 All right. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Okay. This is a transportation crowd here. Come on. We at least be excited about this, right? Get other people excited. I am Valerie McCall. I'm actually co-chair with our great leader here, Mr. Greg Evans and Jim McDonald who's here as well of the National League of Cities Transportation and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but I'm also immediate past president of APTA. And so to be here today doing this joint session shows the partnership and the continuation of the collaboration between National League of Cities and APTA. In my day job, I am the chief of government and international affairs as well as acting chief of communications for the city of Cleveland underneath Mayor Frank G. Jackson. So APTA and NLC stand here today shoulder to shoulder to focus on the economic returns of public transportation investment. And for those of us who are here for both the APTA legislative conference as well as the NLC meeting, we know that this is a subject matter that is near and dear at heart and really close on the radar. An infrastructure bill we know is coming sometime. How much? We don't know, but we know it is coming, right? The check is in the mail. And our panel is here really to help rally around that, but most importantly to make the case for public transportation and to ensure that public transportation has a permanent spot in any legislative initiative. And those of you who were with us yesterday at the NLCT and I committee as well as the APTA legislative committee, this is what we've been talking about. This is what we've been focusing on. And before I go any further, I want to give a plug for Patrick who's here from CUDA. CUDA is our international Canadian partner in all the things that we do here. And we're very jealous of the money that your president gave for infrastructure in day one. He wrote a bus on his first day with his administration. And that image, that went viral one because it was an MCI bus, but two because he took his whole cabinet and it showed day one how important transportation is. So Patrick, I want to embarrass you. Can you stand up, please? He has money, everybody. I'm just saying. They have great money set aside for... And Patrick, by all means, please, as we go to Q&A and talk about this jump in there and be a part of the conversation with us because we're brother and sister partner organizations. And now NLC is the other brother that you didn't meet yet, but now we're all together. Okay? All right. The recent infrastructure report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers graded transit a D minus, the lowest grade of any sector. And while Greg and I were joking about a D is barely passing, sometimes that looked good when you were in college, his point was a very good point. It's a felling grade. And this reflects the $90 billion. We have $90 billion in backlogged needs and ongoing investments to address both state of good repair and the growing demand. I think Peter probably can speak to some of this a little bit with his experience and now being a transit CEO and really saying, well, okay, hey, this is just a series here. I also want you to know that transit investments, as we all know, generates many jobs, lots of jobs, right? Because transportation underpins the economy on an ongoing basis, ongoing jobs that it supports by enabling access and productivity. But the full story is over 50,000 jobs are created per billion dollars of investment. You cannot have commerce without connectivity. Transportation is truly the investment that keeps paying us back. And before I go further, and so art doesn't get me later, I want to put a plug on a study that after just released, who rides public transportation, the backbone of a multimodal lifestyle. This is very important because this is factual information. This is stats you can take with you when you're talking to your legislators. And we're up on a hill and lobbying everybody. We're back in our own districts and talking about what's important. It's right here so we can make sure copies are available. You can have this one just for you. Yeah, this is yours. Okay. And we yesterday, we had a panel presentation where we were just talking about the economic impact of public transportation in both City of Cleveland, Ohio and Eugene, Oregon. And thanks again, Peter, where two of the first BRTs, we actually shared our buses together and the design of our buses. And I talked about this yesterday, but our health line, which was the City of Cleveland's first BRT, we have two of them in place and we're planning a third one generated over $4 billion of economic impact, a longer strip that used to be called Millionaire's Row, if those of you familiar with City of Cleveland. That's where Rockefeller and everybody lived, Hannah and, you know, Severance. And to see the disinvestment that happened over the years, but to actually use public transportation to bring it back, it's phenomenal. It really is a story in that in one that we have no problem sharing and I'm sure Greg can talk a little bit too. So enough of that for me. Today, we're joined by two very special friends who are here with me today. Peter Rogoff is the Chief Executive Officer of Sound Transit, where he has served since early 2016. It has been quite an eventful time for Peter since then. As he opened a major line extension in April 2016, he saw voters in Seattle region approve a $54 billion ballot measure for transit improvements in November. Let's just applaud that. Prior to that, Peter served with distinction as the U.S. DOT Undersecretary for Transportation Policy and then as the FTA Administrator. And we all know Peter was on the ground with us. I heard somebody say, hey, you came to a ribbon cutting. We really do appreciate that, Peter. And just know we miss you. Prior to his FTA appointment, Peter served for 22 years on the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee. So again, we're going to hear from Peter in a few minutes. The other person here is my fellow co-chair on the National League of Cities Transportation Communications Committee. Several of our members are here as well. They're all sitting right here in the front row together. So we appreciate that to let you know how important this is. Greg is a member of the Eugene, Oregon City Council. He was a former transit member. He served on his transit board before he went over and became an elected official. He's a former member of, as I said, the Lane Transit District Board of Directors. He is coordinator instructor of African American Student Programs at Land Community College. And he is a former member of APTA's Executive Committee and Rebel Rouser on our legislative committee. So he's worked this from both sides on the APTA side and the National League of Cities side. So with that, it is my honor to, Greg, I believe you're going to make some remarks next. Thank you, Valerie. I appreciate the introduction and, you know, the opening remarks. And Valerie and I and Peter have worked together over a number of years. As Valerie stated, I was a transit board member for six years at Lane Transit District in Eugene. And during that time, and actually before I became a transit board member, as I was coming on the transit board, we went in together with Greater Cleveland RTA to embark on a innovative project, our bus rapid transit line. And in doing that, we actually were able to create a new bus. And so the bus that we were able to create, and we worked with New Flyer on, was a bus that mimicked what a rail car would do. And you had doors on both sides of the bus. And it did virtually the same thing, but on rubber wheels and rubber tires. So that was a fantastic innovation for us. We opened our first line the same year that Greater Cleveland RTA opened their silver line, which became I think the health line. Now on Euclid Avenue, ours connects both the cities of Eugene and Springfield and goes through the heart of the University of Oregon campus. And we have also had a second line, the gateway line that takes us through to the hospital in Springfield. And now we're just about to complete a third bus rapid transit line in Eugene, which takes us out to the western edge of the city. So we actually have a 61 mile footprint that we are going to eventually build out in Eugene. And I know that BRT is running strong in Cleveland, and across this country and a number of other cities. So it's really something that we're very proud of. And I came on the transit board in 2006, the year before our first line opened, was there to work and help separate our second line opening. And as Peter knows, struggled with getting our third line up and running, but it is almost fully constructed. Now, a couple of things that I want to want to touch on today, and then I'll turn it over to Peter, is that we had an election in