 The only thing that came was eight generations ago from Swiss German, and so Swiss whole H-O-L-L says this name. Okay, sir? That's right, and then up to you. And then my background, let us know. I'm a Californian, but I was raised by FMA. I'm originally just about the speed limit. Well, if that's the case, you have to sort of, you have to put this phrase into your heart. What is it? Pleasure card. Yeah, and let me dig into it. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. My favorite one is couples. So just give an update on what we're sending to Sauce 3. Bring it up. I'll look at you during the... Okay. Yes. I was in Arizona with my son. And my husband's been in the hospital. Yeah, he's Scots. Well, he still has a pick climb. And my husband's right now, a terrorist. I got pictures of him. Hello, sir. Have you heard anything about the PGP campus for the health services that are in Watsonville? We'll go ahead and call the regional transportation commission meeting for Thursday, October 3rd to order. And can we begin with a roll call? Commissioner Meyers, here. Commissioner Batorff, here. Commissioner Gonzalez, here. Commissioner Alternate Johnson, Virginia Johnson, yes. Commissioner Leopold, here. Commissioner Friend, here. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin, here. Commissioner Caput, here. Commissioner Kaufman Gomez, present. Commissioner Randy Johnson, here. Commissioner Brown, here. Commissioner Bertrand, present. Commissioner Low, here. Thank you. We'll begin with oral communications. This is a time when anyone from the public can address us on anything not on the agenda. Good morning. Good morning. Rebecca Downing from the Seacliffe Improvement Association. I'm here to share a bit about our stroll to the Aptos Village Green on August 3rd. Over 120 residents participated in this event that we hosted to raise pedestrian safety awareness and support the Aptos Village merchants who donated very generous prizes for our attendees. We surveyed participants and learned that while most traveled on local roads, almost 25% of them used the rail corridor to reach the Aptos Green. Comments mostly focused on the frustration of living so close to Aptos Village but being unable to get there safely without using a car. Also a severe deficit of sidewalks, crosswalks, signs, and even painted curbs. Hazardous routes of visuals shown here on the chart of the unsafe areas. You can see a bit of a cluster there. They showed these on our chart and also expressed a desire for the scenic trail to be built soon to provide a safer level route away from cars. We wish to thank our County Supervisors Act friend for walking and speaking that morning and for working so effectively on district and county transportation challenges. We also offer our gratitude to Director Matt Machado, who also walked that morning and spoke both at the event and at our association meeting last month about the status of projects in Aptos and future transportation plans. We really shouldn't have to host events like this. We just need to move safely around our community, especially when commuters spill off Highway 1 and through our village. While we are grateful for projects on the horizon, we need immediate interim safety measures for Aptos. Finally, we wish to thank Commissioner Rotkin, who's not here today, correct, for joining us that morning on the stroll. He meant a lot that he cared to walk from Sea Cliff to the Aptos Green to see what it's like for us. I was going to invite him to share anything that he had about that morning, but I think our community really appreciated that he came. I'm going to be sending all of you a synopsis of the stroll, including this lovely chart here, so I hope that you will take that into account as you make decisions about pedestrian safety in Aptos. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Brian Peoples, Executive Director of Trail Now. We're a local organization actively supporting effective transportation solutions. We supported Measure D and actually we were the, our supporters were the biggest funders of making that measure pass. At the last RTC meeting, we talked about the progressive rail contract and the problem with it and basically progressive rail is not obligated to maintain the corridor from Manresa to Davenport, which the original goal of that contract was to alleviate taxpayers from that. And essentially the reason we feel that this commission approved that contract is you didn't pay attention to the details, you know, the details in that contract basically alleviated progressive rail from, which was the goal to take over responsibility. So we want to talk a little more about details today, specifically about what's called setbacks and the setbacks of a train versus a trail. So when you talk about a passenger train that goes 45 miles an hour, the federal government requires you to have a setback requirement of 25 feet. Right now the current plan you guys are working for the trail is 8.5 feet. So you're not meeting that requirement. With all the deaths occurring up at the smart train in Marin, you're going to find that the federal government's going to be even more focused on that 25 foot setback requirement. So if you think about if you had a 25 foot separation requirement, you don't have a trail next to the train by 7th Avenue by 41st. It's not possible to have it physically there. So I think that's a detail that this commission is not addressing. And it's an important detail because you're going off and engineering and doing plans for that corridor without really understanding the details. So let's take a lessons learned from our progressive rail contract where we failed because we didn't pay attention to the details. Let's understand if we're really committed to a train going 45 miles an hour, 60 of them a day, you're going to be required to have a separation from the train 25 feet. The corridor is only 27 feet by 7th Avenue and 41st. So please look at the detail and understand that you can't have a trail in a train. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning commissioners and staff. Michael St. with Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. After trying to decide what to speak on this morning, I came up with this after going through my desk and cleaning up all the clutter from the last three or four years of doing these talks. I came up with this pamphlet which is more choices less traffic. I'm not sure if anyone has seen this. This is from the climate resolve and climate plan people down in Los Angeles which we all know is doing a much better job of their transportation demand management as well as their mass transit goals. Basically, I'm going to try this 42 pages and a little bit of a spoiler alert. If you do get a hold of this, you can see me after this and I can direct you in the right direction. Highway widening is never mentioned in this pamphlet for congestion relief. Just for your information. The goal of this study is how do we achieve greater efficiency and equity from California transportation investments? It does suggest an alternative path forward and the path forward in which per capita vehicle miles traveled reduction is the central strategy of this pamphlet. Totally opposite of RTC and the EIR on the tier one project that everyone's approved here. That increases VMT 29%. This book requires 0% VMT increase. So basically to try to summarize these 42 pages for you, I'm going to have to read the three priority issues. After all the evidence and case studies are in, they prioritize investments in sustainable mobility options and stop the misguided practice of adding road capacity in the name of congestion relief in urban and high growth areas. Why do they do this? Are you going to induce travel? Again, increase VMT and it runs counter to the California climate goals. Number two, align our investments with California's climate goals. How do we do this? How do we invest mobility options other than single occupancy vehicles should have priority? And number three, you ensure that investments in sustainable mobility modes are accompanied by robust strategies to minimize replacement pressures. Example, affordable housing and sprawl. Why you want to do this? You preserve transit ridership. You help mobility, social equity. You increase public health and you have environmental gains. Unfortunately, the RTC here has the opposite effect with the tier one. And we mentioned the increase in VMT, which will also increase greenhouse gas emissions. I want to leave you with a little saying here from Lewis Mumford, adding highway lanes to deal with congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Keith Otto. I hope you're all tracking the news from SMART, the Sonoma Marin area rail transit. If we go back to the January 17 meeting when votes were cast for the corridor study and the progressive rail contract, the two minutes of public comment that most caught my attention were statements from a Capitola person who said he loves passenger rail. He's worked on rail projects in Santa Clara, Sonoma Marin counties and even helped create SMART. He stated that passenger rail needs a sizable population for ridership and a tax base in order to be successful and added that Santa Cruz County does not have and will not have such a population to support passenger rail. So the combined populations for Sonoma Marin counties, 765,000. Santa Cruz County population about 275,000. So even with this much larger population in Sonoma Marin and the tax base that that provides, how is SMART doing? In short, not so well. They take 10 years into their measure queue sales tax to support SMART. They're likely to go to the voters in March to extend that for another 20 or 30 years. Otherwise, they're going to run out of money in five years, which would be five years before the current tax measure even expires. Even with this extension, they'll still not be able to accomplish what was originally promised and even some bike path projects are at risk. What about ridership? Well, that's at 2800 per day. Recall that our corridor study projected our ridership at 3500. So we have a third of the population and we're projecting 25% greater ridership than SMART. So maybe we use rubber wheels instead of steel wheels. I guess that's part of the million-dollar question for later in this meeting. But even if that direction is pursued, significant questions remain regarding cost, utilization, overall effectiveness and helping with our transportation woes. At a previous meeting, a person from County Public Works stated the obvious. If we're creating new things when we don't have the funds to maintain what we already have, we think that is the wrong way to go. So I do have some hope when I hear a few of you describe the disquiet that you hear from your constituents as they go about their lives and they struggle with transportation in this county. Let's get a better plan, one that we can afford, and one that really helps us get around the county. Please contact me for references to any of these statements or to let me know what I'm missing as to why we are on the current plan. