 Good morning. We're going to go ahead and call the regional transportation meeting for December 5th to order. Can we begin with a roll call? Commissioner Lowe. Here. Commissioner Bertrand. Here. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Alternate Lynn. Here. Commissioner Kaufman-Gomez. Here. Commissioner Caput. Here. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. Here. Commissioner Friend. Here. Commissioner Leopold. Here. Commissioner Alternate Johnson. Here. Commissioner Batour. Here. Commissioner Gonzales. Here. Great. We'll begin with oral communications, this is a time when anyone from the public can address us on any item that is not on the agenda. Please come up. Nerdish yourself. Thank you. The last agenda, I'd send it in a correspondence and I don't know if it reached you, but it was essentially making the point that you're going to spend Measure D money on items that are not in the expenditure plan for Measure D, that there's a process for you to do that. And I didn't see in the staff report any indication that you were about to go through that process. So I just want to recall that to your attention. You may want to reexamine that. But I think the bigger picture is that this next round of auxiliary lanes, which was being proposed for expenditure in your last meeting, is beyond the mandate of the voters of Measure D. And the way I understand the decision that you had to make when you put Measure D together was that you thought you needed to put something in on the highway to give people who are stuck on the highway something that they could look forward to in order for them to vote for Measure D. Now, at the time, we were arguing that it doesn't make sense to offer people something that doesn't work. And the EIR on the highway projects have shown that the auxiliary lanes are not going to work to reduce congestion. This next auxiliary lane, which is from Soquel the 41st actually worsens congestion in the afternoon commute if you look at the EIR. So this next round of auxiliary lanes from State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard, it's not understandable to me why you would want to spend money on that. I understand why you did it, Measure D, because you wanted to show people something that they were, you know, even though it wasn't accurate to say it would reduce congestion. It was for show. But why continue the charade in this next round? Thank you. Anyone else like to address the commission? Just for advice, I believe the yellow light is just a warning that you have. Is it one minute to go? I don't want to cut you off, Rick. I definitely got the point. I just want you to feel like you were cheated out of time. So the red light means you're done. Yellow light is your warning to pretty much wrap up. So I can have his minute? You can't do that, but I'd love to hear your three minutes. Go ahead, try. Okay. Good try. Again, happy holidays, Michael St. Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. Let's talk about executive order in 1919 from Governor Newsom. I'm pretty sure all of you have heard about that. I think the governor is trying to do his best to try and steer us in the right direction and help us all fight the effects of climate change. Even Caltrans has taken notice on this, mainly because the order is from the governor, made a pretty significant change with its ITIP draft for 2020. It removed three highway widening projects in the Central Valley and along San Luis Obispo, saving nearly $33 million in highway widening funds to align itself with Governor Newsom's executive order. This all sounds so fantastic. It's kind of unbelievable, but hold on. It is unbelievable. They got the news. People got the news and a lot of bad press came out and these advances towards a better use of state funds have been put back into these projects. Basically, the same old battle continues in our democracy. Big business, special interests, and groups raised distinct and now things are going back to the old school. The fossil fuel interests, auto industry, big banks do not want government meddling in what to do or bothering their bottom line. That's kind of the whole problem in our society. The point is, it's how ironic that they feel this way. One point they do want government the next time they do not want government. Government's okay when we need a bailout, subsidies to keep our profit margins up during a recession. Examples of this, bailout of the auto industry from 2009 or 2008 to 2014, $81 billion, bank bailouts during the last recession, $700 billion. Fossil fuel subsidies, and if you didn't know this, those exceed the spending that the Pentagon has for its budget every year, $649 billion. And of course, 87% of Trump tax cuts going to big business and the wealthy. These are all atrocious, but I think even worse by far is when these same entities try and put a stop to our progress towards combating climate change by focusing on their bottom line or using any excuse to continue business as usual. It is again a battle between the corporate machine and misdirected government and environmentalists once again. And I hope all 12 of you, all of us, had better be praying that the environmentalists won this one. Our civilization depends on that victory. Thank you. Thank you. Is this the consent agenda? No, this is an open comment, oral communications. I guess I'll have, this is Kerry Pico. I live in Aptos. And none of this is exactly on the consent agenda, although it's all related. I strongly suggest that the RTC get an oversight, the Citizens Oversight Committee for many of the things that I will be later on talking about regarding fiscal management, project oversight, contract enforcement. I won't be talking about contract enforcement, but I'm just really, I'm not, I got into this not because I was pro-trainer, anti-trainer, anything like that. It's about fiscal responsibility and accountability. And I haven't seen that, which is why I'm here. And I do want to say one last thing. I don't like coming down here. This is like the last thing I want to do with my time. And I don't think you guys want to hear me talk either. So really, let's talk about accountability for what the RTC is doing, spending money wisely and not throwing away. There are many things that I will talk about that I just see doing it again or throwing money down the tubes. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak to the commission during oral communications? Dr. Bertrand, you had a comment? Yeah, I was wondering if staff could respond to that because I believe we have a Citizens Oversight Committee for D. Luis, go ahead and expand on that. Yes, I mean, the commission does have three action for standing committees. One, that's the Administration Personnel Advisory Committee. It's just commissioners of the RTC that do review a variety of things that come to the commission, particularly budget-related and expenditure-related items. You also have a Measure D Citizens Advisory Committee that is correct. It has been established to make sure that any expenditures that come out of Measure D funds are in accordance with the measure. And they do provide their annual report that is as public. And it's on the RTC website. The commission also has a Blessing and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, which is made up of citizens, as well as representation from organizations that the RTC works with. And also the Elderly Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee that also includes citizens and organizations that the RTC works with. You also do have the Interagency Technical Advisory Committee that has representation from all of the local jurisdictions from the Republic Works and Planned Departments, as well as UCSC and Santa Cruz Metro and others. So you do have a variety of committees, but naturally, if the RTC sees that there's a need for additional committees, you are free to establish committees as you see fit. And there is a Citizens Oversight Committee associated with Measure D. How often do they meet? I believe it's four times a year. Well, the measure does not establish any frequency. It says that they show me, I think, at least twice a year, as I believe with the measure assessed. I think they met three times in the past year. Okay, great. Commissioner Shiffrin. I have a question also from one of the speakers. Is there anything in Measure D that prevents the commission from moving forward with the auxiliary lanes? We do not believe so. We believe it's included in the expenditure plan. Okay. I'm going to move away from moral communications. Are there any additions or deletions to the consent agenda? Yes. Who has those? Yes, there are several handouts and replacement pages that are in front of you and posted on the website as well available to the public. So there's a replacement page for item five, a replacement page for item 13, a handout for item 18, a replacement, two replacement pages for item 22, a replacement page for item 24, and a handout for item 25. And that's all available for the public? Okay, great. All right. Commissioner Koffman-Gomez. Yes, I have a few questions on item 10 at some given time. Okay. I'm going to get to the consent agenda. I'm going to have a couple things to clean up before I get there. Is it about the consent agenda? Okay. Go ahead, director. Commissioner, you want to wait? I'm going to bring to the consent agenda. And before I open that up, I'm going to get a comment from Commissioner Friend. Thank you, chair. I just need to recuse myself on two items on the consent agenda, item seven and 12, which deal with the rail line. I have a primary, my primary residence is within 500 feet of the rail line, so I have a conflict for rail-related items. Okay. Is there any commissioners that would like to pull anything from the consent agenda? No. Anyone from the public have a comment on anything on the consent agenda? Mr. Pico, come on up. Kerry Pico-Aptos, consent agenda item seven, engineering services for bridge repairs and rail corridor. These repairs, my first suggestion is repairs should be evaluated for potential use as rail traffic alone, rail with trail combined use, or trail alone. And the reason is with the La Selva trestle that they've rebuilt, there is no possibility for pedestrian use on there. I believe that was a total, not a total, but a really loss of opportunity to add the trail adjustment. Secondly, regarding this, I'm not complaining about the money because this is about a study, but it's, many of the repairs should have been done already. They've spent 5.6 to 5.9 million, depending on the accounting. On bridge repairs from Pacharo up through Hidden Beach, I personally saw the crew working in Hidden Beach. And for me to hear that it has to be redone is pretty upsetting. And this is why I talk about the Citizens Oversight Committee. If the RTC cannot manage a project and get it done properly and making us come back and do it again, this is my understanding that it wasn't done properly the first time. Why should we trust the RTC to do it again? Second issue is consent for the railroad item 12, consent for the railroad crossing agreement. It states that there's no fiscal impact on the RTC, which I agree, but there's a huge fiscal impact on the county. It says, they kind of put in around, they're asking for $400,000, but we all know that it's a $3.2 million project, approximately 1.5 million of that is related to railroad accommodation costs, including contamination, dealing with a railroad in the middle of an intersection kind of thing like that. And so I urge the commission to object to this project and actually put some sanity back into the public spending. But I will need to say, I wrote this up before I understood that it's part of the Aptos Village project, but I do want the commission to understand that the presence of the rail is causing a huge increase on county spending. And that's really where I'm coming back to fiscal accountability. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Sally Arnold, board chair, friends of the rail and trail. And not surprisingly, we have a different perspective on these bridge repairs. We're really pleased to see that there's a review and design process beginning. We really appreciate staff who've been working to make it happen. And yeah, repairing infrastructure is expensive. I think that the question is, do we want to use this infrastructure? And we do. And it's important for us to have more ways to move people around the county and getting those bridges repaired is one of the things that will help make that happen. And therefore, it's a worthwhile expenditure and we appreciate that you're considering it today. And we urge you to vote yes. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Barry Scott. I live in Aptos. And I'm here today just to thank you all. I see all of these fabulous investments across all of our different modes of transportation. And with the 2016 measure having passed and money rolling in, I'm seeing resurfacing of streets. I'm seeing improvements on the highway. I'm seeing maintenance on the rail line. I see segments of the trail about to begin. And I'm just really, really proud of where this county is and where this body is. And I want to thank all of you because I know it's a lot of hard work and the RTC staff. It's great to see projects happening. So good job. Thanks. Thank you. We actually got a compliment. I think we've had a couple of compliments. So it's not the first but we appreciate them. So thank you for that comment, Mr. Good morning. Good morning. Keith Otto on item 12. Quick question. So if that goes forward, right, is there work that's going to take place that's going to have to be redone as a result of whatever comes back from the high capacity public transit study? In other words, we're going to do something there for that intersection and then have to redo it depending upon what comes back from the study. And if so, then maybe the order there should be reversed, get the results of that, figure out what needs to be done on that intersection and then go forward. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Mark Maceti Miller. I'm a professional civil engineer with more than three decades of experience in designing public works infrastructure in the county of Santa Cruz and beyond. I want to echo Mr. Scott's comments earlier. I commend the commission and the commission staff for an outstanding job of investing the taxpayers money using measure D money to upgrade the infrastructure across the county and particularly the rail line, which needs some infrastructure. This is a good investment. This is smart use of taxpayer money. So I also want to add a compliment to all of you and the great job the staff is doing. Thank you. Thank you. See, Greg, that's two compliments. Okay. So it was really three, I think. Thank you for the accounting. Okay. Anybody else like to address the commission with anything? Comments on the consent agenda? Okay. We'll bring it back. Are there any comments on the consent agenda? Sure. Go ahead. It's a question on item number 12. Sorry. You can tell I'm not here often. This is the railroad crossing agreement with Aptos Creek. My concern is that the commission had a previous agreement with the county for crossing of the rail line. And while it was initially presented to the commission as having no cost impact on the commission, the commission ended up having to pay a good deal of money, I think for hazardous material cleanup. I just want to make sure this is not a project that the commission is initiating. It's not a project that the commission has any need to have happen. This is a county generated project. I just want to be clear that this agreement I read it over, it wasn't really clear to me. I don't know whether there should be another provision in there that no costs of this project should be imposed on the county, on the commission. Because I think that was an unfortunate oversight with the last agreement. And we don't, we never know how these things are going to work out. But I don't think it's proper for the commission to be paying for even part for a project that the, is assisting a developer and the county in carrying out one of their projects. Would you guys like to elaborate on it, one of you two? It is kind of a question to make sure that this agreement is different from the last agreement. And there will be no cost impact on the county. On the commission. Yeah. We can work with the county to have that condition as part of your consent if, if you would like. And, and make sure that, that. Well, I think based on our previous experience, it would be a wise move to make that just be clear that since this is not a commission initiated project that doesn't benefit the commission, there should be no cost to the commission as a result irrespective of what needs to be done to make the project happen. Okay. Well, you can add that condition to them. I would, when, when a motion is made. I'm going to clarify that because if this becomes more involved, we may end up pulling this. So is there conditions in here right now that have the RTC? Are you trying to change some of the conditions that are in the agreement that's, that's been before us today? I think I'm trying to add a clarification. It's just from reading over the agreement, it's unclear that there won't be, that there's, it appears that there, that the county's going to cover all the costs, but that's how it appeared last time. And somehow the commission ended up having to spend a significant amount of money. I'm going to let the ED address this and see if it adds clarification. If not, I'll ask more questions. So I would have to specifically review the agreement with respect to hazardous materials because I think that's what the main concern is here. Often, hazardous materials are considered the responsibility of the underlining property owner. And we will ensure that in this particular case, if, if the commission so desires that, that responsibility be that of the developer and that can be conditioned into whatever approvals you so choose to make. Um, I'm going to pull this item and put it at the agenda. We're going to have some conversation on this. It's inappropriate to do it now. And I think there's enough, I see enough like inquiry that at least we should open this up a little bit more. So we're going to take, that is 12, we're talking about 12, and we're going to move it down to, let's pick a good number. It's going to be 25a. We're going to do that and we'll, we'll figure it out at that point. Any other? Commissioner Coffman, go ahead. Yes, thank you. For item 10, I would like to see if we can possibly get the community bridges to talk to us in terms of a small presentation at some point. I know that they also have an EV vehicle. So I, as the commission and with what we're investing with them, it'd be helpful for us to know a little bit about that. And it's a quarterly cost of the ridership. Part of it too is I'd like to see about a compare and contrast between pair crews and lift line. And I know that that's not really transportation, you know, project kind of thing, but we are funding both of them. And I just wanted to have a better understanding of the differences. And also, since they do have an EV vehicle that is public transit, I think that's our first that we've got here. And it would be helpful for us to have a little bit of an insight of how that's working out. Are you asking for that to come later? Do you have any problems with this current item? I don't have issues with this, but because I have questions about this and I think that we can probably, they're not here to probably specifically ask. It may be as a request to have them come back so that we can actually have a presentation. Okay. But we can move forward with this item. I think that's a great idea. You got that. Thank you. Mine is loosely connected to this, but more connected to the comment that were made with the freeway. Is your mic on, Greg? Yes, it is. Okay, I've got to speak into it. If we have the auxiliary lanes and we also have metering lights on Highway 1, a lot of people think we're trying to get the freeway and the traffic to move at 50 or 60 miles an hour. But we don't have to do that. If the auxiliary lanes can even get the traffic to move smoothly at 30 miles an hour, it'll cut the commute traffic down between Larkin Valley and Park Avenue by about 20 minutes or half an hour. So I think the auxiliary lanes with metering lights will be able to do that. It'll be able to get people to actually keep moving rather than stop, go. That accordion effect causes big backups and where you're actually not moving at all. So that's all I wanted to mention. I moved the consent agenda as amended. I'll second it. Before we do that, can I just modify that a little bit? Can we just approve it excluding Item 7 and 12? I've got recusal, so I'd like to vote on every item except for 7 and 12. Well, 12 has been pulled. Okay, 12, okay. So to be decided on 7. Are you pulling 7? Well, but then I think just Commissioner Frank can just abstain on Number 7. Abstaining is adequate? Correct. On a consent item, he can just note the abstention for the record on a consent item. Okay, great. All right. Thank you for that clarification. All right. Then I've got a motion and a second was by No, Coffin. Coffin Gomez. Okay, great. So all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so that'll take us to the regular agenda. We have a Commissioner reports. Any Commissioner have anything they'd like to present? Go ahead. Is there a way for me to get the emails ahead of time? Is there some sort of website option? Because I'm going to suggest maybe a drop box because I come in early to read the emails from people that want to comment and I don't have enough time. And so if these are available, like before the meeting, I'd love to know. Commissioner Bertrand, the cutoff time for comments from the public is Wednesday at noon. So that would have been yesterday. So we can certainly send those to you as soon as we receive them, but it would be after Wednesday at noon. I did send out an email earlier on Tuesday with all of the additional handouts and the replacement pages, which we will continue to do. But the comments from the public will come a little bit later. Can we like just do a drop box and then I could just log into it? You don't have to send a B for everyone. We post them on our RTC website. Okay. So we will send you an email alerting you that those have been posted. Thank you. Any other commissioner reports or comments? Okay. We'll move on to item 18, the director's report. Thank you, Chair Badoff and commissioners. The Self-Help Counties Coalition held its annual conference called Focus on the Future on November 18th and 19th in San Diego. Senior Transportation Engineer Sarah Christensen and I attended this year. There are now 24 local county transportation agencies in California that are considered self-help counties, including Santa Cruz, delivering supermajority voter approved transportation sales tax measures. These measures combined are expected to generate $194 billion for essential transportation programs and projects. These counties represent 88 percent of California's total population. The theme of the 2019 conference was Building on the Promise. The conference was extremely helpful in networking with agencies on how best to deliver the improvements identified in RTC's Measure D expenditure plan. In addition to meeting with other self-help counties, I had the opportunity to meet with the California Transportation Commission staff to discuss RTC's proposed projects for upcoming SB1 grant programs, including the active transportation program, the solutions to congested corridors program, and the local partnership program. Caltrans' new director, Tokes Omishokin, addressed both the board's self-help county directors and the full conference as a keynote speaker. Tokes comes to California from the Tennessee Department of Transportation, where he served as Deputy Commissioner for Environmental and Planning. During his career, Omishokin strongly supported efforts to develop more and safer biking, walking, and non-motorized mobility options. Omishokin is expected to be an advocate for many of the values instilled within Santa Cruz County, especially with respect to implementing complete streets projects on the state highway system, including those on Highway 1, 9, 129, and 152. I highlighted the Measure D expenditure plan, including RTC's active transportation program, as well as the Highway 1 bus on shoulders auxiliary lane program, as an innovative way to provide congestion reliefs and increased safety without increasing the overall highway capacity. Last month, I announced that staff has been working on development of the inaugural Measure D strategic implementation plan. The focus of the plan will be on maximizing the delivery of all regional projects and programs identified in the expenditure plan, with an emphasis on how best to leverage Measure D funds to secure grants in order to fully fund and deliver the plan. The draft plan is expected by the end of this month, with the public hearing expected for the January RTC meeting. RTC interviewed eight applicants to create a list of qualified candidates and fill RTC's two vacant transportation planning positions. The RTC interview committee ranked eight applicants and created a list of qualified candidates for future employment as a transportation planner. I am pleased to announce that RTC has promoted Tommy Travers to one of the two vacant planner positions. Tommy started at RTC as a planning technician in December 2017 and has been serving as a transportation planner on a provisional appointment since April 2019. Tommy has a bachelor's degree in urban studies with a focus on planning from San Francisco State University and a GIS analyst certificate. Tommy has been the staff