 I think we are ready. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Happy Friday. Thanks. No rain. Maybe some sunshine. We will see. Welcome to the February 23rd Metro Board meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order and ask for a roll call. Director Brown here. Director Downey here. Director Dutra here. Director Cull and Terry Johnson present. Director Cone here. Director Lynn here. Director McPherson will be absent today. Director Nusa present. Director Paygler here. Director Keros Carter will be absent today. Director Rockin here. Exefficio Director Northcutt here. Exefficio Director Risquit here. Thank you. We have four. Thanks. So announcements for today. Today's meeting is being broadcasted by Community Television of Santa Cruz County. And we do have language line services available to buy Spanish interpretation for oral communications or any other agenda item that's needed. If you could please translate that for us. Thank you for being here. Good morning, board. My name is Hector. And if anyone who needs Spanish interpretation services, please, on anything on the agenda, please let the board know so that I be at the assistance. Hello, my name is Hector. I am a member of the community. And if anyone needs Spanish interpretation services, please let the board know so that I be at the assistance. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we will move to agenda item four, which is approval of the board officers and committee appointments. So that is in your packet. There is one slate. So let me see if there are questions or comments by board members. And then I'll take it out to public comment. You should also point out people could have a slate. Oh, thank you. So this is the time that if there is a second slate, please bring it forward. So let me ask that. Is there another slate? Hey, are there questions or comments on the slate before you? All right, I'll take it out to public comment. Is there anyone in the public that wishes to comment on agenda item four, which is the board officers and committee appointments? All right, I'll bring it back to forward. I move approval of the proposed slate. Like it. All right, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, I'm going to pass it out to our new chair. Thank you very much. All right, we will move on to item five, board of directors comments. And I will start by making a comment thanking our now former board chair, Deborah Callan-Fordy-Johnson, for her work in leading this board in the last year. Thank you so much for all that you've done for us. And it's been my pleasure. Any additional board of directors comments today? No comments? All right, we will move on to item six, oral and written communications to the board of directors. Did we receive any written communication? There was just the one in that I sent out to the board last night that Steph was working on and responding. OK, great. Thank you. And are there any oral communications today? Good morning, John Cahme, HR director. I'm going to try to go really fast for now in three minutes, but I just want to say how excited we are with phase one and the anticipation of phase two. It has been super exciting going through this whole process and doing all the hiring and all of that. I want to acknowledge my staff today, because I think it's really important that you guys see the faces behind the scenes that are processing. We've processed over 100 new hires in the last three months. So I would like my department to stand back here. Sorry to put you all on the slide. We have Sophie and Anne, who are all HR analysts. Sophie and Anne are the ones that process each one of these new hires. Everybody processes, but Sophie and Anne are the ones that once Eduardo has been passing over all of the information to them. They're calling the candidates, so during the reference checks, they're getting all the paperwork done. They're meeting with them. They're giving them an offer lift. Daniela Fuentes is our benefits person, so then she meets with each one of these people, and goes over all of the benefits stuff. Monique Delfin is my assistant deputy director there, and she backs them up. So when they get overwhelmed or just questions and everything else, everybody has a part in it, and I thought it was really important for you guys to see this. I also have Ricky Ann Keagley, who she does all of my DOT drug and alcohol training. So she meets with each one of these people, and goes over our whole policy. I also have Manasi, who does all the data entry, does all the bonuses, all the payouts, all the increases. So each one of these ladies have taken a very important role in this exciting anticipation of phase two. So I thought it was really important for you guys to see that. And now I have a thank you gift for all of you. Oh, wonderful. So a little swag bag, and then you can see Danielle later with your size because then she'll have a little shirt for you. So thank you very much, ladies. It's not possible. It takes a village, and you all have played a tremendous role in this. And I just want to thank you all. So one more time. Thank you. Good morning. Another one of them want to say, I just want to reiterate what Don and her department have done. Just to stand beside me because I'm like, calling them, calling them, trying to get things done. And they so much put a lot of efforts. I cannot tell you like, I can't day, night, email them to get to process over 200 applications have gone. They process a hard employees, but they process all. And that just bust drivers per transit. But, you know, all throughout the agency, you know, mechanics, all of that. So I just want to give, you know, the whole department as a whole and everyone else, you know, kudos who they've done it, except for me. Thank you very much. I just want to add also thank you to Eduardo because we have worked so well together. And this has really created really good collaboration. I mean, I feel like we already had it, but we've worked so close with both SCI and SMART. And I don't know. It just, I think it's just really strengthened relationship. So I just want to add that as well. So thank you. Thank you. All right. Any additional comments? Seeing none, we will move on to labor organizations. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot we had someone we had online. Yes, do we have online comments? Yes, Brett Garrett. Good morning. My name is Brett Garrett in Santa Cruz. And first off, I really want to appreciate Metro's recent service improvements with better reliability and more frequent service. But I want to give you some updates regarding personal rapid transit as a possible solution for transportation issues in Santa Cruz County. Personal rapid transit uses a network of dedicated guideways to provide on-demand transportation in very small vehicles, electric vehicles, automated electric vehicles. This has long been considered as kind of a pie in the sky technology, but it is becoming reality in the San Francisco Bay Area with significant projects planned for Contra Costa County and San Jose. In Contra Costa County, a company called Glideways is working with the local bus agency by Delta Transit building a 28-mile system to improve access to BART stations. I would love to see a similar kind of cooperation here. There are many different personal rapid transit vendors that could work with Metro to improve transportation in Santa Cruz County. But I'm highlighting Glideways because they are already developing projects in our region and they have a test facility in Concord where you as elected officials and board members who have experienced this technology. Glideways is also building a system in San Jose that's going to connect Dira Don Station to the airport. This system will make it so much easier for Santa Cruz residents to access the SJC airport using the Highway 17 bus and then just hopping over to the airport on the Glideways system. So it's my understanding that Glideways is preparing a presentation for the Regional Transportation Commission on March 7th. So I want to encourage you all to attend this next RTC meeting to learn more about this technology and what it can do for Santa Cruz County and maybe another presentation can be planned specifically for Metro. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Do you have any additional online comments? No, the right one. Okay, so at this time I will move on to item seven, Labor Organization Communications. Good morning. Good morning. Congratulations for all of you and your new spots and slots and thank you for everyone who is outgoing. I think it started today with the, seems like monthly tradition these days so Mark is going to help me introduce our newest class of bus operators. Please all stand. Thank you from 180 to 196. So I get to meet each of these shiny new faces. I always tell them I started out as a bus operator and it's a noble, wonderful profession. So and a big thank you to my training departments. We're handing out kudos, why not? The training department works with them extensively and gets them through the training process and license. So welcome aboard. I hope you have a long fruitful career and thank you for working for us. We really need you. Yes, we are giving kudos to everyone so I have some as well. As you know, we've been using from the Pacific Station into our temporary transit center. That was a big, big lift. And I think it's bigger than most people realize how many departments had to come together and get that done. So for those who have not been recognized so far I want to recognize everyone in facilities maintenance who moved all that stuff out who set up all the stuff in the new riverfront transit center. I want to recognize IT who the, sorry as I can tell the entire department went down to terminate wires and try to get everything set up down there and a building that's made out of concrete is basically a Faraday cage. I want to thank all of the managerial team that came together to work together to understand what we needed and it's continuing to develop as things come up. I want to thank customer service for dealing with a really big change in working conditions at the same time that they're getting new management. So, you know, big props to them for going into a place that isn't exactly perfect but they're still showing up and getting it done. So I want to thank all those groups that had to work on this project to get it done and will continue to improve as we move forward. That's it, thank you. How many board of directors? I just want to kind of go off of what Brandon was saying. We had a lot of admin staff that really stepped up into a lot of our work to do all these changes whether it be the planning department that's helping out with that mid-bid change and all the work that's going into the next bid as well. The admin went from facilities and HR is doing a great job. The admin staff is really, really busy right now. Finance is working on a ERP transition. IT is helping out with that as well. So we're firing on all cylinders right now which is pretty fascinating to see everyone come together and just work really hard. So, second, I just want to mention that my membership has asked me to provide some comments to the board regarding hiring practices, particularly with management staff and even potentially the CEO. And we are just asking the board to follow a very ethical and rigid standard on hiring and with that, I think we can get a very good competitive CEO recruitment. I think it's very crucial that this next CEO is going to help usher in all the Michael trees, his vision and I want to see that come through. I think we have a lot of great potential to offer the public. We've already done a great job with just phase one and we saw so much more to go. So I just want to end there. