achieve over the next eight years. So I would hope that the analysis of the need for the passenger rail service would also look at what the potential impacts of the state requirements for additional housing are. They're gonna lead to additional traffic. Since parking requirements have been reduced significantly, they could potentially lead to greater ridership. I just think that to the extent that anybody besides the governor takes some of the legislators take these housing numbers seriously, they need to be incorporated into the thinking about transportation because as we've heard over and over again today, the corridors now, the highway is now being used very extensively. And if these housing projections come to pass, they're gonna be used a whole lot more extensively. And that could affect the need for alternatives such as what's being considered here. Thank you, Commissioner Randy Johnson. Thank you, Chair. First of all, thanks for everybody speaking. Thanks for staff for doing what I consider a job that under pretty difficult circumstances with how sometimes there's splits in the direction of the RTC. I think I heard some encouraging things today. Commissioner Rockin, I wanna thank you for acknowledging that we're gonna be open on this. We're gonna listen to facts. We're gonna make a determination that is based on what's best and what's reasonable and what's factual. And what we heard today on this project and I wanna thank Riley for giving a good presentation was a little bit nebulous. I think because we just don't have all the information, what's the ridership gonna be? And sometimes that's gonna determine how feasible something really is and how realistic is it. The other bit of information, Commissioner Koenig, thank you for sharing how people think. And he mentioned fastest, cheapest, convenience. And that was validated by today. I mean, I think it was a relay that mentioned, I hope somebody rode their bike today. Well, nobody did, did they? And if you lived in Scotts Valley this morning and you looked at the time for me to get to here, it was 28 minutes, but if I took the bus and it gave me three routes, it was an hour and 49 minutes. I made that consideration, I thought about it. I decided to drive my car instead of take the bus. The question becomes is the whole metro scenario that we live through and a much needed agency in our community, is it a cautionary tale? I mean, people here have the opportunity to take metro today but they didn't for the reasons probably Commissioner Koenig mentioned. Now what happens when a passenger rail happens at a great expense and all of a sudden the same sort of ridership situation exists, okay? When you've invested and I, again, we don't have enough detail. When you've invested a lot of money, half a billion, maybe a billion, I don't know what the number is. That's where we need more facts. Now it becomes too big to fail, right? And we keep putting more and more and more and more money into it because we have to, right? So when I think about any sort of feasibility and people kind of poo poo the whole idea of self-interest and so forth, what do you think the taxpayers do? I'm just looking at this round of tax measures that's coming before us in March. Live Oak Elementary Bond, Pacific Elementary School District Bond, Pacific Elementary Bond, County of Santa Cruz Sales and Tax Use, City of Santa Cruz Sales and Tax. And one that's very important and one that would have been appreciated by my parents who lived in Watsonville for 15 years was how do you benefit the community, Watsonville Community Hospital? Well, Pajaro Valley Health District is proposing a $116 million bond. So things like this, rail is in competition with a lot of different entities. It could be school districts, it could be the county, it could be various cities and they're gonna make hard-nosed decisions based on their personal belief whether or not this measure which has to come before the voters is actually worth it. So do we think of things like self-interest? Yeah, I represent a city of Scotts Valley. If you look at the original Measure D, they had a little, I guess, image and on Measure D, there was no train, there was a car, a bicycle, somebody pushing a stroller, somebody running and somebody carrying a surfboard. So sometimes, and what happens is that we try and attribute that the past or the defeat of the last Measure D was somehow a way of saying, no, everybody wants a train, that's not quite true. That's an interpretation, but it's not really true. So I'm more than willing to accept this and move forward. And to me, it's worth the millions of dollars that we're gonna spend here to root out whether or not this makes sense. But I can assure you that the taxpayers of this county, once it starts coming forward like anything else, will pay particular attention to how much it's costing them and how it benefits them. So I would never discount that kind of arrangements in the taxpayers and the citizens of this county's mind. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Commissioner Rockin. Well, this meeting runs on forever and will run on longer for my comments. I'll make them very brief. We have to look not to what's going on right now, but there's some people in the audience that said earlier to the future. So just to go pointedly at Randy on this, the decision you made today about driving on the road versus taking the bus, some smart decision. I mean, you know, I made a decision to get a carpool ride down here and stuff rather than taking the bus. But does anybody in this room think that given the growth plans for this county, the 10 years from now that the same ratio is gonna exist between how long it takes to drive your car on highway one and a train that's not in traffic, we have to be planning for the future. And that's what this is about. I'll stand by my earlier comments. The train may not be the way to go. It may turn out to be too expensive and so forth. But there's probably not a person in this county who wouldn't kill for a five cent tax, that would get them from Santa Cruz to Watsonville faster than what's happening now. And more importantly, what will that question look like in the future? It'll be, you won't have that same ratio. It'll be quicker to take public transit. And it'll be certainly quicker to take an alternative public transit that's not in traffic. Thank you. Commissioner Peterson. I just wanted to make a quick comment when the public is deciding which transportation mode to utilize and weigh in those options. There are three categories mentioned, but I don't think those are fair comparisons to a train because as one of the commenters here today said, a train is a unique means of travel where it is an enjoyable experience where you can get work done, where you can talk and relax. It is almost like gaining that commute time back into usable time where none of the other options presented offer that same means. So I think that's just gonna be really important to everybody, including myself, to take into consideration that it's not just speed or convenience, but it's quality of the time being spent. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I will just make some brief comments so that we can move on with today's agenda. And I wanna share this information because I am hearing a lot of concerns about what we don't know and those are legitimate concerns, what isn't included, but I think I wanna point out a reminder that this document, this project purpose and need statement is not designed, not meant to contain all of our answers, but the project concept report is meant to answer quite a lot of our questions. And so as a reminder, from the agenda report, when we approved the project concept report, the entire report that we're expecting in winter 24, this coming winter, early 2025, is designed to include definition and purpose of need statement, which we're starting with today. This is just the beginning. Analysis of rail transit vehicle technology and performance requirements, ridership and revenue forecasts, evaluation of existing infrastructure, environmental screening, geotechnical review, safety assessment, development of the rail and trail alignment, the station layover and maintenance facilities, operation modeling and equipment plan, cost estimates for both capital and operation slash maintenance and risk analysis for the process. And staff can keep me honest if any of that has changed. So we do have answers forthcoming. I know that we want all the answers right now and anytime we see any portion of the project concept report, we think, well, why isn't answering all our questions? Well, this is just the beginning, we're just getting started. So there's lots of information yet to come. All right, I appreciate everyone who provided public comments today and the commissioners for their comments as well. Yesenia? I'm sorry, Chair Brown. We have Commissioner Giddelson who is now sitting in for commissioner Fernandez who has her hand raised. Oh, okay, sure. Commission alternate Giddelson, do you have a comment? I do. There you go. Hi, I'm Judy Giddelson. I am away on family emergency. I'm acting as Felipe's alternate. And as a Watsonville resident, I just want to say the support is there, obviously today or by the number of people that voted to retain the tracks as well. Thank you Riley for a great presentation. And I want to encourage us to expedite this passenger rail. We kind of have to put it in to prove the ridership almost and change the mindset of people. Once it becomes a dedicated rail line that is there, it will be much more used. It's so reliable to have it, not beholden to traffic. And as so many people said, the population is tremendously growing and we can't