 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission today, Thursday, January 14th is now nine o'clock and I will open the meeting roll call, please. Commissioner Bertrand. You're muted, shock. Yeah. I'm here. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Lowell Hurst. Right here. Commissioner Caput. Commissioner alternate Schifrin. Here. Commissioner Mulher. Commissioner alternate Murher. Here. Commissioner Koenig. Here. Commissioner McPherson. Here. Commissioner Lynn. Here. Commissioner Gonzalez. Here. Commissioner Rotkin. Here. And Commissioner Eats. Here. Good morning, everybody and welcome to the beginning of the new year. Patience with me a little bit kind of new at this. So we're going to keep rolling on though forward. We're going to go and move on to item number two oral communications. And I'm going to allow for two minutes of public oral communications. So can be start off. Mr. Vanessa. Thank you. I'm really, you might note that this is on items that are not on today's agenda. So for example, not the choice on the quarter. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, any item that's not on the agenda is as now the moment does speak minutes. Mr. Vanessa. Yes, okay. Can you hear me. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, it's not about today's issue number 27. I'll talk about that later. I'm bringing up to date on the you can, you can fly. Program that's going to be in high schools next fall and bringing up to date on that. That's moving ahead. That's the Watsonville Pilots Association, the experimental aircraft association, which has the young Eagles, they work on airplanes, new airplanes and repairing existing ones. The Civil Air Patrol, by the way, the first Civil Air Patrol west of the Rockies was in Watsonville, Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, your future is our business project. And Joby is also going to be on the committee. So that's moving ahead. It's going to be great, especially for Watsonville with two high schools right near the air strip and with the ability to interchange with them and these sponsors will be fantastic. So we're looking forward to that building throughout the county. And that's an update. It looks really great. These kids will have an opportunity in four to five years to be in the aviation industry as a mechanic as avionics as a pilot as a drone operator with this experience when they graduated they'll be in demand and traveling will be back. So it's a great opportunity. Thank you very much. Thank you Ben. Next, Mr. Craig Chatterton. Can you hear me. Yes. Yes. Yes, I would like to request that item number 10 be pulled from the consent agenda and rescheduled for another time. This item has to do with the state legislative program. I would like to make sure that the commissioners and the public have the opportunity to be fully aware of what the RTC is planning to lobby for a particular concern is the amending the state constitution to lower the voting threshold and transportation. You know, this may be a question that the RTC is asking for this at the same time, they're proposing a $1 billion rail program. Either way. Mr. Craig, a minute that that item is since it is on the agenda. If you want to eat when it comes to that part of the agenda agenda. You can ask to request to pull it and speak upon it. I'm sorry, I thought it was because I'm sorry, I thought. That's quite all right. Is there any other item that you'd like to speak that's not on the consent agenda. Thank you for on the agenda. Thank you. Mr. Michael St. Good morning. I would like to congratulate him for winning the district one's supervisor race. And I also want to remind him that he has big shoes to fill. as we approached it. With integrity, hard work, preparation, and a true commitment to everyone in this district and Santa Cruz County. For the actual comments today, I'd like to share an article with you from street blogs Los Angeles, which is entitled, Cal Trans Lies Again, widening five freeway will minimize congestion and reduce pollution. Given the past 80 years of highway building have resulted in massive congestion increases and climate threatening pollution increases. It is clear that Cal Trans is once again, not telling the truth. We here in Santa Cruz County have not made the same mistakes LA County has by delaying our highway widening for the last 40 to 50 years, whether it was through political or economic issues that we did not widen. Switching the Oxley and Project to a dedicated bus rapid transit would ensure that Santa Cruz County does not repeat LA County's failure of reducing congestion by highway widening. To decrease greenhouse gas emissions, you must reduce the use of the automobile. It is as simple as that. One of the comments on that blog, explained that the induced demand fallacy is based on extensive historical performance. Freeway widening makes the freeway more attractive and results in more people taking the freeway until congestion reaches the level it had before the widening and drivers start using other routes. There are so far no contrary examples in urban freeways. When the 405 was widened through supportive pass, a large number of homes and business had to be bulldozed. Fortunately, we are not going to do that. The result was that the speeds on that section averaged one mile per hour slower than before the project was started. Sometimes the congestion reaches the previous level quickly as everyone rushes to use the expanded capacity. Sometimes it takes four or five years, but it always happens. Expand the freeway because you want more people to use it. Maybe there's enough economic activity to stimulate it to offset the businesses that were bulldozed, but don't pretend that it fixes congestion. Congestion is built into the system. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Michael. Next. Mr. Berry Scott. Good. Go ahead, Barry. You're on. Good morning, commissioners, and congratulations, Manu, on being on the board. I want to speak briefly to something that I don't believe is on today's agenda, and that is the progressive's desire to leave town. And I want to ask the commissioners to all give careful consideration to Roaring Cam, Big Tree's railroad, becoming our provider. They have two locomotives down in Watsonville, one of which is not too far from being able to provide service. I believe that progressive rail would be happy to work with Roaring Cam. They're a local partner. All of the failures we've had have been with out-of-state providers. So if there's a need, and there is for freight service in South County, I hope that you'll all give Roaring Cam your most sincere consideration. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Barry. We don't have any other comments, commissioner. Okay. Seeing no more oral communication from the public, we're gonna move on to item number three, which is additions or deletions from the agenda. So yes, Chair Gonzalez. Go ahead. Yes, Chair Gonzalez, we have a revised agenda, and that on that agenda is item 28, which we have a handout for. We also have a replacement page for item 19, handout for item 25, and a handout for item 27. All of those replacement pages and handouts are located on our website for anybody who needs a copy. That's it. All right, thank you. Go ahead and move on to the consent agenda. You had that other speaker who wanted to pull something you might stop. Yeah, and that's what I was going to. Is there anyone that wants to pull any item from the consent agenda or comments? Mr. Craig, this is the time for your request. Mr. Chatterton, sorry about that. You're muted if you're there. No, can you hear me now? Yes, we can now. Yeah, we got you. Yes, I was concerned about this item number 10, which has to do with legislative program for the state. I'd like to make sure the commissioners and the public have the time to weigh in on this. A particular concern is amending the state constitution to lower the voting thresholds on transportation measures. It may be a coincidence that the RTC is asking for this at the same time and they're proposing a $1 billion trail system. But I would prefer that elected officials do not lobby for constitutional changes that affect all of the citizens. And I suspect many voters also agree with that. So I would ask that you consider that if you go forward with this, you may well be going against public sentiment on changing voting regulations. This also is not consistent with the through bottom line approach of the RTC in terms of equity. I just don't think it meets that definition. So I would ask it to be pulled and scheduled for another time as a regular agenda item. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. Is there any commissioner? We have more comments. Okay. Is there more public comments on the consent agenda? Yes. Mr. St. Michael St. Go ahead and make Michael. Yes. Mike again here with this time for a campaign for sustainable transportation. Some would agree with that gentleman prior to this. I hadn't thought of pulling anything really, but I just wanted to draw all the commissioners' attention to item 10-13, which is entitled Air Quality, Greenhouse Gas Admissions and Climate Resiliency. Basically the three items under that are to improve the air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make our communities and transportation networks resilient to a changing climate. This in my mind is actually the Holy Grail of guidelines for future transportation projects. Although we missed attaining these goals with the poison pill of oxalines in measure D, we can and I hope we will take these goals to heart and do better in the future to help mitigate the effects of climate change. I hope all of you will take time to read these recommendations and legislation before projects are approved. Again, page 10-13 under Air Quality. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. Keith Otto. Keith. Yeah, can the commissioners hear me okay? Yes. Sounds good. If you could stay on this intro slide for just a minute. So I also wanted to speak with regards to agenda item 10, the 2021 legislative programs. Question for the commissioners. Have each of you thoroughly read and reviewed all the pages for this item? Do you agree with the proposed positions? There's a number of items that caught my eye and are of concern with the limited time. Let me pick just two next slide, please. Expand the authority of the RTC to increase taxes and fees. Wow. Yes, transportation and infrastructure is expensive, but this is the wrong way to go. My recommendation is to instead double down on being better stewards of the funds and resources you already have, spend funds more wisely, allocate resources to projects with greater public support. The bottom line is increase public confidence with current spending first, rather than working to expand authority to increase taxes. Next slide, please. Lower voter threshold for taxes from two thirds to a simple majority or 55%. Again, this is the wrong way to go. If anything, we should be raising the bar on voter thresholds. And yes, this might mean that funding does not happen for projects that I think are important, but note what would happen. It's the projects with the greatest public support that would go forward and doesn't that make sense? So to wrap up, if this item is postponed when it comes back, please put it on the regular agenda for wider discussion. As written, I urge you to vote no while it does, while I don't object to everything here, there are a number of items which I consider poison pills to the package. And I've noted just two of those this morning. Thanks for listening, thanks for your time. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I could interrupt out, this is Commissioner McPherson. I think it would be appropriate to amend that and say accept the 2000 state federal legislative programs instead of approve. I think we can accept them and then to discuss them further and further detail in a later meeting. But I think the language, if we had to accept instead of approve, that would be more reasonable under the circumstances. Yeah, I was gonna bring it back to the commissioners. So if any commission wanted to pull that item from the consent agenda, then we can address it at that point, but I wanted to first go to all the public comments and allow them to speak. And then we'll take the floor. Is that okay? No, we'll come back. Thank you. Good plan. Mr. Commissioner Gonzales, we do not have any other comments. Okay, you're on now commissioners. Does anybody want to pull it out? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry to get ahead of the discussion, but I move that we pass the consent agenda with the change to change the policy item number 10, approve the 2000 state and federal legislative programs to the word accept the program. Second. We have a motion, we have a second. That's Rockin on the second. Mike Rockins on the second. Is there any comments or an open to discussion? Seeing none, can we have roll call? Commissioner Bertrand. Aye. Commissioner Brown. Aye. commissioner Johnson. Aye. Commission alternate Hearst. Yes. Commissioner Caput, commission alternate Schiffron. Aye. Commission alternate Mulherr. Aye. Commissioner Koenig. Aye. Commissioner McPherson. Aye. Commission alternate Linn. Aye. Commissioner Gonzales. Aye. Commissioner Rockin. Aye. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and move on to the regular agenda items, item 23 update from the city of Santa Cruz. Good morning, commissioners. This is Christian Eider, assistant director of public work, city engineer. And I know you have a public hearing in 10 minutes, so I'll be brief. I want to prevent, present just a brief information and status of transportation projects that the city is working on and that have been partially funded through the RTC. The first project is the Highway 1 and 9 intersection improvement projects. And we've been working on that aggressively for the last several years. We recently received our funding authorization through the CTC. So we'll be going out to bid at the end of the month for the project so we can anticipate construction probably starting in about April for this project. It will last approximately one year, hopefully not that long. And a certain amount of the work will be occurring at night to reduce impacts to the traveling public. Chris, can you say briefly what the project does? So it adds some additional lanes. The biggest one is a new northbound lane on Highway 9. Currently, there's only one accepting lane, so it'll be widening towards central home supply. And we've acquired the right-of-way to do that. And what that allows is to add additional lanes, one on a second left turn lane, on Highway 1, on the west side of the intersection, and additional lane on River Street heading north. And that's going to reduce congestion and make it safer for people to enter the intersection. We're also adding bike lanes and pedestrian improvements with the project. It's funded through STIP, RSVP exchange, the city's traffic impact fee program, and gas tax. So anyway, we're moving forward closely with Caltrans, and they've approved essentially all the steps that we need to go through to go out to bid and award a contract. Seven of the rail trail. I know you're all familiar that we've recently had the ribbon cutting for Phase 1 from Bay, California out to Natural Bridges. There's still a couple of small things to finish, striping and planting trees and some landscaping. But the project has been very well accepted by the public. People are using it all the time. We're getting all kinds of compliments. And we appreciate the funding that's been received through the RTC, which has included the federal earmark, STIP funds, and a Measure D and gas tax, a Measure D from the city's allocation, as well as from the RTC's allocation. Phase 2 has the design is 99% complete. We have applied for a grant for that project for the construction, and we're hoping to hear back from Caltrans mid February to see if we, if the grant's been accepted. We are also applying for other grants as they come up. And it is one of our highest priorities to complete soon. Segments 8 and 9 of the rail trail. We have awarded a contract to our RM and some their local team of sub consultants to do the design and environmental review of those segments. We're working with the county on that as well because it goes into it. It is from essentially the wharf out to high out to 17th Avenue. And so we're working closely with County Public Works Department on that project. It's funded the design environmental review is funded through the ATP program to about $2 million and a generous donation contribution from the Santa Cruz County Land Trust as the local match. We're also applying for construction grants already for that project, even though the design and environmental review aren't done, but in anticipation that funding will be coming up in the near future. The other project recently we're out to bid on is the Pacific Avenue sidewalk and that's funded through RSTP exchange. Our local measure the allocation and a TDA funds. And that is to replace a missing sidewalk to eliminate diagonal parking next to a bike lane, which isn't generally very safe. And it's been a missing gap in our system for quite some time and that's down in the beach area. So we'll be hopefully under construction of that project in a couple of months. Projects we've completed recently with STIP funding was the Water Street and River Street painting projects using a cold recycled in place treatment treatment and also an enhanced bike lane striping primarily on Water Street that includes, you know, protection as well as buffers. And if anybody's driven it, you can see that it's quite a bit different than some of the other past striping we've done in the city. That was funded through STIP SB1 gas tax and measure H and measure D. And then we've completed a couple of important crossing improvement projects through safe routes to school and the hazard safety improvement program. We spent over $2 million on both projects total and we've include a lot of pedestrian crossing improvements where we used to have one flashing beacon. We now have over 30 and just over the last two years, as well as the number of radar feedback signs near all our schools. And that's been a really successful project. I think as people navigate around the city, you'll see the difference that makes for people crossing the street, how much safer and more convenient it's going to be or it is. We anticipate installing more the RFPs with our different projects. For instance, with the rail trail segment seven phase one, we installed two there and we're installing one more at Al Mar. Anyway, that concludes the main projects I wanted to talk about. We have a number of other ones, but those are the most significant and the most current status of the projects. But do you have any questions for me? Thank you, Chris. Is there any questions for the city of Santa Cruz? And the commissioners, you know, I just this measurement first and again, I wanted to say compliment the city of Santa Cruz and moving ahead, especially with some of the bike pedestrian projects. But I know the Highway one and nine, which is in my district, has been a long negotiation process. And going to improve the safety and the transportation aspects of that whole region, that whole corridor or intersection. So thank you very much for Santa Cruz for sticking with it. And congratulations on some jobs. Well done that trail on the West side is really phenomenal. It's a great, great addition. So congratulations. Thank you. And I'll pass that on to city staff. They've a lot of them worked really hard on these projects. And go ahead, Mike. I just wanted to add, Mike, congratulations, Chris, on the Highway nine, River Street intersecting Highway one, because anybody that's tried to drive almost any time of the day from downtown Santa Cruz out to the freeway or even worse, crossing the freeway over to Highway nine realizes how congested that is and how long that line gets. And sometimes you wait for literally three lights before you can get through. And so it's really going to make a difference to have people able to move more freely through that intersection. It makes a really big difference. And whereas I'm generally opposed to the idea of widening highways, I have to say, sometimes there are true bottlenecks that really sort of bring at least some little piece of the highway up to the general standard of what else is going around it. And that's why I think that widening is justified in that area. Thank you so much. Welcome. Thank you, Mike. Is any other commissioner that like to ask a question or see an end? We have I thought that Burke Schock Bertrand was going to jump in. I just had a quick question. Could you clarify how much money has actually been secured for segments eight and nine and for seven B? So seven, seven, seven face to the projects already been designed. We have measure D allocated for the local match for the grant, approximately two million. So we're applying for an approximate $8 million grant to construct that project. Segments eight, nine, approximately five million has been secured for the design and the environmental review through a measure D and excuse me, not through measure D, but through the ATP program and the Santa Cruz County Land Trust. We have local matching funds dedicated towards a future construction grant, approximately two million dollars. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Yeah, Chris, if I may, is there any allocation for turn lanes for Costco? Because, you know, that gets really congested at times when everyone's going into the big mega store. How do we nine one? Yeah, no, but there's the new north additional northbound lane on on Hyde on Highway nine is going to help that that condition, because what right now what you do is you have people backing into the only lane, right? So that creates a lot of congestion. Now people will be able to get around. They'll be able to go to Ensignal if they want to access Costco as well. And, you know, all the other facilities up there. We also are adding a southbound lane. So that will also help with not blocking Fern Street for people to make the left into the Harvey West area. Okay, thank you very much. You haven't seen the plans, but that seems to solve the problem. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other fellow commissioners we should ask a question? All right. See none. We have about a minute left before we go into a public hearing. I guess. Sing a song. If there's anybody from the public that has 30 seconds comment, I would love it at this moment. All right. Thanks again. Bye. I do not see any. Oh, here we go. We have one hand raised. Let me see. Mr. Bud Colligan. How you doing, bud? You have about 30 seconds. Go ahead. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, commissioners. I just wanted to make one comment to something that Mr. Scott said. He was a large cheerleader for the Progressive Rail. Sorry to interrupt you, but we were on the item for the city of Santa Cruz update. Oh, I thought you were opening it up for any comments from the public after that item was finished. Okay. Sorry about that. All right. Okay. All right. We're going to go ahead and move on now. We're going to go into the item 27. It is a public hearing. It's a 930. And so now I will open up the public hearing and we will start with staff report. Good morning, Chair, commissioners and members of the public. This is Ginger D'Arcar. I'm a senior transportation planner on the RTC staff. The item before you today is the Transit Carter Alternatives Analysis and the Rail Network Integration Study. Today, the project team is recommending that the RTC review and provide input on the final draft report and the recommended locally preferred alternative. The project team is scheduled to come back at the February 4 RTC meeting to request acceptance of the report, which includes the locally preferred alternative. The resolution has been provided in the staff report for your consideration for adoption at the February 4 meeting. Both RTC and Metro staff have been working together with HDR Engineering and Farron Pierce consultants on this analysis. There are many members of the project team here today to present information and answer questions. I'll provide a brief overview of the project. Then I'm going to hand off to Steve Decker, who is the project manager at HDR, who will be presenting the results of Myosem3, the performance measure analysis, and the recommendation for the locally preferred alternative. We also have Shannon Simons here from Caltrans Division of Rail and Mass Transportation to present an update on the California State Rail Plan as part of this item. But first, before I go any further, I want to thank the many people who have contributed to this project to bring together the enormous amount of information and analysis. The Ad Hawk Committee, many members of RTC staff and Metro staff, the consultant team, Caltrans staff, RTC advisory committee members, partner agencies, and the many members of the public and community organizations who provided input into this project. Next slide, please. The objective of the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis is to evaluate transit investment options that utilize all or part of the Santa Cruz branch line as a dedicated transit facility. The outcome of this study is to determine a locally preferred transit alternative for this right-of-way. The study area is shown here on this map and goes from Pajaro Junction, which is a mile or so to the east of Watsonville, to Natural Bridges Drive on the west side of Santa Cruz, close to the city limits. This analysis stems from the outcome of the Unified Corridor Investment Study that was completed in January 2019 to protect the right-of-way for high capacity public transit next to a bicycle and pedestrian trail and to work with Metro to analyze transit alternatives on the Santa Cruz branch line. Next slide, please. With the purchase of the Santa Cruz branch line in 2012, Santa Cruz County was given an incredible opportunity to develop a transit service on a dedicated transit facility. With a dedicated transit facility, transit travel times are no longer slowed down by congestion and mixed-use traffic. By developing a system where transit travel times and reliability become more competitive to auto travel, you expand the viable travel options, expand transit ridership, provide an equitable option for travel for those with low income, people with disabilities, youth, seniors, and others that either prefer or do not drive. As people shift from driving cars to riding transit, renowned gas emissions are reduced and climate change goals can be advanced. By utilizing the Santa Cruz branch line as a dedicated transit facility, we are assuring that Santa Cruz County is included in the vision to develop the statewide rail network that will offer an alternative to travel that meets mobility, climate, and equity goals. The opportunity for Santa Cruz County to use the Santa Cruz branch line as a dedicated transit facility, along with a multi-use trail, cannot be overemphasized. There is no other corridor in Santa Cruz County at present that readily provides this opportunity. To secure the ownership of the Santa Cruz branch line by the RTC took more than two decades of work by the many RTC commissions, RTC staff, and partner agencies that realize the incredible benefit that this right away would provide to the residents and visitors of Santa Cruz County as both a dedicated transit facility and a multi-use trail. Next slide, please. The evaluation framework for this analysis is based on a triple bottom line performance-based planning approach with federal that follows federal and state guidelines for making transportation investment decisions. There are three key milestones of this project, as you can see here on the graphic. For the first milestone, the goals of the project were developed, and then the screening criteria and performance measures in order to assess how the goals would be advanced. The first milestone also includes development of an initial broad list of transit alternatives that were evaluated. During milestone two, the initial list of alternatives was narrowed down to a short list using the screening criteria developed in milestone one. The short list included four alternatives to evaluate in detail. For milestone