Board of Directors Meeting   6/28/2021

Thank you.

All right, well good morning everybody.

Welcome to our first in-person meeting of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority Board.

It is great to see all of you in person and not on a screen.

I know we have one or two more people that are on their way that are running a few minutes late and we have a few minutes or a few people that are on online virtually as well and

This has been advertised as an electronic meeting because we do have several board members that will be participating remotely, which we will call them out when we go through the roll.

We are going to have a public comment period today.

It is going to be at the end of the meeting, and I believe we have the ability to call in for public comments.

posted that link online as well.

So just a few announcements.

In June, our Commonwealth Transportation Board did approve our six-year plan for fiscal years 22 to 27, which includes $1.48 billion in state funding for the Transforming Rail in Virginia initiative.

It does also include $84 million in additional funds that were from the governor's budget this year.

for expansion on the VRE line as well, and $159 million for our Western Rail Initiative.

So with this action, it does officially commit a number of the state funds that are then also shown in our VPRA budget, which you all approved last month.

And so a good development for us as well.

And they did also approve a procurement for surveying on the Buckingham Branch.

DJ is going to have an update for us later with a number of some updates on passenger rail volumes over the past month as well as organizational items, an update on our capital plan and financing as well.

We are going to be, now that we are able to meet in person, we're going to be shifting our days for the upcoming board meetings but also going to

and every other month format.

I think given the number of agenda items we have, it would work well to have meetings in which we can come in the night before, for those of you that are able to, for dinner, just a social get together and then a meeting the next day.

So we're looking at the dates of, and we will send this out to you, but for those of you that are listening,

July 26th and 27th, September 27th to 28th, and December 13th to 14th.

But again, those are on Tuesdays.

But we will send that out to you so you have that as well.

So on our agenda today, we have, again, DJ's executive director update, which will cover a number of items.

our assignment of our Amtrak and VRE agreements.

As you recall, last month, we assigned the CSX agreements and the deeds from DRPT over to the Passenger Rail Authority.

It was important that we do that before July 1st and the beginning of the fiscal year.

Today, we're gonna be hearing some more about the Amtrak and VRE agreements.

I know we've briefed you all several times on those before, but now that we're assigning them, we're gonna have

a briefing like we did last month with a little bit more information about some of the key business terms of those as well.

We will also be doing an update of our, or a discussion of our investment policy and the steps we'll be taking going forward on that.

And a presentation from Rich Dalton about VRE and where VRE is with their projects right now.

Any questions for me?

All right, I think we need to do actually an approval

of the minutes.

And while we do that, actually, I'm going to ask you, Joy, to do a roll call vote as well so we know who is here and who's on the line also.

So is there a second for the minutes?

Can you please respond?

Aye.

What your name is called?

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Mr. Sadid?

Zimmerman?

But Mr. Dalton is here.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, we have a quorum.

Thank you, thank you.

I agree.

I heard you.

And I know I heard Mr. Nichols and Ms. Moses-Nedd as well.

And I know that Mr. Fisette and Ms. Doersch are on their way.

They should be here soon.

OK, thank you.

Thank you and good morning, everybody.

It's good to be here in person.

It's nice to see faces without the screen in between, so happy that this is the first of many in-person meetings.

In the executive director's report, if we go to the next slide, and actually to this slide after that one, I'll be giving a few updates on what's been happening in VPRA.

There is a lot going on.

There is a lot to do on two different streams.

Number one is setting the organization up, putting the policies in place, getting the team in place, and that takes a lot of our time.

But we're very cognizant of the fact that we can't allow that to take away from delivering the projects that we have in place.

So a couple months ago, we had the big announcement with the Western Rail Initiative, where we're going to take the train all the way out to Crete.

There are continuing negotiations with Norfolk Southern on that and we hope to have those deals done by the end of this calendar year on financial.

We've started the alternatives analysis for where those stations are going to, where that station is going to be.

It's in the nascent stages of the analysis.

We'll be working with the community and the NRV authority out there to get a better understanding of what the station will cost and how it will impact ridership.

So that work is underway.

Just a little bit about Amtrak.

During COVID, as I think you all know, Amtrak cut down a lot of its long-distance frequencies and its state frequencies.

