 And welcome to the November 15th special meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. Could we start with a roll call? Commissioner Rotkin, Commissioner Chase, Commissioner Botthorff, Commissioner McPherson, Commissioner Leopold. Here. Commissioner Alternate Mulherrn, Commissioner Alternate Schifrin, Commissioner Caput. Here. Commissioner Kaufman-Gomez. Present. Commissioner Johnson. Here. Commissioner Brown. Here. Commissioner Bertrand. Here. Commissioner Lowe. Here. So now we will move to oral communications. There's just a couple things that I'll, oh, one thing I'll say at the beginning. We do have interpretation services tonight. Mr. Mendez, can you make it an announcement? Certainly. Thank you. So we're going to move to oral communications. I, we're here to hear testimony tonight about the Unified Corridor Investment Study, which covers almost all of our transportation options. So I'm going to ask that you think about that at your oral communication because you will get a chance. The other thing that I want to say at the beginning of this evening, and I'll try to remind us as we move through the evening, is people are very passionate about transportation in Santa Cruz County. And passion for policy is a great thing. But I want to remind us that we also live in a small town. And that the person you yell at or call names or accuse of some conspiracy is the person you're going to see at the supermarket on the street or in your house of worship. So we've been really good if we think about these things beforehand and we, and we think about our measured tone and sticking to the issues instead of personal attacks. And if we have a problem with that, I'll, I'll stop the meeting. But I just wanted to say at the beginning because I want to make sure that we have a good meeting where we hear people's opinion. So good evening, Mr. Nelson. Yes. I'm here. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Leopold, and I second that sentiment. My name is Jack Nelson. And so kind commissioners and RTC staff and members of the public, we're here with Santa Cruz County, bathed in smoke from out of control fires that the scientists are telling us we can look forward to more of because we're changing the climate. It's getting hotter and drier. We're having more drought. And so as some of you already know, I am a person concerned about climate change. But I think at this point with that smoke in the air, I wonder if we can stop and contemplate what the climate scientist told us on October 8th of this year, the international, I'm sorry, intergovernmental panel on climate change issued a special report advising us that humanity as a whole needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions dramatically by 45 percent by 2030 if we wish to avoid catastrophic levels of change in our climate by the year 2040. They're calling for transformation. So I'm posing that as a kind of backdrop to your considerations because we in this county are still growing our greenhouse gas emissions and transportation. That's what the California Air Resources Board has told us. We're doing pretty well on the power grid. We're reducing emissions there, but in transportation, we're still growing them. So could there be an agency in this county that would propose to grow infrastructure that grows those emissions? There could. Or could there be an agency in this county that, hence in the opposite direction, and tells the residents of this county that's what we need to do for the sake and the future of humanity? An agency that does the former and grows those emissions I would propose is the most dangerous organization in this county. An agency that does the other and leads us to reductions would be, would have its place in history as doing the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Gina Wheeler, and I'm here representing the North Coast farmers and property owners. I'm representing them because they are harvesting right now. So they're a little busy. Our members have a long history in this community dating back to the 1800s. And we have farmed the lands on the north coast of Santa Cruz County since the early 1900s, back when the cement plant was built in 1906. We take pride in our heritage as members of Santa Cruz County and the work we have done to protect the coastline as a beautiful resource for our community. We believe building a world-class trail along the north coast will not only help ensure the sustainment of this valuable resource, but it will provide a great opportunity for more members of our community to visit this great resource. So I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask you to just stop there, not because we don't want to hear, but we will be talking about trail, trail only, rail with trail as part of tonight's discussion about the unified corridor study. I don't have much more to go. All right, well, then it will let you finish, but I won't let you come back and testify during that portion of the meeting. Okay. Our families have operated and owned properties on the north coast of Santa Cruz County when the first railroad tracks were laid to support the new cement plant. We are excited how these old unused railroad tracks can become a great opportunity for our community as a world-class trail. Did you even realize that the location of the railroad tracks today is different than when they were, when they were first built? This interesting fact was discovered during the environmental impact report, the EIR analysis. In fact, this turned out to be somewhat of an issue with developing a trail plan because the property owned by the RTC is not actually in the same location of the original purchase by the railroad company. We are hopeful that this does not complicate the plans to move forward with a world-class trail. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission is our neighbor. We want to support their plans to develop a world-class trail. Having said that, we want to express to the board that we have major concerns with how RTC staff is performing their work, specifically their efforts to work collaboratively with their neighbors and community members. Simply put, they have been unwilling to work with us on a win-win solution. We have provided all the inputs and comments requested upon us at these public meetings, and we have clearly stated to them that our goal is to get a world-class trail built by the 2020 deadline. We have actively requested to meet with them to come to an agreement on a plan that works for all of us. If you think about it, we are the first community members who are being asked to work with RTC staff on building the trail. And today, we say the RTC staff has not been a good neighbor. The EIR has many assessments and charts. Based on the EIR, our proposed alternative plan meets all the environmental requirements and will meet the 2020 deadline. We are committed to working with the RTC on getting the trail built and are hopeful that our supportive trail plan that meets all our needs. Thank you. We're just asking for support and collaboration. Thank you. Mr. Peoples, if you're going to come up and talk about the same thing, I'm going to be a lot more strict with future speakers. I want to give you a chance for everybody to speak. Thank you. Brain People's Trail Now. I'm here to talk about what the color of my hat represents. It's a pink hat. It means collaboration at working with the community. It's finding transportation solutions as a team. My blue hat represents the ocean, our community, and the need for transportation that will help save our ocean and our resources. My green hat represents many things, climate change, stopping the emissions, using the corridor now. But it also means money. We don't have any money. We are land rich, cash poor. Understand the limitations. We don't want to waste our tax dollars. That's what the green hat represents. It also represents economic benefits. The coastal corridor will be a game changer as a trail. The quality of life of our community will benefit immensely. The red hat has many representations. It's people are frustrated with traffic. We're frustrated. We're mad. We're angry. Traffic is gridlock. We're seeing failure by this group, this organization. We're in a transportation crisis. My black and white hat represents the facts, the cost to build, the build a substandard trail we understand now, the actuals. The eight years that our corridor has set as a vacant lot. It shows the facts that we're in gridlock. That is a fact. It's a fact. Every day, people are suffering from our transportation problem. We are suffering. People are dying. Cyclists are dying and getting injured. That's a fact. My black hat is actually the most popular hat. It's actually the most popular hat with the kids. And that's what this hat's about is the kids. Protecting them, protecting the planet, building a transportation plan that they can afford, that can be used today, and that meets the solutions today now. No more. We need to use the corridor today. Thank you very much. Mr. Peoples, I think that you abuse the oral communications, so you will not be speaking as part of the Unified Corridor Study. Mr. Pico, before you come up here, I am going to stop you if you start speaking about things that are covered by the Unified Corridor Study. I'm trying. No, no, no, I have a quick question. I'm giving you a warning. I'm going to honor it. No, the money that it goes into what we're paying into the train today. It's not about the Unified Corridor Study. You have our support, John. I don't mind waiting. Why don't you wait until we get to the item, and then we'll speak. If someone wants to speak about something that has to do with transportation that doesn't involve the Unified Corridor Study and the elements of it, I recognize the council member from Watsonville. Libra Hernandez, Watson City Council member. Speaking of personal attacks and fake news, I don't know if you guys got the opportunity to get some fictitious cartoons on here, but I urge you to take a look at it. That said, I'm here to invite people to our downtown Watsonville Complete Streets plan. We have several sessions that we're going to be having. The first one that we're going to be, or actually the second one is going to be December 11th. It's going to be here in the community room from 5 to 7 PM. It's a project input. We want people to tell us and let us know how they want to see their downtown and the two parallel streets, Rodriguez and Brennan, slash Union. So we're going to talk about different things like bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure that we want there, the speed assessment, maybe how fast cars travel on these routes, everything that we can to make our streets safer for our community. So I encourage people here to come to that workshop, especially people from South County, from Watsonville that either live or work here in Watsonville to give their input to make our streets safer here in Watsonville. And then the following one after that is going to be in our last winter council meeting coming up in December as well. So I encourage everyone to come out here and give some input to our downtown. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I just want to recognize that when we come here to the Watsonville Chambers, there is always multiple council members and others who come and care about transportation and speak about it. And it's a real sign of leadership in the county that when we come to the city, that the others who don't serve on this commission also come out and speak. So thank you for sharing that, Mr. Hernandez. Thank you, I'll mind. I'm Jack Carroll. I'll play by the rules that you know where I live. It's my opinion that there isn't a good countywide planning authority that covers all the jurisdictions that we have within the county. And the affordable housing crisis has kind of called that to my attention, the question about where are we going to put housing. And tangentially, it's connected to what the RTC does. So I would ask you to put on an agenda at some point here, an item to perhaps gather some folks in the community to discuss what's an appropriate planning authority to take the big county picture. As much as I disagree with the RTC, I think you're probably the best bet for it. So that's my two cents. Thank you. There is the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, which is a tri-county metropolitan planning organization. We're not going to get into a discourse about it, but I'd be happy to share information about that and what they do around housing. Is there anyone else about oral communications? Then we'll close our communication and I'll see if there's any additions or deletions to the agenda. Yes, good evening, Mr. Chairman. We have several handouts all for item four. We have a handout. We have add-on pages, another handout, and replacement pages. And the one handout that's addressed to the RTC board members, I apologize. This was sent to you yesterday attached to an email and I neglected to sign this copy, but it is for me. But it's the exact same thing that you received in your email yesterday. That's all I have. Thank you. Not yet. So we have no items on our consent agenda, so we'll move to our one item on our regular agenda, which is the Unified Quarter Investment Study, the draft-preferred scenario. Good evening, Ms. Dicar. Good evening, Chair, commissioners and members of the public. I'm Ginger Dicar. I'm a senior transportation planner here at the Regional Transportation Commission and I'm project manager from the Unified Quarter Investment Study. I've had many people say, boy, I'm so glad I'm not in your shoes. The item to be presented tonight is the draft-preferred scenario of the Unified Quarter Investment Study. I see a lot of familiar faces here tonight, so I sincerely doubt anyone in this room does not know the objectives of this study, but for protocol, I'm going to repeat it. The objective of the Unified Quarter Study is to identify transportation investments for walk, bike, transit, and automobiles that on Highway 1, SoCal, Avenue, and Drive, and Freedom Boulevard, and the rail right of way. With the purchase of the rail line in 2012, how best can we use the rail right of way in combination with Highway 1 and SoCal Freedom, the parallel corridors, to address the transportation needs of the Santa Cruz County community? I do want to mention that the funding for this study has come from Caltrans through their Sustainable Communities Transportation Planning Grant and from local voter approved measure defunds. The recommendation before you tonight is to review and provide input on the second draft Unified Quarter Investment Study, step two, scenario analysis and preferred scenario, and consider approval of the preferred scenario as shown in Attachment 1 at the December 6, 2018 Regional Transportation Commission meeting. RTC staff has been working very closely with consulting firms, Kimbley Horn, and Strategic Economics, who have been hired to perform this study. The presentation to you tonight will be a team effort. I'll get things started, and then we'll hand it off to the consultant team. Frederick Venture from Kimbley Horn is here. He's a transportation engineer and project manager of the Unified Carter Study from the consultant team end, and we'll be presenting the preferred scenario. We also have Darryl de Pencier, who will present the results of the performance measure analysis for the preferred scenario. Mike Schmidt from Kimbley Horn, as well as Derek Braun from Strategic Economics are also here to help answer any questions. I do want to take one moment to acknowledge Grace Blakesley from the RTC staff, who has been putting an incredible amount of time and effort into this study with a lot of passion and dedication. The approach that has been taken to recommend a preferred scenario for this corridor has had a number of steps as shown here on this slide. We've developed the goals, the performance measures to determine how well those goals are advanced, the project's list was determined, and a scenario analysis was performed. I want to emphasize that this performance-based scenario analysis approach is a recommended process from the Federal Highway Administration, as well as the Federal Transit Administration, and that it is used by transportation planning agencies all over the country. The Unified Corridor Study does build upon work that has been done over many years, including the Highway 1 Draft Environmental Impact Report, the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail Master Plan and Environmental Impact Report, the Rail Feasibility Study, regional transportation planning documents, as well as at the RTC and with AMBAG, as well as numerous decisions over the last few decades from the many people who have served on this commission. There is a document included in the staff report. It's an exhibit A of Attachment 1 that shows the many decisions made by commissioners starting in the early 1990s to purchase the rail line, to build a trail so as not to preclude rail, and to accept funds from the California Transportation Commission for purchase of the rail line on the condition that RTC provide passenger rail service. The goals of the study are to evaluate safety, reliability and efficiency, environment and health, economic vitality, and equitable access. There has been an immense amount of outreach for this study. Over 40 outreach activities have occurred since this project first started in 2012, when funding first became available from Caltrans. The travel demand model was developed first for Santa Cruz County in order to be able to have the tools to perform this study. The study itself, to evaluate the three routes in the corridor, started in earnest in July or in early 2017. And every key milestone for the project, input from the public, community organization, stakeholders, RTC advisory committees was solicited, and approval was provided by the Regional Transportation Commission. We heard and learned a lot from the public and our partners on priority transportation needs. Just since this draft report was brought to this commission, there has been two public workshops brought to this commission on October 4th. So there has been two public workshops, a stakeholder meeting, a set of focus group meetings with community organizations, both in Santa Cruz and in Watsonville. Staff has presented the unified Carter study results in all four city councils and the Metro, as well as the three RTC advisory committees. Comments received are included in the packet or linked, provided to an online document. And staff has provided answers to questions that we have been receiving from emails from our community through a frequently asked question document that we regularly update and provide online. Based on this input received, we have updated the draft report as provided to you here today, which includes a recommendation for the preferred scenario. And with that, I'd like to hand this over to Frederick Venture, who will be providing you the information about the preferred scenario. Thank you, Ginger. Good evening, commissioners and the public. It's an honor for us to present to you this preferred scenario. I think you will call back with a step two analysis that we presented. There were a lot of numbers in the format of performance measures, a lot of questions asked. So after that, performance measures that were analyzed plus extensive community input and thinking about what the needs are for the community, we have developed this preferred scenario. The slide shows a 2035 preferred scenario that we're going to talk a little bit about tonight, but also a beyond 2035 scenario. And we're going to discuss that in a little bit more detail. What we know is that there's an immediate need. We've heard that many, many times for to relieve the transportation demand in the county, along Highway 1, along the local arterials in all manners that people need mobility and for bikes, for pedestrians on the bus system. So what we did was we developed a system based on an input that really focuses on how can we retain potential capacity in the future, but do it in the best way manner to sustain the environment, but also provide the opportunity for any future planning organization not to end anything at 2035, but perhaps go beyond that. The way of the future is definitely transit. Transit is the way in which we're going to commute in the future. Yes, cars will always be there, but we will see moat shifts happening. We can only the widen the freeway so much and by that time what is going to happen and also greenhouse gas emissions we need to reduce as well. So in this alternative, we have specific focus on especially transit and some freeway improvements that will also provide capacity for transit but also benefit single occupancy vehicles, heavy investment in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and then ultimately retaining that right of way for the rail corridor, having exclusive right of way for public transit in the future is the biggest benefit that this county has in terms of moving people and that moving of people will continue to grow in the future. In the selection factors, equity is extremely important. We need to serve the needs of most of the people in this county and that's what this study does that provide the benefits to serve most of those needs. The reliability and efficiency, that's about how fast can I do this? How long do I need to wait at a signal? I think through this in areas that we've selected we give all the options for all the people that need to commute to improve their conditions of travel, have a faster travel speed, reduce your VMT impacts as much as possible, reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. We know from the economic study that as we improve transportation, we improve economy. It is a known fact any study out there will show that on all levels. Pedestrian movement, bicycle movement, transit movement and people movement in single occupancy vehicles. Staying sensitive to the environment and the health is very important for us. So how we sustain our environment moving forward and safety we've heard again tonight as well. Safety is major impact for our community and I think the options that we've selected enhance the safety moving forward. This is a graphic presentation of the corridor in between Watsonville and Santa Cruz and the bit north to Davenport. If you think about, and if you just look at this in the roadway infrastructure, I think the preferred scenario projects has tried to optimize reasonably and within performance measures criteria every single right of way or real estate that you have for transportation. That's what you're gonna see in the projects. I'm gonna walk through every individual project on this map to and talk you through it and then see how it all comes together in the end. So the corridor without any of the improvements. First up we have the auxiliary lanes. So auxiliary lanes between SoCal and State Park. You have funding for some measure D project. It's out for design right now. That's an immediate effect. You can build this probably by 2022, 2023, 24. This could be in place. The next option is the bus on shoulder. So bus on shoulder will run from Watsonville through to the metro in the center in Santa Cruz. Between Watsonville and approximately San Andreas Road is where we will have the bus mixed with cars on the mixed flow lanes on the freeway because that's where we have fast speeds right now. After that the bus can start moving on the shoulder and then the moment the auxiliary lanes are in place the bus will then share the auxiliary lanes and move faster than what the cars are moving. The next project up is the extension of the auxiliary lane project from State Park all the way to San Andreas to provide additional capacity on the freeway. So we know that's where the bottlenecks are now. Starts basically at San Andreas all the way through to SoCal. It's not gonna go away. Let's focus on how to relieve congestion for that bit of the freeway. Of course the bus on shoulder can start using those auxiliary lanes as well. The moment it opens up. Ramp metering. So ramp metering is a mechanism by which we maintain capacity and flow of traffic on the freeway much longer than it does now. If you think about it, where does the congestion start? Immediately when you have an on ramp and more vehicles join the freeway and then what is capacity for ramp metering will help manage that. So you extend the life of flow on the traffic much longer. So ramp metering projects will be implemented very soon after the auxiliary lane projects are in. The HOV lanes on the freeway is a substantial improvement and provide additional capacity for faster service number one. Number two is you can have your express bus service or go on the HOV lanes or you enhance the transit services and you get vehicles out of the mixed flow lanes that help take up that capacity on the HOV lanes as well. So we recommend the HOV lanes and those will extend from San Andreas all the way through to Cicil Morissi. We heard about the Monterey Bay Scenic Trail flagship project all along Monterey Bay. There are extensive efforts on the way to construct this trail and do it in a really, really great manner exactly as it's envisioned in your MBSST plan and as it is envisioned in this unified corridor investment study. We recommend that the trail be constructed next to the rail facility on the corridor. There's already sections that are in construction. We recommend that prioritization of segments be conducted and that this implementation happen as soon as possible. We hear loud and clear that the trail along this corridor will be an excellent asset for Santa Cruz and we 100% agree with that finding. Connecting to the bicycle routes. This will be a trunk route for all pedestrian and bicycle trips in the county within Watsonville and also within Santa Cruz. This is not, that's one of the key elements of this whole rail corridor that you have in this exclusive multimodal facility that we want to implement in the future is how do we establish that last mile, first mile trips? That is important for us because our trip starts at our front door and it ends at our door at our work. It doesn't start on the rail corridor. So also then the recommendation is that these lines that lead, the feeder lines that extend to the bicycle trail and the pedestrian trail be implemented as vigorous as you implement the trail itself. The passenger rail service is a recommendation for many reasons but primarily because you have the right of way, you have the RTC acquired the right of way, implement the rail service, also with the extension services, get the stations in place, that last mile, first mile service to the rail station. The train will run all the way from Parro station to Santa Cruz and freight service will run with this and then the excursion trail, the excursion rail that we analyze was a bit from north of Santa Cruz into Davenport. Of course excursion services could be implemented along the entire corridor. You will see on this map that there's this link to the Parro station and we're gonna talk a little