three, a more detailed quantitative analysis was performed to evaluate the short list of alternatives using the performance measures. From a comparison of the performance of the four alternatives, the locally preferred alternative can then be determined. With that, I'd like to end off with Steve Decker who will present the performance measure results and the recommendation for the locally preferred alternative. Thank you, Ginger. Can you all hear me? Yes. I'll try not to be as loud. Let me turn it down a little bit. Next slide, please. So through the detailed performance evaluation process that Ginger spoke to as part of milestone three, bus rapid transit, electric commuter rail, autonomous road train, also a rubber-tired newer type of technology, very similar to a tram, and electric light rail were moved forward into detailed analysis, those four alternatives. I'll briefly, in the next slide, I'll briefly get into the characteristics and pros and cons of each. In terms of the bus rapid transit, it follows from Pajaro Station at the southern end of the corridor through on Highway 1, gets on to right in Aptos, gets on a local road system and then into the right-of-way in Capitola. So the right-of-way actually includes about seven miles of bus rapid transit with the other remaining 14 or so miles, 15 or so miles on the local roadway system, very typical of bus rapid transit service. Weekday service, we are proposing 15-minute headways and from services from 5 a.m. to 12 a.m. So very long levels of service on the corridor. We have proposed quite a few stations, 23 stations or platforms, typical of a bus rapid transit which will support a variety of travel markets and trip making. Next slide. In terms of the pros, I'll get into some of the pros, not all. Certainly transit ridership was strong, strongest in the, you know, 6,000 plus range per day. This is easily, this system easily integrates with the overall transportation system, including Metro Bus. This system can be adapted to future new technologies, probably somewhat easier than others. And the costs provide the lowest capital cost compared to the other alternatives. In terms of some of the cons, there are long travel times probably in the 90-minute range. These are shorter trips we're traveling on. You know, we will use bus, you know, bus on shoulder and Highway 1, for example, and local roads. So there are a lot more stops and stop and go travel compared to the other alternatives. It does only use 7 miles of the right of way. There are limited capacity to provide bikes and mobility devices internal to the vehicles compared to the other alternatives. And there are limited opportunities for transit oriented development potential. Next slide. In terms of the characteristics of commuter rail, it uses the entire right of way from Watsonville to natural bridges. There are less number of stops typical of a commuter rail system. We have 11 stops and stations and stop locations. The frequencies are 30 minute headways during the peak, or the train will travel every 30 minutes in the morning and afternoon peaks and a little longer in the off peak periods. The service runs from 6am to 9pm. Next slide. In terms of the pros and cons and characteristics, certainly this will be a passenger rail service with electric propulsion, no fossil fuels. It will operate entirely on the fixed rail system the right of way. There is a strong ridership capacity for long distance travel. One of the keys to this project. It will use single side single tracks. In terms of the pros, just selected pros, definitely reliable, faster travel times from the 45 minute range compared to BRT which could be double. Certainly there is strong transit ridership potential while lower than bus rapid transit. Probably in the 5100 range, 5000 per day range. Strong support for transit and development which could create more opportunities for increased ridership. This provides a strong integration, one seat ride to Monterey, Pajaro to connect to other rail transit in the state going north and south and Shannon from Caltrans will talk about that in a bit. There is more funding potential for this through various state and federal programs. In terms of the cons, this is somewhat higher than the industry standard cost estimates that we created. We developed, it's about 480 million compared to bus rapid transit which was about 410. There is somewhat slower, lower ridership than bus rapid transit but still strong. And this does provide less opportunities to be resilient to climate change. Next slide. Light rail transit. Looking at very similar service on the right away from Pajaro station to natural bridges. We have 15 potential station locations. 30 minute headways again and we figure 30 minute headways all day from 6am to 9pm and this shows the configuration of the light rail. Next slide. Some of the characteristics, certainly we're all electric here, no or hydrogen cell based on the technology. There will be no fossil fuels operated systems here. This will use the right of way fixed rails to operate. There is less ridership capacity than bus rapid transit but very strong, nonetheless operates on a single track, as I said. In terms of some of the key pros and cons, they're very similar to commuter rail as we'll talk about with the locally preferred alternative below. In a few minutes, certainly reliable travel times a little less than, less reliable with more stops than commuter rail but still in the 55 minute range compared to bus rapid transit at 90. Still provides strong ridership. Does support transit oriented development which would help improve the ridership and other aspects characteristics of the right of way. One of the keys is certainly it provides lots of coverage with disadvantaged communities and people who would potentially use the system. 92% and there is level boarding which is key and as with commuter rail, the rail cars, I'm sorry to mention this for commuter rail, but they're certainly flexible enough to provide more bike and mobility device capacity on these types of vehicles. In terms of the cons, higher costs, a little higher than commuter rail and certainly higher than BRT. Some of the lower ridership than BRT and this may require a transfer will likely require a transfer to the regional rail network because of light rail configuration issues. Next slide. So autonomous road train or ART. This is a somewhat new technology implemented in China and getting some momentum in other places worldwide in the US. It is a retire. This configuration starts at Lee Road in Watsonville. So will not there were some compatibility issues with rail service. Current rail service in Watsonville. So we started this in Lee Road. So there'll be this connector from Lee Road to Pajaro to provide that connection service for transit users to the system. And then it goes all the way to natural bridges. There are proposed 13 stations on this line 30 minute headways all day. And the service timing is from 6am to 9pm. Very similar to light rail and commuter rail. In terms of the characteristics. Oops, yep, you could go on to the next slide. Thank you. In terms of characteristics, this is an emerging mode. Electropropulsion autonomous vehicle certainly combines the benefits of BRT and LRT with autonomous drivers. It will be rubber tire with dedicated on a dedicated pavement alignment on the right of way. Definitely resembles LRT style of vehicles and operates on a single lane on the corner. In terms of pros and cons, certainly strong ridership potential. You know, one of the keys is this would have a great ability to adapt to new future potential technologies, including connecting technologies and provides a strong level boarding at all platforms, etc. In terms of the cons, capital costs are very high. You know, in the 700 plus million range. This will not be compatible with current and expected freight operations in the Watsonville or freight rail operations in Watsonville area. And there are somewhat longer travel times in the 60 plus minute range. So next slide. So based on the technical detailed analysis that we performed in milestone three, the locally preferred alternative recommendation will be electric passenger rail, moving forward commuter rail and light rail into the next potentially into the next phase of this design environmental assessment. And in this case, design determinations, the alternative would determine in later stages, whether it's commuter rail or light rail. Next slide. And we talked a lot about this already. About the characteristics of electric passenger rail through the commuter rail and the light rail discussions. Certainly this passenger rail service, the locally preferred will operate on the right of way. You know, with electric propelled vehicles, battery cell, etc, not fossil fuels, it'll operate on a single track with sightings to allow for two way travel, interim sightings along the corridor. We expect speeds of 30 to 60 miles per hour. And the range is pretty wide considering the the makeup of the infrastructure on the rail right of way. There are approximately 11 to 15 stations with proposed level boarding for each, whether it's a full station and or platform. Hydrogen fuel cell battery other future technology will be the propulsion type. And certainly when we go through the agency goes through the future analysis of this, the vehicle type will have to comply to federal agencies in this case, Federal Railroad Authority, Federal Railroad Administration, sorry, other federal agencies in terms of including federal transit administration might get involved here. So the frequency of service, we're definitely in the 30 to 60 minute frequency range with weekday service from 6am to 9pm. So all the characteristics that we talked about earlier. Next slide. In terms of the benefits, very similar to what we talked about with commuter rail, light rail, include actually very similar and, you know, the same, certainly reliable travel times in the 45 to 50 minute range for both alternatives, a little longer for light rail, with the more more stations but still very the fast travel times and reliability is a key. There will be reduction of VMT, which will result in GHG emission reductions as well with shifts to from auto to transit use. Both will this passenger rail locally preferred alternative provide, you know, very high access to transportation disadvantaged populations, as shown in previous slides, level reporting and will be provided, which is key for accessibility of all types of users to the to the vehicles. And these passenger rail provides a greater flexibility in space allocation, whether it's seats for riders, bikes and mobility devices for other for folks wishing to use, you know, integrate those modes with at least bikes with a rail. So there are great opportunities here for transit oriented development with a fixed guideway system such as this, there's greater funding potential through state and federal resources, grant opportunities, etc. And then there are opportunities to provide regional and statewide rail network connectivity, which is what Shannon will be talking about in a few minutes. But there are plans to improve and enhance passenger rail in the state of California. And this would provide that pretty key connectivity to passenger travel north and south in California. Next slide. I think with this, I'll turn it over to Ginger to talk about stakeholder outreach and next steps. Thank you, Steve. The outreach for milestone three was extensive. There were meetings held with the ad hoc committee, the Metro board, the three RTC advisory committees, the bike committee, elderly and disabled, and interagency technical advisory committee. An online open house was open from November 6 to November 27 with input received through a survey. The notification for the online open house was promoted through various avenues, emails, mailers to property owners within the vicinity of the right of way, social media, print and radio ads, media coverage, and RTC website news. There were also two sessions of an online chat room that were provided where members of the public could type in their questions for the project team to respond in real time. Members of the public were also encouraged to email comments to RTC for additional input. Next slide, please. There was no shortage of interest and input on this project. There were approximately 1000 members of the public that participated in the open house and took the online survey. While this survey does not establish a statistically representative sample of countywide support, approximately 75% expressed support for rail. There was about 12% that expressed support for no transit or trail only and about 5% for a bus rapid transit. Out of the 275 emails received prior to November 27, there's approximately 80% of those emails were supportive of rail transit. Again, this does not establish a statistically representative sample of countywide support. Since the November 27 deadline, we received probably double that number of emails. All of the information on emails received as well as survey responses are available on the RTC website, the TCAA webpage. If you characterize the additional comments generally like percentage or what they're most people wanted to have happened. There seems to be in the additional comments received after November 27. There was a bit more. I didn't I didn't calculate the numbers. Obviously, that's why we have a deadline so that we can bring all this information together in autonomy fashion. But it did seem like in going through the emails that there was a little bit more interest in a bus rapid transit than had expressed earlier prior to the November 27 deadline. There was also from the advisory committees, the more they all supported emotions supporting rail as a locally preferred alternative. Letters of support have been received that are contained in the staff report from Caltrans division of rail and mass transportation from the city of Santa Cruz, city of Watsonville and the Transportation Agency from Monterey County. The draft report was revised to consider stakeholder input received. With that, I'd like to hand over the presentation to Shannon Simons from Caltrans division of rail and mass transportation to provide a brief update on the California state rail plan. Great. Thank you, Ginger. Next slide please. Good morning everyone. Thanks for having me again. Shannon Simons with Caltrans and the senior regional coordinator for rail and transit in the Bay Area and the Central Coast. And so I'm going to spend just a couple minutes kind of zooming back out from all of that really detailed work that the team has done on the transit corridors alternative to put this into the context of the state rail plan. As in 2018, we released our most recent California state rail plan, which establishes a vision for prioritizing state investments in the passenger and freight rail network statewide. And it provides a framework for coordination between our planning partners, the rail operators, the rail owners and the state to develop a rail network with the strategic vision in mind. And so the integrated network helps the state meet our statewide mobility, equity and climate goals by improving the options for non single occupancy vehicle mobility options and connecting them through an integrated rail network and with coordinated feeder services of inner city bus, local transit, bike and pedestrian improvements. Next slide please. So the vision for the state rail plan is based on these three pieces. So the first is that it's an integrated statewide network where different services are physically connected, including high speed rail to serve some of those long distance kind of trunk line service trips, slower speed express and local services providing for that local and regional travel. And then connections of integrated express bus services that are used to fill the lower ridership slots on the schedule as well as providing those connections to the more rural communities in the state. The second piece of the vision is that these connections are designed to be made at multimodal connection points on coordinated schedules. So the vision rather is designed around regular pull service, which means that all of the services operate around regular clock-based schedules that allow for these easy times connections at key transfer hubs on the network. And the hubs are identified on the network not necessarily when we say how we don't necessarily mean huge infrastructure like an LA Union station or something like that. It just means this is where we can coordinate schedules and make it easier for local transit system or some of the regional systems off the main line to feed in and out of those services to help expand the reach of the network to the rest of the state. And it does some of the first and last mile connections of the system without a car trip. And so then the final and really the driving kind of component of the vision is that this really is meant to be customer focused. So also thinking about how to connect to and from the rail network either again with local transit services or walking, biking, car share, other services driving to get to and from the network. The second component of the customer focus is focused on integrated ticketing. So through the Calvary Integrated Travel Program we're really working at streamlining how you plan a trip, how you pay for a trip and how you verify the various eligibility benefits you may get by being a student or a senior or a host of other benefits. And then finally this really is based upon the idea that you can provide this seamless customer experience with travel times that are both auto and air competitive. All together these will deliver our mobility climate and equity goals. Next slide please. So the way that we plan for this rail plan is through kind of phased implementation strategic planning. So phasing helps to intensify the existing capacity and improve services to meet both our interim service and connectivity goals without requiring the full capital investment upfront. Also that can help drive down the cost and improve the system in the near and the midterm and then reap the benefits of those interim efficiencies to reinvest into the system to eventually build out the 2040 investment. So as you can see we kind of identified the long-term service vision which for the next rail plan will be 2050 so last one was 2040. Then we derive the phased implementation of the project back to what we reasonably expect to be you know constrained delivery in the 10-year timeframe and then build out the planned and committed projects developed to support that vision that are already in the pipeline in the short term. And so one of the key ways that we do this is by utilizing existing rights of ways to provide transportation capacity that's equivalent to additional lanes of freeway and road expansion. And so this will result in our again long-term infrastructure savings by reducing the need for additional expansion either on the rail and transit side or the highway side. And importantly it's a priority for us to continue to utilize existing capacity which is why I think we're so excited about this project on the Santa Cruz branch line. Next slide please. So we're in the process of updating this rail plan for the 2022 state rail plan which will continue to enhance rail service in the public interest and serve as the basis for both federal and state rail investments on both passenger and rail or passenger and freight rail rather. So what we're updating is we're revising that statewide vision to incorporate all of the work like the CCAA and other network integration and planning studies across the state to make sure that those are brought in to help us update timelines and alignments and connectivity goals. We'll continue to advise the priorities for state investment and then continuing to devise implementation strategies that are both phase but really working towards getting these services up and running as soon as possible. Next slide. Thank you. So the question you all want to know why why rail and Santa Cruz County. So I think that this map is a little bit hard to see here but hopefully you can all get a copy and look at this closer but you know Caltrans through the rail plan and other strategic planning work is committed to advancing our equity goals and rethinking the opportunities for the role of transit and for the role of public agencies that fund, administer and operate transit. So I think there's a big opportunity to provide the seamless connection from the Santa Cruz region to the statewide network which provides access not only to the Bay Area but kind of those duplicates to services of the existing bus routes but also to the high speed rail network at Gilroy as well as points on the Central Coast south of here. A positive rail service in this corridor can meet the demands of commuters while also importantly providing this all-day service and the mobility that provides transportation options for all users in the community and this is something we're really excited about is rethinking how to provide that all-day service. I think COVID has really shown us that the travel markets are changing and when we're providing service for essential workers and people who have continued to work on the front lines it's been more of these non-traditional commute markets and so there's an opportunity to build that system out in all the regions across the state and so you know this is a priority for the state and there's significant state funding opportunities available that can provide a pathway for advancing Santa Cruz County Connections as part of this statewide network continuing to build on these investments and developing more zero emission vehicle technologies and zero emission corridors across the state and then I just had to throw in this example of a battery hydrogen fuel cell multiple unit that's going to be deployed in Tamboridino County because it's a exciting and that's the type of thing that we could potentially see in Santa Cruz as well. So with that I will hand it back to Jinder and thank you. The next steps of the project are to come back on February 4th to seek acceptance of the final draft report which selects the locally preferred alternative and on April 1st the project team is scheduled to present and seek acceptance of the business plan for the locally preferred alternative. With that that's the conclusion of our presentation we're happy to take questions and comments. I did want to introduce of the project team who's available to take questions this morning. From Metro staff we have John Ogro, Pete Rasmussen, Wanda Moon and Ginstu and Matt Marquez from HDR besides Steve Decker. We have Pam Yonkin worked on the performance measures as well as Alan Wang from Fair and Pierce who worked on the ridership estimates and other performance measures. From RTC staff besides executive director Preston and deputy director Mendez and myself. We also have Breonna Goodman who is part of the project team and Rachel Morakoni who worked on the funding sources. Thank you Jinder. Thank you Jinder. It's a great report. A lot of information. I'm going to go ahead now and open it up to our commissioners for any technical or clarifying questions on the study plan. Yes. Great go ahead Greya. Good knowledge you. Okay I'm trying to figure this out. Okay you can hear me right? Yes. Yeah I was looking at that. Is there any is there any place we can look at that actually has rail that travels over 100 125 miles an hour? I don't know that's a tremendous speed so I was looking at that and is it in Europe do they have any trains or anything anywhere? Sure. It goes over 125 miles an hour. They don't necessarily have the answer to that but perhaps Shannon Simons from Caltrans who has a perspective on the you know larger rail transit network obviously in Santa Cruz County we're not looking to have speeds go anywhere near that comes right right. Yes but everything else I got you like hang on a minute. Go ahead Shannon did you want to answer that? Oh yeah thank you and if this is regard to our first vision map that's a great point. Those are largely the high speed rail speed so the high speed rail authority will be delivering both on the blended and in the dedicated high speed rail corridors travel speeds of over 125 potentially up to 220 I think at the top speed of what high speed rail can go on the dedicated right the way. To just point out those those speeds won't not be necessary or appropriate in Santa Cruz but that's what those types of services look at. Thank you. Thank you. Mike you had your hand raised. I was just going to add that I wrote on a train because about 180 miles an hour in Italy about three years ago so I mean but it's not local service like we're looking at here it's a long a long trip across most of the country that's out in the countryside. Mike how did that feel when you were going that fast? You know you don't notice it much unless you look out the window and you see stuff just flying by and you're riding next to a crew here or something you're going twice as fast as the cars that are running next to you. Okay thank you. Is there any other fellow commissioner that has any questions? Who do I have there? Randy? Yeah thank you. Go ahead Randy. For that report I was curious as you mentioned the new reality in terms of with we've learned over the last year many many more people are using Zoom staying and not actually using any form of transportation. So in your ridership numbers did you take into consideration that change that I think everybody agrees is going to be at least somewhat permanent and it's going to excuse me is going to at least subtract some of the transportation that occurs including train, auto, bus and what have you? Sorry with answering that question commissioner Johnson and then I'll pass it off to Alan Wang, a fair and fierce. Obviously this pandemic hit us and nobody was prepared to the level of change in our lives. What that happened due to this pandemic. I think that we still don't know what the future holds and have a good grasp on what things will look like in the future. I agree with you and hope that there are some silver linings in this and that more people will realize that the ability to be able to work from home and that will be a shift. I think that's something that as transportation planners we've looked at previously and have done everything we can to encourage people to at least work from home one day a week or move towards that in the future and reduce the demand in our system. But I don't think that necessarily negates the need. People are still going to want to travel. People are still going to be going to some offices to a certain extent. The ridership projections were based on information pre-COVID. That's the information that we have available. Obviously that's something that we need to pay attention to as we move forward in the future. I don't know about you. I'm ready to get out and do some more traveling myself. But that begs the question of if you didn't include it in your analysis why wouldn't you? We know if anything the number of people who travel is going to be diminished because you know the people who use Zoom it's become more acceptable for this type of environment. So if you didn't take that in consideration my question number one would be why not. Well yet I think I would reiterate that this is something that we don't know to what extent people will be working from home and also that the need for people to work from home in the future give an increased population and demand in our transportation system is and what is going to be there regardless. But I can hand that off to Alan Wang or Steve Decker if you have any other points you'd like to make. This is Steve before Alan jumps in. Certainly the project started and we as we are evaluating these projects with various clients including this RTC we typically go to pre-COVID conditions or post-COVID conditions thinking that we want to be as conservative as possible and we want to replicate represent what ridership potentially would be. Many of the studies that sort of were impacted including this one with COVID impacting the study have not really gotten into the COVID analysis that you're asking for. And as an example the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has suggested that all the analysis will be pre or post-COVID with the anticipation that levels of demand will approach what it was pre-COVID. So