As of the first week of June, they've brought those long-distance frequencies back, so we're starting to see ridership roll back, as we'll talk about in a minute.

Additionally, they are continuing their COVID protocols, so they continue to provide a safe form of transportation for all of the passengers, long-distance and state-supported.

In an effort to get passengers back, we are participating with Amtrak in a pretty significant marketing event between now and the end of the summer, traveling over the summer.

We're cutting fares up to 35% nationwide, which we think will really get folks back to the train.

Anybody that has traveled over the last month, airports or a train, it's getting crowded.

People are anxious to travel, people want to get out of their houses and go places, and we want to make sure that they're considering the train as one of those options.

On the project side, we did get the RFP out for the PE, the preliminary engineering for the Franconia Bypass, which is a big project that will take folks from one side of the right-of-way to the other in the Springfield area.

That was scheduled to go out in July.

We actually got that out early in June, so knock on wood, we're ahead of schedule on that.

We intend to stay ahead of schedule.

Those bids are due the second week of July, and you'll hear more about that in future meetings.

From a staffing point of view, we have hired, you knew last time we had the COO, Mike McLaughlin, who you'll hear from in a couple moments, Steve Pittard, the CFO, who you'll hear from after that.

We've also hired a controller, Ashley Nussbaum, who was previously at DRPT.

is our controller and we're thrilled to have her on board.

We've also hired a director of human resources who will help us with a lot of our policies and our talent acquisition.

That candidate starts on the 10th of July and you'll meet her at the next board meeting.

And finally we've got a chief administrative officer who we have been interviewing and we're in the final stages of those interviews now and we hope to have a selection sometime in the next.

So we're moving forward both on the project fronts and also on the staffing front.

We feel good about where we are.

Yes, ma'am.

It's great to hear all of that progress happening.

And I'm wondering, and I'm sorry I can't recall if this was in early documents or not, but if the authority has or will be working to create a diversity and inclusion set of goals in hiring and in procurement?

Absolutely agree and we do not have that policy in place yet but that's one of the first policies that we'll be putting in place.

Right now the only policy, I guess we have a couple, we've got the human resources manual that we're going to have to bring back to the board with a few tweaks.

We also have a travel policy to reimburse for individual employee travel.

But when the Chief Administrative Officer comes on board, we will have that list of policies and prioritize the diversity policy and also sustainability.

Those are two items that are very important to me personally.

Any other questions before we move on?

Okay, next slide please.

Here is the current organization.

We've worked hard with Director Mitchell and also the executive team that's in place now.

This is a high-level view of what the organization will look like.

Right now, there are a lot of boxes that represent functions, not necessarily people, so there are some places where that box will be one person, some places will be multiple people.

There are also a couple places where it will be a portion of a person's time as we continue

A lot of how this organization will size out depends on how we choose to deliver the projects.

For example, we put a lot of the project management on a consultant.

We'll have fewer people in the actual VPRA organization.

No one contemplates hiring the construction folks within VPRA.

We're not going to have people driving back those and doing that kind of work.

But the staff will range anywhere from 40 to, let's say, 80, depending on how the project management evolves.

So more to come on that.

But this page that you're looking at here is a high level of

The direct reports on the executive team, we've got the COO and the CFO that we've already talked about, the Chief Administrative Services, which as I said, we're in the final stages of interviews, and then we're also going to have a Director of External Affairs that will work with our government affairs and our marketing

as far as our media relations, not our marketing, like track marketing with pricing and those kinds of things.

That'll be under COO, but really with the getting the word out.

As we talked a little bit earlier, we have been blessed with some very good press across the Commonwealth with the work that we are doing and also with the positive benefits that passenger rail brings.

We need to make sure that we continue that good news, being out there.

Talking a little bit, I'll go actually from right to left.

Under Administrative Services, we've got the Procurement Manager, we've got the Director of Human Resources that I talked about earlier, and then also, it's a little confusing.

It says General Counsel, we don't intend to have a General Counsel, but that is the function that is going to interact with the Commonwealth's Office of the Attorney General.

They're going to be our support.

This section here is just our liaison with those folks.

We talked about external affairs.

The CFO under Steve will have the IT management, also the budget and financial program manager, the controller Ashley's on, and then a finance manager.