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to address this at this time? Seeing none, we'll close oral communication. Seeing any additions or deletions to the agenda? There are no additions or deletions. However, there are replacement pages, a replacement page for item 5, handout for item 18, replacement pages for items 21, and an additional handout for item 21. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to the consent agenda. These are items we usually deal with all in one motion. Is there any commissioners like to pull anything from the consent agenda? Anybody from the public like to comment on anything on the consent agenda? Hi, Sally Arnold. I'm on the bicycle advisory committee, and it's just a typo, but I noticed that on page 311, the bicycle advisory committee is listed as being on Monday the 8th, and on my calendar, Monday is the 7th, so that might be confusing to people of the public, but I'm assuming that we're meeting on Monday the 8th. I guess that's one of our corrections that's in the handout, so we did catch that along with you, but thank you for watching that. We appreciate that. Move the consent agenda as amended. Second. Motion and a second. All in favor? Opposed? That motion carries unanimously. It takes us to our regular agenda. First up is commissioner reports. Any commissioners, if anything, they'd like to discuss. Seeing none, we'll move on to the director's report. Mr. Preston. Thank you. Before I get started into the body of my report, one of the items on the consent agenda was the upcoming public outreach events calendar, and I wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that we've decided to move that into the regular agenda so that item gets out a little bit earlier. Today is fall bike to work day. Santa Cruz open streets is going to be on the 13th, and that'll be on the west side on west cliff. On 1022, we will have a highway one chant clear bicycle pedestrian over crossing aesthetics meeting, and on Wednesday, 1023, we will have a highway one bay ported estate park auxiliary lane scoping meeting, and that'll be out the community foundation in Santa Cruz County, and also the bike pedestrics meeting will be at the live oak range, so that information is on page 12 one if you want to look for additional details. Moving on to the body of my report, I'm sad to announce that Joanna Edmonds, she's a planning tech with RTC, is moving on. She'll be moving to the city of Santa Cruz doing transportation coordination work. Joanna has been with us for a little less than two years, and she's worked on the San Lorenzo Valley complete street plans, the E&D technical advisory committee, pedestrian safety working group, Cruz 511 activities as well as park and ride assessments. So we're sad to be losing Joanna. Last month I reported that I was planning to proceed concurrently with the procurement of both an organizational assessment and a project management services contract. The primary purpose of the organizational assessment is to assess the functions being performed by RTC, the staffing available and the needs to perform the work, as well as how RTC should be organized to best serve its missions and goals. The primary purpose of the project management services contract is to provide temporary expertise for the delivery of capital project infrastructure, including those on the state highway system and RTC's owned Santa Cruz branch rail line. I reported last month that there were concerns from staff about the need to consult out certain work, and I've met with staff to address those concerns. In general, staff is supportive of the organizational assessment. We have drafted requests for proposals for both the organizational assessment and the project management consultant contract, and staff now has a better understanding of the scope of the work. We're ensuring that it is not including work that existing staff can perform, and we are working on trying to fill several provisional positions right now that were created by vacancies provisionally filled, and we were holding off a bit. Based on the current workload that we have and the expertise that these positions can bring, we are going to move forward concurrently with filling those positions permanently doing the organizational assessment and recruiting for a project management consultant firm. Finally, to help fill the temporary gap, I wanted to let you know that Karina Pushneck has been hired as a retired annuitant to fill the gap and staffing that we have right now until permanent positions can be filled. I'm sure many of you remember Katrina, who retired in 2017 with over 25 years of service. She wants to stay pretty low profile. She reminded us very much so that this is a temporary and part-time work, and she's going to be helping us on the commute manager work and the elderly and disabled transportation advisory committee as well as TDA claims. So with that, I'd like to move on to provide some more positive news on the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail. Since writing and distributing my report, the City of Santa Cruz has now awarded that contract to Granite Rock Construction for approximately 6.4 million. So we will now be building the trail on the west side from Bay California Street over to Natural Bridges Drive. And I will have more information on groundbreaking ceremonies and as work progresses at future meetings. Finally, I'd like to report that Ginger Dicar, one of our planners, and I attended the annual Rail Volusion Conference. This year it was in Vancouver, British Columbia from September 8th through 11th. Revolution is four days of mobile workshops and panel discussions that help promote, plan, and implement transit and transit-oriented development projects. The conference helps to connect practitioners in all aspects of transit planning, implementation, and housing development, including community organizations, housing advocates, transportation system operators, and government officials from around the country. Metro Vancouver's Multimodal Transportation Network showcased that revolution this year. Surrounded by mountains and water, Metro Vancouver consistently ranks as one of the most livable regions in the world. Metro Vancouver has unprecedented growth in transit ridership, transit-oriented development, and investment in transit systems. Vancouver Sky Train is one of the world's longest-automated rapid transit systems. It runs on a third rail similar to BART, with trains almost every minute at high-peak times. Half of all new development occurs around the frequent transit network with approximately 100 active projects within a block of the Sky Train stations. Presently transit-walking and cycling account for approximately half of all trips in the city of Vancouver. Vancouver is working on a goal of increasing these trips to two thirds by 2040. And if we could go to the beginning of this presentation, I'm gonna go... It's the one before this. Is it available? No. It's not. Okay, so I had a presentation that I handed out as part of my director's report, and it does show that in 2018, Vancouver had about 40% of all their trips by foot, bike, or transit. And in 2020, they've now reached 50%. And by 2040, their goal was to have two thirds of those trips by bike and transit. So, okay, it's up on the screen there now. So if you can move to the next slide. So you can see that their trend is going up towards 50%, and at 50%, walking, biking, and transit, being a very sustainable mode of transportation, moving on. And you can see the relationship between safety and population that as people are moving over to walking and bicycling and using transit, while population is growing, there's actually less fatal accidents. So as a result of walking investments in the city of Vancouver, we've seen an increase of 34%. And most of the improvements were just maintaining their existing system and creating more transit-oriented development around the stations associated with transit. Next. So downtown population, the growth is about 50%. So that's the result of providing transit options and getting people to move more into the cities. The result of cycling investments, although that's the smallest group, they saw the greatest increase, and that was over 110%. And one of the things that they've been doing is investing heavily in cycling. So this is the Barar Bridge, and it's one of the three bridges that go across the Falls Creek and the city of Vancouver. And they had three lanes in each direction and essentially took a lane away from each direction and provided a separated bicycle path. And you see that the bridge is being used quite extensively now with both pedestrians walking on the sidewalk and bicyclists moving through. And one of the concerns, of course, and if you can move to the next slide, was, you know, what is this going to do to traffic? And they really worked on providing a solution at the