November. And we had a sea change in terms of our leadership in this country. And one of the things that has been critical and has been a topic on everybody's lips, particularly in this industry for a number of years is how how do we fully vest our transportation system? As Valerie said, our transit systems are now rated at a D minus. And I've been a college instructor for 22 years. And I've always told my students that a D is a gateway to an F. And that's what we have right now. We are in a gateway to an F in this country in terms of not just our transit system, but our transportation system overall, our roads, our bridges, our highways, every part of our transportation system is in virtual failure right now. You all know it. You drive on roads that are close to mimicking the dark side of the moon. And, you know, we do this every day, and we are not keeping up with the infrastructure needs that we have. So when I became a city counselor four years ago, and I came over from the transit side to the dark side to the elected side, you know, it was interesting to begin to look at the full picture of transportation and to look at more at roads and bridges and other things that I had looked at as a member of my MPO, but I was more focused on transit than anything else. And as I looked at how we were failing, I looked at a $300 million backlog in my city in terms of road improvements and road repairs. And the issue becomes we need not only road improvements, but we need new road, new infrastructure, new transit infrastructure, because our country is growing rapidly. When I came back in 2010, this country was at a population of 300 million. Now in 2017, we have 326 million people. By 2040, we will have 450 million people in the United States. Okay, that's a 50% increase from 2010. So the question is, where are all these people going to live? Number one, where are they going to work? But even more important is, how are they going to get to work? How are they going to get to school? How are they going to get to shopping opportunities? We don't have an answer for that. Unless we invest in our transportation infrastructure now, and particularly transit, we can no longer be married to the single occupancy vehicle mode of travel that we have been married to for the last 50 years. So one of the things that I want to point out is this. Our president has talked about a trillion dollar investment in transportation infrastructure. But a trillion dollar investment in what? We have no details. No kind of plan that has been outlined. There has been talk about three P's. And you know what three P's work in some cases, they do work. But three P's are not a strategy. It's not a transportation strategy. It is a tool in the toolbox. We do need to include three P's in that strategy, but we need to have a strategy first, and we don't have a strategy. What we have is $170 billion of new investment at the local level that has been improved. So we know that people will support investment in our transportation infrastructure. In my city in Eugene, we about five years ago, and we're getting ready to renew our five year cereal levy to support transportation infrastructure. But we're still going to be $200 billion behind. We have a $90 billion backlog to repair and replace our infrastructure in this country and another $42 billion in ongoing maintenance. So we got to keep it up. We've got to work on keeping it up. And we are not doing that. So when we're talking about a trillion dollar investment, I'm saying yay, hooray. Because when I started in transit, we were talking about, you know, what we were going to do with a new authorization. At that time, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, we were talking about $450 billion in transportation infrastructure. $123 billion was the number that APTA was throwing out because I was involved with APTA with Valerie for transit infrastructure. $50 billion of that was supposed to be for rail infrastructure. Now nobody's talking about rail anymore. Not high speed rail. We're just trying to keep what we have. And so right now, what we have is this. We have a number that is thrown out a trillion dollars. We have no plan. And we have people talking about cutting transit from the program and also cutting Amtrak. So we have a lot of work to do. And our work is our work is not done yet. It's time for us to get moving on this. I also want to introduce is Paul Ballmer in the room? Paul, why don't you come on up to the table? I know that Paul is representing. He's the legislative aide for Earl Blumenauer. And Paul, where is your bicycle pn at? Oh, you got it. You got it on. Okay. All right. Because because my friend Congressman Blumenauer is always famous for his bicycle pin and his staunch support for rail, you know, the rail Volusion Conference was the baby of Congressman Blumenauer, who is up to the north of us from Eugene up he's the Congressman from the Portland metro area. So we're glad to have Paul with us. I was supposed to be over at a meeting with Congressman Blumenauer, but I can't be there because I'm here, which is great. But I just want to wrap this up by saying this. We, like I said, we have a lot of work to do. And we need to be focused. And we cannot let transit die. And this is something that can happen. If we are not focused on the big picture, and the big picture includes transit. And particularly when we are talking about, you know, our issues with the environment, with sustainability, transit is a critical piece of that. We will not be able to move 450 million people in this country in 20 years without transit. It's not going to happen. But we have to have the investment in transit now. And the other piece of this that we really need to be looking at is where the funding is going to come from. Because we all know, and most of you in this room know that the Highway Trust Fund is broke. It has not been recapitalized. And it's based on the gas tax, which has not been indexed since 1993. It's never been indexed. So we're going to have to find other ways of funding transit, other ways of funding our transportation infrastructure. And it's going to be critical that we all get together, and we stay focused on the ball, and that we talk to our new administration about what our cities need, what all of our cities need. And I'm not talking about just big cities. I represent a city that is 170,000 people. There are small cities that depend on transit. There are rural cities that depend on transit. We have rural transit, you know, partnerships and other pieces to the puzzle. I know that North Dakota State has a rural transit practice. Yeah. And you know, so we need to invest in all areas of transit. And it is going to be critical for us to move this picture forward. And the only way that we're going to do that is by talking to the administration, talking to Congress, and emphasizing the need for full funding for our transportation program, and full investment in transit, and for us not to let transit go. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Peter Rogoff. What's that? Okay, we want so I'm out of line here. So so we want Paul Balmer to come up and to say a few words on behalf of Congressman Blumenauer. And again, one of our champions in Congress is Earl Blumenauer, along with my Congressman Peter DeFosio. I think I have a great delegation from Oregon. And this one. Well, yeah, we can talk about I'm originally from Ohio. That's why she's given me a hard time. I'm a Clevelander originally. But we have strong support in the Pacific Northwest for transportation and transit. And you're going to hear from Peter Rogoff shortly after we hear from Paul. But Paul is going to talk about some of the things that Congressman Blumenauer proposing to move us forward in transportation funding, and particularly in transit funding. So with that, Paul, come on up. Well, thank you, Greg. And thank you guys for having me. I think the last time that I subbed in for the congressman at one of these briefings was about two years ago. Yes, I apt local government. I think the Chamber of Commerce was there. New report had come out. I think maybe something about the economic impact of investment. And so it seems like a strong parallel that we're here again. The civil engineers report card came out just last week. But here to say that this time the situation is a little bit different, even though a lot of the players are the same. We've got a lot of talk about infrastructure, trillion dollar package, well, not a package yet, but trillion dollar number proposed by the White House, trillion dollars also proposed by the Senate Democrats. You might say that's just a top line number. That's not a lot of similarity, but compared to some of the other things that are happening here, like the some of the dynamics around healthcare. This is this is something that's a lot less contentious. And that