Board of Directors Meeting   3/22/2021

Okay, well, why don't we go ahead and get started then?

And good morning, everybody.

Welcome to the March meeting of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority Board.

Very happy to see you all here today again, virtually.

Just a few reminders, please do mute your background or your devices when you're not speaking so we can eliminate some background noise.

This is a public meeting and it's being recorded.

and it will be available on the DRPT YouTube channel tomorrow.

We'll be posting a link as well to the DRPT website as soon as possible.

There will be a designated public comment period also.

And before we get started, I am just going to read a quick statement that on November 19th, Governor Ralph Northam signed House Bill 5005, Virginia's revised biennial budget, which includes new language for meeting electronically.

In light of the continuing state of emergency declared by Governor Northam, we are conducting this meeting in a remote setting, keeping safety top of mind and mitigating the impacts and spread of COVID-19.

So with that, Bridget, could you go ahead and do a roll call for attendance?

Ms. Butler Painter?

Here.

Ms. Dorsch?

Here.

Mr. Facet?

Here.

Mr. Hall?

Present.

Ms. Moses-Ned?

Mr. Nichols?

Ms. Zimmerman.

Here.

Great.

Thank you.

So at this time, I'd also like to ask for a motion to approve the minutes of our February board meeting.

Second.

All right.

Ms. Butler Painter?

Aye.

Ms. Dorsch?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Ned?

Mr. Nichols?

Mr. Spore?

Aye.

Ms. Zimmerman?

Aye.

That concludes the roll.

Great.

Thank you.

And now we have a period where we're going to allow public comment.

I think, not quite sure, Haley, are you running this?

So at this time, if you have any comments to share, please raise your hand in the participant panel.

If you are calling in, you can press star three to raise your hand.

We will unmute your line when it's your turn to provide comment.

At this time, we're going to open that line and I will be looking for any hand raising.

Ian Ollis has his hand raised.

You have three minutes to provide your comment.

Thank you.

It's Ian Ollis from FAMPO in Fredericksburg.

This is just my first

attendance at your meeting.

I look forward to watching and learning a lot of what you get up to.

And I'm one of those rail advocates who's very keen on promoting passenger rail.

And seen as the current main north-south line comes right through our region, through Fredericksburg, I'm just looking to encourage as much upgrade and improvement of that line and

additional train services for our community, particularly weekend trains and trains that will enable reverse commuting so that people can live elsewhere and work in the Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Stafford region.

But it's my first meeting, so thanks for allowing me to attend.

And I look forward to seeing what you all are doing in terms of your work.

Thank you so much for your comment, Ian.

I'm going to look through again one more time to see if we have any hands raised.

And as a reminder, if you would like to provide comment post meeting, you can share that the email address is listed on the screen now, DRPTPR at DRPT dot Virginia dot gov.

All right.

That concludes our public comment period.

Great.

Thank you, Haley.

So this time I'm going to go ahead and provide you with an update about what's been happening over the past several weeks since we last met.

First of all, Secretary Valentine on March 10th testified to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's rail subcommittee

about our Transforming Rail in Virginia program.

And she spoke about supporting also the COVID relief bill, the Moving Forward Act, and the new passenger rail improvement modernization and expansion grants as well.

So that was very exciting.

We're happy to have her be able to provide that input back to Congress.

An update from the General Assembly, I think,

I think the last time we met we were still just finishing up the session.

The budget conference report did provide some one-time funding for a number of transportation programs, but including rail.

So we were very pleased that the General Assembly supported a number of our initiatives and that included $83.5 million for our

Western Rail Initiative, which will extend passenger rail to Roanoke, or from Roanoke to the New River Valley, and also a second frequency in Roanoke.

In addition to that, there was another 83 and a half million for improving commuter rail service on the VRE Manassas line.

This is work that we've been doing to help accommodate the additional VRE service on the Manassas line that we

also received slots with our CSX agreement too.

As part of that, the budget did also direct the Secretary to conduct a cost assessment of extending passenger rail to Bristol and also to do what's called an RTC model, which is a Modeling Operations Modeling that'll be done by Norfolk Southern related to potentially providing service to Bedford, Virginia also.