there are lots of different ways to look at this. But Alan maybe Alan could describe some of the ways in which they have assessed COVID impacts on ridership. Thank you. I would just add that I think one thing to clarify is in terms of the ridership analysis we are forecasting out to a 2040 condition as the horizon year for this project. So I think as both Steve and Ginger had mentioned there's a lot of uncertainty going post-COVID condition. We don't really necessarily know how things are going to change or how people's travel behavior is going to change in that long run. But for again for purpose of this type of analysis we tend to kind of go back to assume that things are going to trend back towards the normal condition pre-COVID. But that's again just something I wanted to clarify that this is a pretty long-term forecast in terms of the future ridership. With respect to the state rail line connection and so forth the broad sort of you know vision of the state of California it seems to me that the when you mentioned that with in reference to Santa Cruz County it's more of a feature than a benefit. It's a feature that will exist but it only becomes a benefit if people use it. And you know again in my mind I think the minds of many people is yes you'll have you'll have a certain number of people that want to take a train to L.A. or take it over the hill to Gilroy and then up to San Jose. But a ton of people will fall with and this is this is an operative work. So right now you're explaining that there's a feature and there might be funding about this and that for the same time there's no true benefit I think that you can actually project because I don't think that you've done really an analysis of how many really how many people will actually use it in conjunction with a statewide rail system and therein lies the rub in terms of cost versus benefit. Thank you. Annie Shannon you wanted to make comment on that. I see you did. Yeah actually it was maybe not directed about that. I'm happy to touch on that. I was going back to the kind of the COVID ridership numbers. One of the interesting things we've seen and which is why I mentioned kind of the focus on all day travel and the role of providing transit from an equity and mobility lens is that at least in the free inner city routes that are state supported routes we've seen almost like at the beginning nearly a hundred percent ridership drop-off on both the capital corridor and low fan services which primarily serve commute and long distance commute even more than their inner city travelers whereas the fan walking service tends to support lower income more diverse communities that don't have as many white color commuters and their initial ridership drop-off for more like the 60 to 70 percent so while it's still obviously very significant because people weren't traveling at the beginning they've seen a little bit more of this bounce back in a little less of a hit and I think that that is you know helping us to rethink at the state level how we plan for these essential services and what their role of transit is and making sure that we have options available to everybody across the state and so I just wanted to mention that in terms of we don't we don't have enough ridership data though we are certainly trying to account for COVID as we update the next rail plan but really taking a look at who has continued to use transit and when they've used it throughout the past year during this pandemic thank you I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and call on Sandy then Manu and then Jack is that okay and Bruce and Bruce I didn't see your hand raise Bruce I and I just went to the whoever had our hand raised go ahead Sandy you're on thank you uh so yeah this is a great it was a great presentation and I want to thank everybody who is involved at the staff level the consultants and the ad hoc committee I I'm wondering if swan or more of you might be able to comment on the the rationale for the the cost estimates attached to these options I know that you know we've had in previous iterations lower costs and you know just it's a little opaque or a little general at a general level and you know I think that we're you know wanting to get as much information as we can as we make these decisions and while I understand that it you know it's it's really early on to you know to be able to come to any you know solid conclusions I'm just wondering if somebody could help me understand or help us understand what that process was the you know kind of the data analysis and assumptions that were made I'm happy to start that off and then I'll pass it off to Steve Decker it was really the majority of his team to brought all the cost estimate information together and some of the cost estimating for the rail alternatives started out with the rail transit feasibility study they were developed there and pretty pretty good level of detail for a planning study we also utilize that and updated that information for the unified corridor study and that information again was passed off to HDR to update for this transit corridor alternatives analysis also for the for the non rail options bus rapid transit in the autonomous road train it was a standard process for planning is is to utilize the Caltrans 11 page template which makes sure to include all the various different components of a construction project that you don't want to miss because there's those costs can add up and so it's kind of a standard process to go through that we did for the unified corridor study the rail options had a 30% contingency whereas the bus rapid transit and unified corridor have a had a 50% contingency we felt like that was appropriate at the time because the rail did have more detailed information on the cost estimates but we've dialed back in the rail estimate to a 50% contingency because it's a planning study and that's kind of more the approach the typical approach that you would do for a planning study for cost estimates with that hand it off to Steve and provide more information right so for a planning study such as this we did go through a very detailed cost estimation approach process as Ginger said we use this 11 page Caltrans format process for bus rapid transit and autonomous road vehicle the autonomous road vehicle vehicles you know it was very extensive in terms of the various categories of work we did is very similar analysis for commuter rail and light rail so we got to very deep analysis as much as we could in terms of track you know the infrastructure for the rail line in terms of improvements to meet commuter rail or light rail needs so we got into track issues on the infrastructure you know in terms of tie replacements resurfacing new track construction we got into the need for grade road rail grade crossing infrastructure to support the the needs so we we probably had I don't know 20 or 25 different items that we cost it out which is pretty typical we also got into crossing signal details in terms of cost train control structures including bridge rehabilitation retaining walls I will say that retaining wall was a an earthwork were a big deal for bus rapid transit and autonomous road train compared to commuter rail and light rail basically think of you know the the bus rapid transit as a new you know roadway system a new roadway on the right of way so that's why that earthwork was needed so that was built into those cost estimates we also built into into the station's maintenance facility total construction with contingency that was on the infrastructure side we got into purchase of rail vehicles etc so there are quite a few items that went into the detailed cost estimates for each hopefully that answers your question thank you thank you first I just want to point out I think this notion that it's too early to really know about the cost is completely absurd I mean what we know is the costs are increasing significantly if you look at the passenger raise rail feasibility study at that time the cost for a train were estimated at seven hundred million dollars and now we're up to 1.2 billion dollars for capital and operating costs over a 30-year period which is the period that we would go out for a sales tax measure for so the cost of almost doubled in three years I did have one specific question for Mr. Decker they're in the current study it shows the capital cost for most of the rail options which you claim would all be electric at about 450 million dollars however in the unified corridor study the estimated cost for an electric multiple unit train was 550 million dollars I'm curious why in this particular case I would see the estimate has been reduced we did start with the the UCS is our basis for cost estimates we did provide more detail I'm not sure why the difference is a hundred million dollars we did use industry standards to support our cost estimates with our rail engineers and designers and cost estimators so you know I'm not sure of all of the elements that were built into the UCS I know that we built in what was appropriate for this quarter in our analysis I don't know ginger is there anything you want to add with your involvement in the UCS I don't know if I can say a hundred percent but I think at the time there was not the technology had not been available for electric to not have a catenary system I think in the UCS it includes the catenary system which increased the cost of that extra about a hundred million for the public that's an overhead wire system that the train runs under we went with different technology that was not that was not recommended the overhead okay fair enough thank you for that clarification my second question was for miss simons I'm curious if the state rail plan has been adapted at all since our governor said that the current high-speed rail plan will simply cost too much and take too long we've seen political support for that project dropped rapidly what if any changes have been made to the state rail plan to adapt to that new reality okay thanks for the question so we're in the process of updating the next state rail plan so while we tried to make this one more the living document old habits die hard so we are working to update that for release sometime spring or summer of next year so we're still in the process of doing a lot of the technical services designed to account for changes and different service and connectivity goals as well as timing funding availability COVID as best we can and to the point about the governor's statement though he when he said that there was a little bit of miscommunication and when he actually made that announcement early last year what he did was kind of change the timeline of the phases and so when he talked about the overall cost he actually expanded the mileage of the initial phase so we're definitely taking that into account and following direction from our partners of the high-speed rail authority eagerly awaiting their updated business plan which we hear will be out sometime in the next couple of months to make sure that things are aligned on that but we're definitely taking into account the additional 40 miles that have been added to the central valley phase one and looking at what they're saying updated timelines will be for connecting that to silicon valley and then eventually down to Los Angeles as well but that's a very long way of saying yeah we're we work very closely with high speed rail to make sure that we're taking into account updated numbers timeline things like that and then planning the connecting services and the rest of the network accordingly right so we're still opera what we've seen today is still the old plan that hasn't been updated correct yes if you go to our website you'll still see the 2018 California state rail plan and soon we will have an updated vision and I'll be working with ginger to make sure that we are reaching out to this group and others with kind of the components of the service plan so that we're getting feedback from all of our stakeholders well before this gets finalized and stamped for phase two where we start actually going into phasing project development capital costing and working on phase implementation of the updated rail plan thank you thank you thank you jock a question of Bruce McPherson he's lead would you accommodate him and then go ahead and ask his question now go ahead Bruce uh thank you for that consideration number we're gonna flip the switch on the community choice energy issue for Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties in about a half an hour so i wanted to make sure i got a statement so thank you for this time and i just wanted to make a statement about uh i support of doing the tcaa and i know some people are concerned why are we keeping doing these studies but i think we need to do so to fulfill our obligation under measure d to investigate compare the transit options for the corridor uh we just needed and still need some some further answers and i accept the study and i want to thank the rgc staff and steep decker and the consultants for doing a thorough job under some very difficult circumstances with the divisions that within the community on the use of the corridor that we are seeing every day i do believe it is a good public policy to preserve the option to build passenger rail understanding that this is a possible future use but really one that we can't afford now i do think we need to focus on fiscal responsibility and fulfilling our measure d project promises that we gave to the voters in november of 16 and i do think we need to focus on fiscal responsibility and fulfilling other measure d project promises to the voters in that regard um i don't believe another ballot measure to build rail service is fiscally responsible nor is it politically real is realistic at this time um but i fully support maintaining the freight service to whatseville because it is vital to the city's economy um i also want to see commuters from south canna county have a greatly reduced travel times which is the key component of all of this which would but one which we can deliver more affordably and far less time than building passenger rail service uh and we can do that with the bus on shoulder project i believe i do think the rail corridor is an invaluable public asset and i think the community should be able to use it sooner than later which means we need to put this debate to rest and move forward on projects that are financially feasible and can be delivered i think in the feasible future that they for the public benefit um i i think that summarizes my comments uh that some of you have might have seen uh that i made it metro a couple months ago and at the same time i want to thank metro for its uh cooperation and uh the rtc and metro getting together and getting the report to this point uh so i just wanted to voice my concerns and my thoughts about where we should be going in the immediate in the immediate future uh and i thank you for this time before i have to sign off in about 10 or 15 minutes so thank you very much thank you new commissioners uh commissioners jack well thank you very much chair and um i completely agree with bruce's comments um let's back up a little bit when i first heard about what progressive well first of all after the failure of two rail lines uh in terms of the commercial viability of commerce on our branch line uh backing out and now progressive line to back out um the thing that i thought from the beginning is that watsonville is the only viable possibility especially for the people in watsonville that want to get jobs but anywhere north of that um completely impossible then when i read this study and we're up to 1.5 billion and perhaps more as costs increase due to all sorts of factors that we know about since we're on various commissions that improve budgets it's up to 2 million billion dollars um completely out of line to what this community can afford and when you consider all the things that we cannot do right now because we don't have the money like some of the bond measures for schools the the horrible condition of roads in the rest of the county the issues that we face every day with the homeless there's so many issues in this community that we cannot address because we don't have the money we haven't been able to adequately fund so many things and then to peel off in a regressive tax measure to build a rail does not make sense to me we have to come up with something that is financially feasible i completely agree that we need to deal with the traffic issues but the ways that we're trying to think of that in terms of highway one bus on shoulder and other methods i think are the way to go there's so much cheaper point of order i have a couple of questions and i just want to reiterate because i think what bruce brought to the table is about time so my questions do you excuse me jaren i'm sorry my point of order is this is a time i mean me maybe jock your questions are about to be more technical about what was presented they are going to be michael thank you very much because we shouldn't save our general comments till after no i agree michael but i was following up on some other general comments so um i um am i pull my technical career manage many projects that um our decision had to be very considered tens of billions tens of millions of dollars of investment for the companies i worked for and one of the things that we dealt with was when you realize you had 10 to 20 different considerations that had to be made you waited those considerations and the waiting was very critical to the outcome and the waiting had to be very much out of personal or emotional concerns it was based on numbers and what the company was going to benefit from that decision so i'd like to get to the trip and triple bottom line waiting and if staff could comment on that or maybe steven decker could comment on that how was the waiting decided such that one aspect was more or less important than the other and i have two other questions after them thank you commissioner vertrand i can start off the response to that the rtc has been um utilizing the triple bottom line as a framework for decision making um we may have started even earlier i know i i started the rtc at around 2010 we used it for the um regional transportation plan in 2014 and um you know we i feel that strongly that it provides a breath of information for how to evaluate transportation investment decisions and it it um it's kind of juxtaposed against a cost benefit analysis which has its place but also um can eliminate information for decision makers in my whereas the triple bottom line it provides the breath of information on the various different performance measures that can represent economy environment and equity in a way that all the decision makers can look at all of that information decide for themselves what they feel like is the most important and bring that to their own decision making and if we utilize that and waited um one performance measure um in a way that and try to get agreement from the commission on what that waiting would be um i i believe that would be pretty challenging because everybody has a different value system on what they feel like is the most important um okay thank you very much ginger for that and i look to the legislation that this derives from it is state policy and is used in many other cases but there's no mention there in how the waiting is done and i disagree because i think some aspects of waiting are more important than others especially when you have to deal with the affordability i have another question and ginger you talked about this you mentioned in terms of the public involvement and my kudus to the rtc and reaching out and trying to achieve um intensive involvement in the community and get the word out i think that was great but as you mentioned several times um this is not a statistical survey so short of that we really don't have any idea if the public is going to approve all the things that we've been planning for in all these different studies um how would you answer to that when the bottom line is basically um as bruce said the almost the non inevitability of passing something what do you think of our efforts to move towards a solution what we don't even know if the public's going to approve it um again i'll be happy to start off and i'll look towards the project team to um add up any backup information as needed um rtc staff puts a lot of effort towards soliciting input from stakeholders and members of the public it takes up a significant part of our time and um when when soliciting input you know we've had this challenge of um people being concerned about whether it's a representative exam at all and what i found for working from the rtc of the last 10 plus years is the best approach to get information is you know we may have a project team of five to ten people but you get the benefit of the diversity when you get public input that is from 200 people or 500 people or a thousand people to make sure you're considering all the various different angles of what they're um what they're interested in or what they're concerned about and what they want to move forward um there's there was a whole range of reasoning provided from the members of the public and stakeholders that have been provided in the attachments to the staff report i really encourage all of you if you haven't not had a chance yet to review that case four and against um moving towards rail transit as the locally preferred alternative um it provides a wealth of information from members of our public and stakeholders community organizations um as far as whether it's the time is right to go out to for a valid measure obviously this is an argument that a lot of people feel concerned about and it's time to do that um i still i'm not sure it's the time is right for that yet i feel like there's still information that we could provide the members of the public um to get a sense for what that would look like to have transit on the corridor whether it's rail transit or other um demonstration trains that type of thing where you could really give the public and look and feel what that would look like um thank you junior um i appreciate that uh mention of the public's involvement and i did look through the public comments it's amazing how many aspects of this issue was brought out by the various number of comments whether pro or con and i appreciate the public's participation and note that there are several groups that are pushing various views and that's probably why we've had certain numbers of representation of one view of the other my third question is basically to um miss simons in terms of funding so the plans here uh suggest that anywhere from 60 to 50 plus percent would be provided by outside funds and as randy said in a way this is sort of a benefit or a connection to the state system and so i'm looking to the state to provide many of these funds and so i just like to mention some research i did when i first came on um and i like your responses because it brings up an aspect i think it's important so um i referred to san francisco which just got a c contract i forget the particular project it was but i read the detailed state analysis of why they supported san francisco getting this contract and one of the things that stands out to me is that it was a huge metropolitan area and it services i forgot the numbers but you know hundreds of thousands of people during the course of a year you know we are not that kind of situation we are not a huge metropolitan area we're you know we just do not have that level of ability to support projects because we don't have that level of commerce whether hard commerce or not um so why would the state of california fund us as opposed to the major ret metropolitan areas like san francisco sacramento san diego los angeles you do not get the bang for the state monies as opposed to the millions of people that live everywhere else except the hundreds of the tens of thousands that live here so i want to know that rationale why it's worth the state to invest in our project and not in those other projects thank you and i'm not talking about studies studies could be funded all day and they support our staff which i completely appreciate i'm not talking about studies i'm talking about when we actually have to build the project and then we have o and m costs which have to be considered we have to be able to afford that too so why would the state do these things thank you yeah yeah great question i think there's a couple of reasons um you know obviously i'm i'm most familiar with the funding programs that are administered through the state transportation agency though there are others that i think would be available and but i think a lot of the funding that um we work with is from green house gas reduction fund um proceeds and other sp1 improvements which or sp1 funds rather which really do look at having some sort of regional equity across the state as well and so while they are you you are exactly correct that there's more people in the ridership numbers are going to be just you know apples to oranges in a place like la or san francisco we still want to make sure that we are pursuing our climate our mobility and our equity goals in all parts across the state and making it so that there are viable ways to access different housing and jobs opportunities and some of the smaller and less dense regions in the state like Santa Cruz or Monterey or other places on the central coast and i think one of the ways we see that explicitly is one of the sp1 funding programs is the state rail assistance program and that's mostly formulaic but carved into that is for emerging corridors and so i think this is you know a tip of the hat that we want to see emerging rail corridors like Monterey like Santa Cruz like some of the central coast communities have access to these statewide funds that have largely been directed towards the inner city routes or the larger commuter rail operators like a metro link or a pow train or something like that and so i think from our perspective we're really looking at the opportunities to you know build communities around some of the stations the station the transit oriented development the equity concerns again that i mentioned in providing different types of mobility options to all of our essential workers throughout the state i think these are some of the main reasons why the state is still looking at all regions not just the big metropolitan areas across california thank you miss suance i appreciate that i'm gonna try to wrap this up because we do have a lot of attendees and we have some folks that want to speak so scott if you can any technical or yes thank you sir i just wanted to add on to what shannon said in terms of statewide investments the reality is the state is really focusing more and more in terms of funding on programs that reduce vehicle miles to travel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is a huge those are both really big priorities for our current administration as well as equity considerations and so and there's a real movement because of that away from ways that we have addressed traditionally addressed congestion through highway widening and other means that would would have been our go-to strategies as was mentioned earlier that's you know there there is a move away from that the administration is currently working on a climate action plan for transportation investments that reinforces those kind of priorities away from highway widening towards other ways of addressing congestion and providing mobility so i would anticipate you know no guarantees and it's all evolving at this time but there's i would anticipate that that we're going to see him a shift to more operational funding for transit systems and rail systems as well as investments for capital improvements thank you uh we'll take a uh questions and clarifying questions or taking questions i have technical go ahead pat uh thank you uh my first question is um why uh this can you raise your volume just a little bit um can you hear me now yeah that's good okay i'll speak directly into my microphone how's that um i when we initially started this process i had asked that the major transportation investment study from 1998 be included in the discussion mainly because it was the the first swing that this agency took at a unified corridor study or alternative transit corridor alternative analysis it evaluated options down the highway highway widening versus