person to RTC's Bicycle Advisory Committee since May of this year. He has also been working with contractors, other RTC staff, local jurisdictions, local law enforcement, and members of the community to coordinate rail and trail corridor maintenance activities. Working with the RTC's senior engineer Tommy has been implementing the county-wide bike signage project which is nearly completed. Tommy has also participated with a variety of other projects including the Highway 9, San Lorenzo Valley Complete Streets Plan, production of GIS maps, and public outreach events and activities. Congratulations to Tommy. We are in the final steps of hiring a second candidate for RTC's other transportation planner vacancies and should have an announcement by the January RTC meeting. RTC is also in the process of interviewing candidates to create a similar list of qualified candidates for transportation planning technician positions for which RTC now has two vacancies because Tommy was promoted. I expect to have announcements on appointments to RTC's vacant planning technicians also at the January RTC meeting. RTC staff participated in the 20th annual San Lorenzo Valley Environmental Town Hall event on November 23rd. The event featured guest speaker state assembly member Mark Stone and highlighted over 25 agencies dedicated to the betterment of our county's environment. At the RTC booth there was a lot of positive interest in the Highway 9, San Lorenzo Valley Complete Streets Corridor Plan. People were excited about the improvements laid out in the plan and were eager to get moving on getting the projects delivered. Earlier this year RTC was awarded a $250,000 Highway Safety Improvement Program or H-SIP grant to deliver crosswalk safety improvements in the San Lorenzo Valley. I am pleased to announce that Caltrans has agreed to add crosswalk enhancements at at least one location in Felton on Highway 9 near the Wild Roots Market to an existing Caltrans project. With chair bought hours approval I have executed a cooperative agreement with Caltrans for $50,000 of the H-SIP grant funds to have Caltrans construct the planned improvements at that location. Construction is expected in the spring of 2020. Staff is continuing to negotiate with Caltrans on implementing improvements at the other locations. RTC also continues to work with Caltrans on a proposed funding agreement for a Caltrans project initiation document for other components of the Highway 9 San Lorenzo Valley Complete Streets Plan. I expect to bring future cooperative funding agreements to the commission for consideration after negotiation on the terms of the funding agreement are complete with Caltrans. Segment seven phase one of the coastal rail trail will be breaking ground soon. To celebrate this milestone ecology action and friends of the rail trail will be hosting a groundbreaking celebration on January 25th from one to three at the Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing Company. All members of the community are invited. The city of Watsonville has advertised a portion of segment 18 between Olaani Parkway and the Watsonville slough trailhead for construction bids. Bids are expected to be open on December 17th with construction starting in 2020. RTC staff is currently working on the 2045 regional transportation plan. As part of this we are seeking public input to help guide the goals targets and policies for the plan. Members of the public can provide input to help inform the plan by taking a short survey. Answer from the survey will help us update the goals targets and policies and define priority projects. A link to the survey can be found on the home page of the RTC website. The RTC office will be closed for the holidays on December 24th, a half day, December 25th and January 1st. These holidays fall midweek this season. A significant number of RTC staff including front office staff has requested vacation for a good portion of the week from December 23rd through January 2nd. Although some staff is expected to be present in the office during this period, I have safety and security concerns about having the office open to foot traffic if the front office is not fully staffed. Past experience has shown that there is not a lot of foot traffic during this period in order not to have to reject vacation requests and in the best interests of staff, safety and security, I have decided to close the office to foot traffic during this period. Staff will be reachable by electronic means including phone and email as usual. RTC staff wishes you, your family and friends a safe, healthy and happy holiday season that concludes my report. Any questions of the director? Seeing none, any comments from the public on the director's report? Yes, Brian Peoples, executive director of trail. Now I want to make a correction. The organization is friends of rails and trails. It's not friends of rail trail. They're specifically for the train. So we want to really, if you can make a correction on that, it's really important. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay, bring it back. No other comments? Move on to item 19, Caltrans report, Ms. Lowe. Good morning, commissioners and happy holidays to everyone from district five. I would like to mention that this week at the California transportation commission, Caltrans unveiled the draft California freight mobility plan. This plan is to support the needs that we have to move freight efficiently, effectively use sustainable and innovative techniques to support California's economy through the continuous and increasing demand for freight around the state. I will mention that as was brought up earlier in regard to the inter regional transportation improvement program, the ITIP, a project that does feature prominently, both in the state's freight plan and the inter regional mobility plan, is the highway 46 corridor. And you may be familiar with that, it's about a 60 mile corridor between us 101 on the central coast and interstate five in Kern county. There's been a tremendous investment of funds there to have that corridor go through its metamorphosis from a two lane conventional highway with high speed traffic passing each other, posing within feet of each other in large trucks, to a four lane divided expressway. And it does in some manners evoke images of old school expansion. But I do want to say that some of the system completion that we're still committed to is very essential to traveler safety, goods movement, freight mobility, and the environment. And we are excited to see this through the in district five. There are three segments yet to be constructed. One is it's just east of the rest area for those of you who travel in that direction from the rest area in Shalam east going to what's referred to as the Y, which is the split at 41 46. And then that portion of 46 that goes up to the Kern county line is referred to as antelope grade. The department is working diligently to see that project through the antelope grade portion is referred to as the golden spike. There's another segment in Kern county that is held up more from a standpoint of utilities and they have a large oil field that they're navigating at that end. But that is that is an important asset to the state of California. And I think as we go forward with the direction that that the governor has set forward at the end dash 1919 and the new director, there's more that we're doing to also bring forward the importance of bicycling, pedestrian safety and and really investing in that infrastructure as well. So I I'm confident that the department can do both. We can chew gum walk and chew gum at the same time, even if I can't speak appropriately. And there's there's plenty of work to do, especially in the area of greenhouse gas emission reduction and climate resiliency and we are up for the task. It's an exciting time and you do have your project update report here and I will note that the project that your executive director mentioned for the pedestrian accessibility, we are evaluating that to include additional locations. I just wanted to point out that it is that project includes locations both in Monterey County and Santa Cruz County. It's it has a lot of locations. It's an under it's a very small dollar total dollar job, but it sometimes we can have a lot of impact with our small small jobs. And that's what we're hoping to do with that project. Any questions? Any questions for Miss Lowe? Commissioner Caput? Sure. Riverside Drive, I want to say is a really good job they did getting that fixed up and they did it quite quickly. So I want to thank you for that. It's a big project. A lot of people use that, especially to go to 101 to come up either south or north on 101. The other is the Marchant Street and each East Beach is still on schedule, still on track. That would probably come under the item six pedestrian signal upgrades. Yes. Commissioner Caput, that's listed as project 19 on page four. That's the current schedule. That's the pedestrian crossing. Yes. Yes. There are some considerations adding more locations and I'm not sure if that will impact the construction schedule at this time or not. It would schedule, but I don't see it actually specified in the projects, but it would probably come under safe routes to schools. It's right by Watsonville High School. Yes. Yes. Project number 19 is scheduled to go to construction this winter. And depending on the outcome of these additional locations, whether there's an adjustment to that, we'll keep you posted. You bet. And then on highway 152 item 18, that schedule for 2022, 50% of the money is ready to go. But if we got the money earlier, maybe the federal highway funds opened up rather than, you know, right now they're shut down. But if the money was received earlier for that, would we be able to start construction before 2022? Commissioner Caput, I believe you may be referencing the status of the completion of the PNED phase. Yeah, that's the one on high road. Right. We have achieved. The college road and east of Beverly. Yes. That's project 18 also on page four of the report. We're halfway through the PNED phase, which is where we do the environmental review. The money is secured for the project. It's funded through the SHOP program. And it would be on schedule for construction in spring of 2022. So there isn't a, there's no funding gap that influences the schedule. It's the timeframe to deliver that project. And at this point, the project is now a bridge widening project rather than a separate standalone. Oh, really? Yes. That'll add cost to the project though, too, right? I believe the, it's still within the programmed amount. Okay. And we did get some more money for that. Mr. Preston, we got, you know, you know where I'm talking about hula hand college road and highway 152. That's to redo all the signal lights. Yeah. You may be referring to the county's project. Okay. And I believe that's going to be on your agenda later today for the R-tip. Okay. That's all right. Rachel can comment on that more during that item if needed. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other comments from commissioners? Anyone from the public have a question on the CalTrans report? Michael St. Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. Just a quick question for Eileen on any update on those handicap fans, community bridges up to UCSC. I believe there were six of them, whether they're going to be electric, diesel, whatever. Thank you through the chair. Thank you for bringing that up. I don't have an answer for you yet. I am pursuing that. And just recollection, it was the 5310 program where EV purchases were not allowed. And the question last month was can other funding be brought to bear so that EVs could still be purchased, if I recall, because the 5310 program is a federal program and EV was not allowed. And it had to do with the expense of the EV and the ability to serve a larger population. So I'm still looking into that. When do you expect we might hear something back about that? Hopefully at your January meeting. That would be great. Okay. Just one more helpful suggestion. I was at an electric vehicle ribbon cutting a couple of days ago, C-Cliff, and Alan Romero of Monterey Bay Air Resource Board, the gentleman that does their funding outlay, he said they're going to start a program, developing a program in January of 2020 to do just that, to fund handicap vans in the Tri-County area. So as that, I don't know how long it's going to take you, but maybe look into that in January or call Alan and see, because he said it's going to be based on what you're going to do with these vans, but specifically for the handicap type community bridge plan. Thank you for that. Yeah. The Monterey Bay Air District has been a great partner. I'll make one more plug in that. Yeah. So there will be grant money for that. Yeah. In that regard, for folks that do travel south on the 101 corridor, if I didn't mention it before, the first ever high-powered fast chargers are now available at the Camp Roberts. There's one in each direction. There are four overhead solar panels that are necessary to power one fast charger, and it is the first of its kind of solar charger. And that was a partnership between Caltrans and the Air District purchased those and the vendor placed it under permit. So if you have an EV, check it out. Great. Good news. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move on to item 20. I think we can do this. Corey Coletti, come on up. This is a resolution for appreciation for this is a happy and sad moment for us, because I'm happy for your future, but sad for your loss, but we'll get through this. Okay. This is a resolution for Corey. And before I allow you to speak, which I know you're great at, I'm going to read some information here that we've collected. So bear with me. I'm going to read this all because Corey's been here for 22 years and it's worth it. Okay. So whereas Ms. Coletti will retire on December 30th after more than 22 years of extraordinary service to the Santa Cruz County community as a Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission employee. Whereas Corey Coletti's senior transportation planner began her career and with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission on November 28th 1995 as a student worker, took a 21 month hiatus beginning on June 25th 1997 to secure her master's degree in planning and serves a transportation planner at the Association of Monterey Barrier governments and returned to the RTC as a transportation planner on April 5th 1999. Whereas during her tenure, Ms. Coletti has earned the respect and admiration of commissioners, management, co-workers, colleagues and community members. It happens to me also. Okay. So I don't want you to feel singled out. Members for her demonstrated professionalism, dedication, understanding, tenacity, cooperation, work ethic, caring and enthusiasm to improve transportation in Santa Cruz County. Whereas during her tenure at the RTC, Ms. Coletti has managed and played an essential role in the advancing of many projects and programs including development and implementation of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail Network Plan, the North Coast Rail Trail Environmental Review, Measure D development and implementation, serving as the RTC's Bicycle Coordinator, Bicycle Committee staffing and reorganization, bike secure, committee solutions, ride share program, don't drive one in five, true cost of driving brochures, clean air vehicle fares, neighbors helping neighbors, van pull incentive program, RTC award programs and RTC annual reports and many more not mentioned. Whereas as a co-worker, Ms. Coletti has been a well respected and respectful team member, team leader and mentor, displaying great cooperation, coordination, compassion, encouragement, enthusiasm, generosity, teamwork and a tenacious work ethic. Whereas Ms. Coletti has served the people of Santa Cruz County with the highest level of loyalty, integrity, respect, professionalism and dedication and she will be missed by all. Therefore it is resolved by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission that we, the members of the Regional Transportation Commission Board, do hereby commend Corrie Coletti for her more than 22 years of dedicated and exceptional service to the community of Santa Cruz County with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. We further extend our sincerest and most grateful appreciation and best wishes for many years of great health, happiness and immense prosperity in her well earned retirement. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm like really choked up but I do want to say a few a few words. This recognition means a lot to me. I thank you commissioners. I thank you staff for the acknowledgement. I'm really honored to have worked in the service of the important work that you do here. Transportation and mobility choices impact the quality of our daily lives and the climate crisis that we're facing. Your leadership is really critical in making positive strides. I've had the pleasure of working directly with some of you and I've been really appreciative and impressed by your leadership, by your commitment to our community and our planet and to a healthy public and democratic process. I've also appreciated your defense of staff and our professional integrity and expertise when we've come under fire personally. I'm lucky to have worked at my dream job and also to leave here today feeling satisfied in the knowledge that I made a substantial contribution. I've been in this field close to 30 years with 22 of those being here in the service of the RTC. I brought my passion for bicycling and on-the-road knowledge gained via the thousand of miles I ride each year all over the county to my bicycle planning, committee staffing, and rail trail project implementation. To have my passion for cycling and my commitment to an equitable and sustainable world be congruent is something I never took for granted. It was a gift. While you have an immensely talented staff, I need to thank a few standouts. Luis Mendes and former executive director George Dondero for entrusting me with a high-profile career-defining rail trail project and for their empowering leadership styles. Also to my RTC co-workers and partner agency colleagues who have become like family, your work ethic, your integrity, your thoughtful communication, your commitment to excellence, and your kindness even under pressure inspired me every day to bring my best self forward. I will really miss working with you and I know the projects I had the pleasure to lead are in excellent hands. Finally a huge thank you to John Coletti, my partner in life, in play, in politics. John stood steadfast by me during my decades of singular focus on the work we do here even when the cost to him was personal. He also helped me realize that I have many other dreams and that a good book is made great by the progression of the next chapter. I find that now is a great time to begin that next chapter. So thank you very much for the privilege to serve. Excuse me commissioners just a quick reminder it is a resolution so you need a motion a second and about. I get to take a picture with you this is my favorite picture okay. So we had a motion by Commissioner Leopold and a second by Coffman Gomez with that. I'm sorry we're going to correct okay. So motion by Leopold and a second by Schifrin with that all in favor I opposed congratulations passes unanimously. Okay we have one more quick order of business here before we get to our public hearing I think we can do this pretty quick. This is a election of the 2020 RTC chair and vice chair or a report this will be quick. I just want to thank the my fellow commissioners and the public and the staff especially the staff because you can't do this job up here without the staff making you look good and they do that all the time. I really appreciate the presentations they made through the whole year. I think we all remember that we probably started January there was more turbulence than not and the ship has kind of calmed down a little bit and we now have regular smooth meetings with good dialogue and discussion and I love smooth meetings I think most of us do. So I will be vacating this position and I'd like to make a recommendation for the new chair and vice chair that would be that the chair of the RTC next year will be a supervisor Bruce McPherson and the vice chair will be a councilman from Watsonville or really Ogontales. So I'd like a motion with that if we can. So moved. I'll second. Motion by Leopold second by Schifrin all in favor. Aye. Opposed. Carries unanimously. So with that we're going to move on to item 22 this is a public hearing adoption of the 2020 regional transportation improvement plan and Rachel you normally already standing there but that's okay. Sorry honey all composed Cori's thing made me tear up. That's okay it should be together for a long time she's been impressive so anyway I'll try to compose. Good morning commissioners thank you for being here today and so many members of our community who are always involved and we really appreciate everyone's input. So before you today is a proposal for programming some of the funds that this agency has discretion over overall of all the funding sources that come into Santa Cruz County. This board has discretion over about five percent of the funds that are available. These funds though are very critical to addressing some of our backlog of needs in our community and so the work you do today is important to all of our constituents, visitors, businesses. So at your September 5th meeting and as discussed at your June board meeting the commission established a process for selecting projects to receive funds this cycle. Within that action the commission determined that it would designate most of the region's regional service transportation program exchange funds which are a state funding source that is exchanged from federal funds mostly to local jurisdictions on a population basis with a minimum of five percent of the funds to go to each of the local jurisdictions. Before you today is a proposal for 17 projects for about 10 million of that regional service transportation program exchange funds for metro city and county projects. Santa Cruz Metro has proposed to use 200,000 of the funds that were designated for metro to replace pair cruise vans. This is essential for them to be able to maintain their existing services for people who are unable to utilize the fixed route system. Local jurisdictions have proposed to repave several roads in the county actually in total about 75 percent of the projects proposed by local jurisdictions include roadway rehabilitation resurfacing and other pavement management. There's also a proposal from the city of Santa Cruz to add some additional funding for the highway one in nine intersection which is a critical intersection providing access to the city of Santa Cruz utilized provide access to the university to businesses especially in the harby west area all of the metro transit vehicles go through that intersection and provides access to downtown Santa Cruz in the west side. There's also several projects on the project list that include bicycle and pedestrian components these include sidewalk improvements in scott's valley green bike lanes and trails in the city of watsonville the highway 152 and holahand road intersection in the county which also provides access to schools in that area. Aptos village projects and in Davenport to add funding for a pedestrian crosswalk there as discussed at your last meeting. In addition to the funds the rstp exchange funds for that Davenport project the staff recommendation includes $125,000 of measure d funds from the trail component of measure d to add to that project. The bicycle committee and your other committees reviewed all of these recommendations at their November meeting and recommend all of the projects that are proposed before you today on attachment to but the bicycle committee also additionally has recommended that the commission ensure that project sponsors consider installing sharers and or three feet to pass signage on any roadways that do not have bicycle facilities and so we've included that in that recommendation in the resolution. As discussed at your passport meetings we also have recommended utilizing the majority of the regional discretionary funds that remain the state transportation improvement program and highway improvement program funds on highway one auxiliary lane projects. Specifically in the staff recommendation we are recommending utilizing 6.5 million of those stip and hip funds for the highway one 41st avenue to so cal avenue auxiliary lanes bus on shoulders and shana claire bike ped bridge project. This is a slight change from what was initially in the staff report and you have a replacement page showing that we are wanting to utilize those hip funds as quickly as possible and get that project to construction and maximize the amount of match that we're showing for a competitive grant that we plan on applying to the california transportation commission for next year. We've also included $169,000 in stip funds which are the amount that's available to meet state and federal planning programming and monitoring requirements and with that I just wanted to note that we've also handed out several comments from the public that were received the comments generally comment on some of the specific projects there are some folks who are very supportive of projects in the project lists shown in an attachment to there are some folks who recommend the commission not fund a few of those projects and some members of the community have recommended that the commission look at funding alternate projects that are not on the list. Regarding the state transportation improvement program funds these are funds that the