that gives you guys an opportunity gives all of us an opportunity with an issue that is less controversial where there is agreement about investment. I mean, economic returns of transportation infrastructure investment, that's a no brainer. There's there's there's no one who's going to argue with that. And this at this time, in on Capitol Hill, in America, where we're seeing an immense outpouring of civic engagement. This is something that we should all be able to latch on to. We're seeing a lot of action at the local level, especially for transportation investment. And they've been able to make the case at the local level for connectivity, for economic impact, I mean, $200 billion, at least approved by the voters. Obviously, Mr. Rogoff can talk a lot more about his piece of it. Not just ballot initiative state legislatures, you have almost a dozen states raising the gas tax in the last two years. This is something that Congress should learn from this is something that Washington can learn from at the local level, you guys are getting it done. And you know, Congress and Blumenauer, our office, we have our solution, which is to raise the gas tax and index the gas tax. We just introduced the bill last week, HR 1458, the raise it act. Look it up. There should be no shortage of discussion here in Congress, whether it's our bill, I know that after my boss spoke at after this morning, the app to folks heard from Congressman Delaney who has other proposals, there should be no shortage of discussion about how to raise the revenue, where to invest it, where to get the most value out of the federal partnership. That's why you guys are here. I look forward to hearing more about how we can better make the case to our colleagues for making these investments, but we're going to be here, but we can't do it alone. So thank you. And thank you again for being here with us this afternoon. So now for the keynote address, we're gonna turn it over to the computer like what keynote Mr. Rogoff, because I think you are going to find his remarks as someone who has worked on the federal side worked on a congressional side and now is running his own transit agency. Why this is important and how economic impact and investment really, really matters. So Peter, well, thank you, Valerie and Greg and Paul. I have had the great pleasure of working both on the local transit needs and those communities, both Cleveland and the the what we call the Eugene Springfield Metroplex as well as Greater Portland with with Congressman Blumenauer. You know, and when you look across the country, what you find is that the mobility needs of Americans are as diverse as the nation itself. You've got older cities in the east and the Midwest in cities like Cleveland, but also Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, and the like. They have bridges. They have platforms. They have substations that are serving either hundreds of thousands or even in some cases, millions of passengers a day. And they are doing it on infrastructure that sometimes dates as far back as World War Two and in some cases are more than 100 years old. At the same time, we have fast growing cities in the West as well as the South where the population growth is happening so fast that people are seeing road congestion, the likes of which they have never seen. We're talking about cities like Austin, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and for where I now hail from the greater Puget Sound area, including Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. Voters in these communities are hungering for an alternative to spending hours in traffic. And they're looking for federal help to match their own tax dollars in order to get those options to get out of punishing traffic. There is a certain desperation in many of these cities, whether they are the older line cities in need of repair or the newer line cities in need of expansion. That desperation by the older line cities is they're kind of, as they say, kind of running out of duct tape. It is really true that and it doesn't matter if it's a highway bridge or a transit bridge, it's all the same. You can only repair it so many times before it absolutely needs to be replaced. Similarly, in the fast growing cities, we've got communities here, not necessarily large ones, small communities that only run buses, but they're growing so fast and demand on them is growing at such a pace that they can't buy new buses fast enough in order to fill them. And they're really constrained not by whether the riders want the service or not, but how quickly they could finance the ability to get new buses to put on the road to meet that need. The real concern where the population is growing fast and the congestion is worsening so rapidly is the trajectory of their local economy. Many folks have gravitated to those cities because of the economic promise that those cities present. At the same time, if the congestion gets worse enough, the ability of that local economy to actually generate jobs for all those new residents is considerably underwhelmed, undermined. And we are seeing that in terms of the impact of road congestion on our ports and their ability to grow in terms of business location. I will tell a quick story. When I was serving as Under Secretary, I'm going to avoid naming the city. But we, Secretary, then Secretary Fox, and I was serving as Under Secretary, we met with a certain city in the Southeast that was truly, you know, there was a desperation in their voice in terms of wanting us to partner with them and provide federal funds to match their local dollars to build out a transit system, transit connections that just didn't exist in those cities before. And when you really started talking to them and unpacking what the desperation was, it was really because they were starting to become a poster child for congestion. And at the same time, they were losing out in terms of recruiting new jobs, recruiting corporate relocations to cities like Charlotte to like the Research Triangle in North Carolina, to Jacksonville to other cities that were expanding their transit system quite rapidly. And they felt they needed to keep pace because they needed to have options out of the congestion. I will say this, given though that that if you will, that double whammy, the cities in the East and the Midwest that are desperately in need of state of good repair funds, the cities in the West and the South that desperately need to expand their systems. It is quite timely for the new administration to be talking about a robust and transformational infrastructure package. If the President's infrastructure package is large enough, if it's forward looking enough, if it is structured to provide real help to commuters and not just investment bankers, it holds the promise to really address the diverse infrastructure needs of the nation and move our economy forward. But there's a lot of ifs in that. And we need to be diligent as we work with the administration to make sure that those ifs are addressed. I was asked to join this panel to talk a little bit about what we've experienced in the Puget Sound Region, one of those fast growing regions that is behind where we need to be in giving folks away out of congestion. Before I left the Obama administration, I was privileged to work on a report that was called the Beyond Traffic Study. And one of the things that that study gave rise to were some of the population numbers that Greg talked about. That by the year 2040, we're going to have 70 million more Americans. But what was really unique in terms of what that census data showed us is unlike really any past surge in population that the country has seen, those 70 million additional Americans are going to be located just in 11 major mega regions. It is not going to be, you know, diffuse all across the country. Puget Sound, the Puget Sound region happens to be one of those mega regions, and we are expecting a million more citizens, a million of those 70 million by 2040. It's about 800,000 additional citizens within the Sound Transit Taxing District. But when you get just beyond our district line and include Kitsap County and others, it gets up to about a million, a million additional Americans. So let me just give you a sense of what that is. A million additional Americans in the Puget Sound region is the entire population of Seattle and the entire population of Tacoma added on top of the congestion we already have. And that congestion has close to doubled in just the last five years. 