bit later about the rail plan specifically, how important that is and that was one of our main criteria for recommending that you do continue with a rail service along the rail corridor because of all the opportunities especially in funding, the statewide support for it, linkage to other cities in Monterey Bay and to the entire rail system. Great rail service can be provided on the service line as well with the passenger service line so we can provide that service all the way from Davenport through Watsonville to Parro station. Bicycles, this county is up ahead there in terms of bicycle trips, bicycle usage, you've got your jump bikes, we heard loud and clear from the community, we love our bikes, make it better for us, make it safer for us. So along, so Cal and Freedom, we are recommending prioritization of the implementation of buffered and protected bike lanes. These will vary, you have severe right of way constraints in many locations, access locations, driveways, so where you can fit the type of facility in that goes with the land use associated to it and with the travel speeds. We recommend that you move forward with bicycle lanes along that entire corridor, it will serve local needs, especially local needs and local travel and again, that supplemental service to the trail on the rail right of way as well. Get back to our ultimate map, again, every single corridor that you see here that is a people mover in terms of single occupancy vehicles, trail, pedestrian and transit, we believe has been optimized in how we present the performance measures in terms of the corridor study and how we should move forward with a plan. Some key considerations that I think we should be aware of, a preservation of the rail right of way, rail banking has numerous challenges, there's in the staff report an extensive write up about that. The cost of converting back to rail is likely a local burden that is not anticipated right now and it could come in. Failure to implement the rail service will likely require repayment to the CTC. I think there's a letter that George has as well from the CTC about that. We believe that this service and the map and the three corridors and the projects that we've selected provides the widest array of transportation options between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. It's there for the entire community, it solves needs from both traveling northbound and people traveling southbound. These projects will generate for you the maximum number of funding available. We heard there's never enough money. You are so dependent on getting grant funding from everything that's out there. The rail plan doesn't have a funding plan with it yet, there will be extensive funding sources from the FTA on rail services. We are very consistent with the 2018 rail plan. We've heard, can you please look at it? So this is the map from the rail plan. If you look at this, there will be a high-speed rail service coming, going through Gilroy up into the Bay Area, going east to the Central Valley, that's the red line. TAMSI is currently planning a passenger rail service from Gilroy to Salinas and that service will also extend further north into the Bay Area. It will go through Paro Station. They thinking implementation of that rail service could be done by 2021, 2023. It is just around the corner. What the rail plan shows is that there's connectivity between Santa Cruz and Monterey for rail service, but more efficiently also Santa Cruz to Paro, where that station is currently being designed to be improved. The rail plan, we believe, if implemented can increase ridership on the rail service from what's forecasted in the plan right now because of this interconnectivity between a rail system. This is, don't underestimate the value and the importance of this rail plan and the vision of it for us to move people in the future. Anywhere you go now, in any urban area, roads are fully built out. Roads are occupied 100%. The peaks are stretching from six in the morning until 10 in the morning, four, five hours, long exactly like your experience on Highway 1. We need to focus on transit as that people mover of the future. So what we've also heard is, please give concern to implementation. We need projects now. We cannot wait for them until 2035. So this table, what we've tried to do and with reasonable assumptions for design, environmental considerations, SIGWA, NEPA, funding, we've broken the projects down into three phases. The near term we call through 2027. The midterm is through 2035 and then beyond 2035 is what we call longer term projects. So you will see with the Highway 1 projects, the bus on shoulders start immediately with that. It's a people mover. It will complement the, it will be complemented through the construction of the auxiliary lanes. It will carry through with the extension of the auxiliary lanes through to 2025, probably earlier. The auxiliary lanes, of course, the measure D funded. We think they could be implemented 2027 is probably a little late 2024, 2023. Very reasonable if everything goes well. The additional section beyond that and after 2027. The metering of the ramps will most probably happen midterm. It's going to take quite a bit of local improvements. So all ramps will be widened. They're gonna need some right away. So it takes a bit of time to implement those. And then the interchange improvements and occupancy vehicle lanes is a longer term project. So people may ask, wow, why is this only 2035? Can we please not do it by 2022? So it's not just the HOV lanes and the widening of the freeway. Number one is if you build the auxiliary lanes, it's important to go build them in the ultimate location so that as you move forward, you immediately have all the right away that you need to add the HOV lanes. That's number one. So make sure that happens in the auxiliary lane project. Your interchanges, every interchange will undergo significant improvements as the HOV lanes are constructed. And that's what's taking up so much time. I believe that if you go look at the EIR, there is segmentation of the freeway improvements is planned. You cannot do the whole freeway on one go because nobody will be able to move. So if you plan it from a construction perspective, you can have some sort of mobility during construction on the freeway as well. So funding, a very big concern. There's no funding in place. It's of course a very expensive project. So Cal Avenue and Freedom Projects, the Buffett bike lanes and intersection improvements, those are extremely important. We recommend that every intersection that you ever see improved on any of these corridors, make sure that they prioritize bikes, beds and transit before they prioritize cars. Again, you want the buses to move faster than the cars. How do you get them moving faster on so Cal? You give them bus priority at the intersection. How do you do that? You provide the jump lane for that bus through the intersection. Make sure that bikes have the safety. Make sure that the green lanes are there for the bikes. In the rail right of way, start immediately with the Viking pedestrian trail. And there's great momentum going. There's going to be a lot of funding. SB1 was not repealed. We're going to see so much money coming out of that. Make sure that you tap into that part of money, spend it on the trail, get those sections and those segments built that the people are asking for. The Capitola Tressel, we recommend that the Capitola Tressel be replaced. It is, of course, a momentous task. At the moment I say that everybody's like stepping, taking three steps back because how are you going to do it? But that is a huge element of the success of this trail and the rail corridor. Local transit with inter-regional connections. Remember we showed that you have a trunk line. You have a trunk line in the rail. You have a trunk line in the rail and the trail element. How do you connect people to that to last mile and first mile services? And then, of course, the freight and rail excursion will happen as you implement and improve the rail tracks on the rail corridor as well. I'm going to hand it over. So what we did is this was the infrastructure project portion. We took the performance measures and we actually reorganized the data that you saw the last time to actually reflect the performance measures and that was going to walk you through those results. Good evening, commissioners and members of the public. So yeah, we're going to talk about the numbers a little bit and how that compares. So if you remember the scenarios, the four that we presented last time, we're going to repeat that information here so you can see it, but we're going to talk about how the preferred scenario compares to those numbers and then a look at that beyond 2035 value once we get the HOV lanes installed. So if we start with the safety, if you recall, we had basically two tiers of scenarios for safety when we added transit and we added a lot of the smaller safety improvements, that's where we got the biggest bang for the buck and then the scenarios where we added the HOV lane, we had that same reduction in crashes, but we also had a corresponding increase in traffic volumes along the freeway which kind of brought it back up. So when we look at our preferred scenario, that's where we have taken all of those elements that reduce the crashes the most. So at the 2035 level, we have pretty much our optimal crash reduction and then when we add the HOV lane, we pretty much back where we were before. So in terms of safety, the risk of driving is still lower, but you have more driving. So there's a few more crashes out on the roads. In terms of the auto speeds, again, it's pretty similar. So our preferred scenario, we're adding a lot of transit, we're adding a lot of bike and ped infrastructure, we're seeing that mode shift away from the automobile. So our auto speeds are not necessarily increasing a lot on the highway until we get to the beyond 2035 when we add the HOV lane. And then we did get a lot of comments about how to interpret this, the county-wide speed versus what does that really mean on the highway. So we've actually added some information here from the Highway 1 EIR that Caltrans did. So they basically evaluated that once we get the HOV lane in, you'll be seeing speeds of about 40 miles an hour on the Highway 1, as opposed to where we would predict without those HOV lanes, it's closer to 21, which is a pretty big difference for those who commute on there every day. And that was enough to move the whole county-wide average as we saw in the previous. So peak hour transit travel time, again, we had some different scenarios out there before. We really saw that the rail was one of the faster ways to get between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. So our preferred scenario does include that. So we have that option. And then the bus on shoulder doesn't operate quite as quickly as the rail, but it is also another pretty fast way to get there. So with both of those in operation, we provide a lot of access to different parts of the county in between. Gives people a lot of options for how to move forward. We're treating SoCal Freedom a lot more like a local route. So the existing services remain there for shorter distance trips, but we're really taking that trunk transit service off of SoCal Freedom and putting it on to SR1 in the rail right of way. And then once the HOV lane would go in, that bus on shoulder would shift to the express version of the bus that runs down the HOV lane and becomes faster again. So we have a really good fast set of transit that's very competitive with the automobile. In terms of our mode split, so when we look at this, this is another one that was a little bit hard to tell how to evaluate how different these scenarios were. So we move from about 83% of people using vehicles to get around to our preferred scenario is 79.4. So just put that in a little bit of context, that would represent over 150,000 trips at the end of the year. So it's a pretty big amount of change that you see when you make those things, even though the percentages look pretty small. And then again, when we have the HOV lane beyond 2035, we see a tiny shift back into the vehicles, but because we have such a robust transit infrastructure, we have all those bike and ped facilities, we're not getting anywhere near back up to the no build. We're still getting a pretty good mode shift out of the cars. So in terms of vehicle miles traveled, again, our preferred 2035 scenario with the transit, the bike pad, we're seeing that our VMT is pretty competitive with some of the best scenarios we evaluated of the four, but recognizing the need for reducing the highway one bottleneck, adding the HOV lane eventually, we'll bring that VMT a little bit back up, but it's a more efficient VMT because it's a moving faster speed, it'll produce less GHG for each mile traveled. So that is a good option. And you can see that here. So when you look at the greenhouse gas emissions on our preferred scenario, we're pretty much the same give or take as where we were with scenario B, which was the best performing one on our previous analysis, adding the HOV lane adds a little bit, but not to the same level that you would think from the VMT change. So in terms of the impact and the environment of construction, the rail and the trail is where the largest set of those impacts happen. So that would happen in the preferred scenario, little over 40 miles of that construction would need to be dealing with some environmental sensitivities. If you recall that includes wetlands, areas of seismic vulnerability, erosion potential, even things like noise. There was a whole series of factors we looked at. Once we had the HOV lane in, because we've already done the auxiliary lanes and those other things, the construction impacts are actually pretty low for environmental impact at that level. When we looked at the ability of minorities and low income households to benefit from these, just a reminder in the county right now about 14% of households classify there in what would call transportation disadvantaged. So the preferred scenario really does prioritize the improvements that have the highest benefit to the transportation disadvantaged households. So we see a pretty good benefit there when we add the HOV lane in that didn't have quite as much, but we're still pretty significantly above that 14% threshold for benefit to the transportation disadvantaged households. So I think there's good solid representation of that. So the cost of the scenarios, this alternative does take a lot of the higher cost items because that's what gets us the most results. So it's almost $950 million total cost to construct the preferred scenario. The known and anticipated funding sources were able to cover roughly half of that. So this definitely demonstrates the need for additional local funding to be able to realize all these plans to be able to get them constructed. Similarly for operations and maintenance, we can see that the preferred scenario actually has one of the best outcomes in terms of available funding. Rail has a better fair box capture ratio than bus does and since we're not enhancing the SoCal Freedom Bus service as well in this one, we can actually bring that cost down. And then you may have noted from the state rail plan if service was implemented in a similar fashion to what is anticipated there with service between Santa Cruz and Monterey, you'd actually see a higher ridership, lower cost and even a better fare recovery which could close that gap even further. So I'm just gonna pass it to Ginger. I just wanted to re-emphasize the staff recommendation before you tonight. It is to review and provide input on the second draft unified corridor investment study, the step two scenario analysis and preferred scenario and consider approval of the preferred scenario as shown in attachment one at the December 6th Regional Transportation Commission meeting. A decision by the RTC on December 6th on the preferred scenario will provide a clear policy decision that will allow staff to continue to move projects forward and to seek funding. Kimberly Horn presented the timeframe for project completion, but I just wanted to re-emphasize the recommendation from the UCS project team for the near term approach. Here on the slide under the rail right of way, the recommendation is to continue the development of the trail from Davenport to Watsonville along the rail right of way next to the tracks, pursue passenger rail service by developing a preliminary design and conducting environmental review. The environmental review includes an analysis of alternatives and is the next step required to be eligible for funding. Continue to work with Metro on an integrated transit network for Santa Cruz County that includes both rail and bus. For the Highway One, staff is working to go to construction on the SoCal to 41st auxiliary lanes in 2020 as part of Measure D. Aim is to utilize Measure D funds as matching funds to compete for and secure state and federal competitive grant funds for construction of the auxiliary lanes. Also for Highway One, continue to work with Metro and Caltrans on the bus on shoulders, integrate bus on shoulders with the construction of the auxiliary lanes. And for SoCal and Freedom, work with local jurisdictions to construct Bufford and protect the bike lanes along SoCal Drive and Freedom Boulevard while feasible and work with local jurisdictions to prioritize pedestrian and bicycle improvements to intersections. With that, we'd be happy to take questions and comments. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation and all the work you've put into holding public sessions, focus groups and responding to the many questions we've had and putting together the frequently asked questions on the website. I think it's been helpful in terms of sharing information. It's, you've worked very hard and the staff has worked very hard to try to answer the questions that have come from the public on a very complicated study. So I really want to express the appreciation of the commission for your work on this. I want to get a sense of the commission. I'm interested in hearing from the public before we start doing questions and everything. I'll take that. But then after Mr. Mulhern, we're going to go to the public and we're going to then we'll come back to the commission for questions and comments. Thank you. Very quickly on the goals and performance measures under the economic vitality segment of it, the staff preferred 2035 scenarios says 948 million and then beyond 2035 is 1.28 billion. Is the 1.28 billion in addition to the 948 million or is that the total of like? That is the total. The total. So thank you. Okay, I think we held this meeting at night in order to encourage participation from the public and so I want to prioritize that. And I'd like people to come forward and make their comments. I do want to remind everyone that we're going to be focused on the issues in front of us around the unified court or investment study. If I want to stay away from personal tax, tax on staff or conspiracy theories, let's try to keep to this very meaty document. Please, Mr. Long. Longers of public tax. No attacks. I come unarmed. No, before you start, they will get three minutes. This is designed to hear from the public this evening so I don't want to cut it short. My name's Rick Longinati and I'm with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. And I wanted to say that we're educating ourselves in our group about induced travel but it's a simple concept actually. It's something that we all actually have experienced. Anybody over 30 years old has experienced the expansion of a freeway near you in which cars have recongested that freeway and people have studied that and they've given it the name of induced travel. So when you make it easier temporarily to drive then more people decide to make trips. People decide to relocate in our situation here. If we make the Highway 1 easier for a while to travel on because we add a lane or we do ramp metering, people will start to think, wow, it's not so bad to drive from my job in Silicon Valley to Watsonville and maybe I can relocate there and that's how induced travel happens and it's a fact that this is not disputed by anybody in academic circles and but it's not well understood in our community and I think particularly for people who are stuck on the highway who live in Watsonville or live in Aptus, it's not well understood because kind of the sort of lay person's idea, well, if we add a lane, it'll be all better, right? Well, no, it won't be all right. But I'm here to say that the people that do understand it are the last generation of people who've been educated as transportation professionals and urban planners and those are the people that are sitting in the Transportation Commission staff and they're gonna be evaluating grants from this agency and if we come to them, and by the way, the Congested Corridors Program grant which is the SB1 funded program, they're asking for comprehensive corridor plans now. We come forward with a comprehensive corridor plan that says, you know what, we're aiming to double the width of our highway here in Santa Cruz. That'll go in the waste basket because there are a lot more communities that are more obviously transit priority than that, okay? So we can end up with nothing because we wanna please everybody. Pleasing everybody in this case means, yeah, we'll give something to the transit and for the people who are stuck on the highway, we'll tell them, we'll go to HOV after 2035 and in the meantime, we're gonna spend over 200 million on ramp metering and auxiliary lanes that will not benefit them. So this is a question of integrity. It's telling people the truth, especially people, you folks who represent people in Watsonville, it's telling them the inconvenient truth, really. Mr. Dandero asked Susan Hannity, professor from UC Davis, the obvious question, what do we do for those people who are stuck on the highway and she said, give them alternatives. We've got potential occurrence on the rail corridor, transit on the rail corridor. We've got a bus on shoulder which doesn't need auxiliary lanes to get accomplished. And we've got bus service on Soquel, thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners, my name's Dave Wright. I live in Sunset Beach, which is essentially part of Watsonville, it's the unincorporated part of the county. And I work in Santa Cruz. So in the mornings, I leave my house at 6.30. It's not too bad, it's about half an hour, get to Harvey West Park at about seven o'clock. But when I leave my office at four in the afternoon, every single day, it takes me an hour or an hour and a quarter or an hour and a half to get home every single day. If there were a train available, I would take it. And so would thousands of other people in the south part of the county that have terrible, costly, time-consuming commutes. That's why I really support what the staff is recommending which is option B. And I'm hoping that you'll approve option B as well. I think that another part of option B that to me at least is attractive is that it helps disadvantaged populations. The Sentinel reported a few weeks ago that we have a high poverty rate in the county. There's a lot of people here living near the poverty line. And the Federal Transportation Administration says that the number two expense for most households is transportation. This is one of the few opportunities that a government body has to help bring our cost of living down here. Not that much you can do about housing, but you can do something about transportation and giving us transit, giving us passenger rail service would be a significant step in that direction. Finally, I just wanna say this is what voters asked for. We approve Prop 116, we approve Measure D. All the surveys that I've seen of people participating with the RTC have said we want passenger rail. Please give it to us. I know there's a loud vocal, a loud but small group of people who don't want it. I really don't think they represent the majority of people who really do need options to this traffic. Finally, I just wanna say I think the staff and the consultants have done a great job that they have really given it public an opportunity to participate in this process. So I appreciate that as well. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Stanley Socolow, I live in the Santa Cruz area. I'm confused about one issue. The slides today showed nothing that would provide improved bus service on the SoCal Freedom Corridor. Neither in the projects of the preferred scenario, nor in the timeframe slides. But in the narrative description of the projects, it said bus on SoCal would have a queue jumping and transit signal priority were feasible. Well, it's feasible in a lot of places and it's even more feasible if you provide time of day, no parking along congested areas of SoCal Drive and SoCal Avenue so that the buses can use that as a bypass lane. So there's a lot of feasibility there, very little cost putting up some signs and painting the curb. But in the presentation by the consultant, he said there would be queue jumping in TSP. So I don't know what the intention is. Is there gonna be improvements to the bus service on SoCal or not? Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, I'm Jack Nelson. I'm a retired land use planner and tonight I'm wearing a little hat as the chair of the local Sierra Club's Transportation Committee. The Sierra Club here in Santa Cruz County has just around 4,000 members countywide. And the Sierra Club among big green organizations is a democratic organization. We have national elections for the national board. We have local elections for the local board and we also vote on the positions we take. So the Sierra Club has been considering this unified corridor study. And we have a letter in the works, it's not done yet but I've been authorized to say tonight the Sierra Club supports scenario B with some concerns and those would be detailed in the letter that's forthcoming. Among the concerns about scenario B would be inclusion of auto capacity increasing projects. We don't support that. But on the other hand, we really see scenario B as opening the door to a new paradigm in transportation which is to use the rail corridor as a multimodal transportation corridor. That is just so awesome. Another aspect that Rick Longinati touched on is induced travel, we get that. We understand that induced travel destroys auto capacity expansions within not many years. If you spend the money to put that out there the people will find it and use it and you're back to square one on congestion. So I haven't said anything about the preferred scenario. And now I think I'll just speak as myself. I don't see that as a modified scenario B. I see it as a whole new kind of late in the game scenario that is kind of a patch together scenario. It wasn't approved among the proposed scenarios and I don't read in the staff report that it's been analyzed in the same way. It sounds like staff and the consultants did some estimating to guess at how it would perform. I don't see it performing superior to scenario B. So that's my comments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Hello. Thanks for the holding this event. My name is Bill Le Bon. I've been a transportation activist in Santa Cruz for about 25 years. And I just wanna say how it just seems so obvious you know like you're stuck on highway one gridlock and there's this train corridor that's just empty sitting there. It was built before the freeway. It was built a long time ago and it's just been sitting there empty for so long. It just seems so obvious. If you know anything about trains and how many people they can move. You know I was up in Sonoma County for a couple of years and where they got the smart train and I rode it recently and here you are zipping along this train. It's packed full and you're going right by the freeway and the freeway's gridlock. Nobody's moving. And there's a bike trail and there's like one or two people on a bike trail but the people who are moving are the people on the train and there's a lot of them. That train was packed. You know hardly I rode the whole bike trail or big chunk of it about 10 miles of it and I saw like five cyclists but the train was packed and it was going back and forth and it was just blowing by all the cars stuck in gridlock. So to me it just seems like so obvious and I just wish you'd put the train and make that the number one priority because that's how we're really going to move people quickly, fast so thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening and thank you for taking public input and congratulations to the RDSD staff on completing the unified corridor study. I'm actually going to disagree with that previous comment that you just heard. We've heard a lot this evening. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Liz Whiteley. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz. We've heard a lot this evening about the importance of public transit and how that should play a role in the future and I absolutely agree. But when you look at the results of the study and specifically the performance dashboard which is the comparison of the four scenarios you'll see that the first performance measure that's considered is the mode share. So the breakdown of car travel, single occupancy cars, HOV lane cars, transit, biking, walking, et cetera like what comprises all of the transportation modes. And even in scenario B which is the preferred scenario here transit is only 6% of the projected mode share. So as incredible as public transit is and how I would love to see it used more frequently if we're only projecting 6% of transit mode share is coming from a bus and a train combined all of our public transit investment. It feels to me like a train is extremely expensive, extremely controversial, has low projected ridership in that the real investment is in biking and walking infrastructure. And again, you can see that in the projected mode shares. So for scenario A, it's just over 15% for biking and walking combined whereas transit is projected at 4.1%. And then when you look at scenario B, transit only increases to 6% of mode share. And again, biking and walking is just over 15%. So I think what the data is showing us and what the projections show us is that biking and walking is where we can make some worthwhile investments in that a train really is not gonna solve the transportation crisis. And I think we really need to have a reality check as we consider how to move forward. So I would just encourage the commissioners to look at that mode share breakdown and be thoughtful as you consider your preferred scenario. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Anderson Shepherd. I'm a home owner and resident in Santa Cruz. My training is as a scientist and I have a strong belief in the importance of real data. So I was anticipating release of this phase two of the UCS. Let's see, after reading it though, I was discouraged to find it lacked any kind of analysis or discussion regarding the impacts that a heavy gauge diesel train would have on neighborhoods through which it passed. Using county GIS data, I did some spatial analyses, all of which I'd be more than happy to share total data, all the spreadsheets and everything to anyone who's interested in order to look at the spatial relationship between the rail corridor and residential properties throughout the county. I was startled but honestly not surprised to learn that for instance of the three and a half thousand land parcels county wide that are within 250 feet, less than a football field of the railroad tracks, 89% are residential. And that's not saying that each parcel is one person. Many of those parcels are actually multi-family residential apartment buildings, just residential parcels. In districts one and two, Commissioner Leopold, this number's even higher. And in much of the county people's homes are even closer to the tracks than that. In Chairman Leopold's district for instance, 93% of the parcels that are within 50 feet of the tracks, essentially adjacent to the tracks, are residential parcels. So this rail corridor doesn't follow a freeway or predominantly scored along industrial or commercial properties as do CalTrain and SMART and many other railroads around the nation. For the vast majority of its length, our corridor cuts straight through residential neighborhoods. The intimate proximity of the rail corridor to people's homes is a major reason why a trail only option is so ideal. And yet another reason why the commuter train would be so impactful. I just hope that this information will give you a little bit of pause and reason to reconsider. Hastely pushing forward on a plan that would put diesel trains thundering through your constituents' backyards. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, I'm Brett Garrett from Santa Cruz. Just a comment to start with, I don't know why the preferred scenario is being described as scenario B. If you look at it, and especially if you look at it beyond 2035, it is scenario E. All the choices are the same, the results are the same, the beyond 2535 scenario is E. Another thing, I've read Barrow Emerson's report that he produced for tomorrow's Metro agenda and I agree heartily with his perspective. I support and appreciate the idea of a formal alternatives analysis process. I think Ginger mentioned that's in the works. I support it and I would add that it should not just be for bus and train, the alternatives that are studied must include personal rapid transit, also known as automated transit networks. Basically the same thing, pod cars on a dedicated guideway, a better transportation system as shown in this report right here that I obtained for Santa Cruz County because I think it's important to study this technology. It uses a lot less energy per passenger than conventional transit and that's a key to solving global warming. As an elevated system, it achieves climate adaptation. This report here is very conservative in its approach emphasizing tried and true technology that's already being proven in service. The modeling approach that's in the report is described in the report and I urge you to have Kimley Horne validate these results. They're very important. It appears that a PRT system covering both the rail corridor and Soquel and Avenue and Drive all together would attract five or more times as many passengers as the train. This is big. It can't just be swept under the rug. It needs to be looked into. The key is providing transportation that is often more convenient than driving. The system runs on demand so it's not like you have to wait for the three o'clock bus. You just arrive at the station and go, fly over traffic, never stuck in traffic. That's how you get people riding transit instead of driving their cars. The report concludes that PRT or ATN would produce better results than scenario B for all 13 of the UCS criteria. It's at least worth investigating and seeing if your consultants can back that up. Whatever decision is made for the unified corridor study, please keep the door open for innovative approaches and alternative technology such as PRT. It's what the world needs. It's something we can do here in Santa Cruz County. And it can be a form of rail so it might meet the easement requirements for the rail corridor. I know there's some funding that's supposed to be contingent on passenger rail. This might meet those requirements. I don't know. I don't know if it meets the legal goals of providing rail services, but I think it might. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Hello, I'm Dana Bagja and it's good to be seeing you again. I'd like to underscore what Brett just said about the PRT. I like to think of it as public transit rather than personal small pods. I'd like to see bigger pods, bus size pods. I'd like to talk particularly about the rail corridor. I live near the Santa Cruz Wharf and I can remember some years ago I had a friend come in a sailboat from Santa Cruz, San Diego to... A harbor? No, where you're from? Greg. What's a mill? I'm from Capitola. From Capitola, right. All right, sorry. I just went blank. Okay, so she came to Capitola. And then on a sailboat then she was gonna come see me. So how did she come see me? She didn't have a car. She looked at the map and she saw that the rail line was the most convenient, the most direct route to the wharf. So it makes a lot of sense. Someone just said it's been there for a long time. But I do think that it has problems when you talk about passenger rail at this point because of sea level risings, storm surges, coastal erosion. I think that it is not a good investment for long term. And I would advocate that we consider elevated light rail, pods, something that would be much more cost effective. It would be what I would put my money on. They're automated pods, so you don't have to pay for the drivers. It's powered by solar. It uses, there's no carbon emissions or methane emissions to make the energy for these pods. So it just makes a lot of sense for the future. And I was encouraged to see that you will be looking at alternatives for rail. I think it's a good route. We just need to be up a little higher instead of being so vulnerable on the ground. Maybe it's good for rail for freight, but not for passengers. So I'd like for you to please consider that when you look at the future. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Johanna Lighthill and I'm a Aptos resident of 34 years. I'm really nervous here, so bear with me. I read the dashboard and I thought it was a bit oversimplified and the charts were a bit misleading. So I dove into the report and my eyes glazed over because of these giant numbers and a lot of data. And I became concerned with some inconsistencies. I thought that the auxiliary lane project included the reconstruction of the Aptos bridges, even though there are some scenarios that don't include rail. And so I wrote to the staff about that. It was changed and it was modified by $44 million. And that was a concern to me that was I the only person that noticed that? And that was a red flag. I would like people to check the tables for even addition problems in the projects from A to B. There's a lot of changes going on. The real reason I'm here is because I really love my community and I've lived here for a long time in Aptos and where I live, it's only a half a mile from Aptos Village and it's being rebuilt, Rancho del Mar. But there's no way for me to walk there. And I'm separated because there's four lanes of highway, there's Soquel Drive, streets, local street traffic, a rail corridor, two bridges, fences, guardrails, retaining walls, and a creek. And I know that they are proposing the trail but access to the trail will be limited because if it's built with the rail, there are six foot fences that will be dividing them and I think the access might be limited. So when you move forward, I hope that you will consider the pass. I know that they put a study together about 20 years ago, the major transportation investment study. Okay, I think they concluded that bus is the way to go. And I hope that you'll consider that option too as part of transit, we definitely need transit. I hope you look back to when they designed Highway One. What a great idea. Join Watsonville to Santa Cruz, but by doing that, they bisected communities and people are not able to move in between the communities and that's what I'm dealing with right now. And I'm sure that now they're building bridges to join Chanticleer again and apparently more Vista, but millions of dollars and 70 years later is a long time. So I hope that as you move forward, you'll prioritize people over projects and function over funding and that's it, thank you. Thank you, and you did a good job here. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners, thank you. My name is Peter Stanger. I think we're looking, the way I understood it, maybe 3,500 people would be taking the train daily and the investment would be $635 million. And it just seems to me that that's gonna be a lot of the transportation funding from the County of Santa Cruz for many years to come. And people here in South County and I live in Las Alva Beach, we're choking on traffic and we have been for the last 10 years while the rail corridor sat empty. It would have been real nice if we could have used it more actively for bicycles and pedestrians instead of just letting it sit. But that wasn't the way it was handled. One would think, gee, I could get to Santa Cruz a little bit quicker. I would bicycle in from Las Alva Beach. I heard someone else say they came in from sunset. They wanted to train. I would get from Las Alva to downtown Santa Cruz. It would take me an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. And with e-bikes, I can only imagine it would be even quicker, especially if the rail corridor was wide enough for bicyclists, pedestrians and e-bikes. And that's what I would advocate. Also, when you talk about using the rail corridor for trains, for example, the gentleman in Sunset Beach, well, where's he gonna get on the trains? He gonna drive into Aptos or is he gonna park on the streets there? Is he gonna drive into Watsonville and park on the streets there? I doubt if they'll even have a station in Las Alva Beach. We don't even have bus service in Las Alva Beach. We're so starved for transit funds. But wait, we have $635 million to spend on a train. And given the last estimates for, let's say, segment seven of the rail trail, I think the estimate came in at one number and then all the bids are coming in three times as high. So how can we trust the estimates that are coming our way? I would urge this commission to use the rail corridor for active transportation. I heard the study and they were saying that they would buffer the bike lanes along Soquel Drive. I'm just wondering to myself, how are you gonna buffer the bike lane in Aptos Village? I mean, I'm a little bit aware of the complete streets here in Watsonville. They would never have buffered bike lanes because they want parking for the businesses. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Gloria Gehring and I'm here at the request for public input that came from the Registered Pajoronian. My preference of the scenarios is the scenario B with auxiliary lanes and freight in Watsonville. I don't have a comment about the preferred plan, which I just heard this evening, but I did have a concern about the PRT light being excluded from that as that could bring options. I was glad to hear the projected implementation because I know meetings I've attended, it almost seems like people are saying nothing's gonna happen until 2035. So I was glad to see the phased implementation on that. And I just wanna say thanks to the RTC and all the community that works on this so hard. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm David Van Brink. I live in Santa Cruz City. First, congratulations on that first little piece in Santa Cruz for the bridge widening. That's the very first part of the trail that's been put to construction if I understand rightly. So that's wonderful. I'd like to talk for a moment about locomotive hypersensitivity. This is a condition in which the person experiences distress at the proximity of rail to vehicle transportation. Perhaps they even believe that they can detect it from quite a long way away. This isn't new at all. This is a poster from New York about 100 years ago. I'm sorry, it's very small, but it says things like locomotive railroad, dreadful casualty, outrage, and Warren's mother's to look out for their children. More recently, in a 2003 report from local historian Ross Eric Gibson. This is something you put together. I'm sure some of you have seen this. It's some history of the railroads and some suggestions for how to use our transit corridor for rail to transportation. And he's pretty casual about it. He does mention a bit of self care for those with hypersensitivity. He says, those who do not like trains should not buy houses next to train tracks. Fear can make us illogical. We can create complex systems of rationalizations when we're acting out of fear. Systems of a fictional arithmetic and so on. Perhaps hypersensitivity fear of locomotives is a proxy for something else. Fear can be contagious. We have a billion years of evolution that tells us better safe than sorry. I've heard some people say that the RTC proposal is to run hundreds of trains carrying hazardous materials from Davenport to Watsonville. And in my mind, I'm thinking, wait, can that be true? So we're programmed to respond to these things. So we should of course be compassionate to those afflicted with locomotive hypersensitivity. They're acting out of fear, but we mustn't let that irrational hypersensitivity poison our process. Please stick to the schedule that you've been working on and let's all move forward. Thanks for all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for your patience, Mr. Pico. No, my name's Kerry Pico. I live in Rio del Mar, Aptos, however you want it. When I first got involved with this, by the way, somebody asked me to come. I actually would not have come without that. So I, in a way. When I first got involved around 2014 before the feasibility study came out, I got a preview at a government invitation only. I don't know how I got into the invitation part, but when I went to that meeting, everybody there seemed to have their hand out going, which piece of the pie am I gonna get? And everybody was gonna get everything. And I remember asking $133 million and 200 people from Watsonville. This doesn't make sense to me. And when I left that meeting, I said, and I want a pink pony too. And I have never forgotten that comment. And so now when I look at the scenarios, we want everything. And by the way, I don't have, actually I don't care if it's a trail, trained, I really don't care which scenario. We are 270,000 people in this county and we have to be able to afford what we have. And with all these different scenarios, it's not just one pink pony they're asking for. They're asking for a whole corral of pink ponies. So one thing I wanna talk about the expenses. We keep talking about how we have to have a train so we don't pay back the $10.2 million, by the way. I resent the $11 million. We've already spent $12.4 million unrelated to the purchase of the corridor. I've gone through the financial audits of the RTC and took all the stuff related to the rail. Okay, it doesn't include the trail. That's 12.4. That means we've spent an average of 1.2 million every year on maintaining upkeep, improving the train tracks for a private company. We've also committed with this progressive rail thing another 16 million, 15 million. If you add it up over the next 10 years, the total including the last 10 years is $28.9 million, okay. So we're not saving our $11 million, $10.2, excuse me. You've got me saying it, back to that. And we have limited funding. We are $270,000. What can we get for what we can do? And back to the person who said about the trail, I'm the one who pointed out that it's gonna cost three to four times the cost based on the original bids, construction bids. That's $405 to $500 million. We're not gonna get there. If it's that much, I don't wanna trail. In fact, I barely don't even wanna trail if it's $100 million. So we really need to figure out what can we use our money for. You can pick whatever scenario. I'm not asking for anyone. That's why I was confused about where I should speak. I'm not telling you how to vote. I'm just saying we have a limited amount of funds and I haven't changed the story from the beginning. Okay, thank you very much. And I have handouts for you guys if you'd like to see the summary. Great, thank you. Hi, my name's Brad Mills, I live in Freedom. I'm not very good at speaking but that's why the rail company didn't work last time. There's a eagle that lives out there where I'm talking about too. The bald eagle, you guys might know it, from 2012 out of Penal Lake. The male got electrocuted. Well, she came back out to Harkinsloo. I have a picture of the first nest. I have pictures. I'd like everybody to see the pictures, but yeah. Bald eagle, she's beautiful. I named her Freedom too. That's a better picture. This is the first time I've seen them together. This is back like in April. April 1st, I found the nest. This is a picture of her today. She's still out there. They had construction going on out there for the water district and they put in a thing. Well, they had a bunch of earth movers and stuff going on back there. And it scared the eagle. She's scared, she's over on the tree. This is a picture of the nest for 1918. Watsonville, man, this is the only eagle in Watsonville, Santa Cruz County. She's feeding, see that little white thing to her right? That's the baby's head when it was two weeks old. I've been doing this for eight months now. Right, here's a picture of the nest at long distance. I never did get close to them until after the eagle was fledged. And I heard all that noise going on out there. And I love these eagles. I mean, you know, here's a picture. It's real hard to see. Here's the papa and here's the baby. Nests, sharks. Hey, this is what the nest looked like out there. There's three different nests. That's one, that's two, that was the first nest. That was her first nest. And where they're doing that construction, right in the middle of that and that. She's over on this tree now. She's over there just about every day. Go down Harkinsley Road and come to the end of the road and look at that tree and she's right there, right there. She's been that way since the construction has been out there and she's scared. Like I said, I don't know what's going on about the trails, but I love riding bicycles. And you know, I love Watsonville, too. But Santa Cruz got bike trails and stuff in town. I mean, it's not safe to ride a bike in Watsonville. There's no bike lanes. You know, is there? Really? I mean, to drive out to Pinot Lake on a bike. Sorry. Thank you, then thank you for sharing your photos. Good evening. Good evening, Chairman Leopold and commissioners. My name is Bud Colligan and I'm a Live Oak resident. Greenway has provided a separate, more quantitative analysis to you yesterday for the UCS. And so I hope you've all received that. Today, I want to urge you to wait for the next executive director to have an opportunity to review the UCS and provide his opinion. No organization, private, nonprofit, or government would adopt a 17-year strategy with a new ED starting next month without his input. Barrow Emerson's memo regarding the possible cannibalization of metro funding and the need for an alternatives analysis on the corridor is a warning to commissioners to fully understand what is being said before you proceed. In the RTC memo that was distributed to you last night, it sounds the alarm about paying back the 11, or as Kerry said, the 10.2 million in funding. This is not new. Soliciting a letter from the CTC does not create more urgency for all of you as our commissioners. The notion that the RTC is being forced to sit on its hands waiting for a decision on the unified quarter study is also not correct. Any delays in the North Coast and Santa Cruz sections of the corridor are either because of surveying on the North Coast property that was not done according to federal requirements or the significant cost overruns on segment 7A. It's not because of delays caused by this process. There's a lot of good information in the UCS, and we should take the time to use it effectively to prioritize projects that deliver the most bang for the buck. As many emails, I think Liz pointed out very correctly, and her email to you have indicated. I hope you'll read them all. We just had elections, and elections have implications. And the people of Capitola, for example, despite what one gentleman said, that it's a small group who oppose scenario B, in fact, the people of Capitola voted against the RTC plan. And there will be different city council members in all the cities and new representatives on the RTC. Usually a decision this important, government bodies wait for the newly elected representatives to take their place. A couple months delay to give the new ED an opportunity to review the current staff work would be prudent, and in almost any organization in the country would be considered best practice. I urge you to take the time necessary to do this right and earn the confidence of the public in your decision, whatever it is. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Jack Carroll, District 1. Let's talk money. All the scenarios require asking tax payers for a lot more money, at least a quarter of a billion dollars. And that assumes that a half a billion dollars can be found from existing government sources. SB1 has significant money for highway improvements, not trains. The California Rail Plan, which budgets for railroad projects through the year 2040, has no money at all for a Watsonville to Santa Cruz train. The UCIS is incorrect about this. That impacts the federal 50% matching funds requirement. Measure D actually prohibits using any of its money for a new train. And it provides only $40 million specifically for corridor improvements. That's enough for bicycles, but not for trains. You have to ask Santa Cruz taxpayers for a half billion dollars just to run the first diesel train on those tracks and make that a billion dollars for the first electric train on the tracks. And that's for a freight train with no customers. We have no money for a train. I like trains. In New York, I ride the metro north into the city. But we have no New York City in Santa Cruz County. People are spread out here, and buses are more efficient moving them. Achieve your equitable access goal by making all the metro buses free. It would cost $10 million a year. We can afford that. Compare free buses to the predicted $15 round trip fare from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, plus the bus fare at both ends, plus the regressive sales tax increase required to fund all this. That doesn't sound equitable to me. Fund more school buses and get parents off the roads at rush hour. There have already been two votes against your train proposal. Capital is Measure L and a county-wide Measure D. And the vote on Measure H should tell you that more taxes are a very hard sell. Will you listen to the voters? Very little of the investment benefits come from the train, just most of the expense. Our county will not approve a half billion dollars of new taxes for a diesel freight train with no customers and a holiday train to nowhere. Drop any new train from your plans. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share my perspective. And thank you for holding this meeting here in Watsonville. My name is Nishan Mutafian. I live in Watsonville. Grew up here and recently moved back to the area with my wife and my two boys. We have been really constrained by the traffic on the way to Santa Cruz. We rarely go there. And we don't use, unfortunately, Aptos in Santa Cruz businesses because we just can't get there and back. So we definitely feel the urgency. And I appreciate all your efforts. I just speak to you from the perspective of someone who lives in Watsonville. Despite the urgency and how much I want to improve transit, I have a sense that this seems quite rushed. I'm particularly concerned about the train. I don't see that the advantages of that proposal in any of the options, single use or carpool vehicles is at a minimum 80% of the travel modes. And so I see that as being the urgency. The train seems impractical, complicated, really rife with a lot of tensions from a number of different groups and really expensive. And above all, I feel that it's a distraction that is not really going to serve my family or the people who live in Watsonville. That's my sense on it. I really urge and I don't see from the reports that I read, I don't see the advantages clearly laid out or distinct in any way. But yet it seems very clear that that train element of any proposal that it's in is going to cost a lot of money and be really complicated. So I urge the group to continue to think about this and please take however much time as is needed to review or gather more data if need be. My position is I encourage you to leave the train outside of this. I happen to be in favor of the rail and the bike lane and pedestrian trail. But above all, I think the urgency is around the highway. That's where by far the majority of our traffic is going to be. And that's what my family is going to care most about. So definitely have that concern about the train. And I urge you to take as much time as you need to before we dive into something that will be so costly and complicated. And in my opinion, will be a distraction from what we really need as Watsonville residents. So again, thank you for the time. And thank you again for holding the meeting here to make it easier for people with families to come and share opinions. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. I think I know most of you. I'm Robert Stevens from Aptos. I wanted to echo that gentleman's comments. Most of us use the freeway and drive cars right now. So that's where we need to put up a lot of our energy. I also wanted to thank the man that brought the pictures of the Eagles. That section of the trail from Buena Vista to Watsonville is known as the miracle mile for most birders, just because it contains so many birds. I wanted to say tonight, I'm not here just speaking for myself, but I'm speaking for Ted Burke, Gail Ortiz, Robert Quinn, Randy Re-Pass, William Mal, a lot of well-known people in our community that are in the business community or in politics, and the 10,000 people that signed our petition and the voters of Capitola that approved Measure L. And I really had hoped, I had supported Measure D, and really hoped for a fair and open study. But I'm afraid that that's not the case so much. I think it's been just sort of stay the course. And that's been the projection since this whole study began. So I'm a little disappointed in that. And I do think George has done a very good job in presenting this, winding it along, and bringing it to this point. And so now there will be a big push to finish this before December, because we want to wrap this up and move it on. And this is the same staff that advised you to go with Iowa Pacific. And now you will have Progressive to follow in those footsteps. And good luck with that. I don't understand your fear of rail banking and that you don't trust the citizens, that if they had a rail bank corridor and we're using it now instead of running tourist trains or freight trains, that the citizens might like that. And God forbid that happened, because we really don't want to listen to the citizens. And I think it's something that could be shared. There could be lots of multimodal uses of that corridor, lots of experimentation. But as long as we save those rails, that won't happen. For you metro members, you're never going to get buses on that corridor without rail banking. That's a fact. So just forget buses. And also I think you should be concerned that the train will cannibalize metro budget. So when you vote, keep those two facts in mind. And the Watsonville members, I'm just so surprised at how easily you gave up your trail. I look at all the trails on the west side of town and the pride people have. And you have an opportunity with Wetlands Watch, the Pajaro Valley High School, right there. And you just gave that up in a heartbeat. And you need your freeway widened, but I don't think that's going to happen. It has happened on the west side of town. I drive the fish hook. I see the improvements, but I don't think we're going to get any here, because we won't have the money. Now, I did see oil tankers on my way here. Progressive has said they've removed them, but on your way home, you can see the oil tankers going over our wetlands. So, Scots Valley and San Lorenzo Valley. Oh, okay. Thank you. Well, anyhow, it went on too long. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Carina McFarlane from Live Oak, and I'm going to read. So in 40 years time, in 2058, I'll be 102. And I can't say what mode of transport I'll be on. McNamara, 40 years ago, said he was on the wrong side of history. We don't want us to be on the wrong side of history with the rail corridor. These meetings in relation to the unified corridor study, especially with regard to rail corridor use, have been puzzling and confounding to me to the point that I was galvanized to reach out to Center for Wise Democracy founder Jim Ruff and ask, would he come down from Washington State to Santa Cruz to help us hold a space for we the people, a dynamic facilitation on the rail corridor with the intention that all corners of the county might understand the issues and what is at stake. The first step in this process just happened over Veterans Weekend. We're not done by any means, we've only just started, but what we do know is that we want the rail corridor opened up as a viable transit corridor expeditiously, as in how fast can we all be on that transit corridor as a conduit to and from our important life and work essential destinations with modes of transport that work for all and exclude none. As I understand it, the train is a lovely idea along a coastal train track for anyone who first pauses long enough to muse on lovely things. But dig deeper and discover the train does not serve Santa Cruz County community complex, being constrained to the tracks and fencing us in and out, it's restrictive and constrictive, most especially along this coastal rail corridor where our communities now live their lives with easy access to and fro. With a train comes a fence, split neighborhoods, and leaves us with substandard intermittent sidebar path for anything that isn't a train. And we don't have to muddy the waters with the Watsonville freight train service, that's not a question. My understanding of what can happen on the rail corridor is an electric shuttle. IBM Oli is but one example, 12-person shuttle. Electric shuttle is like a mini train carriage. It ferries commuters and other riders in the rain, serves disabled, serves the physically challenged, serves the elderly. It's a rapid transit option to suit Santa Cruz County terrain. No new retaining walls, no new bridges. It would be the shuttle ferry cousin to the jump bike infrastructure. These compact self-drive shuttles with the ability to jump on and off the corridor, up to Cabrillo, up to Dominican, give folk south and north county far greater accessibility than any train would. To speak to bikes and who bikes? My husband grew up in New York, Long Island. He says adults didn't ride bikes, only kids. That's the classmate. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Piat Cannon from Ecology Action. I'd like to thank staff and the consultants for their work on this study. It's a lot of good data there. And Ecology Action would like to say that in terms of the study, we look at it through the lens of an environmental group and the environmental issue of the day is climate change. And so we would ask the commission to do as much to prioritize funding for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And as the study shows, really the biggest greenhouse gas emission minimizer is through electrification of transportation. The no build option gets you 27% reduction in greenhouse gas. Emissions just from a cleaner fuel source for the vehicles that we use today, mainly passenger cars and trucks. So to emphasize as much as you can in this study, I know that's not the focus, but electrification of transportation from passenger cars, incentives in education to transit and even to freight. And then also to emphasize active transportation, biking and walking. The consultants said today that, they were looking at biking and walking in terms of not just on the rail quarter, not just on Salk Hill, but also the connections between those two. And it'd be great to have that codified in the study because I don't see it specifically, I don't see it detailed in terms of what connections would be made possibly and how much budget. And this is an investment study, so it's good to have a budget for that. So you can have the connection between the rail trail and the rest of the corridor study area to see how those improvements could happen. And also to detail further, Soquel Avenue and Drive Freedom Boulevard protected bike lanes. Because there is a huge difference between physical barrier between someone on a bike and car traffic versus paint on the pavement. And studies have shown that the people that can bike, they're physically able, they live near their destinations, their common destinations, they're just too fearful to ride a bike in empathy traffic by giving them something that separates them from car traffic gets them on bikes and walking to bikes in this protected bike lanes example. So, and then also in terms of what scenarios ecology action, we looked at scenario B as a preferred scenario. But once again with the emphasis on greenhouse gas reductions, getting people out of signal agency vehicle cars. The woman before me, I think painted somewhat of a vision of the future. And that's what we need to think about too. There's a lot of things in this study that are gonna be changed in the next 10, 20, 30 years due to technology. And so jump bikes is a good example of private sector working with the public sector and providing a mobility choice that is sustainable for residents of Santa Cruz. So hopefully there's enough flexibility in those plans to look at those technologies that are coming on board and how they can steer them correctly. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Anna Kammer and I live in the city of Watsonville. I'm here to ask you to please support the preferred scenario. It's a balanced plan that supports a multimodal approach to the transportation needs of the entire county. A lot of the people that have been up here have been from North County and living here in South County, I'm very involved in my community. And I've talked to a lot of people. I live on the Clifford corridor for the buses. I walk downtown all the time. I ride my bike all over. And I know that pretty much everybody I've talked to is in South County in Watsonville. Area is really supportive of having a train. You should see their faces when you say there's a possibility of having, using that corridor with a train, some kind of transit and people's eyes light up. So county residents, especially those in South County would greatly benefit from the variety of transportation options outlined in the preferred scenario that you have been presented with tonight. Transit on the rail line is an important part of not only our internal county transportation system, but also the future connection to the Pajaro station, which then connects to the entire rail system throughout the state. So I haven't heard that talked about from anybody that has been up here tonight. And I think that that's a really, our branch line connects with, will connect with the Pajaro station, which will be opening three years. And so for us to have that opportunity would be really great. I also want to advocate for improving our bicycle infrastructure, because it would make this form of active transport safer and more attractive to a wider audience of the public. Protected bike lanes are in along major corridors do make people feel safer. I've ridden them in many other cities and it does, I mean, I'm a very experienced cyclist, so I will ride wherever, but protected bike lanes really make that mode of transportation an option for a lot more people. And it also improving our bicycle infrastructure also supports the vision zero goals that were adopted by the Watsonville city council earlier this year. And I'm not sure Santa Cruz city council has adopted those vision zero goals yet, but they are looking at that as well. So in conclusion, we have this chance to be part of the transportation solution for the entire county. I would like to ask you to please approve the preferred scenario as it is. I think that it serves the greatest share of the population regardless of age, mobility, or area of residence. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Charlie Wilcox. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz. I'm an employer of people in Santa Cruz in Capitola and in Aptos-Seacliff. First time I met Mr. Dondaro, he was pitching Measure D and was speaking to the rail and I was kinda liked about it when I first thought of the ideas. It seemed like it made a lot of sense. When the first economic feasibility study came out, I just quickly ran some numbers and it didn't make a lot of sense to me then and I sort of thought maybe I was making some bad assumptions and I've waited and got more information and gotten more into those details, which I'll speak to in a second, but what I would really like the commissioners to think about as they go into this decision-making process, there's a few simple questions that really need to be answered. This is a lot of complicated stuff, but at the end of the day, there's some really just basic questions. I think there are a lot of concerns with the way the study was conducted. It was using 2010 standards at a time when we hadn't heard of Tesla, we hadn't heard of Uber. No one was thinking about automated driving. These factors make a tremendous change potentially to how we think about transportation. My young employees, which is like 75 or 80% of my employees are under the age of 22, they don't think about cars. You guys are thinking about our future. Those guys are our future. Cars is not where they wanna be, but ride shares, convenient easy technology that gets them past that last mile, so they don't have to make up that last mile is really important to them and there's a lot of possibilities as to where that may go. I'm very concerned with the cost estimates and where we see reality starting to come in versus where they've been projected and I think that that really is something that should be sobering. Even with what we take out of the study as it is, $600 million to build the rail, 3,500 people served a day. That's $180,000 per person. Over a 20-year lifetime, that's $9,000 a year per person served. I think we can spend our money better than that. Buy everybody free e-bikes and put in the trail, just as one wild idea. I think that infrastructure is really important that we build more capacity, but trains as much as I love trains, which I do, I've been riding trains for 50 years. I'm sad that that's a technology that's gone by the wayside, but there are economic reasons why it's gone by the wayside. I challenge the staff, find one city that has our density that supports a real rail system. One, there's not. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Leopold and commissioners. My name is Yannica Strauss. I'm the executive director of Bike Santa Cruz County. Bike Santa Cruz County supports Scenario B in the Unified Quarter Study because it estimates that it has the lowest number of annual traffic collisions, highest projected trips by bike, the lowest rate of CO2 emissions and the highest transit mode share compared to the other scenarios. Our vision is that bicycling in Santa Cruz County is a safe, respected, convenient and enjoyable form of transportation and recreation for people of all ages and abilities. To reach that vision, we must have a comprehensive approach and build infrastructure that is safe and comfortable for users, completely separate from traffic. Between 2006 and 2017, there were more than 200 bicycle collisions on Soquel Drive Avenue, Freedom Boulevard, and it has been termed a high injury corridor by the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency in their 2017 traffic violence in Santa Cruz County report. Protected bike lanes provide the physical separation needed to prevent these collisions and significantly increase ridership and because it is a high-use cross-county route for cyclists already, the minimal investment would have a high impact. Therefore, we urge you to prioritize protected bike lanes over buffered bike lanes as I outlined in my letter to all of you on November 1st. In the rail corridor, please continue the development of the trail from Davenport to Watsonville along the rail right-of-way as presented in the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail so that cyclists may find relief from riding on our roads as soon as possible. Additionally, we urge you to maintain continuity of the rail trail by keeping it in the rail corridor as much as possible, including over Soquel Creek in Capitola. The Unified Corridor Study presented compelling transit ridership data for passenger rail. Therefore, we ask that you preserve the tracks and bring the community more information about passenger rail by developing a preliminary design in conducting an environmental review. Lastly, we ask that you improve bike and ped facilities throughout the urban area, closing gaps in the network, expand bike share countywide, provide bike parking and other amenities along the rail trail and across the county and support bike safety education and encouragement programs. When selecting a scenario and specific projects, please consider the needs of your cycling community and those who do not yet bike because they feel unsafe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Before the next speaker starts, can I get a show of hands of who else would like to speak? I want to encourage you to sort of get in line because I want to be able to hear from everybody, but I want to make sure that we don't go too late. So if there's comments, you want to hear from commissioners. So good evening. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Gray Jameson. I am a high school senior and a resident of Live Oak. I was told that I had to ask your permission, Chair Leopold, to play a video tonight for part of my public comment. We're not really set up to play videos. I see it loaded right here on the monitor, though. Oh, okay. So that's already been... Okay, it's already been... I thought you were handing something to us. No, no, no. If something's already been gone. I'd just like to point out that the options are out there for alternatives to a large, smelly diesel train. That is not even what is in the study. From reading the 2015 rail study, I believe it is referring to a light diesel multiple unit as the most likely scenario for the beginning, at least. As you see here, that is the most likely scenario for the beginning at least. As you see here, that is similar to the vehicle that I chose for this simulation that I ran. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ryan Sonatar from Live Oak. And a pithy quote attributed to John Manard Keans goes, when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? And some of the decision makers in this room, and I can specifically refer to some of the commissioners from their public statements, like Mr. Leopold, my representative, and Mr. Ratkin, Mr. Schifrin, and especially Mr. Dondero, have expressed for a long time, years or even decades, a preference for a train. And that preference is in the footprint of the UCIS, where the proper alternative trail options are really not studied, and therefore you don't have the complete data that you need in order to make the proper decision. In the time since they made up their minds, transportation funding has changed. On one side of the equation, infrastructure costs have skyrocketed. On the other, the government funding for rail, never generous, now has to complete with discretionary funds in an era of increasing structural deficits, and especially the costs of taking care of our population as it ages. Thousands of miles of track have been successfully rail banks since they made up their minds years ago. Communities as close as Monterey are happily enjoying trails. The High Line in New York is an incredibly successful installation. Forward thinking communities like Boulder, Portland, and Seattle have invested in paved trails to great public benefit, and these facts haven't changed any minds. In Santa Cruz, the jump-bike program has been a huge success. It's not just tourists. Jump bikes are replacing car trips and giving residents who do not have a car a new transportation option. And it's a shame that Watsonville doesn't have a jump-bike program so the people here could experience this firsthand. Adding electricity to bicycles creates accessibility and utility undreamed of in the past when those minds were made up. And jump-bikes are just the first of many new personal electric transportation options that require a paved right of way. And these game-changing technologies will make the utility of a paved corridor with no rails much more to the benefit of our public. The data no longer support the idea that trains are egalitarian and economical solution for Santa Cruz County. And now in the first test of appeal of a train, the voters in Capitola have rejected it. And that's an entirely different kind of fact. So when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, sir? Thank you. Good evening. I wish I could offer you a moment to stand up and do some jumping jacks. I just want to thank you for enduring all of us. My name is Rebecca Downing, and I live along the rail line in Seacliffe and lived before in Watsonville for 10 years commuting to Santa Cruz. I grew up using mass transit and only started driving when I moved away from it. I also worked in the transportation and logistics industry for a subsidiary of Union Pacific Corporation in Watsonville. I am currently president of the Seacliffe Improvement Association representing 350 households in the Seacliffe neighborhood of Aptos and speak to you tonight on their behalf. I ask the following. Conduct a thorough survey of Watsonville and other South County residents before making any transportation decisions to find out where they go to work, how they travel, and what it would take to get them out of their car. When you spend a lot of money on something like the study, like the rail line, it's natural to want to do something with it quickly to maximize its potential. Perhaps, therefore, RTC studies and recommendations have always included passenger rail when our county does not have the population density nor enough potential visitors to justify the significant infrastructure expansion. According to Jarrett Walker from your own speaker series, this study is written to satisfy regulation rather than addressing community concerns. Since the scenarios are statistically insignificant in their impact, I would ask you to implement all possible improvements using our current roads before considering passenger rail that is expensive and efficient in its transit times and disruptive to adjacent neighborhoods. When you address equity, I must ask, where is the equity for Aptos? We are the choke point for all the commuter traffic which now overflows into and through our neighborhoods twice a day, diminishing our quality of life because we lack infrastructure improvements needed to widen the freeway and accommodate traffic from 20 years ago. We have a newly improved Aptos village that no one can reach on foot safely nor drive to during peak traffic hours. Merchants like Bay Federal Credit Union are already moving out of the village because of traffic. This does not bode well for our future, so we are asking for your help. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for being here. So, I just have a few comments. I want to second Rick's concerns regarding induced demand for adding freeway capacity, and I also am confused about why the preferred scenario doesn't include the VRT light on the chart, although I see on the text of page 4-8 of the presentation that transit on SoCal Freedom is envisioned to continue to provide for local service. That's good. We're feasible transit signal priority and bypass lanes at intersections on SoCal Freedom will be provided. So, I would like to see that prioritized above adding auxiliary lanes because I think it's much less expensive. It uses our existing road infrastructure. We get more bang for our buck and I'm just not quite understanding why that wasn't a priority in the preferred scenario. And I also want to second Yanaka's request to please prioritize protected bike lanes over buffered bike lanes because they are really, really two different things. A buffered bike lane is just paint. You know, a protected bike lane is an actual physical barrier. It's a really big difference and it'll make a big difference in the quality of life and their ability to feel comfortable and safe when they're bicycling from the trail to the other places in town that they need to go. And finally, I would like to say that as was pointed out in the preferred scenario document packet, Caltrans does have the California Monterey rail, branch rail lines in the long-term plans for rail. They want to connect Pajaro and to the wider state. There are listings in the in the 2040 vision Caltrans document on page 176 talking about the Santa Cruz and Monterey regional lines and kind of their estimated capital cost for like electrifying and having rail service. So, you know, we can say oh, we don't have the population density to need rail and it's very expensive. You know, all those things, I don't know. Maybe they're true now, but in, you know, by 2040, Caltrans is going all in on rail because they feel like adding more highway capacity is just completely non-starter for California. It just hasn't worked. And so they've decided we're going to make California a rail transit state and they're investing locally everywhere, all over the state, in order to build out a rail infrastructure that is pulsed, that is easy, where everything connects to everything else. So, I encourage you to keep that in mind when you make your decision. Could you please share your name with the... Sorry, Jessica Evans. Thank you, Jessica. Barry Scott. I live in Aptos. I want to say one of the most important things I just want to start out with. If we build more roads, we get more drivers. And the, I think the objectives of the state and Caltrans is to not add more drivers. If we build transit, we have fewer drivers. And when I talk to young people today, it's hard to find somebody who can't wait to get their license and drive a car. It's just like, are you kidding me? Can I have a train? Really? Honest, let's have a train. So, I think that's important to remember. If we want to build, if we want to invest for the future, we've got to look at what is it that's going to be best for them, what might they want, not keep building for the past. What Jessica mentioned about the state rail plan, it's very exciting and they're very clear. Caltrans says, shifting from highway to railway, you can be more explicit than that. With something like $1.5 billion dedicated to the Monterey branch, to the Monterey branch line and our branch line, any talk of there not being enough money for this seems specious. About the process, I've been following this for a few years and I remember when the state rail plan came in and I thought, okay, next steps, what are next steps? And then we found out that there is an interest in studying trail only despite a 2013 vote by the commission saying, we're not going to study trail only. Well, we've studied trail only. We've got professionals, you couldn't ask for a better product with this stuff and I expected this outcome. I expected that rail transit would be shown to be economical, would be shown to be equitable, would get high scores across all the measures and it did and by golly, we now have a ton more funding than we would have had we started this three years ago, potentially. We have the Pajaro station, we have Monterey building and they didn't need a tax measure for this, mind you. They're building their Salinas to Gilroy extension now with the station at Pajaro, where we connect. So I urge you to move ahead. I understand and I'm not surprised to hear calls for waiting, oh my gosh, we've got a new director. Well, if that director asks for more time then that'd be one thing. But to say we must have it, because we must have it, well, we're going to hear a lot of that. Let's wait, let's wait, let's wait. I say let's move forward, let's build something. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Nguyen, before you start, just want to get a sense about are there people who aren't in line that would like to speak? I want to encourage you to get in line if you can so we can hear you. Good evening. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak. I'm Ashley Nguyen. I live in La Salva Beach. I've been following this issue since I read the feasibility study which demonstrated beyond doubt that rail is not feasible at the current time. The current study, they listed goals, safe transport for all modes. It failed to study the number or consider the cost of rail accidents. Auto accidents? In there. Rail accidents? No. This is not a hypothetical situation. In 1978 or 79, the current existing train went off its tracks right around La Salva Beach and Manresa. I think it's hard to get some statistics from Amtrak because they settle a lot of cases confidentially. We don't have any facts related to this issue in the study forecasting the number of injuries caused by rail. Rail bike, rail car, rail accident, rail derailment. Second goal, efficiency. Auto time gets worse with the preferred plan. And until we get out to 2035 and beyond, when they do, it should have been done a long time ago. I've heard people criticizing induced traffic. We have a traffic crisis now because we didn't deal with Highway 120 years ago. Don't postpone hove lanes now. Third, it says we'll have a well integrated system. The hove lane helps transit and autos. Rail with trail hurts active transport and delays completion of a trail. Every budget deficit has been off by multiples of the first segments that they've done. Environmental concerns recognize what the Santa Cruz Climate Change Vulnerability Report recognized in the Moss Landing study this past year when it said that one and a half miles of track in La Salva is not likely to be here in 40 or 50 years because of erosion. Science matters. Does it really matter to you guys? And you want to put a capital structure of improvements on something that's not going to exist in 50 years? Finally, I'll end it there. But thank you for my time. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Mike Sette. I'm a consultant to the trainwriters association of California. Our last two newspapers, the California Rail News, and we've had articles about Santa Cruz, which I will give you copies for each member when I'm done here. Two or three quick points. One of the criticisms of the rail plan was, oh, you have to string up wire and electrify it. Well, one of these handouts for the group is about a trolley system in New Zealand that operated from 1913 to 1929, strictly under battery power, and it was apparently quite successful. But of course, in 1929, it went belly up because of the depression. The point is, the battery technology in 100 years has improved dramatically, so we don't need overhead wires. We can electrify using batteries or fuel cells. I just want to point out, just tell you a little bit about what's in these newsletters. First of all, one of these documents was something that I produced in April, Optimizing Passenger Rail Service. There are ways of increasing the ridership from the 7,000 a day, which actually confirms the passenger estimates in the original rail study in 2015, which I use the same method to predict ridership in this, with some changes like running to downtown Santa Cruz and having a good connection to Cabrillo College. Those are probably the two key things that is missing in the current rail proposal. In our latest newspaper, we have some articles about the battery trains, but also how around the world there's a few places they've been experimenting with automated street cars. So there's all kinds of possibilities and hopefully any future studies will take this all into consideration. The other thing is that I also have a white paper about what I think could be done with beach shuttles and the fact that if you have a frequent service near the beaches in this rail line, it does go near most of the beaches in the canning. They can help pay for the operations. And the last point I want to make, very simple, in the article about Santa Cruz, there's like seven points very quickly, which I'll go through. The first is the comparison with the Highway 58. I think it's the quarter between Escondido and Oceanside, North San Diego County. They currently have a DMU service there that carries about 10,000 people a day with a 30-minute service, which is what's being proposed here. Points. Well, it's in the newspaper. Thank you. We look forward to reading it. Thank you. More to read. Good evening. Sorry. Good evening. Commissioners, my name is David Date, former development director of the LSBIA and graduate of Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. I wasn't going to speak on this, but to continue Lindsay's point, we have a rail that is built on, predominantly at least in South County, on a coastal bluff, which is considered a dynamic feature for geologic purposes. And if there were one place less stable than the bluff, it would obviously be on the beach, on the dunes. So to put this capital investment into something that is known to be unstable is... Well, it could be wasteful. It wouldn't be a good word for it. The derailment he mentioned happened in, I think it was 78. And if you walk the corridor, you can see scars down the rail ties. The same rail ties are still in place, and there's a gouge out of the center of each one. When the Southern Pacific train hit Manresa and made a left turn, that car tumbled into a La Selva beach home and ruined it, destroyed the house. The sentinel article that I found actually describes the homeowner running out the door with his life, unhinging the door as he left. And that train was going 15 miles an hour. And so we're talking about running trains at 45 miles an hour through neighborhoods on a coastal bluff. Doesn't make sense. Beside the point, I'm a father. I've lived in La Selva beach for eight years. We have a wonderful daughter, Eden. We had to take her out of school. When she was six, we were attending Terra Redwood. It was taking us 45 minutes just to get her to Soquel Village. So now we home school. I work fewer hours. I make less income. The vibe of the community is affected by this because parents spend hours in traffic. They come home to their kids. And then that sheds off on their kids. Two close friends to us in La Selva are now on psychiatric medications because they cannot grip with the responsibility and unpredictability and anxiety and stress that is our life. We can't move. It's as if every single day was a Saturday summer. You know, and the tourists are coming. We have to plan our day around the tourists that are invading our hometown. But that's every day. So I don't... We need relief now. And we're not talking about a train or a trail right now. We're talking about signing a 10-year lease agreement with a freight company. We're not even talking about solutions. So let's just try to just step back. It's not about a train or a trail. This is about relief now for the residents. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, commissioners. First, thanks so much for having this meeting, having it in the evening where many can participate. Thanks for hanging in with us more to come. It's very much appreciated. And Chair Leopold, following up on your initial comments, right? Maybe I'll change it up here a little bit. And maybe let's start with what is it we can all agree on? And you know, it really comes down to a couple of things that I think are applicable here. One is first and foremost, right? We all love our county. And that's why you're here. That's why you're providing your service to the community. That's why all of us have come out to share our opinions to be part of that process. You know, next, we all, we have transportation issues which need to be addressed. I think we can all agree on that. And I think we can all agree that solutions need to be implemented in a timely fashion. Yesterday would not be fast enough. Beyond that, I hope we can also agree that we need solutions which are fiscally responsible. And you know, what, so then what is that solution? Well, I'll give you my perspective and opinions that I hear often in my community. And you know, as we see it, you know, and this is noticeably different than the preferred scenario. We need to invest in the infrastructure that we have. We need to invest in Highway 1. We need to invest in SC Santa Cruz Metro, the bus, right? We should not invest further in rail. Keep the Watsonville freight service. But don't pursue passenger rail. Don't pursue additional freight service in the corridor. Any such investments going to require huge sums of money to implement, 635 million, but then additional dollars to also maintain becomes a huge liability. You know, the benefits, they're going to take too long to implement, they're going to be too limited and they're going to be too small. So the bottom line is an investment in the rail is not fiscally responsible. So where is it, you know, we go from here? So I would ask that you receive all this input. And you know, are we all on the same page? No. I think someone mentioned earlier there's only a small community that is opposing the rail. I've been trying to keep a tally here and I think it's actually slightly leaning the other way from the speakers thus far. So do I agree? No. But collect the input and decide what makes sense again. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Will Menchine. I live in Santa Cruz. And I wanted to point out, well, first off, many, many people have spoken about many particular items that are in this plan and there are a lot of good things in this plan. My big concern is that the plan comes down to four scenarios that in the final analysis most of the benefits of each of these four plans are more or less within the noise when compared to the baseline or the no-build option. And I think Piet elegantly pointed out that that's largely a result of the electrification of transportation. So if you do nothing but just electrify vehicles, you get this tremendous benefit over time. But I'm actually more concerned about what was not in the study at all. What was not in the study was actually a fair analysis of a truly optimized bike and pedestrian system operating in the rail corridor. That was really what was supposed to be done as part of Measure D's analysis of a trail-only option. But quite honestly, the RTC's version of trail-only or the staff's version of trail-only is really kind of a generic thing that is not intended to really look at what the true optimization of that corridor could be for active transportation. A second major disconnect, in my opinion, is the idea of using HOV lanes without considering HOT or Express. There's a lot of discussion about this so-called traffic conduction principle. But the reality is, and this was brought up over and over again by people at the Innovators in Transportation series, that if you change the way lanes are used, you change the outcome. So essentially, if we had three lanes and one of those lanes was a dedicated transit lane that was operational for people, paying a toll and using it any time of the day, you would have a mechanism, essentially, to apply congestion pricing. And you effectively have a guideway for the next generation of electric buses, battery electric buses, which are here now. They're actually being made in California. And essentially, I believe there will be electric trains as well. The real issue with trains is the fact that they're on tracks. I've been pointed out a number of times tonight that if you have tracks in the middle of the corridor, you limit greatly what can be done with new emerging technologies. And so that's really the issue. There easily can be transit and a much, much better bike and pedestrian path than is envisioned currently in the Monterey-Bake Sanctuary Scenic Trail master plan. I mean, we could really actually have the best of both. There's the potential to have low speed, limited speed, limited like a e-bike, but doing things like trams or eventually the kind of thing that's been described with personal rapid transit, operating in those multi-purpose lanes. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. I appreciate all the work that you've done and all the work that staff has done. Thank you. Before you start, I know Ms. Bilsich is going to be a speaker, but is there anybody else who's sitting down who's going to be a speaker? I got Ms. Bilsich. She'll be the last speaker, which are the three more people. Please, good evening. Good evening. I hope my voice holds up. I'm Janie Soido. I'm a Watsonville native. I appreciate having meetings in Watsonville and in the evening. I really appreciate your wanting to get our input. A little history on my birthday, nearly 62 years ago. My dad and my uncle were tearing down houses in the Morrissey area to make room for Highway 1. They used that lumber to build a chicken house that still stands in Uptaus. I can't support new massive expansion of the highway. The destruction of more homes and more neighborhoods and induced traffic is a little more than I can bear. I support the preferred plan. Watsonville needs as many options as possible. A trail only does nothing for the working people in Watsonville. It does nothing for the people in Santa Cruz who need to connect to Pajaro. I encourage the commissioners to approve the preferred plan on December 6th, so that there's no delay in moving forward with applications for funding to move these projects forward. We need to build something. We need to get moving. A little personal message to Mr. Dondaro. I saw a meme recently. It said, what do you call someone who's happy on Monday? The answer is retired. Congratulations on your retirement. And I'm sure you'll appreciate it. Thank you for sharing that. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Tom Fredericks. I live in Felton. And I just wanted to also offer support of your and the hope that you'll vote for the preferred option. I too hopefully can live long enough to enjoy another option on the rail line. I live in Felton and the idea that the rail could actually connect with the Roaring Camp line someday is just beyond perfect for me. So that's all I wanted to say. I wanted to be counted as a yes. It's a widely known fact that if you come to meetings like this, you live longer. Or at least it'll feel like it. Good evening. Good evening. Nancy Billisich. I'm with Watsonville City Council. But right now I think I'm just talking on behalf of residents, not the council per se. The council, we had a plan and I agree that the capital corridor is really important. I think, you know, it's in San Jose. It's going to be great when it gets to the Watsonville Junction in Pajaro. I can't wait for that. I think I take the capital corridor frequently to go to Sacramento and be nice to have that expansion. And I think people will be able to go to Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Jobs, the whole thing. It opens up. It's really great. I have to tell you that I supported Measure D. And I still think that Measure D to me and to many meant the expansion of Highway 1 because that's the immediate solution. However, that being said, the train's great. I would love to see a train. And I think, but not the big diesel. I know we have that for our freight and we need that for our businesses here. And we can't forget them. If we need that, we have to have it. But that little video we saw, that's great. Something like that. Let's think about the future. I think it would be great to have a train. I want it all. Money, I don't know where we're going to get the money, but we always figured out. We have to be creative and kind of look at different things. But the road for people now, it's an immediate need. Every day people get on Highway 1 and they are totally frustrated. You hear people say, I'm not going to Santa Cruz. Oh, how long is it going to take me? No, I don't want to shop in Santa Cruz. It's too much traffic. They'll go to Salinas. They'll go to Seaside. They'll go to Gilroy. Anyplace but Santa Cruz. So we're losing out. You know, it's our county. And I think we need to continue to find ways to fix the road and get that train going. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your service at Watsonville. I appreciate the testimony we received from so many people. Unlike the first couple of speakers here this evening, most of the speakers here tonight were focused on facts, information in the Unified Corridor Investment Study. You shared with us good information to give us ideas of what it is we need to be thinking of. We're not making a decision this evening. We'll be making that later. But your input does make a difference. We have been listening. We've been taking notes. And we've been weighing the different perspectives that are here. And I appreciate that everyone came here with most of you came here with testimony specifically about the Unified Corridor Investment Study. Now I'm going to turn to my colleagues about questions and comments. Well, I want to keep going because it's 8.30. But if you need to take a break and please do. But now let's hear from commissioners. Mr. Rockin. I have two questions on which I'm not clear. And I believe I've read the study carefully. But it's still not clear to me. In the past 2035 expansion of HOV possibility and the preferred alternative as it was laid out tonight, that's not part of the earlier study but new to us in the last period. Is that basically changing the auxiliary lane into an HOV lane? It's not adding a fourth lane to the highway. I mean, that's just, you know, it might seem like a naive question. It is a naive question. But as I read through stuff, I wasn't clear what we're thinking about for that. Great question. Frederic Ventra-Kimley-Horn. So I think you will see, we had two scenarios in the step two analysis that had the HOV lanes in it. After we have assessed the implementation strategy and looking at timing, we've now just pushed that out to beyond 2035. So that's in terms of timing. Oh, I understand the timing. We're talking about what we're thinking about doing at that point. It was anticipated maybe done earlier, right? So regarding the widening of the freeway, so the widening will start with the auxiliary lanes. The auxiliary lanes are going to be constructed between the interchanges on the outsides of the freeway. When we start construction of the main line and we start improving the interchanges, during that time everything will be in place and so actually provide the HOV lanes. But since it will be segmented as that construction happens, there will be some stage down that construction. Probably two mile sections will be done and as that opens up and we get close to having the final done, the HOV lanes will be striped. So my gut feel is that Caltrans will construct them maybe as an inside shoulder by the median but they will happen on the inside. So there will be an HOV lane, and the auxiliary lane on the outside. My follow-up question to that, which you're probably the right person to answer. And this applies to a... I'm going to ask about a particular alternative, but the alternative study that will follow at some point are decisions. At least that's the current structure of how we're supposed to be deciding this. We'll start to look at ways we might be modifying the plan as we get new information and things become different. I'm going to give you one example, but how we think about this will apply to other ideas that people have. So I look at the fact that the auxiliary lane, which leads to bus on shoulder possibilities, not really on shoulder in the auxiliary lane for the most part, it allows the buses to pass through the bridges without spending the money that it takes to reconstruct the major bridges that cross the highway at various points. The one place where that can't take place are the two railroad bridges in Aptos where the buses would have to re-enter one of the traffic lanes and that causes all kinds of slowdowns and bottlenecks and stuff when it happens. If I understand correctly, those are cheaper big bridges to replace because they're modular type bridges for railroads that are different than building a concrete car traffic bridge. In what way would it be part of an alternative process afterwards to look at the... Again, it wouldn't affect our decision probably about what we're doing overall, but when we think about what the alternative lane induced traffic, the things that people have raised, the possibility of a through bus on shoulder, let's call it bus on shoulder that runs all the way down, spending a lot less money to fix two bridges and the buses maybe not making it a change... This is a weird thought, but not even having them be an alternative auxiliary lane but actually a bus rapid transit lane with some type that runs down there and doesn't have to re-enter traffic at those two points, that's still a possible... My question is, is that not still a possibility even if we decide on the preferred scenario which says nothing about what I just laid out if I understand it properly? My question clear? I think so. Again, there are lots of other things like that that I'm not bringing up, but this is one example of that. I'm not sure I understand completely your question, but let me take an attempt. So between State Park Drive and Rio del Mar, there's the two railroad... Optos is the two railroad bridges as well as the bridge over Spreckles and the creek. And so those are the constraining areas for having the auxiliary lanes as well as what we are calling bus on shoulders, but as you mentioned is really bus on auxiliary lanes and shoulders under the interchanges. And so for the preferred scenario that we're proposing that auxiliary lane as well as the other two auxiliary lanes that bring you down to freedom or to San Andreas would be the kind of the second phase after the measure D auxiliary lanes. And in the intermediary, we would have to be working with the RTC, working with Metro and Caltrans to identify, okay, what would we do in that section between Rio del Mar and State Park prior to making those widening of those three bridges, really the two railroad and the bridge over the Spreckles and the creek. So my question, I appreciate that. My question is the feasibility of that, the cost of those bridges, which I'm estimating in my head, knowing very little about it, that's something that would happen in the alternative study that follows our decision that's to happen fairly soon here about our overall preferred alternative. Is that correct? I don't think so. The alternative analysis, if I understand it, is to look at, you know, whether you're going to use a train or a bus or what are the alternatives you can use on the rail line. What you're talking about is an improvement to the highway. Or change anyway. Or change. And in that case, we would probably be looked at in the environmental impact report when we do those sections of the highway, which is different than the alternative, I think it's different than the alternative analysis. But they're not ruled out as a potential issue that we might get into and figure out a cost that is feasible and that's not in the billions, but a lower cost possibility for us to look at at that point. Now we'll ask the professionals to see if we got it right. Sarah Christensen here is your transportation engineer. Hi, thank you. So if I understand it correctly, you're curious about what's going to happen south of State Park with the potential for auxiliary lanes and any other types of improvements. Well, the plan, as I've read it, is that the buses will re-enter the traffic lane and there'll be the traffic bottleneck problems that could occur from that. I'm asking, is the commission foreclosed from investigating the possibility, not next month, but sometime in the future, but not, you know, 2035, but sometime in the next couple of years, whether they're in fact a feasible project that would actually allow a bus to travel twice as fast as cars on Highway 1. That's really where I'm going