commission has discretion over telling the state how we want to see those funds programmed but ultimately the california transportation commission makes the final determination on what year those funds are programmed and whether or not to fund the projects as we propose so we have asked for the funds on this project that is going to be ready to go to construction in 2021 but unfortunately most of the new capacity for the state transportation improvement program is out in fiscal year 23 through 25 and so if the ctc is not able to accommodate our request to put those funds on this project and not result in project delays the staff recommendation also includes authorizing staff to shift those funds to an alternate auxiliary lane project if necessary to ensure that our region maintains those funds additionally in attachment three you have a couple recommendations for amendments to previously programmed projects these include updating project schedules so moving some of the funds out to later years shifting funds between some projects and updating scope information on those projects so today we recommend that you hold a public hearing it has been advertised in newspapers and sent out to thousands of people that have asked for updates on our activities and then to adopt the resolution which is attachment a and exhibit which is attachment one and which includes exhibit a and b attachments two and three regarding the specific projects that we recommend funding and those amendments projects that are programmed to receive regional surface transportation program exchange funds can begin immediately we do have the cash available some project sponsors are not going to be able to start their projects actually until next fiscal year the year after just due to staffing constraints or their current project schedules but several of them are planning on getting going on those funds immediately and then any projects with bike and pedestrian or transit components will be reviewed by our elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee and our bicycle committee in order to give them an opportunity to provide input before the final designs are done and with that we recommend that the commission open the public hearing I do want to just note that several of the project sponsors are here if you have specific questions about specific projects any questions it could perhaps be a little bit more of a comment because we we've got this the extra packet items especially with the comments from the public and I don't know if the public are here that have emailed this as well but if maybe staff can provide us with a little bit of history on some of these comments or projects that we don't have that they've made comment about just so that we have an idea of I don't know if they've been looked at and they've been you know ruled out or they're further down on the list just so that we know where to stand with the kinds of comments that we're receiving that would be helpful for me to know because I don't have time to read these and I may not know that they've been considered or not considered I could do that now or we could do that after the public hearing and and look at all the comments at the same time whichever you're like let's do that okay so no no questions this time we'll go ahead and open the public hearing and anyone from the public would like to come up and speak on this item good morning good morning commission my name is pauline seals i'm with center cruise climate action network um i i'm going to specifically ask you to reconsider the orcs lanes project and alternatively consider strongly bus on shoulder and rapid transit along soquel avenue there are several reasons for doing this one of them that recently came to me was that measure d was a package and I was talking to somebody yesterday said yeah I didn't want to vote for the orcs lanes but I wanted to vote for the other four things and so we do not have a reading from the county clearly on whether they wanted that or not um so as a reminder about that recently several things have happened caltrans now has quite different guidelines whereas forever they were pushing more usage and I'm not using the right words but getting more um cars along getting them moving faster and they have completely backed off from that and now taking a whole different look at transportation because frankly they realize it's not working um that's number one and number two is the governor's directive in 1919 where he specifically said take another look at transportation simply encouraging cars is the wrong way to go and I'm not using the correct terminology but you get the idea so I think in view of all of those factors the fact that the public truly did not vote for auctioning specifically um there are two new directives it would make sense to look at the funds 109 million dollars or something like that um look at what is the best environmentally friendly people friendly poor people friendly way to use those funds to improve the commute specifically from Watsonville um so I just ask you to think about that thank you thank you hi rick longinani from the campaign for sustainable transportation so there are two projects in there that I'd like to ask you to remove and they're both uh what I think uh could qualify what Eileen low called old school highway expansion projects and old school meaning the the idea that somehow by expanding capacity on a highway we're going to solve congestion that's been proved to be false uh and if you're you know if you've ever been to southern california you know that for a fact or even the bay area um the highway one expansion the auxiliary lanes and the ramp metering were in were studied by an eir that came out in 2015 and it said that in the southbound direction after you've built auxiliary lanes from Santa Cruz all the way down to freedom boulevard and you've done ramp metering that in the evening commute there would be greater delay than the no build project so we're not we're you know this this application for state funding for state grant money doesn't look very good if the project that you're asking for is not accomplishing congestion relief but worse than that it creates more vehicle miles traveled and more greenhouse gas emissions the other project which is the Santa Cruz request for highway one and nine old school already it already that intersection is huge it's eight lanes in one direction on highway one five lanes in the other direction on river street this would make it even bigger whenever you make intersections bigger you make them more intimidating for bicyclists and pedestrians but it's going to have a marginal impact if any on congestion relief but it according to the environmental study on this intersection it will add 10 percent to carbon emissions so you know you we all have one foot in the new world of sustainability and your director attended a conference in Vancouver and came back with you know excitement about sustainability and I think that is contagious but we have one foot in the old world the old world that's that's gotten us to this place where greenhouse gases is going to really pummel our children and our grandchildren so we need to get the one foot out of the old world and quit doing these old school projects thank you thank you I carry pico but before I get started closer to the mic carry before I get started I had asked for I had sent a power point to Fernanda and whether or not it's available not available so then I will speak without it I'm addressing so you can start sorry about that confusion no no it's okay I didn't expect it actually the Watsonville rail from Watsonville slew trailhead to aloni parkway is I believe a complete waste of funds there are two wonderful trails surrounding the Watsonville slew in that area one along the residents one on the other side it goes to full length from aloni parkway up to cerny street the proposed trail would go along the railroad which is 30 feet away from one of the trails and 40 400 feet from the trailhead so it's a redundant thing and it's all in industrial land it really looks awful that's what I wanted to show pictures of if you want to you know take the worst-case scenario of what a view is uh other than trash all over the place it's industrial and it's not pleasant if Watsonville wants to put its best face forward they should insist on having people use the trails that are in existence now they have a wonderful trail network that I've used I've run around it quite a bit and at 1500 feet that's one you know that's a pretty short distance 1.6 million dollars for that short trail that's 5.5 million dollars so as you hear I'm very fiscally focused that's really my issue and then since I'm done with that other than I wish you would not continue with this trail and you put some sanity into one last thing I should say about the trail there's no connection there and if you think there's gonna be a connection somewhere else it's not the the bike trail comes up on beach street so nobody's gonna go out of their way to go do that short little section build it if you ever need it in the future now as to the highway one widening traffic issue my suggestion is and this is you can't do anything about it put your investment into Watsonville build up the business there have the reverse commute then you'll take traffic away I know it's not going to happen but in a real world in a dream world you put jobs where jobs where you have an easy commute to this way it's just to pass through the Silicon Valley without jobs but anyway thank you thank you hi Jessica Evans from the city of Santa Cruz thank you for holding this hearing according to the projections on page 14 of the association of Monterey Bay Area governor's final environmental impact report for the 2040 metropolitan transportation plan slash sustainable communities strategy for Monterey San Benito in Santa Cruz counties in the year 2020 a little over 60 percent of Santa Cruz County greenhouse gas emissions are projected to be from transportation on page 287 the greenhouse gases and climate change section of the document admits that the plan will fail badly short of meeting the currently mandated state greenhouse gas emission targets we need to do better we have a plan in place it's a climate plan it's not sufficient for the emissions reductions that we need to do to do our share of greenhouse gas reduction so in Santa Cruz County transportation is the biggest problem and it's the place where we can make the biggest difference we need to fund projects that will reduce emissions and defend projects that will increase emissions first I um I want to ask you to please stop the funding for the two highway projects that will increase greenhouse gas emissions the auxiliary lanes project and highway one and nine intersection widening projects according to the Caltrans EIR on highway one projects the ox lane project would cause a 25 percent increase in greenhouse gases resulting from the TSM alternative relative to the no-build alternative by the year 2035 that's not a price we can afford to pay we are in a climate emergency and we need to do better expansion of the intersection of highway one and highway nine would also increase emissions about 10 but you know that's not the only cost of that project this project is being proposed at a time when the state office of traffic safety rated Santa Cruz number one in the rate of injuries to bicyclists in each of the years 2013 to 2016 out of 104 cities of similar size we are rated an average of 11 number 11 over those years in rate of injuries to pedestrians to reduce the deaths and injuries of pedestrians and bicyclists we need to build active transportation infrastructure this costs money the rtip for this intersection widening project requests two million dollars in rstpx funds and to transfer an additional 188 thousand in already programmed funds to the project these are funds that could otherwise be used to make streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians in the city of Santa Cruz this proposal also plans to use over four million dollars in local traffic impact fees which is pretty much the whole fund which again would prevent these funds from being used for biking in pedestrian infrastructure you need to wrap up please i will okay thank you so much for listening i know it's long we just the bottom line is we need to do better these projects are these legacy projects we can't afford to continue doing these projects i appreciate your consideration thank you so much thank you nothing wrong with old school go ahead and bring that i'm old school hi i'm noel bach from davinport i'm the 30-year resident of davinport and the chairperson of the davinport north coast association and i'm here to address the construction of a safe highway access crossing in davinport i'm sure many of you have been up to davinport to go to whale city for breakfast and enjoy our beautiful little community there but crossing the highway is very very dangerous um due to a lack of visibility there's an incline as you drive through and in fact a child was tragically killed a couple of years ago because the driver couldn't see her with the sun coming in his eyes and the incline so as you'll see with the photographs i'm passing around drivers park anywhere there's no established parking area which makes for confusion and congestion in davinport adding to the danger people are not um heating the 40 mile an hour and that's not enforced pacific school would like teachers would like to take their children to the outdoor classroom the beach the ocean but it's too dangerous to cross the highway i and other residents of davinport would love to take our grandchildren for a walk on the beach but it's too scary to cross the highway so i'm urging the rtc to provide funding for the final design and construction of a highway one crossing in davinport and not wait until the rail trail project unfolds we cannot afford any more almost misses or fatalities in davinport we need the project of safe crossing from the ursatz parking area to the business district as soon as possible preferably before this summer so i thank you for your time and your consideration thank you can i uh is it gonna be delayed or we're gonna i i think we're ready to go on that davinport crossing right yes right now central federal lands that's doing the work on design of the rail trial project is designing also the crosswalk as part of that project and working with caltrans on getting the uh necessary encroachment permits and that project can be broken off and built separately quicker if um uh we can get approvals in and a matter that would would allow it to do so okay so that uh answers part of the question there we can do it earlier thank you for that clarification mr president go ahead i'm sorry no that's fine good morning my name is bob morgan i'm a county resident i live in live oak um i agree with the speakers that have spoken before me that widening highways does not solve congestion issues the katie freeway in houston which was expanded to 24 lanes 12 in each direction in the 1990s is congested bumper to bumper traffic during peak hours the solution to highway one will never be solved highway one will always be congested during peak hours no matter how wide you build the freeway this is because of a very interesting psychological phenomenon called induced travel many of you know about that phenomenon it is driving behavior which um motivates people its behavior which motivates people to take up a vacuum if they perceive open lanes anywhere they will become motivated to use those lanes so i recommend not funding an expansion program for highway one auxiliary lanes instead i recommend bus on shoulder i recommend alternatives i recommend not expanding vehicle miles traveled which increases greenhouse gas emissions and as jessica mentioned we are not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emissions through vehicle miles traveled decreases in the state of california vehicle miles traveled continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions due to those vehicle miles traveled continue to increase so as long as we continue to expand highways we will induce drivers to congest those highways i urge you to not fund further expansion of that highway nor the intersection at highway nine and highway one thank you thank you morning once again michael saint pretty much everything's been said already um you're old for seven but i'll try to continue the discussion um under item 22 page two under discussion it says the project's being funded improve access traffic flow safety reduces vmt and greenhouse gas emissions i think the previous speakers have summarized that and that's not an actual true statement i think saying these things vmt and greenhouse gas mission is kind of just the cool thing to do so let's throw it in in in the agenda items and hopefully that it'll fly basically it's all incorrect i did a little some type of little discovery i did go through attachments one two and three on the money and the projects you do have some very positive things going on there tried to just generally add up the funds um roads and highways out of that funding are getting approximately 15 and a half million dollars i realize a lot of that's due to resurfacing and that is necessary um and the tdm's getting approximately two million i was kind of surprised at the amount of money going towards tdm most of that in in uh mr capitz area in his district my suggestion is that should be flipped tdm should be receiving the majority of these funds and anything to do with other transportation like highway one a bus on shoulder dedicated much less expensive than ox lanes could be starting to be funded with the lower income and getting the planning done for that that's about the only thing that's going to get this county moving in the next five to seven years is you open up those shoulders buses 10 to 15 minutes you get more buses from metro hopefully electric and people will eventually look at that as advertisement and see why are these buses going 15 to 20 miles an hour faster than me and i'm still sitting in traffic it's a paradigm shift that needs to take place and if we don't do it now you're going to give it to the next generation to do it for you and they're going to look back at this group and say why didn't we start this mass transit sooner i feel you're using these terms incorrectly vmt and gregg greenhouse gas emissions this funding request in my opinion will actually increase both of these as rick longinati stated and gave examples of your own ucs study recommend rtc not adopt this 2020 tip funding program thank you thank you good morning good morning commissioners david date lassova beach um vmt is associated with greenhouse gas but as cars are parked on the highway greenhouse gas approach infinity vmt goes to zero so that that is a important distinction when you're trying to draw this analysis that if we reduce vmt and we park cars on the road well that's not actually reducing greenhouse gas so that's very important so right now we have gridlock traffic ghg or greenhouse greenhouse gas goes to infinity vehicle miles traveled is almost zero so that's that's an important distinction i think all these groups need to make for a sustainable campaign for transportation like duh another thing another thing that is important to recognize is that autonomous vehicles are probably two years out my friend just got a model three he doesn't have a option to buy at the end of his lease because these are going to become autonomous fleet cars so this is happening right now we don't have any infrastructure to accommodate this revolution in transportation so we need to have a little bit of foresight two years not 2035 two years this is happening if we don't have an h o v lane to accommodate these vehicles we are going to miss out on this revolution um maybe there's one other thing vmt greenhouse gas induced demand these models are derived from la houston these are huge grid cities we are a linear city it's only a mile wide so we have three corridors we got so cal some nerves turned into its own little corridor so our induced demand is shared between essentially three roads not a grid so these models do not apply to santa cruse as they would for la houston thank you thank you hi brian people's executive director of trail now i just first want to concur with what david um had mentioned about autonomous cars and the fact that we're having a lot of more emissions because our main corridor is clogged and so you know and and if you remember measure d voters one of the main reasons we one measure d which we support it was to open up the highway corridor the public voted for it so you can't turn your back on that um and as a surf uh active transportation organization we believe that opening up the the highway corridor will reduce surface street congestion and it'll make our surface streets our neighborhood safer we need to stop people from doing those cut-throughs we need to stop it and the only way we can do it is open up that corridor so people traveling from the bay area to monterey they don't cut through they you know we deal with that we have to open it up and deal with the surges what is it six hours of delay now is what that highway is at and that's that's that's even worse than the bay area traffic now of course the interesting thing that we advocate for that we're really concerned with um and we hear from the no widen group is is opening up the santa cruise coastal trail right now it's being hailed by the same people who don't want to widen the highway they're holding the hostage they're not allowing that corridor to be used today so we're asking that we continue to focus on opening the santa cruise coastal trail as soon as possible because if you look at the universe the the unified corridor study it showed that corridor when it becomes a world-class trail designed as a transportation trail which separates pedestrians from fast-moving users it will reduce highway one traffic it will make an impact because what the study showed is you're going to have 800 users an hour and that's if you look at the equation a single highway lane is 2000 people an hour so you have those three corridors so cal highway one and the trail corridor think about that you're opening up this main artery and that's the way we solve watsonville's traffic today is we get the that central core section people not having to do those three mile drives they can use that trail 800 people using that an hour will reduce that impact you know greg you talk about the metering ramps you're absolutely right you're absolutely right so the same thing with our trail it will reduce traffic thank you thank you hi sally arnold friends of the rail and trail um i just want to correct a misstatement made by the previous speaker friends of the rail and trail takes no position on highway widening at all there are various you know individuals within friends of the rail and trail have multiple different positions on that but friends of the rail and trail does not have a position on that and so just to be clear thank you thank you my name is dana bagshaw i happily live in santa cruz without a car i walk ride my bike and i take the bus um i'm not here with a solution i i think that there's a lot of different things that have been said um i'm i'm here for the framework of that solution we need to look to the future and the future does not look good so we need to set a number one priority in in all our planning that we reduce carbon emissions and curb this climate change that's killing us so um i ask you to not spend another penny on infrastructure that supports the cars yes maintenance yes let's maintain what we've got but let's not do any more building let's work on the infrastructure for pedestrians for bicycles and for the metro and let's look to the future too to see what effects climate change is going to have on us if we're going to have sea level rising does it make sense to build transportation on the ground next to the coast we've got to think hard about these things and so i beg of you to start looking to the future and making decisions that make sense for us all thank you thank you good morning uh keith auto so i and others in my community do support investments in highway one so ox lanes h o v lanes and such and that is part of your plan even if those do not deliver on congestion relief they will at least offer increased capacity which is sorely needed it'll also reduce the traffic that currently flows through neighborhoods it'll also enable express bus service and it'll also promote ride sharing and carpooling in addition it will be a resource for public safety i don't know how many of you this morning we're traveling from the south to this meeting there was an ambulance sirens on lights flashing trying to make its way presumably to dominican and it was quite an interesting thing to see as that ambulance was trying to make its way through all the highway one traffic something like an h o v lane um down the road ox lanes sooner right provides an additional resource for our public safety um our public safety assets thanks thank you good morning gina coal executive director at bike santa cruz county thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning um when i'm sorry i'm running a little late because i rode the bus in this morning um but not that the bus was running late the bus was perfectly on time but that it was it was on me because i didn't want to drive by myself in a single passenger car um one of the things that i want you all to consider is maybe think a little bit about what watsonville did with their planning commission um just on tuesday and they held off on a um on a development that would have two drive-thrus and one of the big reasons behind having two of the drive-thrus was that it was a car-centric development it was also the fact that all