That'll be the true nuts and bolts of our accounting and finance.

And then the big

Part of the work will take place under Mike's group, the COO.

We've got the planning group, got the director of engineering and construction, and then we've got the rail services group under Mike that will deal with all of our contracts and all of our agreements, our real estate, our relationship with Amtrak and those folks.

So if we can go to the next slide and we'll talk more about that middle section.

The middle section under the COO, Director of Engineering and Construction, this is really where the work is going to get done on the projects.

Looking now from left to right, on the left-hand side you've got the management of all the design services, so you've got preliminary engineering, a lot of the design work as we partner with CSX, VRE, Amtrak,

and then the programs and projects will shift to the right hand side for the actual delivery, the construction and the delivery of the project.

We've looked, we had

our consultant look at different organizations that have delivered big projects.

We've talked a lot to our friends in VDOT and this is really representing a best in class of how you deliver these complex multimodal projects.

Many of our projects intersect with the highways, many of them intersect with real estate and also track and confident that this is the way to deliver the projects efficiently.

I'd also point out that six months from now, this may look a little different just because as we learn more and as we get deeper into some of these programs, this will evolve.

But for a start, we think this is a good place to start.

The most important part in my mind though is that middle section, the program control support and the program oversight.

Those are the folks that are going to make sure that we are tracking the funding appropriately, working with Steve's group, and that we know as soon as a project gets even a little bit off schedule or off budget so we can come back and get it back on track.

As you've heard me say many times and you'll hear me say many more times, VPRA is going to succeed or fail based on how these projects are delivered and we can't afford to not deliver them smart.

So this is the, you saw the high level organization, this is the COO's organization.

Any questions or comments for me?

Okay, we talked about the jobs that are being hired on the first page.

Here we have a couple project managers already

being advertised, we've got the director of planning that's being advertised, and we're to work to continue to fill out some of these positions.

Many of these projects are already underway.

You see Long Bridge there, we've already started, that's a big one, we've already started on a lot of these, so you'll see these boxes get filled pretty quickly.

Okay, moving on to the next slide, let's talk just a little bit about ridership.

I alluded to the fact earlier that ridership is indeed coming back.

This is the fiscal year 2021 May ridership.

As you can see, May, just looking from October of 2020, coming over to May of 2021, we're up to 40, almost 44,000 riders in the month of May.

is indeed continuing to pick up.

You can see the trend going forward.

Route 51 in Richmond, we're working with Amtrak.

That's the route that we suspended due to COVID.

We're hoping to get that route back in September.

Amtrak is working with us on crews.

They've had some issues with mechanical staffing, but they've been great.

I mean, they're working with us to get that back quickly.

So we'll have that back hopefully in September, but definitely in the fall.

Moving on to the next slide.

This is the May ridership year over year.

I think this is the one that really tells the best story.

If you look at May 2019 in the yellow, those were record months, many of those, for our ridership.

Last year in 2020, obviously, we had very few riders.

People weren't even leaving their houses.

But you can see we're coming back.

Last month, we were just at 50% of ridership in April, and this month we're well over 50% in all of our routes, but for the Richmond route.

Memorial Day weekend was very good.

We're at 65% of our ridership and looking forward to getting back to 100%.

Before COVID, we were on track.

We were breaking records many months consecutively and back there.

Headed to the next slide, please.

This is the fiscal year to date.

This is going to be a little bit of an anomaly because last year, 2020, the first few months were before COVID.

So we've got October, November, December, January, which were great ridership months.

We're still trailing both of the last two years, but again, month to month, as we move into the next fiscal year, that'll be.

And then finally, on the next slide, we'll talk a little bit about the on-time performance.

We're doing pretty well in on-time performance.

We're both on all stations and endpoint.

You can see we're well over 80% across the board, with the exception of actually we're above 80% across the board.

on all the routes and improvements from last year.

Amtrak has been a great partner.

One of the things that we've started already is these performance management teams, Amtrak, CSX, VRE, who sits in on them, and also VPRA, to look at every train that's late and look back and say, okay, well, why was this train late?

What were the dispatching decisions?

What do we need to do differently in the future?

Amtrak, again, is committed to working with us to make sure that our trains are on time because, as we've talked about in the past, people get on trains only if they know they've got some reliability getting to their endpoint on time.

