 Okay, good morning. Welcome to the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District or Metro Board of Directors regular meeting for October 23 2020. It's nine o'clock. We'll start with the roll call please. Dr. Botsworth. Here. Dr. Kaufman-Germas. I heard part of that. I think that might have been me. I'm here with you. Yes. Welcome. Director Gonzalez. President. Dr. Leopold. Here. Dr. Lin. Here. Dr. Matthews. Here. Dr. McPherson. Here. Dr. Myers. I don't see Donna Myers. Okay. Dr. Pegler. Here. Dr. Rothwell. There's Donna Myers. She's here. Dr. Rothwell. I don't see Dr. Dr. Rotkin. Here. Exefficio Dr. Henderson. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Exefficio Director Norak. Here. Thank you. We have Quorum. Just Director Rothwell missing. Thank you very much. Welcome everybody. We'll go slowly through the meeting to make sure there's plenty of time for people to be recognized. Sometimes that's tricky on these Zoom calls. We want to make sure the public has full access to our meeting, at least as much as we can have under these conditions of communication. We'll start with announcements. Today's meeting is being broadcast by community television of Santa Cruz County. And if the person who's working for community television, this broadcasting, this would like to introduce him or herself. That would be great. Hi. My name is Ian. And I'm doing the broadcast this morning with. In the control room. That's great. Thanks. We appreciate it without you. We can't get out to the public at all. Thank you. Any other announcements this morning from staff? None. None. Okay. Any comments from the board of director members of the board of directors. On transit items. Lazy vendor. This Bruce McPherson. I just want to say congratulations on a great article on our safety. Efforts for our passengers. Great article in the Sentinel. It was on Thursday. Wednesday or Thursday sometime this week. And job well done. And I'm glad we're getting ahead of this as much as anybody. Could hope. So congratulations, Alex, to you, the staff. And to James. I took a good, great photo, Mr. Sandoval on the. Congratulations. We appreciate it. And our passengers need to know that. So. Very well done. Thanks, Bruce. I'm going to push that right over to Danielle. She did a fabulous job on setting that all up for us. Right. I wanted to thank Daniel. Gagola for her work. And it's great that we have a marketing director that can organize these kinds of things, which we never had in the past. Thanks so much. Not for a very, very long time. Any other comments from members of the board of directors. Or really. Yeah. Thank you, chair. I just actually like take a moment. Right now to thank Trina Kaufman Gomez. I know she's a trimming out as the city council and city of Watsonville. And I know she's served the city account. The city of Watsonville well on Metro. And I wish her the best. And then endeavors in the future. And stay in touch and keep pushing the buttons. We might have her for one more meeting. I'm assuming is that not the case in November. We'll find out. Yeah. But I would just want to take the opportunity now. In case I. I'm not around. Any other comments. All right. So I see your hand there. Oh, that's Cynthia Matthews. Yes. That raises a question because Ed and I are both turned out. And I think. There was a question when Cynthia Chase turned out. We'll find out. Yeah. But I would just want to take the opportunity now. In case I. I'm not around. Take care. Hope you'll be with us. I. Any other comments. All right. So I see your hand there. Oh, that's Cynthia Matthews. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Cynthia Chase turned out, turned out. Do I remember that. When the election is passed, but the new representative hasn't been sworn in, that can actually be until January. Because we, we don't do our committee assignments in the city until. The third week in January. Do we, do we continue to serve until the new person is appointed? Is that how it works? Okay. Let me tell you now. So we passed legislation that allows you to continue your term. Unless your appointing agency affirmatively does not want you to. Okay. They would have to take some action. Otherwise you can continue until your replacement. Is in place. Okay. Thank you. Good question. Thank you for that. Any other comments. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the public. To comment on anything related to transit. That's not on this morning's agenda. Take a moment to scan and see who's on the call. I don't see any hands. No hands. No hands noted. This is an opportunity for labor organizations. To comment on any item that's not on this morning's agenda. No hands, Mr. Chair. Thank you. There is one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. James Sandoval has his hands up. James, go ahead. Good morning. Oh, yeah, sorry. Good morning, everyone. So I just wanted to say thank you for having us involved with that event. I think it sends a really good message to our community that we're united. And protecting them. And I'm just really hoping we continue moving forward. Working together. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. And as I expressed at the event, we appreciate the work that's done by all of our employees, but particularly folks out in front. Like the drivers who are in contact with the public. For the work that they do. It's essential work. And we were quite appreciative of the risks that you do take is low as Lee. We tried to make them. Next. Any additional documentation. For existing meetings. I think that's a good point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And the schedule for when our meetings are going to take place next year, the main meeting would be scheduled not from May 14th, but May 21st. If I got that right. You did. And that was either a slip or a typo or something in the initials. It was sent out other than that, that that item is correct. As now it's been corrected. I think that's a good point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please. Yeah. Well, first of all, on that, we will post the corrected calendar to the website. It's already been posted. So she's fast. And then you received electronically a copy of a city support letter for item 906, which is a revised contract for the eco or the go pass. And then also we had communication from. Also from. The same topic, which was an interesting link to some discussion about having exercise routines at bus stops. So we've sent that over to the planning department to take a look at. Thank you, Michael Bassano. Who I know is watching today. It was his, it was his suggestion. So thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is written communications from the metro advisory committee or Mac as it's known. I don't think we have any. I didn't see any in the packet. None. Okay. We're now to the consent agenda. This is items, all the items that begin with nine, nine, one through. So, I'm just going to go back to the discussion on these all in one motion unless member of the board or. After hearing from the public, a member of the board decides they want to pull one of these items off for further discussion. Does anyone on the board want to pull for discussion? Any of the items on the consent agenda. Donna. I just have a comment on 906 when appropriate. If you, if I don't, are you going to do public comment first? No comment. Make it now. I just, yeah, I just wanted to. For the discussion. Yeah. So 906 is for the public. Accept and file program update on downtown Santa Cruz employee bus program. Our transportation planner submitted a letter of. Recognition as part of this agenda item. And I just wanted to express my thanks to John. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to say thank you. Representing the city of Santa Cruz. And I hope we can continue to keep up this partnership. So thanks to staff for, for working through this. Great. I think that that. Relationship model for things we might pull off in a number of other areas of our county cities. And you have directed about TORF with his hand up. Okay. Thank you. I just have a quick comment on item nine dash five. Okay. I just want to, you know, bring the board up to date that the capital committee has been had ongoing meetings about the. New newly proposed per cruise. Facility. And after many meetings, we finally had. We had a meeting with the city of Santa Cruz. We had a meeting with the city of Santa Cruz. But also in this facility, there are different kinds of facets being brought in there because of changing times. Things that could affect. You know, our operations moving down the road with. Community service groups in there and meeting rooms. So I think this facility is still going to be, you know, not very big, but, but it's a little bit bigger than originally planned. But that extra space is going to come in very handy for the city of Santa Cruz. So I think that's a good point. And hopefully it was the funding and grants. This will come to fruition. So thank you. Great. Anyone else from the board. Are there any members of the public who would like us to have further discussion. And possible different action on any of the items on the consent agenda. I see no hands, but let me ask that. No hands on either side. No. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And for a motion to approve the consent agenda. Move approval. Is that from bottle in. Yes. Second by their. Anyone else? All right. Any further discussion? You have to roll call vote. Sorry. Perfect. Yeah. Motion by. Yes. No. Dr. Bautoff. Hi. Dr. Koffman Gomez. Yes. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lynn. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pegler. Aye. Dr. Rothwell. Not present. And Dr. Rotkin. Aye. That carries you down. Thank you. All those items are then approved. Item number 10 is a consideration of a resolution to establish the board of directors meeting schedule for next year and the locations. If we end up meeting in. In person or in. Not on, not remotely, but. That's as I said, that's been sent out to everybody. We've corrected the May date to the 21st of May rather than the 14th. Any discussion of that item by the board members. Any comments from members of the public on. Our proposed meeting schedule. No hands. Mr. Chair. When I'm looking for a motion to approve. Second. Who made the motion? I'm sorry. I missed it. I'm a Lynn. Cast off the mark this morning. Yeah. Second was from Donna Myers, I believe. Is that correct? I think Bruce and I tied. So, but he verbally did it. I raised my hand. So Bruce has got that one. Is that right? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They're putting in Bruce gets the second. Any further discussion of the schedule. Then we'll leave another roll call vote. Okay. The motion was by Lynn. The second was by director McPherson. Correct. Director Botthoff. Aye. Director Coffman Gomez. Yes. Do it again. I. I. Dr. Lynn. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Piglet. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. Anonymous by attendees. Thank you. Carries. Next we're going to have a COVID-19 fiscal crisis oral report from Alex Clifford our general manager and CEO. Thank you, Mr. Chair, directors. So I'm just going to run through a number of slides that I've put together that begin to try to plot the path where we're at today and where we are progressing towards. And some of the things we'll talk about in these, this presentation still require a full presentation to the board and board concurrence, but they begin to lay out some of the things that we'll bring to you in the future. Next slide, please. You know, what is. Start there, Alex. I'm sorry. I love where it starts. No one really knows. Yes. I thought that was an important point to make. Although we all know that. So yeah, we don't know what it looks like post COVID. Or how long this lasts. We certainly have more questions than answers. We don't have much of a history to draw from. I mean, we can get little nuggets from the great recession, 2008 to approximately 2014. And then we'll talk a little bit more about that. And what things look like when you have a slow economic recovery. We didn't get a whole lot of help from. Either the 2009 swine flu. And that was a pandemic or the 2005 avian flu. But we did draw some lessons from that that, that led to early implementation of cleaning processes before the first case of COVID hit this county. Next slide, please. And first and foremost, that's to protect our customers and our employees. And since we're using the public dollars, we want to use that money with great care. It is the public trust. We want to be very, very thoughtful about how we approach it. Expenditure of public money. And that includes the money we receive through the cares act. And then I, you know, I really believe we make some of our best decisions. And I think we're going to be able to, we're going to be able to make some of our best decisions. We're going to be able to bring information and learning from others in the state and through our national professional organizations. In other words, we, we can't go it alone. You know, we're, we're all in this together and we can learn. Other agencies will try things and fail and we can learn from those failures. That's good information. And then certainly where there are successes, we want to learn from that next slide, please. And then we're going to go ahead and start with the next slide. And then we're going to go ahead and turn the new normal. I don't know what that means. And I don't, I don't know. If anybody knows what that really means. I think we do just want to talk about it in the context of what is trying to transit look like in the post COVID environment. So we're still getting through the COVID environment, but then there's the post COVID environment. And this just attempts to throw a bunch of things on the wall. That are all part of what we're looking at. Right. And then we're going to go ahead and continue to go ahead. And then we're going to go ahead and. And then we're going to go ahead and go ahead and. We're going to be on demand on demand, what we call microtransit. We've come through a phase of free fairs. There's a lot of agencies talking about the potential of free fairs being permanent. We don't know on the other side of this, whether we'll have more revenue service hours, RSH is revenue service hours or less. There could be some reallocation that occurs. as something to protect the bus operator from assaults. But in the COVID environment and what will become the post COVID environment, they've taken on a whole new meaning and that is to protect our bus operators from airborne particles. So, and as you know, our transit operators here have resisted driver compartment barriers over the years because they felt it really got in the way of the customer service they want to provide. But we've all come around to understanding that now we need to think about these and that they could become, well, they will become permanent into the future even post pandemic. Reconsidering the purchase of buses with windows that open. You know, we've been moving away from windows that open and especially as you're buying electric buses, it has been strongly suggested that you should not have windows that open in electric buses because what happens is on cold days, you're running the heat, on hot days, you're running the air conditioning and you're running them all that much more or those units are working that much harder drawing that much more electricity and draining your batteries quicker and reducing the range of that bus. Now we need to rethink that because what does the future look like? We're buying buses that last 12 to 14 years and will there be another pandemic? Will there be a need to have this same kind of inside, outside air exchange that's been recommended by the CDC that we've implemented on our buses that we've implemented in our buildings? So I don't know that we know the answer to that but it's something that we have to be thinking about. What does remote commuting or remote telecommuting look like? Does the public at large come back to where they worked or is there some significant number of people that in the future and indefinitely, maybe permanently do remote commuting? What does that impact on our ridership and certainly congestion on the highway? So we don't know. It's things that we have to watch for and study. We talked about increased ventilation on buses. We're not there yet. The permanent solution probably is not opening the emergency hatch and windows inside the bus. It's probably going to be other kinds of technology that will come along to help us ensure that the quality of the air inside the bus is optimal, especially in a pandemic situation. Increased focus on cleaning and disinfecting. I really think that the fogging that we're doing each night, disinfectant fogging each night is here to stay. I think we should seriously contemplate that our cleaners, their temps today that we hire to be at our transit centers to jump on every bus that comes through the transit center and disinfect high touch surfaces so that all throughout the day that buses is also receiving a disinfecting that potentially could be something permanent in our future. We have to think about it that way. Certainly