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone on the board. My name is Ron. I represent the professional supervisor association supervisors at the Metro. First, congratulations, Director Brown to your new role. Thank you, Director Johnson for your leadership role. I'm here on behalf of supervisors to advocate for Consenta Agenda Island 9.9 today. New times of Metro and doing things in record time like Jordan said, we're firing on cylinders. We're moving really fast here. There's a record number of new operators that are coming on in the record time. Thanks to Lardo and all the people who are making that happen. New operators tend to need guidance, instruction, all those things. So we're here to advocate for the passage of 9.9 for our supervisors. And we hope that moves forward. Thank you. Thank you. All right, any additional comments? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to item eight, additional documentation to support existing agenda items. And I just send out the slide deck on item 15 to the board last night to preview and we will add that to the agenda. Thank you. Yes. I guess that they're welcome to stay for the entire meeting but they don't need to. Sure. Yeah, so of course you are welcome to stay for the entire meeting, but if you don't want to, you are not required to. I'm just telling you that way. You won't hurt our feelings. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Yeah. You're inviting us. Thank you. Right here. Thank you. Thank you. All right. With that, we'll move on to our Consent Agenda. Do we have any questions from the board on Consents? Is there any items that the board would like to remove from Consent Regular Agenda? Seeing none, we will take any public comments on our Consent Agenda. Do we have any public comments in the room? Seeing none, do we receive any written or do we have any online? We have one online. Okay. With that, we will entertain a motion. Oh. Second. There they go. Okay. Thank you for the motion by Director Linde and a second by Director Rocking. Is that the case? Okay. We have no one online, so all in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. That will bring us to our Regular Agenda starting with item 10, Presentation of Employee Longevity Award for Julio Carrera. If I said that correctly. Do we have the Longevity Award? Do you think it's here? I don't see it here. He is not here. Okay. So we will thank him for his 20 years with Metro. Do we need to do public comment on the presentations? No. Okay. We'll thank him very much for his service here. And we'll move on to item 11, Retail Resolution of Appreciation for Robert Rouse, a Paratransit Operator and Michael Tree, our outgoing former CEO and General Manager. Do we have Robert with us? No. And I know we don't have Michael with us either. So yes. Move to resolution second. All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. We're on to item 12, presentation by Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission on Zero Mission Passenger Rail and Trail Projects. And we will welcome Sarah Christensen. Good morning. We have a powerpoint of the clicker is up there on the stand for you. Let me see a second. My name is Sarah Christensen. I work for the Regional Transportation Commission. And today we're here to solicit input from our partners Metro and the general public on the purpose of the statement for the Zero Mission Passenger Rail and Trail Project. Just want to leave that for the next slide, please. I have to look at it my first time. Just kidding. Okay. So obviously there's a long background to the branch line. The RTC purchased the line back in 2012 and since that time has been very in-depth planning studies to evaluate the use of the corridor. And now we are doing some refinements and developing a project concept for Zero Mission Passenger Rail. And then in addition to that, the remaining postal rail rail segments that are not yet under development, include that in the project. So that will complete the whole network. Here's a map that shows the transit corridors that are going to be put on those next in North Monterey County at Pajaro and goes all the way through Santa Cruz. It's about 22 miles long. And then the remaining postal rail trail segments are what we call segments 13 through 20 which are identified in the master plan that was done back in 2013 for the Monterey Basics Rail Scenic Trail and the replacement of the Capitola Trenzel with a multimodal bridge that's going to accommodate both rail and trail. The big project goes throughout all the jurisdictions with the exception of Stats Valley. But we've been going around to all of the jurisdictions City of Watsonville, Capitola. We're going to Santa Cruz next week. Obviously we went to the commission and then here we are today for Metro, City Hampton on this project. Here's a general schedule. Project concept is where we are. We're just getting into the meat of it really. We're doing alternatives analysis and engineering at this time. And there will be a lot more information coming out really at the beginning of the engagement process for this development of the project concept. And then the idea is after the project concept is complete, we'll be moving into environmental analysis and review. And then completion of that will be a milestone that we're calling project approval, which is essentially the commission approves the project to move forward to subsequent phases, which include right of play, final design and finally construction. So today we're here to ask for input on the purpose and need statement. Basically the purpose and need statement was developed by the project development team. The project development team includes Metro staff. So John, very involved. And it includes all the city staff from Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Capitalist, County of Santa Cruz, Transportation Agency for Monterey, so TAMC, hopefully not missing anybody. So it's a large group of people that we collaborate and we developed the purpose and need and then recommended that purpose and need to go to the public and get input on it. And this purpose and need statement is really gonna help us guide the project development forward. So the preliminary needs, there's some listed here. So obviously we have a diverse set of transportation needs in this county and they're not all fully met, of course. Slow transit travel times, insufficient travel options and there are mandates now for vehicle model travel and three health gas emissions to reduce those and then finally the bicycle industry and make the choice to create that flow network. The purpose, just having us on the board provide increased access to accessible and reliable public travel options, improve the transit connections, integrate with plans for future land use, reduce transit travel times and improve system reliability, enhance bicycle and pedestrian connectivity and safety and promote alternative transportation modes and finally reduce vehicle miles travel and associated greenhouse gas emissions. So we've been doing quite a bit of outreach. We had a couple of open houses last week. We had a really good showing. Thank you to those who attended and then we have a virtual open house. We're trying to get as much input as possible. So we have a virtual open house that is an online format. The website is sccrtc.org slash ZEPRT. For more information, we have a project fact sheet. We have the virtual open house all available there and we'll be taking input for people in the big city or the project conceptual port. We have four milestones identified we're in the first milestones. This is to solicit input on the purpose and need and have a project look ahead, which is what we're doing today. The next milestone will be to show some conceptual alignments. So our consultants and staff are working very hard right now developing alignments for the 22 mile corridor trail as well. We'll also be looking at zero mission vehicle types at that time this summer. So we'll be doing a whole nother round of outreach. In the fall of this year, we'll be doing an additional round of outreach with refined alignments station layover facility to meet its location. And then we'll be concluding the completion of the project concept and wrapping everything out with the bow in the project concept report. At that time, we will have preliminary cost estimates and we'll be talking about steps for project development. That concludes my presentation. So I'm here for questions, input and you know, have any comments on the purpose and need now some time. Thank you, questions, Mr. This is actually a comment on a question whether I kind of might be useful for people to understand that when Sarah talks about the alignment to this that what we're talking about is, you know where the actual rail train would go, including at this point probably three sidings that have to happen. So trains can pass each other in two directions. You don't know where those exactly are gonna go, where the stations are