 that we're ready to get started. So I'm gonna call the meeting to order. Welcome to the September 1st meeting of the Regional Transportation Commission, Santa Cruz County. We are operating in a hybrid format today. So some of us are in the Board of Supervisors chambers and others are on Zoom. And we will proceed according to hybrid meeting protocol. We will start with a roll call. Commissioner Bertrand. Present. Commissioner Eats. Present. Commissioner Sandy Brun. Here. Commissioner Randy Johnson. Here. Commissioner Lowell Hurst. Here. Commissioner Caput. I don't see him on yet. Commission alternate Schifrin. Here. Commission alternate Quinn. Present. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commission alternate Virginia Johnson. Here. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Here. Commissioner Parker. Here. And Commissioner Rodkin. Here. You have a corner. Thank you. We'll now move on to oral communications. Oral communications is a time for members of the public to address the commission on items that are not on today's agenda. The commission will listen to those communications and in accordance with state law, we will not take action on those items as they're not on our agenda. Please, when you are called on to speak, say your name clearly so we can record that for the meeting minutes. And we'll start, I'm gonna start out in the audience here in the in-person and to see if anybody would like to address us for oral communications. And seeing none, we'll go to our virtual participants and we'll start with Brian from Trail Now. Hi, this is Brian from Trail Now. Thank you for taking the time. On September 8th, the California Coastal Commission will hold a hearing on the current North Coast Rail Trail Plan. Based on their agenda, the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration will be required to submit alternative rail trail plans within six months since the railroad is no longer being preserved for rail service at Davenport. As part of the RTC environmental impact. Recording in progress. Cool difficulties for regrouping. Okay, as attendees are rejoining the meeting, apologies, we've had a little bit of technical difficulty and it looks like folks are signing back in and have hands up. I will move on to our next speaker and then I'll, oh, it looks like Brian's back. So we can start, Brian, if you're there and you'd like to continue. Yes, I'll thank you, I'm sorry about that and I'll keep it short. So anyway, so the environmental impact report on the original current trail plan, there was two alternatives trail only in the farmer's plan. And the difference between those two plans and the current plan was rail banking, that's it. And rail banking at the time was determined not feasible. And since that time, it has been determined not only feasible, but required to preserve that valuable transportation resource. So the farmers in trail now are hopeful that the RTC and the Federal Highway Agency will look at those two current alternative plans and not only look at the Davenport section, but look at it all the way to natural bridges road because it can be a game changer because those two plans actually had less of an environmental impact, especially on the coastal bluff than the current plan. So really hopeful that you work with the farmers. One other note is part of the deal with the farmers was that the trail would only be open from sunset to sundown and the coastal commission is nicking that. And so the farmers are a little concerned about that. Actually, they're really concerned. So we're hopeful that RTC works with the farmers because we know we can have a win-win plan that will be more cost effective and well, better for the environment. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Barry Scott. Hello, commissioners. Thank you for the time and chance to speak. I wanna thank you all for all the great work you're doing. And since trail now mentioned something that has to do with the North Coast section, I read through that document and despite their claims that a revisitation of that plan is underway, there isn't an item on Thursday, September 8th agenda, I've read through it. There is no triggering event that will require a reassessment of the farmering project. And I think you're gonna be good to go. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Our next up is Rick Glonginotti. Welcome. Good morning, commissioners. There's an item that I hope you will put on your agenda soon and that would be a revisitation of the decision that you made at the last meeting, which was to fund a $250,000, a continuation of the EIR for the HOV project. The decision that you made last meeting didn't have the updated information from the court, the court issued a judgment August 12th. And according to that judgment, the entire draft EIR needs to be recirculated. And the commission was under the impression that just a portion of the EIR at certain focus areas would need to be recirculated. And that of course would be much more expensive to do the entire EIR and to also to make it compliant with the updated secret regulations, which require mitigation of vehicle miles travel. So since it's gonna cost a whole lot more money, I think it's worth revisiting. I also think that the commissioners may not have understood that the auxiliary lanes can move forward unless our group appeals the lawsuit, the next auxiliary lane can move forward from Soquel Drive to 41st Avenue. The ones after that from Bay Porter to State Park Drive can move forward. There's nothing that anybody can do to stop that because that EIR was certified and there's no legal challenge to that. So the point of spending a whole lot more money on HIV and EIR in order to protect from lawsuits I think is not really grounded. So thanks for your consideration. I hope you put it on your agenda soon. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Rockin. I wonder if we could have our attorney, not necessarily in this meeting, but have our attorney determine whether Rick Lanzanati's right about new that really is new information or not that would have the staff bring us back that issue. I'm not arguing they should. I'm just, we look into that. But also just to clarify that my understanding Sandy and I who were the two people who voted against this item couldn't bring it back, but other members for a reconsideration, I think it's the technical term, but that those who voted no, which is everybody out the other 10 members of the commission and any one of them could bring that back if they believe that there was a reason to do so. And again, I don't need to answer right now, but that's something that someone to look our attorney should look into. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin. Madam Chair. I was actually going to ask for, just if staff had some response that they'd like to provide, but I hear commissioner Schifrin wanted to weigh in. So just one second. Okay. The contract to do this additional work is going to cost money. I think everybody agrees to that. And it's based on an understanding about what has to be done. If Mr. Lajinadi is correct and more has to be done, I doubt that the consultants are going to do it for nothing. So, you know, it will come back. If in fact, the commission and Caltrans is required to do more work. So I don't think we need to give any additional direction. I'm sure that should the contract have to change to increase the amount of work that needs to be done, we'll have to approve that additional money. So I think that, to my mind, is sufficient. Thank you. Commissioner Schifrin, I was thinking the same. I'll just ask if Director Preston, if you have anything you'd want to add there. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Schifrin is correct that if additional funding is needed, we would need to come back. So that was one of the comments I was going to make. Additionally, this lawsuit is against Caltrans. It's not against, it wasn't filed against RTC. Caltrans is the lead agency for CEQA. So our attorney has not been involved, has not been billing us hours on this and it wouldn't, it would cost us money to have him start to analyze this to provide a response. But as Commissioner Schifrin said, we would have to come back. Additionally, we have not fully negotiated the scope of work with our consultant. When we did get the initial estimate for $250,000 for a recirculation of the document, we were not sure how much would need to be recirculated. We had significant discussion at the last meeting of what it could be. And we are now finding that it's going to be more than we thought, but that does not necessarily mean that the funding that was approved is insufficient. We're still gonna be looking into that. And if we need to come back, we certainly will. Thank you. So I'll take that as a desire for me to withdraw my request that our attorney spend time looking into it. And that's fine with me. I understand what Andy was saying, and then Jai as well. Hey, thank you. So we'll keep the public updated as we move forward. Let's see, next up is Michael St. Thank you, Chair Brown. Good morning, commissioners. Michael St. with CFST, Aptos resident. My subject this morning is definitely not on today's agenda. As a matter of fact, rarely does this subject come up on the RTC's agenda. And that is we are facing a climate crisis of epic proportions, one that threatens life on earth as we know it. Yes, I do occasionally hear the words climate change and sustainability from a few of the commissioners, but not a lot of action to reduce our transportation's carbon footprint in the Santa Cruz County. The highest level of carbon dioxide parts per million in the last 800,000 years was 320,000 years ago at 300 parts per million. It pretty much has stayed at that level or lower until the industrial revolution started. Today we're at 415 parts per million. That was on June 23rd, 2022. Instead of just pointing fingers at those we feel aren't listening or don't care, we should take action instead. This is what needs to happen. We need to tackle the entrenched systems and political stagnation that greatly contributes to climate change at the state and regional levels. Citizens need to join advocacy groups that advocate for innovative grid transformation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing vehicle miles traveled in transportation and support forward thinking climate policies. The most important climate action you can take at any level is to vote for political candidates who are ready to take meaningful steps towards curbing carbon emissions and tackling climate change. Climate change is a crisis, but it can also be an opportunity to create a more just world. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sainte. Here, here. I'll call next on Brett Garrett. Welcome, Mr. Garrett. Good morning. This is Brett Garrett with a, well, first I wanna support the comments from Rick Longinati and Mike Sainte, but I'm calling in to make a comment about the RFP for the engineering on the rail corridor. First, I'd like to suggest that the timeline should be extended because this is an enormous engineering project that will require drawing from many different areas of expertise. I also suggest that the scope should be broadened to allow for creative solutions to our transportations issues. Technology is rapidly evolving and the current plans in the business plan involve some serious compromises, especially with regard to service frequency. I love transit, but when the schedule only runs twice an hour, it's just not adequate to draw most people out of their cars. If there's a better approach, we should use it and I will offer a better approach. So I am suggesting to broaden the scope, mostly because I have a specific solution in mind based on proven technology vehicles that already exist from a nearby vendor. This new concept is better than the previous ideas that I've brought your way because it's fully compatible with freight and it fits perfectly into the existing rail and trail footprint that already exists or has been planned with no compromises. It will provide better passenger service using less energy than the current plans. And this new proposal is specific enough to fully resolve. I think it fully resolves the objections that have been raised about previous suggestions of mine. So I'm gonna provide details very soon in the next couple of weeks and a new website that doesn't exist yet, but I'm working on it. So for now, please broaden the RFP to encourage any solution that meets some set of basic criteria. For example, being consistent with the existing and planned rail trail and protecting freight service operations and providing fat passenger service that meets or exceeds the current business plan. And please extend the RFP deadline to allow some more time for responses. Thank you very much. I appreciate all you do. Thank you, Mr. Garrett. Good to hear from you. Let's see, we do have another hand up and that is Barry Scott. Mr. Scott, you've spoken for oral communications. Is your hand up or another item? Yeah, I was cut off, but it didn't seem like very long. I just wanted to remind, well, the Coastal Commission has waived its requirement for a local development permit for the Manresa-La Selva Beach erosion control project. And I hope that the work that was authorized earlier this year can be reauthorized to begin to repair that section. That was all. Thank you. Okay. So it looks like we have no more hands up for oral communications. We will now move on to our next item. Do we have any additions or deletions to today's agenda? Thank you, Madam Chair. We have no additions or deletions, but we do have some handouts and replacement pages. And they are all posted to our website. We have handouts for items 16, 23 and 24 and replacement pages for items 23 and 24. Okay, so you can find those replacement pages on the RTC's website if you don't have them at your disposal. Thank you. Our next few items will be taken together as part of our consent agenda. This is items four through 17. All items appearing on today's consent agenda are considered minor and will be acted upon in one motion if no member of the RTC or member of the public wishes to pull one of those items. Members can ask questions, members of the commission can ask questions during this time, see clarification, add direction without pulling an item. And we will, I'll look to see if there are any commissioners who would like to pull an item before moving to the public. Okay, seeing none, are there members of the public who would like to pull an item? Mr. Peoples, I see your hand is up. Did you want to comment or did you want to pull an item? I just wanted to make a comment briefly, may I? So we'll just, I guess we'll take it out then to members of the public for comment on any of the items four through 17. And Mr. Peoples, you are up. Thank you, Brian from Trail Nail. Hey, item number 10 where you're getting funding for the Metro, great, great thing. That's great to see that. And if I recall, we supervisor Koenig worked with the county director to redirect Metro money for the roads and the work that lately has been done on the roads has been phenomenal. It's a million or more. But is this not a great example of how Metro was able to go out and find additional funding? And I believe the argument there was that Metro has a better opportunity to acquire additional funds for buses versus our roads. And if that is true here, I just wanted to highlight this as a success by this organization, your organization on strategic and tactical planning. Anyways, thanks, thank you for your time. Thank you, Brian. Hey, I see another hand up and Michael St, you are up. Thank you, Chair Brown. Is the commenting on the hand up for item 16, is that a good time to do that right now? Yes. No. Item 16 is an information item. Yeah. Okay. RTC letters, yeah. I just wanted to make sure. Just a couple of comments. I totally agree with supporting this SB 457. I think it's a great idea, but how you explain what we were doing here in Santa Cruz is a little misleading. And just to make a quality, basically says that as an urbanized area with good transit service, I was reading this and thought maybe you were talking about some other regional transportation commission. It says quality active transportation, variety of medium to high density land uses. You believe that the region's existing infrastructure supports alternative transportation questionable. And then at Santa Cruz County has ambitious environmental protection and emission reduction goals. I think you need to be a little bit more honest in actually what's going on. Our, you know, basically our mass transit services barely suitable and barely functional with three to 4% of people using it. So a little bit misleading, but I do support the letter and thanks for sending that off to the state. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you, Mr. Sainte. Okay, I will now return to the consent agenda. Second. Okay, we have a motion by commissioner Schifrin, a second by commissioner Rockin to approve the consent agenda. And now we'll take a roll call vote. Commissioner Bertrand. I approve. Commissioner Sandy Brown. I. Commissioner Randy Johnson. I. Commissioner Alternate Hearst. I. Commissioner Alternate Hernandez. I. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. I. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner Alternate Virginia Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Kristen Brown. I. Commissioner Parker. Yes. And commissioner Rockin. I. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, next up we have item 19. That is our director's report. And I will turn it over to Guy Preston, executive director. Point of order. I think the commissioner reports are first. Oh, I'm sorry. I highlighted those to remind myself to speak. So I just skipped over it. So sorry, we have commissioner reports up next. Any reports from members of the commission? This is item 18. Okay, it looks like commissioner Bertrand has a hand up. Go for it. Yeah. So my understanding is I can make a comment at this point. And Brett Garrett spoke to something that I think is important to consider. And that is the frequency of any kind of passenger rail service that we have. And I know a lot of people on this commission know that, but it should be in the planning that if we don't have adequate frequency, people aren't going to use it. And our comparable right now is Metro. And there's other issues there too. But frequency is critical. It provides opportunity to have people fit in the, the commuter rail service into their own schedules without trying to go the other way, which would make going to jobs and childcare and all those other things impossible. Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Hurst. Thank you very much. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what was going on in South County and Watsonville in particular. We're on the cusp of a great agreement with Caltrans to revitalize and redo the main street of Watsonville. That runs all the way from highway one to through the downtown on 152. Also, great progress is being made on 129 Riverside Drive as well. So there's lots of momentum with Caltrans to improve our main street and propose a road diet, incorporate the aspects of complete streets and lots of vision zero and accoutrements that slow and calm traffic and focus on cycling and pedestrian safety throughout town. And so lots of good things happening in the works and we're on the move. Thank you very much. Mayor Parker may have a much more complete set of comments than I, but thank you. Give you that opening, Commissioner Parker to make a comment here. No, I think he summarized it well. We'll get into the details in the next oncoming months. And I think our council's support of our complete streets and all the amazing things Caltrans is moving forward with in conjunction with the city of Watsonville. So we look forward to that and we look forward to anything Caltrans is doing for Metro in our communication from South to North and North to South. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any reports updates from other commissioners? Seeing none, I'll give mine now that I intended to give. So I just wanted to say on August 11th, I was very lucky to attend the groundbreaking for segment seven phase two of the coastal rail trail. Some of you were there. I'll just highlight there were local speakers and the active transportation program manager from the California Transportation Commission, Laurie Waters, yes, was there. And I'll just highlight that she really in her comments recognized our community or local jurisdictions for our very proactive and innovative approach to working on active transportation and our rail trail is a big part of that. So a good time was had by all, I'll leave it there and turn it over to Director Preston now. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a couple of short updates. The first is an update on Metro service with an announcement on free fares from September 15th through September 29th. Fall Metro service starts on September 15th and ends on December 7th. And Metro is making some temporary route modifications on existing routes to accommodate the shortage of bus operators being experienced by Metro and around the nation and to approve service reliability to minimize inconvenience cancellations and cancellations for riders. Service will be maintained on all quarters and most UCSC school term service will return. In addition, Metro will offer free fares from September 15th through September 29th, countywide, including the Highway 17 and their paracruise service. So I encourage members of the public who care about climate change to give Metro a try. Temporary route changes can be found on the Santa Cruz Metro website under news releases and the fall headways bus rider guide will be available on all buses and transit centers on September 8th. Last month I introduced the new general manager of Metro, Michael Tree, and he's again here today. Since then Metro and RTC has had several meetings to help identify transit improvements along Soquel Drive in Mid County and also on Main Street in Watsonville as potential components of our next multimodal corridor application for SB1 funding which is due in November. The vision includes potential new direct express bus service on Highway 1 between Watsonville and Santa Cruz using our new bus on shoulders facilities and an increased and more frequent service on Soquel Drive because frequency really is an issue. Another climate related issue, zero emission vehicle charging infrastructure study is underway and RTC is seeking community input as part of an effort to accelerate the adoption of zero emission vehicles. Such as electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles throughout California's central coast including on or near the state highway system, major freight corridors and transit hubs and this plays very well with the governor's orders to make all vehicles zero emissions sold in the state by 2035. Six California central coast counties have collaborated on an interactive online mapping tool where the public can offer their valuable and necessary input. The goal is to identify ideal locations for new public charging stations in the six counties between Ventura and Santa Cruz and San Benito counties to East. Electric vehicles are essential to the fight against climate change and more charging stations are needed to recharge vehicles particularly in rural and traditionally underserved communities. The information gathered from the interactive online mapping tool will help create the central coast zero emission vehicle strategy. If you are interested in collaborating on the mapping exercise, please visit the RTC website. It's right there on the front page. There is an announcement and link available under news and updates which explains the interactive mapping tool and it'll be available to the public through October and also the Santa Cruz County Association of Governments who's leading the study plans to attend our next meeting on October 4th and provide more information on this important effort and that concludes my report. Thank you, Director Preston. Are there questions or comments from members of the commission on the director's report? Commissioner Rockin. I would just add, actually this was one earlier comment by our chair, Sandy Brown, that when the person in the California Transportation Commission, the head of active transportation group spoke, she did say that Santa Cruz County was at the top of her list for communities that were addressing the need for active transportation. I think that's worth noting. It wasn't just that we're doing a good job, but that we were doing as well or better than anybody else in the stage. Not that there's still not more to do, but it's good to know that we're making some progress and being recognized for it, particularly by somebody who funds these kinds of things into the future. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin. Anybody else have questions or comments? All right, so I'll take it out to the public to see if we have anyone who would like to weigh in on the director's report. Just a moment. We have a member of the public in person here. Mr. Treet, come on up. Wonderful. Thank you, Chair Brown and commissioners. I wanted to tell you first off, thank you for the actions that you took today, in particular in regard to Director Preston and working with Mark Thomas on the Bus on Shoulder Exillary Lane project for Metro. I'm really excited about that project and I think it will further advance additional projects on Highway One for Metro. But as we've looked at it and I've tried to make a difference on Highway One, just knowing just how difficult it can be on Highway One, we're recognizing that the modeling is showing that that project has time savings in the area of 12 minutes northbound and 17 minutes on southbound for Metro and those are big savings, big time savings. So we're looking forward to continuing to work with Director Preston and his staff. And I did want to say thank you as well for the action that you took to help Metro with replacing buses. Our 34 oldest buses in our fleet of 100 buses have an average age of 20 years. So that's way too long to have a public transit bus on the street. And we really look forward to replacing those buses as we move forward with zero emission buses. So that's the goal of staff. We're working day and night to make that happen but you took a big step today in helping us with that. So I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you. Okay, it looks like we do have a commissioner who would like to speak on this item and so I'll call on Robert Quinn. Thanks, Chairperson Brown. It's really a question for my edification to either the Caltrans people or a guy. We hear about frequency and it's pretty encouraging to hear about improved bus times between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. Do we have a sensitivity analysis or do we know what it would take to actually get people to take the bus in terms of frequency or cycle times? I think each person has their own criteria but one of the most important I think is frequency. It's something that I definitely looked for when I decided to use transit or not. If you have to wait 30 minutes for a bus and you just miss it, you're going to be waiting that full amount of time and then if you miss your connection and need to wait another 30 minutes, that's a significant impact on an individual's schedule. I think that's the most important thing, reliability I think is also important. So if the bus takes an hour to get between Watsonville and Santa Cruz, that's also going to be something that affects one's decision as to whether to take the bus or not. The time savings on Highway 1 that Michael Tree mentioned is a significant improvement. We're also looking at improvements on Soquel Drive with our transit signal prioritization but we're also looking to see if there's possibilities for Q-Jumps, some of the BRT light items that were discussed in the UCIS. We are also looking at providing better boarding opportunities so that boardings can occur more frequently and that buses could merge back into traffic or not have to merge out of traffic, actually be in the lane picking up people so that they can improve the actual travel time. Thank you. Okay, I do not see any additional hands up in the room. So I'll look to attendees and well, I'll call on Michael St. Thank you, Chair Brown. I hope you guys don't get tired of me this morning but just thank you Director Preston for the report. It's very good and some encouragement. I appreciate it. Having been in the airline industry for 42 years, you guys are exactly right. The three most important things are frequency. Reliability is very important. One you missed was non-stop service. That is also a very convenient item as well if the stops don't allow people wanting to use the actual service itself. Also just getting a little bit picky here but could we stop using bus on shoulder as our description of what you guys are going to put on the aux lanes. True bus on shoulder is dedicated. Call it something like hybrid which you've used on several occasions but during traffic time it's just going to be stuck in traffic with the cars. I'll be anxious to see if there's any time savings at all. If you were to do it dedicated I believe your time savings would be more like 30 to 40 minutes at commute times. And that's been all studied and explained by experts especially during the innovative speakers that came about a couple of years ago. Nothing about putting cars in with buses. It was all dedicated and we'll save a lot more time than 12 to 17 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Saints. Our next speaker is Beverly Deschaux. Welcome. Okay, there's the unmute. Thank you, Beverly Deschaux, the Electric Vehicle Association Central Coast Chapter. Forgive me that I haven't been following your meetings so I don't know all the details of all of the issues I have just some of them and have some comments about things that we're spoken about today. One is that I understand that the city of Santa Cruz is obligated to continue buying natural gas buses until 2023. So I don't know how the electric bus thing fits in but what most people do not realize is that natural gas so-called natural gas is 74% methane. Methane has a climate heating capacity 84 to 124 times that of CO2. So really we're not saving a lot for the environment here and when I see UCSC buses with those double buses going around with two or three people in them, yeah, we're not saving the environment a whole lot. And the question I would ask is who is asking who to make changes to their life? I spoke to a woman recently whose car was impounded for something and she has a small child. She told me that it took her four extra hours now to be riding the bus to get done what she needs to be done. And I had the experience many years ago when I was a Cabrillo student many years ago and had a small child, it took me a long time to walk to drop my child off at childcare and to walk further to get to the bus. And I was always panicked about if I was going to get there on time. I would, if I would miss it, that meant I had to wait another half hour and probably miss a class. So, and then it was 45 minutes at that time from Santa Cruz downtown to Watsonville, excuse me, I'm sorry, to Cabrillo. And then the same thing back again. So it was a significant portion of my time. And my conclusion about that is that not a lot of people are going to be giving up their cars anytime soon. So this idea of bus on shoulder, no, we don't have a shoulder. We don't have a shoulder. We have an auxiliary lane, which is actually what's being asked for vehicles. Vehicles that are sitting there spewing enormous amounts of emissions every day. Could I ask that we follow the procedure here and limit people's testimony and otherwise people will go on forever and it's not fair. Just waiting for the sentence to end. Ms. Deshao, your time is up if you could finish up your comment. Okay. So I support increased vehicle charging and yeah. Thank you. Okay, it looks like we do not have any additional hands up. Commissioner Rockin, you wanna make a comment? Yes. So the brief comment on the last speaker, not everything she said, but two points. Number one, the transit district has a strategy for buying continuing to buy some CNG buses at the same time that we increasingly make a high, an increasing percentage of our purchases in zero emission buses. If we were to try and if we allow ourselves to only buy zero emission buses right now, we'd have to cut a significant amount of our service because a rough estimate of the price, it's about $700,000 for a CNG bus. It's about $1.2 to $3 million for an electric bus. And so if we simply, you know, we'd only let ourselves buy those $1.2 or $3 buses, our only option would be to cut our service to people and that would push people back into their gas guzzling cars. So it's a strategy that will have us ahead of the requirements in California to be completely electrified, but it's not as simple as just buying only electric buses from this point forward. And I'm sure if Beverly to show, we come once to contact the transit district, talk to Michael Tree, he could give her more details if it's not clear, I won't go on about that item. The other item had to do with this idea that there's UCSC buses only have a couple of students sitting on them. The reality is that every morning as buses go up the hill to the university, they are standing room only buses, every bus completely full of students, almost without exception. And then of course, when they come back down the hill, there's only two or three students in it. And the afternoon that pattern reverses, but we're not running empty buses to UCSC. If you take the total capacity in both directions, it's well above the capacity of a bus because it's more than the seats we have available. So if people see a bus that's going on its return trip, might look like nobody's using the bus, but that's sort of a little misleading. So I thought that information might be helpful to Mr. Schell. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Rockin. I was going to, just in response to Ms. Schell's comments, you mentioned the city of Santa Cruz and buses and it is the Santa Cruz Metro. And Commissioner Rockin has already offered Mr. Tree to respond to questions. So I think that is the place to connect to have that conversation. Okay. I think we are now ready to move on to our next item, which is the Caltrans report. It looks like Mr. Eads is here. Welcome to give us that report. All right. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the commission. Pleasure to be back with you. I was away on a headquarters assignment for a few months and now I'm back in my role as deputy district director for planning. I have a few items for you today. First is just an update on our quick map, which is a website and a mobile app that Caltrans publishes. It's live traffic condition information. And we just expanded some features. I wanted to highlight those. There's new push notification features that are now on the quick map app. So if you have the mobile device on your phone, when you get within a certain proximity, if there's a road closure or emergency or other traffic updates, it will, if you choose that feature, it will notify you that there's something in the vicinity that you should be aware of. And it's, I think that it's about a 10 mile radius that it'll alert you of. And then there's a ton of other information on there, really helpful in terms of traffic conditions. So I recommend that you go check it out. If you haven't already, it's at quickmap.dot.ca.gov and you can download the app from there as well. And then also want to highlight that there's a Caltrans Local Assistance Training Day coming up. It's on Wednesday, September 8th. It's all about information sharing on our local project delivery policies, processes, and a great place for peer-to-peer exchange of best practices. It's free and it's available really for like local assistance staff, our TPA group members, and even I believe members of the public, if you're interested in learning a lot of technical details about project delivery for the federally process. Scott, September 8th is a Thursday. So is it Wednesday or Thursday? That's a great question. And I will, I've got a, for some reason, my information is not correct. So let me verify that. It is September 8th. So let's go with just September 8th. When I click on the link, that's where it takes me. And I'm happy to provide that link. If anybody would like sign up instructions, it's actually through Sacramento State's College of Continuing Education. So I'll provide a link if it's a lengthy web link web address if anybody's interested. Next item is just a few updates on District 5 projects in your area. At the last CTC meeting, they allocate the CTC, the California Transportation Commission, allocated more than $2.2 billion in transportation infrastructure funding. And a lot of that was SB1 funds, and a lot of it was the new Investments and Jobs Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or otherwise known as IGF federal funding. And within District 5, there was over a hundred million, actually upwards of 150 million allocated. The projects I wanted to highlight in your area, there was $12.6 million allocated for the Side Hill Viaduct Project on State Route 9. It's near, in and near the city of Santa Cruz, North of Vernon Street, and south of Glen Gary Road. And it'll restore the roadway and provide erosion control in two areas that have experienced landslides during rainstorms in the past. Our targeted construction timeline on that is the winter of or to fall of 2025. So this winter, 2025, a lengthy project and we'll be working behind K-Rail. There will likely be some delays and we'll be publishing that information as we get closer to construction. Second project I wanted to highlight is $3.8 million was allocated. I made up of IGF funds in that case for ADA improvements along 152 near Watsonville. It includes an ADA accessible pathway, concrete barrier, retaining walls, curb, gutter and sidewalk. And that's point, just a little bit east of Beverly Drive to Holehand Road and College Road. And the construction start on that is the spring of 2023. There is some bird nesting issues that may delay construction start. We'll be monitoring that but that's our targeted construction start at this point in time. And that is all I have. I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you, Mr. Eads. Are there any questions from members of the commission? Okay, seeing none. Any comments from members of the public? See one hand up. And so I'll call on Brian from Trail Now. Hey, thanks a lot, it's Brian from Trail Now. Hey, Scott, on Monday of this week, traffic going over Highway 17 was a standstill. And I got a lot of calls, people calling me thinking I can communicate to you all. So I wanted to communicate and find out what's the story? I understand there was some sort of landscaping work being done and if there was, I'm hopeful that Caltran can maybe better communicate. Our community in Santa Cruz really has a good social network of communicating up and coming road work issues. So I'd encourage you, especially Highway 1, Highway 17 and Highway 1 are the similar in the sense that they're both two lanes. I mean, 41st has more lanes than Highway 1 and 17. And what happens, it comes down to a capacity and a surge issue. What people don't understand is when you need to do work on it, you close one lane and we're shut down, right? And that's one of the huge values of widening Highway 1 is to open up that capacity so that you don't, when you need to do road work and you need to do it, you're able to keep the flow going. And what these local environmental groups don't understand is by restricting opening up that corridor, you're actually creating more gas emissions. It's crazy how much emissions are coming out of Highway 1 traffic just because we haven't opened it up. So I just wanted to hear, can you maybe talk about the Monday event and is there a mitigation, mitigation you could do and our two lanes really impactful for your operations over. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. It sounds like you're talking about one particular event and I'm not sure Mr. Eads, if you have a comment on it now, I'll give you an opportunity to do that. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I do not have specific information other than if we're talking about Santa Cruz 17, it likely has to do with the construction on the wildlife under crossing, which we're all aware of. Construction activities are ongoing there. That said, I'm not positive in terms of that's what happened on Monday. We do, if we are having lane closures, we do try to have news releases in advance on that to let people know if there's going to be greater than normal delays. Obviously there's recurrent congestion on 17 and the construction is ongoing. So we anticipate some slowing for people just looking, but sometimes there's unforeseen things that happen in the construction process or there's an incident, an accident or something like that that has occurred that would exacerbate the construction conditions out there. But I'm not certain exactly what happened on Monday. But again, going back to my quick map plug, that's a great place to go. It actually shows incidents and tells you it's tied in with the CHP log. It tells you what's happening in real time as the CHP folks in the field are adding information as to what's happening with some indication where the queuing is existing or happening in real time. Thank you, Mr. Eads. I see Heather Adamson from Ambag. Your hand is up. I'll call on you next. Great, I just wanna respond. The incident on Monday was actually CalTrans District 4 in Santa Clara County in Los Gatos and it was listed on the CalTrans website. It wasn't listed on quick maps, but it was listed on the CalTrans website that shows planned maintenance and landscaping. And so I would encourage if RTC's 511 site doesn't already, they link to both the District 5 and District 4 because you can search Highway 17 by both. And so it wasn't listed on District 5's Highway 17 side because the work was actually being done in District 4 in Santa Clara, but it did affect Santa Cruz. I was personally affected by this. So it did affect both Santa Cruz residents heading over to 17, but that information is online. It's just sometimes depending on where the county line is and CalTrans District ends, it might be in a different CalTrans District. And unfortunately for Santa Cruz County, sometimes that information is on the District 4 link and not District 5. So I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. I see that Commissioner Schifrin, I would like to make a comment. Yes, thank you. I wanna say something on CalTrans' behalf. Maintaining these highways is not easy. They deteriorate, there are trucks on them, there's lots of traffic and there's landscaping next to the highway. And oftentimes, I think CalTrans has been very sensitive to the community in trying to schedule their major work in the evenings when it's not going to hold up traffic. And I think the under cross, wildlife under crossing is a good example of where CalTrans scheduled the construction so that they keep planes opened almost as much as possible. You know, the choice is, do we want trees folding on the road because they're not cut back? Do we wanna increase dangers to drivers because of the deterioration of the road? If not, CalTrans is gonna have to go out there and fix the road. And from my perspective, as one who doesn't drive it that often, but sometimes does and sometimes sees or is part of a big backup with a lane closed. I don't like it. But on the other hand, I wanna say that from my perspective, CalTrans does its best to schedule its maintenance at times where possible that it's having the least impact on the drivers. Thank you, Commissioner Schifrin. All right, I do not see any more hands up. So I will close this item. And we thank you, Mr. Eads. We'll move on to item 21. This is a presentation from the city of Capitola. I see that Steve Jesberg is here. And is Kailash with you or? Kailash is in attendance. In attendance. Our panelist at the moment, but he's available for any questions. Okay, so you'll be making the presentation. I'll turn it over to you. Welcome, Mr. Jesberg. Thank you, Chair Brown and commissioners. Good morning. It's great to be with you today. I do have a short PowerPoint presentation. So I will share my screen. So hopefully you can now see the opening slide. We're going to start. Just real quick, Mr. Jesberg, we don't have the slides up. Are they up? I don't see them. I just wanna make sure they're up. They're up online. They're up for the public. Okay, great. Okay, we can see them. Carry on. Sorry. Thank you. Briefly discuss the transportation projects. We've completed and are working on in Capitola currently. Just a quick list of projects. We've completed three or two significant projects and very close on to others. Brommer Street improvements and the pavement management implementation annual street repairs. We're working on a 41st Avenue adaptive system. This is tying the traffic signals together along 41st Avenue. It does include the Caltrans interchanges at Highway 1 and ultimately we'll tie in with the County of Santa Cruz's system on SoCal Drive. Clear Street traffic calming project, a complete streets project on Claire's is ready to go to bed. And then we have these annual future projects which I'm gonna discuss a little bit more as we go through this. So quickly the Brommer Street project proud to say this is the first project of the year that we award we received from the American Public Works Association relatively short project, but key it improved Brommer Street from 41st Avenue to 38th Avenue, little bit farther beyond. It completed sidewalks. There was a big gap in the sidewalk system in this area. In addition, the bike lanes were not continuous in this area. So it truly was a complete street project. Brommer is a major East-West corridor for bicycles. So we're happy to get this done. This funding was $5,000 in RSTPX money and $165,000 of our measured D allocations. Next was just our annual pavement project. We completed approximately two miles of streets in the city of Papatola. Phase one, which was digouts and repairs was completed in 21. And then we partnered with the County of Santa Cruz Public Works Department and included our street resurfacing with them. And that has just been completed. There's a little bit of striking still to go, but all the roads have been sealed and built and it looks great. Funding here, we combined our SB1 money and our measured D money to pay for those projects. Project I'm very excited to say is well long and mentioned it in the opening slide is our signal coordination project. The signals you see here in blue are capital signals. This is all in the 41st Avenue corridor. The red are the Caltran signals over Highway 1 and then the green are the County signals. On the 41st Avenue in the city, those have been complete and coordinated for approximately the last six weeks. I can tell you personally for the first time since I've worked in capital, I've driven from one end to the other without stopping. So they are working. They're continually getting adjusted and I think it's been a successful project. The Caltrans Interchange is part of our project and that is, I believe, very near starting up in the next. I think they're gathering the data now what they do is they collect all the traffic data for a couple of weeks before they start managing the system so that should be up and running within the next couple of weeks. And the County's project was actually completed before ours. Ultimately, I believe they are going to move north on this map and tie in the intersections towards Oak Hill Drive. So, and then we are working toward cannot combining all of these intersections so that they work, so they're coordinated. It's not perfect, but it certainly should be an improvement and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the entire area. Most of the funding for this project came from the Air Board Grant and a little bit from the city, from our general fund. You see, Claire Street Traffic Calming is a complete street project that goes from 41st Avenue to Warf Road in Capitola. We are replacing all the asphalt, adding speed tables with crosswalks along Claire's, and offered bike lanes. It will be a wonderful project when it's completed. The contract hasn't been awarded for that. We anticipate they'll be starting either the end of this month, September or early in October and completing it before winter. Looking at the funding again, it's $800,000 of RSTPX and RTIP money, $260,000 of our measure D funding and $150,000 from the general fund. The rather smaller project has been on the books for a while, starting to figure out a pathway from the parking lot behind here in City Hall that ties up to the rail corridor and Monterey Avenue, which goes down to the village. We've gone through several design iterations on this. We are coordinating with the county who's working on rail segment 11 to make sure what we build works in conjunction with their project. We're currently working on a slight design modifications while we're still in design. We're going to try and focus the sidewalk coming up adjacent to the road and then do the tie-ins with the rail trail in this area. We have $200,000 in RSTPX money and $100,000 from the general fund on City's general fund on this. Kennedy Drive sidewalk has just received funding in the last allocation from the RTC. This is a sidewalk project that goes down to Park Avenue from the Cliffwood Heights neighborhood. It's an area where a lot of cars park, but it does have quite a bit of bike traffic from school and pedestrian traffic. It also is a major route for skaters and bicyclists to go to our McGregor Park on McGregor Drive just east of this project. So this project we've completed, just recently completed to the design. We're going to be holding some public workshops to make sure we got the design right and then we'll be moving toward vetting the project now. And finally, I think this is the last project, 41st Avenue and Capitol Road intersection improvements. Actually, two intersections are being improved as part of this and it was funded through the RSTPX and Tristit grants that we got from the RTC. The Claire Street and 41st Avenue intersection is in core shape and will actually be reconstructed as part of the Claire Street project I mentioned earlier. And then the other intersection, which is even in worst shape is the Capitol Road at 41st Avenue intersection. That will be constructed, we hope, next spring. It's being done in conjunction with further work along Capitol Road. We are looking at this intersection to see if we can make changes to the signal allocation and phasing. Right now they're shared in turn lanes, which kind of limits the ability to efficiently move cars through the intersection. It has to do with the amount of cars that are turning onto 41st in both directions and start to allocate and phase those accordingly. But we're working on that. We may make changes to the interchange or