anticipate how that's going to impact the highway and transportation. But I just think it's a really great opportunity and I appreciate everyone's support that spoke in favor of it today. And I hope we can realize this more rapidly than the timeline. So thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. Thank you again to the members of the public that spoke today and for the commissioners for this discussion. We'll move on now to item 28, Climate Adaptation Vulnerability Assessment and Priorities Report, milestone one prioritization framework. And we will go to the staff report. Ms. Goodman, hello. Can you hear me? Perfect. Good afternoon commissioners. Brianna Goodman of your staff. I'm before you today to present the project framework developed for the Santa Cruz County Climate Adaptation Vulnerability Assessment or CAVA. It's been a long meeting already so I will attempt to cover the last six months of work as succinctly as possible. Slide, please. Already it was. I will begin with a brief project overview and then present some findings from our first round of outreach and then pass things to our consultant team to go over the framework itself and next steps. Slide. RTC is partnering with the County of Santa Cruz for this effort with their departments for planning and public works, as well as the Office of Response Recovery and Resiliency, collaborating as members of the CAVA project team. WSP and Ecology Action join us as our consultants. Slide. As we all know, natural disasters such as extreme storms and wildfire are already impacting our county transportation system. These hazard events will continue to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change. State and federal efforts are underway to attempt to get ahead of these events by proactively designing transportation, redesigning transportation assets such as bridges, redways, and drainage to adapt to the future conditions of a change climate. Slide, please. In order to effectively carry out these adaptation and resilience efforts with finite funding, transportation assets must be adapted in priority order. Since transportation agencies love acronyms, Caltrans has adopted the National Fear Not Network, F-E-A-R-N-A-H-T. The CAVA project will cover steps five through seven of this framework, understanding the climate hazards and threats, understanding the impacts and determining vulnerability and prioritizing. Next slide, please. This involves using the latest climate change modeling science to determine when, where, and how transportation assets will be impacted, developing transportation metrics and utilizing these metrics to develop a prioritized list of transportation assets which will be further analyzed to determine adaptation and resilience reconstruction opportunities, utilizing the new state and federal climate adaptation funding. Slide. In order to develop prioritization metrics in line with the needs of the communities of Santa Cruz County, feedback was solicited across a broad range of mediums as listed on the slide. Particular effort was made to reach residents living in unincorporated areas most severely impacted by recent natural disasters such as the San Lorenzo Valley and the flood panes of South County. Slide. I will now briefly run through some charts summarizing input received from the public via the online survey and the public workshops. These charts are also included in your packet as attachment too. Here you can see a majority of our responses came from either North County around the San Lorenzo Valley in green or unincorporated South County in orange. Slide. Folks were asked to identify what might impact their ability to respond in a climate hazard emergency such as their ability to evacuate or shelter in place. A majority indicated they would have no issues responding. 57.9%. Slide. Thank you. However, looking to where in the county those folks live you can see clearly those who reside in areas most recently impacted by climate hazards are less likely to say they have no concerns about being able to respond in an emergency. Santa Lorenzo Valley communities and the cities of Watsonville and Capitola are right down there at the bottom. Slide. In the next few slides we have broken down the data into three groups, sorry, four groups. Gray for all responses, blue for responses outside of city limits so unincorporated county. Green for communities around the San Lorenzo Valley and orange for South County unincorporated areas. As you can see extreme wind events causing falling trees and down power lines were indicated the most frequently followed by slope failure such as washouts and landslides and wildfire. Slide. These climate hazard events had major impacts. Longer travel times were the most frequent but being completely unable to leave one's home and being unable to access food were also near the top. Slide. Most of these impacts lasted only a few days. However, nearly a quarter, 23% of all responses indicated the impact of the travel from the event is still ongoing. Slide. Thanks. When asked which hazards under consideration in the COVA were most important folks again indicated extreme wind, slope failure and wildfire but interestingly not in the same order. Slide, thanks. For most types of hazards frequency of experiencing at first hand and frequency of indicating the hazard was important track more or less proportionally the green versus the orange that are adjacent to each other. Wildfire is the exception. It is the number one concern in spite of being experienced by less than 19% of those who provided feedback during milestone one. Slide. Slide. During stakeholder and focus group meetings sort of pattern began to emerge in the conversations. That is that there are two different realms of concern when it comes to the impacts on our transportation system of climate change accelerated natural disasters. First, how we respond in the moment such as our ability to evacuate, access medical attention or be reunited with our families. The other realm involved what happens in the days and weeks afterwards how it impacts our daily commute or the local economy. The top metrics identified during outreach interestingly enough, I believe, form the overlap of that Venn diagram as they effectively speak to both the in the moment impacts and those which can linger long after the danger has passed. And now I would like to introduce our project manager from WSP Incorporated, Tim Gross. Tim will be taking us through the framework development itself as well as the next steps of the CAVA project. Thank you. Yeah, thanks commissioners. All right, so in terms of just diving right into how the project over the project framework was developed, it was created to align with industry best practices, as well as selection criteria for a lot of the grant funding that's becoming available at the state and federal levels for resilience. It was informed by data availability, so what data sets were available across the study area in a comprehensive manner. And then it was modified to align with input we received from community members and key stakeholders. Next slide. The asset classes that are covered are listed here, so for the unincorporated county roadway network that includes roadway segments, including any associated bicycle infrastructure, culverts and bridges, and then the branch rail line in any railway segments and associated trails that are existing or planned, as well as culverts and bridges along the railway. We're considering a wide variety of hazards shown on the next slide. Those include coastal flooding and erosion and the effects that sea level rise has on those hazards, riverine and other inland flooding, debris flow, slope failure and landslides, extreme wind and wildfire direct impacts. I use that to distinguish it from the impacts that it has on riverine flooding and debris flow. And the next slide. So the project framework consists of prioritizing different assets and assigning them prioritization scores based on the order in which they should be further addressed. That framework incorporates data related to hazard likelihood, so the probability that these assets will be affected adversely by the hazards and consequence, the degree to which that impact affects the broader transportation system and the people who depend on it. We create prioritization scores ranging from zero to 100, 100 being the highest priority and zero being the lowest priority. And those are based on those metrics that Brianna mentioned that capture both likelihood and consequence data. And the end product will be a set of priority lists for each of those asset classes that I mentioned a few slides ago, so for example, county bridges or railway segments, et cetera. On the next two slides, I'll just walk you through an example of how those scores are put together. This, for example, will take a roadway segment. Okay, this is one of the seven hazards that we're looking at, riverine flood risk. So we take metrics related to likelihood, those are shown in green here, so projected heavy rainfall at the asset location, both now and in the future, projected wildfire severity, both now and in the future at the asset location and other likelihood metrics. We weight those based on the relative importance and combine them together into a likelihood score which ranges from zero to 10. We do the same thing for consequence related metrics, so whether something is within or nearby a disadvantaged community, it's relative traffic volume. And we come up with a consequence score from zero to 10. We multiply the likelihood and consequence score together to come up with a riverine flood risk score. And on the next slide, you'll see this process is repeated for all the hazards. Those all get combined and averaged together to come up with an overall prioritization score. And the end product looks something like this. On the next slide, which is a table where the rows correspond with different assets and it'll be sorted in descending order according to that prioritization score. We'll represent this information visually on a set of maps and these lists will inform where action is needed first and it'll be an important piece of supporting information to go after funding at the project level to address these issues. Next slide. Just to wrap up in terms of next steps, we're ending the first of our three public engagement milestones. Today we ask for your input and approval of the project framework. We'll then embark on milestone two which is developing these draft prioritization lists. And we'll take that to the public in late spring, early summer and be back here for approval in August. And then we'll develop the final report and wrap that up late 2024, early 2025. And that's all we had. Thank you very much and happy to take questions. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah, Commissioner Rottkin. I understand the idea of looking at how, because funders are concerned about it, how close to disadvantaged communities, various kinds of areas are in getting points in effect, raising their priority if that's the case. It makes sense if you're talking about county roads, it makes sense about flooding areas like in Pajaro and so forth. I don't know how it makes any sense at all in relation to a railroad. If the railroad goes out on the Selva Beach, which is a wealthier community, people of Pajaro are as deeply affected as if the rail line breaks, a block from them or something. So I'm wondering how you're handling, because it's not our whole portfolio, but the corridor and repairs are a big piece of what we do. And I just don't think that criteria makes any sense in relation to the rail. Am I missing something here? A couple of comments there. I mean, I think one of them is that the, we'll want to consider access to disadvantaged communities, not just if an asset's physically within the community. So if it's providing an access to a community, it would get prioritized as well. And then- It'd get prioritized in, let's say, Aptos or somewhere because it affects Pajaro. Potentially, yes, yep. And then also, like we are looking at some of the trails as well. So if there were local users in those communities out of those trails. I think that triggered me, because one of the things that you guys get to realize in the commission is we only have, in South County, we only have one piece of the railroad tracks. All the investments have been in North County. Good or bad, that's what it is. So I get to your question is funding in these parameters. We've delayed, we have funding for one piece and we've delayed it because a lot of issues. But lack of investment, if you just go out right here on Walker, you can see all the rail going through the streets and shambles. And we keep asking about who it's at our priority or it's at the rail line priority. I can't get a good answer. That tells you that we are not a priority. As a disadvantaged community, we are not a priority through the commission. Thank you. Commissioner Johnson. Thank you. In regards to you investigating or looking at the entire rail line along the coastal zone, are you engaging with Coastal Commission staff at all in that discussion? That's the first question. I assume you're gonna be looking at all of the vulnerabilities in the entire line along the coastal zone. That's a question I'm, it looks like it's listed and that's correct. Yes. But so if that is correct, then would it make sense to engage at all or discuss with the Coastal Commission staff given their long history of priorities of managed retreat and that kind of thing? So we will look at the entire segment and we will consider what the Coastal Commission's guidance is in terms of what sea level rise scenario is to look at. In this project that we won't get into what to do to address those issues. I don't think that we'll have direct engagement with the Coastal Commission. Yes. So but you're gonna seek some feedback as to at least ask them what they think of your vulnerability assessment based on the data that you've gathered. I think that could be a possibility. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Brown. I would echo that point that Commissioner Jenny Johnson just made. One of the things that I've noticed in following Coastal Commission discussions and also in the efforts to get the work done to approve segment five, the North Coast section of the rail trail segment. It feels to me that having those conversations with the Coastal Commission earlier, I mean it's one thing to look at their written guidance but to really get a sense of where the staff is coming from is super helpful. And to do that early and often to communicate with them. And I recognize this is a framework but it probably would be worth running it by them and just getting some initial feedback about the direction and any kind of concerns they might have because often what happens it feels is that an issue comes before the Coastal Commission and it's like it gets delayed or there's something happens where it could have been resolved earlier on in the process. So I just think it's very important to do that. I also wanted to ask just in terms of the framework kind of responding to Commissioner Rotkin's point as these ask, I'm trying to think about how it would be used, right? I know it's a development of a framework but the point is that it's gonna be used for making decisions about what gets prioritized. And it makes sense to me in the case of roadways where particular block or series of blocks between intersections may not be the priority for repair or improvement, there are alternative routes with a rail line if one of those segments is not prioritized. And I think that gets back to the point that Commissioner Montesino is making. One isn't prioritized, none of it works in the end. Now with respect to the trail, it will work when people are going shorter distances but the point of is just, I guess I'm just trying to understand how that would be operationalized. If one segment's not a priority, what does that mean for the rest? I don't know if that makes sense. Thanks. Yeah, I think that makes it more important to look at sort of the hazard likelihood along the different portions of the railway. So what's most susceptible? What are the weakest lengths in terms of these types of hazards and are there ways that that could be helped or mitigated? Typical detour time, oh, sorry, I'm usually so loud, I figure you could hear me. Typical detour time and length is one of the consequence metrics and obviously if you have to go off of the rail line and find an alternate way to get around through that point, that's gonna become a much larger number so that will be captured there. All right, I just have two brief questions. So basically what you're saying is that we are looking at the segments of the rail line that are most susceptible to experiencing the kind of damage that would impact the entire rail line. Correct? Correct. Okay, and then so I was contacted by some residents recently about like a large drainage pipe that runs into a ditch and sea cliff and it's eroding back further and further towards the rail line and eventually will likely reach the rail line and so their question to me in looking at today's agenda was when are we gonna see a list of what's being prioritized? And so if I'm understanding correctly in the staff report, this spring or the summer rather, we're, it's gonna come back to the commission for us to actually see a list of the prioritized areas that are most likely to be susceptible to this kind of damage. Is that in summary? That's correct. Okay, great, thank you. Okay, if there's no additional commissioner questions, we'll take this out to public comment. We'll start with those in the room. Hi, welcome. Thank you, David Schwartz. So I'm listening to this and I'm thinking and I'm looking at the pictures and I'm thinking first of all, we need to look at what we can control and what we can't control. One of the things that we can control is how water flows if we build things correctly. And I noticed just this last storm that our brand new work on Highway One is flooded. Why? Why aren't we putting in the infrastructure to drain that water? The many of these hilly locations where the roads wash out, that's from the water. So what happens with all of these things? They tend to join up together. Like when water is coming from the sky and then you have heavy rains for a length of time and everything gets saturated and then the wind picks up, then you got all kinds of things falling all over the place but we're back to where the water's flowing for the wind to have an impact. So when those trees fall across the road and nobody can get by anything, then we have to do something. But if you look, you look at even in the pictures that were there, there's large drainage ditches there where the water's going around them. Why are they doing that? So not only do we need to look at what we can and we cannot do, we need to be more proactive. We need to be making sure that our plans allow for proper drainage. Now I drive a lot of the back country roads and many of them are dumbed in the middle, which means the water runs both directions. But one side might be an uphill side. Where's it gonna go from there? There are ways that we can put in after the fact, we can drill and put drainage in places that won't take a whole lot of tearing up the roads to do that. There are ways that we can do something about that. And I think we need to look at that very closely. Thank you very much. Thank you. Additional comments and chambers. Saying none, do we have any comments online? Give me one second commissioner. Sure. Mr. Bryan Peoples. Yes, hi, this is Bryan Peoples with Trail Narrow. Really appreciate the work of this project. I think we should have had this a long time ago. And I think it really is telling of the risks that our community has for transportation system. I want to remind us that we have really three main corridors that are key for transportation across the highway one, so Caldera and freedom there. And the coastal corridor, all of them need to be open. And dealing with the climate has to be part of that equation. And we have to understand what is smart and best. And this kind of analysis will help us with that. So I appreciate the work you're doing on this. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Not that I can see. Mr. Barry Scott. Okay, thank you very much for this important presentation and this effort. The climate adaptation vulnerability assessment effort is a, we're dealing with an existential challenge and we're in a community of a county that is exceedingly threatened by and limited with just one highway and, you know, so come drive as our ways in and out. And I think the, this topic underscores the importance of the passenger rail project and the rail line itself. I mean, after all, we're looking at the two, the two ways in and out every day but also under emergency conditions. So the intersection of this topic and the prior topic can't be overstated. I look forward to more work on these evaluations and these assessments. And I believe that a well-written plans in responding to the CABA process is going to help us to qualify for the kinds of loans we're going to need for infrastructure, for rail infrastructure, for emergency and resiliency grants. And again, I want to remind folks that the Coastal Commission permitted armoring at Davenport of the Bluffs because of the rail line, specifically because the rail line was there and Mr. Kreston explained to them that it was a technically active rail line that for which we have plans, then the Coastal Commission waived their prohibition of armoring at the Bluffs. So we need to keep the rail line and we need to have it in our arsenal of ways to respond to climate change. Thank you. Thank you. Sean. Sean, can you hear us? I have a few questions about major processes and things happening to do with systems in Watsonville and what's going to affect the people of Watsonville are often, are often had by people who talk around the people of Watsonville and nobody knows better what Watsonville needs than the people of Watsonville. And they have been a good example in the county of how to prioritize the needs of children and the needs of women and the needs of elders. Now, children and women and elders of color pay the highest price for climate change, both the price and the bad effects. And people talk around us as if, as if somehow, they're devaluing Mexican Americans and indigenous Mexicans. But, you know, also helped build the railroad is indigenous Mexicans like my grandfather. They'll also work double shifts in the brown house during World War II. And now the America that they're building is all of you. They prepare all of our food. They produce our crops, you know, and then they capture those products and process them. You all have, you all owe them the best that you can give them, because they've given you your best, your best. Thank you. Any additional public comment? That was our last speaker. Okay, and I think there was some question about whether or not a commission alternate Gettison was trying to speak. What did she have? She doesn't have her hand up right now. Just making sure, okay. All right, well, we will bring it back to the commission for further discussion. Sorry, no, I was not trying to speak. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to make sure no one was being left out who might want to comment. Thank you very much, thanks very much. So I don't believe we have a vote on this item either, but it's just to provide input. Oh, it is, it is to approve, to provide input and approve. So if there's further discussion or else we're gonna entertain a motion. Move approval of the Cava. All right, we have a motion and a second. And so can we have a roll call vote, please? Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Commission. Commissioner Randy Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Commissioner alternate Gettison. Commissioner Gettison. Commission alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner alternate Quinn. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner alternate Jenny Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Aye. Commissioner alternate Pegler. Aye. And Commissioner Rothken. Aye. And that passes unanimously. All right, thank you. We'll move on to our final item on today's agenda, 29, Highway 1 State Park Freedom Auxiliary Lanes, Bus on Shoulder and Coastal Rail Trail Segment 12, Project Amendment to Professional Engineering Services Agreement TP2122. We'll go to staff. We have Sarah Christensen. Thank you, Chair Brown. And if it's okay, I would like to give this presentation from where I'm at now. Yes, absolutely. Say put, okay. Thank you. Today's item is to recommend a amendment to Professional Engineering Services Contract with our design consultant for additional scope and adding budget to that contract due to some changes to the scope of work for the project. We do have a handout for this item, which is on our website and it's the public comment received on the item. Next slide, please. So today, the presentation here's an agenda. I'm gonna give a real quick update on the project, the status and where we're at today, review the proposed changes to the scope of work, a lot of which is focused around the Aptos Creek Bridge on the north side of Aptos Village. Review the staff recommendation and then there will be time for questions and discussion. Next slide, please. So project location, there's many components to this project. There's components on Highway One, which include bus on shoulder facility and auxiliary lane facility. There's widening of the Highway One bridge over Aptos Creek and there is the Coastal Rail Trail Segment 12, which is about a mile and a quarter of Coastal Rail Trail that goes through Aptos Village between State Park and Rio del Mar along the branch line. Here's the project schedule. We are just about midway through the final design process. Environmental is complete and we are starting on the right of way activities, which will go over the course of the next year and a half or so with construction plan for 2026 and that's pending availability of full funding for construction, which we're still working on. Next slide. So the main change to the scope is structure related. There's the Aptos Creek Soak Health Drive, bicycle pedestrian over crossing that I mentioned. We are looking at changing that bridge from a three span bridge to a single span and the reason for that is we uncovered some underground utilities that conflicted with where one of our columns was gonna go and the project development team reviewed and is recommending to go with a single span structure to avoid utility relocations for various reasons and then we are gearing up for the next round of applying for Senate Bill 1 funds for the project and we need a little bit more grant application support and we have an exciting proposal that we have been working on, staff's been working on, which is to extend the bus on shoulder facility, which I'll talk a little bit more about today. Next slide. This is the location of the Coastal Rail Trail Bridge over Aptos Creek and Soquel Drive. You could go next slide. So there's two options. I mentioned single span. There are pretty limited options when you look at a single span bridge and the Tide Arch, which is the one on the left is shown as obviously a more visual statement than the Stress Ribbon, the Stress Ribbon Bridge is the same type of bridge as the Arana Gulch Bridge. Staff prepared a video and is soliciting input on what the community prefers between these two options and I'm just gonna go through real quick and show you some of these renderings that our consultants put together and this is obviously an important decision for this community, especially those who are in close proximity to this area. This is a big opportunity for the community to provide input on what they desire and I would just like to make it very clear, going from a multi-span bridge to a single span bridge, it is more expensive, but between the two bridges, they are identical in terms of the construction costs, the design cost and the width of the bridge is the same, the railings will be the same and so really the only thing that we are wanting to input on is it's really a question of visual aesthetics. Next slide. So the tight arch bridge, the bridge is supported by vertical arches that are about 300 feet long with cables that come down and support the deck and this bridge at its highest point is about 50 feet tall so it's obviously going to be a big visual statement. Next slide. Just want to show a couple angles. This is, you know, if you're walking across this is what it would look like. Next slide. Here's a view from Soquel Drive, the road kind of coming, looping up and around is Soquel Drive going towards say the Rancho Shopping Center. So it would go right next to the railroad bridge and be visible from virtually all angles. Next slide. And next, the stress ribbon is more of a low profile bridge. The type of bridge is, it's like a cables that are strung across the creek and then the deck is resting on top of those