bus rapid transit versus rail transit on the rail corridor and which is why i had asked that it be engaged as part of this this process but it doesn't seem to have been included i did find one mention of it which is strange to me because the the major transportation uh investment study the mtis uh was fundamental to our prop 116 application in fact the the prop 116 funding application said that we were acquiring the rail line in order to implement the mtis so it being left out of discussion is curious to me especially since it traveled down all of the same corridors that we went down with with the tca and the ucis um could someone explain why why it wasn't uh part of the documents i realized it's old but we did also i saw references to the around the bay rail study which is also from 1998 um is there any reason why the mtis was not uh discussed I'm happy to take that Commissioner Mulhern uh we did um my mistake leave it out in the first draft report but it has been included in the final draft report that is available on the rtc web page so uh apologies if um you have not seen that yet but there is an appendix a in the back of the um report that does go into the details of that analysis and and the outcome from that study but that's that's great because um that that study uh concluded that rail transit uh wasn't financially feasible um and even at the time the technologies that they were evaluating are very similar i mean they're the word they were diesel trains at the time but but the cost projections were very very similar to the ones that we're looking at here and it's it's strange to me that that i mean it says that it is not fiscally feasible in their report and yet uh we seem to be uh going in a different direction with this report uh my second question is uh do we know where the station locations are going to be yet there were station locations developed for each of the four alternatives that are provided in the report on the um alignment maps uh they were also provided in the powerpoint presentation um component that steve decker presented um for each different alternative there was different stations um there was for the commuter rail transit there was um 11 stations that um we've been looking at on the um light rail transit i believe it was um maybe 15 stations two of which are um seasonal stations these are proposed and these are the stations that were evaluated in the transit card alternatives analysis but that does not necessarily mean these will be the stations as we move forward this would be something that we would be looking at again through um you know next steps uh preliminary design and environmental okay so that that's something that we would settle upon in the environmental phase okay thank you i have one final question um how are uh i guess this is for the consultants how are you going to develop um a business plan without selecting a specific technology to uh i'm sorry you're saying generally speaking uh passenger rail is the prefer alternative but making no distinction between commuter rail or light rail injure should we respond take that safe sure i'll start um with the business plan uh passenger rail there are the two alternatives we will do a different analysis for commuter rail and light rail as we build the business plan to understand um revenue projections how would fund funding scenarios over time uh so that both would be built into the business plan while we're not selecting a technology through the business plan we will identify what that those revenue projections are the cash flow and funding would be as we move forward so there will be that separate analysis for both and then the selection of the the technology would come you know the next phase is with the more detailed engineering environmental and the station area analysis that we just talked about does that make sense yeah totally thank you i i just wanted to get that out um into the the public conversation here since uh we're talking now about finalizing our decisions in some future study that we haven't agreed to do yet and certainly haven't paid for ah thank you Patrick okay um annie uh any questions yeah it's very quickly um uh about half an hour ago there were about 197 people uh attending the meeting uh they're now down to 139 this was a public hearing for to hear what the public has to say um we've been at it for quite a while i think i would really urge the chair to open the public hearing that that is here that's what i'm trying to do if you had any questions or i can wait till after the hearing from the public comments are going to be after the public hearing okay seeing none no more i'd like to open this up to the public commissioner given the amount of attendees um is it a two minute or a three minute comment period let's go ahead and guess the amount of the attendees let's reduce it down to two minutes uh i know some of you have presentations that are for three but due to the fact that this is a kind of a longer than anticipated uh and to give as much people's opportunity it will be going down to two minutes and i apologize for any inconvenience okay so we'll go ahead and get started with mr mark Johansson you're muted you're on mark you're muted yeah we hear you we don't hear you still muted okay let's see if he was allowed to talk i'm mute can you hear me now yes yes okay so so this uh power point is for the next speaker not mine okay could you speak me well the yeah there we go okay uh can everybody hear me yes all right so this is originally a three-minute i'll see if i can really speed through this so good morning commissioners my name is mark Johansson i'm an attorney here in santa cruz and a resident of aptos and assisting to get with this demonstration next slide please so the to recap the commission approved this demonstration in december 2019 because of the pandemic has been rescheduled to this summer next slide to get will demonstrate it's award winning off library operated zero mission in quiet mr 3b a tram with a hydrogen fuel cell range extender next slide the train is a bit longer narrower than the standard minibus with comparable weights and about a quarter of the weight of a passenger rail car next time this will be a live demonstration between the boardwalk and capital atreso and stationary exhibits in aptos village in wasa bill next slide the vehicle has level accessible boarding the ability to accommodate bicycles and runs on a fixed rail which is safer for other users of the rail trail next slide so what about financial uh feasibility in the 2019 unified quarter investment study estimated the cost of board and 74 million that was based on a large metropolitan train system that study also said that the use of the current technologies could significantly reduce the cost of the system next slide so take it would like to propose a concept for the commission's consideration which includes a public private partnership to design build operate and maintain a rail transit system on the branch line which would provide passenger service putting wadsville and wasa cruise and excursion service between capital and davenport the system which is divisible in phases and expandable to meet the rider's need this would include private investment of 120 million and a public contribution of 57 million over 15 years which is one quarter of the cost estimated in the unified quarter investment study because of the technology use this includes track improvements track welding replacing 38 000 ties two and a half miles of new track passing thank you for your time sorry about that thank you next we have um brad read and i will bring up your slide here shortly is he on can you hear me yes let's go ahead brad if you can thank you i i certainly can't get through this in two minutes but i'll try uh tig mllc is a california a railway design build company we have produced and developed and delivered a 90 page proposal for a privately funded project that will include full use of the branch line railway as shown in the in the illustration right here the proposal includes computer simulations of operations and a cost model for capital expense in 15 years of operation showing that the project can be profitable the tig m capex is 26 percent of the tcaa lrt cost next up slide please for the commuter rail we'll use our battery hydrogen fuel cell vehicles continue on please next slide for the tourist excursion rail also battery hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for the diesel electric vehicles for on the short line freight operation continue please we've put together delivery team that can design finance build operate and maintain this entire project tig mllc jonai consulting urban innovation santa cruz big trees and pacific railroad for the short line operator and mark johannesons our local li liaison and legal consult consult next slide please the modes of travel we we propose multimodal stops at every station the modes of travel do not compete with one or they complement one another next slide please tig m rolling stock used the same propulsion system and is operated by the same on m staff next slide please zero mission rolling stock battery and fuel cell next slide please all virtually silent using flange lubrication each wheel resilient wheels and vibration damping next slide please based on the work done in the src the sec rtc rail transit study we've developed simulations next slide please full computer simulations are available close up thank you thank you okay mr auto go ahead auto you recognize you got two minutes still needed can you hear me now yes sound check great can you pull up my slides please okay go ahead great sounds good Keith auto county resident next slide please the tcaa recommendation is for electric passenger rail passenger rail does not make sense for santa cruise county consider the huge cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build tens of millions of dollars each year to maintain that maintenance being a forever liability yes infrastructure projects are expensive all the more they need to be effective and passenger rail will not be effective for santa cruise county the tcaa projected ridership numbers are low it does not move large numbers of people to where they need to be rail is inflexible transit times are long a better solution is to invest in sc metro restore the service cuts that were made back in 2016 continued to implement bus on shoulder which has noted in the rtc corridor study has better transit time than rail and create a premium trail in the corridor next slide please going back to those operating and maintenance costs what will we spend per the rtc corridor study that's 13.2 million dollars each year next slide please the tcaa study tells us that regardless of which option we choose the operating and maintenance costs will be 23 to 25 million dollars each and every year not only is this a large number but look at how much it has increased from only two years ago next slide please as noted last month the tcaa ridership numbers are even lower than those already low numbers we had from the corridor study next slide please wrapping up remember the 10 000 signatures for trail and no train let's go forward with a better plan let's invest in metro implement bus on shoulder build a premium trail and as noted again in the sentinel today let's have a county wide vote thanks for listening thanks for your time thank you mr. mr. vernazza go ahead mr. vernazza you're on is he there ben ben vernazza still muted okay got you now got your band all right um go ahead due to due to set segment 12 um and the fact that the includes mostly expenditures for the train you may and be in breach of the fiduciary duties because on page 20 of the ordinance expenditure plan it says the measure revenues do not include funding for any new trail rail service and that's mainly trained in segment 12 the expenditure plan can be amended for you to do that and here's the process reciting necessity finding necessity that's hard then note note to every supervisor and every city council that you want this done and then you vote and the amendments require a two-thirds vote now segment 12 comes under the corridor and it talked about it in the in the ordinance but it didn't talk about the 2.7 miles cost a 45 million dollars a mile it also said revenues can be improved bicycle and pedestrian facilities on existing crossings so don't lie in the highway use that travels as bicycle pass and walking pass and you connect all of mid county between sea cliff to La Selva beach inexpensively the commission can only start to spend a new trail by making that amendment or otherwise you may be in breach get the votes go ahead it takes eight the breach matter matters should be said further by the county legal staff now high school Santa Cruz high school is the only one near the rails so it can't and the rail doesn't matter anyway because it doesn't go to the airport metro bus i put my application in for the oversight committee i love your support that was my job in the past a forensic accountant with trusts pension plans endowments wrap it up thank you thank you uh mr craig chatterton go ahead craig you're recognized unmute okay can you hear me now yes yes thank you for bringing up the slide all right thank you for the commissioners who have already raised a number of the issues that i have in the slide this is a summary that talks about the benefits and the costs of this rail system and i'd like to highlight the fact that aside from the costs which have been discussed widely already they're really very small and minor almost insignificant benefits if you look at the carbon offs the carbon savings that you get the emissions it's less than point one six percent of what the county produces today vehicle miles 22 000 less than point four percent of the vehicle miles traveled per day in the in the county traffic fatalities you may reduce injuries by one you will not reduce fatalities so if you look at this from a triple line perspective looking at the economic the environmental and the equity perspectives there's no benefit here it really just doesn't have to fight it in all this data comes directly from rgc reports this is either the current study or the ucis study this does not make sense and i think commissioners have already said that today and cobit 19 as one of the commissioners pointed out is another area that we just have no knowledge of at this point in time the how it's going to affect the future but spending 30 billion dollars or 30 million dollars a year for the next 30 years i don't see any way that this makes sense that's it you always a question did mike did you have a question you raised your hand no i'm sorry just so okay so in summary the lp in my view and i hope you'll agree if you look at the data and i do urge you to do your own analysis this i've tried to be as fair as possible these numbers come directly out of the rts rtc reports i think you'll see this just does not make sense unfortunately and the reason is because our as they pointed earlier our density and population it just simply does not match the areas that have successfully introduced programs like this thank you great thank you for your comments mr. colligan yes i can you recognize can you hear me chair consuls yes thank you chairman consuls and commissioners but colligan i'm a live oak resident this commission has now been studying options for the rail quarter for over seven years prior commissions have studied it for 31 years more you have had the numbers you need to make an informed decision on the use of the rail quarter since the completion of the ucis in 2018 more data is not going to change the fundamental question does the public want a rail solution providing limited ridership that will cause 500 million in capital 800 million in operating expenses over 30 years and require a new tax approved by two thirds of the voters that's the question unless you can answer yes to this question today you need to stop wasting our precious tax dollars and start developing a realistic and doable way to use the corridor only one option has ever been universally supported by the public a trail the huge question is what type of trail and how to preserve future options you have a simple path forward to preserve future options on the corridor with rail banking the tcaa only reinforces the conclusions of the ucis a train is not feasible or fundable in a county with 270 000 people most of whom have no possibility of ever using it if you feel you need additional public input make it representative and put a countywide vote on the ballot leadership is about telling the truth even when it disappoints some of your constituencies let's respect the voters intelligence and move in a direction that's obvious to the voters today thank you thank you for your comments but mr bruce saw y'all can you hear me yes go ahead you're acknowledged thank you hello chair gonzalez rtc commissioners and staff thank you for your diligent and thorough work on the tcaa i want to speak to the importance of metro and the corridor development process and business plan development friends of the rail and trail at no surprise to anybody supports the locally preferred alternative of rail on the rail line we realize that the tcaa is specific to the rail corridor but the rail corridor has to be part of a larger transportation system to be truly effective research shows that public transportation changes from an option of last resort to an option of choice of transit modes are integrated the schedule is reliable and not affected by traffic and frequency is every 30 minutes or better this is necessary to achieve huge increases in ridership our vision is that most rail stations would be mini metro centers with a bus or three waiting as passengers step off of rail vehicles using buses on short circulator routes integrated with rail gives more bang for the bus and allows more geography to be effectively served this is a spine and rib configuration rail transit on the rail corridor should not be viewed as competing with metro but rather as a resource operated by metro to provide better service to more riders throughout the county this means that metro needs to be deeply involved in integrated transportation planning to build the most efficient equitable and cost-effective transportation system possible thank you Mr. Rod Dierden Mr. Dierden you're on mute go ahead Mr. Dierden unmute yourself and we can come back to him Callie Arnold go ahead selling our good morning commissioners just wanted to a sound check can you hear me yes got you okay great um so as as i think you know i'm with santa cruz county friends of the rail and trail um and first i i want to really thank uh commissioner shifrin for mentioning the huge numbers of people who have uh overcome great technical hurdles and a lot used a lot of their time to try to be in this meeting right now um i'd like to take if you haven't done so yet i'd like to encourage the commissioners to each look at the bottom of your screen at the little participant button and click it and you should be able to see the list of names of who's here and you should really take a minute to scroll through it and see the the huge public interest in this issue um and the obviously the the public cares deeply about what we are doing here today and and what are we doing as a community we are considering which will be better for our county bus service on part of the corridor or rail service on the whole corridor other transit options have been considered and rejected trail only with no transit has been considered and rejected there are people who are unhappy that those earlier decisions were made and they want you to revisit that decision that was made two years ago but please keep in mind we've studied and rejected those options it's time to move forward today the question is bus on part of the corridor or rail service on the whole corridor and how are you going to make this decision the rtc is chosen to use that triple bottom line analysis which was already discussed your staff and consulting efforts experts have reached this conclusion that for our county passenger rail transit is the best we own the corridor and we have the tracks and it makes sense to use the resources that we have this option of passenger rail transit is broadly supported by many government agencies community organizations and the general public and the final tcaa and your agenda packet make this clear they've done tons of community outreach and people are telling you what they want it's not unanimous but the majority is vast the obvious choice is to approve the rail as the locally preferred alternative please direct the staff to thank you for your time this is plan uh mr lee s go ahead mr lee s uh we acknowledge you two minutes mr lee or really could you make a general comment that people need to be more ready to like on youth themselves you know so they can get on quickly this is sure we're wasting literally we're wasting 20 seconds a person okay so let's go to um jack carroll go ahead we're gonna move on to jack carroll hello this is jack carroll can you hear me yes you got two minutes jack good uh the state rail plan has been mentioned uh in several contexts and uh i want to comment that there is a zero funding provided by the state rail plan it's a at best a cost estimate um last time i looked at it um the uh regional plans that we had were in the tier three 2050 year 2050 vision that's uh 30 years from now and uh the possibility that sp1 greenhouse gas emissions reduction funding being available that diminishes every year as we move towards electric cars that there's a less and less advantage moving from an electric car to an electric train so i don't see that as a funding source that's available to us by the time we'll actually be uh asking for the money so um rail is just uh not a financial possibility for us it's it's a bad idea as far as ridership goes to and uh i'm not real excited about having a bus on our bicycle trails either that's my opinion thank you very much thank you jack mr dear ben uh is the uh is that working now yes yes good i apologize for the uh you have two minutes go problem uh yes thank you very much for uh hearing me i was asked by some friends over there to give a a listen to you what you're doing having gone through about 15 of these kinds of joint powers boards and and i am happy to be with you and congratulations to you mr chairman and the commission and to steve and ginger and shannon for their final reports a quick comment please remember that you're building a project for the next hundred years you're not building it for 30 years from now you're building it for a hundred years from now and if you if you lose that asset as a quarter uh then you lose it forever and and your valley your area is going to require that transportation over the longer term so please have the long vision as uh my friends bruce and and uh fred keely and others over there remember uh this is for the long vision and by the way huge amounts of funding are being created now uh by the uh biden administration uh in the carbon disincentive fees over a trillion dollars and uh it's going to go to projects that are shall we're ready because they're also creating jobs so if you're ready you're going to receive funding don't worry about that it's a matter of being ready that means completing your alternative analyses and identifying a course of action to go forward and of course your project needs to be carbon neutral so thank you very much for your good work and good luck with you thank you sir diane drier go ahead diane you you're on hello my name is diane drier and i i want to start with just saying i totally agree with uh mr darodon i hope everybody listen to that there are so many reasons that rail is a superior choice for us and i want to sorry i want to steer you towards chapter six of the tcAA report that summarizes all of the benefits rail protects the trail construction by assuring a continuous corridor rail provides faster travel times and greater travel time reliability rail allows for easy connections to the regional trail network rail network rail reduces auto vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions rail assures energy efficiency per passenger capacity mile rail provides greatest opportunities for transit oriented development rail can be implemented most quickly and has more funding sources available it allows for future rate freight and excursion service and rail utilizes the whole right away between pahero and west side santa cruz rail provides the ability to have level boarding at all stations rail stations serve a high percentage of disadvantaged populations rail has more space for bicycles wheelchairs and other mobility devices given all the evidence the obvious choice is to go with the recommendation of the experts and confirm passenger rail as the best locally preferred alternative thank you thank you matt ferrell uh matt you're on uh can you hear me yes two minutes uh i serve as the city of santa cruz representative on the rtc's bicycle advisory committee which has endorsed electric passenger rail as the most bicycle friendly transit option i'd like to speak to some points in the cal trans comment letter that i think are important for today's discussion cal trans states that the 2018 rail plan identifies the santa cruz branch line is a key corridor for passenger rail throughout the region providing critical connections to the bay area central coast destinations and it is vital to preserve this rail line because it aligns with the state rail plan passenger rail service in this corridor can meet the demands of commuters while importantly providing all-day service and mobility that provides transportation options for all users in the community this is a priority for the states and there are significant state funding opportunities available that can provide a pathway for advancing santa cruz county connections as part of the statewide network building on the state's investments in the corridor through proposition 116 realizing the full pendenche pinnacle of a combined rail and active transportation corridor is consistent with the sustainable community strategies for the monterey bay the state rail plan connectivity for goals for this region and regional greenhouse gas emission target thanks for the time thank you matt robert singleton next go ahead robert you got two minutes great thank you can hear me yes my name is robert singleton i'm the executive director for the santa cruz county business council um organization represents the 85 or so largest employers in santa cruz county uh we were supportive of meser g in 2016 um but in 2017 after hearing from members of the rtc fort and greenway and the rate of multiple ridership studies 86 percent of our membership voted for a trail only option because we found that the train options were financially infeasible for providing the level of service and value um to reduce traffic on during peak times on highway one now after three years of studying uh people pulling out of the freight contracts um and uh your own analysis saying that bus rapid transit might be better for ridership uh we feel that the political and bureaucratic support for uh light rail is waning so now we're in an interesting place where we certainly are not in a position financially to make this kind of investment right now and given that the outreach that's already been done we feel it's a lot of self-selection uh none of the outreach has been scientifically valued or statistically accurate we don't know why the rtc didn't do an actual opinion poll since the tax measure is no doubt going to be needed and at this point looking at high speed rail the smart train and sonoma we feel it's really important to put this issue to a countywide vote when we're genuinely skeptical of the analysis that's been conducted thus far so we feel strongly we need to put this to a countywide vote and it's a course of action that we might be willing to pursue on our own accord if the if the rtc or in the board of supervisors is not willing to do it themselves thank you thank you for your comments Nancy Faustich next Nancy I'm Nancy Faustich director of rehenaracion we at rehenaracion parro valley climate actions strongly support rail transit for the rail corridor our county is disconnected and segregated who is here today who is not represented we had classes of pv high students here who had to leave to go to their next class kind of confusing to advertise a public