It's one of the reasons why we do all stations as well.

If you're over 86%, you're in a good place.

All stations gives you a lot more clarity because we have

When we just do endpoint, you could be on time all the way down to Ashland, for example, coming south.

And then if something happens between Ashland and Richmond, you lose that train.

So we want all stations to be at least 86.

And we're working with Amtrak to put metrics in place.

We don't have yet service level agreements with Amtrak that say, hey, here are the numbers that you need to hit.

But we're working with them to develop.

Can I follow up with that?

Just thinking from a marketing perspective, I'm curious what it might be for the airlines, but also just thinking about 95 and how unreliable that can be.

I know just talking with people and encouraging them to take the train and having conversations where it's taking 95, how often are you really in touch?

So I'm just curious if like VDOT has anything, just kind of looking ahead to marketing around

No, that's a good point.

That's fair.

That's fair.

We can look into that.

The other thing that you'll see starting next fiscal year is that when we start the fiscal year, we're actually going to set goals for ourselves so we know what we're going to expect.

We've got to make sure that as we put these projects in place, if they're going to have an impact on our on-time performance, we need to plan for that.

And we also need to let people know one of the things that

We've done well in the past in passenger rails.

We've said, look, for the next three months we're going to have slow orders and you're going to be later so we can adjust the schedules temporarily or at least let folks know you're going to see a different experience than normal but we'll get you back there.

Communication is key.

People, if they're going to be late, they want another.

Any other questions on the performance?

Good morning.

I'm going to ask if everyone can hear me well, but not hear that well.

It's really great to see everyone in person, and I have been here before in front of the Commonwealth Transportation Board, but it's quite an honor to be here in front of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

So, thanks for having me here.

I'm going to give you an overview of the capital project updates, the ones that are under Mr. Dalton's purview.

I'll probably leave those a little more to you, but we'll get going.

Next slide, please.

So I'm not going to read every word on all these pages, but I am going to have some highlights.

I will start at the top.

Long Bridge, we can move along with that.

I think we told you before, we hired a contractor to finish preliminary engineering.

We brought them on in March.

That contractor is VHB, who has a lot of experience in the area and actually has some experience with VRE in that area as well.

That's moving along well.

Alexandria-Fortrack, which is being coordinated with

Beery and Mr. Dalton's group with regard to Crystal City Station because that is within the four track area is moving forward.

That is CSX will have that responsibility.

That four track is being laid on their part of the corridor.

If you recall, north of Alexandria, VPRA is getting the west side of the corridor and the room to build in this area is on the east side.

So this would be on the CSX side of things.

They are leading construction on that.

Frank Cooney, 3rd Main Line, CSX is also leading that construction.

Project authorization notice, in case you're wondering what that means, since CSX is leading the construction, that is an agreement we'll work out with them so they can then move forward, continue to move forward on final design in many of these projects.

A big highlight here is the Franconia-Springfield Bypass, which I already mentioned.

We're getting the west side north of Franconia.

We're getting the east side south of Franconia.

To make the transition smoother for the passenger trains, we're building a bypass so the trains can go up and over the freight conflicts below.

We had an RFP for preliminary engineering released on June 6th that's currently in procurement.

This means it proposes to do July 14th since it's in procurement.

I can't say much more than that.

But that is one that we had actually promised to get that out by July, and we met that timeline.

The next two are interesting in that Chairman Bulova might be familiar with Newington Road and Route 1.

We are working with Fairfax County.

Those are two narrow roadways underneath the CSX right-of-way.

This is a corridor where we're planning on building a third track, but we actually get to build

Instead of just building an extra one-track bridge, we're going to build an extra two-track bridge.

So we'll have two two-track bridges.

So we're building four tracks over both Newington Road and Route 1.

You may recall when we briefed you before on the agreement with CSX, the corridor, for the most part, from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, has the envelope for a four-track corridor.

So in certain locations, and you might see this again in the future, in certain locations where it makes sense to build the four tracks, we're going to do that.

So we're doing that at both Newington Road and Route 1.

Again, there's a two-track bridge right there now.

We're going to lay another two-track bridge next to them, both at Newington and Route 1, and CSX will be leading that with us.