big, big topic. Our planning department is working on this. Improved contactless touchless fare concepts. I think everything is going to move away from touching things to touchless and contactless. We have smart cards today in our system, but I think we're headed more towards smartphone-based systems as you know from our pilot project that we have going on. What's the future of bus capacity limits? And if you have limits or if this experience we're having today continues for a long period into the future, but yet riders return and you have capacity limits on your bus that inhibit your ability of serving everybody, we may have to look at certain routes putting more service out there. Can we afford that service? Do we reallocate it from less productive areas? Decisions yet to be made. Helping our employees feel safe is going to be always at the forefront. We have to continue to reevaluate now what is the future of fixed route? Is on-demand transit comes in, do they work together? Is fixed route always going to be what it was in the pre-COVID environment? We have to study that. Automatic passenger counters on vehicles helping us provide the ability to customers to see how many people are on the bus and to make a decision if they feel uncomfortable that there are too many people on a bus they can choose to wait for the next bus. There's a lot of work in the antimicrobial treatments areas things you can spray on, products you can buy that have antimicrobial features to them. That's a growing field. Also UV ray disinfecting is being experimented out there. It's not something we would jump on board right now but it is being experimented with and I think it will continue to develop. We're also considering seat materials making sure that we're buying seat materials in buses that we purchase that don't hold in the virus and smells and things like that that are easier to clean. And then finally what is the future of cash and coin? It may be phased out over time. Next slide please. So at this particular point I would lay this out as our initial strategy. And one we've been working on for the last several months and sort of came to a crescendo this week with what you spoke about earlier with the media event in which we talked about the things that we're doing to help keep our employees and our customers safe and are signing on to the app to pledge. And that's to restore public and customer confidence in a safe experience when riding the bus. That is paramount. We learned that through our survey that that's important. And so we've put in play now in a very formal way phase one and that will be continuous and running in parallel. Phase two is really talking about added value. What value can we add to what we already do in order to try to attract our customers back? We'll talk about that in a minute. And then phase three of course is post COVID transit service. Next slide please. Okay, so again, phase one restore public customer confidence. Next slide. There's our app to pledge. Next slide. These are on the sides of buses throughout our system. Next slide. Of course we've completed all of the between row sneeze barriers. Next slide. Let me say before you move on from that one, those of you who haven't had a chance to see one of these buses, it's quite impressive. The job that's been done outfitting our buses with these division separations between the seats. It's very professional looking. It was done very quickly. But if you look at it, it really looks like we knew what we're doing. And I wanna appreciate the work that was done by whoever was responsible for all of the actual physical work of putting those things in. It's a lot of work. It's quite impressive. Yeah, and that Kudos goes to Eddie Benson, our maintenance manager, and very specifically to Joseph Mada who has moved on to other work elsewhere but did a great job for us during his tenure here in installing these barriers. So he did a fantastic job. Now we do consider these temporary. We do believe between row sneeze barriers will likely be something permanent in our future, not something we would take down in the post pandemic environment. But we're watching the industry out there to see who's gonna produce something that will be more permanent in a plexiglass type of a form. Next slide, please. Of course, the fogging that's going on. And then you see on the right slide the hand sanitizer that's available to our customers as they board the bus. Next slide. These are the cleaners I spoke about earlier at the transit centers hopping on to clean high touch surfaces during the day. Next slide. And then of course you saw this in the Sentinel, right? Except it was James behind the curtain in the Sentinel picture, but that is our curtains that we put up. We hope to replace this in the near future with the permanent version, which is the plexiglass version. But this was again done by Eddie and team on very quick short-term notice so that we could react to the pandemic arriving here. Next slide, please. Of course, face covering, probably in the post pandemic that goes away but all the way through whatever, whenever it's formally announced that you don't need face covering, we will require face covering to ride on our vehicles, both employee and the customers. Next slide. Okay, so phase two as we talked about added value contactless, touchless. We have the smart card. We want to encourage customers to migrate away from cash and coin. We want to encourage them even to migrate away from the mag stripe card because that's not considered cashless, touchless. And so that's one avenue for them to go but it's sort of an inferior product because you have to go to either a ticket vending machine or one of our two customer service centers to load value. It was never launched and or envisioned originally back in 2009 with online features. So we have this pilot project going for the mobile app and we as a part of our reaction to COVID and the pandemic, we expanded that pilot project not to be just highway 17 as originally envisioned but to be system wide. So that will lead also to a validator that will be placed on the highway 17 buses and that's part of that pilot project too. So if that all works out well, we can launch the validator system wide and start really marketing heavy to move our customers off of whatever fair media they use today onto the smartphone app. We're investigating bringing you a proposal to expand Wi-Fi from just its current state which is limited to highway 17 buses to all of our buses. We think that will really add value. So we'll bring that to you hopefully sometime early next year. Another one we hope to bring to you to consider early next year is the automatic passenger counters or what we call APCs. And as I explained earlier in addition to that providing sort of us data geeks here at the office with a lot of information to better plan our services, it does provide a wonderful feature for our customers especially in the pandemic and post pandemic environment of being able to see how many people are on that approaching bus. So we think that will be a real nice added value. You're gonna talk today a little bit about smarter bus stops and redesign and we've launched our customer service kios at both transit centers. Customers can walk up to a doorbell looking device and push a button and communicate with the customer service folks and have their questions answered without burdening the individual, the customer service representative who's selling fair media over at the customer service window. And then of course we're in the final acceptance stage of automatic vehicle location or predictive arrival and departure. As we've talked about a lot that's an important feature for people to understand when their bus is coming in, if it's on time. Next slide please. Could you expand that a little bit again for any members of the public that are present? Could you say a little bit more about that arrival and departure information going to the public? Sure, so our customers will have a free app they can download onto their phone and they will be able to see if their bus is approaching on time or not. If you're at your work station you might see that your bus is running late for some reason and you might be able to stay at your work location or whatever you might be doing. Maybe it's a student studying for a test. They might be able to continue doing that because they know their bus is gonna be say 10 minutes late and they can avoid going to the stop and waiting there maybe even in hot weather or rainy weather unnecessarily for an extended period of time. So it'll really help provide a nice customer service feature to our customers. Thank