95% increase in just the last five years in terms of the delays that citizens in the Puget Sound region are experiencing. And they are well tired of it and looking for an option. More than 90% of the highway delays in the entire state of Washington are all within that Puget Sound region. And what I used to say commonly when I was both undersecretary in the Federal Transit Administrator, really, when you're staring at population growth of that magnitude in that rapid a pace, you really only have two choices. You can plan for it or be completely overwhelmed by it. And I'm pleased to say that the people of the Puget Sound did in fact plan for it. And voters this past November approved an historic extension of the region's high capacity transit infrastructure. It's a 25 year, 54 billion dollar plan approved by voters. It includes, among other elements, building 62 more miles of light rail, establishing real bus rapid transit on two important segments on Interstate 405, one of our most congested highways in the region. We as well as on State Route 522. We are adding to our commuter rail service, our commuter rail service between Lakewood Tacoma and Seattle. Their ridership has increased 15% in just the last year, with absolutely no increase in frequencies available. That 15% surge in one year was really just the result of how punishing the traffic is on I-5 in the morning. So the voters of the Puget Sound region encountered and took on upon themselves a serious sacrifice to do this. The tax increment that they are paying should not be belittled. It is on average $169 per adult per year in increased taxes to pay for this plan. But that's what a doubling of congestion over five years will do to the mindset of folks. As Valerie kindly pointed out, we had a very successful launch of light rail in terms of we've added three stations in just the last year. Two of those stations happened to be in the most densely populated communities of the entire state. As a result, depending on which week you count, we've had a ridership surge of between 77% and 82% in ridership on light rail. I would love to tell you that we were perfectly situated and postured to absorb a ridership of that increase all of a sudden. But we did have some learning curves to climb in terms of that. But it was an absolute game changer. I'm not going to get into like local sports, Ohio State versus University of Washington football. But I will point out that the terminus that to the north right now until 2021 when we will advance up to what's called Northgate and then on to Linwood into Snohomish County, the current terminus is at Husky Stadium at the University of Washington. And it was a game changing experience for folks who normally commuted on Saturdays to come to a Husky football game when they could literally take light rail right up to the gate. You know, people as the game ended and they realized that they were going to be home in 20 minutes rather than have to take 40 minutes just to get out of the parking lot to then take another. It is like I've never known what to do with the second half of a Saturday afternoon because I've never had one before. But those are the transformative things that light rail does for folks. It actually gives them the guarantee no matter what the weather condition, no matter what the traffic conditions, the comfort that they are going to get home in time to pick up their kids from daycare. They actually have a fighting shot to have meals with their kids, supervise homework, and perhaps, heaven forbid, entertain a hobby. The kind of things that it's so hard to do. Also importantly though, these aren't investments are not just about the quality of life of the commuters we serve. It's also about the jobs we produce. Earlier I talked about the fact that if you don't make the investment and congestion completely overwhelms the city, how that can really undermine the financial trajectory and the ability to create jobs. But when you do invest, you create thousands of thousands of jobs and they're not just any jobs. These are construction engineering jobs, material fabrication jobs, the kind of family wage jobs that don't necessarily require a college degree, but now with a 25-year plan in the Puget Sound region, we are going to be able to keep people employed for a career. As a result, we are making very, very aggressive efforts. On top of the aggressive efforts we were already making to exceed our disadvantaged business goals. We just exceeded them again this year to accelerate our apprenticeship programs to make sure that women and people of color are fully represented throughout the workforce and actually use those investments to transform the trajectory of those communities as well as part of the overall economic resurgence of the region that we want to see. In the end, we will support over 70,000 direct jobs. Those are the direct jobs. I'm not talking about the indirect jobs over that 25 years of construction. So it is a very positive story, not without its challenges in our region, but right now we are blessed with the implementation challenges on how we literally expand Light Rail north, south, east and west, not at the exact same stage, but roughly at the same time over a two-decade period. In the end, about 84 percent of the people living in the Sound Transit District and 93 percent of the employees will have convenient access to our rail system. I want to talk a little bit about the budget, something that Greg was alluding to, and then I'll sit down and take questions. We're here at a propitious week. This Thursday we are told the new administration will be releasing what it's referred to as the skinny budget. That normally refers to the fact that it's abbreviated budget and new presidents that when they've come in, and I've experienced this before back when I was working in the Senate, some of you may remember this, when George H.W. Bush took over for Ronald Reagan and he first came in as president. He released a document called Building a Better America, or BABA for short. It was many, many years ago. But releasing as a new president a skinny budget is fine and appropriate and precedented. What concerns me is the skinniness of the funding levels that we are, that are rumored that we could be hearing, especially for the Department of Transportation. I think it's important to point out, as Greg did, we stand ready to support and be fully behind a national infrastructure package. It is something that the president cited that engendered bipartisan support and bicameral support throughout the campaign. We are especially interested, obviously, in an infrastructure package that addresses the needs of all modes of transportation and one that truly benefits daily commuters and not just benefits financial intermediaries along the way. But importantly, a one-time notional infrastructure package is no substitute for the regular funding that comes in the annual budget that cities across the country depend on each and every year to pay their bills. We can't be wowed by the notion of an infrastructure package and watch Congress accede to a budget request to cut the guts out of our annual infrastructure investment that really just serves to maintain things the way we have. Or I really shouldn't say that because at current funding levels in the regular annual budget, we are not maintaining things that they are. In fact, conditions are worsening. They are worsening on our runways. They are worsening on our highways. They are worsening our transit and rail systems. They are worsening in our bus networks. All the more reason why we can't be wowed by talk of an infrastructure package and ignore the realities of what may be coming out in Thursday's budget for transportation. What we really need is a national infrastructure package that doesn't serve as a substitute for regular annualized funding, but actually thrusts the country forward to buy down that infrastructure deficit, to actually move us forward in expanding systems to meet the growing population, not just substituting one pot of money for another. So thank you for listening. I think we're as a panel we're going to take questions. So again thank you very much and we'll take questions now. I knew ours going to be the first one. We're talking about these projects that bring economic returns. Now the word that's been thrown out lately is dynamic scoring. And I'd like to just ask that, you know, straight up. I'm frankly not pushing for anything here, but I'm just saying is there a, does that make sense? What are the views on that? If a project brings economic activity, increased revenues to communities, increased tax revenues that are going to parlay through, should that be scored in the past? It has not been allowed to be scored, right? But that idea seems to be on the table now. Is dynamic scoring a good idea? Yeah, Peter, why don't you start? Dynamic scoring is generally referred to, especially, you know, within a narrow band and that is what are the federal tax reductions accompanied by the federal receipts that people would then expect to result. You know, I'm not an economist. A great many economists question whether really it's a legitimate way to do that or whether it's just an end run around