intersections coming off the bridges. And by making them more bicycle friendly and reconfiguring the lanes, those high rises to the, on the top right corner of the intersection was very concerned about the amount of traffic, because the bridge was essentially a parking lot before they converted the lanes over to bicyclists, and they were concerned that taking away more lanes was actually going to increase traffic, and they found that the opposite was true, that by making the intersection more efficient that the bridge now operates much more efficiently with less lanes and more people are biking, as shown by the graph on the left. You can move on to the next slide. So their investment in transit, it was pretty significant. I mean, they invested about $7 billion, but they're a population of two and a half million. But I did some quick math and, you know, people talk a lot about the scale and we heard a little bit about that this morning of, you know, not having the population base for transit and it's probably one of the things that I noticed most about going to a conference like this, is that they focus a lot on the bigger cities, but if you kind of do the math and you look at, you know, the $7 billion investment for a population of two and a half million, I mean, it comes to a scale of what we're looking at investing in transit in this area. So if you scale things down and you do things appropriately, you can actually compare how a city like Vancouver can move towards more transit options, transit-oriented development, walking and cycling, and we can have similar sorts of improvements. So if you can move on to the next slide. So the transit ridership trends increased significantly as they opened their various lines. So these are the three lines on the SkyTrain, which is TransLink's third rail system. Move on to the next slide. So what's next is where Vancouver is going and if you can move on to the next slide, they've kind of realized that they want to create a more walkable city and where 90% of the people live within an easy walk or roll of their daily needs and that's by providing stores and whatnot within walking distance of where housing is. The other future priority is to create a safe and convenient act of transportation in transit and you can see at the bottom, because of the climate emergency that we're facing, they're now actually moving forward their goal of creating two thirds of the trips by walking, biking and transit by 2030 instead of 2040 and that's very ambitious, but they believe that they can get there and if you look in orange and that's the motor vehicle trips, you see that pretty much stays constant and that stays constant as population is growing. Move on to the next slide. So a future priority on walking and cycling and transit, they're still developing. They're doing pedestrian counts in downtown and consistently showing that the people on the sidewalks are exceeding the people in the cars on the top right is their continued five-year cycling network planning and then on the bottom, their next big transit project is the subway along the Broadway street. So they also want to continue to acknowledge the fact that people will be driving on the highway so they're moving towards pollution-free cars, trucks and bicycles and by 2013, 50% of the kilometers driven in Vancouver's roads will be by zero emission vehicles. So that was a presentation by Lon Leclerc or the city of Vancouver. We got to walk around and Ginger got to go on the mobile tours by bike. I actually had to walk, you know, do my injury, but we had several photos and Yuseni, if you can bring those up. The photos, if you go to the next photo or the first photo, some of the things that we saw that we can incorporate in some of the planning here in Santa Cruz County is when they do separated bike lanes, there's different features that can be used and here they use planner boxes to separate the bikes from the cars, which creates a much more visible, safe barrier, prevents people from running across the bike lanes and whatnot. If you can move on to the next slide, more of the same next slide. In cases where you have buses coming in, the big wide concrete area between the bike lane and the traffic is for a transit stop for buses. Move on. This is another picture of a bridge where they put a positive barrier between bicycles and the vehicles. Where things were more constrained, they used railing for something, a thinner feature. There's another picture of the Barard Bridge that we showed earlier. Next. Where you don't have as much room, you can use just a curb, a standard curb that looks to be about six to eight inches wide or the planner box was shown on the right. As you can see, going across intersections is where they're showing the green strips so that it's much more visible at the more dangerous locations. This is the intersection at the Barard Bridge where you can see the bicyclists have a free right lane that's completely separated from traffic and if you're going straight, you're going across the green painted area. More pictures of bicycle features. Next. This is an old railway that they purchased from an abandoned railway that they just paved over with a 10-foot wide trail and they separated bikes from pedestrians with just a white stripe and this was a quick way of putting down the trail initially and transit is being considered for the area to the right. Right now they have community gardens but they do plan on putting in transit adjacent to this rail line in the future or what used to be a rail line and is now a trail. And we looked extensively at the intersections. They've got a lot of great crossings similar to what we would have. We wanted to look at the delineations, whether they used yield signs for the bike paths, stop signs for the pedestrians. Next slide. Whether they made them one way or two ways in certain areas. Next slide. There's more of the signage. That was the mobile bike tour. More separation between vehicles and bicycles. We saw this picture already. Next slide. And that is the Sky Train and that was our way back to the airport. We didn't get in a car the entire time we were there. It was a wonderful opportunity to really go through and meet industry experts and look at different ways to reduce greenhouse gases and create a more sustainable future for our county and I really appreciate being able to go on that. That trip right in front of the alternatives analysis, it was a good opportunity for staff to learn and hopefully incorporate some of the things that we learned in the upcoming alternatives analysis, which is an item on today's agenda, but that concludes my report for today. Great. Thank you for that thorough report. Any questions for the director or comments? I think it's on. One of the questions I have is the first mile, last mile, did they give you any information on what that looks like in their capacity because obviously the vehicles look like it's pretty constant, but the population increase has then affected the other modalities to be used. What would be the comparison of their first mile, last mile to maybe what we've got here? The first mile, last mile is being done a lot more by walking and biking than any other mode. There were several sessions on planning for first mile and last mile, a lot of emphasis on jump bikes, using taxis and Uber, but a lot more emphasis on transit. They have an extensive bus network already in place that connected to Skyling. Integrating the various forms of transit was a big portion of it. We did not see a lot of parking lots. We didn't see a lot of areas where people were driving to the transit centers. We were in a very big city, very condensed downtown, so people were walking and bicycling quite a bit to get to transit. Was there a breakout or a workshop on the modalities in combination of the bus and the train complemented each other and being used and effective and that kind of thing and working together? Yeah, there were so many different sessions to choose for and there were multiple sessions on those very topics, yes. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Anyone from the public want to weigh in on the director's report? Michael St. once again with campaign for sustainable transportation. I wasn't planning on talking, but I'd really like to thank director Preston for going and doing this and I also hope your injuries are healing well. I almost kind of had to pinch myself over there because this is all the stuff that we've been talking about for the last few years and if this is a little bit of a movement towards that direction, I'm just very, very appreciated of that report and what you had to say. The two comments I'd like to re-comment was Mr. Preston said something about climate emergency which is very, very true. I don't hear that too often here at the RTC and also taking lanes away for transportation demand management. Total key to the whole thing. At some point, the 12 of you are not sure what your thoughts are about climate change and what you believe in but you have to ask yourself maybe when you go home tonight what is it going to take to happen to you personally with the environment and the people you know and how they're affected to believe in this climate crisis and to make a change away from some of the plans and things that you're about to do in the future with highway widening and increasing VMT. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, we'll accept that report and move on to item 19, the Caltrans report. Ms. Lowe. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, commissioners. I would like to let you know that Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission have released the draft 2020 ITIP. The ITIP is the Inter-Regional Transportation Improvement Program. This is the 25% of the portion of the STIP, the State Transportation Improvement Program. Is this on? The 75% is distributed by formula to all of the regions around the state and the 25% that the state designates is referred to this ITIP. Hearings will be held October 8th in Modesto and on October 15th in Orange County. Comments on this proposal are due November 15th and we will be resubmitting the final version of that in December and ultimately the CTC would approve this funding program in March of 2020. I'd also like to let you know that these types of decisions are being guided by the governor's executive order N-1919 where he has asked that every aspect of state government redouble its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate impacts of climate change while building on sustainable and inclusive economy. I want to also acknowledge your executive director's participation at the conference in Vancouver because it's very inspirational and it looks very much like what the governor I believe has in mind for aligning climate goals with transportation spending for reducing vehicle miles traveled that through directing discretionary funding that supports housing that is close to jobs to reduce congestion through strategies that encourage mode shift to fund transportation solutions that contribute to the overall health of California with greenhouse gas emission reduction and focus on transit walking and bicycling and finally to mitigate increases in transportation costs for lower income Californians. Those are the objectives stated in the executive order for the California State Transportation Agency. Other agencies that were also named in this executive order for their actions is the Department of Finance, the Department of General Services and the California Air Resources Board. So I wanted to give you that news. There will be more discussion for sure about how this influences our work moving forward but it's another clear sign of what the governor has intended for us to sustain our livability and move our economy forward. And then you have our list of projects ongoing through the State Highway Operations Protection Program predominantly. This list also will continue to grow. We have as you know much deferred maintenance on our state highway system which will continue to be a vital underpinning of our ability to move around and have access to goods and services. Any questions on that? Any questions for Ms. Lowe? Director Friend. I don't have a question. I have a compliment for Ms. Lowe. As a result of our walk that we did in C-Cliff there were concerns on State Park Drive. I reached out to Ms. Lowe regarding these two conflict points on State Park Drive for pedestrians that are very dangerous. She immediately got her investigations team on it. We had a very nice conversation that actually just happened yesterday with some suggestions on how to improve those crosswalks. They will be going out there to take a look. They already had some ideas. And I appreciated that very quick response from Caltrans in regards to that because those two crossings we can make a pretty big difference there with some actually pretty minor improvements from Caltrans. So thank you for being so responsive to our requests. Thank you. Commissioner Leopold. Thank you, Chair. The work that's being done on Highway 1 and the guardrail repair how long did it take for Caltrans to get that into the queue to get done? Because I noticed it's a lot of money. I get a lot of questions about it. And we did this access management plan and they estimated there was about 25 million dollars to do some part of that. And I'm wondering how we can get those projects in the queue. Commissioner Leopold, you're speaking of Highway 17 or Highway 1. Well, I'm asking about how long it took to get the Highway 1 but I'm curious about how we do it for Highway 17. Okay. Yes, Commissioner Leopold. I will have to go back and get a little bit more information about the guardrail job. It usually takes some years. They appear simple when they're out there because we make our job look easy. But it takes some years. And even the safety jobs, we expedite them. I can find out and give you a little rundown of that as an example. Highway 17, many of the projects that we undertake there are also funded by our safety program. The access management plan is a little different because it takes that next level of effort, really. And we're still looking for funding sources for that. And of course, depending on the scale of the improvement, we believe we identified about three interchanges, that kind of thing. It's a proportional amount. And I will just say that projects that require right of way, that's one of the factors that really adds on additional time. So many of these safety projects are being done completely within our right of way and can proceed a little quicker than the more aggressive projects where we might have to purchase right away. But I will absolutely give you an example with that timeline. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Anyone from the public like to comment on the Caltrans report? Okay, thank you again for that report. It takes us to item 20. This is section 5310 grant applications. Grace Blakely, welcome, Grace. Good morning, commissioners. Grace Blakely of your staff. This morning I'm here to present to you with information about the current section 5310 grant cycle. This is a federal transit administration grant that is administered by Caltrans. There's about 14 million available statewide for counties considered small, urban, and rural, such as Santa Cruz County. Funding under this program is distributed for the purpose of providing capital and operating funds for projects that meet transportation needs of seniors and people living with disabilities. Seniors and people living with disabilities in Santa Cruz are some of Santa Cruz's most vulnerable populations. And its transportation is a key element for them to access health care, food, and maintain independence and avoid isolation. Approximately 15% of Santa Cruz County population are seniors, and this is projected to grow to 25% in 2040. Approximately 10% of Santa Cruz County residents are living with a disability and has to be expected a significant portion of those are of the senior community. Among those individuals identified, seniors make up, among those identified as falling below the poverty line, seniors make up approximately 7% of the low income population in Santa Cruz County. So these are very important projects for our community to serve that population. The program is separated into two programs, which is referred to as the traditional and the expanded program. The traditional section program is focused on the acquisition of vehicles and related equipment, and the expanded section is focused on operating funds. The traditional program is available for capital projects but can also include computer and other mobile type of equipment to support dispatching. The eligible applications for traditional program include private not-for-profit and public agencies only where non-private nonprofits are readily available to provide the proposed service. For this grant cycle, two traditional section 5310 program grant applications are received from eligible applicants. These are shown in attachment one exhibit A of your packet. The first one I'll review is submitted by Community Bridges Lift Line. They submitted a grant amount just shy of 200,000, requesting funding for three paratransit minivans, which seat five ambulatory passengers with ramps for wheelchair passengers. This will replace vehicles that are past their standard useful life and serve same day and out of county trips for medical rides, meal sites, and elder day transportation programs. Their request also includes funding for network equipment and mobile radios and vehicle cameras. The University of California at Santa Cruz submitted one application in the amount of 168,000 requesting funding for three paratransit minivans that also seat five ambulatory passengers with ramps for wheelchair passengers. This will also replace vehicles past their standard useful life and provide service to students, staff, faculty, and campus visitors living with permanent or temporary disabilities who are unable to use the campus shuttle. The regional transportation planning agencies, the RTC, is responsible for scoring the traditional section 5310 grant applications and certifying that they meet eligible federal requirements and conditions. A local review committee made up of one member of the Elderly and Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee and RTC staff met and scored the applications and the scores are shown in your packet as in exhibit A. There's four different sections that are scored related to eligibility, the amount of service provided, consistency with AMBAG's Coordinated Human Services Transit Plan and the need for the replacement vehicle essentially. The expanded program is a little bit different. RTC is not responsible for scoring those projects. We are responsible for certifying that they meet eligibility requirements. They are included as exhibit B to your attachment and to note that these have been submitted. We have reviewed them and we agree that they are eligible for the section 5310 programs. I want to go over the programs that were submitted, applications that were submitted for those programs. Camping Unlimited submitted one grant application requesting funding in the amount of 400,000 for a two-year period to provide transportation services to their specialized camp program for people living with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This service would provide transportation to and from their camp location as well as for day trips during the summer and weekend programs. Community Bridges also submitted an application under the expanded program requesting funds and just shy of 200,000 for a two-year period to provide transportation services to their inter-regional medical destinations both same day and advanced scheduling transportation services to low-income individuals. The Mental Health Client Action Network submitted one application in the amount of 371,959 for a two-year period requesting funding for operating