By the way, any time a project leads, that doesn't mean they're doing it by themselves.

You're going to hear me use the word team effort.

A lot of times, a lot today, that's going to be a team effort.

They're going to be working with Fairfax County because they're going to be working with Amtrak, VRE, and us as well.

We have a lot of coordination going on, you know, in the parties, but they will, they will, they will take the lead, CSX will at those two bridges.

It's very, very, again, very narrow.

And those are benefits to the whole Commonwealth because we'll be widening

the passageway for vehicles underneath.

And not just cars, but bikes, bus rapid transit, there's some initiatives at Route 1 in the future and Fairfax as well for that.

Of those roadway aspects that I mentioned of the widening,

EDOT is putting in 20 million for, they just passed it in their SIP last week, six year improvement plan at CTB.

So they're a big project funder of both of those.

And that group one is one that we also received funding from NVTA, that Director Mitchell was key on getting that funding about a year ago or so.

Sorry, we also received funding from them from Franconia Bypass.

We're working with a lot of project partners is my point here.

BDOT, BRE, Fairfax County, up and down the line.

I'll continue with other jurisdictions too.

On the next slide, the sidings are about three miles, no, not, sorry, go back one.

On this slide, the sidings A, B, and C are, they're sidings, but they're really the beginning of a third track all the way to Spotsylvania, in some cases to Richmond.

Those, for the most part, were environmentally cleared under DC to RVA.

And preliminary engineering, some of that was done also under DC to RVA as well.

And Mr. Dalton, if some of this looks familiar, we did borrow some best practices from some of your board meetings as far as some of the graphics.

So we liked what you did there to be able to put things concisely on one page.

So, again, I would probably put up this map a lot.

You've seen this before.

Sometimes it's good just to have a geographic reference.

RFP corridor projects do want to state that

Flagging agreements, which is so important.

You wouldn't understand how important it is until you hear it's a tough resource and I see those who've been in the railroad industry nodding their head.

Getting enough flaggers out there that are trained.

and can make sure the program moves along safely is very important.

So we are working with CSX and that to increase their flaggers.

We're continuing along with access agreements and other design agreements, some things that are already touched upon.

The corridor survey for Washington, Petersburg is ongoing and the survey for the Buckingham branch is soon to be awarded as well.

Those have been, those procurements were done under DRPT and the CTB process, so we moved those through the CTB process.

And again, the program management team meetings, these are meetings that we have with CSX, VRA, and Amtrak, in fact, which Mr. Dalton and I just talked about this morning.

We have one upcoming on Wednesday.

Those are monthly meetings, and we'll also have technical committee meetings that'll accompany those as well.

Next slide, please.

So I just want to show you some pictures of some things that are going on out in the field.

The survey work is going, geotechnical work is underway for Long Bridge.

Yes, that bridge is, while it might need a paint job, it is safe and the CSX, that is the CSX bridge, we'll be building a new bridge right next to it.

So we just want to, we'll be showing, continuing to show you pictures from out in the field.

The next slide, please.

And one of the other early works projects going on is an Alexander four track

Many of you have probably gone along the airport access road and didn't even think about the rail line underneath it.

But at the south end of Crystal City is an airport access road that goes over the CSX corridor.

And one of the first projects, we're meeting an FRA USDOT deadline for early works projects.

We call it the crash wall project.

We want to build a crash wall around the airport access road.

That work is ongoing, as you can see.

and so it's just beginning of the construction phase.

And the design was revised to account for an existing storm shooter.

So there was a location that was unanticipated.

And these are kind of things you might see, I see Mr. Dalton nodding his head, see up and down the corridor.

So we do build these contingencies in both time-wise and money-wise into the system.

And our engineers tell us that this is not a big issue.

We'll be able to move forward and meet our deadlines.

So next slide, please.

Franconia Springfield Bypass, just want to highlight this a little bit, show you some pictures.

Like I mentioned, it's the bypass, if you're going from north, from south to north, it'll carry the passenger trains on the east side over to the west side.

For those of you who know where the VRE stations are, that makes a lot of sense.

If you think about Brook and Leland, the stations like that, they're on the east side south of Franconia, and if you think about the Crystal City and L'Enfant stations, they're on the west side north of Franconia, so it makes sense the way we've laid it out.