gonna go, whether we have enough land. We've got a right of way, but how much right of way do you need for these three additional sidings? And you know, we have to purchase some additional land and we're trying to get a real end result of this work is to get a realistic sense of like where this, what needs to be built to make this thing actually function and like ballpark, it's gonna be very, very, you know, loose estimate, but it won't cost to actually do it. So the questions we've had that people reasonably have about, well, how much is it's gonna cost to build and to operate and so forth. We'll have a lot more information about that rather than just people who either like or don't like trains is not a useful way to make this decision. So we're gonna get some really quantitative information that suggests, you know, what the future for this plan really is and I'm really excited about that. And there's strong support from throughout the regional transportation to proceed with this at this point. And then we'll see, you know, whether it justifies the expenses necessary to build a project. You know, it's not gonna be a cheap system. What do we cost to build that and how it will function? But that alignment question is absolutely critical. Just so you know, the current tracks we used for freight train that went 10 miles an hour and we had derailments on that around some of these curves, because they're so tight. So they need to be read as, some of the curves need to be designed if you're thinking about a passenger train that's going, we don't know at this point, 30 to 60 miles an hour, it's gonna have to, we're gonna have to change the range of those curves. And then again, maintenance required, additional purchase of land or something to make that happen. So it's a pretty exciting process. And we're making a really important step forward here with this part of it. Yeah, thank you. You have a comment? Yes, go ahead. I have just a question. So on the timeline, see product approval in 2027, but that's ultimately, I also would need some kind of funding for this project. So would we in theory then have asked for that in 2026 or 2028? 2028, most likely. The way that, so what the director is talking about is, you know, this project is a large project and this county does not have sufficient resources to find it on our health. So we're gonna be pursuing federal and state grants and in order to be competitive for federal and state grants, we have to have a local match for the construction of the project. But we also need a secure, locally funded source that can find the operation of the system, the maintenance of the system. And so we will need another local funding source, which we suspect will be, you know, sales tax measure. And typically you don't put that out on ballot until you have your project approval because you need your cost estimates in order to size that ballot measure. So 2028 is the most likely unless we have some sort of delays, and it would be later. So we're shooting for 2028. Oh, fuck. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So what happens if the city's already vexed out on their sales tax, which we are, I mean, you know, it's not necessarily. Yeah. It's not necessarily. So legislation, but then Metro wants to out with it. I mean, we're... Only where? The left. As long as I say, I don't know, you can bend the... There's a lot of competing interest. Yeah. And I don't know if you can bend the voters that much to keep on... So we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. All right. Whoever goes first, I think we'll see how it's going to pass. Yeah. Well, there is a, there was some legislation that was passed very recently that actually allows Metro's measure, whatever that looks like, I believe to be exempt from the ceiling. I can be signing about it. And I don't... No, that's correct. John May is the author of the bill. So that's helpful. Because then, you know, it gets a little bit more flexible than you can have, is that? Well, it does for Metro's. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, isn't, I mean, it's a lot slower of going, you know, it's not to increase our sales tax, but it's still, you know, we're asking people to support our hospital, but normally that's me. So I hear it from the people already, you know, they're getting tired of it. So it'll be interesting to see how that works. Hey, Sarah, will this group be working with the RTC Climate Resiliency Project that's going on in New York? Mike was talking about a line that I just didn't know what, how their involvement was with this particular project. Yeah, there will be some coordination. So what Director Downey is talking about is we have a Climate Adaptation Vulnerability Assessment combat study happening that the commission is partnering with the County of Santa Cruz and that study is ongoing, but we've been coordinating quite a bit because a big part of that study is to look at the infrastructure, a lot of the existing infrastructure. Obviously the rail project would most likely upgrade a lot of that infrastructure. So looking through that climate lens is really important to give you that to make sure we're planning for, you know, sea level rise and those types of issues. Any additional questions? You're probably going to check for Mr. K. I mean, you're asking the County, the County's being asked to increase their, yeah. Last comment, I think the one full point that we could possibly take issue with here in this room is the slow transit travel times. Like, but hey, we are increasing those randomly. So I do think that we need like an actual benchmark as far as what current travel transit travel times are where we are once we get the bus on shoulder facility in place, the smart, you know, responsive smart lights on so-called drives. And then ultimately make sure that if we aren't going to invest in a system that could cost us a billion dollars for rail that we're actually significantly beating those and it's, that would be more attractive for riders. Okay. All right. Any further questions or comments from the board? That's good. All right. Thank you. And we'll go to public comment on this item. Nothing online. Any comments in the room? Sure. Good morning. Hi. There's the book. Hi. Worship. Sure. I just want to reiterate that I personally and very much in favor of the rail trail and the way it is set up at this time. And in regards to funding, the voting public has made it very clear in the past that they are very much more in this project. So I think a tax for it would probably pass. I really like the rail trail because it helps me get around like over in the mission area without being on the sidewalk which is problematic for me in the wheelchair because some of the sidewalk is not completely flat. And on the rail trail, one of the things I'm hearing from my friends that ride their bicycles is that they wish all of the streets that they have to cross all of them would have a stop sign so that the cars are at least slowing down and that would make their travel through there on a bicycle a smoother travel. Personally, for me, some of the places where you go up to it and you push the button so to warn the car that you're coming some of them are in a really weird place. There's two or three of them that I have to go almost into the street before I can push the button and that's just not safe for me. So things to consider as you expand the project and put new stop lights in and so forth. Thank you. Any additional public comment on this item? Seeing none. Actually, I suggest we pass that last comment on to the ROTC since they're the ones that actually deal with all the signs. That makes sense. Okay, we'll move on now to item 13 which is rapid keeping of interim CEO general manager engagement letter and I will turn it over to Julie. Thank you. So as you recall, you were appointed Daniel Zaragoza as your interim CEO last month and directed staff to negotiate an engagement letter that has occurred and that is before you today for ratification. I'm just gonna do a brief summary of the key business terms. The effective date of the position is February, what was February 17th the day after Michael resigned. The hourly rate is $107.95 per hour and the PTO pay time off and benefits remain the same as they are for any manager. And with that, I will turn it over to see if you have any questions. All right, questions? Seeing no questions, we will take this out to public comment. Any comments? No, any comments in the room? Just a thumbs up. We won't register that. And we will close public comment and bring it back to the board. Second. All right, they have a motion and the second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. Thanks, 10. Congratulations. All right, we're on item 15 of presentation on re-imagine metro phase two and... I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Are you all right? Are you all right? I'm fortunate that oral update on the Pacific Station project. Okay, they're both mine. It's still John. So Brandon touched on a bit of this. Good morning, directors. About Pacific Station renovation update. So I'll touch a little bit more just on the customer service side and what we've been experiencing in these first, what has it been? Most two weeks? About two weeks. About two weeks. So the Pacific Station booth and the old pack station officially closed on February 8th coinciding with the start of our free period, which ends... Carl? 25th. 25th. Flyers with important dates were posted plastered throughout the Riverfront Transit Center throughout the move at Riverfront Transit for Bath and Fire at brochure handouts. Two large banners about the move were posted throughout Pacific Station by notifying riders. Of course, we still had people walk through afterwards trying to find their bus at the old location, but that was to be expected. But there were two very large banners there. Thank you Daniel. This was also the 8th, the first day our operator trainees helped serve as ambassadors and we're at the old Pacific Station and also in the new location, help the customers find their way to the new bus stops and stations. Customer service then reopened on Monday the 12th at the new Customer Experience Center at 6.03, 6.05 front. If you haven't seen it, it's a really beautiful space. The outside windows have some of the one right at the time wraps and the city worked with us to redevelop