expenses to provide free transportation to people who are unable to use public transit due to a mental disability to medical appointments and other basic needs. The Seniors' Council submitted one grant application requesting funding in the amount of 261,786 dollars also for a two-year period to provide mileage reimbursement and or transit fare reimbursements for low-income individuals volunteering for the Seniors' Council foster grandparents and senior companion programs. As I mentioned before, the Regional Transportation Commission is responsible for confirming submittal of these applications and certifying their eligibility. Caltrans will then score the expanded applications and assess how well they address the program goals, how well-defined their transportation plan is, how it affects the target population and how they will track program effectiveness. RTC staff will submit to Caltrans the RTC approved scores as well as the confirmation of the expanded program applications as well as that all programs meet the certification and insurances that are required. Caltrans will then rank the scores based on the available funding and make a recommendation to the California Transportation Commission at their December meeting for which programs to fund. Before I conclude my report, I just wanted to note that the development of the unmet needs list that this commission reviews in May is a key piece of what the agencies look at when they are putting forward funding proposals. I'd also want to note that RTC staff is advocating for some changes to these programs. One of them was included, there was a letter included to you in your September packet related to a change in the 20-hour per week requirement under the traditional program, which really prevents camping unlimited from applying under that program because they have a seasonal program. And frankly, the traditional program typically, it's easier to get funding through that program. So that's one thing RTC has submitted a comment letter on the state management plan. The other thing to note is that RTC staff is in discussions with Caltrans to advocate for allowing public transit agencies to apply for capital improvements under the expanded program. They did allow that in the past, but that has not been allowed for the last two cycles. That concludes my report. And with that, our staff recommends that you approve the attached resolution in the exhibits. Thank you. Thanks, Grace. Any questions for Grace? Commissioner Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the report. These are all really worthwhile programs. In the what we call the eligible category, the ones we don't score, how big is the state pot? What's the likelihood of these getting funded? So we have 14 million for the small and rural counties, and that includes both the traditional and expanded. The traditional makes up 55% of that funding, and the expanded is the remaining 45%. For the scores, for the traditional program, usually the last cycle they scored down to as low as 73 points. So you can see a lot of our programs were able to get funded. The expanded program is much more competitive. I believe it was, I have my note here, 85 points was required to be awarded funding. We have been very successful in the past last cycle. The seniors council program was funded. It was ranked very high. The mental health client action network was right on the cusp, and at the end, Caltrans decided to only partially fund projects to allow more projects to be funded. So they were then moved in to that group. Community bridges was also funded through that program and ranked quite high, and camping unlimited was not. It was just below the line. So I'm hopeful that we'll get all four funded this round. Thank you. Thanks for your work. Commissioner Bertrand. You have two questions. I'm not familiar with the program. You described defining the on-met needs, or how is that working, or how is that organized? I'm just trying to get a sense of the sense of that program. Well, you know that's one of my favorite topics, so I'm happy to answer that question. The on-met needs program list is very important. It is developed through the Elderly and Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee. It's one of the main things that they look at all year. We start with a preliminary list usually in December, and we discuss any new priority needs, or hopefully remove some needs that have been met thanks to Measure D for the first time in many years. We did, we're able to reduce priority for some of those high needs that were then being provided through Lifeline Community Bridges Services. For an example, a new need that has been elevated is the need for on-demand paratransit services now that we're seeing taxi companies no longer consistently providing that service or being competitive with transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft, so those are examples. Then the draft list goes to the E&E TAC in April, typically. We usually send a notice out to all of our stakeholders, over a thousand folks on our list letting them know that we're collecting input, and then it comes to the commission for your approval in May. Thank you. Last question. In terms of the program for the senior council in the reimbursement, who or how is that evaluated? In other words, the disbursement of money and how well is it evaluated that the senior council runs that program? Or does this group, RTC, do that, or is it basically through the funding? Well, we do, so what we've done in the past is we do a preliminary scoring of the grants for those applicants that submit scores, I mean submit draft applications, so in the past we've asked folks if you would like to submit a draft application, we will review it and score it and give you our input so that you have a chance to make any changes. I think one of the reasons their program is so competitive is because the number of people they reach and it's a very low-cost program. Any other questions? Yes. Thank you, Chair. Just on exhibit A for the scoring, just a question on section four, what's the reasoning of that such low scoring? I mean everything else maxed out except for that. I mean we barely passed half. Yeah, that's a good question. Section four is based on the amount of service that's currently provided, so it's a combination of different formulas calculated by the number of daily miles, or weekly miles traveled by your entire transportation program, so for example for community bridges, it's about 1,600 miles a week, and then it's divided by the number of people, number of rides, and so the formula, the application requires you to evaluate it in a number of different ways, so it really favors organizations that have high mileage and high usage. It's not just based on the vehicles that you're applying for, it's your whole transportation program. Did that answer your question? I guess what you're applying is that the community bridges isn't driving up miles. Well, 18 out of 20s, I think that's about 20 or 30. Okay, there, I see. Right, there, so for example, community bridges, total miles per day out of the number of vehicles they have, they only got four points out of 10, so that would be an example. The service hours per week over the number of vehicles, they only had five points for that, so yeah, programs that have more service, more miles, more service, 10 to score higher. Any other questions? Okay, we're gonna go and open up to the public. Anybody in the public like to come in? Big day for you. It is a big day. I wasn't planning on coming up here this often, but things do come up, you know. Basically referring to Exhibit A, under project description, I guess what I'm advocating is for a change on the actual vehicles propulsion. I believe what this means, minivan, five ambulatory passengers with ramp gas. I'm assuming that's the vehicles that you're gonna have. Is it gonna be 100% fossil fuel? Is this correct? Okay, so I would like to advocate for a change to electric vehicle. As Grace has said here, lots of use each for these ambulatory vehicles. 1600 miles is considerable, almost about eight to 10 times more than just a regular person going to work and back. So you'd have a total of six vehicles here, three for community bridges and three for UCSC. So if there's any way, I don't know what the, I'm sure it's probably more expensive, but I know community bridges already have two vans that are fully electric. So I think that should be researched for full electric and at least be a hybrid because these are for ambulatory passengers. And this could be respiratory. So you're gonna sit there and idle with a gas car while you're loading these people that are having trouble breathing in in the first place. So even if you have a hybrid, it's gonna shut off as the boarding procedure continues. So advocate for electric and maybe change the cost, add some more money and make it greenhouse gas emission free. Thank you. Great. Anyone else from the public? Welcome. Good morning, commissioners. My name's Kirk Hansen. I'm the program director for Lifeline Community Bridges and we operate CTSA. And I'd like to respond a little bit that community bridges is doing all it can to move electric. We received a car grant and we got 16 passenger two wheelchair vehicles, two buses that provide electric and two charging stations. And we're also working with LC Top Grant to get another small bus, which is in the works now. As far as the state, Keltrans, they do not offer electric vehicles yet. So anything we can do to encourage the state and the federal government to bring in electric vehicles on the grant, that would be great. They do offer CNG, but that's on a medium bus and not on a minivan. So there are no alternatives for us to get this funding, which is 100% funded at the time through the federal program through Keltrans. And our mileage, our transportation, our client passenger trips are kind of low for the out of county because we'll pick up two or sometimes only one person to three people and take them to specialized appointments. And these are for low income seniors and persons with disabilities that are Santa Cruz County residents that can't get that special care in the county. So they go to Stanford or the children Lucille Packard and stuff like that. So often we're making these long trips to meet those specialized needs. So I just wanted to comment on that. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Anyone else from the public? I'll go ahead and bring it back. I have a quick question. Ms. Lowe, do you have anything to weigh in on and Keltrans hold up on this or what the problem is? Mr. Chair, do you mean for the electric vehicles? The electric vehicle. Yeah, I took note of that. I'll have to look into it. Okay, great. I'd like to hear back on that. So thank you for that. Okay. Any other comments from the board or action? Move the staff recommendation. Recommendation by Schifrin and I'm going to take second by Leopold. Any other conversations? I just wanted to... I've wasted the carry. We're going to amend that. We're going to amend that to Gonzalez, okay? Thank you. Well, I think I really appreciate the work that Community Bridges does to expand their fleet and electric vehicles. They are making a very good attempt to expand their usage. And while these are not electric vehicles, there are, as they just explained, there are good reasons for that. And I believe in my conversation with the director of Community Bridges that they're continuing on their efforts to identify additional sources of funding for electric vehicles. So I'm supporting the motion. Great. Any other comments? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion carries unanimously. That takes us to item 21. This is the alternative analysis, high-capacity public transit on Light Railway, Ginger Dicar. Welcome, Ginger. Good morning, commissioners, chair. I am Ginger Dicar, our senior transportation planner on your staff. My item today is to discuss the alternatives analysis for high-capacity public transit on the Railway and engaging consultant services for this study. The RTC is developing an alternative analysis to evaluate transit investment options that provide an integrated transit network for Santa Cruz County utilizing all or part of the rail, the length of the rail right away, as a dedicated transit facility. Various transit alternatives will be compared to define a viable project that will provide the greatest benefit to Santa Cruz County residents, in terms of the triple bottom line of equity, environment, and economy. Prior to the release of the request for proposals, a draft scope of work was brought to the RTC for input at the June 27th, 2019 RTC meeting, and again at the August 1st, 2019 RTC meeting, the scope was also brought to the Metro on June 28th for their input. On August 5th, the RTC released a request for proposals for consultant services by the September 3rd deadline. RTC received a proposal from HDR Engineering Incorporated with sub-consultants from Fair and Pierce and Alter Planning. An evaluation committee comprised of Commissioner Alternate Schifrin, RTC Executive Director Guy Preston, myself and three members of the Metro staff review the proposal for completeness and content based on the criteria that was specified in the request for proposals and information from the written proposal, interviews and references. The evaluation committee recommends negotiating and entering into a contract with HDR Engineering Incorporated. The staff has received comments from the public expressing concern about Alter Planning being on the team as a sub-consultant because of a potential conflict of interest since they have worked in the past for an organization that promoted a trail-only option on the rail right-of-way. The commission direction based on the outcome of a unified Carter study is clear to the HDR team that the alternative analysis will be evaluating transit alternatives on the rail right-of-way. Alter's role in this project is to assess how transit and a trail on the rail right-of-way can be combined to produce the best outcome. Alter Planning has no existing contractual relationships with any community organizations that promote a trail-only option on the Santa Cruz branch rail line. In addition to the cost of the consultant, RTC will need sufficient budget to perform their work, including overall project management, administration, public outreach, coordination, legal fees, event fees, publications, et cetera. Staff has analyzed the cost on similar projects and anticipated needs for this project and has determined that $370,000 in additional budget is needed to complete this study. With that, the RTC staff recommends that the Regional Transportation Commission adopt a resolution on Attachment 1, authorizing the executive director to negotiate and enter into an agreement with HDR Engineering Incorporated for professional consulting services totaling up to $640,000 and $77,000 to perform the alternatives analysis for high-capacity public transit right of way. The second recommendation is to amend the Measure D rail corridor five-year program of projects to provide $370,000 in additional Measure D rail funds to complete this study. As an addition, RTC's subsequent fiscal year 2021 budget and overall work program will reflect this additional budget. With that, I'm happy to take any questions or comments. I also want to take a minute to introduce Steve Decker, who will be project manager for the HDR team and is also here to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Questions? Questions from the commissioners? I think they're happy with the selection. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Let me just say a million bucks seems like a lot of money. And so if this was an elevator speech to somebody who was wondering what this million dollars would go to, what would your second response be? Why is this money being spent? I think that my response to that question would be that this is a big decision for our commission and for our community about how we're going to use this property that we have purchased in 2012. And it's been obvious going through the unified Carter study that people felt like there was additional information that was needed. Certainly Metro spoke pretty directly about needing to understand more of the options for the bus rapid transit alternative and really requiring a more detailed in-depth look at what could be provided as a bus alternative to rail. I think it was made pretty clear at the end of the unified Carter study that this was needed, that the regional transportation commission needed to come together closer with the Metro transit agency to come to a decision on this. RTC staff is working very closely with Metro staff in order to bring this information to you as the decision makers for the study. I fully understand and thanks for that response. But it just seems to me that again, a million dollars here, a million dollars there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. And you know, are you trying to integrate and bring forward all the studies that have been done in the past, all the accumulation of knowledge and present it in such a way that it's fully understandable? Or I guess I just don't fully understand and I've looked at the spreadsheet and there's lots of hours at 280 dollars an hour and $100 an hour for principles and so forth. Again, just seems like I thought it would be more in the neighborhood of a lot of our other contracts of $100,000 or $200,000 but it's over a million dollars and it's hard for me to support that kind of expenditure of the people's money. A million dollars is a lot of money. We're looking at a rail corridor with a potential transit project of over $300,000,000 in total. So commencing forward on a project that could cost upwardly to $300,000,000 we want to have a pretty good understanding of what that project is going to be and make sure that we have the commission's support and understanding going forward. So the study looked at three corridors and tried to determine what the best use of the corridor would be on the rail line and we walked away with that with a lot of concerns about spending that sort of money. When you look at the cost of a million dollars versus the overall investment that you're looking at making in this corridor is a very reasonable amount of money for the amount of work that we're looking at putting in. There's significant community outreach that is included in this. There's significant traffic studies to try to really understand how transit is going to work. Those studies are not inexpensive by any means and we do not take this request for funding lightly but we want to make sure that we come out of this that we can move forward with. Moving straight into an environmental document at the end of the unified corridor study was not what this commission wanted to do. This commission had directed us to do an alternative analysis to really make sure that we were doing the right thing. If you do move forward with an environmental document without doing this level of prescoping beforehand you will be doing this during the region and you run the risk of doing an awful lot of really expensive studies on alternatives before you really figured out what you want to use the rail line for. I respect your question because I have been put on the mission to be a good steward of taxpayers money but at the same time try to deliver the transportation improvements that Santa Cruz County is looking forward to actually get people moving better and out of their single occupancy vehicle cars. I support the direction that the commission provided us before and we have worked extensively on the scope which is not easy it's pretty challenging and I believe that this money will be well spent. May I? Absolutely. So thank you for that. It's a good explanation sometimes you do have to pay for what you get when you mention Mr. Pressin about $300 million that's not money we have yet maybe in the very long run but