you. Next slide please. So then it gets a little bit trickier. Phase three post COVID transit service is ongoing. I'm not here to tell you we've mapped it out and we know where we're going because as we talked about we don't have all the answers. We are evaluating implementation of on-demand service and we will probably bring you early next year some recommendations there. As much as is financially feasible our goal is has been and hopefully continues to be to restore service to our pre COVID levels. Now there's a couple of caveats there. Of course for right now we don't have all the students at UCSC so we wouldn't restore that service right now because we'd have a lot of empty buses running around because the tech industry over the hill still predominantly has employees working from home. We've cut back Highway 17 service and we're reacting to what are sort of new developing peaks in that service and made some other minor changes but overall our goal has been to try to make sure that we put back now as much service as is possible so that as our customers return to the service maybe their job has asked them back. They move off a furlough to come back to work full time or they need to get to their doctor's appointments or just the grocery store as they return to our service that service is there and available for them. If it is not we risk that they find other ways to accomplish what they need to accomplish and we lose them for good and we don't want that to happen. There's a lot of talk nationwide and even in our own survey about focusing on service frequency. So we'll be putting a lot of thought into that and then we think that we need to do a better job. We know we need to do a better job in on time performance. That is a great feature for our customers if we can not just having an app telling you if a bus is running late but doing everything we can to not have that bus run late to manage the system better and that automatic vehicle location data will help us do that. It'll also help us focus on something we call running hot which is buses running or departing their time point ahead of schedule. In the business of delivery of bus service that is a huge no-no. There is one thing that you can control when you're out there driving on the system and that is whether you leave a time point early or not. So the data will help us focus on that and to reinforce to our bus operators that if they happen to be running ahead when they're at a time point they should hold until they're back on time and then depart. That reduces our incidents of running hot that allows us to provide a better service. I would just close that off by saying there's nothing worse from a customer's perspective than for a customer to arrive at a bus stop on time only to see the tail of their bus rolling down the street. That bus left that time point early. That is poor customer service and we aim to fix that. Data will help us do that. We also need to think about the role and functionality and the layout of our transit centers. In the post COVID environment do we just open them up and go about businesses we did before COVID or do we need to have them provide a little bit different functionality than they did before? We're thinking about that. And then of course as we talked about earlier rethinking the future of ticket vending machines, paper, fare, media, cash and coins. And we think too that bus on shoulder is just gonna be a wonderful addition. And of course in partnership with the RTC that continues to move through the process. Next slide please. And of course we always like to close with this all of our Metro employees are essential frontline heroes. Mr. Chair, that concludes my presentation. Thanks, Alex. Are there any comments or questions to Alex from the board members? Yeah, Mr. Chair, Supervisor McBride, I just wanna say a great presentation forward looking and to mention how appreciative I am that how well we're working with the RTC and Regional Transportation Commission on these issues and others as well. As chair of the RTC and there's many of our members that are on the RTC as well. It's vitally important that we work together to meet the transportation needs of our county residents in particular. So thank you. It's noticeable how we're Metro is getting along with the RTC and vice versa. I just much appreciated having served or serving on both of them as many of us are. So just thank you very much. I think it's vitally important because we're all in the same bus, so to speak, getting people from one place to another. Thanks, please. And Mr. Chair, you have Cynthia Matthews. Cynthia, go ahead. That was a really good presentation. Could you send us your slide deck for that? Yes, absolutely. Anyone else from the board with a question or comment? Donna Myers. Yeah, I just, yeah, Alex, I thought it was an excellent presentation and I'm wondering if you might at some point be able to make that presentation to our city council at some point in the future. It's just really good information for everyone that uses the bus system to, so I don't know if we can condense it, but I'd love to work with you to possibly have maybe a condensed version and bring it to our council in the near future. Absolutely, yes. Thanks. We'll work directly with you on that. That was part of my thinking too. We reported each meeting briefly on the various assignments that we have and this one is really substantive. So I'm aligned with Donna on the thinking here. Great. I'll second that too with the county level. Yeah, agreed from Scotts Valley as well. And some of the things that you said, it's amazing the technology and what's changed in just a few years. Just looking at some of the things that you're looking, that we're going to be able to do is amazing. So be nice to share that and all the good work that Matt was done. Thank you. Lilio. Yeah, I wanted just same thing for the city of Watsonville. Since there is a lot of ridership from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, I think it's important that the community of Watsonville see this. Yeah, let's lace up your shoes. You've got some traveling to do. Actually, if, well, you know, online, you don't have to leave the seat. But if you could forward that information so we could post it on our agenda, that'd be grateful too, because we do an oral report on our behalf. Yeah, I'll send it to all of the members. And we, I normally do, after the first of the year, I do the rounds to the county and all of the cities and make a state of metro presentation. Sometimes that does stretch out into the year. So if you would like me to join your council meeting on a Zoom in between then and now, I can happily do that. Good. As a final word, an interesting thing about this, although the theme is technically COVID safety, it touches on all the technology initiatives that we're involved with as well. So it's more than, even more than what it appears. Great. So I assume everybody will individually from your cities or the county contact to Alex and work on a schedule. Any members of the public want to comment on the COVID-19 report from the CEO? I don't see any hands. Okay. Back to Alex again for a more general CEO report on the state of the transit. Okay. So a couple of things here in the way of new hires and promotions, we have Tanya Gilliam, purchasing assistant and Wayne Sakai, vehicle service worker. So welcome aboard to those two individuals. And then we have a bus operator who has promoted to transit supervisor and that is Robert Valdivia. So congratulations, Robert. Then just in the way of a quick update, I'm sure you all have been following the news, the COVID, the thought about COVID recovery funding from the transit side of it. Well, from the overall package side, at least we understand as of right now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Secretary Treasury Stephen Mnuchin are still talking. It does appear that the news coming from Washington is that they're rallying around a $2 trillion-ish package. So it sounds like they've come a little bit closer together, although they're doing all of this without having the benefit of the Senate involved in it. So that could be intriguing to see how that works if they come up with a proposal and then it tries to go through the House and the Senate. As you know, we got the CARES Act back in April of 2020 and just for a point of reference, that CARES Act of course is more than just transit that we were a component of that, but that total package was 2.6 trillion. So that gives you some perspective. And within a $2.6 trillion package, transit got $25 billion. And then of the $25 billion, Santa Cruz Metro got about 20 