hearing starting at 9 30 and they wanted to comment as the rtc prepares to accept or reject the staff's recommendation i'd like to know how many commissioners have built personal relationships with individual low-income brown essential workers the majority population in watsonville how many of you have ever ridden a bus from santa cruz to watsonville in traffic how many of you live with your family in one room of an apartment or home with limited kitchen and bathroom access how many of you have ridden the bike to a bus stop not knowing if there will be room on the bus for your bike i'm concerned about the bus option because one it would take longer to develop two there could be major problems with right of way since existing easements for for purpose of rail and three with a limited three bikes per bus that makes it a risky bet on whether any individual could count on riding to the station and getting on with their bike in contrast electric train will be faster accommodate many more bikes will be more accessible and will be implemented sooner and let's talk about those easements is a hidden issue here the large payoffs that would go to property owners for the right of way that's not for the purpose of the rail let's step back and recognize that it's imperative to get people out of cars if we're going to drive down emissions sufficiently to actually protect a livable planet with the change in federal administration i anticipate much new funding including for transit systems thank you nancy for your time thank you kary mcdonnell hi can you hear me yes sir you're on hi hi i'm a resident of live oak taxpayer and very interested in this issue i've listened to uh this presentation with an open mind i have a couple key questions there's been a lot of talk about studies how much public money tax money has actually gone into pain for the existing studies and and i heard some future studies is there a cap i've actually heard that it's been over 20 million dollars in studies i think which i think is unforgivable secondly is measure d money going into this project because i believe uh that that money was not to go into any to build or operate train secondly uh the second third point on all three rail options the cons were higher costs operation costs higher maintenance costs with lower ridership and less resident resilience to climate change even though those those are there was a lot a shorter list of cons those are massive cons to me and more importantly all three rail options as you stated uh there there are speeds were 30 to 60 miles per hour now as a bike an avid bike rider on the streets of santa cruz i would not feel safe riding next to a train going 30 to 60 miles an hour and then finally to suggest that the sample size of a thousand respondents is even close to representative of a town of 64,000 or whatever we would need at least in my estimation about 2,500 responses so i'm suggesting that this should go to a vote of the people and like i said i was fairly open-minded when i uh attended this conference i'm completely against the rail now and i'm actually four mass transit but this does not make sense for santa cruz in my opinion thanks for hearing me out and if you could answer those questions that'd be great thank you carry Gina Cole go ahead Gina you're acknowledged Gina you can speak thank you so much my name is Gina Cole i'm from bike santa cruz county sorry i lost my letter bike santa cruz county wishes to express their support for passenger rail as a local the local shoot sorry for the local whatever i'm sorry it's not coming the local preferred method of transportation along the rail line we believe that utilizing a rail option is essential to support a sustainable and safe way through the county from a cyclist perspective safe means separate from automobiles and wide enough to ensure safety for all users the rail trail is currently proposed offers this kind of safety and as for sustainability keeping the tracks does not put the trail at risk however removing the tracks does not only just keeping the rail intact save the trail it saves time and valuable resources in order to sustain the trail we must firmly support preserving the rail another reason that bike santa cruz county has is that bike santa cruz county has always advocated for bike friendly infrastructure that increases the ability of people to use a bike for daily trips to use a bike for recreation to use a bike for increased physical and mental health and well-being we will continue to advocate for safe routes for cyclists and we will continue to push for a trail alongside a rail line while we are not transit experts we do offer perspective as active bike commuters and recreational riders and it is in the spirit that we give our support for the rail as the clear choice for public transportation along the trail the transit corridor thank you thank you jenna my grab go ahead michael plus you're acknowledged you hear me yes yes yes this is my composer i'm the chair of the local group of the seara club we have 4 000 members in santa cruz county we support the staff recommendation for some kind of train or tram on the rail corridor we do have one condition which is that the trail is not put on the streets anywhere along the corridor doing so would divide up the majority of the members of the county that support a train and trail system so not even for a few blocks keep keep the keep the trail on the corridor and then build a train i know that we can do it the seara club supports the train because in the long term fixed line transportation with fixed stations encourages and supports the type of planning where and development where people walk and ride bikes for shorter trips and then use a train for regional mobility and that type of growth those types of lifestyles are what we need to reduce our largest cause of greenhouse gases trips by personal automobile now you may have heard me mention development and growth which is not something that the seara club you know often comes out in support of but our club supports the train partly because we do care about the needs of workers and others especially in south county and we see a way to support the needs of those workers in a way that is supportive of the world's climate which is some kind of rail system i've heard a lot of people talk about our train is too expensive that seems odd to me given that the average person spends 25 percent of their income on their car and for working class people it's more like 30 or 40 or 50 percent so for a worker to raise their sales tax by a few hundred bucks a year and you'd be able to operate less automobiles as a household that's a great bargain socialized transportation like socialized medicine is expensive for the government but it's a bargain for society as a whole especially people that have a hard time affording cars which are the kind of people we should be serving so again the seara club supports the staff recommendation mostly because it's the best thing for the world's climate but also because we want to collaborate with people that care about working people and care about the economy so we're with you we're supportive and let's move forward next um i have a phone number your last four digits are 3660 unmute yourself 3660 you have two minutes hi greetings chair gondolas and my name is Steve millen i'm a professional engineer and a board member of fort i have carefully reviewed the earlier graphs and final drafts of the tcaa r and is comparing them to each other and comparing them both to prior studies especially the unified forward investment study completed just two years ago i am frankly disappointed in the level of detail regarding estimated cost contained in this report what i and hopefully some of you have already noticed is the level of detail in this report is less than that provided in prior studies this bothers me because as studies become more focused the level of detail and accuracy of estimates should be increasing not decreasing fort has brought attention to several of these issues in prior written correspondence but fort's comments appear to have been ignored accordingly i'm bringing this to your attention today here are two clear examples first the contingency included in the ucis was 60,900,000 representing 23% of the estimated cost the contingency in the current report for light rail is now 127,200,000 more than double the previous figure and now represents more than 37% of the estimated cost second fort requested a more detailed breakdown of the estimated on m costs included in the November draft of this report the final report removed even the paltry amount of detail included in the November draft we strongly recommend the estimates be revised and updated to provide the level of detail and accuracy warranted by this once in a lifetime project in light of the tig m presentation include a probable range of costs and be made available for public review before proceeding with the pretend promised business plan which will rely heavily on these cost estimates thank you thank you mark Tina next Tina you're acknowledged good morning can you hear me yes go ahead two minutes Tina andrietta I've lived here for about 40 years I'm a volunteer for four friends of the rail trail I live in AAPTOS I live close to the rail corridor and I am speaking today in support supporting the choice of electric passenger rail as the locally preferred alternative transportation represents our single biggest choice given its share of greenhouse gas emissions adding passenger rail transit to our existing rail corridor is an opportunity to expand our choices for mobility and make a huge different locally to reduce the devious stating effects of green climate change I have five quick points vehicle miles traveled is the gold standard and measuring environmental impact a rail solution is estimated to offer a 31 percent greater reduction in vehicle miles traveled over bus rapid transit rail solution is estimated to also offer 31 percent greater reduction in global warming greenhouse gases over BRT a rail solution is estimated to offer 23 percent more effective energy use over BRT a rail solution is estimated to offer 86 percent greater capacity during peak travel times over BRT transit critical as we anticipate future demand a rail solution can be implemented up within 12 years four years faster than BRT finally apart from the TCAA study did you know particulate pollution from unregulated rubber tire wear is the significant element poisoning our water systems and our oceans rail based vehicles eliminate this unfortunate and not often discussed impact on road vehicles I urge the RTC to select rail transit and rapidly move forward to make this genus leave at 10 thank you Jim all right test one you got two minutes Jim all right thank you my name is Jim Jensen I live downtown Santa Cruz I live 500 feet from the Santa Cruz big trees Pacific railway I live 600 feet from highway one and you get to guess which one is noisier louder more pollution more dangerous to walk along one point I would like to make is that a lot of people are saying oh we can rail bank or this is an abandoned track that is not a local decision that is actually handled by the feds at the surface transportation board and anybody says it's abandoned or can be rail banked whether it's a letter to the editor to the Sentinel whether it's an activist or whether it's a politician they are lying to you this is Roy and Campbell probably say no we do not want to be an embargoed system and the surface transportation board will say no we can't pull that up so we're gonna have this track and we can either use it or not use it and I say if we have it use it because it makes more sense and then another person said about you know oh my goodness there's a train that's gonna go by me 30 miles an hour the thing about trains is they generally stay on the track and they don't swerve into bike lanes or onto sidewalks I used to walk down water street from branch 40 to ocean and every time I come to a corner I look around because I knew somebody was sneaking up behind me either in a car or a bike and trains just don't do that so I definitely recommend continuing the plan for rail transportation you know we got to think 58 years down the line and not be selfish thank you thank you Mr. Brian Peoples Mr. Brian Peoples you're acknowledged you have two minutes thank you hi this is Brian from trail now can you hear me yes the options included in the TCA will cost our taxpayers over a billion dollars it's time to stop wasting spending let's rail bank the coastal corridor proceed with building a transit oriented trail that serves the most in the county our voters have declared time and again that they want to trail now we do not want 60 trains a day speeding through our neighborhood we believe a continuous trail from Watsonville to the boardwalk can be built by 2023 we're asking the RTC to make this a reality trail now the trail as part of the TCA was not included as part of the analysis it did not include the miles of fencing that will be required to protect the public 12 people have died in the last three years from a smart train you imagine 60 trains a day speeding through our community finally the the TCA in their control of public outreach that was published in train magazine the survey so train advocates across the world were commenting and adding support so your survey was flawed if this organization does choose to go with rail we will support an election in 2022 against rail thank you thank you Mr. Fields Brett Garrett Mr. Brett Garrett you yeah the floor Brett no hi I'm here can you hear me now you got you got yeah I will suggest that you announce the queue so that people know that they're up next so they can be more prepared I am Brett Garrett from Santa Cruz I want to say whatever decision you make today please be open to the possibility and I would say the certainty that there could be a better transit system than the so-called preferred alternative personal rapid transit would be a much better solution probably cheaper I continue to insist the consultant's milestone two analysis of PRT was simply wrong I provided a lot of specific details explaining where I felt the information and the scoring was incorrect and I'm not aware of any response to those specific details that I provided but I believe your milestone two decision and anything following it was based on incorrect flawed information you're talking about spending at least half a billion dollars on a transit system with 30 to 60 minute waits between vehicles that cannot even serve downtown Santa Cruz transit center and at Cabrillo College the train stations would be on the wrong side of the freeway it's just not good enough to justify the cost not good enough to get people out of their cars consider personal rapid transit please a PRT system could serve the railroad corridor with or without keeping the tracks doesn't really matter for PRT purpose and it could include additional loops going to downtown Santa Cruz Cabrillo College and even UCSC serving those communities directly the service would be on demand with usually no need to wait and much more efficient in terms of energy usage it's also the only system I know that promotes social distancing and contrary to what the consultant said it could serve more passengers than a train on our corridor it is a high capacity system they apparently don't know how it works it's probably at least 10 years before your preferred rail alternative can be implemented a lot can change in those 10 years I don't know so all I'm saying is yeah a lot can change whatever decision you make it's not set in stone thank you for your comments Ryan Sarnaterra then Joseph from Fort go ahead Ryan you're acknowledged okay you can hear me now yes all right I've been following this issue for quite a few years I was supportive of the purchase of the corridor in 2012 thought rail and trail was a wonderful idea until a few facts came my way which disabused me of that magical thinking and I think that the RTC has consistently pushed the train as the preferred option and has done many things over the years to marginalize and make the idea of a trail sound unfeasible and I do think it's the RTC's responsibility to start to dispel some of the magical thinking that it has fostered on the community such as you could have a rail a train in that corridor and a bicycle trail for the entire distance that is impossible I think that the RTC needs to tell the community just how much money it's going to take and where that money is going to come from instead of speculation that it'll come from somewhere else and I also think that in terms of freeway traffic it's really important to let people know that even if you were capable of putting that train onto the track onto the corridor that the number of riders would not significantly or really in any meaningful way reduce freeway congestion Finally, look to Monterey they took out their their rails years ago and they have a trail that has a fantastic amount of usage and it's a tremendous community asset and it's also an asset in terms of visitors coming to the community to use to use the facility it's expanded over time that's the last thank you Ryan for your time thanks next Josef from Ford then Barry Scott Go ahead Barry you're acknowledged Yes sir Yes go Thank you Hello to all my name is Joseph Henley I'm a former student of UC Santa Cruz and a proud member of the Santa Cruz community I wanted to speak today about the potential for the passenger rail locally preferred alternative to not only become integrated at the regional level with neighboring Monterey County but also take a meaningful stride toward linking up with the expansive 2018 California state rail plan to begin with the Transportation Agency from Monterey County is currently working on the Monterey Bay Area rail network integration study for planning intercity rail service between Monterey County and Santa Clara County and connecting Southern California the future vision service is currently considering an hourly regional trail service between Monterey and Santa Cruz with station stops at Capitola after Watsonville, Pajaro, Castroville, Marina and Seaside with timed connections to and from intercity rail service that hubs stations in Pajaro and Castroville supporting the rail locally preferred alternative in Santa Cruz is a way of ensuring that we are fully included in this process of modernization the passenger rail service with an FRA compliant vehicle would allow for a one seat ride between Santa Cruz and Monterey in the not too distant future but only if bold decisions are made now to begin integrating a rail service along the defunct rail corridor in addition to this the 2018 California state rail plan developed by Cal Trans Division of Rail proposes a major expansion intercity regional and freight rail services throughout California passenger rail on the Santa Cruz branch rail line provide the greatest connectivity for Santa Cruz County residents to the future statewide rail network the funding landscape for transportation is moving more and more toward transit we as a county can emerge as a permanent pioneers in California's eventual shift toward a culture of green public transportation in a bid to combat the climate crisis thank you for your time commission thank you sure Mary Scott and then Ms. Seagal from Ford good very acknowledged in two minutes thank you a couple of things first I want to say that a trail is not public transit another thing is that essential workers and minimum wage workers do not telecommute I'm happy however to see that every rail every study we've done continues to support in stronger and stronger terms rail transit over any other use of that rail corridor and so I urge the commission to stay on track with this interestingly though this transit corridor alternatives analysis calls for technologies that are not modeled in the cost estimates why are we looking at 500 468 million dollar systems that aren't what are recommended in this study the study says alternative fuel technologies including hydrogen fuel cell battery or other future clean non fossil fuel technologies would be utilized well if this is the case then I think some of the next steps that we need to do are to make sure that our business plan business plan that's recommended by the way as part of the purpose of the study to develop a strategic business plan I think we need to look at the full range of options some of the costs that contribute to the higher projected costs for CRT and LRT involve positive train control that could be eliminated if we use temporal separation or find other ways to implement something like a street car I was I was hoping to see the full presentation by TIGM of their hydrogen battery electric hydrogen street car that would I believe qualify under a light rail system and be in remarkably more affordable than the more traditional technologies so I look forward to seeing a business plan and thank you for thank you for your work carry on thank you very for your time Mr. Gull from Ford then Buzz Anderson good morning good your acknowledge you have two minutes thank you as a WHS graduate I have to echo what Nancy Faustich was saying I'm disappointed that our students from PV were not allowed to speak the importance of passenger rail and public transportation for the students in South County and the workers cannot be overstated this provides opportunities to get to universities and schools that they are not otherwise afforded and cars are not an option any kind of personal transportation is not an option for students in South County a $200 bicycle is not an option public transportation is about investing in the community and investing in something that is going to help the entire community and benefit the entire community I am so disappointed to hear people in my community claiming that it will be so expensive when the people saying this are some of the richest people here we've lived in one of the richest counties in one of the richest states in the richest country in the world it's outrageous to think that anybody would say we can't afford public transportation having said that I have to say that I fully support rail transit for Santa Cruz County so does all of my family and so do all of the people who I grew up with in South County we are not only supportive of passenger rail but have serious concerns with considering rail banking thank you Mr. Fan for your comments thank you I did want to make a comment toward you you could have all the students email us their comments and concerns to the commissions and we accept them all so we we apologize for them not having the opportunity to speak due to their class time so we will move on to the next speaker Buzz Anderson then Jim Wheeler I guess you can hear me we all live in a democracy the cornerstone of any democracy is the will of the people in keeping with democratic ideals the future of the corridor should be decided by a majority of county voters this is the right thing to do and the obvious thing to do the issue should be put on the 2022 ballot people that want to train versus people that want to trail only giving both sides plenty of time to state their case and also for the RTC to summarize their many studies and be transparent in possible finding of any project that goes forward I know the trail only supporters want a fair election in 2022 I challenge the train supporters to also advocate for putting the matter to a public vote I haven't heard them voice that sentiment there are some strong train supporters on this commission would they agree to a democratic vote of the people to decide the corridor's future I would hope so thank you thank you Buzz for that for your comments Jim Wheeler then Michelle go ahead Jim you have two minutes Jim you need to unmute yourself commissioners please do not let the enemies of public rail transit persuade you to abandon our long-term project for passenger rail in the railroad corridor please approve and implement your staff's proposed locally preferred alternative from the time of its acquisition and before then the railroad corridor has always been intended by the state of california and the vote of the people locally and statewide for public transportation walking and cycling on a path a street or a road are modes of private transportation by means of the public way and are inherently unsuitable over much distance for most people most of the time public transportation means mass transit a system of high capacity vehicles available for public use all the time for everybody that is what our rail corridor has always been intended for and to abandon the project would be a tragic and shameful waste of public resources and a failure of public purpose public transit is what you are required to accomplish you are not charged with being a county parks and recreation agency talk of converting the railroad corridor into a linear park is not in your bailiwick it's out of the question for your agency please do not be bamboozled keep your hand on the plow hold on that's all i have to say thank you thank you jim for your time miss sale then jessica evans miss sales hello can you hear me yes a few minutes my apologies this is solid in sale i'm a long time resident of santa cruise a 20-year e-bike rider and i support the report recommendations trail with rail has been subjected to deep scrutiny by credentialed transit experts who've consistently concluded this is the optimal use of our unused transit corridor trail only has been studied and rejected other forms of public transit have been studied and rejected every study shows rail and trail to be the best transit choice for a host of reasons some local citizens convinced of some malevolent intent of this commission and staff have even publicly suggested conspiracy theory is as to why this body of properly elected and appointed officials keeps choosing expert advice over those armed with little more than conviction and anecdotal evidence as we've seen in washington this kind of denial of the facts and rejection of the process leads to craziness locally we have dark money orgs funding campaigns while exercising their right to conceal their donors identities and donations i'm concerned the local wealthy interests opposed to this project are not simply anti rail as their supporters believe but may want neither transit nor trail in their backyards removal of the tracks under the illusory protection of rail banking well absolutely open the doors to decades of property owner easement litigation thereby halting further progress on trail or transit who would benefit from this certainly not the potentials for your transit comments jessica evans and then kyle kelly go ahead jessica you have two minutes thank commissioners my name is jessica evans i live on the west side next to the rail corridor i volunteer for friends of the rail and trail for the campaign for sustainable transportation and for bike sanacris county i'm here to ask you to please follow the tcaa recommendations and plan for rail as the most equitable transit option for the locally preferred alternative rail with level boarding allows dignified independent access to people who rely on mobility devices like wheelchairs and walkers the limited number of wheelchair spots on a bus can lead to the spots filling up and people being refused entry and being left sitting at the stop and waiting for the next bus this is not equitable service rail provides high quality service for people who rely on bikes for primary transportation level boarding makes rolling bikes on and off easy and gives more bike spots in contrast only three bikes can be loaded on a front rack of a bus and i can tell you personally it's very physically challenging and mentally stressful to step down into the street in front of a bus and lift your bike up onto the ride that's not equitable service for bicyclists finally rail is more equitable for essential workers who live in south county because rail transit stays in the corridor and out of the highway congestion between watsonville and outtos the tcaa study projects rush hour travel times from watsonville to santa cruz of between 45 to 55 minutes on a rail vehicle depending on the number of stops versus 90 minutes on brt that's more than an extra half hour each way for bus passengers versus rail passengers because brt on auxiliary lanes still gets stuck in traffic that is not equitable service for people who live in south county to support equity in santa cruz