those cars are going to sit and wait and that's what happens here we sit and we wait um folks that spoke were very adamant about looking to our future um and creating a more a more sustainable world and we say this over and over and over and the reason that we do is because it's important um we can't continue to use our gas cars and that we have to have alternatives to a gasoline powered um existence and we need to shift our mindset from being so dependent on our cars to go from place to place and to do that we need to create infrastructure that makes it doable for folks to walk and to ride their bikes and to access public transportation that is going to be a less impactful um method of transportation throughout our county we're not a really really big county but we do have spread out places and we do have folks that aren't don't have access unless they do have an automobile to from where they live out out of the the regular circles of our of our jurisdictions to where they work where they play where they shop um I I for one am trying very very hard to not use a car we're down to one car for my whole family um and it's not easy it's really not easy to consider given the weather this week what that rain looked like and how am I going to get milk home um and how am I how am I going to do that but we need to be creating this next generation of folks that think differently than we do um that is why it's really important for us to set the example for the young people who are trying really damn hard to set the example for us so when we stop and listen to the facts that that they're presenting that they want a more sustainable world that they want to be able to ride their bikes in a safe way they want to be able to walk to where they can go they want to be able to live where they work where they play where they go to school we need to create a a plan that honors that thank you thank you good morning good morning thanks for this opportunity my name is uh benjamin ketchum I live in live oak um I didn't plan to make comments this morning but I realize I better take the opportunity that's what this is for uh so thank you my short point is to echo speakers from before me that talk about sustainability I think it's true still and I I've read that the train part of the rail trail proposal is still categorized as a diesel locomotive style train which sounds like the opposite of sustainability and absolutely contributes to emissions um my advocacy is for using that space for a healthy pass passenger opportunity uh passageway opportunities biking and walking and wheelchairs and eventually some electronic kinds of transportation um because it's sitting there it seems like it's been sitting there for a long time I remember taking a survey it feels like 15 years ago would you like to ride a train once in a while from here to there in Santa Cruz I said sure sounds like fun but I don't really see the pragmatics and I would love to know how many residents actually took that survey way back then because it doesn't seem sensible to me in a very logistical kind of a way I would also say that if the that space was open to uh to uh more uh to to biking and walking etc today the surface having uh the rails pulled out all together could then be converted perhaps to a battery powered bus kind of a system or something solar powered in the future if we needed a little more capacity to to to travel more people um so to me you're not closing down that option but a diesel locomotive sounds ridiculous and I think it should be transparent and continue to be transparent to the public that's still what's on the uh what's being uh considered thank you for your time thank you good morning again commissioners my name is mark mcd miller i'm a professional civil engineer with more than three decades of experience I want to support the staff recommendation that you go ahead and adopt the 2020 transportation improvement program and I know that there are many controversial things in the program but taken as a whole this uh this uh transportation improvement program will do a lot of good things in our county it will improve pedestrian safety it will improve cyclist safety um it's going to enable a bus on shoulder program that frankly would never happen if it weren't for the auxiliary lanes I have studied the bus on shoulder program I've looked at the drawings I've looked at the plan and that plan depends on the construction of auxiliary lanes especially the auxiliary lanes that go from sea cliff from state park drive out to freedom where that freeway is without shoulder at all I also want to mention the Davenport crossing that is a hot spot in our county for safety and this transportation improvement program includes funding for that crosswalk that area seeds massive numbers of people from out of our community that are not as smart as we are and don't understand how dangerous it is to cross highway one right there and anything we can do to enhance the safety of not only ourselves but the people who come and visit us come to whale watching this is this is these are the tourists and our last time I checked our economy depends on tourism so again I urge you to support the proposed transportation improvement program thank you thank you anyone else from the public like to address this on this time come on up hi I'm Robert Esposito and I've been to a few of these meetings now and I'm from Aptos and uh there's just one rail and I don't really see how you can have an effective commuter system just using one rail and I nobody's really been mentioning that the whole time and so I really can't I haven't been able to wait for the trail to open so me and my family we've been riding it on our mountain bikes and it's just too bumpy and you just need to throw some dirt or something on top of the tracks to open up that corridor I know a lot of children have trouble getting to school on the new Brighton middle school and just to just getting the school traffic off of the highway it makes a huge improvement so from my experience riding on that trail you're not competing with uh inpatient drivers who are high on coffee and uh and it's just it's just dangerous for uh for for children my my son who's 10 years old I don't really want him riding on the streets and I got to say the air like not having to deal with cars it's it's magnificent and uh it's 100% inspirational it's very inspiring and that's what we need is 100% inspiration if we're gonna uh really take on this global carbon crisis thank thank you for listening to me thank you thanks thank you for your comments good morning good morning this is set up for 12 people I'm CJ I live right in between cities Soquel and Santa Cruz I'm over there on Thurber Lane which is very beautiful I take the bus a lot and I work with seniors and have since I was knee high to a grasshopper and the buses are nice and wonderful and I'm always impressed that so many people put their bicycles on there sometimes there's people that leave early so someone who's going a longer distance can have the space for the bike but what I want to talk about is the safety of both the bikes and the walking sidewalks we don't have enough sidewalks and when I have seniors that call me because they've had to give up their licenses they can no longer drive it's not a choice they're scared to take the bus and they're scared to walk because they'll have to cross the street where there's not a ramp if they're you know carrying stuff to set them down they can't um rely on the time to get across the street when the you press to walk and it goes 10 9 8 7 and they're halfway through so we have a lot of issues about making it more pedestrian friendly and because the grain of America is happening I've been working on this since before I was a senior we need to be mindful that the more seniors we have the more friendly the walk needs to be thank you thank you good morning my name is christin raugus I'm from Davenport uh general manager of whale city bakery I have a front row seat to the pedestrian crossing problem there I'm here to urge you to approve funding for this package but um I also want to urge you if at all possible to do this crossing pedestrian crossing in Davenport as independently as possible so that we can get it done as soon as possible because it's a it's a rather urgent problem Davenport's overrun with people now people are crossing everywhere um drivers are missing them people are getting killed people are getting hit um I think this if we could get this pedestrian crossing going as soon as possible we can avoid another fatality it'll also be better for the drivers that are coming down highway one it will make it much more clear that people are crossing and that they have to watch out for them and they have to stop for them and uh as it is now they're just crossing down by the roadhouse they're crossing up north of the parking lot they're crossing in front of whale city and it's it's really an urgent urgent problem and I really hope that you guys take this up right away thank you thank you all right Barry Scott aptos um I want to I I read on social media and I read the letters to the editor and I hear my neighbors speak to a couple of things and I and I thought I might add some information that might be helpful about rail vehicle technologies and whether or not these would be diesel I think the staff and maybe most of you know that the unified corridor investment study used the existing studies the 2013-2015 passenger rail feasibility study that included a diesel multiple unit type of vehicle but we've had speakers and including our own past executive director who spoke to the likelihood that rail vehicles would be electric and and more specifically battery electric we had a presentation from Kyle Grattinger I've spoken to Chad Edison with the state and there's just every every reason to to expect that the rail vehicles that will be available at the time that we implement service would be light and battery operated perhaps similar to what our demonstration project is going to is going to demonstrate to us as regards a single track and I've looked over and over again at different systems the Sprinter and Santa Cruz the I mean the Sprinter in San Diego the smart train and using a single track is common you use passing sidings to accommodate and and rail vehicles and going in different directions are dispatched in a way that prevents collisions and you don't need double tracks but it's easy for people to think how on earth could you do a single track bi-directional train so there are solutions to all these things in it but but they're not they're not apparent to the to the you know the light reader on this and I'll add one one more thing I'm I'm uh I don't brag about it but I am proud of the fact that in 2010 I applied for grants and created a clean transportation technologies academy we worked with the ACE train the Stockton to San Jose train they're a sponsor AECOM which is AECOM which is like a Bechtel size organization engineering firm was working on the Altamont corridor express and high speed rail ideas and they were the sponsors for a high school academy that I founded for a clean transportation technology so I've been looking at rail transit for that long it's not a like a hobby it's part of the work I do and so I thank you guys for all the work you do and I'm excited about the work that is coming soon thank you thank you hi my name's Nina I live in let's speak into the microphone so we can hear you okay thank you my name is Nina I live in live oak shout out to Mr. Leopold I've already sent you a letter a detailed letter we could send out beforehand but I've been listening to a lot of people talking for example about Davenport I'm a cyclist primarily except for when I used to work I worked at Kaiser so I drove but I'm trying to take the load off the rest of people who can't stop driving I do cycle up to Davenport that is treacherous but I also cycle the roads all over in town thank you for all the work you've done making it safer for us making our community aware of bicycles because I do go into certain areas in California where you can tell people aren't really used to seeing cyclists around so thank you very much for all the work you do I guess what I want to say is we have a track and whatever we decide to do with it in the future that asset is already there so why don't we take care of it thank you very much thank you anyone else from the public like to address us seeing none we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back for discussion anyone else something like to begin commissioner Bertrand I was in some comments about the trail proposal and our support near the Watsonville area aren't we working with Watsonville because we did have a presentation I believe from this the streets person from Watsonville talk about how they're going to integrate their trails with our trail proposal so it's just any comments on that good morning commissioner so within the staff recommendations is a recommendation for an additional $600,000 for segment 18 of the trail network as well as on attachment three there's an amendment to the scope of segment 18 and what the funds are going to be used for immediately Murray fonts who is the project manager for the trail project in Watsonville is here if you have specific questions but generally Watsonville has spent the last two decades building up its trail network and has plans to integrate trails over lee road they're working with the county on in the land trust on how to develop that which would also integrate into the proposed segment 18 rail trail once it's completed linking folks to downtown the Oloney Parkway residences and then there's other trails as well but if the commission would like a future presentation on their trail network annually when we meet in Watsonville they do oftentimes provide that but if you have specific questions I'd like to defer to Watsonville staff yeah maybe one question thank you morning Murray good morning thank you for being here from Watsonville to here so my sense is we're adding capacity besides a beautiful quarter Watsonville quarters I've been on them but to me I don't see the capacity sense that this proposal is going to do so I was wondering if you could comment on that is my take correct the segment of trail that we're discussing is segment 18 of the rail trail it extends the entire project the entire segment extends from the city limits at lee road into the downtown area at the intersection of beach and walker street the city is proposing to construct a portion of that we're phasing our project because of permit requirements and other delays we were unable to build it all at once so when we look at this one segment in and of itself it doesn't appear to add capacity we did have to go to the california transportation commission to receive approval of the funding and what we did was we portrayed it in the manner that we see it and it's a regional trail we're building a segment at this time when it's completely built out it will extend a link to the southeast side of town which currently isn't linked to any trails except through sidewalks and yes it does need to go through an industrial corridor to get there but if we don't do that we won't reach them it will end at lee road and as rachel mentioned lee road extends out into the county and we're going to partner with the county and with the land trust to develop a trail along lee road that will allow access to land trust property will also provide alternative access to pahero valley high school and then trails will eventually loop back into the city so it will create transportation opportunities for pedestrians and bikes it will create vistas that are inaccessible currently for those individuals but we're doing it in segments as you can thank you very much Murray Murray Murray I'll go away yes yes before you go can you elaborate a little bit more of why we need to do this segmentally because of some of the restrictions in that process because obviously if you're looking at 1500 linear feet in the middle of something and they're going well there's nothing there's there's nowhere from point a to point b segmentally it's because of what reason we had originally intended to build the entire 6400 foot segment when we began to design it we recognized that there were four crossings four rail crossings through which we need to get a permit from the california public utilities commission two of them are new crossings we're going across spurs that don't have pedestrian or bike trails recently the cpu c changed the rules and said we need to allow a year and a half for those permits to be secured because they need to be reviewed by an administrative law judge that was an oversight on our part but we still need to address that so we carved out a segment of the trail that we could build that didn't require any crossings and we're now moving head with acquiring the we're preparing the documents we need to submit the applications to secure the permits and this is part of a 33 mile trail system that we've adopted and we're annually improving thanks dina for that question it helps me understand it better thank you for your response thank you mr. for clarifying all that i have some questions related to the transfer the proposed amendment to transfer funds from the for the city of santa cruz frederick and so cal project to the highway one nine project so i understand and i've communicated with mr. schneider but since you're here i do have some follow-up questions i understand that there are issues right of way and cost issues related to the frederick so cal intersection project however i also understand that there is widespread community support and and people have been waiting for those bike improvements to happen on frederick and um so given that that's been a community priority i'm wondering if you could uh if i could ask it can the frederick street um bike lane improvements that portion of the proposed project be implemented independently of the intersection issues related that require the right of way settlement of the right of way issues with pg and e so that's kind of my one question is it possible to do the portions of the project that are are possible before resolving that um and if not why not uh good morning christ schneider assistant director of public works with city of santa cruz the bikeway the project didn't include bikeway improvements on frederick street they were on so cal to enhance the existing bike lanes and essentially to widen the intersection slightly to improve the um the uh left turn lane and the through movement um that line up a little too closely the frederick street bike lane to install bike lanes on frederick street requires removing parking and that's the primary issue and they can be done separately from this project um we're not abandoning the so cal frederick project it's just more expensive and more complicated than we originally anticipated and so the funds that were dedicated to the project are insufficient to meet the goal and so they're getting a little bit old they've been around for a long time so it's important for us to spend the funds now on an existing project that's uh going to move forward a lot quicker so i guess i'm looking for clarification then because my understanding was that the bike lane improvements were related to the intersection but then also extending on down frederick street the so that is a project that is funded entirely separately from this well it's not currently funded well unlike most of our c.i.p. our capital improvement programming yes but so none of that is is funded so this is not taking away any funding that's correct other than the the the work that cannot be done until issues are resolved with pgne yes and bike lanes on frederick would as i said require parking removals that could be something considered by our transportation public works commission in the future okay so it sounds like the action then to get the frederick street moving would be to go back to the city council and reaffirm that priority and ask that it be funded and you believe that there is funding available to do that if i think your message said that you know there's grant funding available another funding for to go back to this overall project but could that include the bike lanes i think combining the bike lanes with the intersection improvement project overly complicate the issue of the bike lanes on frederick street there will be funding available grant funding in the future for transportation improvements and that we could we would be eligible to apply for funding for so-called frederick or for bike lanes i don't think they need to be put together okay so i guess my the sense i got from community members who are involved in trying to make this project happen over 10 years ago was that that was included but so you can confirm that's not the case that's correct okay thank you thank you commissioner shifrin yes i'd like to follow up on that one um this is one that is somewhat close to my heart because my mom lived at the senior facility and was a strong advocate for this these improvements um and it's a dangerous crossing as you know for pedestrians and i think people at the um the facility oapasada have been waiting for a while and we had testimony from one of the speakers about how scary it can be for older people to be trying to cross some of these complex intersections so i'm concerned that i can understand that their adult projects have delays we're certainly familiar with that but i'm concerned that there's no specific commitment to doing this project at a particular point in time no timeline no funding uh estimate you mentioned that the price was going up but you didn't it doesn't seem to be a budget that we're moving to and it just seems like in those kinds of situations it's being put off indefinitely and i think that would be very unfortunate because it is uh at least as a pedestrian crossing it's a very important um it's an important project for the people in that area so what's your you know is there more information you can give about some kind of timeline or some kind of budget that um could move this project along um i i think the the complication lies with utility improvements it's a major crossing for overhead utilities on soquel as well as down frederick and there are four uh significant utility poles on frederick street um that tie in with the system and and we need to work with pgne more closely but um this isn't a high priority for them at this point um and that's really where the key lies um they're right now in the middle of all their other issues um so it's been raised i think once we get a better sense from pgne about when we can move forward on a design and how to solve these um complicated issues then we can provide an update well i hope that this you know the city would take a more aggressive stance with pgne in terms of trying to move this project forward i do want to say something about the davinport signal project i appreciate the testimony that has been given on that it is a critical improvement that's needed i appreciate staff from the commission and the county and recommending that money be set aside for for the project i think it can be separated from the um the overall rail trail project going up to davinport eventually but my sense is this is one and i'm going to put a lien on the spot here um that it's going to come down to caltrans highway one is a caltrans road um and caltrans can be cooperative and collaborative and you know committed to make this work uh as i think we saw them um caltrans in terms of highway nine um willing to be flexible and creative in terms of making improvements to the safety along highway nine in the valley i think that's what's going to be required in terms of making this project work in davinport there's no question that there's some complexity with this project um but hopefully will be possible to move forward uh expeditiously um we're waiting on the preliminary design from the federal agency which would hopefully be coming in the spring the ability then to move to final design and construction i think more than anything else is going to depend on caltrans so i really want to urge caltrans to work cooperatively with commission staff um and the federal people and the county to see this as a desirable project that should be done it's necessary for public safety and uh help make this project happen as quickly as possible thank you you want to follow up go ahead yeah i sorry i just wanted to follow up on because uh commissioner shifrin asked a question that was also on my list um related to of the plan for uh realizing the so-called frederick intersection project and um so i would like to see some something more substantial in terms of how we intend to achieve that and um kind of the process for engaging with p genie i think um it clearly isn't a priority for them but we may have an opportunity or more than one to make clear how much of a priority it is to us and i think that's perhaps something that our um the city council um uh might want to look at and so i'm i'm trying to see if there's a way to um kind of make this happen um kind of here to get that commitment that we do not that we are gonna actually come back and have some report on how this is um you intend to proceed um rather than um having a full agenda item about it so if you have any thoughts on how we might achieve that um it would be great to hear those now sure we'll be developing the next five-year capital improvement program for the city of santa cruz starting in january and at that time we'll um include that in the cip appropriately and show how it's going to cost how much it's going to cost what's involved in what could potentially be the anticipated year that it would happen and you can see that in comparison with all the other projects that and grant funded projects that we'll be doing okay um thank