having to live within the constraints of a unified federal budget. I will say this, we shouldn't be necessarily wooed into these budgetary concepts because when we talk about the economic benefits that come as a result, for example, of a major infrastructure investment, whether it's a port investment, transit investment, a highway investment, I do not know that those additional economic activity results in federal revenues, right? It may result in state and local revenues. It may just, thankfully, not all just get taxed but actually land in people's pockets in the form of new jobs, new job opportunities, materials bought. I don't I do not know that, you know, as a community we should be wooed into this budgetary concept, which frankly has a lot of its motivation in folks that want to bypass federal rules for other purposes. I think a more interesting conversation is really about the issue of having separate operating and capital budgets for the federal government. This is something that happens and they have in certain examples of local or state government, where they recognize that the capital expenditures that need to pay themselves off over a longer period of time and generate revenues over a longer period of time are treated differently than annual operating funds. That, I think, may be the more interesting conversation for folks interested in infrastructure. Thank you. Jeff? We've all heard a great deal about the new technologies that are about to sweep over us in the transportation industry, the transportation network companies, the autonomous driving vehicles, predictions that it's going to cure congestion, that parking is not going to be a problem anymore, and there is a school of thought out there that says we should push the pause button on major mega-projects until these technologies sort themselves out. What do you think about that? Having babies. Didn't we hear that this weekend? Let me provide a more nuanced response than Greg. I, you know, we, we, we heard this issue during our ballot measure. We at the transit agency, we do not campaign for a ballot measure. We just, you know, share information in terms of what it would do on both the revenue side and the expenditure side. There are, we have board members and campaign operations that are completely separate from us that engage in that. But we did hear this discussion about Uber and Lyft and whether that's how everyone's going to get around. I think in the final analysis, I go back to what I said before, road congestion has almost doubled in five years in the Puget Sound region. Uber and Lyft vehicles have to use that same road network and they are stuck in the same congestion as everybody else. So the notion that that is, you know, a panacea or a path out, I think really did not hold water with the voters of the Puget Sound region and, you know, we view those companies and those innovations as an opportunity to augment the service we have. I've been particularly fascinated and wanted to sort of do more research on an example in New Jersey, a community in Bergen County when they were faced with the cost of building a new parking garage adjacent to a New Jersey transit facility, decided instead that at least as a pilot they would subsidize the Uber and Lyft trips for their community to get the people in their community to get to and from the rail station. Now, those people are not going all the way from Bergen County to Manhattan on a subsidized Uber and Lyft. They are simply getting from their home, the so-called last mile challenge, getting from their home to the transit station. We at Sound Transit will be making sure that as we build out the additional stations that come with this new ballot measure and more than 60 miles of additional light rail, that we have turnaround and drop-off facilities to accommodate them. But I don't ever see them, certainly in terms of the throughput that we can provide at peak times. Our value proposition is that we can get people out of congestion and Uber and Lyft simply cannot offer that. I'll jump into here. I think that that last example of communities and transit agencies working together with TNCs is great and I think the answer is that there's a lot of middle ground between saying that autonomous vehicles aren't going to be here or they're not a panacea and embracing it and not investing in new transit. I think that it does need to be considered and people do need to be thinking about it. I think National League of Cities put out a report last year that only 6% of large cities had autonomous vehicles in their 20-year transportation plans. I'm sure a lot's changed in a year. This was a huge year for autonomous vehicles and mobility technology, but nevertheless I think it should be a part of the of the planning process. Certainly no substitute for transit, but I think there are some things we can learn. The Uber and Lyft and their competitors have become very adept at monetizing congestion, which is the biggest cost of the transportation network. Ultimately, Congressman Blumenauer believes that we should move to more of a congestion pricing scheme where that's on top of a gas tax, which doesn't really pay for your actual use on the network. Congestion pricing can be, if people are more comfortable with it, if they are used to seeing it when they call that car. I think that that will be a way to help us move forward and also incentivize people to make other choices, like taking the train. And I would just add, I know Jeff, your question. I do think we have to pay attention, though, to the new technologies that will be coming out. I don't think we can stop and wait because technology is ever evolving, but I do think we have to make sure we're paying attention because, I don't know if you were in the board meeting we had the one year when we had the guy from, we had a session at one of our active board meetings around disruptive technologies, and he asked us a very brilliant question. We're funded from the gas tax, right? Well, if we're moving to more autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles, did you just fund ourselves out of existence? And so we do have to pause and make sure that we're paying attention to what those new technologies are, those that haven't even come out yet, and keep our hands on the pulse of what's going on. So to your question, I think it's a great question, is when we ponder a lot and we have to stay up on it. So thank you for that question. You also have to remember, too, Jeff, that technology is also going to be keeping pace with how we ultimately price out the vehicle miles travel. So as you know, we have had pilot programs in Oregon, Washington, and California about, you know, VMT pricing. And so, you know, being able to capture vehicle miles travel as a way of paying for our infrastructure systems is going to be critical. And I know that a lot of people in, in my state, in the rural cities, push back against that and say, you know, you're, you're, you know, you're going to be, it's not fair, we drive more miles, whatever, but you pay for what you use. And that's really where it's going to end up being the bottom line is being able to pay for what we use and using technology to be able to do that so that, you know, when you stick, you plug in at the pump, whether, you know, you're charging up your electric vehicle or your chart or you're gassing up your vehicle, you know, we're going to be able to capture the vehicle miles traveled, you know, dollars through those, those new technologies. So technology is going to, I think, be complementary to what we are, you know, seeing evolve over the next 10, 15, 20 years and eventually people will wrap their heads around, you know, VMT pricing or maybe another technology that has yet to emerge to be able to pay for what we use. Yeah, I would just add one last thing on technology. We move on to other questions, I know there are some. Let's also remember that technology advances also benefit our industry. We are very proud at Sound Transit. We just, my board just voted to become a financial partner in a new state-of-the-art wind power generation facility not far from our area. And as a result, at least for a number of years, we believe we may be the only carbon neutral rail system, transit rail system in the United States. Now in fairness, it's nice to boast that. That is in part because we generate a lot of power in Washington State through hydroelectric rather than coal. So we already start ahead of the game. And then with that remaining increment, we're going to be able to get it from wind. But these are new technology innovations that, you know, we at the same time are looking for our ways for our vehicles to use less energy. Then we're getting our energy from new state-of-the-art wind power. We'll be carbon neutral for a number of years until a good thing happens. We extend our service farther north