Again, the RFP went out in June.

Proposals are due back soon.

The bypass would be just under a mile.

Next slide, please.

We already talked about sightings A, B, and C. Again, we just wanted to give you a geographic reference to put them up on a map.

We talked about these earlier.

Next slide, please.

Moving on to some other areas.

The Western Rail Initiative that was mentioned earlier, marks by Mr. Stadler and others,

There's three major construction projects for the Western Rail Initiative, Nokesville to Calverton, which is just southwest of Manassas, building seven miles of double track.

Norfolk Southern will be leading that project.

And that is an important project for fluidity, both for freight trains and passenger trains.

We'll be adding, as part of this agreement, assuming we do come to a different agreement, like Mr. Sadler said, by the end of the year,

that project and the Roanoke Westyard Project are ones that will be ongoing.

These are for the second train and also the extension to Christiansburg.

Norfolk Southern is also leading the Roanoke Westyard.

And what that will do, that'll allow trains to transfer easily from the Roanoke Station to the Virginia line.

There's a few miles of track between Roanoke and Salem that was made under Norfolk Southern's ownership, but that

We don't want to get stuck in the rail yard in Roanoke, so we'll have an easement through that area in Roanoke and they're building a bypass, if you will.

If you're not familiar with what the letter of no prejudice means, that means that Norfolk Southern will begin the work

and they'll do it under their own risk, but once the agreements are signed, that work is eligible for reimbursement.

So if we do sign different agreements by the end of the year, both the North Scottsville Cavalry and Royal Oak West Yard money is eligible for reimbursement.

If we do not come to agreement, the Norfolk Southern did that design work at their own risk, but we feel confident that we'll be able to get to agreement by the end of the year.

Salem to Christiansburg, that is a project that VPRA will undertake.

We do have a task order out to consultants.

for planning and feasibility.

And that's also going to, we're gonna upgrade some tracks from Salem to Christiansburg and also the station construction out in the Christiansburg area.

So next slide, please.

I'm gonna highlight a few other major construction projects that VPRA or DRPT might not be leading, but that we have an interest in from a funding aspect.

and like I mentioned earlier, I'm letting Mr. Dalton talk about Lawn Front Fortrack, but there is $22 million in our financial plan for the Lawn Front Fortrack.

It's very important that that is necessary as part of the CSX agreement, because that Fortrack will get that, finish off that eight miles of connection from Alexandria all the way up to what we call CP, Virginia Control Point.

Virginia is the south of Union Station.

Arkanale to Powell's Creek, if any of you take the train, you'll see in the last few years, some third track around the Quantico area,

That is being finished up.

That is a project that has been ongoing for a few years, and that'll be finishing up soon.

Related to that, as Quantico Station, again, a project Mr. Dalton will probably talk about.

I know we're solving your slides later on.

A project that we're a major, that DRPT and now VPRA are a major funder of, and that is an important project to add a third track along with the improvements to the passenger area there.

I do also want to point out that

This isn't just along the RFP, but there's a lot of other major funding going on throughout the Commonwealth of Newport News Station.

Over 20 million from DRPT.

Remember, Director Mitchell was gosh, about this time last year out there for groundbreaking.

So that project's moving along.

That Newport News Station is moving a few miles up the road.

It'd be a nice multimodal center in Newport News.

So that is one we're also tracking as well.

So next slide, please.

And I think we're coming toward the end.

Just as a reminder, we intend to show this every month, just give you updates, or every board meeting, give you updates on how the project's going.

We want to make sure that there are truly no surprises.

We're confident these will all stay on track, and when they're not on track, you'll know about it as soon as we do.

But this is just our way to keep you all informed.

If you have any comments, if you want to see something differently, please let us know, because this is really for you.

And we truly do mean it.

Last month we said, we showed you the capital project update for the first time.

You've seen a lot of changes already.

And if you have any other ideas, we're happy to make that constructive.

And before Mr. Pittard comes up, I do just want to say hello and recognize Mr. Fisette for being here and also Mr. Hall, who's joined us as well.

All right, now, Steve Peter will give us the financial update.

Morning.

Nice to see everybody in person for a change.

It's really welcome for me in particular.