you thank you chair um i just had a couple questions uh it was brought up that somehow these action would be in conflict with the governor's order around climate and i'm looking to our executive director uh to know whether in any of the conversations you've had with ambag the california transportation commission um how have they looked at this uh governor's order on climate and with respects to road projects there are still a lot of work to be done on how to meet the requirements of the legislation to reduce vehicle miles traveled how um regional agencies are going to be expected to mitigate for increases in vehicle miles traveled vehicle miles traveled is now the new requirement by the state for the consideration of traffic impacts previously the state used to use level of service where they would look at um the delay caused um by a project um as the traffic impact but because of the um legislation to reduce greenhouse gases and the following legislation to do so by reducing vehicle miles traveled um there has been a definitive shift in how we uh look at transportation improvements and the impacts associated with them and all development in the state um a lot of guidance has not been provided yet there is going to be workshops on how um things will have to do change in the in the future but we've been assured by caltrans that um existing environmental documents and environmental clearances for projects will not be um uh looked at uh negatively we're not required right now to use vehicle miles travel but we will be later in uh 2020 so uh and maybe uh miss low that's your understanding of it as well i mean i i don't want to put something forward that that's going to be shot down at at the ctc commissioner leo pulled i i would like to say that uh they well i'd just like to reflect again what what your executive director said guidance is forthcoming i think it demands that we're being more diverse and more committed to active transportation which i believe this commission is and which this um program of projects helps advance so i believe that that is key i believe some of these other projects that that you have for operational improvements and that kind of thing are still important as you go forward um and as we all go forward into the new structure of vmt so i um i guess i'm not supposed to advise you directly but it doesn't seem like a big risk to me okay the it seems like the the direction that you're taking and the commitment that you have to these other modes um is sincere and um you know we're all gonna be moving forward and migrating together on this so okay appreciate that um i i am you know we've gone with this uh new style of of doing the funding uh for this round where we've asked jurisdictions we've done it by formula we've asked jurisdictions to provide us with their with their priorities um and um i would say that the highway one nine thing isn't my priority but it's the priority of the city of santa Cruz um and if the city members are supporting it then i'm gonna support it as well similarly with watsonville and the question about the trail if that's a if that's a priority for watsonville um it that it it meets a lot of our needs and so um that i i have less problems with that i i think that's a good project i know that that in the county a lot of the our work is being used to have roads and i can tell you that the ones in my districts are there's not enough money here even though uh there's almost 1.4 million uh because these uh especially these rural roads require a lot of work um we're not going to get everything done on these roads uh these are priority roads uh for me and for the people uh that i represent uh but it's gonna it's very hard to stretch these dollars as far as possible um the last thing i'll say is there was a speaker who who was concerned about uh seniors sidewalks lights uh looks like she left uh but uh so kell and thurber were doing a bunch of work to actually make that light uh system work better provide longer times for people to cross the street um and some of the work that we have that we're looking long term on so kell drive to make that a a higher functioning um uh road will include include a lot of pedestrian improvements and i'm looking forward to seeing that i'm going to be supporting this thank you commissioner kaufman gomez yes thank you um i would like to talk about the fiscal leverage of these projects and i know that at one point we were really how do we balance what we have for funding um as a self-help county as some of these projects come here can you talk to us a little bit about um how we're taking a dollar and stretching it and finding other resources so we can include projects maybe larger or to get projects done sooner as a result of leveraging our assets and our funding sources so the majority of the projects on these lists are being um implemented by the local jurisdictions for the ones being implemented by the rtc themselves and that that would primarily be the highway projects the highway one auxilary but best on shoulder projects um we have um targeted uh the uh senate bill one program is for active transportation uh program because we have bridges over highway one we have looked at the solutions to congested corridor program um because uh the the project would uh fit well within the guidelines that we've seen for that program and we've um uh are also looking at the local partnership program funding which provides a match to measure defunds um one of the things that we noticed when we looked at these programs and the ability to leverage is the solutions to congested corridor programs require that projects be environmentally cleared prior to um being able to apply for the funding so we focused on trying to get all of the projects needed um as part of the highway one program of projects uh environmentally cleared so that they would be eligible for this funding um that is the best use of measure d funds at this time um and we are using the uh STIP funds that um are part of this action to program that on construction as a match to those SB one programs um as well as the uh H-SIP funds um or excuse me the the HIP funds the highway improvement program funds those federal funds and then any formula funds that may be provided in the future as part of the local partnership program funding so we've been very strategic about how we're doing this um the next round of funding is expected early next year um the uh so-called two uh 41st project um which does have environmental clearance and is in final design right now will be what we call shelf ready or ready to go those projects often receive priorities the other thing that um is looked at is uh the CTC wants to see innovative projects projects that are not increasing um greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles travel without proper mitigation these projects are very innovative we are one of the only two counties in the state that has legislation for bus on shoulders projects auxiliary lanes is not the business as usual build HOV lanes now sort of projects it's looking at um providing um ways to improve the operations of the highway system in such a manner that does not include through lanes that increase the overall highway capacity we have spoken with CTC staff and they seem very interested in the highway program and how we are setting it up to leverage these future grant opportunities and I am very confident that by following this um methodology which will be laid out in the strategic implementation plan for measure d expected later this month that you will see that this is a very strategic way of leveraging measure d funds for future grant opportunities it's good to hear because we definitely need to stretch the dollars and and one more question and the rest i'll have comments a bit later if you want us to make rounds on comments um there was a mention about the emergency services will we at all look at the bus on shoulder avenue or location as a possible means for emergency vehicles such as the ambulance or police or fire at any point i don't know i mean normally everybody pulls over to the right so that the police fire and that the ambulance go through but if we have that that lane available do we are do we or will we look at that in terms of emergency services and the access for that bus on shoulder location for that type of um vehicle i am so glad that you brought that up because safety is one of the major components of these grant programs that they want to see done highway one is the lifeline for santa cruz county if there's ever a major emergency it's going to be used as an evacuation route and it's also going to be used by emergency vehicles the highway one auxiliary lane bus on shoulders program not only provides the auxiliary lanes between intersections but it also includes shoulders adjacent to the auxiliary lanes that the emergency vehicles can use between the intersections um so under the overpasses and whatnot that's where the buses will ride on the shoulders and the emergency vehicles can also use those shoulders when you get further down the line and it was correctly noted by some of the public speakers today we have some of our most serious safety concerns and those are associated with no shoulders between state park and freedom drive and those are a result of those railroad bridges that really restrain the right away by replacing those railroad bridges providing an auxiliary lane and an additional shoulder next to it we will greatly increase the safety of the highway system especially for emergency response vehicles and this is something that will be looked at at ground ground opportunities because it's been highlighted in all of the guidelines that we've seen thus far and safety is a primary component of the highway one corridor program which is allowed by measure d thank you commissioner consuls thank you chair i just wanted to speak on this highway one nine intersection i don't agree with that i think the money can be utilized in a better location maybe uh bringing it back to the federax so cal intersection issues that they have uh so with that i i i agree with everything else and i'm looking forward to the auxiliary lanes moving forward on highway one and getting some of this traffic at least uh relieved thanks mr moeller go ahead thank you i just wanted very quickly expressed my gratitude to the commission for uh reworking our rstpx allocation policy for the current grand cycle what we did was we uh directed all of the rstpx federal money to the local jurisdictions for local projects and because of that decision a project in core lettuce that we've been waiting on for a long time is actually going to be built it wouldn't have been built otherwise this decision today will provide over a million dollars uh to the pioneer varnier road project um and i know that people down there are very excited to finally have some relief so thank you very much i would move this staff recommendation motion by shifrin seconded by i missed the second yeah seconded by bertrand great any other comments before i called called commissioner kaufman gomez um yes i i do want to respond just briefly about the we don't want the auxiliary lanes we don't want this we don't want that we all have to come back and first of all we can all have a majority consensus that we need to do something and this is a process of doing something we also know that this is a process of compromise we all made compromises for two-thirds vote for this measure d funds so that we get the the wildlife on 17 but also so that we get the auxiliary that we need at the south end for those relief um the measures to reduce the vehicle miles the other problem that we have here is this is a very complex a very expensive county and for us to say we need to move people around and have jobs and create jobs that is part of the balance of the housing demand that we have here as well as doing the economic drivers so that they don't have to leave the area and and be able to retain and reduce the number of miles that they're traveling because the job is close by watsonville has become the most affordable location within this county and therefore that's why we have a housing community and also why it's contributing to a lot of the issues that are here so for people to say no we don't want auxiliary the voters have decided that that's what they want we've been confirming that we've been processing that we've been moving those type of projects forward for the relief of those that voted for that part of it that may not have voted for it because they didn't believe in the wildlife pathway or other things that were going on in other segments of this county so we have to keep that in light when we're voting on these projects and the purpose of measure d and how the phones or funds are being allocated we obviously have a very transparent process so that the community and all of you that are here with the concerns see how every dollar is spent how it's stretched how it's prioritized and how our different jurisdictions have said what their priorities are so that they can go ahead and have those projects put in alignment and prioritize to get them get out there and working on them so so please believe that you may not like something that's part of that but we all came together we all made the compromise we all agreed at two-thirds that the measure d was to be allocated for these resources to happen so i will i will support these projects thank you commissioner brah just make a couple of comments uh so i have reluctantly supported the highway one nine project and i because a couple of people commissioners here have uh gestured to you know that that item and the will of the city of santa cruz um the city council has voted to support moving that project forward i have been reluctant in my support because um as i've been reluctant in supporting anything related to highway widening including ox lanes because i i do believe that they are not going to improve the congestion situation and i do believe that reir suggests that the greenhouse gas emissions will not be improved and potentially will be um we will have an increased negative impacts i um i also understand that there are uh the significant portion of the community is interested in um trying to get some traffic relief and um so while i hope that as we move forward um we will find alternative um options um i will support the um the staff recommendation today and i um was inclined to include some kind of um uh condition or delay in the highway one nine transfer the money transfer um i um will save that for our cip review in january and um so i did want to say that i'm reluctantly supporting these measures that are are just really going to lead to you know through induced demand to more cars and more greenhouse gas emissions thank you i also want to just say a word about highway one nine because it's probably for a bicycle list and a pedestrian it's probably the safest crossing of highway one because there's a bike lane along the levy that goes underneath highway one um and it's a pleasure to be using that bike lane to go over to the other side for various business and not have to try to get across highway one um at at the light which is always tricky because there are it's probably the worst or the second worst intersection in the city so well i think there can be disagreements about priorities certainly in terms of safety for bicyclists and pedestrians getting across highway one the highway one nine project is not a problem what does not create any additional problems um and as commissioner brown has indicated it it will provide some relief to some people it's not going to be a cure all for sure so thank you okay i think we've had enough discussion i am going to take my liberty as chair to just elaborate a little bit on this topic um i first of all foremost i want to thank rachel for assembling a great package here i know there were a lot of work going into this and obviously by the conversation today this was a very needed conversation we need to have and i want to commend you on always delivering a professional document for us to evaluate um i i want to bring up something it's a little off topic but uh i went on thanksgiving to petaluma and i happened to go over the sam rafael bridge and i don't know if anybody's aware of this i think this is recent but they've taken the top portion of the sam rafael bridge and put a barrier all the way across that bridge removing the shoulder it's now a bike lane and that's a pretty dramatic move okay to uh because what that does now is if there's any accident on that portion of the freeway you would be reducing that bridge to a one lane bridge but this is a significant uh improvement for bikes for bicycles and pedestrians and i've saw bicycles and pedestrians going over that bridge at a calculated risk but maybe that's what we need to do to forget advance pedestrian and bicycle work so i just want to commend who at every agency or whatever act of congress it took to to remove a lane off of a major bridge uh did you want to weigh in on that did you have that because i would love to know how it happened i was just going to say that that they was caltrans yeah okay all right well yeah and you know whatever it took it was probably a big leap of faith but it did happen um the other thing i want to comment on is you know uh commissioner kothman gomez brought this up and it was uh you know a lot of people take credit for the success of measure d and i just want to make it really clear that everybody should take credit for for measure d because there was things on there that nobody liked and there might have just been one thing on there you like which gave you enough reason to vote because it did not win by that much but it was because there was something for everyone and i think what you just saw today up here was as you saw commissioners struggling with working and taking money maybe from their agency to another agency and supporting other agencies and if you think what the mission of the regional transportation commission is it's to do what's best for the county so i applaud this commission which what i think is going to be this vote so with that uh all in favor opposed and that motion carries unanimously and thank you okay so we're going to move on to item 23 which is my cruise 511 and i'm not sure who's doing this presentation here you are i didn't see it back there okay welcome amy good morning commissioners my name is amy naranjo rtc staff and program manager for the cruise 511 program i'm here today to recommend distributing a hundred thousand dollars of measure d transportation demand management or tdm funds for county wide employer outreach and marketing contracts for the cruise 511 program i'm also like to provide an update for my colleague claire fleisler at the city of santa cruz on the the go santa cruz program which is using the ride amigos network so if you'll recall in september the commission directed rtc staff to work with the cruise 511 implementation work group which consists of staff from rtc the city of santa cruz university santa cruz and ecology action and for the group to prepare a recommendation for distributing those funds so as the group has been meeting over the last couple of months and in this time we have developed a plan where we recommend distributing seventy thousand dollars of that to ecology action for county wide employer outreach and then another thirty thousand dollars for marketing and branding and using both of those for sole source contracts the marketing contract would go to a local public relations consultant miller maxfield the city of santa cruz is currently working with both ecology action and miller maxfield in their go santa cruz campaign and this feels like a naturally way to use them as well for the county wide launch by using both of these will ensure the continuity the continuity of both the transportation programs with employers county wide as well as provide some economies of scale with marketing components that are already being developed and have been developed miller maxfield contract with the city was competitively competitively bid and awarded in august 2019 so only a few few months ago and then ecology action has a they they have they offer a unique service that and that they provide an emergency ride home are already working with employer employers county wide doing outreach and training workshops and they also offer a zero interest bike loan so go santa cruz is the first public network that's using the my cruise 511 or ride amigos platform so essentially when when i came to you in august and i explained with the ride amigos system it's it's an online software it's a platform we've titled it my cruise 511 for our area and then the city of santa cruz has their network which is go santa cruz and that's directly within our my cruise 511 platform so you might hear a couple different names that's how i'm trying to explain that so the go santa cruz program launched just recently in october on october 1st and their goal is primarily to reduce the drive alone rate in downtown from 69 to under 50 percent and they are doing that by providing different transportation options for employees within their program currently they've been able to reach 125 local downtown businesses 800 downtown employees have already enrolled in the my cruise 511 go santa cruz network and out of 800 employees out of a total of approximately 4 000 downtown employees so that's roughly a 20 participation rate so far in the first couple of months within that time the city has distributed 500 annual transit passes those are local transit passes 150 jump discount memberships 100 preloaded bike lockers that are in $20 increments and then 50 50 downtown dollar rewards for logging alternative trips and each of those are 10 dollar um 10 dollar values in addition the downtown employees have already logged over 17 000 non sov miles in and 5000 non sov trips um and then in that time they've also reduced our saved 5.5 tons of co2 emissions by using alternative transportation the city has an annual budget of $580 000 for this program for their downtown santa cruz program and of that 400 000 is exclusively for incentives so the incentives that i mentioned um in comparison to the cruise 511 county wide program we're only looking at having approximately $20 000 in incentives so there's quite a big scale um and the scope that we're doing from the county wide approach to the the downtown approach um see so we expect that while working with um working with miller maxfield and ecology action to continue moving the program forward using the existing resources that we have building on them and then working with uh targeted employers so we've essentially we've outlined approximately 20 major employers throughout the county um looking at both working directly with the county with the local jurisdictions and then major employers that are equally distributed amongst all the super supervisorial districts just so that we're trying to capture a little bit throughout the entire county um while also maintaining our focus and with limited staff time to really go out and do this work and we'll be relying on our our additional partners to help move this program forward um let's see so with that being said we recommend uh distributing the 70 000 to ecology action and 30 000 to miller maxfield for marketing for the cruise 511 county wide employer outreach and marketing um with that i end my presentation i'm happy to take any questions thank you amy any question mr ron question leopold thank you uh thank you for the presentation and uh i think this is a great idea working with uh two local organizations who have a great track record and have shown to to um be very successful so i think the ecology action miller maxfield are good choices um just had a question about ghost uh santa cruise which i think is is is it's a great um experiment um and trying to figure out what how does uh what's working in um and how to scale that will be very important the the question about um uh vehicle trips outside a single occupancy vehicle um or other modes do do we will will we have information about whether those are new trips you know because if i'm a downtown employee who used to take the bus and now i get a free pass i'm still taking the bus um but i i haven't changed that dynamic right will we get a sense about that i'm just yeah that's that's something that's in the works right now um so one of the barriers to getting people in our system is an extended registration process if they're having to spend 10 minutes filling their information out their commute behavior the travel behavior they're more than likely not going to finish the process and get in the system right so our focus primarily right now has been just to get people in any which way give them some incentives give them some um any of the incentives and then get them in the system and from there we can then give a baseline survey and we're in the process of developing that baseline survey to track that commuter behavior to to answer those questions what are you doing currently and then based on the incentives that we've distributed the challenges that we've had and so forth how then at the end of the pilot program we'll do another survey and then measure that participation rate from there yeah well i just think it would be great to have to be asking some questions about what they did before the program started to because um if i drove my car before but now because of the the bike incentive or the or the bus pass that i'm now not driving my car right that's a huge win absolutely and that's one of our goals is to try to once we get an employer on board or once we get folks on board into the system within 90 days to distribute that baseline survey so that we can find um some of the before stats great thank you any commissioner johnson thank you for your work thank you a