cables and it is a unique type of bridge in that there is a very slight sag to it. I hate to be out of order and ask a silly question but that's right at the entrance and I see marks, there's going to be a ton of cycle traffic on that bridge. And out of that it packs the design and or putting a divider in there. Okay, thank you Commissioner Quinn. Next slide please. This is what it would look like in terms of width, you know, the striping could be obviously a little bit different in the final configuration. Next slide. And in comparison to the tight arch bridge this is much more low profile. Go to the next slide please. So we have a QR code here on the screen for those who are joining us virtually or commissioners if you want to snap that QR code it will take you to a survey. We've actually received 750 participants already which is amazing. And we still have the survey open through the end of next week. So February 9th is our deadline to participate. Next slide. So next I'm going to talk about this exciting proposal to extend the Busson Shoulder Facility. As you are aware, we have a program of projects along Highway 1 that is proposing about an eight mile long facility between Freedom Boulevard and Morrissey Boulevard along Highway 1 in both directions. Next slide. There's a opportunity to potentially add Busson Shoulder elements from Freedom Boulevard which is where our current project ends all the way to the Bonavis to interchange. And it would be in both directions on the outside similar to the configuration that we have. Next slide please. Just want to cover a couple more things. So it would extend our eight mile facility an additional three miles for a total of an 11 mile facility towards the south, towards Watsonville. It would, the configuration is what the community and some commissioners are calling a true Busson Shoulder. So it's not the hybrid auxiliary lane Busson Shoulder configuration. This would utilize the existing shoulders on the outside. And it would require an update to the concept of operations for Busson Shoulder. But this could be a really huge benefit to Metro and their cross-county routes. And so staff has been very diligently pursuing this proposal. Next slide. And finally, the staff recommendation is for the RTC to authorize amendment four to contract TP2122 with Mark Thomas, our design consultant in the amount of $1,299,972. And that would bring the knot to exceed total contract value to $13,728,717 for this project. And that concludes my staff report. And we're available for comments and questions. Thank you. Thank you. We'll start with commissioner questions. Down on this end, questions. Commissioner Johnson. What's the difference in cost of the two bridges? Zero. All right. Commissioner Peterson. Thank you. I know you said the cost is the same and the bridges are the same. But I wonder, is there any difference in like long-term durability or like how like an earthquake might impact it or things like that? From a structural standpoint, both bridges will be adequate, the same. Those will be the same. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Schifrin. Yes, I had a question about the environmental review of the EIR for the current project. How would, as I understand it, the final EIR is about to come out for the highway widening in segment 12, is that correct? It's out. It was really, I think last week. It's already been out? Correct. So what does it mean to add a bush and shoulder from freedom to Buena Vista? I understand it would increase the cost, but would it be a separate project for environmental review? Yes. So in a sense, it's not really part of this project. It's a different project that would have to go through a normal environmental review process and there'd be more information on design. I think there's some concern that this has sort of been dropped down suddenly onto the agenda as part of, making it seem like it's part of that freedom, state park drive to freedom, but it really isn't. It really is a separate project that would have to, which is just starting. And in a way, I guess you're asking whether there'd be any commission objection to starting the process to examine that bus on shoulder extension. Just isn't really clear from the staff report what's going on here. At this time, staff is only seeking essentially changes to the scope, slight changes to the scope to update the concept of operation. So that's an addition to the scope of work for the contract because the consultant that we have on board includes the traffic, engineering consultant who prepared the concept of operations, who's been helping us develop this concept of operations all the way since 2018 when we started working on it. And so this is really transparency and informing the commission and the public that this concept of operations we're proposing that we update it. And you're correct in that this would be a separate project and we've got some work to do. We're pretty early on. This has just been a proposal by staff and Caltrans has to approve a lot of things before it actually comes to fruition. So really what we want to at least start on is looking at that concept of operations and seeing what it would take to potentially add these three miles to our facility. Thank you. If I'm understanding it correctly, that's helpful. But I think it might have been preferable to have a separate item on this since it is gonna be a separate project that's just being initiated. And while it's related to this, as I understand it because of the analysis and what's being called a concept of operations as an addition to the as far as the segment 12 State Parks to Freedom Boulevard it's a different project. I know there is even some concerns about whether it's appropriately considered as a part of Measure D or whether it would require an amendment to Measure D. I think it may be helpful to have a separate item to really discuss this. And for the commission to have a better understanding about what's actually being proposed. Particularly have any objection to it? It's just process-wise I have some concerns. Well taken, we can definitely provide updates as we go along through the development and approval process with Caltrans. Thank you. Additional questions on this end? Yes, Commissioner Montesino. So, but if it's a separate item as stated as a questionnaire that that gives us less chances to be able to fund it through one of the programs or... So just to clarify both Commissioner Alternate Shiffrin and Montesino's concerns about funding the original expenditure plan for Measure D included very specific projects in 2020 this commission amended the expenditure plan to add bus on shoulder to the expenditure plan in a more explicit manner. So that was done in 2020. And in terms of costs, we don't have estimated costs. The improvements have not been designed. They have not been approved. And we have been in conversations with Metro staff as well about potentially partnering on the funding. So the funding for this future improvement is not identified yet. But it is an exciting possibility because what we find in the project delivery world and it's very beneficial to the public when there's an existing project that's being developed and scope of work gets added to that project instead of having say a project and then another project. Five years later. I mean, the community has to go through construction twice instead of once. There's a lot of value in the soft costs associated with just putting a project out to bid. I mean, there's a lot of work that goes in and funding and so there's a lot of value from a cost and schedule standpoint. So this project, if we're successful and we can bring everybody into agreement could start construction as soon as 2025 and that's pretty darn quick in terms of how projects are normally delivered. Thank you. You're welcome. If I could just jump in real quick. Sarah, can you speak to the Caltrans projects that are going on there and kind of why we might be able to get this done quicker? Yeah, so they're actually in the design phase for this project. It's a safety project. It's in their state highway operation protection program their shop program. And our proposal is essentially to add specific improvements just for bus on shoulder. So pavement markings and signage that are specific to bus on shoulder. And hopefully ideally we have it done before they advertise for construction bids which is later this year is what they're scheduled to do. And there's other opportunities you could do it during construction. It's a little messier that way, but that's really kind of the landscape that we're looking at in terms of where that project is and whether we could pull this off to that. Yeah, that's what we're really getting at. If Caltrans is out there and gonna plan on doing some work can we piggyback on the fact that they're out there to get a large benefit for the community for what's relatively a small cost and much less time than we would be spending if we were starting this from scratch by ourselves. As Sarah mentioned, it's not a slam dunk. Caltrans is a big shift going in one direction and we're wanting them to make a little bit of change after they've left port and they kind of think they've already got their path. So we're working to push them to make that change because we realize there's a benefit to the public not to have those being done at the same time. There's a benefit to taxpayers that we can do it more efficiently, but that may mean they have to make some adjustments and slow some things down too. So we've had a couple of meetings on that already, but that's the reason that we're not coming up with this as a completely standalone thing. It doesn't matter if we do it this year or next year or the