Couple other bills, House Bill 1893 and Senate Bill 1212.

They were introduced by Delegates Hurst and Senator Edwards, respectively, to create a New River Valley Passenger Rail Station Authority.

Both passed.

They're on their way to the governor for signature.

Those bills will establish as a local authority that will be able to provide a conduit for potential funding for a station in the New River Valley.

Again, part of our Western Rail Initiative.

So our VPRA website is, or now our Transforming Rail in Virginia website is now live.

We expect, actually it's our interim website is up, but we expect the full website to be up by April 1st.

So we'll certainly share that information with you as soon as we have it.

We also did do a rail industry day with BRE on February 24th.

and that was really to inform both the community but also our rail industry contracting community about the work we're doing, various projects on transforming rail in Virginia, and potential bidding opportunities that will be coming up soon too.

So a little bit more about the federal stimulus package that passed.

I'm sure many of you have read about this already, but it did

The newest coronavirus relief bill did provide $1.7 billion to Amtrak and $175 million of that will be going to the states to help support our state supported service.

With the new stimulus funding, Amtrak has reported that they expect to be able to restore all of their long distance service by June 7th.

And here in Virginia, that includes the Crescent, Palmetto, Silver Meteor and Silver Star lines, which, again, will be fully restored to their daily service by June 7th.

Also, Amtrak expects to start reinstating

the furloughed employees.

They had to furlough about 1,250 employees and they expect to start reinstating those employees this month as well and hopefully completing all of that by March 29th.

They are also looking to lift, right now they're still at 50% capacity restrictions.

They are in plans right now to hopefully lift those capacity restrictions later this summer.

that'll be somewhat dictated by ridership demand and obviously public health and safety as well.

So our ridership year over year in Virginia is still down about 68% from what it was this time last year.

However, it is still improving.

We're very happy to see that.

Their Amtrak seven-day moving average for bookings continues to improve.

Their system-wide bookings right now are about a third of the bookings for the same week last year.

Again, we're starting to see some improvement and advanced bookings are starting to increase as well.

So with that, that concludes my report.

Does anybody have any questions for me?

Okay.

So with that, I'm actually now going to ask for a motion to go into closed session.

I do.

I move that the board convene in a closed session pursuant to Section 2.2-3711A1 of the Code of Virginia for the purpose of discussions related

to prospective candidates and interviews pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.23711A6 for the purpose of discussing potential transactions where bargaining is involved and where the financial interest of the Commonwealth would be adversely affected if the discussion were made public at this time and pursuant to Virginia Code 2.23711A8

for the purpose of consulting with legal counsel regarding provisions in the agreement requiring legal advice.

Do we have a second for that?

Second.

Okay.

Miss Sullivan?

Aye.

Miss Butler-Painter?

Aye.

Miss Dorsch?

Aye.

Miss Moses-Ned?

Mr. Nichols, Mr. Siddeed, Mr. Spore, and Ms. Zimmerman.

Okay, so I believe you all should have received a separate meeting link.

Zoom meeting link to go into closed session.

And we'll see you over there in a few minutes.

Great.

So thank you again to everybody, all the board members

that participated in the closed session.

We are now coming out into open session and I'm going to read the following statement.

We are now going to take a roll call vote and I ask that each member indicate their agreement with the following.

To the best of my knowledge, during the closed meeting, the only matters heard, discussed or considered were those matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and only those public

Business Matters as were identified at the motion by which the closed meeting was convened.

Bridget, would you please do a roll call vote?

Sure.

I see her.

I see a wave.

Okay.

Ms. Butler-Painter?

Yes.

Mr. Fisette?

Mr. Hall?

Ms. Moses-Ned?

Mr. Nichols?

Mr. Sadeed?

Mr. Spor?

And Ms. Zimmerman?

Aye.

All right.

Thank you again, everybody.

And we'll be back in touch soon and appreciate all of your participation today.

Thanks.

Bye.