couple of questions or a couple of comments transportation demand management programs are among the most cost effective for those of you who are not familiar with them of any of the transportation programs this commission funds they're relatively inexpensive they're very fluid they're very can be often very innovative as you've mentioned in your staff report Amy they can be changed much easier than trying to change a hard escape project which is much more bureaucratic and much more difficult to do so to get people to change their behavior and how they transport themselves is among the hardest of transportation policy decisions that we make and programmatic decisions or implementation that is done by your staff and your partner's ecology action and Miller maxville and others very very difficult but it's been around for a long time and and we've for many of us who've been in this field for a long time we've known that it works very well when done well and well funded so i'm really excited to hear the amount of resources that the city is putting forward i agree with commissioner leopold that it's nice to know the net new behaviors that occur but to get people in the system just to be able to demonstrate the importance of these alternative transportation modes and people's willingness to do it is also very very valuable so i just hope that other jurisdictions in the county including the county consider putting some incentives toward this the 511 system and putting more because for the every dollar we spend on this we're going to get a huge bank for our buck so thank you and then i just want to make one correction on your staff report as of april 22nd next year 2020 ecology action would have been around for 50 years wow good to know commissioner kaufman go miss um yes the the peer review and the part of it i'd like to see or maybe you already have this in in place if if i'm a candidate and i've put my my paperwork in there and i'm registered in the system and i'm utilizing it are you providing them with a new symptom for a referral process for somebody that's using the system that may be a selling point for it to expand it because if you're doing the employer and there's 20 employees those 20 employees are now disseminating more information out there about the program and do you or will you look to see about incentivizing them for the referral process to expand the bandwidth of the use of the program in those resources that's something that we actually have not discussed at this point but it is something that is easily set up and available in the right amigos platform and it's a really good option thank you for that thank you commissioner brown i i just want to oh thank you i just want to make a comment and put in a plug for the ghost anacris program uh you know i think one of the um kind of one of the issues that we really had very robust and thorough discussion about was the provision of bus passes to make those available to all downtown employees and at the time um you know there was some reticence to do that we were talked about doing it as a pilot a small a limited number and because there was an expectation that people would not take advantage of bus passes they would not ride the bus and what we see here is you know we ultimately the council decided that we were going to go for it and see um what might happen um and and increase the budget for our ghost anacris program and i'm really happy to see that in the first two months um you know 500 bus passes um and so i'm looking forward to hearing more about the increase in ridership and reduction in in car travel and um anticipate that the numbers will continue to increase as people learn about the program so i really think that you know just going i guess my takeaway message here is that you know just making that decision to invest and go for it can really um you can see some real results pretty quickly thank you for all your work thank you okay any other comments looking for a motion here public thank you we haven't heard from the public so that's okay good there is some thanks for that mr. commissioner shifrin now we're now we're up to the public thank you your people's thank you very much brian people's executive director of uh trail now um you know my day job i'm an engineer i've been an engineer for 30 years over the in the high tech industry and you when you we design a system you're essentially designing a system to fix a problem right and you you identify metrics um or requirements of well how successful are we at fixing that problem and you you identify those those metrics too and um mr leopold made a good point of you know are we regenerating it and already addressing existing but when we look at engineering a system i think right now we need to kind of change our our mode in the transportation world um vehicle miles traveled is really a poor metric it really is a poor metric with the way technology is transforming right what we need to look at is people miles moved transit systems miles moves how are we moving the public right and if we keep going in with this mindset that we need to restrict the this resource this vehicle resource to enable the public to move it's deterring from our design of our system i mean our public is aging my mother has is you know in a wheelchair she has to have direct movement from her home to her final destination and that's the direction we need to get to is we our expectation that we can't have a transportation system that the public can't use because they're stuck in their house so we really need to change our mindset on what metrics are we measuring to our design of our transportation system and vehicle miles traveled is the wrong metrics it's people how are we moving the people how many people can we get through our transportation system again it's just comes down to that y'all it's you know we got to get away from this idea that um vehicle miles trans movement is it's it's not the metric that's driving it we want to look at how do we maximize the current thorough ways that we have the Santa Cruz coastal trail the highway so Cal in the surface streets how do we maximize them in an efficient way and vehicle miles traveled is not a good metric and i think we're hearing that from the state as well they're realizing that that's not the metric that you measure to because with autonomous cars it's it's it's going away the systems are going to be able to handle the demand of our aging population and we need that thank you very much and i support them thank you morning company commissioners my name is piet canna from ecology action and i just want to commend staff for putting together this transfusion demand management effort it's a collaborator effort in terms of working with the city of Santa Cruz large employers like ucsc and other jurisdictions and ecology action has been part of this coalition for for many years we have a program where we do employer memberships and we have 24 employers locally that are part of that fee-based service such employers as the seaside company looker and other other private businesses and then in the public public sector we have ucsc and the county ecology action provides services like a modern emergency ride home service to guarantee that everybody that use sustainable transportation if they have a personal emergency they can they can get home and take care of that emergency where the car pulled van pulled or walked quickly so that's a service that's kind of general for sustainable transportation and then also we also provide a zero interest bike loan so people have economic barriers to buying a bicycle both regular bicycle and electric bike they can do so with the financial assistance and we also do customized programs for large employers such as bike safety workshop bike rides bike safety distributions and so you know we're looking forward to continue working with this collaborative effort especially with the go Santa Cruz program being so successful out of the box i mean 800 sign ups the miles that they've already clocked for sustainable transportation is pretty significant over you know 125 businesses that have signed up just in the downtown district so we believe that you know people outside of the downtown district and um employers are going to want to also be able to sign up and get the benefits of this online platform the ride amigos are my cruise five on one so we we would help our tc staff to get recruitment get people signed up get to them understand how to use the system encourage them to do car pulling um take the bus walk bicycle other forms of transportation as electric bikes become more popular that kind of makes people go further and faster so and then also just to um reply quickly to some questions the city of Santa Cruz hasn't done baseline intakes as people sign up but they have done two transportation studies over the last couple years of downtown employers so they have a general um read on how many people bike in the in the downtown district coming to get the bus how many people are driving so they have those metrics to go off of as a baseline and then can do follow-up on that so that's one thing that they they have there to um quantify the improvements so thank you very much thank you good morning good morning commissioners rtc staff my name is taun kennedy and i work with ecology action and uh i'm a program coordinator with adult sustainable transportation programs and i just wanted to report back on uh we've done our now our first two uh presentations as part of our work with go santa Cruz our first presentation was with city staff and we sent out a uh claire sent out an rsvp link and within about an hour we had about 30 rsvps uh we ended up having about 60 people attend the workshop um and there's continued excitement from city staff uh to have access to uh information and resources regarding uh both signing up for the Cruz 511 platform as well as the bike safety and uh commute support that we provide via those workshops um we ended up having to move from the city conference room to the civic auditorium uh main floor which was that was my debut presenting at the civics and i'm very proud of that and then we also just delivered a our second presentation at looker on wednesday to about 34 employees and again there's you know incredible amount of excitement and interest in shifting um to more uh sustainable modes of transportation and so um thank you for considering this proposal thank you for this comment hi jessica and city of santa Cruz i just wanted to voice my support for this really extraordinarily innovative program and um i'm super pleased that you guys have supported it kudos to you um thank you so much thank you david date licella beach um we lost our bus service uh september 2016 before measure d was passed um it still has not been restored um i've informed a few people who have been at the bus stop waiting for a bus that's never coming that the bus isn't coming and i try to offer them rides whenever i can um i saw a gentleman named tim who sees and lives in seascape and he was pacing back and forth at the um seascape bus stop that is on san andrea's and i offered him a ride he wanted to go to downtown santa Cruz uh he informed me that the bus is always late so he plans on getting to the bus stop late and then he waits and he does he's not the uncertainty that he experiences not knowing if the bus had already come if the bus is coming at all and this is pretty much his entire life um having uncertainty and anxiety about moving um so it was um it was an interesting perspective and i just wanted to share that thank you for that comment move to staff recommendation uh second motion by shifrin second by leopold any other comments well just quickly uh to the last speaker the metro is actually uh going to be putting in place a system so you'll be able to track when the buses come when when your bus is coming or whether it's already passed i think it's going to be installed this year um uh it's a million dollar system to be able to put on all on all buses um also uh amy if you could provide us with a list of which employers you're working in our jurisdiction i'd love to have that any other comments cut uh all in favor i opposed motion carries unanimously thank you takes us to item 24 so on call capital project management management services contract award sarah christensen still morning sarah welcome good morning thank you commissioner um right uh here today to um hopefully uh get a contract awarded to help us with delivery of capital projects um specifically the regional projects that the the rtc staff is responsible for delivery um so measure d passed in 2016 and it included a expenditure plan of projects and um at the same time rtc given this new obligation of delivering projects we did not really increase um our resources internally and so the purpose of this contract is really to help support staff in getting these capital projects implemented um which is a huge priority for this commission and so um a little background about the procurement we released the rp in uh in october we received three proposals uh the selection committee um which was made up of staff it was uh guy president executive director of myself ginger daikar senior planner and um grace blakesley senior planner we reviewed and ranked the submittals we interviewed all three firms on november 15th and uh csg consultants they were um there's they scored the highest uh based on the selection criteria and one of the main reasons why they had such a strong team is because they had a very diverse team of professionals who have experience across all modes um because we have a really unique program of projects that aren't they're not just highway projects or you know we have we own a rail corridor we have active transportation projects we have trails we have transit projects um there's just a lot of needs that we have and and enabling having consultants um in our back pocket to um support us allows us to leverage their expertise instead of having to hire a staff person for each one of those expertise so um the scope of work is really to help us with three main categories of regional projects the highway projects and the rail infrastructure preservation projects and the mbs st projects this uh the contract is structured as an uncalled contract with task orders being issued as needs arise and our estimated need at this point uh from a fiscal perspective is approximately 400 000 a year the term is three years so that puts the total contract value at $1.2 million over three years there is an option to extend the contract an additional two years if needed um but with that i'd like to uh recommend that the commission approve the resolution which is a replacement page just a note um to award the contract to csg consultants thank you sir any questions from miss christianson commissioner coughman gomez um and the funding sources for this is this from the d or is there from another funding source yes this contract will be funded by um the various categories of measure d answer questions go and open up to the public anyone from the public like to comment on this item this brian people's executive director trail now um we support this we think that the rtc staff is moving in the correct direction in industry we do the same thing we do the same thing we go out because we can't afford to have the specialist we can't afford to own the specialist so what you need to do is go out and contract out with the specialist so this is the correct approach thank you thank you well you can mark this day on your calendar we are in agreement it sounds like a great move to uh can build the capacity of the rtc to move important projects forward and we hope you vote for it thank you thank you engineers bring the world with the bring the community together very scott at us i i also rise in support of this this uh contract and i want to add just because i've been watching this crazy rain that we're having and i'm i'm reminded of what happened in to the to the rail line right now we have well crazy rain and it's having an impact on some parts of our county and in the rail corridor and i hope that everybody's uh vigilant about and i'm sure sarah and and guy and louise will be looking into some of the some of the problems that may be imminent uh so that we can avoid damage that that might end up being very very serious thank you thank you any other comments okay i'll bring it back i would move i would move the staff recommendation i'm going to go with the leopold with a motion a second by kaufman gomez okay any other discussion all in favor i opposed motion carries unanimously thank you sarah okay this is uh item 25 track improvement for rail vehicle demonstration mr mendez yes uh good morning commissioners as you know the uh you know transportation commission purchased the sankers branch rail line right away in 2012 to preserve existing rail service implement recreational rail service build a bicycle and pedestrian path and investigate potential future rail transit service and the rc has been working to implement all of those items uh and and the latest is the alternatives analysis that the rc is uh is undertaking and at its uh september meeting the rtc received their presentation from a tigam a company in southern california that manages new factories electric trolleys to do a uh to conduct a a proposed um demonstration of their vehicles and the rtc was was very receptive and and asked that we return uh with uh further uh information and recommendations now um tigam has been working with rtc staff with railroad operator uh saint paul pacific railroad the federal railway administration uh to ensure that everything needed for a passenger rail vehicle demonstration is in place for the federal railway administration requirements the track um must be at class one for a passenger rail vehicle to operate on the line um there have been inspections between uh capitol and santa cruz which reveal that some work uh is indeed needed to ensure that the track is at class one and completing the work will allow this demonstration plus will allow the rtc to to uh permit other demonstrations uh if the rtc would like also the rtc has a commitment under the administration coordination and license agreement that's between the rtc and the rail operator saint paul pacific railroad uh stipulating that the track uh must meet the fra class one standards before the rtc can hand the track over to saint paul pacific railroad and at that time saint paul pacific railroad will take will take responsibility for uh maintaining uh and uh and using the track so that because of the work identified by indian inspections will allow for the demonstrations and will help uh to meet the rtc's responsibilities under the agreement saint paul pacific railroad uh staff solicited quotes from contractors for the work that that's needed and the contractors uh submitting quote industrial railways uh company submitted the lower quote um there was a slight difference in their quotes in that industrial railways did not include uh disposal of the ties after they got removed so in uh working with industrial railways we asked well that could be included uh and they said that indeed it could be included and it would be you know a total contract cost of 60 000 uh now the art which is still lower than the um other uh quote that was submitted and under the rtc's uh you know recent inclusion uh under the california uniform public construction cost accounting act which allows negotiated contracts up to 60 000 this will well just barely uh you know uh meets that uh therefore the rtc can enter into the negotiated contract uh with industrial railways without having to do a bidding process for that so staff does recommend that the rtc approve the attached resolution authorizing the executive director to enter into prevailing wage no bid contract with industrial railways company to upgrade the sanctuary's pantry line track between capitol and santa cruz straya for a class one standards for a contract value uh not to exceed 60 000 dollars in a term uh ending december 31st 2020 uh we expect the work will be done much sooner than december 31st 2020 because tgam intends to have a demonstration in february of 2020 um uh and they have been working towards uh making sure that like i said before they meet all the requirements to to do that uh and tgam would like to run uh between capitol and santa cruz and and also plans to take their railroad vehicle down to wassenville to showcase it for a couple of days uh and the administration coordination lines agreement that the rtc has with um the railroad operator does allow for the rtc to provide licenses to third parties for demonstrations or or other uh events tgam will bear all the costs associated with the demonstration except for the improvements to the track which as i mentioned is part of responsibly the rtc uh under the agreement with the railroad operator so staff does recommend that the rtc authorize the executive director to negotiate and execute a temporary license agreement with tgam for demonstration of the passenger rail trolley vehicle between capitol and santa cruz and and in wassenville um the agreements that would be entered into would be substantially in the form that's attached to your staff report but they will still need to go through you know review by the go council and and so on um so with that staff has the recommendations in front of you and uh uh there are funds for um the work being recommended and the actual demonstration uh or providing the license for demonstration does not uh incur a physical impact to the rtc thank you and any questions for mr mendez commissioner kaufman gomez thank you sir um i'd like to make sure that when we do have because we're talking about the demonstration as well as a repair that we invite monterey bay community power so that we have somebody from that agency here we know that over 60 ghg is in transportation and they are obviously our electric generator um a procure and i think that we may be able to show them some of the type of electric transportation projects that are within their jurisdiction and uh that way when it comes to future projects and funding and potential of some things i think they would be very beneficial for them to be included uh as well as um tamsey and i forget to hold a debbie hail um they had somebody that came in to say that they would like to do demonstration and tamsey um board declined to go ahead and process a request of that nature that was unsolicited so there may be something there with other kinds of interests of things on that and um the the cost are we charging them a fee for the permit to use this to show or in the future any other vendor that has an interest in showing a demonstration or part of the application process so we're covering the administrative expense in doing so in this case uh there has not been a a fee that's been proposed to charge uh to again for the operation as i mentioned that they are covering uh the full cost of bringing the the um uh vehicle here to demonstrate a lot of times these demonstrations do have a a shared cost between the the company doing the operation and then the the agency that's providing the uh service here in this case that is not that is not being shared it will also provide some benefit uh to the RTC's efforts under the uh attorney's analysis because you know then the community will be able to see something that could potentially be on this rail line and it could be one of uh several demonstrations the RTC could have so the community can see um the types of vehicles that uh could potentially be used uh as the RTC's moving forward with it with his alternatives analysis and then the last part of it is just the the media capacity so that we can actually promote that this is occurring for those that have an interest in seeing what this is about so making sure that we have the media component when this project comes forward for the community to be aware of it and commission Gonzalez uh thank you chair just a follow-up um for this demonstration in the city of Watsonville is it possible to have it first prior to them going to the service section of the capital of Santa Cruz to start the promotion off in Santa in Watsonville you know I I don't I wouldn't know about that but Mark Johansson is here from uh New York Santa yam so you can probably respond to that and then one more item and since since we're going in this route um would it be a cost to uh work with metro to try to get a shuttle to go from Watsonville to capitol to service the the this demonstration train uh so we can try to see what what utilization we can have with metro and and a and a train service we can ask Santa Cruz metro what the cost might be for a shuttle thank you commissioner Mulhern uh thank you very much um how how did we uh select this segment of the rail line to repair it is the segment that uh well there are several parts of the line that actually aren't available because there's still storm damage repair that needs to be done uh and in this segment there isn't a storm damage repair that needs to be done it also is a segment that that saw work most recently on the track because in 2016 iot pacific was the previous operator did quite a bit of work on that section of the track to run their polar express train that they ran from Santa Cruz down to just past Capitola and so the thought was that most likely this segment would be in the best shape and would need would need the least amount of work so that it would be available for this and and it also seemed desirable to have the demonstration be uh uh within the more populated area of Santa Cruz county so more more of the residents of the Santa Cruz Santa Cruz county would get a chance to see it and experiences that they would like if they would like and um the the alternatives analysis will be exploring high capacity public transit just i i i'm not familiar