county please choose rail transit for the locally preferred alternative and plan for rail finally i just want to take a moment to encourage you to move forward with the business plan and to be bold the biden administration is set to invest in rail nationwide and cal trans is committed to supporting regional rail in santa cruz county if we can plan our rail project with watsonville included there will be grant opportunities as the biden administration implement thank you kyle kelly then jeremiah daniels okay kyle you have two minutes yeah this is kyle kelly uh despite i call in support of the the rail and trail uh and to go with the the preferred option i just want to point out something about kind of our own future and your own future for your kids and your grandkids and to think about the geometry of cars and how much space they currently take up the reality is we need to shift to rail not just like what this fight has been over the last few years but i want you to think about how many children you have how many grandchildren you have how many friends do they have and each of them is going to have to drive a car and each of the tourists that come in is going to have to drive a car even if they are going to also take the trail the reality is we need a connection from here to watsonville we need to support the current commuters where there's 60 000 not all of which can work remotely we've we've got to do it so please think to the future not just what's been happening right here and now we've we've got to establish something Santa Cruz could be a much more friendly bike city that many of us care about while also enabling that rail that will help us go long distances across the county thank you thank you kyle for your comments jeremiah daniels then jona hey jeremiah you have two minutes hello thank you all for your hard work on the rail trail corridor improvements that are already done they're really wonderful i've been enjoying them they look beautiful i live in midtown near the rail corridor and i use it nearly daily for business and pleasure i look forward to more segments completed i want to remind folks that the 1998 report does not reflect changes in the economy in demographics or technology since it was done uh the accessible solution we all know is rail and trail members of this council must work toward a solution that enables and empowers all members of our community and not just a vocal minority of their consist constituents many of the people who would benefit from the light rail implementation are not able to make it to this meeting for a variety of reasons and i want to remind you all of your responsibilities to represent them as well thanks for your time i'm looking forward to this debate being put to rest yet again and for progressive equitable public transportation to be made with a rail and trail solution thank you very much thank you Jeremy for your comments Jonah then Michael will go ahead Jonah you acknowledge thank you um good morning commissioners my name is Jonah Payton i'm a college student and westside resident calling in support of the electric rail alternative we need a reliable way of getting across the county and our current transit system does not provide this it does not allow for quick travel from centrist what all the destinations along the way due to low speeds and low frequencies even if you have a car you cannot get across the county at rush hour during your reasonable amount of time due to congestion even if that car so happens to be electric so we need something new and an electric train on the rail corridor can provide that the rail option is vastly better than the bus option it makes the best use of the rail corridor using all of it not just some bus option also has serious equity issues since it does not provide south county with transit on a dedicated right of way making it no better than existing bus options really rail usually gets better ridership and has much higher speed and capacity than the other it is simply a more efficient way to get people around in a sustainable and efficient manner and usually ignore the nimby naysayers who care more about noise levels in the climate i would urge commissioners to ensure that rail can reach the highest frequency possible however increased frequency means more capacity and more freedoms it still has to develop a timetable the proposed 30 minute edgeways are less than ideal some corridors though some some commenters have suggested using the rail corridor for only a trail even setting aside the legal issues with the right of way a trail is not sufficient for long distance transport providing transit throughout the county is essential to equity and providing freedom for everybody to get everywhere i would suggest that if we want to have more active transport options that we could look to existing roads which have plenty of right of way wasted on cars that we could use to create protected bike lanes connecting to train stations and to the rail trail which of course will still be built we don't need to sacrifice mass transit for active transport finally i'd like to comment on this public hearing as i said i'm a college student who lives in Santa Cruz but i had to miss the beginning of this meeting because i was in class i hope that future meetings will be scheduled at times that everybody can attend the alternative methods of outreach to use so the input can be made from everybody not just those with time to attend along public meeting thank you so much thank you for your comments michael wall then johanna light hill hey michael your acknowledge you have two minutes hi um my name is michael wool i'm a ucsc student and lifelong um Santa Cruz county resident and i support utilizing the rail corridor for passenger rail service um the i just building on what i've heard a lot of people say for trail only it's kind of laughable and insensitive that people think that it's a viable alternative for people commuting from south county to north county to use a trail instead of a public transit solution this simply is not a transit solution this is just something that's only going to benefit the richest part of the county in north county implementing this trail will be good for the county long term and with the new administration coming in public funds will be available to build the trail thank or the rail and the trail oh my god all right thank you thank you michael for your comments uh johanna lighthill then anda go ahead johanna acknowledge you have two minutes hi thank you for you considering my comments um for anyone who doesn't want to read the entire 330 pages like most books you can skip to the ending to find out the best part i recommend everyone go to page 312 appendix g it's a detailed performance evaluation results and it's really the meat and potatoes of this study it provides a line by line comparison of each transit option with each metric it addresses economy social economy and and the environment and no matter how you feel about rail or bus in appendix g you'll see that brt is the winner of this study um there are so many advantages that i'm not going to list them all because i don't have enough time but the few are highest frequency longest duration of service and for the students that are commenting today about um accessibility the bus runs till midnight if you have an evening class you'll be able to ride the bus the rail quits at nine o'clock so um on that note i can go down the list but one of the most important things to me is that the climate change resiliency is very is not really addressed in the tcaa um they explained that um 1.85 miles of the railroad is has the potential for coastal erosion la salva beach new brighton capitol a trestle or west of that and the boardwalk are listed as vulnerable locations with rail retaining walls and other protective measures will be necessary yet specifics are said to be determined at a later study recently resilient coast santa cruz discusses adaptation versus mitigation with regard to coastal erosion managed retreat is more likely favored than retaining walls and this is in my opinion will be the fatal flaw thank you so much miss enda miss enda moving on you have two minutes thank you my name is enda brennan i'm a local attorney and i am appointed as a commissioner to the senior commission in the county of santa cruz by commissioner coonerty and i also have been uh appointed by the city council of santa cruz to the downtown commission so i'm a locally appointed official both city and county i want to first of all thank as we enter the third hour of this meeting actually i guess we're entering the fourth hour since we're just hitting 12 noon now but i want to thank everyone for participating i want to especially thank the staff for the excellent report that they did provide i was a strong supporter of our getting the 12 million dollars from the state of california bond money to purchase the 32 mile corridor over the number of years i've had the opportunity to assess the facts and i would encourage all of the members of the rtc who i know you do pay very close attention to the facts to recognize that there is absolutely no way the voters in the county of santa cruz are going to support spending a billion dollars and up on this project i ran for judge some 25 years ago here i won in the city of santa cruz and i would if that was the jurisdiction i would have been a sitting judge for six years starting in 1994 but how i got county wide only 42 percent of the vote and this is a county wide decision i asked the political leaders which is what you are as members of the regional transportation commission to show political leadership and put this on the ballot the five board of supervisors are all members of rtc thank you for your comments put it on the bell okay missioner gonzalez i do not have any other comments okay with that i'll be closing the public hearing and bringing it back to the commission for any comments go ahead mike i acknowledge you uh mike you you're muted anybody that wants to speak make sure you unmute yourself prior to it uh and if we can go today that worked for me also okay hallis so thank you quick points uh this is a plan for the future i don't think anybody thinks we're going to have a train running up and down this even the tig fuel cell train you know in two years it's going to take a while and we're looking at about 30 50 years out for ultimately for what's going to happen here so the question we're asked being asked here i think is really what kind of a long-term plan should we have for the transit use of this corridor and the we're building the trail already and the issue is what's the best transit use the the bus options don't make much sense i mean if you're going to have buses they should run on the on the freeway on the bus on shoulder that's the way to make the buses move in a hurry you don't get very much by adding a bus that uses a bit of this corridor but basically doesn't provide very much else in addition the um in terms of the waiting uh zhaka made a comment earlier about how when you work for a company they basically made their decision based on a cost benefit analysis we're representing the public here and cost benefit is one of three factors we're looking at but companies unfortunately don't much look at equity issues and they certainly don't look at environmental issues or at least most of them don't and so our responsibility is to try and weigh these things according to a wide range and i thought the response from the consultant uh and the staff on this that basically they're not going to set an exact we're not going to get a number this one's this is a five point two and this is a three point seven that allows us to easily make this decision you have to weigh these factors according to how you value the all three parts of the triple bottom line assessment um in terms of the vote i'm in favor of a vote i believe in democracy we should have a 50% vote to find out what the majority of people that's what democracy is about what a majority of people in this county think about this issue not what takes a two-thirds vote when it comes to the two-thirds vote because you know you're eventually trying to get people to pay for this thing you can't go to the public with a vote if you can't tell them what they're buying for all this money and it's a lot of money we're talking about so we've got to develop an alternative and say this is what the alternative is you would get if you spend money on taxes you can't offer people a vague train for which people raise all kinds of concerns about what we don't already know and the fact that the costs are not clearly fixed and so forth so i'm in favor of a vote but let's have a vote after we have a business plan and we know what actually we're choosing and whether we think it's a good idea and i'm not against democracy i think we should definitely have a vote to decide this issue but put in front of people something that the experts and this commission develop is what we think is the best possible option and then if people don't like that option they think no we really don't like that after all despite all your work and everything else you've done then fine they'll reject it and we won't be building this thing but it seems to me critical that you you have a vote on something real that you put in front of people two more quick points um actually i'm going to save my other comments for later i mean not for this later another meeting or something i just want to say i support i support the i support the local um you know the rail option that's put in front of this it means a lot more development it needs a business plan you need to know what it really looks like and you know what the real option is before you put a vote in front of the people otherwise it's kind of a meaningless vote you like this vague idea for a billion plus dollars i would vote against it if i didn't know what the heck it is i was voting on so that i don't think that's a very meaningful option for people at this point a vote at some point let me know what we're voting on thank you okay any other fellow commissioners have any comments you'd like to do now at this moment raise your hand i don't see anyone don't don't lead has her hand up yeah thank you i i have many of the same concerns that have been raised i feel like there's a lot of questions not enough information i have concerns about the cost and you know ads i do director rod can makes a good point i i agree i'd like to see it go to a vote but i i think we probably don't have enough information to take it to the people for a vote um there's real concerns in the report we receive that you know changes through coven we don't know what that that effect will be on uh on transportation in general so there's a lot of questions a lot of answers that need to be developed before i think it can go to the to the public but when we have a report i think that's an important next step and i i do think there's we don't know what the new normal will be so there's some things that probably could not have been presented to us but there's certainly a good you know i appreciate the work that's been done and want to see what the future information involves thank you i'm gonna go ahead again and uh i'll acknowledge sandy brown job and money okay go ahead sandy thank you uh so i uh also i'm going to reserve most of my comments for our deliberations when we uh on at the february meeting but right now i just wanted to say thank you to uh all of the members of the public who showed up um and i am i'm sorry that we were not able to accommodate uh folks who um were unable to stay um you know i think it's really important in particular that we uh listen to what uh young people have to say because the decisions we make now are really are about uh what's going to happen many years down the road and so you know are we have a responsibility to that and so i just wanted to say that and you know folks who have come out with varying perspectives you know it's been really helpful to hear from you and i take your comments very seriously and um i'll leave it there for now uh and thank you for uh giving me the time to to respond to to you all thank you go ahead jack uh thank you very much chair um i'd like to reference a couple of comments that um public participation made note of and the latest was uh john uh light hill if i cut the name correct and um you handle it okay i'm that's good right thanks good michael um you know i think this is a consideration that we're really not taking into account i'm part of a group called four c's that um is looking at coastal issues um and uh johanna talked about several things retreat or resilience uh preparation and our coastal corridor is woefully um imperil and we don't think about that capitol we have bluff losses all the time and a major portion of the rail line runs along the bluff as it gets down to seabright beach um so these are issues that we need to think about it gets down the corridor towards watsonville as you know a major portion right now is flooded i'm not sure what the cause of flooding is but these are issues that cause extensive um need to come up with engineering considerations um to fix it the um reality is our coast is under attack and it's going to be more so as we go towards um our greenhouse gas generating rise in the ocean etc etc so these issues are very important and i'm aware of them the other is another person brought up when they looked at how much money we could get at what year was it 2045 2050 um so indeed we're planning for the future so if we're going to get money in that time scale um that's a concept 30 years or whatever that we're even going to get a significant support from the state and maybe the feds if we're lucky to pay for any of these projects um is uh mike rockin just said we are thinking for the future um i think um a way to put things in perspective for those who want a trail is that why wait we have a resource right now that we can use for a trail but why wait until we could actually fund something that would make use of it you know i'm getting comments all the time about the trail that's on the north end of Santa Cruz and the complaints are it's too skinny you know you're running the people you know this is not a usable trail and that's because it's under the constraints of the railroad right away so rail banking would enable us to use the trail right away but it has to be done properly as you know this is a federal issue that they've enabled and california will recognize federal law just talk to but about excuse me others about this um our own executive director talking last night about this so these are things that are possible to make use of this right now in terms of looking for the future um you've heard of people talking about road diets in the cities and i think we're actually going to get to road diet diets on the highways as we realize that the roads i totally agree you expand it when i was a kid highway one one-on-one along the bay was a little road and it's now five lanes and i've done bumper to bumper traffic from san francisco to sunny bale and then switch to a train i'll be honest about that the train it costs a lot but it was worth sitting in the train i think we're going to go in the reverse direction i think we're going to say we need to road diet our one-on-one quarter our highway one quarters and various other quarters and put on that transit lane now options that will definitely enable high density moving the people and you know when you think about that as the future you have roads that go to where we need to go and then the options for cross traffic and stuff like that so they connect to the last mile that easily be made through an enhanced bus system and in Santa Cruz we woefully need to have an enhanced bus system money that we would be spending on the trail option or the train trail option or just a train option why aren't we putting a lot into the buses you know those are usually the way for most people to get around i use buses in san francisco i have gone on the buses in santa cruz here but the time element is horrible so i think looking for the future i agree with mike this is a futuristic effort on our part the future in terms of funding is not coming anytime soon i think the future for the santa cruz rail line is in peril because of climate issues and i think the future for us in terms of dieting on car use is actually going to be transferred to our highways as we realize that we need to force traffic in different ways and providing other alternative ways to move people we're actually going to have things on highway one highway 101 and other corridors to move people it's not going to be on little dinky streets or little dinky railroad lines in an area where we can't afford it thank you thank you jack for those comments um i just want to remind everybody that if we can stay in on focused on the alternative analysis study and the recommendations sorry chair go ahead andy i acknowledge you oh no mana was next sorry right thank you uh chair gonzalez i want to thank all the members of the public who took time to come out and speak today i want to thank the staff who has dutifully tried to execute the will of this commission and i want to thank all of my fellow commissioners who have grappled with this issue for so long now the what we're looking at here that the facts of the matter are the the nature and the seats on this commission are changing i'm a prime example of that we'll actually have new commissioners even at the next meeting which is why we're postponing any vote on this and it's changing because the voters are fundamentally frustrated with the way this process has gone to date or i used to stand on the other side of this virtual dais and warn this commission that a new freight rail operator wasn't going to work along with many other members of the public we were right i helped collect thousands of signatures ten thousand signatures throughout the county in total saying that people want a trail not a train we passed measure l showing the majority of voters in capitol want a trail on their trestle and not a train excuse me commissioner mano can you can you stay focused on the certainly all i'm saying is that the pro one of the most pro trained voices on this commission is no longer here because the voters spoke and put me in the seat instead of the commissioner that has nothing to do with the alternative now it actually does because we're talking about the relevancy of whether we want a train or trail or a bus so the complication is how do we move forward with this study you know the notion that we don't have enough information is completely false because we've actually seen the real data stay exactly the same through all the studies that we've done that the rail transit feasibility analysis said yeah maybe uh five thousand boardings a day you know that's pretty much the same number we have today five six thousand at the most that's about three thousand people if you count round trips each one having two boarding so that's the fundamental problem because that would account for about two percent of the voters and we need 66.7 percent of the voters to pass a new sales tax which this study acknowledges that we need in order to fund a train we might best case scenario we have 60 percent of the funds needed for the capital costs and only about 45 percent of the operating costs best case scenario that's assuming we get all the funding sources we outline which is not going to happen either so equity the idea that we require 66.7 percent of the voters help pay for a solution that only meets the needs of two percent is ridiculous so we don't have enough funding the capacity is not there for it to be an effective system um and you know this the stakeholder outreach that's been done i mean it truly isn't representative you heard staff say that over and over again i mean the the study they or the the survey that was put out that received a thousand responses it was put on facebook on a pro train site and there's been no validation of whether the feedback there was actually from people who live in our county so the implication of all this is pretty simple it's that if rail is the best transit alternative that we can come up with we shouldn't put transit on the corridor and i do want to go back to the fact yes this commission decided to pursue studying transit on the corridor but we never really did a thorough analysis of what a trail only option would look like and i let's just say trail only is a misnomer because we're not talking about just doing the trail and not the rail we're really talking about double trail we're talking about twice as much of what we all want we're talking about trail squared because if you look at the capacity a capacity that was measured by alter planning these are the folks that did the master plan for monorail county on their trail network their monorail based sanctuary uh scenic trail right a trail that's already been a rail bank to be created they said that with a 12 foot wide trail similar to one that we're creating today on the west side we could get 600 people an hour total capacity with a separated trail one for bikes one for pedestrians we could get 3,600 people an hour that's more than twice as much as we could possibly get with a transit and trail option twice as much at drastically lower cost you know I was also happy to note that in this report the estimates that I calculated before for cost per user cost per user on a train $15 per ride cost per user on a bus $10 per ride what's missing in there is the cost per user on a bike 25 cents per ride so you want to talk about equity we need to use our dollars to help as many people in this county move for as little money as possible as fast as possible so where do we go from here you're we're absolutely right everyone that spoke we need a vote on this issue we need to begin doing the much more thorough analysis of rail banking so that when we go to the voters we not only have the thorough details of a train which already exists but we also have details relative to rail banking we need to begin we need to stop any more spending on rail whatsoever and we need to pick ourselves up uh and and move forward together because when we do that when we create this wide multi-use trail the double trail we're going to actually create an economic and environmental revival in this county the likes of which you've never seen before thank you okay Andy Shafrid yeah thank you very much uh I also want to thank all the members of the public that testified today and also expressed my appreciation to the staff and the consultants for all the work that they've done um making it just to remind the commission that today wasn't the day that we were supposed to make a decision on the locally preferred alternative that's what we're going to do next uh next month so I think it's um you know I I'm not going to state my preference until then um I do think that the decision around that really has to do with what's going to be the long-term future and I agree with testimony about where we are now uh there isn't sufficient funding to um and I don't and I agree with those who say that to go to the public now and ask for a two-thirds vote just is not realistic uh it's not going to happen um that doesn't mean that where we are now is where we're always going to be and I'm always amazed that people who think they know the future uh because it keeps surprising me uh I don't know uh what the Biden administration is going to do I don't know uh how climate change is going to affect policies uh around alternative um transportation modes but I from my perspective it is critical that we don't give up the possibility of having a you know a different transportation mode along the corridor that we own I do I want to say a word about the business plan I've been thinking about a business plan and normally it seems to me that an entrepreneur when they're going to produce a business plan or when in the past the commission has asked for business plan it's because we knew that there was somebody who wanted to run a business uh that wanted to provide a service I think it's clear at this point that given the financing available there isn't the really the ability um to run a service to uh implement passenger rail with the funding sources that are that are available at this time so from my perspective it's very questionable about whether it makes sense to carry out a business plan uh when we know that