with respect to doing any of these things whether it's rubber wheels or train or what have you is it fair to say that we're going to have to go back and ask for a little bit more money to make this thing happen? That's one of the things that's included in the scope of work for this alternative analysis itself I think that was some of the concerns that came out of the UCS is the price tag on all of the transit alternatives were over $300 million whether it was bus or whether it was train there was also the cost of the trail and we don't have that money and there is significant work to try to come up with a plan and the last deliverable in the scope of this work is to come up with a business plan to really look at what are our options to move forward would we need to go back to the voters for more money or could we get it via grants in another manner or is there another funding mechanism so that is part of the work and it is a fair thing to say that we have not identified the funding that would be needed to move forward with the project of this scale I think when the commission asked you to come on board a lot of it had to do with your fiduciary responsibility in your past history and doing that so I trust you with our money in terms of being a watchdog as much as we everybody up here has other responsibilities and it kind of falls on you and staff the watchdogs if you will to make sure this money is well spent and I guess maybe it was just sticker shock or something like that and maybe just the full amount and spectrum of what is being studied is maybe it works maybe it is worthwhile so that is a roundabout way of saying I think I trust you on this thank you thank you for that dialogue Commissioner Bertrand Executive Director I thought I didn't want to talk to you Ginger but I want his input on something if that is okay thank you very much so we just touched on the idea it is going to be our final delivery of the business plan and we have been involved in preparing reports like this I have read all the points in the business plan I kind of like your take on how your approach is going to be how are you going to think about this community your involvement with the various aspects of our community the committee that we have I would like to get some general words from your perspective how you are going to approach developing or helping to develop this business plan thank you very good question through the planning process obviously we are going to be communicating and throughout the entire process with the public as well as key stakeholders members of this body and an ad hoc committee for example RTC metro so one of the keys here is not just understanding the data being unbiased but also assessing the options understanding all the funding strategies it is also getting key input from the stakeholders and public to support the projects throughout the entire phase all tasks so for example we are not just going to develop that business plan without a lot of information gathered in various tasks so we are going to have those funding strategies we are going to define those we are going to define potential phasing plans we are going to have a detailed value engineering assessment of the alternatives to really understand not just a generic BRT for the corridor but all the details of how it could work and maybe alternatives to that and how it could work within a trails integrated with trails and pedestrians and first and last model types of activities so there is a lot of information that is going to go into the business plan and that information is going to be collected and compiled through our entire planning process we could define the right types of strategies in terms of funding financing grants as well as what that fits into this type of the solution at the end thank you for that answer I am an engineer retired and I have prepared multiple business plans for high levels of investment for the companies I have worked for and I always had to be prepared for the directors are not going to support my idea which are comments on that do you have any comments on that the public may not believe what you have to say you know being data driven unbiased understanding all the potential strategies for funding as well as the overall solution I think is key to the process for decision makers to make decisions and then that is up to you folks to make the ultimate decision with this business case and that is what we are going to present at the end of the day about this particular alternative and the locally preferred alternative and how it would work and how it could be funded I understand your question and I think that is our job to get you the right information to help make a sound decision inclusive unbiased data driven thank you professional basically one more comment Jen sorry Randy spoke before me and this is not to you this is basically to our director and to the RC staff Randy thinks that he has confidence and your directorship on this best said thank you very much and I am going to support this obviously because I think we need as a committee here to support the executive director's decision and the direction he is taking the RTC thanks for the report Jen I think it is important to hear from the public I have still got questions here on the table after I get done with the questions I will go to the public thank you and thanks for both your comments commissioner Johnson and you answered several of my questions but just to be crystal clear to the community this study is not duplicating this is building on the effort and the planning data that has been gathered so far great thank you just to affirm it that has been said in different ways but I just want to affirm that and it just occurred to me at the end of the unified quarter study that there were so many different interpretations of the outcome of that study depending on the different constituency that you represented in this community that it was just too wide open to do that and to expand the effort it would take to really figure out the detail which is what you just describing and so I think it is more than worth it before we start investing and we really have a vision as to what it is going to take and the financial implications and so forth and thank you for doing it I will be supporting it any other questions okay thank you ginger and the public good morning Brian people's trail now Virginia I appreciate what you said right there about the people taking the perspective different perspectives on the unified corridor study and the reason is because from the unified corridor study the actual results showed that using the coastal corridor as a trail designed for transportation had five times more users and greater impact than any mass transit vehicle so there was there was a bias in the sense of moving and keeping it as a mass transit rather than looking at the real data so I think it's important to as an engineer myself is look at the data driven rather than the political aspects of it and so with that I want to remind us that we need to really look at the federal guidelines on setbacks and as part of this outcome if you're going to have a train we need confirmation that you're going to have a continuous trail with that train because we predict you will not you will not you are eliminating if you have a train 45 miles an hour 60 a day you're not going to have a continuous trail the other important thing that we want to make sure we incorporate into the analysis is the structural integrity of the trestles many of them are timber trestles hidden beach seascape capitola those would have to be replaced and we want to be that needs to be included in this assessment that's a big factor you can't have a train and a trestle and a trail on hidden beach trestle and so I would assume that as part of the study you would maybe interview the homes that are 10 feet from the corridor and when you and you go and you make a proposed plan of 60 trains a day 45 miles an hour going past their homes and the businesses that's part of the analysis because you're changing the aspects of it so again I want to bring it back to the fact that the unified corridor study we spent a million dollars and we feel that it was a true failure in providing a data driven decision because we didn't look at the data we already were going to have a train no matter what even though the data showed that a trail was significantly greater impact and that trail will reduce traffic in Watsonville because it'll pull people off the highways 800 people an hour during heavy commute times that's what the numbers were 800 people an hour using that corridor a single highway lane is 2000 an hour so appreciate the time thank you thank you hi Sally Arnold friends of the rail and trail I just want to say that we're really glad that this analysis is moving forward and we look forward to participating in the public process we're really pleased that the triple bottom line equity environment and economy is going to be moving forward and evaluating the options and we're also really pleased I noticed in the scope of work that it talks about how will whatever we do on the corridor connect to future transit connect us to the rest of the world communities beyond Santa Cruz that that's going to be considered as well and that's also very important this is a really exciting step forward in creating a comprehensive transportation system that will offer a genuine alternative to people driving private cars and gridlock traffic so thank you hi Rebecca Downing again but I'm speaking as a resident of C. Cliff myself who lives on the corridor and one of the things I noticed this morning on my way here was we were really sitting there in Aptos looking at each other toodling along until we got to about 41st things broke up and got here pretty quickly so I'm just going to keep talking about that Aptos choke point that Walker mentioned in his RTC presentation to you that that needs to be solved before any of these decisions are made about rail trail buses