million. So that was exciting for us. APTA's proposal that they're pushing for is a $32 billion package. And as you know, while we agree with the $32 billion transit package, we certainly don't completely agree with APTA's approach, which tries to skew the money towards larger agencies. And then as a matter of fact, in May of 2020, the HEROES Act came out of the House and it sort of reinforced what APTA was doing. But even worse, it channeled almost all of the money to 14 very large urbanized areas in the nation. So we would've got zero out of the HEROES Act. And then in October, there was the revised HEROES Act that came out of the House. And that one ended up being a $2.4 trillion package. Of which it provided about $32 billion in emergency transit funding. That started to get a little bit better for us because 18 and a half billion of that 32 billion would have flowed through the formula. Very much like CARES Act one did. We were still not completely happy with it because 10 billion still went to this APTA concept of an emergency relief grant, which again focuses on larger properties. So we would not likely get anything out of that. So where it stands today, I don't know. It's possible they're using some of the tenants from the HEROES Act one or HEROES Act two, but we all anxiously await to hear what comes out of Washington and hopefully soon. And Mr. Chair, that concludes my presentation. We are using our firms we've hired, for example, in Washington DC to do lobbying with our members, our local members and other appropriate members in Congress about this issue of the APTA focus on larger properties. Yes, so Chris Gileo works for us. And Chris and I crafted a letter that we circulated nationwide to get signatures from small and medium sized properties. And Chris on our behalf still continues to circulate that in DC, as long as this topic is in play. The main focus of that is whatever money you end up dealing to us. Of course, we support the $32 billion idea, but whatever money ends up helping transit agencies through this crisis be flowed through the formula just like CARES Act one did. And I think actually we've had some success because remember Heroes Act one did not flow money to us through the formula, but then their next version did start to recognize that they needed to do more than just the 14 major urbanized areas. So Chris is doing a great job, but everything that's happening is happening behind closed doors right now. Thank you. Do you have anything else in your CEO's report? No, that concludes my report, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any comments from board members on that report? No questions? I'm seeing none. Any members of the public with a question or comment? My hand's showing. Okay, next we're to consideration of appointments to the Metro Advisory Committee or MAC. Yes, and Mr. Chair, if I can, I can turn it over to either Ed or Donna or Larry who were members of the ad hoc committee if they'd like to talk about their recommendations. Which one? I don't want to let Larry do this since he was a big contributor at the meeting. Yeah, I'll unmute myself. In looking at the list, we saw that one of the categories that we wanted to fill was representation of someone from Cabrillo College. And we saw one individual, James Cruz, who indicated that he traveled to the Cabrillo College campus on a regular basis. We also were well-familiar with Becky Taylor and Mike Pesano's performance over the past several years and felt that they should be continued in that role. And that's your recommendation? That's our recommendation. Anyone care to add to that? Nope, you did a great job. No, we got- Sure. It was a unanimous recommendation from the ad hoc committee. Yes, it was. Good addition. That appointment's made by the board and we'll need a roll call vote then. First, a motion, I guess, to make that point. I would move the recommended nominations and they're great candidates. I know two out of the three and they really work hard for Metro. That's great. Oh, second. Second by Aurelio and then we'll have the roll call please. We have a motion by Director Leopold a second by Director Gonzales. Correct. And roll call is Director Botthorff. Aye. Dr. Kaufman-Gumiz. Yes. Dr. Gonzales. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pegler. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. unanimous by attendees. Thank you. Next, we have consideration of authorizing the CEO to use the, let's just spell it out. C-A-L-A-C-T flash MBTA. And I'll let him explain to us what that is. Purchasing cooperative contract for the purchase of six buses from Eddie's company, Dempsey-Narvin. And I'm just gonna give this report, I believe. Or is it Alex? I'm not sure. We have it down as Eddie. Eddie or Margo, are you gonna present this report? I can present it. Go ahead, Margo. Good afternoon. First slide, please. I don't think we have, do we have slides on this? Oh, okay. So we're asking the board to authorize CEO to execute a contract with Gillick for the amount, not to exceed $3,958,985. So we are paying with these buses through a couple of grants. One is the P-T-M-I-S-E-A grant. And that was for $3.5 million, which the board approved in November of 2019. And then the remaining funding comes from... That's the local match. The local match, I'm sorry. We'll make up the difference for the CNG purchase. We purchase our buses through a kind of a cooperative agreement. It's the California Association for Coordinated Transportation, the Morongo Basin Transit Authority. And as I said, it's a cooperative purchasing contract where we get better pricing for our buses. And with that, does anyone have any questions? Are there questions? Any members of the public who have questions? We have a hand from Cynthia Matthews. Thank you. Oh, it appears we're getting more, more buses for less money. Am I understanding that correctly? That is correct. We were to purchase four, but we're actually purchasing six. Yeah, that's amazing. And what happens in terms of budget? We had some funds budgeted for that. Those go into the capital fund, et cetera. That's just a question. So we are poised to purchase two more buses. So yes, it'll return to the capital fund and then we'll use those to do the next round of purchases. So we're coming back to you next month, I believe, for to exercise the option to buy two additional buses. These are funded by the state. We couldn't put them into this same request because the state has to complete its process before we're allowed to say that we're gonna buy the buses. They don't give us pre-award authority. And if we prematurely get out there, they can tell us that we can't have the money. So we're very careful about that. I have just a quick follow-up question. So when I first joined the Metro Board, I don't know how many buses past their useful lifetime we've had. I mean, it was the vast majority. Where are we now on that graph? We are looking at 29 buses that are past their useful life. Out of 90 or something like that? Yes, yes. So we have a long-term plan to replace our buses a little bit at a time, but we do have a plan to make sure that and we replace them in a timely manner. It's also worth noting that we also developed a plan to make sure that we're compliant with the zero emission buses by the deadline that we're required to do so. And that deadline is 2040, correct? Not sure. It's a phase deadline. So in 2026, for example, if we buy buses in that year or that year forward, 25% of what we buy have to be electric. Then in 2029, 100% of anything we buy has to be electric. So we presented you a plan that's compliant with that, allows us to get some electric buses here on this property, shake them out, see how they're gonna work for us. And then also allows us to experiment hopefully in a couple of years with hydrogen fuel cell buses. And we're on track for, even though we're buying here CNG buses, which are not zero emission buses, we have a schedule in which by the addition of more electric buses or some kind of zero emission buses will be compliant with those deadlines. And this does not slow us down from reaching that goal, as I understand it. That is correct, Mr. Chair. We will be compliant with the law and what we presented to you as compliant. In that journey towards 2029, we will continue to buy as many compressed natural gas field buses as we possibly can. We do own a compressed natural gas facility that invested, used public funds. We're invested in that. That's a very expensive facility. I think it's in excess of $3 million. And it's useful life really does run out about the time that we would start to be under the 100% requirement. So we do wanna