year after. We're trying to piggyback on what they're already out there going to be doing. Commissioner Rutkin. I'm a little conflicted on this because on the one hand I love the idea of just grabbing it and moving ahead and stuff and appreciate the staff taking that attitude. I mean, it's what the public certainly wants out of us. At the same time, Andy's points are worth considering. People do need to understand what we're up to. So it comes down to me to one kind of question. It's not obvious to me that time is saved. I'm on the transit district. If I have any sense that it's going to make the buses go faster, I'm for it. But has anything study been done, anything to suggest? It's not a particularly congested part of Highway 1, at least is from what I can tell. Things back up to there from Soquel Avenue and whatever. So the question is, do we have any data that indicates that doing this, it's not free, that doing this would actually speed up the time in the busking to travel that extra little through that space? So we don't have data per se prepared right now. This was a proposal by Metro staff originally. We've been talking about it for quite some time. And what we've seen is the backup is actually all the way to Buena Vista at this point. And whether that's potentially construction traffic or if that is here to stay. Just having the facility, if it's just signage and striping, it's really a very cost effective way that even if there's just an incident, one day a week on Highway 1, there's still some value there. And so, although we don't have all of our ducks in a row from a traffic modeling standpoint for travel times, we still see a lot of value in this proposal. Well, I don't think we're trying to be sneaky. I think we're trying to be effective. So I'm basically supportive of it. I want to say on the bridge issue, I think it's fine to have the public that lives nearby make the aesthetic decision. Both bridges seem attractive. And I like one that I like better, but I don't think I should be the one that would make that decision. It's not, I don't see it every day, but I think that's great that the two bridge alternatives, I think are both fine. Commissioner Koenig. Thank you, Chair. I want to say just how incredibly excited I am to see this proposal. So as has been said, the traffic does back up to at least Mar Monte Avenue, if not Buena Vista. So I think that this absolutely will help the bus save time. And the fact that our staff, Metro staff, Caltran staff is all thinking creatively about how to get a true bus on shoulder facility constructed faster is fantastic. I mean, it's going to come right in line with this time period when we're seeing $148 million of state and federal investment in our Metro system. 57 new hydrogen buses expanding just the frequency of all of our bus routes. I mean, if we can get this done in the 25, 26 timeframe when the Metro will be free, that's what we're working on right now on the Metro board. And hopefully should start later this year. I mean, this could be a complete game changer. And I think it's also extremely important that, I know Caltrans has some reservations about the bus running in the shoulder. And of course it's also an emergency pull off facility. If we can start to work out some of those issues now with this project, I think it'll also bode well for our ability to continue moving that facility forward and further into other areas that we are also heavily impacted by congestion throughout Aptos and Live Oak. So kudos to everyone working on this. I'm a very enthusiastic supporter and I think this is gonna be a huge benefit to our community. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, I just have some brief questions. Yeah, I'm excited about this as well. I feel like this would be a really big deal for specifically the 90X route on Metro that runs directly from Watsonville into Mid County. I do have a couple of questions just to make sure that I understand. So the bus on shoulder concept of operations report was before my time on the RTC. I think it was in 2019. And so any updates? Would we be receiving a report on those updates? Would we get a presentation, a chance to vote on them, anything like that? We could definitely do that. It's not a document that has been formally adopted or approved. It's meant to be more of a living document as the operation of the facility, the needs could change. And that's kind of how we've been operating. We have a document from 2019 that hasn't been updated to date because we don't have an operational facility yet. So this is our first time kind of doing an update. And we could definitely bring the draft. And if the commission wants to adopt it or we could definitely bring that information forward. That would be great. I would really appreciate that. And then will the update be done before Caltran says, yes, we're gonna bring this project under our project that we're already doing or do we need to wait for them to approve and then we update our document? It would be somewhat of a concurrent everything at once process because we have to develop kind of the concept collaboratively with Caltrans and make sure that we're on the right track. But it would be kind of, it would be concurrent. Okay. And then it says that if we could anticipate the construction would begin in around 2025 then I'm assuming that it makes sense that these updates and all this work with Caltrans and it coming back to the commission would be this year. Most likely, yes. Okay. I think, oh, within the staff report it mentioned that there's no fiscal impact to all of this because we're reallocating funds from other projects. What were those other projects? So the reallocation. So there's several changes to the scope that happened. There was the bridge work, the grant work and the bus on shoulder work. So we have come under budget on some tasks within the same contract and have reallocated all of that to these efforts but there's still this almost $2.3 million amendment to, that's obviously in front of you today for approval. The fiscal impacts to the project, there's no new fiscal impacts because of just changes to the schedule and changes to as you are developing projects, costs sometimes go up and sometimes they go down and lucky for us, some of our rideaway costs associated with purchasing during the advanced acquisitions of a few properties that we did last year has resulted in freeing up some funding that will cover this amendment. So we don't need to amend the measure D five year plan and we don't need to amend the budget. Okay, so this isn't other projects, like it wasn't like the project concept report came in under budget and so we're taking money from that. It's tasks within this same contract that we're just kind of moving the funds around within the same contract, correct? Would that be an appropriate way to raise that? It would be additional funds for this contract but it is within the project funding, the current project funding. So we don't need to add additional funding to the project to fund the contract amendment, but we do need to amend the engineering contract so that they could do this work. Right, okay, great. I think that's mostly that I just wanna clarify so that I can understand what I'm voting on about, again, the environmental aspect of this. So is that something Caltrans is gonna do or we're gonna be a part of it or? It's to be determined. So we haven't even started that. Correct, for the bus, I'm assuming you're talking about the bus on shoulder element. Yes, correct. Okay, hasn't began. Okay, great, those were my questions. No additional, none. Okay, we will take this out to public comment and we'll start with those in chambers. Lowellhurst Freedom Area. Whatever you do here today, don't stall, don't delay, don't put it off to some other time. Let's get going, let's get moving, let's get these projects done, and let's don't siphon money away from other projects that might benefit the most disadvantaged folks in the community. So get moving, stay moving, thank you. Thank you. Hello, welcome back. Thank you, David Schwartz. I hate to say something completely opposite, but I have a different view here. Number one, why are there only two bridges that we're looking at? But I think the more important thing here is a bigger plan. What are we gonna do in the Aptos Corridor when all of those homes are filled and there's two or three times the number of people going through those areas? We're gonna build a bridge. Does the railroad bridge need to be replaced? Will we ever expand SoCal Drive in that area? If we do, we have to take that bridge out because it's got a huge concrete abutment on both sides of the existing road. So if we were ever gonna make that any bigger, we'd have to take that out. If we were to take that out like five years from now, we'd have to build another bridge for the trail or the train system that we wanna do, right? Is the cost of replacing both of those bridges double the cost of a bridge? Or would we save money by taking out both bridges right now, building one bridge that covered the entire area? Just a thought. I have a lot of ideas about transportation and such and I don't have the time now, but one other thing about the bridge, there was a recent suicide on the existing bridge there. I would like to see that we are building some kind of protective measures there to help to avoid that in the future, non-climable fences such as that on each side of it as necessary. So just a few ideas, just something to think about. You guys make the decision. I'm just a part of the public here and I'm here to tell you what I think, okay? So hopefully you give it some consideration, think about it, plan for the future and plan for the present. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any additional comments and chambers? Yes, hello. Good morning, Matt Farrell speaking for Fort. We wanna thank staff for the work they've done on segment 12. We're excited about it moving forward and the great community engagement they've worked on for the design of the bridge at Aptus Creek. We have some questions or clarifications about the section that deals with bus on shoulder or in some conversations I've had with staff auxiliary lanes on the highway project as we understand it is a three mile section. So in the environmental review, we understand that the exemption that was applied for the previous segment of bus on shoulder auxiliary lanes would not be eligible here and therefore there would need to be an analysis of vehicle miles traveled as a result of these auxiliary lanes. Secondly, we would like to know if the state guidelines for SHOP programs allow for newer auxiliary lanes or does it require an exemption with this funding source? And finally, we look forward to healthy and robust public participation process for the state park freedom highway auxiliary lanes and that will encourage community engagement and including we hope the public's review and public approval of this proposed cycle for grant funding application as amended with auxiliary lanes project. Thank you. Thank you. Any additional comments and chambers? Yeah. Just wanted to clarify, my understanding is we're talking about only about the bus on shoulder. We're not talking about adding a new auxiliary lane for this area. Am I correct about that? I'm just trying to do that. That fails question or comment. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, I'm a bit perplexed by the question because we're not, yeah, we're not adding auxiliary lanes south of freedom as part of this effort. There are auxiliary lanes under development with the bus on shoulder facility for the highway one segment 12 project. So that's between so yeah, all the way to freedom but beyond freedom, we are not so. Thank you. Any other comments and chambers? Okay, we'll go to zoom. It looks like we have five people providing comment online. Rick Longinati. Hello commissioners, Rick Longinati from the campaign for sustainable transportation. I really want to appreciate staff for generating this idea of additional bus on shoulder project and trying to figure out a way to get that done. That's really great. On the other part of what you're voting on today, you're being asked to vote more money for the engineering for the auxiliary lane project State Park to Freedom Boulevard. As you heard today, the final EIR was published last week. And to my knowledge, there's no plans to bring it to the commission for consideration. And you know, I think it's safe to say that the public really expects environmental impact reports to inform decision makers. And I hope you would agree with me on that. And if you do, then I think it makes sense to defer spending any more money on this project until you take a look at the final EIR. And I'll tell you one good reason to look at that because the EIR says, we already heard today that, you know, traffic is backed up sometimes to Bayview in the, I'm sorry, not Bayview, but it passed the San Andreas interchange in the morning commute. Well, the EIR says that it's gonna get even worse if this auxiliary lane project is built. Who wants to build a project where it's gonna make the morning commute worse? I don't think any of you do. So please look at the final EIR, have a discussion at the RTC meeting before you vote money for this next project. Thank you. Thank you. Brian Peoples. Mr. Peoples. Yeah, yes, this is Brian Peoples' trail now. This is phenomenal work by the RTC staff and Caltran. They're working ahead. They're communicating, they're collaborating. This is exactly why what we're appreciative of the staff that Sarah and Caltran have been doing. So thank you. And we totally agree with moving forward with this additional investment for the engineering that supported that. At the side note on the other segment, 12 were a strong advocate of doing the optional trail. Let's use it now for the trail they can pull it up. But one of the other things I wanted to comment while I have the forum here is many people already use those two frescoes that go over the highway in our cross community. And when the construction begins, you're going to need to build the new trails over the highway before you destroy those. I'm hopeful that you'll destroy those. More hopeful is that you would pull the rails and make it into a simple gravel trail so that we can use it during the construction period, during today. It would be phenomenal today. Really nothing to hold to this back is, as we heard from Gatt, the former RTC guide president recommended years ago, the railing. And we could build the trail. We could have a gravel trail today. So anyways, I just want to thank staff and the Caltrain for really looking forward in their planning process and fully agree. Over. Thank you. Fiona? Good morning. We're back and in. I just had a point of clarification for the commission. I think what I heard RTC staff say was that the savings on this project came from right-of-way acquisition, which would be a rail trail cost and that we're going to be moving that precious active transportation money to a highlighted project. And I hope I heard that wrong. And that we, if we have any savings at all and that precious active transportation funds that we're putting that back in the rail trail category and not spending it on highways. Thank you. Thank you. John? I live in Capitola. So I'm a long-range strategic planner and when I look at projects like this, I go to the past to begin with. So in the 1950s, our governments decided that lanes were the greatest achievement in transportation planning. So we started building lanes and expanding our road systems and all the detriment that comes with that aside, the reality is we are not going to be here from this path at this point. So we are not lucky enough to have enough room for a 26 lane freeway, like the KD freeway in Houston. We just don't have the space or the money for that. But I do think we need to start to plan further ahead on projects like this for the next lanes. So I figure we have a room for five to eight lanes on each side in some places if we really work at the right. So I recommend that we advise staff to start looking at the next lane expansion, which is down the line, induce demand and almost guarantee that any lane you build will just cause more traffic over time. I'm also a little worried about parking. So where are people going to park on the delivery lanes? When I go on the highway these days, there is no place to park. And I just think like we're so concerned about parking everywhere else, we should make sure our highways also have sufficient parking. So that we can have space to store our cars. This is the priority for a reason. And I would just like us to start planning our budget to have a time to focus everything towards lanes and parking. So thank you for your time. Someone speak about helping to meet the needs of the most in need and for a candidate for district two to open up with. Well, I've got the opposite opinion. It's very district two these days. Now one in four Americans identifies as having a disability. And let's tell you, all of us are going to join that community if we are lucky enough to live that long. The rail is about accessibility. This, the bridge plans, you're going to find that, yes, one has a structure that people could climb on and get hurt from. One, the other one, if the stressorism, a stressorism ribbon, if that bows out on the bottom of the center, then you're likely to hear from the disabled communities that that one is not the favored one. And the bridge and the rail and the trail, they're all about accessibility. I think that if you would listen to some other voices, you'd find good information from Lonnie Faulkner who has partnered with leaders in the disability community from the start. I know because she called me when she, when she wanted to swap her nonprofit and sent her to one of the best people I know in the county. And along with Charlene Nijwa who's running for Congress. We're not the disabled community is not going away. This is very important. Thank you. JB Jordan Jr. Yeah. Yes. This is Joe, the J stands for Joe, Joe Jordan. Hi everybody, thanks for everything you do and including all the work on all this. I just want to reiterate what was said earlier about the importance of the latest EIR. It'd be a shame to spend a lot of money like, you know, of order 10 to the eight hundreds of millions of dollars on something that ends up hardly making a dent in traffic, if at all. So please the commission should take initiative on this. I mean, yeah, you got a great staff, great reports but you all need to make the decision. And strategically we're shooting ourselves in the foot by the way, if we tie together the non highway projects which are excellent and great and needed and economical. If we tie those to the highway projects and certain grant applications, well, we end up holding the good non highway ox additional ox lanes projects hostage to the highway ox lanes madness. So please do take seriously that EIR and put it on your agenda for another meeting. And I know that goes against the rah-rah earlier about yeah, let's move now, let's do this. Well, you need to take a little more time to look at that EIR. That's what EIRs are for. That's what commissions are for to my mind. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. That was our last speaker commissioner. All right, thank you. We will close public comment. Just a quick question for clarification. I know you said we're not, we haven't even started the EIR process yet. Do you have an idea of what the timeline is? Assuming we're talking about by central there. Yes, I'm sorry. I keep forgetting. There's many types of environmental documents that are possible for this type of improvement. And it doesn't mean we or Caltrans will be preparing a full blown EIR per se because there's other paths forward through CEQA, especially if your improvements are very non impactful, if you will, like pavement coloring, pavement markings and roadside signage. So I don't have a timeline right now, unfortunately, but obviously this is getting a lot of attention from the community and the commissioners. So we will definitely be returning with more information at subsequent meetings. Thank you. Any additional comments, questions? Yes, commissioner. None. I just want to move staff recommendation. All right. Second. We have a motion and a second. Commissioner Schifrin. About the EIR and the main project, based on the public comment is that, I think you said the final EIR is out and what is its process now? Since it's out, it can be approved. I assume that Caltrans is the lead agency on this. Is that correct or? That is correct. What? That is correct. Caltrans is the lead agency under CEQA. They have delegated authority from FHWA, Federal Highway Administration for NEPA. What is our role with the EIR? Will the EIR be brought before the commission? So we are the implementing agency for the pre-construction phases, if you will. So the project approval environmental documentation and final design process, right-of-way process. And our role is that we are a responsible agency under CEQA. We don't have to bring the document to the commission, but we can and I'm hearing maybe we should. But typically if you're familiar with how we moved forward with the Coastal Rail Trail Project, where we were a responsible agency under CEQA, the segment eight and nine project being implemented by the city of Santa Cruz, we brought an item to this commission and adopted findings. So we could very well do that for the Highway One segment 12 project, if that's what the commission desires. Okay, my understanding of CEQA is that if an agency is a responsible agency, they at least have to make findings. So I would, if not, approve the document itself before moving forward with the project. But I think it's important, given the public concern about this project, that the EIR come before the commission with findings. And I wonder if the maker of the motion would accept a friendly amendment with these two additional directions. One that the final EIR on this highway widening project from Freedom to State Park Drive in segment 12 come before the commission. And also that as a separate item, the commission get a report on the proposed auxiliary lane project to Buena Vista. So first of all, the project being proposed south of Freedom is not an auxiliary lane project. It is looking at routine maintenance that Caltrans was planning on doing on their shoulder and adding a little bit of additional striping and signage so that the bus can safely run in the shoulder. That is also a separate EIR from what, this is the segment 12 on phase three of the highway project that this commission's considering. I mean, I think we could certainly make a suggestion to staff that we wanna review the final EIR for segment 12 phase three, totally in support of that, but not sure if it makes sense to necessarily try to add all that stuff to the motion at this time. Thank you for your support. You're right. It's the auxiliary lane project. But even as the auxiliary lane project, as I understood the staff response, it would be considered a project under SQL and would have to go through a SQL review. Is that not correct? Wouldn't necessarily need an EIR. It could be an exemption. It could be a neg deck, but it does need to go through SQL review as a, even as a shop project. Correct. So just to clarify, we're talking about the potential bus on shoulder improvements between Freedom Boulevard and Buena Vista. That would be separate and it would be future environmental review, whatever document that looks like. So my request to the maker of the motion, the second is that we get an item that really does update us on that as well as bringing the EIR on the main project to the commission. Negative on my end, I don't know the second of the motion. It is the suggestion just that when Caltrans, assuming that they're the ones during the environmental impact report, or getting through the SQL process, just that we receive an update about those findings or that process at the time. Yes. I just think we should get, since this is a new project that's being discussed with sort of tacked on to the, what's essentially a request to change the scope of the, slightly of the other project that we, you know, that would be treated separately. I think it makes sense to certainly review the environmental impacts in the future time, as far as the bus on shoulder project. I mean, that's fine. Thank you. All right, additionally, I would get you to vote for this direction. Well, I'm supportive of the staff recommendation. I just think that given the public concern about the main EIR and some of the concerns about the added project, we should, you know, the commission should see them. All right. Any additional comments, commissioner Schifrin? No, any additional comments from anyone else on the commission? So I just want to be clear on what's being proposed. The first is to bring the final EIR that's been filed on already to the commission at the appropriate time. As we've made findings on the other segments, we should, you know, and we are a responsible agency. I think we have to get it anyway, legally, but... So there's the final EIR we've already done. And then the second is any potential environmental document that would have to be prepared for the bus on shoulder portion. And that is the motion to bring both of those at the appropriate times, separately at the appropriate times. Okay, I just wanted to make clear. I don't really see any issue with that. I mean, we've already reviewed the draft segment 12, how we want EIR if we feel that we should review the final as a commission, great. And you know, I understand any concerns about an additional project. I don't think that the impacts are gonna be very big, but I don't see why we wouldn't take the opportunity to at least review that as a commission. So I'm in support of the amendments. Yeah. I agree. You have a question? No, call the question. Oh, call the question. Yes, let's call the question. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Commissioner Eats has his hand up first. Oh, yes. Commissioner Eats, do you have a question or a comment? Yeah, I do see that he has a second. Hold on for a second. All right, Commissioner Eats. Do we mute them? I can hear you if this is Brian. I just can't hear you. Oh. Thank you, Brian. There you go. We can hear you on Zoom. I can hear you on Zoom. Okay. Can you all in the hearing room hear me? Now we can. Yeah, we can. Okay, great. So, Madam Chair, I just wanted to clarify that this is a safety project that we're talking about and we're more than happy to coordinate on these projects which is part of why we have an update on projects that we're moving through the project development process on and we post those on your agendas every month to be able to provide opportunities if there's an interest in consolidating scope or seeing if there's other things, contributing funds or other things like that. So this is a perfect example of a project where there appears to be an idea that Calterans hadn't considered that RTC staff wanted to discuss or more than happy to do that but I just want to caution everyone and a brief update on the project and that is that it is a safety project so it's high priority for us. We've already completed the environmental document to my knowledge and I need to verify that but from what I see it is in the design and right-of-way phase which means we're beyond the environmental phase. We were just talking about interior shoulder widening and barrier improvements to my knowledge and so there wasn't any scope in the project for exterior work. So not that it can't and shouldn't be considered. We're happy to talk further with RTC staff on that. However, another thought along this lines is sometimes the shoulders on the outside have not been designed to accommodate heavy vehicles except for emergency situations. So that's something else that may need to be looked at by the team if they haven't already talked about that yet. So again, we've got kind of a short timeline in terms of when we were expecting to complete safety improvements we're happy to continue working with RTC staff to see if there's opportunities that we can consider within the scope of the project that we have for us. Thank you, Commissioner Eads. Okay, roll call vote. Commissioner Peterson. Aye. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Aye. Commissioner Randy Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Montecino. Yes. Commissioner Alternate Gittleson. Come back to you. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Jenny Johnson. Aye. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Aye. Commissioner Alternate Pegler. Aye. And Commissioner Rotkin. Aye. And Commissioner Gittleson. You're muted. Thank you. That passes unanimously. All right, thank you. All right, with that we will adjourn to our next regularly scheduled RTC meeting on Thursday, March 7th at 9 a.m. at the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Chambers. Until then, please take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Goodbye.