and we have to buy some power from a different utility. So yes, ma'am. So I'm not going to truncate the technology conversation. I'm an IT director that works in Seattle and I go home and I can stay home and I can telecube from commute from home and you're not going to get a penny out of me for those roads. Or I could work for Microsoft and they pay for my circulator to come get me to go to work and you're not going to get any money from me, maybe a little bit from that transit situation. Or you're going have me think about driving to work but eventually I'm going to get that automated car that drops me off and goes back to my home. So I've solved the problem to get to and from. I'm only using surface streets at that time. Where's your VMG there? My feeling is, and it's a little bit crazy, a little bit radical, you ought to start looking at insurance coverage. Because I own four cars. I own four cars. Whether they drive them or I don't. And they charge me insurance for those cars. Maybe I should only have one car but I have different things I do with them. And for each of those insurance fees, I think you ought to be looking at us. Whether it's automated car or whether it's, you know, a four wheel driver, whatever, you ought to be looking at that and taxing that. As opposed to how far I go on a road. Because I can either never go on a road and still use your road maybe on a weekend and gas up once a year or I can find a way to have no gasoline at all and never pay you any taxes there. I think at some point, somewhere, we as a public are going to have to say much like many other utilities it costs money to keep roads up and it costs money to keep transit up. And I hate to talk tax or anything else but find a way to find, you know, to get the revenue steady and quit one and two in the users because you're never going to get there and frankly this is as important to me as the fire department or the police department or anybody else. It's a public thing that we need to support and there are people who cannot buy it and eventually the technology people are not going to use it. And then you're going to charge us what? Because we'll get our employees to do that and other people to do it and at some point we're just all not going to be moving and Amazon is going to drop my groceries off apparently through a through a overhead vehicle of some sort unmanned. So we need to think way beyond the envelope that we're in. I'm happy with the solutions we see between I call it the last mile because I'm from technology but the last mile getting home from that transit center is really important to me. Parking is ridiculous and asking us to park in neighborhoods and overflow them that's ridiculous. So I would hope that you could help us look to new ways of finding those revenues and get it steady and get it isolated and devoted and dedicated to transportation. Any one of you can comment on that you're welcome. I think that you know there's not a far-fetched idea you know I could even say we can get it from apps because technology isn't going anywhere and so every time you download an app there's an automatic X amount of cents that goes to pay for whatever we want to pay for. I think your point is a very important point which I think we're talking about. There is an economic impact to public transportation yet at the same time we have to start thinking outside the box of how we're going to continue to fund it because quite honestly what will happen is where we've got we had the MAP 21 we have the FAST Act which was the longest funding bill we had in a long time but that's already what three years in almost we're two years into that one pretty much three years already and so we're already talking this conversation about moving forward but how do we make sure that we have dedicated funding and it's not just on a federal side there's a local issue here too because it's great if we dedicated up here but then we can't fix the roads and the bridges and the things still down in our respect of communities we just did ourselves as disservice so I don't think your idea is too far-fetched quite honestly and it's one of those things where we have to push ourselves as an industry it's not just apt or illegal cities which is why I focus on collaboration a lot we all have to come together we all have to have those same top 10 bullet points and then we have to drill drill drill no pun intended I was gonna say drill baby drill but but drill that into you know the heads of our legislators to say hey this is serious and we're serious and so that's part of what we have to come but there's there's we could probably have a really great session sitting around and thinking of all the other things we can end in talking half of them off the table but the point is the fact we're thinking outside the box that's not a far-fetched idea at all yeah I would just add I want to echo Valerie's discussion about collaboration you know one of the things that concerns me again I don't know what's coming out with the administration's budget but I've seen proposed budgets by some organizations that have fairly significant sway it seems and in the new administration and some of them try to sort of throw us back to old ideological battles about roads versus transit rail versus highway you know inner city rail versus airport you know aviation and I will tell you if I have one impression of having gone from work to the federal level to go work at the local level that is how extraordinarily irrelevant that issue is when you get to trying to solve community-based problems as I said earlier the future sound region is going to have a million more people in the next 40 years excuse me by 2040 with a million more people coming by 2040 it's not about aviation versus highway investment versus transit investment we need more of all of it and then you can include within that locks and dams other waterway improvements port infrastructure so when and and the other thing is on the technology side the distinctions between what is transit versus what is highway you know what is traditional road transportation you know we operate commuter rail over a freight rail network we try and figure out every day had a better coordinate to get more capacity out of that system it's one system and if you've seen one city's transportation profile you've seen one city's transportation profile because each of them are different and each of them have to solve their problem their own way so by collaborating with all those other interests to figure out how to solve the funding conundrum that's really the way to go because it'll be it'll be way easy for opponents to try to balkanize us and say you know they don't need the money you do and that's not a productive conversation I know we have a couple more questions we want to try to get in there so we're gonna back there yeah I heard Mr. Evans talk about 3p and I don't know what that term means and I have a second question which is I I hear the Trump administration talking a lot about privatization private capital and tolling and I have concerns about that in terms of fairness and and regressive impacts on on people who are already kind of at the edge in terms of their ability to pay for transportation and I'm wondering if you're thinking about how to how to work within the what looks like the framework that will be coming out of the Trump administration which is not much new public investment but instead trying to lure private investment in which means they have to make a profit and it it means that that maybe the services that are available to modern and low-income households won't be available or won't be won't be increased but instead we'll be building a transportation infrastructure system that is that is for the high fliers so to speak so 3p's and I'm sorry to get into acronym crap but it is what it is our public private partnerships and so and you you make it you make an excellent point about that so what we've had from the administration to this point is this the throw out of the big balloon number of a trillion dollars of infrastructure investment and then some sketchy talk and I'll just be candid about it I'm a politician so I get away with that sketchy talk about public private partnerships and you know being able to have private investment to basically drive you know the the development of our our our infrastructure transportation infrastructure is country and what people don't understand is that public private partnerships are a tool they are not a strategy so what I mean by that is is that you know what the president is looking at as bright shiny things over here okay and what the reality is is that and even his own transportation secretary said this a week ago is that public private partnerships are not a panacea for public investment in infrastructure so you know you have you know two different versions of what the story