get full useful life out of that facility as possible, but maybe equally, if not more important, we really want for the electric technology to continue to be innovated in such a way that they get more range out of those vehicles. Today, we would make a huge mistake if we said, let's just go 100% electric and everything that we buy from here forward would be a huge mistake. We'd be saddled with buses that we couldn't run on all routes on our system. It would just be a nightmare for us. So we'd need that technology to continue to get better and better and more range in those buses. Great. Okay, so we have a recommendation here for the purchase of these buses. It requires a motion, a second, and a roll call vote. I move the recommended actions. I'll second. I've got a motion by Larry and a second by John Leopold. Right? Okay. They'll have a roll call vote, please. Do you want to go to the public, Mike? Yeah, I'm sorry, thank you. Any member of the public want to comment about the purchase of these bus, six buses? No hands from the public. All right, then we'll have the roll call vote, please. We had a motion from Director Pegler and a second from Director Leopold. Correct. Roll call is Director Batworth. Aye. Director Kaufman-Germans. Yes. Director Gonzalez. Aye. Director Leopold. Aye. Director Lind. Aye. Director Matthews. Aye. Director McPherson. Aye. Director Myers. Aye. Director Pegler. Aye. Director Rodkin. Aye. Again, Pastor unanimous. Thank you, Jane. We're now to our last item, which is approval of bus stop signage upgrades. And this is a report from John Ergo, our planning development director. It might be new to John, I don't, there you go. You're still muted, there you go. Good morning. So this report presents for the board's consideration a new design concept for Metro's 798 bus stop signs based on research of industry best practices and evaluation of Metro's current signage and multiple iterations of design review that staff has been working on over the past several months. And we're excited to present these ideas to the board. The goal here is to enhance visibility and accessibility through standardization of things like sign height, pole placement to establish clear branding and informational hierarchies and to better guide customers through all of Metro's service and informational systems. So what's before you is the current stop design. I'm sure it's familiar to everyone. It contains lots of useful customer information, the bus stop ID, some branding customer information numbers but I think we can all agree that it's fairly visually cluttered. It lacks a clear hierarchy of information and it doesn't quite guide customers through the system. Most of the most prominent information is the bus icon and stop ID number while the most relevant information such as route numbers and names is printed in very small text and is impossible to read from a distance. This design is also one-sided although schedule information is often posted on the back of the sign if there's not room on the front because the schedule route decals are quite large which means that customers have to kind of look around the bus stop to really find the information. Next slide, please. So these are just three examples of best practice signs that our research turned up. So as you can see from these examples there's very clear agency branding, large route numbers and customer information towards the bottom that guides customers through how to access additional information if they require it. Next slide, please. These designs are typically organized along a hierarchy of information. So at the top, the primary information is the bus stop sign or the stop flag that makes the purpose of the sign clear allows customers to identify where the bus stop is located from a distance and it also functions as a marketing tool for the agency's brand. The middle section is the secondary element which includes route numbers and names. Route numbers and names are typically organized with a destination and primary corridor showing where the area where the route travels and the bottom or tertiary is information the customer needs to seek additional resources. So this information is tertiary because it's only relevant if customers were considering using the service advertised in the primary and secondary elements and it typically includes the agency's phone number, website, stop ID, but can also include the name of the bus stop and instructions how to get arrival information and organizing the information this way cuts down on the visual clutter. It cuts down on extraneous information and it recognizes that bus stops while they're one of an agency's most useful informational tools, they're also just one component of a multi-tiered information system and should be used to guide customers through the rest of that information system. Next slide, please. So I won't dwell on the current slide again but really the point here is that we don't follow any of this primary, secondary, tertiary informational hierarchy. There's lots of information, there's often redundancies we have logo, customer information repeated twice. Next slide, please. So the proposed design includes a number of enhancements and again, it's really aimed at improving visibility and accessibility. So the first element is a redesigned signage and route decals, which features Metro's brand colors, very large texts. And we're proposing to sidemount these signs now. So they'll be double-sided printed on both sides visible from both directions for pedestrians and people traveling on the street. The top section features clear agency branding and this section is common to all stops. The middle section contains the route information it's printed in very large texts. And the route names would follow the corridor to destination format. And we've also proposed some color coding based on service type. So whether the service is local, express, limited, or rural for a quick visual reference. And the bottom section contains the additional information where customers can go to find real-time or the text message-based schedules. We're also planning to include a link and a QR code for quick reference to the real-time arrival application. Next slide, please. Actually, could you expand on the last comment? Yes. So it's not shown there, but at the very bottom there is a link, scmtd.com slash apps, or the same information that we currently have, which is the schedule by text, which is for customers that don't have access to a smartphone but do have a cell phone. In the future, these will both point customers towards real-time arrivals. So currently, it'll point you to a static schedule, the schedule that we post on the website. But once our automatic vehicle locator system is fully operational later this year, it'll give you real-time arrival information, either through the text or through the URL link. Or it's not shown here, but we're going to add a QR code where you scan or take a photo using your smartphone that will automatically pull up the link to the real-time arrival information. And is that going to require new signs, or can we use decals or something to not have to replace these once we create these? So the proposal here is to replace the decals on all the signs. So once we do that with the new design, it'll have the QR code, the link, and the schedule by text information. So we're not going to put these signs up until we get our mobile app operate. I'm not mobile as what I'm talking about, but the vehicle location information out to the next bus information out to our customers. Yeah, so in the implementation schedule, there's a lot of elements to this proposal. It's not just the redesign. We're also looking at raising the sign height, ordering new polls played. So we think by probably spring is the earliest we can implement this, which should coincide with the AVL system. But we can also, if for some reason it's not ready, the link will be live and the QR code can point to the static schedule information until the real time is there. So we don't necessarily need to wait for one or the other, or we wouldn't need to update it. It would point to the same information. I would just replace it with real time once that's available. Thank you, that's very clear. I appreciate it. Because I was a little concerned about us putting out all, we have a lot of signs out there, putting them all out and then having to put new ones up as soon as we've got our next bus operation in order. Yeah, that's something we're trying to avoid for sure. Next slide please. So this just shows what signs we look like with one to multiple routes. So the majority of our signs only have one route and we're