with the full array of of Tiggum's products or technologies but based on what i've seen on their website and on their previous presentation it looks like they move more to do streetcars for tourist destinations i do see that that one of their technologies looks like it could be scalable but how is this how does this meet the definition of high capacity public transit this particular technology that they're going to be using maybe mark and uh talk a little bit more about what their technology can do good afternoon commissioners my name is mark johanneson i have a law practice here in Santa Cruz city and live in aptos and i'm helping Tiggum on this project so a couple of questions first of all thank you for the staff alice and and guy on helping move this project through as you know we're on a fairly tight schedule we started looking at this back in september even before that preparing but it does take time and we've got the demonstration coming at the end of february so some of the issues i think that have been brought up first of all we are going to be engaging bill maxfield in the public outreach campaign and we expect to be able to work with a rtc on that public outreach as well i've already made contact with the c ec cover energy commission they have a hydrogen unit as you know this particular vehicle is a is a transportation vehicle it's not a it's not a tourist vehicle it's an enclosed trolley for humans for for actual commuting this particular vehicle holds 100 people they also have a model that holds 200 these can be tagged together through a variety of means to scale up as as need arises so they are commuter vehicles and the we've all also i think the comment to reach out to monorail community power i think that's the it's it's on our list of things to do because even though this is a battery electric vehicle it has a hydrogen fuel cell top-off generator and the extent you can use green power going into the generation of hydrogen you have a totally green system from end to end the only mission is going to be wider um we would we would also reach out to the berry resources resources district because as you know those of you who sit on that board 90 percent or 80 percent of the particulates in the air are from mobile sources and so this type of system would actually fold into reducing those types of emissions and tamsi as well i've reached out to them and the expectation is once the demonstration is in place we will have um like a groundbreaking day or something like that and the ideal to to invite calvary energy commission representatives tamsi representatives folks from the monorail bay power as well as local representatives and the california fuel cell partnership as well to help push this out so we'll have the facility part of the local fundraising we're going to be doing to actually be able to push this out to as many people as possible but we'll be looking for assistance in that on other other channels in terms of watsonville the plan was to have that demonstration first i think the suggestion has been watsonville depot in that area where there's parking there's a spur i think that could be used for that um uh and um in terms of the uh let's see what i'll see um oh um so um that's it we'd like to actually park it in an aptos village but i understand the there's going to be an issue with the bridge there so um i i know the staff is looking at an engineering report and that may or may not happen if it doesn't it's i think the the trajectory would be do it at watsonville station or exhibit there have an event around there a look and see uh we can't really move it uh because right now all that track is considered to be accepted track which means you can't run passenger service on so we're working with progressive rail on getting the approvals to do that um then in terms of coming back to santa cruise we'll have the need the fr a approval now that we've got um we'll have the class one repairs made at that point um we will have to have uh according to progressive probably some type of consent form that may go along with this so we'll work out the mechanics for that on how to easily do that so as as these smaller issues arise um we're going to be addressing those as those comp and just for folks that want to get a hold of uh at least the tig m side of this my email is mfjlaw at gmail.com it's mark frank jacqueline gmail.com and i'm certainly willing to talk to anybody who would like to discuss this and i'm going to be available for further questions and comments thank you commissioner retrand then shifrin it wasn't finished just a question oh hold on a second excuse me i gotta follow up that's okay no i i'm just curious if this is going to implicate the the alternatives analysis what what sort of data are we collecting on this who and who's collecting the data so um yeah this is a demonstration project and and we totally understand that there's going to be an alternative analysis and there could be other options so um our thought was to if there are data requirements to work with the folks that are doing alternative analysis to see what they would want to get out of this um obviously there's a you know writer satisfied questionnaires number of writers but it is going to be um you know it's going to be an unusual demonstration because it's you know people aren't going to rely on it to go to work but i think the plan would be to have an infographic of something in nature that has a schedule on it for the period of demonstration so you know at this time it's going to go at this location and and look at the stops were throughout the route or it'll come every so many minutes that type of thing so there there is data i think that can be thrown off by a project like this but it's really working with the stakeholders on what they would want and how we can accommodate that but um but because it is a demonstration project for a number factors uh yeah if we knew what uh data requirements there are then we can work that into the project as well so we'll ask our consultants then to devise some kind of metrics that we can use we'll work with the consultants yeah okay and what is the maximum speed allowed in class one rail i think it's 25 actually not class one rail for passenger it's 15 miles per hour i think so okay so it's not really a public transit project we're looking at um and how are the upgrade crossings going to be handled i realize that we currently have people flagging at those sorts of intersections is that going to be me flagging okay thank you very much and in terms of rolling this into a more uh faster streetcar obviously there's different improvements that would have to be made to make the ride smoother to get it up this this particular section 3.9 miles which is 25 miles an hour is about six minutes uh to to do with one one trip so okay commission for train yeah i'm glad you're gonna get some customer feedback i guess so that was one of my questions the other question is actually for louise um where's the uh rock going to be put in capitol is the curve that was mentioned in the report it's um as you leave capitol and go towards um right that there's no towards uh santa cruz oh it's the first curve that that you get to okay there's some track needed on the i mean some rock needed on the outside shoulder of the curve okay thanks mr shiffer as i understand that the the demonstration rides are going to be free correct everyone is there is the commission going to receive a more detailed report on the specifics of how many trips a day where the stops are going to be um things like that or do is that known now um what how's that i'm not sure maybe that's a question for you louise i mean is it is this going to come back i'm very supportive of doing this i think it's a really good idea but there's no information on the specifics of it that is be front is in front of us i let me just also say that um was a little concerned about the commission spending money on this at this time when there's so much uncertainty i think the fact that the service is being offered free is really a good justification for uh spending some money to really get that kind of a demonstration but there is i know when i mentioned it to a couple of people they said well where is it going to stop where are people going to park what how many trips a day um what times is it going to happen i just wonder will the commission have get that information or do you is that commission is that information available now uh well so far we have not received all of the little details from um tgm i think they're still working on on that uh and uh based on our conversations uh it seems that there would not be any stops in between uh santa cruz and capitol but i don't know if that's something that that you know tm could work work into that and we can come back with you know more detailed information if you like as we get closer to the demonstration well if the demonstration is going to start in february then i think it's something that should be on the january commission agenda to sort of get those details and and again it's just coming from i don't have a a set of priorities i just think will be useful for us and the public to know before it starts just what's going to be involved i know one of the other issues i think we should get a report on is kind of the noise impacts the fact that it's an electronic vehicle is great and that really is uh will cut down on the vehicle noise but as some of us remember it's the whistle whistle blowing at the intersections that drives some people crazy so um we should get a report on what that you know how that's going to work because somehow it's not a problem with big trees but it was a problem with you know the christmas express or whatever it was called yeah well and i will also remind that when we the last polar express that one from santa cruz to someplace i don't know new brighton that we got we we got the the noise complaints were were pretty minimal in terms of the blowing in the horn and that was using a more traditional uh diesel uh train and i i will just add that uh i'd love to talk with you about having us stop or doing something for live oak yeah i think the the the discussion was that in the real city in the past you'd identified five or stop five or six stops the idea would be to mimic those in this demonstration because i think the idea is to say to show that this is a um a valid way to commute for example if you have weekend and we have a stop close to 41st street you can walk them all get on there go to sit and go to the the boardwalk and if you have a set schedule then people could actually for the period of demonstration use it to do ordinarily ordinary daily type things um so and that that would be one purpose of demonstration in terms of the noise obviously it's a an electric vehicle there's no noise there's no overhead wires the only noise would be the the noise whatever it makes on rolling down the track in terms of the stop the whistle it's an electronic device it's just say it's ding ding ding ding you know like a street car it's not a horn like a train has and that the decibel level of that horn can be adjusted to whatever the community wants beautiful any other questions i think i'll open it up to the public for some comments uh brian people's trail now back to the metrics it's very important that you outline what are my criteria that i'm going to measure to um no you're not going to adjust the decimal you have to meet the federal requirements for the decimal for the noise um what's going to happen to the traffic when the train stops next to 41st when 41st is shut down while the track train sitting there so those are metrics that staff needs to go off and define first um honestly this demonstration if you're going to make it a demonstration on evaluating a system design you have to define your criteria that you're going to design to and look at those and how they perform to it this feels more like a propaganda promotional thing and that's really not good when you're spending a million dollars you're spending another million dollars to see how best to use that corridor whether it's rubber wheels on asphalt or fixed rails so you're really that's poisoning and this is the what the public gets frustrated with gets frustrated that you're you're you're you say one thing and then you go and you do another so going and doing a uh you know a party and promoting this while you're doing a independent study is really um not upfront it's it's not being honest honestly um and then finally you know we're talking to progressive rail i'm actively talking to them and and they're not the the trolley company has called them multiple times and what progressive rail has said is they feel like they're trying to sell them a trolley and that's what they're trying to do here so trying to sell you a transit vehicle and for you to believe that you're not paying anything that the sixty thousand dollars is going to be progressive investing in your tracks well what happens if the the the study comes back and shows that a train won't work well you've lost that sixty thousand in addition to that is the tracks in order for progressive rail to take over the tracks you have to upgrade it all the way to Davenport so that's millions so this sixty thousand we think that it might move you in the direction of making progressive rail responsible for it that's not true progressive rail has publicly said has informed them that they're not taking over the responsibility until you upgrade the tracks all the way to Davenport so don't think that you're upgrading this and that's a value added investment that it won't cause that it will incrementally move you in that direction because it's not so we don't recommend that you invest in it today maybe down the line but you're contaminating and poisoning the studies thank you thank you hello again hello Keith Otto a couple questions that the commission might want to consider on this item you know how does the demo train get to Santa Cruz and Capitola I'm not clear on that second what's the northernmost portion of the rail that will be used I think there was reference to mile post 19 it's unclear if that includes the bridge over the harbor perhaps not but if it does what's the condition of that bridge for use for this demo also where is it that passengers would be loaded and unloaded from this demo train and the question there is around safety and then lastly is the investment that would be made in these this section of the rail corridor since we haven't yet seen the results of the alternatives analysis is it possible that we're investing in something that is not going to be ultimately used in in the future so those are my comments thank you thank you hello good afternoon my name is Tina I live in Aptos please accept the staff recommendations in item 25 I voted for measure D which includes money to maintain the rail line while studying transit on the corridor and I know that the rail contract with progressive requires upgrading the entire line item 25 is to upgrade four miles of track and to provide a license for the battery operated electric streetcar that can carry a hundred passengers the same as two metro buses and is 100 in line with measure D I'm a little nervous um let's see here let's see the tracks let's see I recommend the approval of this the tracks will be ready to bring other types of zero carbon demonstration services here so let's stick to our measure D promises and commitment to transit and the environment and approve this package I live in Aptos and the rail is behind my backyard and I'm looking forward to the demonstration services going from all the way to Capitola I really hope that it could run down to Aptos too I think it would be great for the two-week demonstration lastly I think it's let's look at maximum options benefiting benefiting maximum amount of people it's safety firsts for children grandkids disabled seniors thank you thank you hi hi Jessica Evans city of Santa Cruz I just wanted to ask you to please move forward with this project um obviously there are funds set aside in measure D to do exactly this work um this was approved it's it's sitting there there's no reason not to do it and um I also think it's really important that the community start to see the possibilities that are available in terms of the various different kinds of transit vehicles and sure you know these guys are trying to sell us a trolley and you know they sell trolleys so you know that's fine but I'm sure there will be other vehicles available um to come and do demonstrations and and you guys may want to ask for some kind of super fancy BRT vehicle to come and demonstrate to the community as well I mean I I just don't think that um turning our backs on the possibilities would be a good way to go so I encourage you to move forward with this proposal thank you so much thank you hi Sally Arnold friends of the rail and trail of course we're so excited to see the plan for these track improvements I know you've already got the money allocated in your budget and the track maintenance is part of your obligations so in a lot of ways this doesn't seem like it should be a surprise you know controversial measure it's just you know kind of what you plan to do and you need to do but it is so exciting anyway because once those tracks are repaired the demonstrations are possible and um you know somebody complained about you know maybe TGN wants to sell sell you a vehicle well you're shopping for vehicles that's what the the alternatives analysis is all about right this vehicle that vehicle what might be the best choice and so it seems entirely appropriate to bring as many possibilities to town as you can and the I feel like also I mean obviously this is not the same as running you know a permanent service the length of the corridor but it's a chance for people to see different vehicles and what they might mean I know that um you know I have some friends who live near the tracks and I think they're permanently scarred by that train to Christmastown it's like they just can't get over it and um I actually live pretty near to the tracks I didn't think it was that big a deal but all I can tell you is some people it's like they will never forget it and it seems like a chance for them to have a different experience with a rail vehicle is really important I mean I hear people tell me I don't want to see a 19th century co-loc motive on those tracks it's like yeah I don't think anybody does but they just can't get over a big loud train and so it's really important for us to see some modern vehicles out there so people have an idea of what we're really talking about here and I think that this just has a wonderful opportunity for you to do some shopping and for the community to also do some shopping and see what the options are um so I just we just enthusiastically uh urge you to approve this item I think it's going to just be great for the community thanks thank you hello my name is Johanna Lighthill and I live in Aptos the reference to shopping reminded me of the time when my excuse me my daughter was shopping for a car when she became of age and she wanted to go test drive a tesla so I had to tell her sorry we have to investigate our price point before we go test driving anything so I hope that you guys will consider that when we're looking at options for rail or the possibility on the corridor more down to the bare bones is that I also like mr. Otto wonder how the train will get to Santa Cruz uh currently there are some vertical restrictions on highway one and most motor homes or mobile homes or whatever are are diverted off of highway one into rio domar into seascape and up they take out excuse me they take out curbs and they take out power lines as they go and our um I'm happy to say measure d funds recently repaved a lot of our streets in rio domar and sea sea cliff and I hope that that um this transportation is considered in saving our streets as well I I don't know what the effects are but I hope you will consider thank you thank you hello again Gina Cole with bike Santa Cruz county I would encourage you to accept the the report as is um I really thank you Araleo for mentioning Watsonville and having working on having some way to move folks from Watsonville to to utilize this I'm a firm believer in experiential education um we don't know what we don't know until we try it and I would encourage all of you to play hooky and take a ride uh when it's offered thank you good afternoon now my name is Mark Mercedes Miller I'm here just to offer a few comments on the proposal before you number one I would encourage you to accept it for a variety of reasons sooner or later you need to maintain the rail line the voters voted money to do that you ought to do it make the voters happy demo trains are really a great idea they will inform our community many of whom have yet to actually see a passenger train I have talked with many people whose total life experience was taking Bart to a Raiders game one time and uh you know it would be great to expose them to what is available in the marketplace today and as Gina said before me there's nothing like touching and seeing and hearing or maybe not hearing a train that would be really uh in informational and educational for our community with regards to the question about charging for the demo I was around when the demo trains were brought here back in whenever well very long time ago I'm not very good with dates but it was a long time ago and as I recall the the RTC spent money they they paid to have a train brought here in fact I think there were three of them or something like that I don't remember the details anymore um and here you have an opportunity to get a train here for us to look at for our community to learn something from for free so please let's go ahead and get this done thank you thank you very Scott Aptos uh yeah it was 1996 I have a couple of buttons it's a flex liner from uh that year there's a the uh there's a return of the return of the sentence special and the coastal cruiser three three one-day services so one-day services are great this is expected to be what a couple of weeks or several days how fantastic is that um with regards to the uh $60,000 expenditure that's part of the commitment for the entire line it's not new money that needs to be found I think we are blessed with this opportunity for people to see uh what what modern modern Tesla like technologies can do the the cost of batteries for vehicles for transportation continues to fall their power content continues to grow this is such a no-brainer I think this single vehicle is a hundred hundred passengers and I think when you do the larger vehicles and the fact that they can be ganged together you start getting into 200 and 300 passengers I am delighted that this is going to Watsonville even if they're it's not able to carry a passengers that Watsonville should possibly even be first to see this this vehicle is significant um I I don't know about the bridges but if it's possible to bring it for a day over the Capitola crossings to sit in Aptos I think that would be terrific I mean while we have it here let's let's do as much as we can with it and uh I just I've encouraged the commission to to approve everything in in this uh item 25 and uh I can't wait to see it thank you thank you Michael St Aptos um totally support this rail demonstration I think it's a wonderful thing for our community uh also came up with just two ideas specifically for safety and liability exposure have we considered any or are there any encampments or people living along those tracks and prior to doing this demonstration will that issue be taken care of and and also remember these tracks have not been used for years and the local people along residential and business are not expecting maybe a demonstration like this is there going to be specific notices per property saying here are the dates there's going to be train running along here at that time just be works I think they go out there and use it for recreational purposes so they need to be warned and that's just my suggestions thank you thank you I can handle some of those questions there are encampments all over the corridor hundreds of people utilize the corridor every day for transportation and leisure I am in the works and making a time-lapse video so we can document this and actually realize how much use the corridor is with no accommodation whatsoever um will this displace that use yes obviously and another thing I've been working on I've been organizing community group efforts to remove vegetation from the corridor we've done this once we got a bunch of invasive species a scotch broom cleared out along New Brighton which was encroaching on the rail corridor you cannot meet federal safety or FRA1 designation with vegetation that encroaches on the tracks there's $60,000 worth of vegetation removal that needs to happen before this makes class one so this this this idea that's all going to get done for $60,000 I don't know if the contractor has actually walked the tracks and checked it out um odds are though they're going to fall flat on their face and and probably ask for more money but we'll see another project we did there was a a on the Aptos crossing right by Aptos barbecue there were two two by 12 planks removed from the pedestrian path I spoke with the local sheriff Jordan he told me that he had notified the RTC that this was an incredible hazard because they dropped right on the Soquel Avenue someone could fall through here and get ran over by a bus and we went out last week and we patched that up put two planks down I think it's important to preserve access for the corridor this the trail is already happening a train lack of maintenance all of these things come at the expense of the the access that people already enjoy in the corridor thank you thank you any other comments from the public come on