So next slide.

Just this is an update from last month and overall slide here, and then I'll go into detail of the three items in the schedule at the bottom.

But overall, we are on

We're behind budget as far as capital projects is the main item to look at on this page.

And it's due really to the length of time it took us to negotiate the contract with Amtrak and CSX.

It took a lot longer than we had ever anticipated when we prepared the budget.

And so without going through all of the details here, as we get into those details going forward, if you take that $200 million payment out, you see

We're at $35 million, roughly, out of $143 million, excluding that CSX transaction.

And it is just a result of we couldn't go forward until we knew we had those agreements signed.

Next slide, please.

On the operating budget, we are doing

Well, here we're on budget on the admin and the marketing.

And then with respect to our Amtrak services, we have been receiving federal stimulus funds, which when we did the budget, we had not anticipated an exact dollar amount.

And therefore, since we didn't know an exact dollar amount, we did not include those in the budget.

And that's why you see this variance here on the passenger service and in total the operations budget.

Next slide.

The administrative budget for the year, we are on track overall.

I will say there is a large accrual resulting from the memorandum of agreement between Department of Rail and Public Transportation and the Passenger Rail Authority that we signed.

Gosh, I think it was back September we signed this agreement based off of language in the Appropriation Act from the General Assembly and the Governor.

signing that bill that allowed DRPT to do a lot of work for the Passenger Rail Authority in the past year.

And there just hasn't been a bill actually sent and processed yet.

Part of that was getting set up with our bank account and getting the ability to pay that bill back to DRPT.

And we're happy to report we are there now.

Not sure if we're going to process it here this week with a close being June 30th, but it will be done shortly in the beginning of next year, if not.

The other thing I point out here in one of the bullets is one of the variances that's kind of large, it's kind of blocked on the screen there with the inset picture, is the office building and related, and it's just a little bit over, because we did have to

end up buying office furniture, which was a lot more expensive than I had anticipated.

And on top of that, we did actually have to renovate the space.

It was a very unusual layout in that space next door to DRPT on the 21st floor where we are.

So that was just a missed estimate there.

But overall, we're going to end the year pretty much right on target here on the admin budget.

Next slide, please.

So on the capital projects expenditures, as mentioned, you've got the Long Bridge project, Alexandria fourth track, and then the phase one of the sidings, but all three of them along with a little bit of work on the bypass are due to getting those agreements signed a lot later in the year than we anticipated.

We had hoped by September to have those agreements done.

So that's what you see, those variances at the top part of the schedule.

And then as we move on down, you see there is a $10.3 million variance where we're over budget.

And that was due to not, we did not have the transactional costs included with the right of way purchase for CSX, which attorney's fees, there was a large recordation payment, not in Virginia, but in,

DC, and we are working with DC now to hopefully have those funds returned to us, but it is included in this analysis now.

And in addition, there's a lot of survey work on the corridor, obviously a lot of miles of track and then a lot of different looking at titles, et cetera, and surveying that underlying property.

A lot of work there has been undertaken and is ongoing into the future.

and then finally the last point I'll point out here is we do have the last line for TRV is the other infrastructure and that is the Fairfax County Bridges as well as we had service that we had originally planned that would start in this year and with that service and with Amtrak we are required to get new equipment, new train equipment and

Obviously with the delay in the contracts, that service has now been pushed back to a start date of fiscal year 23, but in the budget we had planned on it happening, as well as those bridges which got moved out slightly.

Next slide please.

On capital grants, it may not look like we're on budget here, however it is, and I'll

direct you to the three-track lease payments sort of in the middle of the chart.

They add up to $14.4 million of variance at the end of May.

And we funded those with federal funds that essentially what we do is we transfer the authority of those funds to Virginia Railway Express and then they contract directly with the federal government to receive those funds.

and therefore none of those expenditures actually run through our financial records.

However, from a budgeting perspective, they were funds that you had authority over, so we wanted to include them in the budget to get your approval for allocating those funds.

Next slide, please.

On the monthly revenues, we continue to track right towards budget for the year.

And like I say, in the future, we should have a little more, instead of a flat budget line, we should have a little seasonality.

I'm not sure.

At some point, I'll go back and investigate what happened in September.