the inside of that space. So I encourage you to go check it out. It's right there by the boarding areas at the New Riverfront Transit Center. We had trainees throughout that week help direct customers to the new boarding areas throughout the site and they've been there since. So it's been really a tremendous help to have this new class coming in before they start or as they're doing bus operator training to be customer ambassadors. So you'll still see them out there. And so far so good. So there's a new transit lane, it's painted red, which just helps all of the service, which is now all these service, all the South County service that's going up Northbound on Front Street. And we worked hard to match the operations that I presented this a couple of months ago, but the operations at the old Pacific Station to map them over to the new transit center. So lane one to lane one, lane two to lane three, et cetera, lane two to lane two, et cetera. So we have three boarding areas. UCSC is all in one spot, all the South County and San Lorenzo Valley routes are at one spot. And then sorry, not San Lorenzo Valley and 1735 are one spot. So most people do not have to leave the bus stop to transfer, it just happened at the same location. End of round, first stop, going up out. What else? I also have a marketing update from Danielle to share about the move. So we'll be hung a riverfront traffic center Sorry, we posted a riverfront traffic center banner on Metro's website homepage, along with the free fares banner. And we have a transit center landing page with all the information and maps where buses are and a site map to the location. The press release was picked up by Lookout Santa Cruz, the San Andal and Goodtimes. The city of Santa Cruz posted the details on their website. We did our social media posts. We send emails out to our subscribers and have fliers and brochures were created in English and Spanish and placed on our buses at Pacific Station and riverfront traffic center at customer service and we had the ambassador. So we really tried to get the word out as much as we could and see if there are any questions about the move, how it's going. Great. Thank you for the update and for all the work. I know that it's been a huge lift. And thank you for the great partnership with the city. I do have a question. I know there was some discussion with the downtown association, the DTA, to increase the number of downtown ambassadors and have the Metro contribute to that. And I'm wondering where that's at if that's going to move ahead. I personally think it's a great idea. Yeah. My call, Brandon, are you ready? We're working on it. Okay. All right. Yeah, we're still fine with the cost. Yeah, sure. We just got to figure that out and then we'll be able to make a decision after that. Okay. Well, if I can just put a plug in, the city has increased investment in the downtown ambassadors and we've seen a tremendous shift and we've been hearing it from the retailers downtown. It's been really a great investment. So it's putting in a plug. Yeah. It was a great idea. I believe in the interim we felt we were okay with all the operator trainees. We have them there acting as ambassadors. Yeah. I think we're still exploring it. Right. Yeah, sure. Dave, any other questions or comments from the board? Okay. We will take this out to public comment. Do we have any online comments? There are none. Any public comment in the room? No. Okay. We will move on then to item 15 now. Back again. Yeah. Presentation on re-imagined Metro Phase 2. Yeah. So this week we've done three in-person average meetings on the Metro Phase 2. Two in Los Angeles, one in Santa Cruz and there've been, those have been all hybrid meetings. So people have joined us via Zoom as well. And then I also presented to RTC's equity committee and then we've got a meeting this afternoon at the campus at UCSC. And so we wanted to just present the analysis behind the network plan at this meeting and then we'll come back in March with any changes to the plan that we've heard based on the feedback gathered over this past month and present the final plan and do public caring for approval. But we wanted to get some of the presentation to you beforehand. So I'm gonna pass it over to Daniel at the Darrow Walker Associates to go through the presentation. Great. Thank you, John. And you all see my screen, intro slides says re-imagined Metro draft September 2024 network. We can. Great. Well, good morning board members. It is really exciting to be hearing all that's going on right now to help get you to phase two in hiring and all the other efforts that got mentioned this morning. So anyway, I just wanna express my appreciation for working for helping out an agency that's clearly moving in a really good direction at a very impressive pace. With that said, I wanted to give you a lightly abridged version of the presentation that I've been showing at public meetings this week along with John. You'll have that full presentation I believe sent to you by Donna last night as you mentioned earlier, but here we go. So as you know, we've been working on reimagined Metro for about the last 15 months since December 2022. And really the driving goal throughout this effort has been to create a network that's useful, convenient and a real option for many more people's trips than it has been over the last few years. And so a part of that has been looking at where and how often buses run and how that could change within existing resources. And that's kind of what's happened so far, mostly but we're also really looking at how Metro should increase service. And that's kind of what we're getting into and at scale really in phase two. So I guess, yeah, we've analyzed the network. We've had these couple of rounds of outreach before. We developed the phase one network. We basically have this record now of feedback that we've heard kind of over and over and fairly consistently that has led us to the phase one and now the phase two proposal. So as part of phase two, the driving thing here is that there would be a roughly 50% increase in service from what's being proposed in a month from now from what's gonna happen in a month from now and what's being proposed in September 2024. So that's of course being made possible by several things happening at the same time. One of them is the one-time COVID recovery funding that you're receiving from the state of California that's gonna allow you to really increase your service levels for a couple of years. Another one is the incredibly intense hiring drive you're on right now to get yourself up to about 230 drivers and all of the other hiring that needs to happen around that and all your other departments. And another is kind of the ongoing conversations with UCSC about how to improve, change, modify Metro's operations at UCSC and figure out really what the right role is for TAPS and campus shuttles versus Metro and how to distribute both those actions and that service logistically as well as the campus shuttle funding. So all that's happening at the same time. Nonetheless, if these changes are to happen in June and September, we really needed a plan for how that was going to happen. And so there's a draft network plan that's out there right now this month for public input and we've been asking for feedback at these public meetings and with an online survey. So I guess I won't spend too much time discussing what's happening in March with you all because I think you're pretty familiar, but as you know, there'll be some increased evening service on a few routes compared to right now, a few more trips on the Express Route 90X between Watsonville and Santa Cruz, bringing in the new Route 78, which has been planned for a while, but which will bring service to the Westridge Social Services office in Watsonville and making some small adjustments to other routes, particularly bringing Route 72 back to Green Valley Road in both directions. So that there'll now be service every 30 minutes on Green Valley Road and Watsonville in both directions. And an adjustment to Route 38, take into account the fact that the Murray Bridge is in fact probably not gonna close this year. So those are kind of in some cases, little technical changes and in other cases just kind of completing the intention of the first wave of service change which happened in December, bringing in that additional evening trip and those additional express trips. So that's what's happening in March and I'll just flip back and forth between March and the draft plan for September. So here's March, September. Here's March and here's September. So I'll just a quick reminder in case that's not in the front of your minds, the color of the lines on these maps mean how often the bus comes. So red lines are frequent routes, those are routes that come or would come every 15 minutes or better. And when you compare these two maps, which you'll notice that there are a lot more red lines on this September map. And so what this reflects is really extending frequent service far beyond the west side of Santa Cruz where it's largely concentrated right now so that we'd have frequent service throughout large parts of Live Oak, Soquel, Aptos and Watsonville. There's also built into this draft plan the notion that weekend frequency would be equal to weekday frequency on almost all of the routes that are being shown here. And so in particular on those red routes you can think of that service as being frequent every 15 minutes or better in the daytime not just on weekdays but seven days a week, right? So that's a real transformation in how useful the network can be for someone who might need to travel anytime. Other big transformational change included in here is kind of the way that people would get from Watsonville to Santa Cruz. Route 90X, the express from Watsonville to Santa Cruz via highway one would go from being a peak only route to an all day route operating 30 minutes all day. So that means that really at any time of day you can have fast and direct service for people who need to travel across county. That was very important for us to get to. And also, so that's for the express service. Local service becomes more frequent and then there is this, the East West the way services are combined East West would change a little bit. There's been a lot we've heard over the past rounds of outreach about improving East West connections