proposing a smaller flag, so a 12 inch by 12 inch flag, which is on the left. And then as for stops that have multiple routes, it would expand to the 12 by 24, which is the size of the design we have now. Next slide please. And this just shows the color coding that we're proposing. So there might be some changes to the colors here, but the basic idea is that for Highway 17 Express, different color indicating that it's an express limited stop route, blue as a local service route and the very kind of limited frequency routes, for example, the 4041 and a different color for that quick visual reference. Next slide please. So another major enhancement that we're proposing is standardizing the vertical clearance of the sign and the pole location. And so most agencies or bus practice research turned up do adhere to the ADA 80 inch clearance, sign height. It's not a requirement for us, it's only a requirement if the sign extends more than 12 inches from the pole, which ours do not currently, but we're proposing and they wouldn't in the future, they would be at that 12 inch exactly. But we are proposing to just standardize this, follow industry best practices, raise the sign height to that minimum 80 inch clearance to just improve the visibility to pedestrians, to bus operators, to passing motorists, avoid obstructing pedestrian pathways. And we're also looking at relocating the signs from inside of shelters to new poles installed on the outside for, again, greater visibility. So currently, if you're out of shelter, you have to look inside and we're, this is not just tied to customer information, but also branding to show clearly along the corridors where Metro services. The, staying on this slide, the most significant upgrade is the new schedule as map inserts that we're proposing. So these would feature stop specific schedules, as well as schematic route maps installed in display cases that select stops. And future phases might include the installation of real-time information displays, which I can get into later. So currently, as you all know, Metro maintains full timetable and route map information at all stops and they don't provide the information in the clearest way for the customer. So customers have to locate themselves on the map. Are they near A, B, C, D, E? Find their nearest time point and then extrapolate based on where they are on the route, the arrival time based on that schedule. So these stop specific schedules would just list the times for that stop and would eliminate all of that guesswork. The maps would are more schematic, but they highlight key corridor information and stop locations. And so we think this will provide more useful information to the customer, reduce the visual clutter. They'll also reduce maintenance costs of having to replace schedules and maps at every stop whenever there is just a minor schedule change. And this is something that we've been going through over the summer and fall through COVID. Every time we did a minor or often major service reduction or change, we had to go out and replace schedules at all 798 stops. And in the future, we would only have to do that when there's a change in route. And in fact, only the most well resourced agencies post schedules at every stop are research turned up that about 80% of agencies do post schedules at stops, but they do so at an average of 5% of stops. And these are typically in areas with high pedestrian activity, possibly tourists, casual first-time riders. So the bus stop signs serve the purpose of making the transit system discoverable and easy to use. Conversely, in low-density areas or areas with less frequent transit service, riders are more likely to approach a stop having planned their trip in advance and not needing the schedule information at the stop. So next slide, please. So we've developed these criteria for where we are proposing to maintain schedule information with this new enhanced at-stop schedule and schematic route information. We have identified 118 such stops. This is 15% of all the Metro stops where we're looking at Westside stops, near large student populations, stops in proximity to social services, senior housing and destinations, downtown areas, Santa Cruz government center, Boardwalk, Watsonville, Cabrillo College, stop serving high schools that receive special kind of schedule and transit service and rural and mountainous areas with poor cell phone coverage. I don't wanna take a minute to highlight the work of our intern, Rohan Tuli, who actually spearheaded a lot of this effort and the design, but also combed through the cell phone coverage of all the four major carriers in the area to identify areas of poor cell phone reception to identify those stops. And so this, again, this would be 15% of the stops and it also, besides the maintenance costs and improving customer information, it takes into account how existing Metro customers access the information. So the most recent onboard survey in 2019 found that two thirds use Google Maps or the Metro website to get schedule information. More than half of customers do have access to internet on a smartphone and very few use, indicated that they use the schedule information at the stop and even fewer use the text by stop, about 8%. But we do wanna keep that information because it will be useful once it ties into the real time. Next slide, please. Let's give that intern an A. This, so this is the breakdown of which stops would have schedules, award information that would be at each stop. So again, that 120 is on the right three columns and on the left are the 675 stops where we would just maintain the flag, route numbers and names. But again, do all the other enhancements of installing new polls, raising the sign height and posting the link to real time information on those stops. And on the right is where we keep route map schedules for information. And some very high use areas in downtown say would have perhaps a local area map or a system map. All in the end, all Metro routes would have some stops with posted schedules and all stops would have information on how to obtain the real time arrival and text message based scheduled by stop system. And we also are proposing a process for members of the public to approach Metro to ask for schedules to be posted back. So potentially as we implement this, we start with a smaller set that expands as we see a greater need for schedule information to be posted at the stop. Other agencies do this, typically they have criteria where the stop serves a location where customers are unlikely to have or use smartphones to attain information or there's a minimum number of boardings, say 50 boardings a day where the agency decides that there is a utility to posting that stop information there because they know customers will need to use it. So I think that's my last slide. We are asking for approval and feedback on this design concept. There will be some future design iterations as we walk through a little bit more of the color. We'll find more of the colors, the font sizes and things like that, but we plan to do that in-house. And again, with the implementation schedule, we're gonna be ordering new polls, new sign plates and printing all of these new decals and actually visiting all 798 stops to make sure that we can achieve the vertical clearance, also the horizontal clearance on the sidewalk. There's gonna be a lot of work involved in that. We also presented this to the Mac on Wednesday and agreed or talked about a process to work with some of those members to interact with the design. And we have a mock-up in the hallway here that we roll out into the street as we go through this process. I'd be happy to take questions. Thanks, John. That was an excellent report. Are there questions from board members or comments from board members? Well, I think this is a good report. And I think you have to take a look at these critical pieces of information every once in a while and make sure that they are really using modern standards. And I think it's been a long time coming and I'm really glad to see us moving forward with these new designs, new way of highlighting them. I think it really makes sense. So thanks for your work and the work of the staff. I'm sure you're speaking for all of us. Are there members of the board? Hey, John, this is Dan Henderson over at UCSC. First of all, it looks great. I think that it's gonna be a market improvement. So great work. Can you expand upon what are the limitations that if there are any, that's preventing from basically putting the schedule information and all the information on all the stops, is it that the infrastructure or the poll is not tall enough or because