with this. Right. That could definitely be studied as a Future Tier 2 project within the overall Highway 1 program. And hopefully we secure some SB1 funding for the auxiliary lanes that are in the expenditure plan for MeasurD. That would free up MeasurD funds for future improvements such as that so we can move south. And so there's a lot of possibilities within that area. I've got a lot of ideas about, because we own those bridges now. Right. And so there's a lot we could do and I feel like we could find a really good compromise, a good cost-effective solution to get a good bang for our buck in that segment. I've taken enough time. Thank you. I'll stop my questions here. Other questions looking down here. Mr. Mullhorn. Thank you very much. So I have, first of all, this document doesn't exist in a vacuum. And if you forgive the extension of the illusion, it exists in a constellation of relationships and other documents that sort of circumscribe our decision-making. I think the first of which, and Commissioner Schiffern several meetings ago addressed this one, is how does this comport with the decisions that we made for the 2040 Regional Transportation Plan? And I ask that because in the funding assessment in the UCIS it says that allocating the funds, the UCS projects, requires shifting funds identified for projects identified in the RTP action element, which is part of AMBAG's EIR, which was certified in June. So does changing the project mix in our work plan for the 2040 RTP affect AMBAG's EIR that's already been certified? I'll try to address that one. So our Regional Transportation Plan is a programmatic level document. It doesn't provide detailed environmental review for the projects themselves. And we did provide in this updated report Appendix A, I believe, that showed that the projects that we are evaluating in this study are in the Regional Transportation Plan. Some with constrained and some with less constrained amount. Typically it's a mix of constrained and unconstrained. When projects are coming to where there's actual funding and they would be programmed, it does not matter. I mean, it provides guidance to the commission for deciding what projects would get funded, whether it's in the constrained and unconstrained, but it does not lock us in in any way. The RTP or the UCIS? The RTP. The RTP does not lock us in. So changing our work plan does not affect the certified EIR? Correct. And I can take that to the bank? We're not going to get sued on this at some point? Okay, thank you. We'll get sued, but maybe... Well, I mean, successfully counsel somebody. Okay, I have these concerns because an EIR is a very official document. The process that led to the RTP was the extensive 10-year process, created this document, and now we create this document and we're going to go around and jigger with our work plan that went through an extensive public process. Curious. Okay, so the constellation. This is a document that... Thank you. This is a document, the RTP, which is one of these planning documents that helps guide our decision-making. But it's also, like in the constellation, our relationships with other agencies. I think one important point that has sort of been touched on through the public comments is how this staff-preferred scenario affects our existing transit agency. And some people, I don't know how many of the commissioners have read it, but have seen Metro staff report that's going before their board of directors tomorrow that has an initial take on some of the assumptions and some of the project mix that's been asserted in the staff-preferred scenario. And some of the conclusions that Metro staff have reached are troubling. So not the least of which being the limited amount of transit capital and operations funding that comes into this county would become competitive between two transit agencies within the county. So what the staff-preferred scenario recommends is that we divert bus transit funding to rail transit. So there are two ways to kill a transit system. One, you increase your fares. Two, you reduce service. We've done both of those to our Metro system. So the bus transit system is already disadvantaged. What this proposal seems to do is to divert discretionary transit operations funding away from Metro to rail transit. I think that it would be interesting to know what Metro thinks about this. And I think that they should have an opportunity to formally respond to the staff-preferred scenario. We've done a great job of public outreach over the course of the past year. We've done a great job of engaging with our stakeholders over the past year. But we come to the staff-preferred scenario here, and while we're doing a good job of engaging with the public, we don't seem to be engaging with our stakeholders. These are separate agencies from the Regional Transportation Commission who make their own decisions that are dependent of our decisions here. Metro is in a special case because they are dependent upon us for a great deal of their funding. Their three main revenue sources are in many ways controlled by the RTC. So they are subject in many ways to the decisions that we make according to this document. Another question that I have in the research that I've done over the past couple of months, which isn't a lot but what are the impacts of adding a new rail transit line on bus service? And does staff report to Metro seem to indicate that there might be some conflict there? I would like to know more about that. How does this staff-preferred scenario conform with Metro's own strategic plan? So some of the projects that Metro is considering to increase their viability, things like they want to re-institute service to the San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley. That's great. They want more Watsonville routes. They want microtransit which would increase their flexibility and interoperability with some of our other systems that are already in place. And they want on-demand services, on-demand transit services. What they're proposing is a flexible system for addressing people's transit needs on the existing infrastructure. My takeaway from the overall UCIS, by the way, is that the low-hanging fruit here, the lowest-cost investment with the biggest bang for buck is bus transit. I was a little dismayed that some of the more innovative systems, so bus rapid transit light increased frequency of transit with express services were excised from scenario B. So scenario B was, sounds like everyone's preferred scenario, but we took out these investments in our bus infrastructure. So I'd like to know what Metro has to say about that, too. I'm glad that Ms. Lighthill is no longer here. She mentioned the metropolitan, the major transportation investment study from 1998 or whatever it was. That was the 20 years ago version of the UCIS. It's a very candid document. Conversational, easy to engage with. This was very academic, I think. That one I thought was very easy to engage with. But in that study from 20 years ago, they said that, or those consultants, Parsons Brinkerhoff said that passenger rail is financially infeasible. And that plan recommended bus service on a fixed guideway on the rail line, which was one of the proposals in the staff report that's going before the Metro Board tomorrow. So progressive rail. Talking about stakeholders, organizations and agencies that are dependent upon this transportation network that we have here and whose decisions are independent of the ones that we make here. Progressive rail is a private corporation. They currently own a 31 mile, 32 mile freight corridor along the rail line. There's no mention of progressive rail in this entire document. According to our Administration, Coordination and License Agreement with progressive rail, freight service on the rail line. And all other uses are secondary and subject to freight service. So how does running commuter trains on the freight easement affect progressive rail's business model? Everything that I've read has said that single track railways, on single track railways, freight and commuter rail are incompatible. There are different business practices for freight businesses to run freight on there and that they compete with these on-demand schedules of commuter rail and it makes their freight business less economically viable. There was a decision called the Stagger's Act it was a legislation in 1980 that allows train companies to make decisions that are based on their own economic interests over all other considerations. And so freight companies, the latitude to say yes or no to any other services on the rail line if it affects their business model. And the surface transportation board has oversight over those decisions anyway. And our Administration, Coordination and License Agreement with progressive rail very clearly states that any services introduced to the rail line that interfere with freight service have to both be approved by the rail operator and I don't see any of that process in the unified corridor study. Finally, I well, I'm sorry, yeah, finally Guy Preston stakeholder it's going to be his responsibility to implement whatever decision that we make. And other people have said and I know there's going to be some arguments about this but I feel very strongly that as the head of an agency, this individual whom I've never met should have the opportunity to weigh in on this as well. So to that end I mean, if it pleases the chair I would like to see this vote not on December 6th but on January 17th to allow an ant we're not making motions but share your... I won't make a motion if I have to chair. I'm telling you I'm going to hear comments from all the members. And I would like responses from Progressive Rail and Metro and Mr. Preston about what they think about the staff preferred scenario. How does it affect their plans in the county? How does it affect their business? How does it affect their strategy? I would like formal responses from each of those and if I need to make a motion I will. Just for context, I know that there's this perceived time crunch we need to hurry up and get this done, right? One of the one of the gates that we've been presented with a deadline, a drop dead deadline is that there's the California Transportation Commission wants our executive director to go up there and give a presentation in January on the outcomes of the Unified Corridor study. That meeting is on January 31st. So if we can push this decision back 23 work days to January 17th allow all these other stakeholders an opportunity to weigh in on the staff preferred scenario I think that we will make a better decision. It's only 23 days. It will still meet the deadline set by the CTC. Our new executive director will still be able to go up there and do his power point about what the UCIS is. It's not an unreasonable request. I'm not saying it's unreasonable. I'm just wanting to I told people that we hear from commissioners and we'll be ready to take some action. I'm not even necessarily in disagreement. I'm just trying to honor what I said we were going to do. Would you then schedule this vote for January 17th? Let's hear from everybody and then we'll get to whether we're going to make motions about the dates. That's what I'm asking. Well, it's no surprise that people who were acting out at the beginning of the meeting are still acting out at this part of the meeting. We heard we listened to all of you and now we're going to listen to people here at the commission. There were a number of questions there about well I perceived them as questions about the role of metro in the planning process of this document. I'm not going to go into the general because I serve on the transit board that they're going to be taking up this issue tomorrow. There were presentations. They were part of the focus groups that were part of this process. It hasn't been done outside of the metro. I can add some clarification to that if you'd like. I've definitely been working very closely with metro through this whole process, both Barrow Emerson had a number of conversations with Barrow and we feel like this rail right away is an amazing dedicated potential to have a dedicated transit facility in Santa Cruz County. That's number one. Metro and the RTC are partner agencies. We've worked together before. We'll continue to work together in the future. If the rail does come to fruition, there would need to be a redesign of the whole transit rail bus network. There's no doubt about that and being partner agencies we will be working together. We understand the potential for funding issues and how there could be some clashes but that's not the intent. We are, again, we work together to make sure that this transit network would work for our community in the most efficient way. Metro is a likely candidate to be the rail operator. That is still to be determined. They could be making many of these decisions about how this network would come together. I think there was also a question about why the BRT light was removed. I can address that. There was a substantial amount of increased frequency of service for the BRT light that was added for Scenario B that was based on Metro's input on how best to evaluate that. We did not see the much increase in the travel time or the improvement, reduction in the travel time with adding the transit signal priority and transit queue jumps. We felt like that service is definitely needed on SoCal but with having additional transit service on the rail right of way that provides a much faster transit service with stops in 10 different stations and then the bus on shoulders and eventually HOV trains for transit on Highway 1 that provides more of an express service for transit that they would be more of the main trunk lines for the transit network in the future with SoCal and Freedom obviously serving significant population but the transit travel times were just not the reduction with the signal priority was just not that great to increase the service there. Let's hear from other members. Thank you. On the 2035 preferred does that stand alone or that's in addition to all the other scenarios? That's what I want to clarify. It's not a scenario on its own. It's in addition or a follow-up to all the other scenarios. So we've developed in Step 2 scenario A, B, C and E. And then we were tasked to develop from the outcome and from the outreach a preferred scenario. And that preferred scenario took into consideration the comments plus the outputs from those scenarios and you will see it's a combination of some of the other scenarios. So it brought in elements of the other scenarios to become a preferred scenario. So if somebody voted for scenario B they would also have to vote for the preferred 2035 in order to add freight to scenario B. So I think people prefer scenario B because that's what was presented to them. Tonight there's a preferred scenario that has elements from the other scenarios. Most of the elements come from scenario B but we've taken some other ones from some of the other scenarios. So if you vote tonight I guess you would have to vote for the preferred scenario and say no, I don't like the preferred scenario, I like scenario B. But that's anybody's option to vote for. What we're recommending is the preferred scenario. Okay, that's fine. And then the other I guess small item on page 4 dash 15 under reliability and efficiency second one down AM peak hour highway 1 goes 2015 baseline it's 28 and then it goes down miles per hour to 21 for the year 2035 preferred. Is that a mistake or is that it's going to actually be slower? Can we just confirm? Yeah, reliability and efficiency on 4-15 second one down 2015 baseline 28 2035 preferred 21 miles per hour. Yeah, that's correct. So in the 2035 preferred we don't have the HOV lane in place yet at that point. So the additional traffic that happens between 2015 and 2035 would be loaded on to the freeway without that additional capacity. So there would be a reduction in travel speed from what we have today. Okay, all right. And then real quick I'll go from the Watsonville City Councilman Philippa Hernandez had to leave and I tend to agree with what the Watsonville City Council approved and I don't know if anybody here is privy to was it a unanimous vote? It was unanimous, okay. The preferred scenario presented tonight is consistent with what our Watsonville City Council resolved would be best for our city and for the county for the near term and for the future. We need highway improvements and safer streets. We need to use all three corridors for transit, not just two. Trail only does a little for Watsonville and removal of the rail line is not negotiable. The unified corridor study follows years of public input and other studies and I trust, I guess he's saying we trust its findings. Our council approved scenario B and we are pleased that the preferred scenario added auxiliary lanes and freight service as recommended. It is time to move forward to make decisions and build something. I urge the commission to move forward now with the 2035 preferred scenario and with the beyond 2035 for consideration later. Felipe Hernandez, Watsonville Councilman. Thank you. Mr. Bertrand. I have a couple of questions. I don't know if you can hear me. In terms of rail banking and the issue of landowners holding a tile to part of the rail has the RTC done any surveys to see if that's actually the case for any particular parcels? Do we know basically if there's landowners that actually own piece of the property that the rail goes over? It's not a question of whether the landowners that own a piece of the railroad property now the railroad owned the property? If part of what the railroad owned their easements then if you get rid of the track and get rid of the rail service then that property would revert to the adjoining property owners that tends to be the case. Are there areas where there are easements? Yes, there are. How many exactly? Yet. And also there are areas where there is insufficient documentation because Unipacific did not have documentation records or laws from the 1906 fires from the earthquake in 1906 because the headquarters of the rail line were in San Francisco a variety of things complex history of ownership of rail properties. We have engaged services at the approval of the commission of consultants that are helping us to sort that out for some areas of the rail line we're not working on the entire rail line yet but as the commission moves forward with projects in different sections of the rail line that does need to get sorted out. So I know that's the line segment north of Santa Cruz that we've already paid some money, right? So basically right now the RTC does not know exactly where we actually have control enough so that if we do a rail banking we can't be forced to give that property back. That's why I'm trying to get to because basically rail banking is predicated on as this memo from George said the ability to keep that property so that no one else could take it away basically from us because we're not using it for active transportation excuse me for rail freight. The RTC does not fully know how many parcels could potentially be at risk if there was rail banking. We don't know that yet. And it probably would be impossible to know that as well because it would depend on where people might see openings for potential lawsuits and see whether they could get something out of those lawsuits. So it might be impossible to fully know the full extent. Okay. The only reason why I bring it up is because the whole idea of rail banking is predicated on what I'm talking about and RTC has owned this line for a long time and basically said we can't rail bank because of this particular issue. So it seems to me it's something that's been addressed because you're putting it out there is something that we can't do because of this particular problem. So I'd like to support wholeheartedly some of the positions that Patrick Mulhorn, Commissioner Patrick Mulhorn has brought up. But I'd like to go over something that someone did say people over projects, a lady came up here and she talked about that. And I think it was the same lady that said I tried to understand I tried to understand the scenario analysis and I was going crazy and then I went back and tried to understand the data behind it and I found a lot of mistakes. So I did that too and it sort of led me to where are we actually here? So the things that have caused me the most concern is that to me what is working best in Santa Cruz and should be supported is the things we could do right now and the things that are effectively working and I'm thinking of Metro. So in public comments one of the stakeholders comments said view rail and bus transit as a system in its entirety and not too competing services. And I think that is a great statement. I wish I was there when the person said that. I really have concern that the rail line is going to suck out money from the Metro operation cost budget. That to me is a major issue. So we are not talking about two systems that are cooperating. We're talking about a system that is taking money away from something that's working and using it as something that we don't really know is going to work. So from the staff report that is going to be presented tomorrow at the Metro there's a comment here currently Metro is only able to maintain its bus service at a minimally effective level with available funding and it is acknowledged that in order to attract additional riders there is need to increase the frequency in span of existing service prior to preserving and pursuing new service. How can the Metro which is probably the most egalitarian operation we have here in terms of serving people expanded service if money is being sucked out to pay for a train that we don't even know if it's going to work. Well 3,500 people back and forth each day yes maybe. I have a problem with that. That's why I agree with Patrick. Metro is a clear stakeholder. A clear stakeholder that many in this room probably use right now. I see faces I see head shaking so I know that's right. The other issue is progressive and I have a question in scenarios C progressive is freight service only in Watsonville. I have yet to see anything about how good or how much progressive has proceeded on their claims. When I read their book it was a clear snow job as far as I can see. The book that they gave us in terms of what they were going to do for Santa Cruz I totally completely agree Watsonville freight service there if progressive can do it. I've been in bargaining positions before if someone comes to the table and says they can claim something and it's everything under the sun I say work on the thing that you most have the best chance of doing and to me that's Watsonville freight. SP Sierra and I forget the other one abandoned this freight line because it wasn't viable. It wasn't viable and we're talking about the RTC making a decision to give it back to someone SP a major network Sierra nor the in the other one I forget whatever it was called they abandoned I read some of the number excuse me I read the letter saying we do not want this because we can't make any money on it. It's aspirational to think that we're going to have something like that high school students said in his video it was a beautiful video and that's the kind of thing that sways a lot of people because you see it in a video it's aspirational I've taken trains all my life and I said this at the last city council meeting in Capitola first couple of trains when I was a kid in high school I went up to Seattle I went up to Utah I drove across the Oakland Bay Bridge and got on the train station in Oakland I had no problem much longer drive than from Capitola to the proper station which doesn't exist yet if people want to take the train to somewhere in California on a regular basis that may not be too bad of a sacrifice but when I look at the money that we'd have to make a budget to make that happen as a convenience I have a problem the main thing I said in Capitola is what I think about in terms of when I approve a budget each year I've only approved four so far but many on this council here have approved many more than I have I think in terms of competing needs the competing needs that are really important right now in Capitola is to pay for PERS we have other competing needs the county has talked about that quite a bit the city of Santa Cruz just got some more money because they can't meet their general obligations without asking the public for more money so are we going to put half a billion whatever it is into making this train work when we have these other needs in Santa Cruz one last comment one of the competing needs that Capitola has is we have a bluff a lot of people like coming to Capitola because they go up to the bluff and over the years the bluff has been falling off into the ocean the people that have the houses on the edge of that bluff want us to do a bunch of work to complete some sort of riffraff or a gun eye position building a huge wall so that the surf won't keep pounding and the bluff won't keep corroding we don't have the money to do that they would wish we did so a little bit south from the bluff work Debo Hill is and the bluff continues and guess what is on that bluff the rail line someone just came up here and talked about how can we invest in something that is going to have a foreshortened lifespan because of climate action and bluff erosion caused by climate action now it's true the rail line that is running along Park in Capitola is further away than the houses on Debo Hill but it's inevitable bill an inevitable action those are my comments thank you I just wanted to come to have a conversation of what we want to do about timing Mr. Dondaro has received information from Progressive Rail they were interested in coming and making a presentation about what they're doing and I asked not to do that because I figured if we said that we were doing a Progressive Rail as trying to sway people one way or another so I actually said let's not do a Progressive Rail presentation because I felt like that would generate the wrong kind of interest but if we're interested in that we can have them come to a meeting I think it's important because if I may briefly because I want to hear from everybody else too briefly so in scenario C we just only have freight in Watsonville and then now it's taken over to the prefurb for the whole line and that's something I can't support and I can't support especially because all the other operators we've had don't even see any viability there what I'm just saying that if we want to have a presentation for Progressive Rail they can come to our next meeting I haven't done it because every time we say the word train if the staff says train people said you're biased right and so I didn't want to care I was trying to avoid that so we could focus on the document but if we want to have that we can have that discussion they are a major stakeholder as Patrick said Ms. Kaufman-Golmes let's hope I'm a little bit briefer well I know everybody's looking to get home it's getting late I too would like to see a bit more about Metro I believe that we're going to be