between Santa Cruz and Live Oak. So that's integrated here. You can see that the West side routes are now part of the East side routes. One, two and three would go across and take over, well, the one would take over the 18 and the two would take over the 19. Of course, that would create very, very long routes if we didn't make any other changes which would have reliability issues. So what's happening is that within this draft plan and this is really a question we're asking the public as to whether what people think about this. The idea is that routes one and two would end at Cabrillo College and then East and South of Cabrillo, the same areas that are currently on routes one and two would continue being served by those routes but they would be called, but there would be new routes called Route 61 and 62. And the 61 which really serves all of the, well it serves large parts of Watsonville and many of the more populated parts of Watsonville here would be upgraded to service every 15 minutes. Route 62 would continue to be every 30 minutes like Route two now, but it would not end at Cabrillo. It would actually extend past Cabrillo through Capitola Village bringing kind of consistent all day service to Capitola Village for the first time or at least the first time in a long time and then going all the way to Capitola Mall. So there'd still be some direct trips from Watsonville to Capitola Mall. So that's kind of the big picture of what's being proposed. Oh, one other thing that's important to mention, Route 17, that's the express from Santa Cruz to San Jose. So there would be some changes to that service as well. The idea is that there would be at minimum a base, a regular hourly service on Route 17 from downtown Santa Cruz to downtown San Jose. And that that service would be timed so that people could transfer easily to and from Caltrain which also runs hourly from Derriden and San Jose. There would continue to be additional trips serving Scots Valley both on weekdays and on weekends. I think we're still figuring out exactly when those trips happen, but that's the general intention. So why are we doing this? Well, we're trying to follow the feedback we've received and this slide here is when we asked people last summer what improvements they thought were most important in the future when more resources would be available, we asked people to select which three would matter most to them and these were their responses and what we heard very clearly and what's consistent with prior rounds of outreach as well is that high frequency wherever possible is really the public's number one priority. And so we tried to respond to that very strongly by adding all those frequent routes. We also know that people are interested in, all of these other service improvements. And so we tried to bring as many of them as possible within this plan. With regards to frequent service specifically, I just wanna point out that, so in terms of overall coverage that's being proposed in this draft plan, there isn't a huge change, but in terms of people near frequent service, there's a massive difference. We're bringing frequent service every 15 minutes or better, seven days a week with service every 30 minutes, even after 9 p.m. Near about 100,000 residents and 40,000 jobs. So here is what that looks like graphically. You see these bars here, the top bar is all residents and then the next bar is specifically for low-income residents, people of color and jobs. But what you can see is that basically right now about 70% of people in the urbanized areas of Santa Cruz County are within a half mile walk of a bus. Only, well, fewer than 20% of people actually live near a bus that runs frequently. In phase two, still about the same people that are near service, but the number of people near frequent service goes from less than 20% to almost 50%. And same for jobs, going from just above 20% to just above 50%. So massive, massive increase in the number of people near a service that comes frequently and it can be convenient for many kinds of trips all week long. So the whole point, of course, of this is not just to be providing more service, it is to provide that convenience, to provide the usefulness, to provide the freedom that frequent service can allow. So that's really been the guiding star throughout this process. And this, the charts here kind of show you a brief summary of how we've been improving where people can get to in a reasonable amount of time throughout this process. This, these charts are showing the number of jobs that someone could get to within 45 minutes and within 60 minutes, 45 minutes in red, 60 minutes in blue. And we're comparing three different time periods. So the top three here are for the average person in Santa Cruz County. And you can see the difference between what was true about a year ago in the spring of 2023. What's almost true now and will be true in about a month at the end of phase one. And then the third one for what would be true at the end of phase two if implemented as currently designed. And so what you can see is that we're just increasing the number of places people can get to in the same amount of time consistently, both within 45 minutes and within 60 minutes. And we've been paying attention not just to the impacts on people in general, but also the people who might need transit the most, including people with low incomes. So these are numbers and these are charts and that's great. But let me show you what that looks like from certain specific locations chosen within the urbanized area. So here is how far people could get to from downtown Watsonville. So on these maps, you see these shapes. They are these colors. There's this sort of pink, gray, purplish color here. And there's this light blue color here. So if you're in the kind of grayish, purplish area, those are areas where if you leave today from Watsonville Transit Center and you're watching from downtown Watsonville and you're near the Transit Center and if you were taking the bus to go somewhere, those tell you how far you could get to on top within 45 minutes and on bottom within 60 minutes. And the light blue areas tell you how much farther you could get to under this plan. And so what you can see from downtown Watsonville is that there is a small improvement in how far people could get to within 45 minutes, but a really noticeable improvement in how far people could get to within an hour. And that really comes down to for Watsonville, the Route 90X operating all day every 30 minutes because that means that even though you might have to wait an average of 15 minutes for that bus, the service is so much faster than is currently available on routes one and two that you'd be able to within an hour or less, including walking, waiting, et cetera, get to most of East Santa Cruz, parts of downtown Santa Cruz, all really kind of job and opportunity rich areas that we know people wanna access. So that's from downtown Watsonville. From Cabrillo College, you can see that there's an expansion in access in all directions. You can see those light blue shapes expanding the area people could get to in both 45 and 60 minutes, making Santa Cruz, Live Oak, and Watsonville all significantly more accessible from Cabrillo College. That's really coming down to service every 30 minutes, being converted to service every 15 minutes. Most routes to Cabrillo College right now are every 30 and they'd go up to every 15. From Capitola Mall, kind of a similar expansion in service, also largely due to increased frequencies. In addition, you'll notice that within 60 minutes, there's a significant expansion into West Santa Cruz, the ability to travel there in less than 60 minutes. And that comes down to both the frequency and the fact that we would be tying together the routes between the East and West sides of Santa Cruz. From downtown Santa Cruz, this is mostly frequency based improvements. You can see because routes one, two, and three would all be operating every 15 minutes, you could now within 45 minutes basically reach all of Live Oak parts of Capitola, parts of Soquel. And within an hour, you would be able to even reach parts of Watsonville that are near stops on Route 90X. From West Santa Cruz, it's kind of the inverse of Capitola Mall. You get both the increased frequency and the fact that routes go through directly. And so as a result, this is showing you from Bayon Mission, but within 45 minutes, you can get to large parts of Live Oak and Dominican Hospital within an hour, you can get to basically all of Live Oak, almost all of Capitola and Soquel. So zooming out, here's a map that shows you within the urbanized area where people live and whether their access would be improved. So the dots, each dot represents about 25 people. The color of the dot tells you whether from that place that those people are located, access would increase or decrease. Green dots means things get better. Sort of gray-white dots mean that things don't change much and then brown dots mean that things change a lot. And you can see that most of the dots here, in fact, about two-thirds of them over the county as a whole are green. And that basically means that about two-thirds of residents live in areas where in 45 minutes or less, they'd be able to access more jobs using transit. And just, this is something I think I've told you all before, but just to reiterate, we measure access to jobs not because we think it's all about commuting, but because jobs are, well, it's consistently available data for one thing about destinations. And for another, we know that places of employment are places where people go for many, many reasons, right? Anywhere you go to shop, anywhere you go to eat out, anywhere you go for medical services, social services, government, et cetera, et cetera, those are all places of employment. So when we're increasing access to jobs, we're increasing access to places people need to go often in general. So within 45 minutes, the average resident could reach about just under 20% more jobs, 19% more jobs. And we also examined not just the impact on people in general, but also on how that affects different demographics. And what we're able to say based on this is that overall, low-income residents would benefit from access gains at similar or slightly higher rates than the average resident. In terms of other marginalized groups for people of color and Hispanic people