on the rail line and so we really are excited about this alternative analysis and one of the things that I want to make sure that you do when you talk about your outreach is to make sure that you do extensive and thorough outreach with all the commuters south of 41st especially in the southern part of the county because those people are driving in their cars right now they might be going over the hill they might be going downtown they might just be going to Aptos but you need to find out from them don't wait for them to go to your website to fill out your survey go find them and find out do they need their car to get to work because if they do they're not going to get on a bus and they're not going to get on a train they're going to need their car and so when you talk about accurate data we'd really like to make sure that there is included in this study a really comprehensive survey of those folks that are sitting there on highway one in the morning and what it would take to get them out of their car to either take a bus or get on a train because the ridership numbers that we're seeing for the train are difficult to justify for the cost of putting it in and so the million dollars being spent on this to me is just critical thank you thank you Keith Otto some comments, questions one would be are the details that were requested from the previous speaker is that within the scope of what will be covered with the million dollar study and then the second comment question just as a point of comparison the corridor study as I recall right different study but that was also on the order of a million dollars if I recall correctly and then there was an additional $200,000 that was added for additional follow up later so million dollars plus another million for the UCS and then now another million for this study and I'm trying to understand if I have those numbers correct thank you thank you I believe those numbers are accurate thank you any other comments we'll go ahead and close the public comment bring it back for discussion yes as I remember what happened throughout that study the commissioner heard about a lot of alternative transit options on the rail line and people had a whole range of desires for what they thought made sense so at the end of that process while there was a decision to focus on transit on the line it was a natural follow up to be sort of focusing in on well what does that really mean what is a feasible approach for using the rail line for transit the other justification in my mind for moving forward with the alternatives analysis is a critical need to integrate with the metro system and we really haven't gotten a lot of information about that we learned at the end of the quarter study that metro was concerned about the ability of various options on the rail line threatening funding that metro might have I think one of the major motivations for doing this alternatives analysis is to really figure out a way to at least learn about possible feasible alternatives that would allow for the integration with the with the bus system would work for metro as well as work for the rail line so I'm very supportive of this study I think it's responding to what the public asked for after the unified corridor study I'm ready to make a motion to approve the staff recommendation and maybe that would be a way to kick off further discussion so I will move that we the commission support the staff recommendation on the alternatives analysis motion by by Schifrin second by Brown we'll continue the conversation Commissioner Leopold thank you chair I appreciate the comments from members of the public and I appreciated hearing from both the consultant that would be working on this project and our staff we took seriously the unified corridor study and at the end there was a real interest in wanting to figure out what would the best mode of transportation so this is an honest attempt and I appreciate the comments by our director about how this sets the stage for whatever the environmental document that we're going to be doing following that so this is an investment that we will actually see benefits from I also note that there are still members of the public who like to disparage some of the figures from previous studies but then use some of those previous studies to highlight what's actually going to happen we might remember that the the transit study the train study that we did back in 2015 looked at things like that we might have 60 trains and what that would look like there were counts about how many people might ride those they were criticized at the time it was just a part of a study but it comes up here as a scare tactic now not recognizing that alternative analysis the whole point of it is to look at what might actually work and what it might cost and eventually how we might fund it so I think it's important to say that this commission has not committed to the transit mode that we're doing that is why we're doing the study and we hope to have enough information to make a good decision about the investment that we want to make in our community's transportation future I support the motion and look forward to the results of this study thank you any other comments we'll start on the end down there commissioner vitran so I couldn't agree with John Moore hopefully this study will put aside what we've done in the past and have a more realistic view of what we hope to plan or we are planning for the future and perhaps achieve that one of the attractions of the UCS study that I felt about was the lack of actual hard data that I could actually evaluate anything about tables and such so those could be in an addendum I realized the report has to be somewhat easy to read there's many ways to present information but one that I respond to and I take many members of the public to respond to is the actual data and then it's massaged in various forms to make a presentable which I totally understand I do support this motion thank you just briefly add my appreciation and thank you to RTC staff for hearing the concerns from the community and from commissioners about the meaningful inclusion of this triple bottom line approach to assessment and evaluation I think that that is clearly critical to our community and just again I appreciate that you worked that into the request for proposals more explicitly and I think that we got a proposal that really reflects that and I look forward to hearing the results and the progress along the way and I want to wish our consultants luck on the community engagement piece their comments on this side moving on down Commissioner Kaufman Gomez yes thank you we're all into studies and consultants and what not when it comes to the public policy and we know that we need to have people that are very refined in the business that they're in to give us and disseminate the information for us to be able to comprehend what it is this isn't what we do day in and day out you know I don't know about public transportation well enough and that's why we have the consultants and why we have the team that we have and why it's going to be very important that the information is disseminated simply for us not only for us to understand but for us to reflect to our constituents about what this is I think it's a very good segue into the the steps it's going to take for the environmental impact reports that will be part of this and to make it defensible on the process of that taking place afterwards and I think also that you this plan is important and figuring out with the priorities what the timeline looks like how this is going to be marketed how this is going to sell where our money is going to come from how do we get the partnership working cohesively so that we're all on the same team here working forward with it and flushing out a lot of those type of details concerns that the public has opinions that are out there that are very strong and that we're actually listening to the folks that are going to be using this rather than people with assumptions that aren't from our neighborhood so it's very very important especially when it comes to the south county that we have a very difficult time getting the community out to these things and we want to make sure that we do the best and the ability for that kind of outreach so that we do hear from them and it's a robust report and evaluation that is something that we can interpret well we can stand behind and that it will reflect what the community is after and the highest and best resource that we have here. Thank you. Thank you. Comments? I agree with my fellow commissioners here I think that you know we've we've listened to the public we've listened to a lot of passionate people about different modes of transportation and I think this is our chance to truly evaluate all those modes of transportation come up with a goal. I strongly believe that the director, the staff and this board is committed to coming up with the best possible mode of transportation and use of that trail and we're doing that by we've created the ad hoc committee to bring in Metro to take some commissioners here and put them on that committee because Metro needs to interface with whatever we do in this county they are the essential part of transportation that exists in this county and I'm looking for all those questions to give us enough information to make a rational decision to end this process and I'm going to vote all in favor. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. That brings us to our closed session item we have a preview of a closed session. Thank you Mr. Chairman. We have two items on closed session I do not anticipate this will be a long closed session though. And do we expect to report anything out? We would not have any reportable action from today. Great. Thank you. With that we're going to go ahead and adjourn to the closed session and our next meeting will be on Thursday November 7th at 9 a.m. in Watsonville city Watsonville council chambers so have a nice ride down there. Thank you.