up I just would like Robert from Aptos I just like to second the feelings of that engineer fellow he seems the most lucid of all the opinions and sorry I'm a little nervous sorry I forgot I was going to say him yeah anyhow thanks for coming up yeah yeah thank you sorry good afternoon David van Brink City of Santa Cruz this is a very modest expense with high value I encourage you to approve this thank you thank you I just have a quick question for I don't know if the staff or for our attorney but is there a position of the RTC of anybody doing work on the rail is that somebody we're going to address that just for general we've become aware today and prior to today of trespassing on the rail line we have contacted law enforcement the rail line is not open for people to walk on and to physically alter our structures it's dangerous and it's not legal this is a law enforcement issue and we will be addressing it in such a manner I appreciate that clarification thank you and Mr Schiffen had a question I was just going to make the staff recommendation to move the staff recommendation with an additional direction that we get a report at our January meeting on response to some of the questions that have been raised today about the details of how the demonstration is going to work I'll second that motion by Schiffer and second by Bertrand any other comments sorry um yes just for clarity purpose the transport of this unit to the tracks could you just clarify that now because that doesn't have any logistics about the timing and when it gets here and all of the other displays there multiple times on the community have asked for that to be addressed yes thanks for the question the under the license the the demonstrations from February 20th to March 5th comes in on a low buoy with rails so basically it's just trucks trucked in loaded lower down loaded on the tracks so there's a number of places that this can be done on both the the Watsonville side and the Santa Cruz side and in terms of the timing it's really just looking at the weekends are going to be doing this I think it's why don't we wait on that until we get our report next week yep thank you I'm sure we'll have all the details we expect all that at the report and Commissioner Bertrand briefly it was great to see so many people supportive of this particular option to demonstrate a different mode of transportation on the rail corridor and I think it indicates that people are looking forward to different solutions than have been proposed in the past and the alternate analysis I think is going to take advantage of this to broaden our perspective on how to use the rail corridor which I'm very happy to see the other comment is some of the people talked about the people along the corridor not the homeless but the residents and I think in terms of the analysis metrics that we should consider is what the people along the corridor think you know when the vehicles passing their their property what do they experience what do they think about it noise etc and stuff like that vibration there for some people come here and talk about the vibration I know this vehicle is lighter but still these are issues that might be important in trying to understand what the experience is thank you okay we have a motion and a second all in favor I opposed carries unanimously so this is going to take us to item 25 a which is actually consent item 12 and Luis are you going to do sure I can thank you I can say something briefly as state and the staff report there are a variety of agreements as part of owning the rail line which are operating agreements that were assigned to the to the operator those include agreements that are for crossings so in this case there isn't it's a crossing at Aptos Creek road that has been there but has been a private crossing is being turned over to a to a public crossing the and the county of Santa Cruz is working on that as part of the Aptos Village plan and so they have already worked out an agreement for that crossing with the railroad operator and under the agreement that the RTC has with the railroad operator it states that even though those operating agreements are not part are not agreements that the RTC is party to that the RTC would that the agreements would come to the RTC to write consent to those agreements and the question was about whether the RTC might be under responsibility for costs associated with that the improvements there is section four of the agreement that states that that the entire cost and expense incurred in connection with with the design and construction maintenance repair etc would be borne by the licensee in this case the licensee is the county but again this agreement is between the operator and the county not the RTC and the county so if so that doesn't leave a bit of vagueness potentially as your executive director mentioned with respect to hazardous materials that that may be found because a lot of times the owner of a property is deemed to be responsible for that so the RTC can add a condition to its consent to say that the RTC will not be responsible for any costs including any hazardous materials costs that might be associated with the work and and we can communicate that to the county well I hear as you say the this is not an agreement between the county of between the RTC and either the rail or the county but we we are giving consent to it and so I just am concerned that at some point the county will come back and say well we have to pay these costs but really you should pay them because you're the owner so I would as you kind of didn't quite recommend but suggested that we approve this agreement but with the condition that the the it that be conditioned on the fact that the county that the commission not be held responsible for any of the costs of the project and I'd make that as a motion and just just to be clarified the motion of the commission would be not to approve the agreement but the consent yes I would be to move the staff recommendation with the added direction that a condition be added to our consent that the commission not be held responsible for any of the costs of the project second okay motion by ship from second and this is to accept the yeah that recommendation with taken away no additional liability for any reason commissioner moher and have a comment yeah thank you very thank you very much so a couple of years ago the county embarked on an intersection similar to this at trial gulch as part of the aptus village phase one in that project we discovered a great deal of contamination in the rail bed and incurred a great deal of costs associated with remediation at that site at the time there was an agreement made between the county and the commission to share the costs of that project with the understanding that any other at grade crossing project the cost for remediation would be borne by the applicant that agreement stands our our team has been out to the site has investigated the current site has determined the extent of the contamination at the site and has then budgeted for full remediation to be born the cost to be borne by the county this this is already already conceived you've already designed the project we're ready to go out to bid this is this is the last phase of of our project and we are expect to go to construction sometime in the spring if we're going to have a policy discussion about how we handle at grade crossings I believe we should have a policy discussion about how the RTC is going to handle environmental remediation at grade crossings rather than doing it at ad hoc manner such as this this project is designed and ready to go as I said any further delays is going to delay our construction horizon and furthermore the construction of this project is is a condition of approval for Aptos Village phase two so any delays from this project will then implicate that project so I will be voting against the motion for all these reasons could I respond because there's no intention in the motion to delay the project and if I understood what uh commission commissioner moher was just saying there's already an agreement that the county is going to pay the full cost so we don't have that agreement in front of us so I don't think it's inappropriate to just add a condition that or add a direction that that condition which seems to reflect what has already been approved be part of our approval so I don't see why this would either delay the project or is inconsistent with previous decisions that were made I just think with the information before us it's prudent to add that added direction I'm going to speak out here I'm going to bring in our our our attorney and also maybe our executive director I want a little direction here because I'm at concern I we've done projects in capitol built a skate park and found contamination underneath it and I think we've all done projects with the contamination and I don't know that we're reinventing the wheel here by saying that the owner of the property cleans up contamination so now I'm more concerned with mr. Mulhern's point about this being you know if we're going to make a policy decision if we own the rail and there's contamination there are we able to skirt our responsibility there's a question to you mr. match we able to skirt our responsibility here or shift it somehow the responsibility can be shifted the if the contamination exists on the property right now but it's not being disturbed there may not be an obligation remediate the the reason that there would be an obligation now is because the because the that grade crossing is being installed and so so that's what's necessitating it parties can shift the financial responsibility for it the legal liability does generally reside with the owner of the property in terms of the way that a state regulatory agency would look at it in this instance the commission may want to consider that the consent that was part of the motion I asked mr. shifrin if he would agree with this approach if there is an agreement already in place that does actually accomplish that contractually in terms of shifting that responsibility to the county then you wouldn't need to you wouldn't need to implement the condition if you will because that is already satisfied by virtue of the agreement and so if the if the commission would feel would feel that it would be more appropriate to acknowledge that agreement on the assumption that it exists you could just reflect that into the motion that if to the extent that there is an agreement that already shifts the responsibility that satisfies the condition that you're asking for well I still have it here because I'd like to I think the board's a little anxious right now and I'd like to put us at ease and I would like to use that friendly amendment to your motion that in the absence of any language or contract that exists the RTC will bear no additional expense not in the absence but in the existence and the existence of an agreement right I'm thinking we're trying to agree here Annie which is rare but I mean I'm going for it here well I don't think it's I don't think it's rare at all I think it's normal okay but I'm happy to have the my only concern is that this is not a commission's project the commission shouldn't have to pay for mediation when the commission does the project that requires remediation we're responsible for paying that seems reasonable if there is an existing agreement that says that the commission will not have the liability or the cost of any remediation then I'm happy to that to have that be reflected in the motion the our attorney came up with language that's I've forgotten but it's acceptable to me so I'm willing to have that be a friendly amendment to approve this recommendation with the additional language as suggested by our attorney I think this supports the commission also I'm going to ask him but but because I don't want to be here setting a precedent for any other crossing and or disturbing anything but we could deal with this one case with this existing contract is that satisfied my only concern is delaying this project that's it well there's no way we have we have if this has to go back to the county for agreement no do we need to consent to this is not an agreement between the county and and the commission this is an agreement if the county has to agree to the consent then that were the conditions that were placing on the consent which would require some kind of vote of the body can someone clarify that for me I think all this requires us here and then move forward with the project I believe this all this requires us for our attorney to look into the fact that there is already a contract that exists right we would simply be confirming that and to the extent that we can confirm that that agreement does exist then there would be no operable condition at all and so they were the consent would the consent would simply stand alone with no delay but in the meantime we wait until that is determined and then if it's found that there isn't a written agreement in place I mean mr mendez you were part of these conversations when we had this had this deal back with trial gulch can you perhaps enlighten us as to whether there's a written agreement there was a written agreement to pay to share the cost for that um the remediation at the trial gulch road crossing I do not recall whether the agreement actually includes language stating that you know for future crossings the RTC will not be responsible I do remember that there was conversations about that for future crossings that the cost would be um worked into the project as you've mentioned uh commissioner mohern that that's already been done for this project so that would be in line with those conversations but but I do not remember whether that was actually put in writing so so that the county the county is prepared to bear the costs we have budgeted for this particular project if we're going to make a policy decision going forward it's my firm opinion that we need to make a policy decision at the body and not do it an ad hoc basis and certainly not to implicate this project which is central to a development that we're trying to complete so thank you mr fischer I would say that the commission has a policy that doesn't pay for projects that it doesn't have any benefit from well then why do we need to add consent to this if I could finish to the extent that this is uh imposing a condition on our uh cost on the commission for a project that the commission has not initiated and has no had no particular interest in doing that seems inappropriate it was done once um and I don't think and I and I thought as a result of it there was I was hoping some clear understanding that it would not be done again and if that exists then I think that's fine but I don't I think it's important that we not consent to an agreement that then's going to allow the county to come back and say give us two hundred thousand dollars to remediate the the hazardous material if that is clear that that's not going to happen then I'm fine and I think that's what the uh the motion would do the language of the agreement says that the county will bear the full expense so I'm not sure where where the county would yes but that is not an agreement with the commission I understand that that's an agreement with and and I also reassert that the county has has planned for and budgeted for all the environmental remediation on this specific project and furthermore that if we're going to make a policy decision it should be a policy discussion and not in an ad hoc basis the manner mr. mr. Mendez was uh mr. machado in these conversations you had no I think this predated mr. machado um but I I it was John Presley yeah I think it was when you had the previous director was here so and and most of the negotiations were also with our previous executive director as well and also previous council and previous yes sir are we in these meetings so I haven't been and obviously this predated me but I've been involved in the current project every milestone of design I have reviewed the plans and I understand the trout Gulch um project the reason there was so much remediation required for that project is because there was so many deep excavations to install a closed drainage system they did trenching they installed inlets um I saw the plans for this segment and I I asked the designer to redesign it and um eliminate all of the closed drainage features which would result in an extensive contamination cost doesn't really matter which entity is responsible for paying for it if we can reduce that cost whether it's the county or any other entity we want to do that that's our job as engineers is to reduce that obligation and so hopefully that puts a lot of you at ease is that we learned a lot of lessons from the trout Gulch project this project it's completely different we um there's design implications that we've uh have in place now they've also done a environmental site assessment as part of this project which was not done for trout Gulch um they have a site uh soil management plan that they prepared for this project that was also not done for trout Gulch so we learned a lot of lessons from the trout Gulch project we're ahead of it the county has budgeted funds um as Mr. Mulhern um explained that will help her mediate so we don't anticipate having a surprise bill like we did on trout Gulch just to put you at ease um for starters one I don't want to delay a project that's fully funded ready to go shovels ready to go um two uh we we had the language in item four and the item four indicates that the licensee is fiscally responsible for the project three in the event that there is a discovery which you've learned your lessons and had there been something else that was found that wasn't part of you know learning the lesson from the trout Gulch if the county says okay well we did find this they know at this point this body is going to say you know that you've said that you've taken this on and you'll be responsible to do so so don't come back and request it from the RTC for anything more I think that that's been pretty well cleared flushed let's get this project going and that and when it comes to policy part of things instead of an ad hoc I think that that is something that we can have have the RTC look at and see if there's other concerns that we have to make it a policy of some sort or change modification or review based on that I let me just say there is no desire here to hold up this project um maybe the word that's problematic is condition so um based on the last conversation I sort of amend the motion to say that to prove the staff recommendation with the understanding that there will be no cost to the commission as a result of this project so that if in fact that all of our good expectations turn out to be wrong and the county comes back and says oh wait we found things that we didn't expect and therefore we're asking you to help pay where we think you should have to pay for them the commission will based on this conversation and this understanding say no so that's acceptable to the to the second I would make that as the revised motion to just have an understanding that there'll be no cost to the commission as a result of this project were you the second yeah absolutely that's acceptable to me I would I would just say that um I don't see anything in this causing a delay in the project and in my role as a city council member I you know we deal with this all the time and um the uh the party that stands to gain from the improvement or you know whatever the um the project is is responsible and that's made clear and so I think that making that clear is not necessarily going to do and make anything happen differently than is already anticipated um this is just a an effort to um say that and state that up front that this is the part the commission's position yeah I'm concerned about it unraveling because there was obviously this conversation that took place and there's no other players in the room and Luis doesn't have a vivid recollection of what happened here and I think that it could potentially delay it and I and I go along with Commissioner Coffman Gomez I don't want to delay a project that's 90 done we just got done in the item before this approving things where we shifted money from one city to a county we were back we were all harmonious and now I'm like well okay we've got this project here 90 done why are we putting up this radar so I'm I'm concerned about approving the motion to say not any other expense when I know in my heart for the city of Capitola we've paid expenses for contamination and we all know that that's the jurisdiction's responsibility and apparently this trout Gulch went bad or went deeper than they thought they've made modifications they made an agreement that whatever expenses there are I know this is all hearsay at this point because nobody's here to verify that but I'm inclined to believe the conversations that took place so I'm uh I'm very confused I don't know how much I'm going to support this because I I don't want to get in the way of this project and Sarah you sit up so I'm gonna let you say something so just another point to consider is that the county will need a right to enter and construct this project so we will be entering into another agreement so we're going to have another bite at the apple if that's how we want to address this issue and just make it a clean approval of the staff recommendation so without delaying this project any what the action today may not delay that because we're going to have to come back and get this agreement just to start the project with that that's accurate so we could uh there's a way to postpone this decision until that meeting when more intervention can be brought back to us well I would doubt that the county would want us to postpone it they want to have the consent of the commission and you know for the commission to give its consent with a particular understanding that helps give direction to the staff in their negotiation with the county on the right of entry agreement of where the commission's coming from I don't disagree that the commission should take responsibility for cleanup when the commission is doing a project or as the city of Santa Cruz has found out when they were doing when they're doing segment seven there's lots of cleanup responsibilities but it just seems this is not a project that this is a this is a private developer a private development in Aptos which is between the county and that private developer that's fine I don't think there's any I don't have any objection to that I just don't think it's not a project that the commission has an interest in and therefore shouldn't have to pay so it looks like that's not the intention and that's great and I think having an understanding having that reflected in the right of entry agreement when it comes forward so I don't think any I don't think the motion that I'm suggesting will hold up this project and I think it does reflect a responsible perspective from the commission to not have to pay for them for projects that it's that or not it's I think I'm agreeing with you and I think what's going to happen is there will be another bite at the apple if we want to reverse our decision we can yes okay so I think we could we could vote on the motion today and if it turns out that there is a cost or there's something else we could reverse it at that access here next hearing so with that if there's any other questions I'm going to call so we're just going back to the original motion was proofstaff recommendation with no additional cost to the rtc with the understanding that there would be no additional cost to the everybody clear on the motion yep all in favor I opposed here's an atom yes okay so with that yeah with that we're going to have a review of closed session mr. Mattis mr. chairman we do have three items on the closed session and we will have one open session item at the end of the closed session okay okay so for this we're going to report out at the end of this so we're going to adjourn to closed session but unfortunately that our private room has been taken so we're going to ask you all to clear this room and closed session will be held here 30 minutes hopefully soon no more than 30 minutes 30 minutes mr. Matt okay we're going to resume this session I'm going to report on closed session what I'd like to announce is that the commission got together in closed session and we do evaluated the executive director the the contents of that evaluation brought us to a consensus that this body unanimously supports the executive director in the direction he's leading the regional transportation commission were satisfied with his performance the way he's conducting business the reputation he's setting in the community and how he's interacting with other officials that he has had to deal with and with that I believe I would make a motion there mr. city attorney do we have an action that we need yeah so mr. chairman what I would note is that item 31 on your agenda is a consideration of an approval of a step increase in compensation mr. Preston's contract provides that at the conclusion of a satisfactory evaluation that the authority can approve step increase in his compensation under california law for executive management positions we have to state in public session what the increases would be mr. Preston's contract provides for a 2.5 percent increase that would take his compensation from what it currently is to an annualized amount of 221 707 50 if the board were to authorize that and so I would move that we approve the step increase to the executive director as provided and as enumerated by the attorney motion by shifrin second by gonzalez any other discussion on that any other comments with that all in favor I oppose that motion carries unanimously and with that we are adjourned for the year 2019 to the next meeting