specifically, those groups, people in those groups would be slightly more likely to live in areas where access would increase than the population as a whole, although they would be slightly less likely to live in areas where access would increase greatly. And that largely comes down to that long distance between the very concentrated large Hispanic population in the Watsonville area and the big job centers that are largely located in the west of the county, Capitola and west of there. So here's how that looks within 60 minutes. So you can see that similarly here, most of the dots are green. That means that most people live in areas where access would increase. We get to more jobs, more places, within an hour or less. Actually, slightly higher percentage, 77%. And the average resident could reach about 23% more jobs in that timeframe. And I do wanna point out that you can see that generally speaking, the green dots are a little bit more intensely colored. And also I wanna point out that the places where the strongest increases would be located are these dense areas in downtown Watsonville and around Manning Green Valley in Watsonville that are near stops on Route 90X. Equity results for within 60 minutes are in many ways similar to the ones within 45 minutes, although there is a smaller gap in those large access gains between all residents and people of color. But again, low income residents benefiting at similar higher rates than residents as a whole. So I don't think that, respecting your time, I think I won't take you through the detail of every single proposed change, but I'll just quickly show you these slides so you know they exist. And if you have questions, we can cover them. So here is West of Cabrillo College now basically in March and in September, in March and in September. Here is kind of East and South of Cabrillo College in March and in September, in March and as proposed in September. And here's a little detail of Watsonville, which I'll be happy to get back into if there are any questions specific to changes being proposed in Watsonville. And here is areas North and West of Santa Cruz. One thing that I haven't, well, it's sort of within the general idea that weekend service should be able to weekend service. I just wanna point out that that does include the main service in the San Lorenzo Valley, which is route 35, which would then go to service every 30 minutes, seven days a week. And in terms of how people are, how we're soliciting input. So as John mentioned, we had those three public meetings this week that were hybrid meetings, both in person and online. We're having a workshop with folks from UCSC this afternoon. This meeting, this board meeting is of course open to the public. And we are also directing people as we do this outreach towards the online survey, which is available at the project website at scmtd.com slash reimagined Metro. I should also mention that in terms of the promotion of these meetings, we didn't just say, hey, we'll do meetings, maybe people will show up. We actually had our team members from Amma Transit planning call up all of the different stakeholder organizations and riders that we had been in touch with in prior rounds of outreach, let them know this was coming and encourage them to come and invite people to come. And so that has really kind of allowed us to make sure that anyone who's really interested and really wants to be there as an opportunity to, the survey is gonna be open until March 4th. We're hoping to get as much input as possible. Obviously you all as board members are people who may have a wide reach within your own social networks. So if you'd like to promote this, please, please go ahead and do so. We'd like to hear from as many people as possible. We kind of wanna know generally speaking, just confirm that this overall direction of change is congruent with what people are expecting and what priorities are. And also asking people specifically, you see this plan now, we have a pretty detailed plan by area with this improve things for you, do things need to change and be thought about differently? So presenting this to you today to give you kind of a preview so you know what's coming and you know what we're putting out to the public. The idea then is that next month we'll come to you with a summary of all that we've heard and our proposals for how to adapt this draft network based on that feedback. Hopefully getting an approval to proceed for then proceeding with service changes in June and September. We'll also be working this spring on kind of the longer term changes for what to do when yet more resources come available. And yeah, that's all that we're doing right now. So thanks for your time. And I guess Sean and I will be happy to take any questions or comments at this time. Thank you. Questions, yes, Dr. Duterte. Thank you. I don't know who to look at. So I'm gonna talk to you. I have a comment and then I also have a couple questions. My first comment is, you know, we have been one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. So where wealth is considered as a status thing. So I think referencing low income people as can be, I don't know, it can be sensitive for some peoples. I mean, maybe we can refer to like any disadvantaged or disadvantaged residents or disadvantaged areas. We can ask Daniel to clarify what definition income levels. You guys are right. I mean, low income. I can imagine I was a low income person and you can be $100,000 in this county. So teachers are low income people. So can you imagine like a teacher like, oh my God, you know, we're, so that's why it's, I would imagine some of our own employees here, you know. So yeah, so to be clear, when we're referencing low income people in these graphics, what we mean is people who live in households that are at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. So what that means in terms of Santa Cruz County and the living costs that you have in your county is people who are severely disadvantaged based on their income, right? People who are probably experiencing significant challenges in general, in general in their livelihood. And the thing is that, you know, despite the fact that Santa Cruz County is in fact, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, there are still and rather significant numbers of people who live in households with very low incomes. And that's why, you know, and we are, we wanna make sure that we are representing that constituency within our analysis and within our thought process. It's also a requirement of federal civil rights law to make sure that any changes that are done by transit agencies to service don't disproportionately impact people of color or low income residents. So we're trying to make sure that we do this right, both, you know, for the, both because we know that the lot of people in those households are within the core constituency of people who really need Metro on a regular basis. And also to make sure we're doing morally the right thing and to make sure that we're following civil rights law. No, I understand the federal standard. It's not area meeting. Oh, okay. So that's a federal like definition. Okay. Yes. Okay. Because I'm sticking to that. That's not a, that's not a scope. I can imagine, you know, just it could be intimidating to approach this topic at all. If, you know, you were somebody who's struggling. So if you're already being placed like, oh, hey, you know, you're the low income person. And my other ones are, is it possible for the 79 to, instead of cut through Parkway, go to the roundabout and Riverside and then come back and then go down college because it is cutting through a residential neighborhood and I've been getting some complaints and I just want to see if there's a remedy that we could do. I think people are noticing the, the, the increase of things. So it's, and it's only going to become more. So that would be possible. That one's not going to change going forward, but it did double. It's was hourly. Now it's every twice an hour. Yeah. We've gotten the same complaint. We go back there because there's people that we're trying to serve. Absolutely. To East Lake and to the quarter, but would that be? Can we look at that? Maybe that's different. Cause I think if we cut that part out, I think we'll solve a lot of that. Yeah. If you can spend the specific routing suggestion. Okay. I'll do that for you for sure. And then also I brought this up before on college. I do see people standing on the hillside. That's kind of, but there's one at this point is all the rain, but it seems a little dangerous for our riders to be like kind of standing where they can get, you know, swiped by, you know, put very fast. But, you know, so it's on these little roads. And so, but if we can get a bot, a bus stop there, that'd be great. Sure. Thanks. And I know you're talking about the nurses who didn't tell that to you, but someone over here is listening. Right? I know. A couple of things. First of all, I don't think we're one of the world's counties in the country. So we look at a standard that we're far from it. What? We're not. We're 10th in the state. So, and that's not one of the wealthiest counties in the country. No, not by far. If we're 10th in the state, we get a stat, it'll be right here about where we stand in relation to, you know, what we're doing. Oh my God. This isn't a disconnect. We're not the poorest, but we're not the disadvantaged. Any rock. When we started this process a while ago, our first idea was to like figure out, we took our current service, had to make a hard choice, to be favorite frequency or distribution and be overwhelmed. And I think not today, I was like, you said we want frequency. But we imagined that the time, we suddenly would be certain people are going to go like, hey, things are getting worse for me. I'm not very happy about this. Thankfully, we took a different approach and what we did is like expanding our service at the same time or making this choice. So we're putting the majority of our resources into frequency and there are a lot fewer people who are getting screwed over or losing some service that they might have had. I wonder if you could give us some kind of an idea that even given what we're doing now, who is being disadvantaged by this? Who might we expect hearing that they actually changed the service, things we need to improve? We're going to be here with Pitchforks