it may stay the way, but at least we'll get it reconstructed in the pavement replaced. That is the end of my report. I would certainly want to thank the commission, the commissioners and commission staff for all their support to the city of Capitol or small city with very small staff. And it's only with their support and funding and guidance and getting some of our projects done that we're able to keep up and get done what we do. So thank you very much and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Chasberg. Are there questions? Commissioner Schifrin. Yes, thank you very much. First, let me say I appreciate the projects that have been done. And actually I used the Bromo Street bikeway two days ago going out to Aptos and it was so well integrated into the street that I didn't even know it was a new project, but it certainly made riding down Bromo more enjoyable. My question was about the maintenance of the bike lanes because I know that's an ongoing headache, but there are some parts where I was going down Warf Road, which as you know is some places good and some places not so great for bikes, but some of the area for the bike was not in really good maintenance. So I just wonder what the schedule is, how often the bike lanes are maintained because having the bike lanes is one thing, but keeping them safe obviously is something else. Commissioner Schifrin, we sweep and try and keep the bike lanes free of debris. We're talking about pavement repairs. That's something we look at pretty much on an annual basis. We don't get to them all. We have a limited budget for patching. We will be doing a patching project here soon in a couple of bike lanes and I'd be willing to take a look at Warf Road and see what we can do there. Is the maintenance weekly, are they swept weekly or how often do the bike lanes get swept? I would say a minimum of every two weeks. It depends on what road they are and where they are. Every two weeks we try to sweep every street in the city. Okay, thank you. Bear? Yes, so I did just get a request from Commissioner Brown, Kristen Brown to make a comment and then I see Commissioner Bertrand I'll get you next. Yeah, okay, thank you. I just want to take a moment to thank Steve and Kailash for all their work in the city of Capitola. These are really exciting improvements in our city, especially as he mentioned the adaptive signal project. I also have noticed the increase in efficiency and going down 41st Avenue. As Steve mentioned, we're a small city, small staff, so they put a lot of work into making these things come to fruition in partnership, of course, as mentioned, with RTC and RTC staff. I'm also really excited about this complete streets project on Claire's, all of you probably know we've completed the library recently. We are expecting to have the park where Rispin Mansion exists completed hopefully by the end of the year. And so part of the streets project is an artistic walkway where we will have like a painted library books and the design. And so that's going to be really fun. It's not only an improvement to our streets, but it's kind of a public art. And so that's always really exciting as well. So again, just thank you to our staff for bringing us to this point and for presenting to us today. All right, Commissioner Bertrand. Thank you, Chair. I'm just going to follow from comments by Commissioner Brown. She obviously is on the city council of Capitola as I am as well. She represents Metro, but she is definitely a resident of Capitola. So I have a question and a comment. My first question is, and I'm going to leave it up to you, Mr. Jesper. Try to give the public a better idea of how much you went through to get these projects lined up in terms of funding and the vagaries, some of these things go back to RCTC days if you want to choose clairs. And I also know that project went through a lot, but you also went through a lot just trying to get the signals going in 41st Avenue. At one point you suggested buying the equipment and having Capitola do it itself because it was getting pretty difficult to get funding. So if you can answer that just to give the public an idea. And then after you finish, I do have a comment. Thank you, Commissioner Bertrand. As with any project, there's always hurdles. We have to cross Clare Street in particular. Some of the commissioners may know back 20 years ago there was a hotel project proposed at Clare Street at the Richmond mansion. And the Clare Street project or a version of what we're doing today at least was proposed to be built as part of that project. So then we've had funding allocated and moved through the RDAs that then went away. So it's been funded and unfunded several times and we're excited to finally move forward with it. On the signal project, it was just a tough project to we bid it once, probably in 2017. Pricing was like four times our funding what we had available in funding. We've worked to build that funding up and reduce the cost of the project and finally haven't moving forward. So each project has its own struggles. Being a small staff here, we do have, takes us longer to respond than a larger agency. We're working on multiple projects. So it's an ongoing juggling act and we try and keep all the balls in the air. I'd like to further emphasize, I know as mentioned in the past our work with District 5, Caltrans, that was a hurdle to get those signals. If you could comment there, that was a good partnership I think. Yeah, I think it's a great partnership. Obviously the Caltrans signals on 41st are key to keeping the traffic moving. We've worked with Caltrans to get an encouragement permit include the controllers in their cabinets. They've been good, it's taken a while. Wasn't a completely smooth and seamless process but we've gone through it and we're coming out the other side now so we're excited about that. Okay, thank you very much for those explanations and letting the public know some of the things we go through to deliver projects. A lot of people sometimes send letters to us and why are we moving on these projects fast enough? And the reason why is that they're not always easy to get together not just funding, but there's another aspect and that's gonna be my comment. One thing Steve has done in the Department of Public Works along with the others that work in the public works is deliver projects that are meaningful to Capitola. And as Commissioner Brown indicated, they have great impact and so we haven't just chosen anything. So there's that aspect but the other aspect that I think is really important from the standpoint of the citizens is Steve and his staff have coordinated with the public. We've had many public means, I've gone to many of them. And so when we do projects, we do have good communication with the public trying to understand how it affect them. And often there's a lot of input that helps us improve the project. I think this is something that's pretty common in Santa Cruz. This is a county that does interact with the public. The public expects it but I think Steve in particular has been very, I wouldn't say forceful but definitely very consistent in making sure these things roll out with public input. And thank you very much Steve and also for your staff, Kailash who lives just up the street from me. And we're part of a system or a group that's providing service for Capitola and I appreciate your efforts in helping that happen. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Koenig. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Mr. Jesper. I'm really excited to hear about all these projects. At Claire Street, I've heard walked a lot in that area and it's been extremely dangerous and it's exciting that it's finally gonna get some improvements as Commissioner Christian Brown said to access the new library. I'm also excited to hear about the art crosswalk there. I've been talking to our public works department to see how we could get some of those going for a while now. So I might be connecting them County DPW staff with you, Mr. Jesper to see just how you approach the safety elements of that. Question for you on the light timing project on 41st that is, as you said, has been long awaited too. I hear complaints about that all the time. It'll be much, much needed relief. What can we expect as far as timing to actually synchronize the city lights, the county lights and then the Caltrans lights in between, I've been talking about a month. No, I think, well, the Caltrans signals should be tied in with the capital signals within three to four weeks. Like I said, they have to collect data for a couple of weeks, which I think is just starting now and then they implement the system. We're talking with the county, we're trying to find out when that's to do that. I think we both want to get a little comfort with our existing systems before we start trying to get the two together. But certainly, probably I'd say six months for now we'll start seriously looking at trying to tie those two together. They're all the same vendor who puts in the controller so we know that they can talk with each other. And so I'll be a goal to try and complete probably within the next year. Okay, so sometime within the next six months to a year we'll finally get the holy grail of all different jurisdictions talking together. That'd be great. And then one more question for you on the 41st Ave and Capitola Road intersection. You mentioned some pedestrian improvements. Certainly just the resurfacing will be an improvement for bikes and pedestrians back through there all the time. And it is pretty gnarly right now some of the divots in the road. So the resurfacing itself will be an improvement. I'm wondering what else you have in mind. I mean, what you're just talking about more visible crosswalks, better, you know, their signals for bikes and pedestrians. What else are you looking at? So yeah, it's improving the riding surface. That's very the biggest improvement. We will be putting in new crosswalks and probably a big part as far as a bicycle is concerned is the, it's actually a result of the signal timing project is we now have video detection at all of the intersections on 41st Avenue. Previously, our bike detection was limited at those intersections, the video detection will pick up bicycles. And then along Capitola Road, which is next to that project, we will look at improving maybe putting green bike lanes, the green highlighting at that intersection to help identify and highlight where the bikes are supposed to be and highlight their visibility to the cars. Awesome, can't wait to see it done. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, I see one hand up in the other panel let's see a panelist and an attendee. So we go back to panelists. I has his hand up actually. Oh, Jacques's hand is still up. Did you wanna make another comment, Jacques? Commissioner Bertrand? No, okay. So it looks like from our attendees. I think I wanted to make a comment and his hand is up, Sandy. Oh, sorry. Go ahead with the public first. I should go. Please. Okay, I'll go first then. I just wanted to thank Director Jasberg for his wonderful presentation today. This may be the last time we see Steve as a full commission in this capacity. Steve is retiring at the end of the year. So I just wanted to congratulate Steve on his retirement. It's been a wonderful career and he's done a great service for the community. Thank you. Absolutely. And really appreciate your responsiveness to the community and to the public which Commissioner Bertrand mentioned, but I've also heard wonderful things about your work. We'll take it out now to the public. I see Mr. St, you have your hand up. I'll call on you. Thank you, Chair Brown. And thank you, Mr. Jasper, for the wonderful presentation. I presently live in Aptos now, but I lived in Calif, Capitola for years and it's really one of my favorite places in the Santa Cruz County. Just two quick questions. Are there any future plans for traffic calming and bike lanes on 41st Avenue? And are you possibly considering decreasing the speed limit on 41st? People drive awfully fast going up and down 41st Avenue. My second question, will you be coordinating traffic flow in pedestrian safety with the future Capitola Mall Housing Project? I'm not sure if that's still on the agenda. And possibly try to make that a more walkable community around the mall area. Thank you. And congratulations on your retirement. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Bike traffic on 41st and issues there. As we do our improvement projects on 41st Avenue, certainly we're addressing intersections at this point. We will be making improvements as best we can along 41st. It's a difficult road, it's probably the busiest surface street in Capitola and in the county, so it's a difficult one. But we will be looking at that. We do have a long range project out a couple of years looking at 41st from, excuse me, from highway one to Clear Street, and certainly we'll be looking at improving the bike corridors there. Regarding the mall development, mainly due to the COVID pandemic that's been put on hold, we're not hearing a lot from the developer now. But when we were active, we were certainly trying to make that and activate that as a more pedestrian friendly area, including bike facilities. We're trying to put a bike route through the mall that would feed off of 38th Avenue and go up to Rose Road. We feel that would be a great and better alternative than riding bikes on 41st Avenue at this point. So we're working on that. So we are working on those. There's nothing big planned right now. We are doing a bike traffic calming study on Park Avenue right now, which has actually completed some preliminary designs, we'll be reviewing those and only workshops on those soon. I know that's another big East West corridor where a lot of bikes run. So just on a, just thank you to Guy for the encouragement on retirement. I'm not retiring at the end of the year, I'm actually retiring at the end of this month. So thank you, commission, for all your support. We have one more speaker in our attendees list, Beverly from EVACCC, the Electric Vehicle Association, I believe, and you'll have two minutes. Thank you, I didn't know that I had two minutes. I cannot see it anywhere on any screen. So yes, Beverly Day Show Electric Vehicle Association, Central Coast Chapter. Thank you, thank you, thank you for that improvement. As soon as I saw the Capitola was going to be presenting today, I was going to ask that question, when will you be synchronizing the lights on 41st? So that is a fantastic legacy for you to leave. People will love you for this, if nothing else. I don't know what your other accomplishments because I haven't been coming to meetings. But my question is, so who is responsible for handling other streets in the county to do the same thing, to synchronize the traffic signals? I've been needing to go to Watsonville recently for a lot of things, and I, it's maybe I get through one, maybe I get through two lights, but all the way from the freeway, all the way through Main Street, I'm hitting every light and it's very frustrating. So who handles that? And commissioner Rodkin, I was not saying to get more e-buses, I realized how expensive they are. And there are a lot of funds right now for that, but you're right. So the buses are at night when I'm seeing them with only a couple of passengers coming back from UCSC. So just clearing that one up. Thank you all. Thank you. So we did have a question there. I'm gonna, and we do have other folks who want to weigh in from the public. So if we could, I'm not sure who would answer that question. It's related to this item, but if you like to answer in terms of who is responsible for an outside of your jurisdiction. So it's a jurisdictional basis. I mean, if the signals are in Watsonville, it'd be the city of Watsonville. They're in the unincorporated county, be the county of Santa Cruz Public Works. If they're tied to the freeways, most likely Cal Trans is involved. So the signals are maintained by the jurisdiction with when they are within. Thank you with coordination there across the jurisdictions as we heard. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lonnie Faulkner from Equity Transits. Hi, thank you, Mr. Jesberg for all your work. It's just amazing to know that we'll be able to ride bikes safely down in that area, especially Long Clarris toward Warf Road. Great work with the traffic signal timing. And just want to say a general comment, which is as we look toward doing more traffic signal timing coordination, please do keep in mind what Michael St refer to, which is the traffic calming. We have such an aggressive just in the last year, the drivers and the level of aggressiveness has ramped up tremendously with huge trucks often rumbling down these roads at paces, which is very dangerous. So just please keep in mind, whatever project we do take on it for improving the access to also improve calming measures to keep traffic at a safe pace for our bicyclists and pedestrians. Thank you. You know, we are, and that was a big part of our Clare Street project is providing those buffered lanes that we're also putting in the race crosswalks to slow the traffic down. So we do keep that in mind as we move forward with our projects. All right, thank you so much for the presentation, all of your wonderful work. And moving forward to MovingCon 41st Avenue and the bike improvements as well. I think we are now ready to move on to our next item, which is Item 22, the Highway 9 Boulder Creek Complete Streets Improvement Federal Grant Opportunities Update. We have Brianna Goodman here to give us a report. Thank you, good morning, commissioners. Brianna Goodman of your staff. And today I'll be presenting an update on all the good work we've been doing in the Highway 9 Complete Streets Corridor Program, as well as some grant opportunities that are coming our way. I have slides. Oh, they're over there. Sorry, still knew what this used to zoom. So this map shows some of the work that we've been doing since the Highway 9 Complete Streets Corridor Plan was completed in 2019. First in the yellow, you will see the full Highway 9 Complete Streets Corridor Plan project area. And we just very recently completed the project initiation document for that. That is a Caltrans required document that defines the project on Caltrans state routes, analyzes existing safety conditions and environmental concerns, as well as provides high level cost estimates and schedules. So that's now completed and we will be able to start prioritizing and moving forward with many more exciting projects in this route. In the orange, you will see the Fulton CAPM preventative maintenance paving project. That's a project that was instigated and is funded by Caltrans. And so they will be repaving Highway 9 from the Highway 1 intersection up to El Sollo Heights Drive in Fulton. And Caltrans is graciously asking RTC coming to us about what complete streets elements the public would like to see in Fulton. And so they are putting in that project for us. Most of the improvements that were identified in the SCV plan for Fulton, that includes sidewalks from Graham Hill Road to Laurel Drive, crosswalk enhancements, bike lanes, a center turn lane, center median islands, and several multimodal improvements at the Graham Hill Highway 9 intersection. Third, you will see in the red that is the Caltrans instigated and funded safety project. That is between Graham Hill Road and the SLB schools complex. And that will be providing pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in between Fulton and the schools that has been a project that the community has been asking for for a very long time. And you'll see, sorry, I missed it. The construction is due to begin in 2027 for the CAPM project and for the safety project in 2024. So these are coming down the pipeline from Caltrans and are in environmental phase now. And last you see in the Peach, that is the SLB schools complex circulation and access study, which is ongoing. We are working with our consultant Mark Thomas to evaluate solutions for congestion and multimodal access to the SLB schools complex. So that does include bicycle and pedestrian access, both tying into the Caltrans safety project and going up to the Glen Arbor neighborhood north of the schools, which will give students much greater opportunity to get to the schools safely by foot or by bike. And so moving beyond these four projects, if they could have the next slide, please. Based on the analysis and prioritization of the SLB plan and work we have done taking a look at crash data as a result of the complete streets pit, the next priority project in the SLB plan we are looking to fund is Boulder Creek. Boulder Creek has high foot traffic with the newly reopened Big Basin State Park, a lot of tourism in Boulder Creek. It's also just really cute downtown. People love going down there and shopping and spending time. It also has a really high rate of collisions, both of autos and of bicycles and pedestrians that I'll show in a moment. There are infrastructure gaps in the town. There's few blocks of aging sidewalks that are no longer up to date and beyond the couple of blocks right in the center of town, folks are walking in the highway to get where they need to go. There are fewer right-of-way constraints in Boulder Creek. Also, that's an opportunity for us. There are some, as you know, if we've gone up Highway 9, there's some really constrained areas with cliffs and redwoods super close to the right-of-way. And so we look at Boulder Creek as an opportunity to get these projects funded and constructed quickly and for less money than some of the other locations in Highway 9 where we will be dealing with serious constraints. And last but certainly not least, we do have very high community support for this project, myself and other members of the SLB program team have been working extensively with the public in Boulder Creek and with Bruce McPherson's office to get this project going. The Boulder Creek Business Association in particular has really been, we've gotten very close over the years about how the great the need is for this project for improving safety for pedestrians. So people feel comfortable accessing the shops in Boulder Creek. Next slide. So here's just a couple of examples. We went up to Boulder Creek a couple of days ago and took some photos of the current existing conditions. The top left, you'll see an example of a long crossing distance with lanes of parking, center turn lane and aging pavement and disappearing paint for that sidewalk. And so these, sorry, crosswalk, these crosswalks would have curb extensions to shorten the crossing distance and also narrow the right-of-way visually for drivers to help with speeding issues. Other pictures here, you see that there are no bike lanes. There are many locations where there are no sidewalks and pedestrians are walking in the road. Where there are sidewalks, there are many locations where they are not ADA compliant. And while we do have, I believe, five bus stops in the project area, the amenities are aging. And this is a photo on the bottom right is the stop with the most amenities. It does have a shelter. It is the only one, but you will see that the bike racks definitely need to be updated. There are no garbage cans, very little other facilities in Boulder Creek besides that one shelter. Next slide, please. So this is an example of some of the analysis that we did looking at where we should go after the Greater Felden area in the schools. And you could see lit up like a Christmas tree there at the top is Boulder Creek in yellow. That is the combined bicycle and pedestrian crashes on Highway 9 between and Highway 236 between 2011 and 2021. So we do see a clear pattern of concentrated crashes in the downtown core of Boulder Creek. Next slide, please. We're looking at applying to two different grants. They're doing a couple of weeks, we've been working diligently on completing the application packages and come to you today for your support in both submitting them and tentatively funding the match that is required. So today we're asking for the higher amount for the Safe Streets for All as it is a 20% match. So those are the numbers you will be seeing in your staff report. But there's also a second we'll be applying for as well. So wish us luck. Next slide, please. And sorry, I should have added one more detail there. These are federal grants and we have been working in partnership with Caltrans through the grant application process. And Caltrans is going to take on implementation. If we win this money, we will be acting in an advisory role and Caltrans will be doing all of the pre-construction right of way and construction on our facility, which will really help cut costs and keep us in timeline. So thank you, Caltrans for your partnership. If you take a look at this slide, we've got our existing facilities right now on the left. The orange is where the existing sidewalks are just in the three central blocks of downtown. And then on the right, you'll see the expanded plan which does include bike lanes in green, a great expansion of the sidewalks in orange, several blocks in all directions connecting to Boulder Creek Library, connecting to Bear Creek Road and connecting down to the end of the commercial corridor at the fosters freeze at Mountain Street and to more of the transit stops. Those red dots are center meeting islands that will help both with the visual appeal of Boulder Creek and also to discourage speeding and also discourage some parking of freight vehicles that's been happening illegally that the business community is concerned is unsafe because you can't see around the trucks when they are parked. Next slide, please. This is just a detail of some of those intersections. But you will see that we are adding some new crosswalks when there are only two or three crosswalks in an intersection that will now be complete crosswalk facilities along with those curb extensions I mentioned. And we are looking at analyzing a new stop sign on the intersection of Bear Creek Road, both to allow all of the commute traffic that comes down Bear Creek Road, a greater opportunity to merge onto Highway 9 as well as slowing folks down as they come southbound on Highway 9. There's a lot of excess speeding coming down out of the rural areas north of Boulder Creek as they approach town. It's actually one of the areas we had a fatality recently and walking on the side of the road with no sidewalks was hit by a southbound driver exactly in this location. So we will be working to make sure that that won't be happening again soon. Next slide, please. So we come here today to ask your approval for submission of these grants and a potential match of 2.4 million for an 11.8 million dollar total project. Keep in mind that does cover all pre-construction right-of-way, et cetera, from the PID process onwards. We will be bringing the full five-year plan for Highway 9 now that the PID is done and signed to you guys this fall for the five-year plan and we'll get more detail on exactly how the numbers crunched then for the Highway 9 program moving forward through the lifetime of Measure D. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Goodman. I'll look to the commission for questions and comments. Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair. It's been 10 years almost since Supervisor McPherson came into local office and when he went into local office, one of the first things he did was hosted numerous community meetings in St. Lawrence Valley and always at rows at the top where the bicycle and pedestrian and safety improvements as well as a traffic congestion issues along Highway 9 because after all, it is the main street for all these little towns, not just a highway. So it has unique challenges as pointed out by my staff. And with all of that being the top priorities for the communities, which had been well known for many years and with the support of this commission and George Dunderer, the previous director and Caltrans, this corridor plan became a reality. And now we're actually getting down to projects. It's just really exciting. It takes a long time to do all transportation projects, but this was the whole point of that corridor plan and Measure D is to leverage and to get some of these projects using Measure D funding for local matching, getting some of these projects done to really make improvements. And Caltrans has done a great job over the decades in maintaining this highway but actual improvements to get to increase safety, to get people across the highway, to close, slow the traffic down, to mitigate some of the congestion of the combined school campus, which is really awful and really difficult. These are all things that needed to be worked on in a very super path. And I really want to thank you, Brianna and Guy and your staff and Sarah for working on it and Caltrans for their partnership. I really know you have a lot of passion for this project or all these series of projects. And I know that way beyond the term of the current Fifth District Supervisor and future Fifth District Supervisors as you always move forward with these projects that they're gonna get done. And I finally have confidence that they're gonna get done because of your support. So I just want to thank you and I'd like to move the staff recommendation. Second. So just before we take motions and I'm happy to reserve those for just a moment. I do need to see if the public, if there's anybody from the public who would like to speak to us on the item, but I'll hold those to be submitted in just a moment. And I do not see any hands up. So if there are no other comments from commissioners then I think we can go ahead and take the motion and the second. I move the staff recommendation. Second. All right. There are any other comments? I'll just take a moment to say in addition to my appreciation for our staff and all of the people who have put so much effort into this planning process to get us to this point, want to thank Supervisor McPherson for his advocacy and leadership. I know he's very passionate about it as are you. And I just think that the role that your office has played in making this happen has been really fundamental and I appreciate that too. So with that, we'll call for a roll call vote. Commissioner Bertrand. I approve. Commissioner Sandy Brown. I. Commissioner Randy Johnson. I. Commissioner Alternate Hearst. I. Commissioner Alternate Hernandez. I. Commissioner Alternate Schifrin. I. Commissioner Alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. I. Commissioner Alternate Virginia Johnson. I. Commissioner Christian Brown. I. Commissioner Parker. Yes. And Commissioner Rothken. I. That passes unanimously. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you. Our next item is item 23, the Highway 141st Avenue to Soquel Drive, Ox Lane's and Bus on Shoulder Project Amendments. And we have Sarah Christensen, our senior transportation planner to give us an update. Thank you, Chair Brown. Senior transportation engineer. Engineer. It's okay. I'm sorry, I was reading engineer as planner was going through my head. Engineer, very important. Holy fine. Okay. I have a PowerPoint. Okay, it's up. I'm Sarah Christensen of your staff and I'm here to recommend an amendment to the construction cooperative agreement with Caltrans and to program additional funds to the project. And just to note, there's a replacement page. Attachment two was replaced. We had a couple of minor updates made to the cooperative agreement. Next slide, please. So we have quite a robust and busy program of projects. We actually have all three projects. Thank you. Can you hear me better now? Okay. All three projects had an item on this agenda. Can you click? Yes, and yeah, there's animation. I'm trying to make it interesting here. So the phase one project is for item 23 and this project proposes auxiliary lanes in a bus on shoulder facility between 41st and SoCal. There's also a bicycle pedestrian over crossing in Chanticleer Avenue and construction is scheduled to begin this year, which is great. Next, item 23. Okay, next, the second project. You can click it one more time, Yasenia. Thank you. The second project was also on the agenda. It was on the consent agenda for item seven, which was a amendment to the consultant contract and a cooperative agreement with Caltrans for construction of this project. That means we are wrapping up the final design of this project and getting ready to hand the reins over to Caltrans as the implementing agency for construction of this project, which is scheduled to begin next year. This project will extend that auxiliary lane and bus on shoulder facility and additional three miles between the Bay Porter interchange and the State Park Drive interchange. It includes replacement of the Capitola Avenue over crossing and that over crossing will be improved with bicycle and pedestrian facilities of wider sidewalk and bike lanes. And it also includes a new bicycle pedestrian over crossing at Marvis to Drive. Next, and lastly, the next item after this item, item 24 is to give an update and ask to begin the design phase of the phase three project, which is currently in the environmental phase and it will complete the seven and a half mile auxiliary lane and bus on shoulder facility. And this project also includes segment 12 of the Coastal Rail Trail, one and a quarter mile long multi-use trail along the Santa Cruz Branch Railway. So that's just a really general program update of all the projects that are going on. Next slide, please. So back to the phase one project, which is 41st Soquel. This project has been under development for many years. The RTC led the pre-construction phases. So we were in the lead for the environmental and final design phases. And then we entered into a cooperative agreement with Caltrans for Caltrans to implement the construction component of the project. We're also the sponsor agency for this project. We've invested local funds and pursued competitive grants to fully fund this project. Next slide. So just a little bit more about this project to jog your memory. Auxiliary lanes from Soquel to 41st bus on shoulder facility that will complete all the way from Morrissey to 41st interchanges. Sound