is so it doesn't get to funding public infrastructure it does not get to the issues that we need of building out public infrastructure it does not get into the issues of the broad investment that we need and you know hopefully next week I think it was coming up the skinny budget comes out next week there will be some more detail about what the administration's plan is around this but be quite frank I'm not very hopeful that that plan will have any real robust beef to it so yes public private partnerships have been successful in public transit Denver RTD is one of the examples of that they had a rail line that that they built that is a public private partnership that has a 34 35 year window of investment on the private side and that that infrastructure will eventually be turned back over to Denver RTD after 35 years but those kinds of projects are few and far between it doesn't necessarily work for smaller guys like us and Eugene Springfield or in some other places so we really got to look at you know looking at what the real issues are and stop following the shiny ball over here and I would just add public private partnerships 3Ps whatever we want to call them are not new and depend on how you look at them from a local level we do 3Ps every single day we partner with our philanthropic community we partner with our school district we partner with the transit agency on the local level so we do it all the time what I think we have to be careful about is there are some great examples of public private partnerships right here if we take it out of the transportation realm and look at it from a municipal realm and it's called it could be seen as privatization there was a drive I won't name any city where everybody was coming in hey let us why don't you give us your parking lots and your parking meters you know we'll operate them for you we'll pay you x amount of millions and millions of dollars upfront and we'll turn it around and give it back to you at some point later right well for us at the city of Cleveland in particular that parking every time you put a quarter in a meter that helps to support our municipal bonds and so that's our asset we own that we own that asset and so I do think I know we had a we had a very good discussion about three P's in the TNI committee we need to balance and make sure that we're using the same definition we know what it is in particular and like Greg said and I think you hear some people say the Denver model was phenomenal when we were building a bridge in Cleveland the George Boynard Bridge and our governor came out and said hey we got a way to expedite the funding we're going to do a public private partnership are you guys okay with this and then just went away because that didn't work out because they were going to front the financing so I do think we need to be mindful I think those are case by case situations from a fiscal perspective but there's different definitions of public private partnership when the truth of the matter is they mean the same thing so we got to start using that same one and then using that as you say one of the twos out of the two box and I apologize I know we got a couple more I just I wanted to say this historically we need to remember transit agencies started out as private enterprise in this country and they went broke in the 60s and that's why we ended up with public transit and you know people having having you know 1% sales tax or whatever the case may be all across the country to fund public transit in a broad context because it was needed and was seen as a public utility that's what it is so I would just address the one part of your question we didn't address very quickly and that is the regressivity of the of the revenue sources you know we've talked public private partnerships have been changing Denver was a unique example really made facilitated by the fact that the state of Colorado's legislature was willing to put up an availability payment against which to leverage the private partnership when it comes to taxes there's also some innovations going on in the Puget Sound region is one of the areas where it is happening let me give you just a couple of quick examples ones on the service side ones on the tax side on the service side we're very proud of a program we have in our region it's called orca lift orca is the card you use to tap onto our system bus or rail you can go through social service organizations verify that you're a low income individual and get subsidized transit tips when I board the bus in the morning I tap onto the bus and when the person behind me does they tap on the bus we're both cleared and nobody knows who you know paid the subsidized fare versus the higher fare it is just a service that we provide for low income individuals to be able to access the system and obviously we forego some fair revenue to do that but as a matter of policy the region stands behind it similarly we have some taxes which in certain of our cities Seattle being one where there is either low income exemptions or low income rebates in order to deal with that now that's very that's so that this has always been an issue with the gas tax the gas tax likes like other excise and sales taxes is a very aggressive tax and that's one of the reasons and one of the other motivations to try to move away from it you know we talk a lot in the transit community about transit dependent individuals I have in-laws who live in rural Indiana they are gasoline dependent individuals you know to get my mother in law to healthcare it's not going to happen on a bus and the price of gas makes a big difference to my father in law and is on a fixed income to make it work so there should be ways of looking at all of these progressive versus regressive taxes in a way where we get the revenues we need to build the system but also be cognizant of the fact that depending on how we structure it it could hurt the very people we're trying to lift up you know through these investments just before we go to the next question I know I see one in the back one up front I just want to be mindful we have a hard stop at five o'clock and so you know we want to try to take as many questions as we can but in case we don't we can make sure that you know how to get in contact with us if you have additional questions as well all right I saw a question in the back Billy did you have a question go ahead now go ahead ask you a question Billy what's up Paul seeing Paul more a couple of days than I seen my wife the last couple of days that didn't sound right Billy runs government affairs some apt we've been we've been working hard appreciate the congressman's comments this morning quick two quick questions Paul number one what is the congressman's feeling regarding the 115th and his bill getting any more any less traction than it than it previously proved to be data's new opportunity less of opportunity a curious about that and then secondly in fact take a quick second and change name and add to the panel here that the economic returns of local transportation initiative and what do we do with the money Valerie modded a wonderful session yesterday about public transportation and its economic impact talked about some 4.5 billion dollars of economic impact by various BRT lines and I'm curious Peter also your thoughts about the tremendous level of economic activity generated or birthed by transportation public transportation investments and those revenues that are generated how can we find a way to to invest back in the very entity that birth those revenues in the first place sure no thanks for the question and yes as Billy alludes to gas tax legislation no new initiative for congressman Blumenauer was introduced to the last two congresses same template 15 cent increase faced in over three years increasing both gas and diesel taxes and indexing them to inflation two years ago when we reintroduced it when at the beginning of the 114th congress there was a lot of momentum around gas tax you saw almost daily reports of a senator republican senator being open to it or Nancy Pelosi saying maybe it was time to raise the gas tax I think a lot of that was due to local action actually and action from the infrastructure community we had dozens of letters up to capitol hill and the drumbeat for real investment that was stable dedicated and big enough to do the job of funding a long-term transportation bill that message resonated and seems like we're not quite in the same place there are a couple of other things going on in the news that can sort of distract from the infrastructure investment gap that we are facing I think the congressman mentioned this a little bit this morning at APTA if the atmosphere is conducive to a real tax reform conversation and if we do get down to business on an infrastructure package I don't think that public-private partnerships are going to be enough to cut it and