and you've got torches telling us the story of life. I mean, we've been out for various months, right, doing outreach. We haven't seen the Pitchforks yet, but there's still time. These numbers that Daniel walked through the access analysis and the proximity to transit, because there's no shrinkage of the network, nobody loses service, right? So it's just certain places gain more than other places, right, but the actual network itself does not change it. We're just investing, as you said, in areas where there's higher demand, where we see more potential for growth. So this plan does lean heavily into frequency, but it does so in a way that it brings half of the county really within a 15 minute log chart of 15 minute service, right, frequency is freedom. So it does lean heavily into that. And Daniel, maybe you can add a little more color to the question. Yeah, I think the big picture that you mentioned is correct, right, but so there were, I think that there were some fairly significant changes to where the bus went and how the routes are organized in December. And then what's being proposed between now and September is largely increases over current service levels all in the same areas. There is one big thing that we are putting in here that is worthy of consideration and that we've been putting out there in these meetings and making sure that people hear about it and understand. And that is we're really changing the way that East West travel works on the transit network. So at the moment, you have routes one and two that go from Watsonville all the way to Santa Cruz and they're these very long local routes that have some reliability issues due to their length but they do kind of provide a zero transfer trip between many different possible origins and destinations. The cost of that is that your West side routes are very isolated. If you're on the West side, you're gonna have to transfer to go anywhere not on the West side. And so what's being proposed here is that we're trying to bridge some of that gap by first of all speeding up the trips that are from Watsonville all the way into Santa Cruz which you know are a significant portion of the demand on routes one and two and speeding up the trips between the West side and the East side by joining the one, two, three on the East side with the 1819 and while I guess still three on the West side. And that means that between Watsonville and Santa Cruz we are creating this one split in service at Cabrillo College. And we are proposing to basically mitigate that split by with all these increases in frequencies so that people's average wait times on cross-county trips don't change even if they're not going quite between the center of Watsonville and Santa Cruz. But I think that there's a legitimate question as to like was that the right choice to make in increasing frequencies? And I think that's something that depending on the feedback we receive may change a little bit between the draft and the final. I think the intention of increasing the 90 X to all day services fairly baked in at this point. I haven't heard any negative feedback about that. But yeah, that was my liberation. And today we haven't heard much about the transfer issue but we have heard some feedback around specific trips particularly around freedom center and rural freedom. So previously to phase one our most frequent cross-county route went the rural freedom route, right? The 71. We flipped that but all the frequency through the more densely populated areas Watsonville, Freedom, Lincoln, Main Street and then those routes get on the freeway. And we have heard from people that used to ride the 71 that it's just not frequent enough. And we are increasing in March, the 73 to every half hour from every hour. And the second piece of that is a direct connection from that freedom center to Capitola Mall and so I think one change will present when we come back in March is extending the 73 from Cabrillo to Capitola Mall. And that seems to satisfy at least the people we've talked to so far. Those are kind of the most kind of pointed comments against the plan or the plan so far. A couple of questions. Jimmy, I wanted to follow up and this is an interesting thing. It feels like it's been more than 30 years that I can recall where we increased frequency and it generated complaints about buses in the neighborhood. Am I understanding? Because this is going through that. That's what neighborhood got. Okay, but there are neighborhoods where we're trying to increase access and hopefully people will get on the bus. Larry, I brought up one neighborhood on Twin Street. And I know of one on the West Side of Santa Cruz where there were complaints in the 80s when service was increased on the high street. So noisy buses going by. Just curious. Other questions I had to do with driver time behind the wheel. Some of these routes look very long and I was curious like maybe the route three from origin to destination and back. How much time might there be for the driver before they get a break? And that leads to a question of are the September improvements in phase two dependent on a layover spot at UCSC? It looks like one, two and three to terminate and then go back out. Can you update us on that? Yeah, so those last two questions are directly related. Part of the rationale behind this network was to even out operator time behind the wheel across the network. So the old 71 could do up to an hour and 40 minutes one way, right? By splitting the routes more in the middle of the district we're evening that out of both sides, east and west and creating more even total run times between routes. But making that happen is completely dependent on identifying a layover location at UCSC. So if we're having really positive discussions with UCSC and taps about where that location can be and getting that ready for September. If it doesn't happen, we know from the experience of route three right now that we can't operate this network without doing. So, yeah, okay, we won't. When you said seven days a week, weekdays, weekends does that include holidays? We got that question a couple of times this week. We honestly hadn't considered it but we'll consider it now. We were considering Saturday, Sunday. We didn't think about changing the holiday plan. Well, holidays will let you reach people that would normally take the bus. This is where the parking is in grace. Plus, if you got to work on the holiday, you still have to get there. Yeah. So some of these routes still won't have super frequent service and the longer somebody waits for the bus, I believe the better the shelter should be. She were talking about, you know, signs and the dirt next to the road. And I just would like to make sure that while we're doing this, that we can accommodate people and care for them while they're waiting because they might not take it otherwise or especially if they have to wait in certain areas for a little bit longer than some of the less frequent routes. So I have a friend who just can't stand the 3B anymore because it's unreliable, blah, blah, blah, multiple times. And it kind of started to get me thinking about somebody other challenges, the learning curve for this whole project. Jimmy was mentioning a street. I know in Aptos, we've got a street now where it's a residential neighborhood and there's been some complaints about speaking and stopping and all that. With regard to Cabrillo, since there's a lot more emphasis there, is there a way to work with Cabrillo to provide a little bit better facilities so that maybe some of these other neighborhoods aren't impacted? That's a question, but the other one is are you running into some other challenges that you're gonna have to deal with with moving some of these routes? And how have you been sort of working on those? The two that were mentioned today were the only ones that have come up so far around resident complaints, non-customers upset about more buses coming through. The reason that the 73 is doing that route is because we wanted to make the transfer as convenient as people for customers at Cabrillo College. In order to do that, the last stop inbound happens at the same location that buses that continue inbound, the one and two go, and then it goes around the block, that was back. If we just looped the backside of Cabrillo, people would have to run across O'Kel to get from one direction to the other. So we didn't wanna do that. We've heard a lot of complaints, we may need to consider that, but I would come at the expense of convenience to our customers having to do that. So for those, so far, those are the only two locations where those types of concerns have come up. And I do think in the plan that we'll bring in March, you'll see the 73 extend to Capitola Mall. So we won't be dealing with that issue anymore. Going forward, yeah. We also won't probably resolve the issue, but it will help when we're totally electric, if the bus comes. That's nice. Yeah, in addition. Wider, yeah. Yeah, yeah. On the shelters, yeah, we need to improve the whole experience for people. We got a, let's call it a clean California grant after 23 shelters throughout the district. And then we also have funding through our Tursuit Award last year for 35 shelters on O'Kel between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. And so it'll take some time to get those projects on the ground. The 23 shelters will be in place by the end of the year. The Tursuit grant's gonna take probably two, three years to operate them. But that's a great point. The whole experience needs to be, needs to work for people. Just a pretty quick thing. Another area that I've been hearing in particularly the campaign forums talking about several of the valley in the North and the town, not, you know, the impression everyone there in the forums have talked about only having one hour service every hour. And obviously the shelters in that area are really dangerous. Yeah. I mean, I'm just, there's always been. I don't even know how to prove it because there's no room. But, you know, I mean, the whole North County, that's the thing we're hearing is they feel neglected and it sounds as though even I wasn't as clear on it that it would be an improvement in 30 minutes. I know we can't, that's a combination of wait for minutes, yeah. Yeah, what I was hearing from parents as kids and things and not being able, it doesn't work for school, it doesn't take