seeing some of this presentation we do need to be able to be cognizant of the money we're spending on the transportation modalities we currently have and I know that other areas have done this implementation between the trains and the buses I'm sure that that's part of what we're doing here is we if we move this forward then that's going to be a major focus in studying on how to facilitate that how has it worked elsewhere what resources are being balanced out between the two modalities for the transportation and how they can complement and where they are competing against each other so that's not an answer that we're going to be able to have tonight over it it certainly means that we'll have continuous dialogue about it and we have a lot of questions that will come out of it that's the point of doing the drill down further so that that can be flushed out with those details and where money's going to come from and who's going to take over what part of it all that's going to be flushed out and again we have a lot of you up here that have the interest for transportation as a whole commodity for this county that represent the RTC as well as the Metro so we're not going to give one up for the balance of the other one it will be all looked over thoroughly and those type of questions will definitely be part of what we want to have addressed and that we're not losing the services because certainly they're areas that aren't this corridor I mean Freedom Boulevard, Soquel that's not part of this rail corridor, rail corridor is only an entity of the pathways that we're looking at here as the bigger picture I do have maybe some vocabulary terms just not too familiar bus jump lane can somebody give me a definition of a bus jump lane maybe how that it's terminology I'm not familiar with great question so if buses typically is in mixed flow traffic now so in a travel lane and they get to an intersection of the signal they have to wait for the signal to go green before they can proceed and get to the bus stop what a Q jump lane does it is and it can be in two forms it can be an exclusive lane just for a bus so you basically build almost like a right turn pocket or an extra pocket as the bus approaches the signal there will be interconnectivity so it's basically communication between the bus and the signal that the bus will actually turn the signal green for the bus and stop the traffic so the bus can actually bypass the back of the queue of the cars waiting at the signal and continue and there's a bus only signal that says bus only and the bus continues through if you cannot do this just for a bus you can actually do it for a right turn pocket as well it's a little bit more inefficient but the right turn pockets have a right turn on right after stop so they typically empty out so you can push the bus into that lane as well and get the same effect green light bus goes before the car so you give the transit priority to the bus okay so that's helpful in moving buses because my concern is you get them off the auxiliary and they're sitting in the same stoplight everybody else is and how does that actually make it more efficient for getting buses moved along that option for the corridor I had you know some numbers in terms of volume stats on whether are they current numbers or are they the futuristic numbers there was 150,000 trips reduced in the mod B plan and it's based on today's costs or today's counts or future counts can we get an idea of where it's related to time so our forecast scenarios we had our 2015 baseline then for each scenario and each forecast we would have given you a 2035 no build so when we're talking about our reductions it's generally between our scenario 2035 number and the no build 2035 number so that's okay and again everybody is looking at this is what can we do urgently what can we do that's going to take us to the 2035 number and I know that when our new director comes in it's going to be a priority for them for him for Guy to go ahead and look through everything he's got the almost 30 years of experience doing this and will be able to educate us even further from his perspective coming at it this is a fresh look on some suggestions and ideas and we certainly want to make sure that we can account and accommodate that and figure out to you know better timeline I mean I know that these are sort of squishy numbers 2027 2035 you know we're all saying let's hurry up and see what we can do and I think that with moving this forward with the adoption we'll be able to see a bit more of that work effort take place to be a bit more accurate on where the timeline looks for these projects and the funding sources as well as the cost factor because again there's so much speculation there and anybody can sort of cherry pick one end or the other on the cost or not cost and the frequency and the not frequency the volume and not we know we need we have a ways to go to cover on those items there I had I think sorry the EIR for the highway one it was 2017 that we've had the EIR but we don't have it finalized yet and every time I've had a meeting I've been hearing that we should know soon do we have a final EIR for highway one we're still on schedule to deliver it in December December at our meeting in December for I can't say it will be at our meeting but sometime before Christmas so maybe Santa will bring that for us huh it'll be it'll be yeah quite a treat yes I'm sure it's a big relief because then that allows us with what we are trying to be working on as anticipating some of these projects because keep in mind that people look at this as it's forever it's too far out there but we're not going to see anything on highway one for the next six years from based on the materials that I'm reading here I don't um but but again we have the EIR still to go through and I know we've gone a couple years out already because of measure D um 2024 I mean when is the first when are we going to see the first car on the first new auxiliary lane what year does the construction begin well it's planning to begin 2024 the auxiliary lanes between so come 41 2020 that's a year a little bit okay so we no you're saying 2020 is when the construction would begin yes the way she said it it sounded like about that 2020 we're okay we're close here so what I was looking at is the actual vehicle on that auxiliary lane for completion is still 2024 which my number is still six years correct construction would probably be a year and a half to two years at the most so 2022 is when construction would be done so community folks 2022 before you see anything on one based on these auxiliary lanes um I know that there's other types of improvement projects but the big impact of we have six auxiliary lanes on this wishlist three of which are measure D and we're not going to see before 2022 I would say I might want to remind the commission that Miss Christensen presented to us a way to speed up the work on highway one by starting the engineering work before the EIR was complete but still legal we we began the design at risk during environmental in order to cut 68 months off of the schedule yeah so the and as EIR it's been as long as I've been in office we've been trying to get this done and we're actually in the final lap assuming we don't get sued and there's some injunction but you know that's we're moving that we are as close as we've ever been to getting this done that's correct yes so bear with us audience we're about there and we also have don't we have the EIR for the north coast trail project as well I just want to know is it completed so that okay so let us talk about what takes us of the north end to finish if we don't have that completed yet either we're working on the administrative draft of the final EIR which we're planning to bring to the commission at the beginning of next year so that means because funding happens to do with we have to do get something ready for 2020 on the north end but that's also subject to this EIR separate EIR and remember we're starting construction on the city of Santa Cruz segment 7 in 2019 we hoped it could be starting construction on the north coast on 2020 I'm not sure when we're going to be doing the Watsonville piece and then we'll also have this EIR done of the highway and be moving this along we're going to be doing a lot of projects by 2020 well and so everybody will then need to be patient with the cone zones and making sure all that goes so that you know that we're actually making progress and then people will be frustrated that they see the progress happening so I'm just wanting to make sure that we have a better understanding in the audience that it's government process we all have to be patient not everything's going to happen overnight and we will certainly do our best to be fiscally responsible up here as commissioners when these reports come to us and really really want to do the drill down on the type of questions the hard questions to be answered and be able to address a lot of the concerns that this community has brought forward so these are some of my basic questions on this thanks for the time and we all know patients is going to be a virtue here for whatever we're putting together here thank you this brown I'll be really brief I just want to my questions were mostly answered I shared some of the questions that commissioner Rodkin and commissioner Mulhern raised in particular about the question of the HOV lanes in addition to auxiliary lanes and the idea of then getting to four lanes in some places which I can't say that I personally support at the moment particularly with the kind of limited information we have given the late inclusion of that but I also wanted to just say that I have concerns about the potential competition with metro or under mining metro funds but for buses given that we are placing such a high priority on getting buses moving more quickly I think it's important that we that we really allow metro to weigh in and really take it very seriously how the rail line transferring funds or shifting funds may affect that so I just wanted to put those items out there let the public know those are my big concerns at the moment and we'll see whether we move forward on the 6th or the 17th depending on I don't have a real strong opinion on that I think Mr. Dondara, do you want to respond to something? Well, yes since the issue of the fear of sucking funds from metros budget keeps coming up I would just like to refer the commissioners to page 101 in the plan that's dated November 2018 I don't know if you have it with you but jot this down please page 101 the first bullet I'd like to read it funding identified in the financial element of the 2040 RTP for Santa Cruz metros ongoing capital and operations is not assumed to be available for UCS rail projects though some UCS projects or expanded bus services are eligible for some of those revenue sources and are assumed in the UCS so the only UCS projects that assume use of metro funds are bus projects our staff work very closely with metro staff this was not there was no hidden agenda here or deception involved between our staffs they've been working very well together I've checked in frequently with Grayson and Ginger and Barrow and I think the communications have gone well so I really take issue with any statement that suggests that this plan has somehow going to dismember metro my other comment is if rail service is ever to be funded what you will have to take to the voters is not a rail program but a transit program because we know that metro is still rebuilding its bus fleet and you will have to expand your bus services to really give this county good complete transit service all across the county one of our guests our first guest speaker Jared Walker mentioned the fact that he was surprised at how thinly spread our transit service was if that's really the goal of this commission that's what you will take to the voters not just a rail but a fully funded transit program and it will probably have to be run by one agency that's the way it's done successfully in other cities and I think that's eventually what will happen here right now there's this tension but I think you can grow beyond that I don't want to divert the discussion to this so I appreciate the factual information about working together and I know metro is going to be talking about this at their next meeting and their analysis of the UCIS and I know that Barrow Emerson has put together some really good information and it will be a robust discussion I'm trying to get to everyone and I have a direct rebuttal to what Mr. John Davis said I believe the concern is about the new revenues coming in from SB1 and the new policy that the RTC adopted last December that gives us much more discretion about how these transit monies are going to be spent and I think that their concern is that the RTC will decide to direct those new revenues to our preferred projects I mean the staff report says that it raises their concerns about what we're going to do with this money George these are long standing concerns coming from metro it's not news to us I would say something about this please the person who lost the vote last meeting trying to get $300,000 for the local jurisdictions that was recommended by staff and only being able to get three votes not including yours to take the money from metro this board is way overrepresented by metro and in fact metro always gets what it wants on this board it gets 83% of TDA and even that little $300,000 that I tried to shift to the local jurisdictions was I lost on a nine to three vote I think it was so the notion that somehow this this body would prefer rail over metro this doesn't make any sense to me the metro representatives are extremely active in supporting financing for metro in my view ultimately what really makes sense if rail turns out to be feasible is for metro to run it is the way to get an integrated system and the state rail plan money is money that would only be available for rail and I think what it does is it offers an opportunity to have additional money for transit service in the county that would go beyond just the money that can go to metro so I think this is really a false issue one because metro is more than able to take care of itself in terms of assuring that any money that it can get its hands on it will get its hands on and two the potential funding for rail capital improvements and operations will be coming from alternative funds and the only way that the commission would divert some of those money that money funds that it has control over is in a jointly run integrated system which really is the only way that rail could be feasible and it has to be in a way that would be supportive of the bus system they're not competitive they're really to succeed they need to collaborate and cooperate and if we ever get to the point of being able to fund passenger rail if the commission decides to keep that option open then it's going to be in an integrated way so I look forward to hearing from what Metro has to say but I think I hear it every time we have a commission meeting given the you know the fact that the commission has many of its members are also on Metro and take and have a real deep commitment to the bus system as has this commission as a whole so I just don't think that's a that's a from my perspective it's beating a dead horse to try to get to try to make it seem like somehow there's something nefarious going on here in terms of rail stealing from Metro I'm sorry Patrick but I want to avoid getting into I would like to focus on just like I asked the public to focus on the unified corridor investment study let me go on and if I can go on and I want to make sure to hear from everybody who hasn't got a chance to speak so Mr. Schifrin if there's if there's something you want to talk about the UCIS I'm can I just say thanks for the clarification and the additional information I just wanted to follow up on what Commissioner Mulherne was talking about in terms of the EIR and regional transportation plan because I think it really it's important to remember that the UCS is a planning document I mean there's no money to build rail now there's no money to do HOV now we don't know if we'll ever be able to get the money what the unified corridor study does is sort of look at well in the future what might be possible to do and what might we want to do and most of what we want to do is already in the regional transportation plan any changes will show up in the next regional transportation plan it seems like we're doing them every time we turn around so we will be having another regional transportation plan we will be having another EIR the question I want or the request I want to make to staff is when they come back for a decision on the unified corridor study they talk about the CEQA issues because the regional transportation plan has an EIR done for it there's a real discussion about what action are we taking and will that action be subject to CEQA if what we're doing is really a planning study well planning studies are exempt if what we're doing is making decisions that could lead to effects on the environment I think that leads to potential CEQA problems so I think we need to get a clarification from staff on what's going on I wanted to respond to some of the other concerns that were raised both by public and commissioners in terms of progressive rail didn't we just approve their contract last spring June actually how quickly can we expect them to be doing anything and it's all under the possibility that we're going to end the contract if the commission decides not to have rail service that could be the end of the contract with progressive rail the company to be doing a whole heck of a lot even in Watsonville I think is not reasonable we've got to give them a couple of years and if in fact it's as infeasible as it's turned out with the other contractors then it will go away and we'll have to deal with whether we want to try to convince the service transportation board to allow freight service to force us to keep trying to do it on the other hand if I remember the contract it does provide the option for passenger rail service and working with progressive rail to get that so I think it's kind of a false issue to think that because we have freight on the line we can't have passenger rail service there are ways to work it out and in our contract we can't wait that in terms of some of the environmental concerns about the bluffs et cetera I think those have to be studied and what staff is recommending is that we go forward with design for potential passenger rail service and with environmental review and that's when the kinds of climate change issues will be looked at in a systematic way and I think that's that's the appropriate time to do that if the commission decides I want to keep the rail line the other point I wanted to make there was a good run down I want to thank the commission of where we are in the various projects but one was left out and the one that was left out is the project to build the trestle over the San Lorenzo River the plan estimated to cost $9 million because they wanted to replace the old bridge and as a result of county city and commission and the land trust a study was done and that that project is the bid was awarded by the Santa Cruz City Council on Tuesday and the expectation that the trestle will be widened over the San Lorenzo river the completion by the end of May by the summer it only costs $2 million which is not anything to shake a stick at but it's a significant and it sort of says estimating future course is a dangerous business in this case it went down and let me just say that segment of the rail trail because it connects the east side of Santa Cruz with the boardwalk probably will get more pedestrian and bicycle use than any other segment frankly because huge numbers of people are squeezing through the very narrow trestle now and it's a very popular it will be a very popular segment so the final thing I want to say is really a question for staff and it has to do with the Capitola trestle and I'm wondering I don't really remember do we have a contract now for an engineering study for the Capitola trestle yes it's the same company that's doing the yes or no does that contract include looking at the possibility of cantilevering a trail along that no we already did that we have a written study of that we did that in an earlier study the timber trestles are not designed to have cantilevered structures off on one side is there excuse me for not just shutting up but that's what we were told about the sailor and the river trestle as well it can't be done different structure but I'm just wondering is there a written report that states what you're saying Elise do you want to take that we didn't have a specific report done on that but basically when the master plan was being done for the trail at that time we had engineers on contract taking a look at the bridges and so we asked them for the benefit of that plan to also take a look at the bridge and see what you can't leave her off of and they determined that for the most part most of the bridges you could not that same thing about the San Lorenzo river bridge which is why they recommended it to be $9 million can we vote for $50,000 to look at this variation that was what I'm asking about it's not to look at whether a trail could be there but whether the trestle is just going to fall down the $50,000 extra was to look at the possibility of designing one bridge that can handle both the trail and the rail so it's rebuilding the whole bridge that would be a bridge replacement I made that motion and it didn't specify it could only be a replacement it opened up the question of what it would take to make that bridge work for a rail and trail and I assumed maybe $50,000 is not enough to do a complete study but we didn't say you can't look at that other issue I think that is still open-ended I think we know the answer to that you may know the answer but it wasn't the motion that stopped that and let me just say engineers disagree I've seen that a number of times firms say they can't be done another engineering firm comes around and says we can do it for we will ask them for any possibilities of getting both rail and rail that's all I wanted to pursue so I think those are my questions thank you very much for your indulgence Mr. McPherson thank you for making me last unless you want Caltrans we've got a couple more anyway I want to thank the I want to thank the staff consultants and the staff too especially Ginger, Dicar and Grace just sticking with this and putting it together and even though I'm paralysis by more analysis is not always the right approach I think everybody agrees I hope they do that we should wait and I too being one of those metro folks that is on this board as well I do think that we have to have a full vetting of that tomorrow we will in the metro meeting tomorrow morning but I just think that there was some push to have these discretionary funds shifted and that didn't happen as was mentioned and so I mean that's what I think we're a little afraid of and I really appreciate that the RTC and Metro is working probably as well as it has in many many years but I just thinking about this whole we're talking about 3500 passengers on the rail and I'm just thinking that we have in Metro 5 million passengers trips a day and that's 13,700 a day something we don't want to you know, weaken that and I know we're not going to get in an argument between Metro and RTC but we really have to make sure we protect our complete transportation network here and I think that is being done when we're having a hybrid scenario that incorporates various elements is the right approach so I do appreciate that Mr. Johnson Thank you chair I had a question I guess Kimberly Horn you said one of your goals is to relieve transportation demand is that a fair statement you said one of the goals of this whole study is to relieve transportation demand because there's just no more capacity is that right? So will a train do that will it relieve transportation demand to the extent on Highway 1 it'll flow freely or will there still be gridlock? The train does not function on its own to relieve demand the train is part of a bigger system and that's what this corridor does that's why it was an integrated corridor you cannot single out a single because I can also say that the bus does not the freeway if you build the freeway then it's not going to solve it So like the smart train it was sold as something that's going to relieve congestion but it didn't happen there was still gridlock on Highway 101 correct? That's correct So I guess it's a false premise to think that because you build a train system an operating system it's all of a sudden going to magically solve the gridlock on Highway 1 that's one of the reasons why some of the people here are talking about and accusing this commission of not talking about solutions of not talking about real things and real problems and addressing them with the lackality and a sense of priority and a sense of urgency so I guess when I hear here's another example that bothered me just a little bit that every intersection that you explore and transform is going to be dedicated not to people who drive cars but to people who walk, ride bikes and transit Did I hear you correctly? No, if you improve the intersection there will by default also be improvements for cars because they travel through the intersection but you got to make sure because our typical history is about let's do it all for cars and not look at bikes and pets and transit Again, the transportation system it's not typical because we just we just transformed the intersection at Mount Herman and Scott's Valley Drive and there are we actually prioritize some of the things that will help so saying that is not really a correct statement is it? If you go look at the CIPs you will see many intersections have been identified because of level of service and making the level of service better for cars One of the things that I think in general, thank you for that I guess it was throw that said simplify, simplify, simplify and what I see here and it started very early and one of the reasons why I didn't favor measure D is that there were 15 different buckets and actually just six five to be all things for all people okay you know, we keep talking about fiscal responsibility and be able to finance things and so forth but we may be able to talk about how our staff gets along with Metro but there's a limited amount of funds and a limited number of passengers and they compete against each other and it's not just projecting that this is going to happen it's been proven in many other places that they compete against each other and degrade both and there's not enough, especially in a limited population like we have to support both yet we want to forge ahead it's a little bit like going to a restaurant and you have ten dollars in your pocket but you order fifteen things off the menu and hoping that somebody might be the person next to you is going to help pay for those things or some government agency is going to come and pay for the bill it's not realistic