I think that any infrastructure bill that's based just on that doesn't stand any chance in congress I think if we actually took a look at it there's a possibility for the gas tax I mean we've just got to follow the lead of the leaders at the local level who have done this work Peter, I think you had a part for you I think the question is how might transit better capture the revenue generated from its investment and a couple of ideas that are out there that have been tried at various levels tax increment finance districts which are not legal in every state there are hybrids of it that kind of look and smell like a tax increment financing district but these are things where you effectively draw a line around the alignment that's the community around which is going to have the greatest capital appreciation and try to tax a piece of that increased value I will tell you a lot of the challenges and something that we are dealing with that's sort of unique it actually goes to the regressivity question that was asked before we are working diligently under new requirements that came with our ballot measure to try to make sure that there is still the availability of some affordable housing around the infrastructure we build that did not get developed to a point that it becomes a huge gentrification engine as it has in other communities you can view that as potentially as leaving some revenue on the table you know you could build high-end retail along every one of these environments and continue to push people out of their communities and then have what have you really done for them you know I will tell you that in the Puget Sound region our biggest challenge I think right now is not capturing more revenue the voters have already voted a very sizable tax increase among themselves and it's time for us to deliver on it I think part of our challenge is to ask them to be patient because they'll be paying the revenues right away and we will be delivering the projects out over a 25-year period but there are ways I think the FTA has sought with a new joint development circular to see if we could provide some greater flexibility to transit agencies to partner with private development in and around their facilities in order to capture a piece of the revenue I think especially for those systems that have generated billions if not zillions and yet have a huge state of good repair challenge it is really necessary to find a way to let them reinvest because you can bet that if they as you do see in certain cities around the country and we are unfortunately seeing here in the nation's capital with the imperative need to close down the WMATA system to do urgent needed repairs that should have been done years ago that when the businesses lose that rail connection they feel it then so there needs to be some mechanism on the other side that if they benefited from the presence of the rail connection they need to make a contribution toward its upkeep and you know I think that's interesting that you raised the TIF and I know Tom you had a question up here next sorry but just a quick follow-up to that real quick Peter on the TIF have have you used that as a trade transit agency we have not but we are you know we are already funded through a unique sort of blend of three taxes you know right now like I said we're sort of the unique thing to not we don't look necessarily at the community is how can we command yet more money out of them we're trying to do a lot better on place making to make sure that that community remains mixed income and open and available to people and the reason why I asked is I mean we use it a lot on the local level so I'm sure most cities we use it a lot we try to keep our school district hold with our TIFs because we're TIFing the real estate but we try to make sure but we have done some successful projects we redid the whole flats east bank you gotta get back there check it out based off a TIF taking the the incremental increase in the value of the property and putting it back into the project but I haven't seen it down on the transit side it may be something worth looking at one day so if you do do one let us know I want to follow it actually not far from you I think at least Chicago Redline was looking to try to do one to help leverage funds to for that rebuild I don't know if it went to check with Dorval okay and I'm sorry I know we had a question up here Tom and then we we probably this will probably be the last question depending on how long we go but I know I see some hands up so we'll float around a little bit but I just know members have a hard stop at five o'clock okay I'll try to make it brief no you're good in our last local election the overriding issue and it's a vote to intervote out of office issue was trafficked in congestion so we know you but you should probably for others identify okay I'm Tom Odell I'm the councilman from the city some admission in Washington one of Peter's supporting suburbs but the the issues there are a number of facets here one is what can be done quickly and when we look at technology everyone's talking about you know sky blue stuff 10 15 20 years in the future my voters are not going to be that patient so we also need to look at what can technology do for us today to make the current system work more efficiently things like the intelligence intelligent transportation system computerized light coordination identify choke points clear them up jump lanes that type of thing for buses the another thing I wanted to it's really not a question Peter so much as supporting what you said before uh I think the latest setup Puget Center Regional Council or MPO is by 2050 that one million goes to about 1.4 million on a base of 3.6 million so you get the idea the magnitude of the problem but more importantly to your to the issue getting back to the issue of value analysis or whatever we're called it part it's not only what can be brought into their community it's what can be retained in the community two examples Boeing has a major parts production effort down in Auburn which is on the south side of Seattle their major assembly points are five miles north of that and then another 25 miles north and ever there are two ways to get there I-405 and I-5 when I first worked for Boeing we were trucking parts up at all hours of the day and now doing it at 3 a.m I think number two and if that is not fixed somehow Boeing may well relocate and take a whole bunch of highly paid manufacturing jobs with it number two port of Seattle is having a hard time getting truck traffic container traffic through to the port and it's the downtown mix it's I-90 it's the whole nine yards so to your point these are it's not only growth it's keeping what's in order here thank you well two quick thoughts this is sort of sharing Puget Sound more with the broader community here we do a lot of things in the Puget Sound and we do them in extraordinarily close proximity to one another which is part of what Tom is talking about so in terms of where we have major manufacturing our port infrastructure at least in the port of the Seattle you're not going to find a major seaport of that size in such close proximity to the heart of downtown and that's why like the location of a new basketball arena if we're ever going to get the NBA back has become a holy war in the region over the availability of movement for port traffic versus others I totally agree it's one of the things that people are concerned about when we talk about introducing transit and it's not just about retaining the job infrastructure it's also retaining the community as they know it right quality of life exactly the fact that you can still like own a home on a fixed income and your and your mother can still maintain her home adjacent you know near to where where you're raising your own kids right you talked about early projects and what early technologies one I think I'm very enamored with I really want to work with wash dot and the federal highway administration on it and it is part of the sound transit three plan is just using the existing shoulder as a bus only lane it is something that is actually funded as a project out in your way out moving toward Issaquah but with just a little bit of investment in new sensors that you can put in the roadway and in the cabs of the buses you can pretty well ensure the safety of operating in the shoulder and that's something that you know the taxpayers already paid to build that shoulder and maybe we need to do some striping maybe we need to do a little bit of widening but that's a cheap piece of work frankly to get a throughput of another lane exclusively for transit those you know with a little bit of technology and not very advanced technology at that so that's that's the example I'd throw out there all right so if you don't mind if you don't mind joining me and giving our panel a round of applause