the money isn't there uh in the near future when we get more information I don't agree that it's never going to be possible we don't know what the federal government's going to do uh we don't know what the state government's going to do I thought the testimony about how there's more concern about local um local and regional uh rail uh services in the state rail plan I think that's really um offers a potential that there may well be uh capital and operating um funding in in the not so distant future but it's not here now um let me just I I'm a supporter of transit I've ride it once in a while um and I um would say that I would remind everyone that in 1978 the voters of this community before there was a two third majority uh already approved to have sent sales tax for the bus system and as part of measure d additional money was made for the bus system so the the public transit is expensive and it requires a subsidy whether it's a bus system or a rail system and I totally support not uh taking any money from the bus system to make rail feasible but looking for separate rail uh rail funding sources my my sense I I did want to there was something that I think Commissioner Berkson said about the existing trail um on the north side of Santa Cruz I've been walking that I've written my bike on it uh over the last before it was opened and now and my sense is it works really well I have not I'll be very surprised if and actually pleasantly surprised if the amount of use really starts to overwhelm um its capacity um I recently bought and I'll finally I'll say I recently bought an electric bike and my sister lives in Watsonville and I rolled my electric bike down to Watsonville it took me a really long time and it was even with the electric bike it was pretty exhausting the it took me almost two hours an hour and a half to get back when I took a more efficient route um the the idea that somehow a trail is going to provide a meaningful option for um people in the south county or people in the north county going in the opposite direction for commuting for um those kinds of trips I think is uh I it just doesn't appeal up here really so I but I do support continuing to build the various segments of the trail that we're building and I think they will serve lots of people and they will provide for alternative trips but in the end I think um we we it's important that we not foreclose the option of having the rail a rail rail service and if the track if the tracks are ripped up that's the end of it it will never come back um and I think we need to recognize that anyway I look forward to next month and uh probably we're gonna have to hear from all the same people again and before the commission makes a decision and um then we'll see how um you know what what the what the commission wants to do thank you I think I'm gonna go ahead with uh commissioner Randy next and then commissioner Lowell and then commissioner Caput you have the floor Randy thank you uh appreciate it thank you to the staff who did a lot of hard work and the consultants I don't necessarily agree with what their recommendations are um I know Mike and Andy have been talking about the future and you know 20 30 50 years out but I've always liked to look at the past and I I think it was Santiana who said those who uh failed to learn or ignore history or condemn to repeat it and one of the things I think that it's incumbent for anybody who does an analysis is to look at what other communities have done not the least of which is this is a smart train um my intention is before the next meeting to go and see what some of the consultants and some of the promises that were made of taking traffic off of freeways and so forth and how much reality was actually delivered I think you'll find that the promises in terms of ridership in terms of uh what do you call it the toolbox where people actually spend money to kind of ride at the expense um the subsidy you can pretty much say the same thing about uh Santa Cruz County light rail system uh that none of them have actually uh met met the expectation and to me that's an important thing because if you have a you know in in business today if you have a let's say buy a car there's a lemon law that kind of protects you that this this car is not working promises were made and so forth but in transportation and with trains um as you incrementally spend more and spend more and spend more you don't all of a sudden just cut it off and say hey this ain't working what you do is even if it doesn't make financial sense you want to keep putting more and more and more money into it because it becomes too big to fail okay and so that that there lies the problem my my recommendation to any consultant anybody on our staff let's look at the smart train uh their ridership numbers never materialize and the only time they even approach forty five hundred dollar or a forty five hundred passengers in a day was when they gave it away for free okay now with respect to equity um all due respect to the people that said that you know scott ours uh watson bill uh was kind of you know not allowed a full discussion here and they've been deprived my mom lived in watson bill for 15 years just recently passed away she was 97 years old she would never have taken a train why because para crews offered everything she needed from door to door and that is a significant thing from door to door is so important because of the first and last mile uh sometimes mean everything to a commuter because it's convenience and what will work and what won't um so um i'm not going to um you know i guess along the lines of what andy you're suggesting is that i'm going to reserve judgment on this um i respect the work that's been done but truth is important and as looking at things um kind of from a business angle is sometimes important we in government can always look at bottom lines and business and you know no subsidies and everything has to pay for itself because then we wouldn't have any affordable housing we certainly wouldn't have transit or whatever but every once in a while we have to pay attention to the taxpayer you have to pay attention to the people's money and you know i don't want this to become a transportation of vietnam where we start with advisors and then we start with that sending more troops and then we have a gulf of tonkin and before you know it you have a terrible situation which which i won't go into the history of vietnam but thanks for that ready quite a worry but incrementally i don't want us to see spending more money okay um when uh this may be going nowhere because you know um a million dollars here a million dollars there uh pretty soon you're talking about real money to quote eric dirksen which many of you would know probably not know so i'm going to reserve judgment but i think you know my sentiment is uh that i don't want something i feel enough infrastructure for the needs of this community with a with with a with a bus on the side of the freeway with a trail with um excuse me with with better lighting on our side treats and so forth um it's there it's available and i you know the the amount of money to kind of meet the objectives of of of what people want um i think is not only not there now but i don't think it'll be there in the future so thank you uh chair thank you commissioner commissioner low well thank you very much for the opportunity to speak i i feel like i should filibuster all afternoon here but i'm not going to do that i was down at the walker street and the oloni trail recently in watson bill and it is under construction it is right next to the rail and both of them are functioning now progressive may not work uh in watson bill but somebody else can make it work in watson bill because there is freight that needs to be hauled and producers that want to haul freight and i think that's going to be a growing industry and so let's don't throw out the baby with the bathwater here let's uh let's don't um let's either fish or cut bait on this too and so it's interesting to see the uh the tig demonstration let's see what it really looks like in person i'm glad to hear of uh uh the the focus on equity in watson bill and and the concern for the economic well-being and the future and and we heard about the past as well people have been waiting decades for some kind of uh relief and uh transportation as well as economic justice so let's move forward and i would like to move the resolution to accept the uh the tcaa report that selects the locally preferred alternative and that's a motion my understanding wasn't that was going to be done at the next month meeting am i wrong well we have it's true you did put a motion on there so uh that's why i'm not going to second it i like this idea but i'm going to not second it because i think it's not our plan at this point i'm going to wait till next moment hang on i just if there is a second then it'll carry for open to discussion but if there is no second then it'll die so what i'm saying is let's just accept the report well i could chime in i think that's that decision on what to do with the report is what we're uh have agreed to do next month and um there'll be other there'll be another issue in terms of the rail line that will be on the agenda at that time so um i would move that we continue this matter to meeting in february so hang on so see no second or hear no second that motion dies um i will second um andy's motion to move the discussion hang on hang on hang on sorry sir uh we still have uh lull you're completed with your comments i would soon right well i just want to see santa cruz county get moving and let's stay on track and you know there's a lot of uncertainties about the future but it's pretty clear if we don't have a plan if we don't have a business plan we'll never get any federal support we'll never get any more state support and nothing will happen and so let's make some things happen and you know if it has to wait till next month fine but let's make some things happen and you can mission condition cap it you have the florida if you did there we go thanks a lot uh rillio and uh i think uh quick i'm going to do this quick so we don't have a six hour seven hour meeting but uh for people to say a trail and a bike only and no uh freight and passenger service on a rail uh i don't think that's really a reasonable option i don't think that's good for south county i don't think uh that's going to help us ever get federal and state money and uh so uh we're we got to look at all of them all of the options and uh let me get that and uh the other i would say is for south county and also santa cruz connect to gilroy monorail uh and then uh be able to go north uh in california or south all the way down to la uh with the rail that that will be possible and it will connect uh watsonville with santa cruise and scott's valley for that matter and davin port but anyway uh and also when you're talking about a railroad you're talking about passenger service you can you can take your whole family on a railroad and uh i haven't seen a lot of uh families that are actually walking or taking a bike uh for other other than recreation but they're not they're not going to commute uh by a trail or a bicycle as far as the very young and the very old you have a certain part of portion of the population that's healthy and able to get around and able to use that trail so i to use it only for a trail and a bike path uh is not uh in my opinion not reasonable and uh anyway i think freight and passengers good for south county and i think that that would help uh also the whole county and then they would connect us with the rest of the state so anyway uh i i would second uh lol's uh motion but i guess we don't need to is that is that correct i think we're gonna consider his motion next month i think it's okay that that'll be fine is that okay with you lol uh no not at all but um i don't think the public hearing is actually being closed uh yet and so you guys can do whatever you want to and um we just you i think it's imperative that we do get moving and that we plan for the future and that we have a business plan and that we explore options that um you know won't come again if we don't take action so if i would make i have a question for staff at some point thank you lol i'm gonna second i'm gonna second his motion if he really wants to take it so uh we're not gonna go proceed with that uh we're gonna go ahead and continue this until next month the motion was a second was asked there was none acknowledged at that time uh so that motion had officially died um and so i will take one question from mike i know jock you want to uh speak again but due to time i'm just gonna everybody's spoken once and i'm gonna take mike's last question it's a question it's a question of staff about whether the brown act or common sense or anything else demands that we have a public hearing again on this topic what is it that you're going to be presenting next month i mean i know you're you're taking the comments that you've gotten and so forth to organize a final motion or recommendation which is not yet from coming forward but is there any reason that we have to open up another public hearing as opposed to continue this public hearing not allow people that have already spoken to speak again take any new comments that people have or something as a way of not spending two more hours before we come to a discussion and decision about it that's a staff question i i'm not arguing one way or the other but is that a possibility my interpretation of your question mike is that whether we cannot have um public comment on the um item at the february meeting and um isn't it the same answer to the is that not the same item as we're discussing now and i'm not you know i believe in public input that to have people come back on and tell us what they told us this month i don't know what we get from that so the commission can close the public hearing today if that's the if that's the desire of the commission and then you could have the item on your next agenda as a consideration item where the commission would make its comments and then take whatever action and deemed appropriate um alternatively the commission can choose to take additional public comments at the next meeting that's both both options are available to commission if we don't take additional public comments could we still have a brief uh staff comments you know just to prepare us for the discussion um you could yeah you could have i mean staff comments in that context typically would come in the in the form of um a summary of any changes if there are any to the tcaa and then alternatively answers to questions from commissioners during like commission deliberations i'll leave it to a really or what do you think we should do but i i mean i don't know that if i can i let let somebody argue that having two more hours people repeat themselves as well anybody's time yeah actually i did want to address us as a commissioners on this matter um you know i'm going to ask staff is there anything that was mentioned or brought up that it's going to change the alternative analysis the tcca study or the uh preferred uh recommendations i did not hear any requests from the commissions to make any changes to the final draft report that's been provided in the staff report so i do not i do not see anything from the public that would make us uh go back and change anything in our study i did not pick up on anything that needed to be changed from comments from the public that i would actually move so commissioners commissioners so this is this is my thinking i know this is a hot item and i know we can discuss it and and i hear you guys all um one of the things that i i don't agree with that's been discussed is we're talking money and for me that's kind of putting the card in front of the horse kind of a deal right now at this point i know we have to talk money i know we have to look at being physically responsible uh that means if just if you look at it one point of view of if you establish a trail only that's going to cost us millions of dollars to build for a few people to utilize there's an outrageous amount of money uh to be utilized uh taxpayers money in that sense and to maintain it because you would still have to maintain it and you would be getting no uh return back from a bicyclist writing it so the taxpayers where it would have to still do the ome on that trail no matter what um and i think if we really focused on what we have in front of us what we have in front of us is the is a study that the rtc has done and presented to us uh and no commissioner has brought up any changes that would alter this study at all and also there has been no other changes that would alter the preferred alternative uh rail service um and so with that and that's why i was gonna uh recommend it yeah let me move let me move we close the public hearing we we move to close the public hearing i'll make that motion back in oh we'll bring it back to roll call commissioner bertrand no commissioner brown no commissioner johnson all right commissioner uh alternate hearst yes commissioner cap it you needed great commissioner alternate shifrin hi commission alternate mulhern all right commissioner koneg hi commissioner uh alternate uh johnson jenny johnson yes commission alternate lin hi commissioner gonzalez hi and commissioner rockin hi commissioner cap it are you back so so far i have two noes so that passes okay we've closed the public hearing um and we completely finished my comments because we we're doing procedures um you know it's important to look to the future um and to be able to do get to some of these points that we do want to do and benefit the community we do have to go through this process uh i know there's some folks that would like to prefer just a trail only on it but to get to that also at the same time we have to go through this process i don't agree with that part but again we have to be equitable with everybody but to do that again and some of you have mentioned rail banking uh and we need to do and and consider uh accepting the preferred alternative as rail uh so we can move forward i think it's important that this commission stay focused on on on the long term and the long-term vision and not get bogged down on our costs right now i know they are important i know a lot of people right now probably fringing because i said don't look at the costs but you know i've been a resident of this of this county for many years and i've seen highway one and highway one originally uh the cost to expand anything was probably pretty forced to cost what it is now you know we've waited 30 years and it's more than triple the cost of working on highway one so if we continue to wait and wait the costs aren't going to go down costs aren't going to go down on any public transit system um and so if we keep putting this barrier before us of cost uh just reflect back on highway one if we would have done this this work 30 years ago it would have been a lot cheaper um but now we're paying out of the nose to be able to put a bus on shoulders uh program on there um so i just want to leave you guys with that uh stay focused and what's good for like when somebody said this is 100 years out still you know i mean this is this is something that's going to benefit the county in this country in this region uh not not two years from now uh not 30 but in the long run so i leave you with that yeah the commission has been at this item for over three hours um i think to have a debate there are two problems i have with debating and a specific action on the tcaa itself at this meeting one i think we told the public that it was going to be in the February meeting and i think in terms of the public process we should wait till the February meeting to yeah that's what we're gonna do well not what some of the members want to do but no that's why um i let me just if i could finish please um the the other thing is and it's complicated then may not be one simple motion on this there may be a number of choices that the commission will want to consider so based on that i would move that we continue this matter to the next meeting and in addition ask staff to provide an analysis of the brown act requirements because i'm not sure that simply by closing the public hearing we can prevent public comment we may be able to prevent people from who spoke this time from speaking next time but i think if there are additional people who want to speak under the brown act they have a right to speak so i could be wrong but i think we should get some information on that anyway my motion is to continue this to the next meeting and ask for staff information on uh brown act requirements second i had already seconded uh you're repeating the motion i believe go ahead with a little bit of an expansion yeah right the brown act thing i didn't think about that's why i voted against closing the meeting because next time we're probably gonna we should have the right for other public members to speak that's why that's why i voted against closing the meeting Chair Gonzales can i please just make a quick comment um so yeah i agree the reason i voted no was because i um have some concerns whether due to the brown act or not about for closing the possibility for folks to speak um in particular because of some of the comments we heard today about people who were unable to speak um due to you know other commitments and you know i think it's important that uh you know for example Watsonville high students feel like their voices could be heard so that that's why i voted to not close the public hearing entirely um i hope we can accommodate that at our next meeting without repeating all of the the commentary that we've already heard mm-hmm acknowledge that so we have a motion when we have a second to continue this without the public hearing portion of it is that is that correct Andy no the motion was to the staff will give us a report of what we can do you know people can have a right to speak on any item on the agenda where there's a public hearing or not as we know from all of our meetings um having closed the public hearing doesn't necessarily mean that people can't speak next time i think the question is can the commission at its next meeting decide that people who spoke at this meeting not speak at that meeting and i think that's what the intent of the motion is i don't think we can prevent people who hadn't spoken today from speaking next uh next month okay so we have that motion we have a second and can we have a roll call can we can we have some discussion discuss well thank you very much i think a simple solution is to accept the report and and then you'll still get the feedback later on i mean that's why we had the report on the agenda today that's correct by as closing public hearing um you know we we're just going to come back and the report's going to be presented to us and people are going to be able to speak again so you do have a good point i have a comment on the process go ahead the reason i think we should start our next meeting and have the staff tell us what our options are in terms of taking additional comments there's no brand i believe there's no brand act rule against holding a meeting over two days taking testimony on one day and having further discussion of second day and not taking any new comments people who wanted to comment on this item had their chance the reason the staff put it off for a month because they thought we might give them more direction more information needed things that would require them to change what's going on prevent present a fifth option whatever the heck none of that happened and so i want the staff to tell us at the beginning of the meeting what what options we have and i would be perfectly fine with telling people that we announced this topic we're still on the same topic we've taken the public comment on it and they'll let us know maybe andy's right maybe we have to take comments from additional people but on my argument is that this is so a continued as we've just devoted a continued meeting we've had the public input on it now we're going to move to step two which is our public debate about it we'll see what the staff tells us and based on that we'll have a motion to either take additional comments or not take additional comments but i don't know what the brown act requires of us let them tell us at the beginning of the next meeting that's my view can i refer the commission to the recommendation from staff on page 27 dash one which is that the commission staff and consultants recommend that the commission review and provide input on the transit corridor alternatives and the studies and the locally preferred alternative is not telling the public that a decision was going to be made today and it definitely implies that it's not going to be made today we're just providing input and we're reviewing the report which is what the commission has done and for members of the public then there is not the expectation we're now down to 99 people we've lost half the public and so it's would be appropriate to continue this as kind of implicated in the staff recommendation i think that's what we're working toward dandy right and this we had your motion we had a second um this the discussion on this motion is there any other commissioner that would like to discuss this this motion that it's on the table all the question okay roll call senator burtrant aye commissioner brown aye commissioner randy johnson aye commissioner alternate hers nope commissioner cap it aye commission alternate your friend hi commission alternate mulferrn aye commissioner konegg aye commissioner uh alternate jenny johnson aye commission alternate lin aye commissioner gonzalez aye commissioner rockin aye that passes okay with that let's take a little break or do we want to continue on and go back up we have one we have one more item and then you will you do have a closed session and were we sent a link for the closed session yes so we we we were supposed to go back to item 24 commissioners reports and then item 25 the directors and then caltrans and then we have the the last item item 28 to deal with so really quick is there any commissioners reports none yeah none we'll move on directors report we have a director thank you chair gonzalez and commissioners i'm going to keep this short i provided a written directors report i'm not going to go through the three items there that's provided for you for information only i am going to make an announcement uh yesterday ctc staff relief that staff recommendation for its two year seven point two million dollar short line railroad improvement program included in the recommendation was a grant for 285 thousand for work to rehabilitate rehabilitate the paharo river railroad bridge by rtc from potentially going out of service from below the branch line to continue continuing direct and efficient freight service into watsonville a special thank you to rtc planner uh tommy travers for his initiative and great work on the grant application that concludes my report good to hear that right good job all right guys yeah good job calcans report you got 30 seconds well i'll avoid you're on your privilege sorry i was double muted there i'll make it super fast uh we have a few call for project the first is happening through caltrans the sustainable transportation planning grant program sec rtc staff are aware of it the deadline for submittal is february 12th let me know if you need any information on that also want to highlight that we are holding webinars for public works contractors to try to just get the word out provide so in the coming months there'll be workshops on estimating bonding understanding caltrans process labor compliance and the like again look look to let me know if you need any additional information and that concludes my report thank you scott okay we're gonna go ahead and move item number 28 is a contract award for vegetation control along the Santa Cruz branch line rail take it away is that yes i good morning commissioners so i'll let be my best to be brief here as well as you know the rtc owns a rail line and the rcs responsibility to maintain that that rail line preserve the infrastructure and of course also not not impact neighboring properties so as part of that the rtc the rtc does vegetation control on the on the line staff has done quite a bit of and with the use of our contractors done quite a bit of work during 2020 to try to gain control and vegetation