in my opinion so when people are frustrated I think it has to do with the whole concept that Measure D promised a lot but one of the things that left out was timing okay it didn't mention the fact that we were talking about 2027 or 2035 or 2050 or whatever it just said these things are going to happen again so when people talk out here about the frustration of not being able to drive their car or move their family or do all the things that we're supposed to be able to do in a modern society and then we also get people who say driving cars is terrible I'm not going to do it again you don't have to raise your hand but just think about if you drove a car here or took a bus nobody did right the reason they don't because of convenience and the same thing is going to happen with the state rail plan you can have a state rail plan that connects Santa Cruz to Pajaro to Salinas and so forth but aren't people move within our county they take their kids to soccer games they go shopping businesses use trucks to do construction on houses people operate on convenience and what I fear is that transportation wise we have this big round peg and we're trying to fit into this big square hole and we continually do that and we're saying well it's only going to be 450 or 600 million dollars or whatever to do this train thing but the reason they're frustrated is that in 2016 we probably had I don't know 38-40 meetings we've talked about highway 1 maybe 2 or 3 times but we've talked about the train and this and that you know 50 times on all sorts of agendas so it's a little bit misdirected and that's why I'm going to quote Mr. Dandera I'm going to quote you because you did send out a missive here you said others suggest the RTC is rushing to make a decision all this can be expected for those who disagree with the draft recommended scenario as they want more time to lobby you to change course more time to discredit the integrity of the study and more time to mobilize social media to whip up resistance well I just heard from my colleague here he had real questions Bertrand had real questions and Metro has real questions and that's what we're talking about so help me understand why people who might have real questions and don't quote want to rush this through why are they being made out to be somebody who just wants to rush things and mischaracterize what we're trying to do here as a commission I do because you know this isn't a brief if you're going to say something because I'm trying to focus on the UCIS I mean that right yeah so my point is that nobody is up here trying to rush anything rush is not really in the vocabulary of this commission because we what we are doing is trying to I think we're trying to weave ourselves through a complicated situation in which we have limited dollars we have risks and reward and people are trying to just trying to find facts that kind of help us come to an informed decision so you know again I think that we're in the solution if we really want to be we're in the solution of having a highway that works a bus system that integrates with that highway system and a trail that doesn't cost you know millions and hundreds of millions of dollars and again getting back to throw simplify a little bit and use the things that actually work and you know if we do that we have a better chance of success instead of just spreading ourselves with the staff with the commission and with our funding that nothing succeeds so do I support this preferred scenario no I don't but maybe after a little bit of time maybe with a little bit more information I might but I'm not going to be accused of you know rushing and not wanting to rush something I think that we do need more information and that's why I think if my colleague here makes the motion I'll second it because I think we do need more time thank you I just had one or two questions and I had a couple statements just one thing I know that bike Santa Cruz County had asked in a letter about getting some numbers on protected bike lanes at least in my cursory look because I just got this revised UCIS it still looks like it says buffered lanes the striping are we going to get numbers for protected bike lanes so we it's a fact that protected bike lanes provide a safer mean to travel and you will get increased ridership in looking at Soquel and Freedom you cannot put protected bike lanes anyway if you have multiple driveways and you have protected bike lanes you need to gap everywhere so physically it does not work so what you tend to do is you put in a striped buffer it makes it easier for in and out if you have a long section or a long block where you don't have driveways and you have the roadway with protected bike lanes are perfect you're going to end up in certain sections where Soquel just does not have the right of way where you don't cannot put a buffer or you can you won't be able to protect the bike lane either so that buffer is maybe going to go away and you end up with a striped bike lane I think so for ease of implementation right now is to look at how you can easily implement this but for future planning as any redevelopment occurs along Soquel and Freedom thoughts should be given about obtaining property from those developers so that you can put in a protected or a buffered bike lane depending on the access locations the driveways and the ability to fit the bikes facilities in Soquel with property well I'm not a transportation expert but I I'm convinced from talking to bicyclists that protected bike lanes are really make a difference and I'll check with my public work staff to confirm your analysis I hope you're wrong the other question I had about you is in the preferred scenario it talks about ramp metering and auxiliary lanes but as my colleagues have pointed out limited number of funds if we if we were trying to figure out where to make the investment would it be ramp metering or the extra three segments of the auxiliary lanes or is the great question so ramp metering so ramp metering there's actually two different elements so I would it would be really hard to say which one is going to give you the best impact unless you do a very detailed analysis and that's something that Calta and Stepik does my gut feel says that the auxiliary lanes are going to give you the bigger bang for your buck because you moving all the weaving that you have on the main line off from the main line so you can get throughput the function of that ramp metering is totally different it limits the rate at which you allow traffic to join the freeway so there's added benefit in that just up front tell you which one is better it's going to be hard right now what you're saying is you have to make a decision on what's more important to you and what's going to give you technically maybe the quicker benefit they're looking for quickly can you build it and ramp metering also creates some other issues too and if you do ramp metering now and you don't have capacity on the freeway so now it's congested it doesn't help if you ramp metering right now because you still can get on right so try to get the main line moving okay I appreciate that and I had I'm going to offline I'll talk to staff about the BRT light and the reason for taking that out of the preferred scenario I don't want to get into that now because I think it's a detailed discussion but I it was less attractive to me to take that out but I want to understand it more I won't we won't get into a discussion about it now you know this study is supposed to give us some information we have the preferred scenario we may choose to move some pieces around on that preferred scenario we might choose to take some things out that's in the end it's a staff recommendation and we as the commission are going to make the final decision and so that's why we have these discussions and we take this testimony because in the end we're going to vote our name is going to be on that motion and how we vote on it and I just want to make that clear to everyone here you don't have to stand up there do what my colleague did so I just I want to remind people that it's the ultimately the commission's decision about this and we're going to take the but we do with everything we're going to take the expert advice from our staff we're going to assess it and we're going to make a decision that's going to be the best as possible the discussion about Metro we've talked about that quite a bit there's a people are very interested in and supporting Metro I too am interested in supporting Metro and to be clear for some of the advocates here is their recommendation also includes not giving up the transit option on the rail line and as I understand the recommendation it's to do the alternative analysis which the staff has suggested we were going to do as what would be our next step in this so they may not completely match up I won't pretend like I could say with the greatest clarity but it gives you an idea that transportation experts are saying don't lose your transit option on your corridor and if you're going to make a decision you really need to look at all the alternatives and both the RTC staff and the Metro have some version of that I think that's important to note because while there might be disagreement on some parts of it there's a lot of clarity about the overall vision of how to use our rail corridor we're going to we always talk a lot about bridges but what's in the recommendation is very much in keeping with Measure D about the trestle and capitol there was a disingenuous campaign that somehow asserted that the train would somehow we would lose the trestle and there's always been money in this measure to repair the capitol trestle and this commission has directed staff to spend money to figure out how you can accomplish both things and so sometimes the rhetoric is much different than the reality we saw that with that campaign for sure and so what Measure L told us is depending on how you look at it and everybody depending on which side you're on will debate what it really meant and what it told about it but it's part of a larger discussion about transit in Santa Cruz County and how we want to move people around success is defined different ways people have said don't spend money on the rail line not that many people will use it I can make a commencing case why spend a half billion dollars on highway one with HOV lanes six minutes so is that a good investment one of the things that we put in our regional transportation plan in 2014 is travel time reliability because one thing you get with a fixed system is you get reliability we know that that train is going to get from Santa Cruz to Watsonville we have a pretty assured time that it's going to take and if you care about that if that's your measure of success then that's a good thing if that's not your measure of success if your lifestyle doesn't want it if you don't ever want to think about a train if you want to stick to your car and you want to deal with the unknowing of what your travel time is going to be then of course you want to put money in the highway so that's why we try to in these scenarios to take a look at different pieces and why our regional transportation plan tried to take a look at different measures of success because we all might some of us might define equity or the environment or travel time reliability or congestion relief it all means something different we're a diverse community and I don't think that we will all agree on one thing and I think that's a great a transportation system that meets multiple needs and I think the success of measure D says that if we look at a multi-multi-future that that is what people are interested in supporting and we could debate about whether they support the train or the bus or the car or the bike or the pedestrian but that was a recipe for success is looking at all those pieces and the UCIS I think about where to move forward now depending on what part of your argument is are we rushing or not some people here said tonight we don't rush anything we're stalling as if we haven't done anything on things like the highway that people complain that we haven't we've owned the rail line for six years why haven't we built the entire trail and put the train in yet these are all things that people assume will happen just like that it only took us 20 years to buy the line right and so we bought the line we approved through an environmental process a trail plan that won awards we are moving forward with the EIR on the highway and as I mentioned earlier we are weeks away from that next step in the process and that we are now talking about dates in which we actually might start building things so it's frustrating because we all want everything today but we are moving forward in Measure D actually put money we got projects in every one of our jurisdictions which are happening we have service on the metro because of Measure D so Measure D is already getting people moving here in Santa Cruz County we have big projects and those projects have to go through the California Environmental Quality Act process and as soon as we can get that process done and some of these other issues we can actually start construction I think it's going to be important for us to think about what are the most important pieces of this if people feel like we are rushing and we need to move it to a meeting in January I'm not opposed to that but if you think there will be any greater clarity about it if you have to read the documents and you have to make your own opinion and you have to ask the questions you don't have to wait to ask those questions here at the meeting you can also talk to staff and try to get some of these questions answered we could be ready on December 6 to discuss this commission about whether we want to wait to January 17 I think it's and I'm willing to go with the will of the commission I have been in contact with Guy Preston he is busy reading all of our past documents he has a stack in his office that he's trying to catch up with only 20 years of work that we've done with the ground running when he gets here but I think if you look at what transportation experts have been talking about some of the big issues and this commission I would be surprised if somehow he looked at it incredibly different because every transportation expert that we've had in front of this commission have said some variation of the same thing we want to keep transit on the corridors that we can't give that up so I look forward to the continued discussion Mr. Rockin they will be brief comments to add about responses to the audience I wanted to start by thanking the audience for the tone of the conversation very different than when we started this conversation there were still huge differences about what we ought to do but people were respectful of each other I don't take that for granted when people feel so passionately about an issue just some very quick comments several people talked about the passenger train as if it's going to be a diesel train like the Cal train or something that runs to San Francisco I'm not answering the question of whether we'll have a train but if there's a train it's not going to be a big hunkin diesel train pulling 15 cars it's going to look more like what that guy did the high school guy did with his video or some kind of a tram some sort of a smaller train or something so the concerns that there's going to be the passenger service is going to be some major diesel train that's going to shake the foundation of every house that goes by is not that's not a reasonable fear at this point whether we should have the train we'll have that discussion and get further into it secondly Patrick raised questions about the compatibility of freight and passenger service I just want to say there's no question that modern train systems even on a single line with some additional pass buys automated services and so forth there's not a technical problem having freight and passenger on the same line that's not an issue at all I'd like the staff to answer is Patrick's question about the ability of the rail operator to stop to thwart passenger service and we've had some answers in the closed session and stuff but in open documents some kind of a written response to what extent do they have the ability if assuming they have a primary interest in freight service of thwarting the passenger dreams that people who want passenger service perhaps more than freight service we need a clear answer to that do they in fact have the ability to run us around and stop us from having passenger service if they wanted to I don't know if they wanted to do so but if they wanted to do so do they have a legal ability to do it I'd like the answer to that question in a clear way my earlier understanding was in the closed sessions without getting into the details what was discussed there that's not a scenario that's going to happen and John talked about this as well how come nothing got done on the rail quarter for the last 10 years well we didn't have any money measure D had not been approved so you had no way to spend any money even for the trail much less a larger project more importantly we were in the middle of the second worst recession in U.S. history and so the fact that there was no money to do anything is why that didn't get built not because there was a lack of will or stalling or dragging our feet or we're incompetent or something but that's not the evidence of it the people who spoke against doing the induced traffic problem which I believe is the case every expert that we brought here told us nothing you can do will stop congestion every one of them they were very very clear about it nothing you can do will stop congestion what you can do is give people alternatives John suggested the importance of knowing how long it takes and so forth there's other issues about it but I want to say to the people who are against induced traffic and don't want to support the auxiliary lanes I think we should stop that part of the project there's in addition to a technical question I certainly believe in induced traffic I don't think that those lanes are going to improve the traffic situation for many very many years before it looks just like it does now and that's what the statistics show us over time it's going to rebuild again but there's a political reality that you have to deal with and not have passed without auxiliary lanes in it it would have gone down in flames we'd have no money for anything that anybody wants a bike trail or anything else that's going on and so I know that's hard to take look at the facts, look at the science I understand the facts and the science and I understand we could spend another 20 years with no money to do anything for public transportation so I bit the bullet and decided I'll live with these auxiliary lanes I don't believe in them, I don't think they're really going to fix stuff but I think you have to respect the fact that we make these decisions and we were not successful, we tried to do something that would not involve that kind of situation, we did polling did a bunch of studies to figure out can we pass this thing, because I wanted to do that can we do this without doing anything to improve the number of miles people are driving alone in their cars and the answer is you couldn't get it passed in this county, it would have gone down in flames and we wouldn't have this meeting we would have no plans and nothing else going on so that's just political life it's unfortunate, somebody once said it's very cynical but that the way things get done is politics is the art of getting morally indifferent people to do good things for bad reasons I mean it's very cynical but there's a political reality to these things if you're going to try and do something in the community I have to make sure that I can put something out there that people who completely disagree with me think still works for them even though they don't share my views I was in city council for 26 years, I got a pretty good sense that you have to try and figure out what you can do that actually will work that makes me a pragmatist and I think that's sort of necessary in political life the most important thing that I want to say is that I really do want to have this progressive rail thing addressed what is the Patrick's question about it like could they in fact wake up tomorrow morning decide they want freight service and they could just kill the passenger part of this whole thing and we couldn't stop them and they have the legal ability to do that and I'd like to know the answer to that question in a definitive way and I think the public has a right to know that answer so that's the one question I really want to leave staff with before we come back to our next meeting thank you now given the hour I want to see if we can get a motion Mr. Mulhorn thank you so much so I think I've been keeping track of questions here Commissioner Schifrin sort of clarified what my concerns were about the RTP whether it's a planning document or a project document is it subject to CEQA is that about what you said no there are two kinds of documents that are subject to CEQA there's a programmatic kind of a document which is a planning document a policy document and then there are specific projects like a building the key question with CEQA is are there potential significant effects on the environment as a result of the decision that's made about the project and in this case it's a question of is this study a project under CEQA and if it is potentially a project under CEQA does it need what kind of environmental review does it need is it exempted under CEQA does it need environmental review and I think those are just questions I would hope staff would come back with answers to so policies like general plans like the RTP those kinds of documents are subject to CEQA whether this the University of Florida study is or not is the question so question one the second question from Mr. Rotkin will limit our efforts to initiate commuter rail I would also like to hear what progressive rail's opinion is of the staff preferred scenario how that affects their business plan I would also like to hear a formal response from Metro on how the staff preferred scenario affects their business plan and their plan for operations in the future and I guess by this point Mr. Press will be around so he can provide his own input but in order to allow for all of these decisions and information to be produced I'm hoping that we can come back on January 17th and have this information provided to us so that we can make a more informed decision and I mean to imply that I'm not being unfairious at all about any of these processes I just feel that these are outstanding issues that I would hope to have answered before I make a billion dollar decision and so that's my motion if we could return on the 17th with these questions answered please we don't have to wait to the 17th to get the answers we want them by the time we vote on this on the table is there a second and I want to make a comment is there a second second from McPherson so motion by Malheur and seconded by McPherson now we have discussion real quick yeah we're just basically putting it off is that correct until the 17th no I'm asking questions and I'm hoping that they can answer them in a 23 work day period that's fine putting that down I just wanted to clarify it and I did want to make where I'm coming from if we did not purchase the rail line about seven years ago we wouldn't be having any discussions on a pedestrian trail we wouldn't be having discussions on bicycles we wouldn't be having a train discussion so the importance of the train on that rail line is a significant piece that we have to address and that's why we're having so much trouble finding out what the priorities are but we did purchase a rail line seven years ago and that's a key part to what South County and Watsonville wants that they want to be connected to the rest of the county with a train thank you and if we didn't buy the rail line we would just argue about the highway now we have something else to argue about but I appreciate your point we can pick each section does anyone want to speak directly to the motion of waiting until January 17th to make our decision or make our motion on the Unified Corridor Investment Study with the additional information that's fine I want to try to get people to speak directly to it thank you we can get that addressed even in the December and at the December time then we would have a better feel for how Guy feels on comfort level of taking a vote then or for January and it could very well likely be January but I still think that we don't need to wait until January to get those things answered Mr. Rockin I just have a piece of information for people I have a class my last class that I teach on December 6th at the time of this meeting so I have a great interest in waiting until January 17th for this decision you should take that in mind when you decide how you want to vote on this motion half the crowd now wants to vote on December 6th Mr. Schifrin and then Mr. Bertrand initially I was wanting to support the staff recommendation which was essentially to come back on December 6th and consider their preferred scenario but I think I will support the motion because I do think that there are enough commissioners who would like a little bit more time I don't think I'll support going beyond that because I think you know those who may not like the decision will be afraid that they won't like the decision would like us never to make it and so I think it's important that we do make the decision I think the questions that were asked are reasonable I think they probably could be answered by December 6th but since there is a motion on the floor from other commissioners a number of commissioners do want to wait until the 17th I will support the motion Mr. Bertrand I'll support the motion I'd like to point out there's two commissioners that are not here so I'd like to have them present at that time not here boy that's a that puts it over you're going to go check out second bite at the apple come on I assume it'll be a friendly amendment but I'd also like to have as much information as we can get it won't be definitive about the issue of the right of way on the rail and what would happen if we were to give up the rail line in terms of like whether land would revert to property owners that lie along the track so I know we cannot get definitive because ultimately we'll only find that out when somebody seizes and takes seven years to get to the U.S. Supreme Court but I don't know enough about how much land even vaguely looks like it might be a threat that would be helpful information when we make our decision as well we did cover a lot of these issues in closed session in the past so we can figure out what it is we can share you don't want to give away your complete legal position so I think we have a motion on the table to get some additional information and come back on the 17th when we will act on the unified quarter investment study recommendations all in favor signify by saying aye and he opposed motion carries unanimously thank you for coming out and sticking with us