wall, one sound wall and a couple of retaining walls and the bicycle pedestrian over crossing at Chanticleer. You could see the alignment on the picture on the right in blue, somewhat of a horseshoe alignment. And then you could see the proposed highway improvements which include shoulder widening on the southbound direction, a slight shift to the median. So the freeway is actually going to be shifting a little bit towards the northbound lanes. An improved median barrier and widening on the outside of the northbound lanes to provide those auxiliary lanes between Soquel and 41st interchanges. Next slide. Construction contract was put out to bid by Caltrans back in June. The bid opening was August 10th. Five bids were received. The low bid from Granite Construction Company was above the engineer's estimate. And the reason for that higher bid is because there was a little bit of a gap in time between the engineer's estimate completion, which was 2021 and the bid opening which was just last month. Also there's been many changes in the market, including increases to labor and material costs and supply chain issues, which resulted in unusually high inflation between 2021 and today. So Caltrans did an analysis of the bids. The bid breakdown for the five bids is included as attachment three. And Caltrans after their analysis recommends awarding the construction contract. However, because the RTC is a sponsor agency, we are responsible for the additional funding to award the construction contract. So Caltrans, next slide please. There's funding available through the state transportation improvement program called G12, it's somewhat of a contingency program. And we were able to secure 870,000 of G12 funds and staff is recommending funding the remaining shortfall with a combination of unspent funds that were previously programmed in prior years as well as additional measure D highway corridors funds. So staff's recommendation is to authorize the executive director to negotiate and execute the amendment to the co-operative agreement with Caltrans and program and budget these funds to allow this project to move into construction. Next slide. And I'm here for questions and discussion. Thank you, Ms. Christensen. Are there questions from the commissioners? Yes, commissioner Johnson. Thank you, chair. What was the 469,000 unspent programs for previously? Is Tracy new on the Zoom? Can she reflect on that? Or Rachel Marconi potentially if she's not available? There she is, thank you. Good morning. The amount of money it was programmed for the highway one for versus SOCal or consultant fees and it wasn't spent and it carried over. And so it wasn't meant for a particular purpose other than for funding the actual project. Thank you. Mr. Koenig. Thank you, chair. No questions. I'm just really looking forward to seeing this project go forward. I can see the traffic back up right here from this particular spot from my office, the sheriff's center every day. And I think it's a testament to the way staff has approached these projects that I know I'm looking forward to the bike and pedestrian overcrossing almost as much as the freeway improvements themselves. And at the county, we've really been planning around expanding the bike lanes out from that area so that we can get more people safely over that overcrossing. We just repaved Thurber Lane and put in more better and more visible bike lanes there and are looking at projects along Chanticlear as well to improve access. Thank you. All right, I'll look to our Zoom attendees and it looks like we do have a couple of hands up in the attendees list. So I will start there. Brian, trail now, you're up. Hey, Sarah, great work. Appreciate the work you're doing. I think they're overworking you, giving you that RFP on the train, just an FYI. I think you are doing great work with this and really appreciate that. And C&I, I think the financial report, I think we shall shortage on RTC staff. So you're really a valuable resource for our community. So I just wanted to say that. We fully support widening the highway because we need that corridor open for big heavy traffic. It's really the solution for our community. We're a big supporter of HOV and toll roads as well to go through there long-term. One of the comments I wanted to make was it's interesting to see that this widening of the highway, when you look at the cost per mile is cheaper than segment seven rail trail, which is a 12 foot wide trail. And what we want to point out is it illustrates the fact that we're spending a lot of money to accommodate this train. And when a highway is cheaper to widen than a trail to build, there's something infrastructurally or structurally within the planning of this organization. That doesn't really make a lot of sense. But anyways, again, Sarah, appreciate your work. You're doing great work. We need that highway widened as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Michael St. Thank you, Chair Brown. I just want to mention something really quickly. We can't see, at least I can in the public, the slides. They're staying on the screen of the speakers. So they're hard to read as well as look at the map. But after that, I just want to comment, as you know, CFST doesn't support the exact ox lanes as you aren't going to use them. We have no issue with the bike and pedestrian bridges. We actually have no issue with some highway widening, but preferably a shoulder on that area for a dedicated bus system. I think lots of millions of dollars will be saved for that project and still give Caltrans and Granite Construction plenty of work. Initially, I hate to disappoint Mr. Koenig as well as Mr. Peoples. And they talk about opening it up and getting rid of this traffic congestion. But since Mr. Koenig is much younger than I am, in the future years to come after the ox lanes are done and there's cars and buses in them, he will again be able to view more traffic. Most commissioners as well as ex-directors realize the ox lanes will fail and it's just only a matter of time. And what I'm going to do is the next agenda item 24, I'm just going to count this as my comments for that as well because it's just another ox lane project. So good luck with everything. You know how CFST feels and I'm going to go on vacation and I'll see you in October. Have a good day. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Sains for your efficiency with comments as well. Our next speaker is Beverly Electric Vehicle Association. Hi, thank you for allowing me to speak again. I was confused. I'm really appreciative of the auxiliary lane between 41st and Soquel happening but what I wasn't able to understand from the map as Michael pointed out, it's difficult to see and I only heard a brief comment. What about from Soquel to Morrissey Boulevard? When I come from downtown, there's a wall right at Morrissey that's backed up from Soquel. It's a wall of traffic. And I'm not a fan of cars but I just, I recognize that people are not getting out of their cars anytime soon. And I want to mention an equity issue that's perhaps not being accounted for and that is people who are able to live and work near each other so that they can ride their bikes have a privilege. People who cannot afford to live in this community have to commute to Watsonville. Those are the people who you're asking to take their extra time to ride a bus and what do they do when they need to drop their child off for childcare or when they need to do a big shop? No. Anyway, I don't, and a bus, excuse me, and a bus on shoulder, it's not a shoulder. We don't have a shoulder. It's building another auxiliary lane. So am I, I'm not hearing. We can hear some talking, I'm not sure what's going on. We can hear you about what you're hearing on. I see them all, I mean I see six. All right, thank you. So when were these highways built? They were not built for the traffic that we have now and people are not giving up their cars anytime soon is why I have worked with the Electric Vehicle Association for the past 15 years promoting electric vehicles so that even if there is traffic when they're sitting on the highway, they're not spewing enormous amounts of emissions every day. So that is my comment, thank you. Thank you. I will now bring it back to the commission for additional comments or questions or a motion. Move the staff recommendation. Second. Okay, in a race to the motion, Commissioner Schifrin made a motion. Seconded by Commissioner Rodkin. I'll catch you next time. That's fine. Quick comment, you've got a comment. Just a quick comment about the increased cost of the project. You know, I make the motion, I support it. But I think this is what we're going to see and only making it because we're going to see it with trail projects as well. And I hope commissioners who have more concerns about the rail component and a trail component will be as understanding of the fact that we're living in a time when costs go up and they may exceed our estimates and there may be change orders and there may be change orders on this project. I won't be surprised that we're on others. And that's just the name of the game. That's what we have to live with. And, you know, I'm happy to support this motion based on that understanding. Thank you. Commissioner Koenig. Thank you, chair. I'll just add some comments, you know, sensitive to the idea that widening doesn't always work. But I think, you know, we're really seeing, especially with the end of the legislative season here in our state government increased push to move towards electric vehicles and reduce the number of cars used. And whether it's going 400% of all vehicles sold in California being electric by 2035 or incentives to move to less than one car per person per household, we have to transform the Highway 1 as a facility to an all-electric zero emission facility with more transit on it as has been discussed before. But we're not going to get rid of it. We can't just let it sit there and break. And I think any investments we make in this corridor, we'll continue to see incredible returns on. I mean, there's 200,000 trips a day on this facility, 200,000 that just doors anything else in our community. And so these basic improvements to the way traffic flows with the auxiliary exit entry lane, improving flow for the bus. This is just one step forward in helping to transform the facility. It's the basic work that we need to do. It's going to make traffic disappear overnight. No, but it is setting the table for this, this transformation over the coming years. Thank you. And so I support the actions. Okay. I do not see any additional hands up. I'll make a quick comment and say, I am going to support the motion. I really want to thank commissioner Schifrin for the comments that he made about the kind of, the trend that we're seeing in cost overruns. They're, this is just the reality that we are in, in our, in our society right now and in our state. And I do hope that the same kind of understanding will be extended in, in other cases. I am my preference is bus on shoulder as some of the members of the public have suggested and have been advocating for that is not the direction of the current commission. And so I'm going to support this today and hope that we can move forward and get the parts of the project that we like. We'll also be coming along with the, with the ox lanes. So with that, I believe we are ready to call it take a vote. Commissioner Bertrand. I approve. Commissioner Sandy Brown. Hi. Commissioner Randy Johnson. Commissioner alternate Hearst. Hi. Commissioner alternate Hernandez. Hi. Commissioner alternate Chiffrin. Hi. Commissioner alternate Quinn. Yes. Commissioner Koenig. Hi. Commissioner alternate Virginia Johnson. Yes. Commissioner. Commissioner Kristen Brown. Hi. Commissioner Parker. Yes. Commissioner Rotkin. Hi. That passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. We will now move on to item 24. And I believe that that's Sarah once again. This is item 24. I'll just read the summary of the item real quick. This is highway one ox lanes and bus on shoulder from state park drive to freedom Boulevard and the coastal rail trail segment 12. A project contract amendment with Mark Thomas and company. Sarah Christian, the senior transportation engineer. Please take it away. Thank you, chair Brown. And just to note, there's a couple of replacement pages for this item. We made a few corrections. And I'm just going to get going because you already gave the intro. Yes. Any of you could go next slide. So just a reminder about the program of projects. Now we're going to talk about the phase three project. This project is between state park drive and freedom Boulevard. I'm sorry. Can I just interrupt you for one moment? I want to respond because there were members of the public who said they were having difficulty seeing the map. And we don't. It's a, it's a delicate dance to try to make the technology work. So if you are having trouble, you can access this and see the map. It doesn't have the interactive features, but you can see this in the agenda materials for today's meeting. If you want to get a clear look at the map. By the way, the maps clear to those of us online. It's for those of you in the room that are having trouble, I think. I think I heard some members of the audience say they were having trouble. So I just wanted to be, but glad to hear that. Okay. Sorry for the interruption. No problem. Okay. This project's in the environmental phase. We are proposing today to get going on the final design phase of this project. This will complete the seven and a half mile auxiliary lane and bus on shoulder. Facility on highway one. Next slide. So. The project proposes auxiliary lanes between freedom Boulevard and Rio del Mar and Rio del Mar. To state park drive interchanges. We began the environmental phase in 2020. And the RTC is the lead for the pre-construction phases of this project. Next slide. I'm just going to highlight some of the project features here. So this is. This project includes segment 12 of the coastal rail trail, one and a quarter miles of the 32 mile coastal rail trail along the branch line. This project will also improve crosswalks in rapid flashing beacons at the five at grade intersections within the project area. It will include two bicycle and pedestrian over crossing bridges over Soquel Drive in Aptos Creek. And then again over Soquel Drive and Valencia Creek. And it will provide. Enhanced connections to Aptos park. Connections to Aptos village. See cliff and Rio del Mar neighborhoods. Next slide. The highway bit of the project includes two more sets of auxiliary lanes on a state park to freedom. Widening of the highway one bridge over Aptos Creek. There will be sound walls and retaining walls. The bus on shoulder facility will be extended all the way to complete the seven and a half mile facility. The north and south Aptos railroad underpasses will be replaced and the two there will be two new bicycle and pedestrian over crossing bridges over highway one. So there's many bridges as part of this project, two over highway one, two over Soquel Drive. It's going to provide a really great dedicated facility for bicycles and pedestrians. Next slide. Just want to briefly touch on the Watsonville, the Santa Cruz multimodal corridor program. This program of projects prioritizes innovative improvements along three major routes through Santa Cruz County, including highway one, the Soquel Drive and Freedom Boulevard corridor and the Santa Cruz branch rail corridor. The delivery strategy for this program includes the use of measure D and other local funding sources to advance projects to construction ready and then pursue competitive grant funds. The main one that we're pursuing for this particular project is the Senate bill one solutions to congested corridors and local partnership program. There's about $700 million dollars available statewide and staff is currently preparing grant applications in partnership with Caltrans, the County of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Metro. A major part of our delivery strategy is to advance projects to get them construction ready because that makes us more competitive to get the funding. Next slide. Here's a project schedule. We began environmental in 2020. We are scheduled to release the draft environmental impact report environmental assessment document this fall. That's the first star on the milestone star shown on the schedule. Another milestone we'd like to highlight is when we'll find out whether we're successful or not with the Senate bill one cycle three funding award. That's the second milestone you'll see and we expect that in June of 2023. We're proposing to begin the final design phase now and you'll see there's a short overlap between the environmental phase and the final design phase. That's about six to eight months. So we're proposing to get started to save six to eight months on the overall schedule. That's about six to eight months. That's about six to eight months. By doing final design concurrently with the remaining environmental work. This will make our project more competitive. Next slide. And this is the last one. So staff is recommending the RTC authorized amendment one to the contract with Mark Thomas. For the plan specifications and estimates or final design requirements. We're going to look between State Park Drive and Freedom Boulevard, which includes segment 12 of the coastal rail trail. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you. All right. Commissioner Koenig. Thank you for the presentation. Sarah and some questions for you. And so the estimated cost of this proposal to increase the scope of services is nine point nine nine point nine. I'm curious approximately how much of that ten ten million dollars is for the highway project versus the rail and trail project. So we consider it one single project. And I've. I've thought about this of a cost split. It would be really difficult to do so because it's really one package of plans specifications and cost split. But I'd say maybe a. 60 40 split. Probably 60 highway 40 trail. Okay, okay. And you say you look at them at one as one project. I mean, is there any way that we could separate this out to consider these separately? I mean, just we are, as you mentioned, not not done with the EIR for segment 12. And then also critically are awaiting to hear back from the state from our grant applications to the active transportation program for segments. Eight through 11 and that'll be significant because we'll really understand whether we get 100% of the funny we asked for or 50% or or nothing. Who knows. But it really gives us a sense of how much working money we're working with, particularly for the trail. So is there any possibility of revisiting the segments? Is there a possibility to separate these out and make sure that we have that information? Or the engineering work relevant to the trail. In a couple months. Once we have that information. If. I would say, you know, the early parts of the final design phase is really. Your survey, your geotechnical, it's gathering of information that's going to help lead to your design. And so. I wouldn't recommend. Doing anything different. If there's new information that comes out that. Changes the project. Most likely we would be coming back to the commission. For discussion. But. We're confident in getting this going now. If you'd like, we could provide. A more detailed breakdown between the highway work and the trail work. We did not recommend separating them into two projects because. It's. Really a strategic. Way that we have packaged our projects into a comprehensive multimodal projects. So. If you'd like, we could split, we could provide the. Numbers to split between highway and trail. But we don't recommend doing anything kind of separating them in any way at this time. Okay. And I understand we could always come back and revise the contract. But I'm not sure the commission understands. Just the size of the decision. We're kind of waiting in here first with the engineering work. But when you presented, I think it was back in May. On really. The alternatives for this project was basically. Somewhere between a 60 and a hundred million dollar difference. When it comes to constructing the ultimate trail and. I mean, that's. 10% of measure D. We're talking about replacing buses earlier 60 million dollars that would. Be move into the project. And we're talking about the cost of the project. And the cost of the project is probably more than 60 million dollars. With all electric vehicles are close to it. So. This is a. Pretty probably one of the most serious decisions ultimately that were that we're moving into here, as we consider. This package of projects. I mean, did I get that right at 60 to a hundred million dollars as far as. The difference in costs. I would say closer to 60, but it was. I think that was a good one. Thank you. Hey, I have a cue going here. I've got you. Commissioner Quinn, you're next. And then commissioner Rockin. My question is an easy one for Sarah. You refer to that bridge is the Aftos strangler. A couple of meetings ago. Are we confident that that. Traffic will be able to flow across it during the expansion. Process or is it going to all be shunted over on this project? That question. The stage construction for the project. This will all get more detailed and. Design during the final design phase. But we don't anticipate highway one getting. Shut down with the exception of maybe. Night closures. But we're we're anticipating keeping all four lanes of highway one open. To an each direction. Unless it was at night. Even at night though, if you consider emergency vehicles. That's a significant detour adding, you know, I would guess five to 10 minutes. To the, to the traffic in an emergency. Correct. I'm very familiar with that detour because we had to shut down the freeway. For a recent storm damage repair. And. We do take that into consideration and there will be sufficient signage and notification in advance. But we're going to dive into those details as part of this. Final design of this project. To hopefully limit the amount of disruption. Thank you. So if I can expand a little bit on. How Caltrans does their traffic management. During construction and how they deal with emergency vehicles. You know, based on the volumes of traffic on highway one, we just can't close it during the daytime. So. The closures. Full closures. Well, likely be either northbound or southbound. Depending on. Which side they're working on. And that's to lift the false work beams across the highway. We don't want to do that under live traffic. Though in those instances, traffic will be detoured on to so-called drive. And it will only be for a few days where that takes place. But we do. Caltrans does. Work with emergency vehicle emergency responders. And does have radio contact with them. So if there is an emergency, there is a way to get. And an emergency vehicle through without having to take the detour. All right. Commissioner Rock and you're up. Yes, thank you. The. Sorry. The original report on this item was a little confusing. I want to thank staff for the. Reissue and sort of the issuance of a new. A corrected. Report to this item. I just want to make sure that I understand what's being proposed. The. My understanding. At least the confusion was some people believe that incorrectly. That the staff was saying that we're going to put off the. The. Fixing is these. Railroad bridges across the highway one. To a later. Time in which of course would put off the trail. And the rail planning and so forth on that basis. My understanding now is that we've gone back to the. Original plan, which is to make this part of the overall project for the highway and for the rail trail. Improvements. I should be corrected if I don't understand that correctly. I'm what I do want to understand is what. What's the standard of the. Highway one overpasses that were. We're building in other words is this. There was some discussion when we were talking about the interim and ultimate trail of whether this would be simply a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the highway for now and then later. Upgraded whether we would build the abutments to the standard for freight but then. You know later. You're building such a way you wouldn't have to tear the whole thing out. To put the. If it were to come to that a freight bridge or a passenger train bridge over the highway. So I want to understand what in terms of our current thinking what the. What to what level or what standard is the. Or the two railroad bridges being built. In the in the. In the environmental design design and environmental work we're doing currently in this plan. Thank you. Sure. So the current scope of work for the final design includes. Railroad bridges and the trail bridges we received. Direction back in May when we. Came to this commission to program the funds. For the local match. To. Proceed with the ultimate. Design and so we are proceed we are recommending to proceed with that so it includes. Both the rail bridges and the trail bridges. And in terms of design. Standards for the rail bridges in particular. They would be. Design for freight. And you'll see it you know through. Future. Development of the. Passenger rail. Project that freight standards will most likely govern all the bridge designs. Along the corridor. Let me make clear in my question I'm not this is not advocacy for necessarily freight along the entire line but. As to do more of the preservation of our. Eason rights. And concern that if we don't. You know do things that look like at some point you could bring freight back even if you're not going to do it initially. That we might be. Some risk for losing our right of way here. So again I make clear this is not an argument for let's get freight running it up and running on the line. And as our first choice I don't think that is where we're going with this. But thank you. I appreciate your response. Okay. Next up is commissioner Schifrin. Thank you very much. A few comments. Just to first say. Appreciating the work that Steph is doing in this very complicated project. In fact it's really two projects. It's the highway project and then it's the rail trail project. The highway project can't be built without rebuilding the railroad bridges. It's just necessary for that to happen. So somehow they have to be integrated. And it's going to be complex to integrate the trail. And the rail bridges. With the highway project. So it seems to me that the direction that staff is moving. Is a reasonable one. I also wanted to make a point that the funding between these various. Projects. Or the various different projects people would like is not fungible. We can't just take the highway money and put it into buses. Or the railroad money and put it into buses. Or the railroad money and put it into buses. There are different funding sources. And they all have their own complexity. I also wanted to clarify. That while the EIR for segment 12 isn't done. Neither is the EIR for the highway. They're both in process. And so we're going to end up with two highways. Hopefully they're being well coordinated. So that they are in, you know, they are consistent. And I think we're going to be able to do that. And we're going to be able to face a good deal of uncertainty now about what the final project could look like. And as well as how it can be funded. We're only does this contract, as I understand it, is only for designing the project. And given the vote on measure D. The commission needs to support planning a project that will retain the rail option. And we're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able for both the separated trail and rail bridges and the highway. Right now, I, I think. Your point about the importance of having an integrated approach really makes sense. It's probably going to be the least. Not cheap as none of this is, but probably less expensive than trying to do it other ways. So that's a, that's a good point. But I think we're going to be able to do that. And that's just to the point where we'll see what our funding is available for construction. And we'll be, then the commission will be able to make decisions on what project that wants to be wants to move forward with, or can move forward with, which I think is going to be more of the question. So thank you. You. Hey, commissioner Johnson, you're next. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making the comments and asking the questions that I was about to ask. So thanks. I don't have to do those and repeat them. But I am concerned about costs. Which speaks to the ultimate feasibility of any of these very expensive projects. And to commissioner County's points. I'm less concerned about separating out what parts of trail. It's parts of highway. I understand the integration and the complexities. But I think that's the ultimate cost for each option. So. As these current proposals of the CTC are moving forward, these current grant proposals for. Ultimate and interim trail. Move forward. We're going to have a decision on that in October. That's great. How does that feed in? It sort of. Gives a litmus test to how the CTC is looking at. How are our community is approaching one option over the next year? I think it's a feasible funding. What are we going to be faced with with ultimate versus interim trail? But I do think it's really. Very wise to plan for and design for. The bigger thing here for the railroad bridges, et cetera. And I understand that that's separate from construction. Which is the big ticket item. And I think that's a good point. I think that the understanding of the costs. Need to be very clear. With each of the options. Understanding they can't be really separated out completely. But there needs to be clarity for commissioners. As well as community. Because to commissioner. 10% of measure D is a lot of money. Compared to all the other needs in our community. And it doesn't mean we wouldn't do it. It just means we need to understand it really clearly. And. All the other clarifying questions and comments. And I'm going to support staff recommendation. Thank you. All right. Commissioner Hernandez, I see your hand up. You're next. Yes, thank you. Well, first of all, I was glad to hear that the RTC updated the agenda on item 24. And you know, I think to some of the comments, I think it's important that we do keep this project together. With the rail and trail and the entire process and, but it is. Good to clarify. Or to illustrate the cost in the whole process. But I think, you know, with current funding trends, I think it's going to favor. Multi-modal projects. And that's why it's important to keep it all together. And not separate them as standalone projects, because that'll really limit our chances of getting any funding for standalone trail by itself or rail. Or, you know, the auxiliary lanes. So I think it's smart to the RTC keeps it keeps it together. And you know, thank you. Thank you for all the work that you guys are doing. And I'm, you know, willing to move forward with this. Thank you. Hey, I'll now take it out to the public for comments. Brian trail now. Hey, thanks. Thanks, Sarah for your great work. It's Brian. Hey, you don't have the design for freight to preserve the corridor. Let's keep that straight as a transportation resource. The way we preserve the corridor is we rail bank it. So going off and doing a design for freight. So remember the problem with adding cost when you're trying to preserve it for a freight train or a future rail adds significant costs because you essentially have to keep the rail corridor flat over the highway. So that requires you prior to Sarah tell me they can do more compressed road work compressing. You had to lower the highway to get it under the railroad. Right. So you're designing for a freight that will never be there. And then secondly, I don't understand why you're not looking at the codes. You know, if I was building a house, I would look at the codes of what I can build on my property. You guys are not looking at the codes in the California coastal commission. The state of California has specific codes that say you they will not fund a fixed rail system that's 20 feet from the ocean. You're never going to get money for a fixed rail system right next to the ocean. San Diego is moving Amtrak. They're spending 300 million just for the planning and design to move Amtrak away from the coast. So for our community to just be designing an elaborate expensive. Railroad. Highway widening to accommodate a future train. You're adding cost to our community. And as a supervisor code pointed out, that's not smart way of planning. And that's really your role. So I just don't understand why you're not looking at the codes and you're not following it. So my concern is that you're building four trestles over the highway when one would do for a pedestrian and pathway. Anyway, so I do appreciate it. We do support moving forward with the design, but designing it for a future train, a freight train is very poor public policy and leadership. So I encourage you to step back and say, why are we spending money on an elaborate design? Brian never materialize. Thank you. Thank you. Just, just wanted to let you know your time was. Thank you. Barry. Actually, we have a member of the. Excuse me. Audience who is here to speak on this issue. And so I'm going to go out to our in person speakers and call on Sally Arnold. Thank you. And I just wanted to thank the commission for. Making sure that this highway widening projects doesn't threaten either the rail or the trail project and that, you know, it is considered as a whole piece. And for the people who are interested in separating out costs, perhaps they would like to know how much the highway widening in this location is adding to the cost of the rail and trail project. Those railroad bridges would not have to be replaced except for the highway widening. You know, friends of the rail and trails not taking a position on the highway widening, but if we're going to talk about what's adding additional cost to a project, that would only be a fair way to look at it as well. But mostly I just wanted to thank the staff for making sure that the rail and trail project is not in any way threatened by the highway widening project. And thank you for making sure it's all included. Thank you. Okay. We will now go back to our virtual list and our next speaker there is Barry Scott. Well, thank you, chair. And I want to thank commissioner Rockin for his comments on the matter of the freight. It's freight capability that we want to retain. And that's consistent with our obligations and it, and it may well be important for things like natural disaster response and recovery. But you know, it's the great easement that protects our entire corridor from being lost. And it's well worth the effort as Sally points out. It's the highway widening that creates the need for new expensive rail bridges. And so I'm just really encouraged by this, this agenda item for the folks who are concerned about wider highway, you know, highway highway, additional highway lanes. Remember, if we're, if we put our effort into it, those, those lanes could become transit only lanes. And I completely embraced this mixed project that does a little bit of everything. It's really shows vision on the part of the staff and the commission because all the four modes of transportation are addressed here trail, public transit and, you know, auxiliary lanes for hopefully electric vehicles in the future, although I really am a fan of transit. It shows integrity on behalf of the executive director and the staff that you all are, are taking seriously the, you know, 2016 measure D that, that provides fundings for all of these things, including rail line maintenance, the trail, my goodness, 25% of that transportation tax, going to rail and trail alone, rail maintenance and building this fabulous trail. So I hope that we see a unanimous vote supporting item 24. And I just, again, I thank the staff and the executive director for pulling this thing together today. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Our next speaker is Matt Farrell. Welcome. Thank you very much. I just would like to speak in favor of the staff recommendation. In the words of commission alternate low hearst, do it right the first time. Thank you. Right. Thank you, Mr. Farrell. Our next speaker is Mark. Good morning, chair Brown, commissioners and commissioner alternates. My name is Mark. My name is Mark Farrell. I'm the chairman of the CD Miller. And today I'm speaking to you as a board member of the Santa Cruz County friends of the rail and trail, commonly known as Fort. First of all, Fort wishes to thank the RTC staff and the selected consultant Mark Thomas and company for putting together a comprehensive scope of services on a very complicated project that includes the public transportation and transportation. Fort is pleased to see that segment 12 of the coastal rail trail will be completed and two new rail bridges over highway one are both an integral part of this project. Connecting our entire county together with a modern rail and trail facility has been Fort's mission for the last 20 years. And we are delighted to see the pace of progress accelerating. Speaking now on behalf of myself only and in my capacity as a professional civil engineer with more than three decades of experience. I have one suggestion for the design team. Given that combining the rail bridges with the trail bridges over highway one would result in a significant reduction of construction cost, a reduction of the materials required for construction and greatly speed the time required for construction. If a combined rail with trail bridge facility is not already part of the thinking. I trust the design team will consider such a combined facility going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker and this is our last speaker who has a hand up so if you're interested in speaking please do raise your hand now. Otherwise this will be our last speaker. Call now on Beverly to show. Thank you. I wasn't seeing the place to unmute it wasn't coming. Thank you. I wanted to go back and ask the question again because I didn't get the answer. What is happening on the highway between on highway one between I'm sorry I'm driving now between Soquel and Morrissey Boulevard. I didn't get the answer to that is that going to be left in that same condition or is there going to be an auxiliary lane there and I support having these across the highway bridges. I think it's a great idea. Yes, we who drive electric vehicles also many of us ride bicycles when we can and I think it's a great idea to support that. Thank you for all of your work. Thank you. So it I missed that question on the last round and I would ask if there is a response from staff about the portion that where we already do have an ox lane there Morrissey to Soquel. Yes, you're right. There is a backup that is experienced because that's where the auxiliary lane ends and so with the three projects that are underway little by little there will be relief and actually I would just note that this project and the southern most project is although it is the most expensive it is actually the most beneficial from a highway operational standpoint. It is the strangler, if you will. So with the high price tag comes great benefit. So I would just say that over the years as we construct these auxiliary lanes the the traffic is going to be greatly improved. So if I can elaborate a little bit on that to Sarah's correct the auxiliary lane between Morrissey and Soquel Drive was completed several years ago as part of the Proposition 1B program and if you're traveling in the southbound direction you see the backup that the member of the public was speaking of and that's pretty common in a bottleneck sort of situation when you're going from 17 you come off there's four lanes one lane merges in and you have three lanes one is the ox lane and then it goes down to two lanes if you're actually traveling in the northbound direction you see relief as you're traveling from Watsonville you're backed up all the way to Mar Monte but as you move forward and you pass 41st and Soquel it actually opens up and that's the opening up of the bottleneck so you're going to see that continue as Sarah articulated as the bottleneck forward or to the south you'll see more opening up if you're traveling northbound into Santa Cruz a little bit sooner you'll see the backup move from Soquel more over to 41st and then the you don't really fix a highway and the bottleneck problem until you clear all of the bottlenecks and that's why the the Alpdoss Stringler project from State Park to Freedom will provide the most relief in our traffic studies to show that it's not going to be the same as a through lane where you are actually increasing the capacity these are auxiliary lanes so the relief is going to be tempered not as much as you would see but it also has the added benefit of hopefully keeping traffic on the highway and addressing the comments that we heard earlier today from the public you know the irate drivers that are driving through on our local roads will hopefully take the freeway and stay on the freeway and make our local streets safer for bikes and pedestrians so that's what we're going to do today. Thank you for that thorough response and Oxlames 101 really appreciate it it looks like we do have one more member of the public who would like to speak so I'll call on Lonnie Faulkner from Equity Transit. Hi, thank you Commissioner Brown and commissioners we want to support the staff recommendation that it includes the rail bridges and as well as the completion of the segment 12 of the rail and trail so appreciate hearing that that is in order. As the RTC is eager to do highway widening we would advocate for a bus transit only lane if possible moving forward and just putting the thought of prioritizing public transit as we desperately need to address the change even with electric cars they really do not address the climate needs to the level that we need to address as does public transportation. Thank you so much. Thank you and I'll bring it back to the commission and I see Commissioner Rotkin is ready to move the staff recommendation and I see okay we had a race to the second and I heard Commissioner Bertrand jump on that one. Okay so we do have a motion and a second on the item any additional comments Mr. Koenig. Thank you chair. I'm going to cautiously support the recommendation with the understanding that we could always revisit the work based on the amount of funds we see come in for other trail segments see how well Lori Waters pulls for us in the state and you know just to reiterate that we're talking about some pretty complicated engineering over some very steep creeks I encourage any of the commissioners who haven't seen it firsthand Commissioner Rotkin and I got a chance to thanks to a tour with Miss Christensen Director Preston it is you're just flying over Aptos Creek Valencia Creek and then there's Soquel Drive and then the highway weaving in and out so there's a reason why this is $10 million worth of engineering here and you know as staff has discussed this project in the past and how we might actually apply for state funding you know the huge additional costs of doing the ultimate trail Miss Christensen mentioned about $60 million you know we've talked about actually bearing that with local money because we don't want to over ask to the state and get rejected completely so you know this we really are talking about a project built out with local money not sort of state funding money if you will and just to respond a little bit to Commissioner Schifrin's point about the fungibility of these different segments I mean I also point out we are last we saw from staff including four electric buses in this multimodal highway project proposal because we're really looking at the highway as a multimodal and electric transit facility so you know I think it's not out of the question that we could consider adding additional buses that we're going to run primarily on the highway or maybe on Soquel Drive to support today, thank you Thank you, Commissioner Hurst Thank you very much chair Brown and I'm so pleased to hear of this integrated approach you know every policy maker is certainly concerned about cost but we should also look at the size of the problem and anyone who traverses this area on a regular basis during congested times knows that it's not a pretty sight and improvements cry out for actually they've cried out for decades to try and get us moving which is our goal and so I compliment staff in attempting to get us moving this is going to expand access and better you know we need to build the state standards and standards that are going to be federally acceptable as well and this integrated approach is clearly the right approach and I'm glad to hear of support for it let's get it right the first time as I have said before and let's do what's most beneficial in the long run thank you for I would just call for unanimous support for this item thank you Commissioner Bertrand you're up thank you chair I am too going to support this but I'd like to chime in you know based on Manu's comments and especially the ones he made earlier and then also someone from the public talked about the relative costs for trail compared to what we're actually doing on the highway one so the ultimate thing is how much we're going to have to pay for something and that's when the public is going to chime in in terms of an integrated approach to this planning I agree with that but we don't know what way we're going to be going in the future and so being able to come back and decide which way we're going to support things based on the actual costs to do things I think is very important maybe beyond our my tenure here in December I'll be off but the public in large is going to have to consider that before we go ahead with any trail rail projects thank you very much thank you I will now call Commissioner Schifrin yes I think it's important to remember that all we're doing here is approving a contract to do the planning it seems to me it's premature to try to get too caught up in how much it may all cost and where the money is going to come from because it's not just a question of the total cost it's also a question especially given the likely size of the cost of the potential availability of funds from other sources so I think it is a step at a time process and as we learn more the public will learn more and I just appreciate moving forward with an integrated project I think it is consistent with what the public has indicated at once and I'm happy to support the motion okay I believe that it looks like we have one more comment Commissioner Ratkin I just wanted to remind people that after the vote on measure D and this year's ballot I think the commission got a pretty clear sense of what the public wanted and I was very pleased to see the direction the unanimous decision to move in a particular direction and I want to appreciate the growing hopefully unanimous support for this measure but as time passes people are going to forget that 73% of the people in this county and something close to 73% in every district in this county supported the idea of a rail project and I get nervous when people start to start already now as Andy pointed out long before we're at the level of actually seeing what costs are starting to think is there some way to get back out of that again and as months pass I think people will more and more forget that vote and sort of not be so clear what the public wanted but I think the public are clear what they want and I think it's our job to try and pursue that as best we can and if at some point in the future something can't be afforded then I can't and we'll make that decision but I get a little nervous that I sort of see people looking for possible alternatives earlier comment about this where he says well now the solutions rail banking there is no path to rail banking in this county that's one of the things that 73% vote indicated but even before that just the number of people that showed up when we were talking about adverse abandonment so you know rail banking might be a solution to all of this if we're even vaguely possible but it's less possible than getting funding for everything we want to do and so we need a realistic process that at least has a possibility of delivering what the public has asked us to do and so I would encourage people again I appreciate the way people made their comments at our meeting where we decided to move ahead with the rail and trail project that you know they're going to wait and see they reserve their right to be skeptical that we'll ever get funding I appreciate that they have every right to do that they'll have I told you so rights if it all falls apart at some point in the future but let's hope that in the meantime we don't drag our feet create some appearance that we're already trying to peel away from a decision that we've made thank you very much Thank you Commissioner Rotkin I believe that we do not have any additional comments from commissioners I'll just say thank you to staff once again for bringing us very clear and well organized and corrected staff report for this and you know all of the work that's going into it I agree that an integrated approach to this planning is critical and I'm very supportive of doing that so with and I'll just leave it there because plenty has been said I'll ask for a roll call vote Commissioner Bertrand I Commissioner Sandy Brown I Commissioner Randy Johnson I Commissioner Alternate Hearst I Commissioner Commissioner Alternate Schifrin I Commissioner Alternate Quinn Commissioner Koenig Commissioner Alternate Virginia Johnson Yes Commissioner Kristen Brown I Commissioner Parker Yes Commissioner Rotkin That's unanimous Sarah go for it I would like this opportunity to thank some members of our team that are here with us in person so commissioners who are in person can see we have Martha Dadala who is our project management consultant I heard earlier from a member of the public that I have too much work on my plate but Martha really helps keep these projects moving forward and she's been doing a great job of moving things along and being my right hand for my way one program and then Zach Sevilleia he is actually the president of Mark Thomas & Company and he's also the project manager for this project and he's been stellar with his team and all through COVID when everyone had to go home and work from home we didn't skip a beat at all and thanks to our talented consultants we've been able to really jam forward with my successful program so thanks thank you and thank you for recognizing the whole team okay I think that we are now on to our final item which is announcement of our next meetings the next RTC meeting will be hybrid it's scheduled for Thursday October 6th 2022 here at the county board of supervisors chambers and will also be a Zoom do you know if we're are you expecting a transportation policy workshop on the 15th yes we are but only for the purpose of AB 361 findings unless there is another item that we are time sensitive on so there will be a TPW later this month okay so we will have a TP policy workshop September 15th two weeks from now and that will be by Zoom teleconference and with that we are learned thank you