but more work is still needed so the staff they put out a request for bids for the needed vegetation control and provided two potential approaches for that one that includes the application of a pre-emergent herbicide and another that does not include that but in order to try to be as effective as the application of the pre-emergent herbicide it requires additional mowing a couple more times a year and based on that the research that staff did for pre-emergent herbicides staff was able to identify a mixture of three herbicides two of which are not considered hazardous based on federal regulations and one that that this is one hazard with prolonged or extended exposure to that particular herbicide so given the notable cost savings that that came about as a result of the results of the bids the the approach with the with the herbicide is significant is about $145,000 the approach that only uses the the mowing is about $145,000 is about $300,000 difference so given the no cost savings the superior effectiveness of control of vegetation with the pre-emergent herbicide and protecting the infrastructure and the low hazard risk which with the pre-emergent herbicide mixture identified by staff which based on the research that staff did and the communications with contractors can be mitigated by ensuring proper application and using us best practices which is what typically is used and then also including notification to the residents of when the application would be done so staff therefore recommends that actually improve the resolution authorizing the executive retrofusional negotiation next to the contract for the vegetation control along the rail line with that that includes the spraying of a a pre-emergent herbicide thank you staff who have the staff recommendation hang on okay any technical questions or clarifications I don't want to hear no comments just technical questions or clarifications for your staff go ahead Jack yes I know this is an issue to the homeowners along the rail line is this going to be notified to the general public besides the residents because a lot of the general public also use it and thank you for coming up with a a solution that may not be toxic indeed the notification the contractor will place notices along the rail line at all the crossings so if anybody's coming into the rail and they will see the notices those will be placed in a number of days in advance of the spraying and there will also be notifications of the RTC's website and social media and so on thank you thank you Commissioner Mahmoud thank you Chair Gonzalez yeah this was a significant concern for many folks in my district who back right up to the rail corridor a lot of manufactured and mobile home parks are very close to the corridor I mean just a number of feet and so seeing all the dead vegetation this past summer was quite shocking so you know I and some people might not walk as much as they would like as or we would all like to and so I don't know that that kind of notice is going to be sufficient I mean really ideally people should who live right next to the corridor should be sent a notice in the mail and or at least some of the major parks in the area like I said the mobile manufactured home parks at a bare minimum but just putting notices at the crossings which may be more or less visible to some folks and and a notice through the RTC's website which really has a limited distribution I don't believe will be sufficient but just to add we will also use social media to notify and part of what of course what's been suggested as part of that is it's next door which it seems that you know and you know neighborhood associations and so on so wouldn't just be on the website okay thank you for the clarification all right thank you I don't see no more questions or do I have a motion the blocker a motion from Watkins a second that's for the staff recommendation for the staff recommendation I have a second from Lowell I just second I would like to Sandy to move an amendment commissioners Sandy acknowledge you discussion thank you yeah I just I just wanted to make a comment about the some of the you know I've read the material safety data sheets now for the three substances the three herbicides that will likely be used and I really want to appreciate Mr. Mendes for providing that information to me in advance of the meeting. And you know while I recognize that there's a significant cost differential I am very concerned about one of the substances in particular I can't remember if it's Esplanade or Milestone that's the potential neurotoxin and so I you know it's very hard for me to support something like this as a you know having worked in organic farming for many years worked on pesticide regulation and for many years as a researcher and having worked at the city to transition to IPM practices so I I can't support this as is it sounds like commissioner Koenig may be making a putting forward an amendment and I'll wait to hear about that but right now I'm just my concerns are just too great to be able to support it and so just wanted to let folks know that and I guess I would add that you know this is not just my concern based on my own you know my own experience but you know I have heard from many many residents in the city of Santa Cruz and beyond who are really concerned about the use of herbicides in our right of way as well as you know and Cal Trans has also addressed this so I hope we would move towards if not right now move towards IPM practices in the future thank you commissioner I'm gonna back up and you at this so I apologize but I do want to open up to the public for any public comment on this item on the agenda so there's anybody from the public they would like to comment on this you have two minutes we have Tom and Susan hey please unmute yourself there you go can you hear me okay well thank you all for being here and trying to help out but our property does back up right onto the railroad tracks and the plants you're talking about should actually climb our fence along with most the people I see up and down our our section of the of the rail line there and last summer we were not informed a bit and they did spray directly into the fence which went into our yard we have a neighbor who is dealing with cancer directly caused from herbicides he was shocked to find out that the county would not inform him that they would be doing this ahead of time so he knew he should know it's our right to know what you're spraying into our yard I can't tell you enough you have to stop this practice of using herbicides that are toxic to spray directly at someone's home that's what's actually being done so I'm being very adamant here about that because we're way beyond this we should be way beyond this by now and so I hope you will take that into consideration that there are people that will come back if you do this again and we will stand up for our rights you cannot spray herbicides at our homes thank you Barry Scott and Mr. Brian Peeples go ahead Mr. Scott yes, floor thank you and just very briefly I appreciate the work that you all are doing on vegetation management and the attention you're paying to using more benign chemicals and I hope that listeners will appreciate that the more on top of vegetation management we get and as more sections of the trail are built the lower the need will be to conduct vegetation management because by staying on top of it there's less of it to do and another thing is a lot of people are of the opinion that the whole place is overgrown nobody's seen the fabulous work that's been done for example around the washout in other areas where vegetation management is being conducted and has been completed and it might be a it might be a public service to provide the occasional update on what's happening and and how how good things are looking thank you Mr. Brian Peoples then Jack Brown go ahead Mr. Peoples in two minutes thank you this Brian from trail now we absolutely want you to be more careful with spraying of herbicides in there and on it we would actually say that you don't need it if you could afford if you had a more viable plan management plan of how you're managing this prop at the end of the day this commission owns a 32-mile piece of property that goes through the center of our community and you need to manage it and you can't just come in and spray everything managing a property is taking mechanical process of pulling the weeds out cutting back the brush cutting back the trees I think it's a good time to express how the you're not even addressing the eucalyptus trees that these these tracks go through in and with eucalyptus trees what happened the branches fall so can you imagine driving 60 trains a day through a corridor through a corridor of eucalyptus trees and the branches fall in it and the potential of derailing so it takes a lot of money to manage 32-mile piece of property and so you can't just go and say we're going to spray it no you own a piece of property you can't afford the way you're operating you can't keep doing studies and spending money on studies because you don't spend money on saving fixing the property thank you go ahead jack miss brown in two minutes hi yeah no i'll be quick jack brown aptos I live against the rail corridor as well since march I've been work from home where I've set up a great little office where I overlook my backyard and the corridor and watch people use it to walk their dogs or take a walk through the area and also watch the clearance that's been going on over the last few months I too was very shocked that this was sprayed last time with absolutely no notice and watching people walking their animals and you know watching their their animals feet getting exposed to this material with with no notice and also to just make the point of the way you're planning on notifying the public at this next attempt is probably only going to reach those of us that are active in the rail rail and trail only issue so I urge you one not to use spraying again as Brian people said the proper way of doing this is actually doing brush clearance and taking all the stuff with you not dump on people's properties like you did last time and to that you actually send the notices out and post notices along the corridor if this happens to take place thank you thank you Rebecca Downey can you hear me yeah two minutes my name's Rebecca Downey I live in C Cliff along the rail line and I just want to confirm my concerns that Sandy and Manu shared what happens in your meetings and what you vote on and what's contracted often changes once they're out on the corridor so I think everybody's intentions may be good because I believe the spraying is only supposed to happen within a certain number of feet from the center of the rails but it doesn't always happen like that on the trail so I wrote to Louise and asked him to make sure that we are notified as property owners and I think next door is a really great place to post this but I do believe that those of us that have properties adjacent to the sections to be sprayed should be given notice directly thank you thank you Rebecca don't see any others being any more we're gonna I'm gonna bring it back and we have a motion and we had a second and matter what the avid amendment to it you had the floor and yeah I was gonna go back and Commissioner Manu to have a what's next yeah I thought I was gonna be able to make this as an amendment but I ultimately especially after hearing public comment don't think so you know the reality is if we do the notice properly and send everyone along the rail corridor a physical piece of mail and then you take into account potential liabilities if someone actually be coming sick from this no it's really not worth it to continue to use herbicides in the corridor I appreciate staff's attempts to try and rate a blend that would be less harmful but really it's just not the right solution for a linear part for a trail that's supposed to bring us together using toxins on that same space is it's not the right approach what's the cost difference again to so I'm sorry for interrupting I believe it's $300,000 or so the difference is $300,000 that's correct yes about $300,000 sorry man are you know I just want to point out that you know it's the same problem we have in county parks maintaining many many parks and the ultimate solution that we're going to use there and that I think we should use with the rail corridor is community volunteers adopting a segment of the trail you know doing that work I've talked to many to many constituents who happily go out on the trail and help clear brush and if we begin creating those volunteer programs now we can manage the corridor in a way that is sustainable so I won't be supporting this motion and if it fails I'm happy to support propose that as an alternate motion which is that we direct staff to create a program that ultimately uses mowing or other forms to manage vegetation on the corridor and involves the community to the greatest extent possible for these cops thank you commissioner Monee commissioner jock and then it's commissioner Andy I see you Andy thank you chair you know I thought this was a great motion until I heard Sandy's comments about the data sheet which I've read those for 30 years in my business and I did not ask for that information so I'm a little ill at ease I don't know how toxic this is and you know Sandy you mentioned that you saw things on the data sheet that led you to be concerned so I don't know if you can tell us more I don't know chair if this is the time to have that discussion but I just walked from Aptos to Capitola and I saw signs along the road you know do not spray and there's a lot of work to do on the line to keep it and most of all I think it's hand work I don't think you can spray your way away and I did see as someone mentioned down trees and such so to me this is a lot more than just spraying and I don't know what the plan is that you know we pass D and part of D is to actually maintain that corridor so I'm at a loss here chair you know I don't hear that that this is going to be the best thing to spray and maybe this is a larger discussion because I think there's more than just spraying that we need to do to maintain that corridor yeah so I give it up to you and the council maybe Louise to make a recommendation but I I'm at I'm at illities right now okay if I might if I might add Mr. Chair okay since the quite yeah since people are wondering about what what is the the one hazard identified and indeed in a commissioner Brown is correct that the same data she's do do show a hazard and it's stated in this way in the in the safety data sheet says may cause damage to organs and then it prevents these nervous system through prolonged or repeated exposure so and so as it's stated it's nothing that it definitely causes as it may and again it's through prolonged repeated exposure and so you know the reason why staff you know that well maybe it's okay to to recommend this is because you know again it is it could potentially happen through prolonged repeated exposure and that seems to be mitigated by the how the best practices that are used to make to you know to make sure that these you know impacts are not going to happen again they they will spray directly downward you know this they spray load of the ground and I'm letting no more than two feet above the ground spray down to the ground do not spray in areas where there is water present and I know some people said that spraying happened on their fences that that is not something that that that would happen it's just sprayed on the right and it doesn't and it's not sprayed to the edge of the right away as long as it's it's sprayed to the I think eight feet from the from the from the rail reach of the rails and then some areas where they where there are drainage facilities that need some spraying that might be a little bit beyond that that would that would happen but again it would be within within the right away they would they would not be spraying up to the to the edge of the of the right way thank you any yes thank you Luis that's helpful information this is an issue that the county has been struggling with and have been a very controversial issue for a number of years ultimately the county set up an IPM committee that reviews all the proposed spraying that's done by I think both parks and public works definitely public works and you know there are dangerous herbicides there are non dangerous herbicides and there are situations I know along a levy where the only way to deal with you know the pests that could undermine the levy is through chemicals that are more or less dangerous to humans it might be worthwhile since none of us I think are experts on the you know the level of danger from some of these herbicides to refer except for maybe Commissioner Brown to refer the the contract to the county's IPM committee and have it come back on our next agenda with their recommendation because I think definitely you know to the extent that there are potential health impacts because of one or more of the herbicides that are being used that's of concern so if that is a way of sort of moving us forward I'd be happy to make that as an amendment to the motion that we continue this to our next meeting and refer it and request that the county's IPM committee review the proposed contract and provide us with their recommendations that committee has both staff as well as IPM advocates on it let me just with let me just draw my motion andy and you'll just make yours I think it's a better motion just to refer to that committee we'll see what they tell us I'll suck them out okay we have we have a motion that's been withdrawn and and you want to restate your motion andy just that we continue this to the we continue this contract to our next meeting and request the county's IPM committee to review the proposed contract and provide us with their recommendations I guess I would also add because I think notification is important that the staff come back with a more vigorous kind of a notification proposal simply putting up a sign I think is limited given the length on the other hand it could get very expensive to start mailing every property along the way so I think if staff comes back with you know a more well developed notification program for consideration that would be desirable so I'll make that as part of the motion if it's acceptable to the second check that is I'll second that no one else has no job had seconded so okay we put with that job yeah I just like to add on a comment I know everybody wants to get notified and I know cities and counties do their best to notify everybody but I've also discovered that it's we can put out as much notifications as possible but that neighbor that's living next to the tracks doesn't read the notification throws it away because it's from the county they don't want to most of the time read anything from the county and some some that are posted aren't read and one of the problems that I have is that you know we want to notify but if we're going to do this notification everybody it needs to be multilingual because we do have residents within our county that do not understand English or read English and so if we really want and concerned about our community and as well being I think this needs to be put out counting by notification and it needs to be done in a multilingual way otherwise you're wasting your time and you're again being unequivocal within the community if you're only single mindedly thinking about that individual that owns that million dollar home next to the rail if I may add just one more thing and Mr. Chair that might might help inform the motion on the floor um that the type of herbicide that that is being proposed at this point is what's called a pre-emergent herbicide which is herbicide you want to spray before plants sprout or as they are sprouting so you want to spray during a certain period of time to catch that if it's going to take a long time to go through the process with county's committee and then it might not really you know might try to negate you know the possibility of spraying this and and so just that I'll let you know um I we certainly will check in with the county's IPM committee and hopefully we can do something or they can take a look at this prior to our to the next commission meeting and and then I think there might still be time to do this do the spraying and still be you know catch the plants where we should or the germination where we should so just I'll let you know thank you please Jack yeah quick comment you know the mobile home park next to the train tracks next to J Street Park in capitol I know a bunch of people there and they barely get out of their homes and certainly not computer savvy as much as people here so notifications is an issue I completely agree with Annie we have to address that and those are the people I'm talking about right now that we'd be particularly susceptible to chemicals that they might inhale or ingest in some way a lot of people have little gardens too yeah I think as a commission one thing we need to also stay focused on that this railroad track corridor has been in existence for many years and past companies that operated this have been fumigating so this is nothing new this is the way and the method that they've maintained this rail corridor for decades but now with the concerns that we do have and looking for the best in the health for our community and just like in the city of Watsonville we passed a resolution against using a roundup roundup you know to protect our employees and protect our community and it is important that we do look at alternative methods to to fumigate or or recite a pesticide seed the railroad track the corridor itself not not beyond its its limits so and due to the time frame to stop growth and so it's kind of one of those tricky situations right now for us because if we do not do what we need to do and do diligence and then we do have more damage because of groups that are coming in through the railroad tracks which is going to cost us more money as a organization so we really need to look at that point and so I would refer that we do try to look at trying alternatives and the dangerous herbicides pesticides that are being used so with that I will leave it to you guys and bring it back for roll call Commissioner Mulhern would like to speak that just just very very quickly since the city of Santa Cruz and the county of Santa Cruz both have integrated test management policies made maybe the RTC as a property owner should also develop we should develop an integrated test management policy too maybe we should step can come back with that at some point and we can just have a policy that will be at least here yeah go ahead commissioner low I would just say the longer you wait the more the vegetation is going to grow and that's been one of the problems over the last 10 or 15 years it's grown up it needs to be removed and that's what the control is all about how it gets done you can argue that for quite some time but the control needs to be applied and whether it's mechanical or goats or however you want to do it volunteers the the weeds and the ivy and the brush needs to be cut back that's it I will take commissioner Sandy's last speaker and then I will read the question back thank you yeah I I don't want to prolong this discussion indefinitely here but I I just wanted to add or ask the question I guess about the feasibility of getting some feedback from the county's IPM committee before our next meeting and if the three-week extension of our decision would I mean it doesn't seem to me based on my own experience that you know letting a contract in early February would necessarily preclude getting you know the pre-emergent substances applied in time but I I'm not I don't know about this particular case and the other thing that I would say is that you know two out of these three substances are not considered hazardous in in this way and and the the one which is esplanade which is a neurotoxin through prolonged or repeated use is is the only one right so um so I'm just wondering if if if it is time is really of the essence if there's a way to you know just you know rely on the other two I know that's a question that can't necessarily be answered without communicating with the contractor so it wouldn't necessarily get us out of the the challenge of delay but I just wanted to put those out there for the discussion that staff may have moving forward do you want to make an amendment on the motion to allow for the non-hazardous well but what's before us is a contract so we could I guess we could approve the contract for the non-hazardous um if it if staff thinks this is possible we could approve the contract for the non-hazardous chemicals or herbicides and direct that that the you know the at the next meeting we hear from the IPM committee about it although from my perspective waiting a month is not you know to get a comprehensive view is is not that big of a problem so I'd ask Luis whether you know a month or three weeks delay is going to be problematic um well um I don't know how long it'll take to go through a process with the with the IPM committee but if we can do it in three weeks and then have something for you next month I think would still be in time to to do the the pre-emergent spraying beyond that I think there's a good chance we won't be and in terms of the the three different herbicides that are that are listed here there are three because each targets different types of plants and so you know that that mixture was sort of recommended as being the mixture that then would ensure that you're using something that targets the variety of plants that that we see on the quarter definitely spraying with only the two and not spraying with the third one that's that that's a concern would be helpful because you know that'll that'll definitely you know target a number of of plants but like the third one that add it's even more effective because it targets some additional plants that we find on the on the rail line right away let's put this off for a month and make a decision with new information and just move on seriously okay so I have a question for your call Commissioner Bertrand I agree Commissioner Brown I Commissioner Johnson Randy Johnson forgive me I'm confused about what the what what I'm voting on we're putting off the decision for a month and you can get input from the site the end committee if we can get it if not we'll have to make a hard decision without there thank you and also to for come back with additional information on public notice right all right thank you yeah permission alternate hers yes Commissioner Caput quick question how many years have we been using the herbicide on the rail I mean is this the same herbicide that we've been using all along the RTC is only has not been using the server side at all so we we really don't know whether the railroads use this these same herbicides based on the information we've gotten from the railroad in the past it doesn't seem like this these are herbicides that they were using it seems that the herbicides that they were using were actually significantly more toxic than this okay so I I'm I'm I guess I'm voting yes because I don't want to I don't want the herbicide to be used until we really have this all figured out so we're putting it off so yep but I want are they going to stop using this herbicide while we're waiting all right thank you I at Commission Alternate Schifrin I Commission Alternate Mulhern I Commissioner Koenig I Commission Alternate Jenny Johnson I Commission Alternate Lynn I Commissioner Gonzalez I Commissioner Rottgen I at houses thank you we're going to go ahead now and adjourn our regular meeting and we will have closed session we will take a five minute break and I will wait they have to they have to report while we're discussing you're turning us to make a comment before we go into closed session thank you Mr. thank you thank you Mike so so we we are going into closed session for real property associations related to the to the Santa Cruz branch line it is not into the Commission would provide direction to your real property negotiator so it is not anticipated that we will have a report out of closed session today thank you so we'll give see you in five minutes in closed session we have to re-log in correct yeah this would be you just got it you just got an email with the you logged in okay thanks Mike all right