the timing, you know, but. Well, we could potentially like to add more school terms for us up in the valley. Like you said, it's a really challenging area. There was one road and now it's one lane. Right, right. And North County's been neglected area because of logistics, I mean. Yeah, although historically it's had some of the most frequent service and like 30 minutes and 35 and the 71 were the most frequent routes outside of the UC service area. So by metro standards was always kind of the most frequent service, not, and I think. San Lorenzo, not a bit more frequent. Well, we're at splits, right? Passable or frequent, but we heard the concern. We have some San Lorenzo Valley residents come to the Santa Fritunating to share those concerns. And so we'll consider additional tweaks to the splits. I totally understand the temperature that they say would pass that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Obviously, it'd be better if you're here. I just want to, so for the US Census Bureau, there are 3,144 counties. Santa Cruz ranked 78 per capita and they also ranked 90th per median income. That puts us in the top 2% in the country. So to me, that is one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Sure. So, I just want to be clear. I'm not here making numbers up, you know. I wouldn't find it that easy. Well, you brought it up and you know, it was some awful comment that I had made. So I'm just clarifying it. That's actually a statistic that I'm going to start using more words. Any additional questions or comments? Yes, please. I was up on the summit recently, got a question. Whether that's 17 bus could ever make a stop again at summits and highway 70. I also that same night drove back and was like, this is a challenging intersection. Yeah, I was trying to get back. There's literally coming into Santa Cruz, that ramp is, I don't know if I can turn around there. But did you evaluate that at all? We've evaluated that. We've gotten that comment before. As like you said, it's just a really challenging area to turn us around. That's kind of the way it doesn't really seem feasible. There is a small park and ride lot there, right? With a couple of spaces, but you're not going to get people trying to walking in from the neighborhood, so to speak. So probably not, it's a challenging area. And then with the map and then it's like, how far I can get in 60 minutes or 45 minutes. I think I remember from previous presentations that that is total trip length, right? As walking to the block stop, waiting for the bus. It assumes that you don't look at the schedule, that you just walk to the bus stop and show everything. It's intended to be comparable to your experience on any other mode where, you know, you would just leave your home when you leave your home, which could be at any random time. Thank you. And that's where the, obviously, the frequency improvements improve the traffic. I have a couple of questions as well. One is about Route 55 and it looks like in March, it goes all the way over to the Capitola Mall and then come September, it's going to terminate at Cabrillo College, but then one or two will pick you up and take you wherever you need to go in that direction. So I've heard some comments recently about that, but it's not about the termination at Cabrillo or the fact that it's not going to go further. It's the fact that if you get on 55 and outtoss a Rio del Mar, you have to go all the way out to La Selva and then circle back to get to somewhere like Cabrillo College. And so I'm wondering if there's any consideration in that becoming a two-way route, so that those who might otherwise want to be going north don't first have to go south. Yeah, we really tried. We'll keep trying the streets through Rio del Mar and as you're getting out to La Selva, they've just not set up a lot of locations for two-way service in terms of places where we could put a bus stop. There are some locations. The benefit of shortening the route to Cabrillo is it'll come more frequent. It'll actually be every hour, not every hour, 30, 45, we've kind of changed it. Over 55? Yeah, so it'll be more frequent, at least hourly. Most people will have to transfer, we'll keep working on it to see if we can do bi-directional service. Bi-directional service though may mean less frequent because we have to add more resources to the route. Yeah. Okay, and then the other thing I was curious about hearing is since we're almost at the completion in phase one with the West Side UCSC, have we received any feedback on that? Were there any unexpected challenges? Is it just all good news so far? The main challenge we've been having on route three is our first foray into the East West connection is just the reliability. And it's a function of not having a place to stop the bus, a terminal on campus. And so as Director Pegler mentioned, it's a really long seat, really long time for the operator of the bus. Sometimes upwards of two hours, we're experiencing a lot of delays. So it doesn't work as a round trip, basically. So that's getting to a terminal on campus is really key to the implementation of the rest of this idea that we're laying out of this plan. So some growing pains on the operations, although, and I don't have great ridership data yet. We did submit the quarterly report, but it only had a couple of days of phase one implementation in the last quarter's ridership. You know, we knew beforehand that about a quarter of live of presidents on the 66 or live of boardings on the 66 and 68 were UCSC headed. And that seems to be at least holding steady if not increasing anecdotally, I see a lot of students and maybe other factors that are continuing on those three routes through downtown. So that was the whole point. Seems to be working. We'll wait for more data to see if it's really doing what we thought it would. Great. And then my final comment, I'm not 100% sure that this is even the right time to address this, but it was brought to me and I think that I want to mention it now that we're talking about routes. Someone approached me about bus service at juvenile hall and that when young people are having their hearings at juvenile hall, one of the things that's taken into consideration is whether or not there's adult presence there for them to provide support and if that support will carry on outside of their time there. And so because quite often those from disadvantaged communities are more impacted by the criminal justice system, wondering if there is an opportunity at some point for us to look at the equity, the possibility of equity impacts and creating some kind of stop at some point at the juvenile hall to provide more access to folks who might need to be there for the youth that are incarcerated in their hearings. Yeah, we'll put it, we'll consider it for the next couple of weeks as we put the final touches on that plan. I might call on the time machine if that was ever considered in the past or- Yes, it was. Yeah. It started with an issue with that. So we can serve it. We had the route 30 previously which served Grand Hill into Scott's Rallys. It was less than one rider per hour and was one of the first things we cut and the runs best that we could get out of it. It just wasn't used, but we did used to serve that area. Great. All right. Any further questions or comments on this item? Okay, saying none, we'll take it out to public comments. Thank you. Do you have any public comment online? None online. Any public comment in the room? All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. We will go now to item 16, our interim CEO and general manager or report. Thank you. Hello. Hi. Yeah, just I'm going to be brief because John already covered a few things that I wasn't going to cover, but I want to start off by giving kudos to Daniel, our marketing and communications and customer service director. We won an award at Apta. It's the ad ride award for our youth cruise-free ride system. And that is all due to the hard work that Daniel will offer us so you can see. We also released the one ride at a time bus now that we wrapped in partnership with Mbari. It's beautiful. If I don't know if we have a picture, but it shows all the animals that live deep in Monterey Bay. It's a beautiful wrap. It's black and it's just amazing. We also, I want to talk about the new hires. We had Kevin Montes, Morales, and Mark Vazquez. They promoted from paratransit to fixed route. February 15, we've hired 14 new bus operators since the last board meeting. Six paratransit operators. One distance scheduler, one full stack developer, and one mechanic. And then to talk about our ERP system, it's expected to go live March 14. It'll be the first time that Metro does their complete payroll as the county used to do it. They'll no longer be doing it. And then we signed all the documents with the city and Eden housing for the construction of Pacific Station. All vendors from Metro are out of the buildings. And that's all I have to report. Thank you. Thank you. Questions? Yes. Yes. Congratulations to Daniel. It was a team effort. I know, but it was really fun to see that come through. Thank you so much. And I think the Mbari bus is on our socials. Yeah. It's not like it's beautiful. Especially because it's an articulated bus, right? So it was kind of at a V on the socials. It was really neat. And regular people are noticing the buses. If people aren't telling me like they really, really like it. They don't even like the bus, but they see it. It's like mobile art, right? It's awesome. I saw one on the freeway on my way to San Jose a couple days ago and I thought it, I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before that of course it's going all the way to San Jose, but I realized that our buses. And I'm so excited to be here. And I'm so excited to be here. And I'm so excited to be here with those beautiful wrapings are going all the way into San Jose and into Santa Clara County. And that our message and our work here is, is being seen far beyond just here in Santa Cruz County. It's really exciting. Okay. Any public comment. Virtually. No, any in the room. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. We are going to now convene to our closed session. We have one item. We have a public hearing. We have two items. We have a public employee appointment. CEO, general manager, manager position. And conference with leaver negotiator. Do I need to.