it would seem to me that the schedule information would be pretty critical at all the stops or maybe I'm just wrong. Could you give me a little bit more of an idea of what the thinking is there? Sure. I mean, I think there's a couple of ways to think about that. We have stops within the system that serve very few riders or potentially no riders. And you could argue that the posting schedules at those stops really serves no purpose. And so the point of this was to focus or the point of this is to focus Metro's resources in areas where posting the schedule information is gonna serve customers using that stop. There is certainly a maintenance cost with going and servicing all of our stops with full route and schedule information every time there's a service change. And again, we've experienced that multiple times throughout the summer and fall that we've had to implement these emergency service changes. And so this is a modernization that also recognizes that the majority of customers don't, I'll say the majority of regular customers that turned up in the 2019 on-borne survey don't actually use the schedule information at the stop. They use Google Maps, they use the website, they use headways, they use some of them use the text by stop. And so there isn't a need necessarily to go out and maintain the full route and schedules. It would also honestly be very time consuming to produce these at-stop schedules and maps for every 798 stops. So we are doing the work that the customer typically has to do at the stop to extrapolate that stops particular schedule to rival times, but it's a lot of work to have to do that at every single stop. And we don't think the payoff is there. We don't think that it really serves a useful purpose for the customer. But again, we are maintaining stops or maintaining the schedules where there are casual riders, where there are poor access to cell phone coverage or where we know there are populations of customers that likely need that schedule information to be there. As we go through this process, I'm sure we'll add and take away and we've proposed a way for customers to request a schedule of at-stop information at additional stops. Gotcha, thank you. Mr. Chair, you have Cynthia Matthews. Thank you, go ahead. I just wanna say as an art major in college, these are really beautiful. And so the existing ones, if you wanna know, they're just all, I mean, it contributes so much to the impression for the marketing. They're both functional and really attractive, so good work. I don't know if Rohan is on the meeting, I hope he is, but he really put a lot of work into this. So it's his way home and done a gratitude. You're that chair. And do you have James Sandoval? James, go ahead. Hey, John, I really like the presentation and the bus stops do look good, but I do wanna say that it might be fair to say that the data that we collected from the surveys are not completely accurate in the sense that they're probably filled out mainly by cell phone users and not so much people that don't have a cell phone. And I can advocate for a lot of our passengers, they do use those schedules. I'm not saying I'm not open to this idea because it does allow us to move in the right direction, but I just hope we keep an open mind for areas that might still need a schedule, even if it doesn't fit the criteria that we're putting in now, if it's requested that we're open to accommodating our passengers. So that's all I had to say. Thanks for that comment, James. Yeah, and just to reinforce that point, as John described, he's developing a process for customers to communicate to us. So if we go through this transition and they happen to be at a stop that doesn't have the information, they can sort of appeal it to our agency to reconsider placing more detailed information at that stop. Good response to that concern. Any other comments or questions from either board or the public? I have a question. Yeah, Alta. We still have the ability to put schedules on the bus, correct? The headways, I'm assuming you mean, yes. Yeah, the headways, yes. What I use, when I use the bus, I keep a headways in my backpack into the current headways. I've never used any of these signs. I constantly using the headways to figure out when, especially when I'm on Highway 17 or taking a route that's not my regular campus route. And I don't know when the buses come and stuff. I use the headways to figure out when the bus is likely to come. And of course, when we have next bus information, that's gonna be really useful. I have to say, I love it when I go on CalTrain, and you know when the next train's coming. It's really, it makes waiting a lot easier than just guessing that I miss it as it's coming soon. Who knows? I think I saw Larry Beggos in. Larry, go ahead. Yeah, John, great presentation. I wasn't an art major, but I appreciate the kind of logical flow of information. It's much easier on the eye and the mind to understand what's going on. We do have a number of bus stops around the county, particularly at the UCSC campus that are shelters rather than boats. And I'm assuming that your reliance on the plate is gonna translate well to anything that's inside of a shelter. Does that fit your model? So we're using the same plate size or proposing to move the place to the outside of the shelters where there's space. So where we can actually install the pole in the sidewalk. We'll do that to improve the visibility. And then I think at UCSC, we're actually, I mean, around the campus, it's interesting that there's a lot of use obviously, but it's very frequent service and that population is probably fairly attuned to smartphone use and the real time arrival information, once that happens, but we are proposing some of the West Side stops to maintain the schedule information for casual student riders to access the service. But the goal is to reinstall the signs on the outside of the shelters, so they're more visible. Yeah, I know that you should be in touch with Dan because a few years ago, we were trying to reconfigure that almost a bulletin board of both the Metro and the UCSC services within the bus shelters where they're located. So there's a system and it's based as much on the scale and size of your plate. So I think it'll work. Good job. I do have to say that I'm always the only person in my classes that doesn't have a smartphone. I'm looking out for you still. So don't worry. I also appreciate after serving with her for 16 years on the city council, I just found out for the first time that Cynthia Matthews was an art major. I have no idea. Mr. Chair, I would just add one other note here. When you talk about the customer experience at a bus stop, that also includes, as John talked about the shelter, but also bus benches where the bus benches are located. We have some of the saddest bus benches I've ever seen. So we've tasked Danielle in our marketing department to look at that. One of the sad truths is we used to use this crazy stencil to stencil Metro on our bus benches and it looks so unprofessional. We stopped doing that, but it is equally sad that we don't have something representing our logo on those benches. So we can do better. There's a solution out there and we've tasked our marketing department with trying to find that solution. Great. Any other comments? All right, we have to take a need motion and action to approve the concept here. We're not approving the exact design, but the concept that's been presented to us, I'm looking for a motion. So moved. Second. By John Leopold, second by, was that Donna Myers? Donna, yep. Do we need to go out to the public anymore or are we done with that? I had already asked the public. Unless there's somebody right now that don't want to leave anybody out. I don't see any hands. We don't see any hands. Okay. Let's stop. Signage concepts. Motion by Leopold, second by Myers. Roll call is Dr. Bautov. Aye. Dr. Kaufman-Go-Mance. Yes. Dr. Gonzalez. Aye. Dr. Leopold. Aye. Dr. Lind. Aye. Dr. Matthews. Aye. Dr. McPherson. Aye. Dr. Myers. Aye. Dr. Pegler. Aye. Dr. Rotkin. Aye. Everybody's voting. You were out of this meeting. People are voting before your name's called. We have an announcement of our next meeting. That's Friday, November 20th at 9 a.m. That will be a teleconference as was this one. And we are adjourned. Thank you all very much for your participation. And I want to thank our staff, particularly all of our staff, bus drivers, as well as all the administrative staff, the service staff, maintenance staff, because I've been doing a great job under very difficult conditions and the board appreciates that. Yep. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye, everybody.