I suspect

There were a lot of different moving pieces with the new legislation involved with the rail authority and I suspect there was a payment of revenues that was delayed from July or August and it hit in September so I think that's just an accounting timing.

We actually

The revenues work through both DMB and VDOT and the Department of Accounts before they show up on our books.

But I will investigate that and going forward I do hope to have some flow of the funds throughout the year versus just a straight line.

Next slide please.

Finally, our cash balance.

We talked about this last time.

We were steadily accumulating funds and we made the $200 million payment to CSX in April.

And obviously that's that large drop.

And then what happened in May was we were able to collect about $67 million of priority transportation funds that were allocated for that purpose by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

Going forward, I will probably change this slide analysis to include our investments because in June, we have been able to get the Wells Fargo account set up.

And on top of that, we've transferred all of the funds from the General Account of the Commonwealth

and moved, as I told you all before, we're sitting at a balance about $5 million in our operating account at Wells Fargo.

The remaining funds that you see here are now in the local government investment pool with the Treasurer of Virginia, as we had talked about previously.

Next slide, please.

And finally, this is pretty much the same slide we saw last time, because these were earnings that are coming out of that general account from the Commonwealth of Virginia, and they post the interest.

They basically allocate interest to all 200 state agencies that have a balance, and they do that on a quarterly basis, so there's not really an update here.

And then going forward, we will have our own

Analysis, and we will hopefully be able to show you a monthly earnings report.

And one more point before we move on here, we do have later on, we're going to bring to you just an outline of the investment policy that we'll be working on and hope to have y'all adopt the July meeting.

And I'd like to also welcome Ms. Doersch for joining us.

Good to see you.

Sorry, I know

You took the train down this morning.

It was a little late, but good to see you.

Thank you.

OK, so with that, next on our agenda is an update from Rich Dalton on VRE and the VRE projects, and obviously you'll continue to hear a lot from Rich as we move forward with all of our capital projects that are being jointly executed.

But we're very happy to have Rich here today to be able to give you all a broader overview of what's going on.

because a lot of their projects are very tied in with ours from a schedule standpoint, but also from a funding standpoint.

We work together and have a lot of common funding sources that we are using to execute both our projects and their projects as well.

Thank you.

And if you haven't had enough discussion this morning about projects, here's another dose of it.

but I like the way that we sprinkled in some financial information in between to give you a little bit of a break.

So thank you, Chair Mitchell.

My intent here is just to simply, if you're not familiar with some of the interconnecting station type projects or even other capital improvement programs through VRE, this is just a quick introduction, as Director Mitchell said,

You know, periodically, and I don't know what that is yet, but periodically we'll come back to this rail authority and just continue to give you some updates and stuff like that.

I was actually inspired a little bit by the previous rail authority meeting by some of the questions that were being asked and particularly about Alexandria.

Questions were asked about what was going on with Alexandria Station.

So hopefully, like I said, I'll just step through this and feel free to stop me, ask questions, and either through the presentation or at the end.

So next slide, please.

So just as I'm showing you a little different map, if you will,

that Mike showed you before, obviously, but the similarities, the north to south parallels I-95.

But our service, of course, we branch out and we operate over the top of Norfolk Southern out to our westernmost station, which is Broad Run.

And so just want to orientate you to that map.

The projects that I'm gonna go through here in a little bit, we've got them basically categorized into three categories.

What we refer to as our core line, which is where both the Manassas Line service and the Fredericksburg Line service coexist.

So basically at a point, Franconia, Springfield, just south of Alexandria North into Union Station, and there's four stations in that area.

Then of course the Fredericksburg Line,

which is essentially Alexandria to Spotsylvania, and then the Manassas Line which is Alexandria out to Broad Run.

Next slide.

Here's the core line stations and relative projects.

Next slide.

First, we'll go just slightly north of the Lafont Station.

Just wanted to bring

Bring your attention to the fact that we have been coordinating with Amtrak to enhance, expand midday storage.

That's very important.

And now, of course, as we continue to look at the planned additional services as it relates to Transforming Rail in Virginia, we'll continue to develop this program

into eventually building out additional storage space.

So, again, just wanted to put this one up here.

It's not a station project or anything, but it's a good project and very important for the service.

Next slide.

Font, fourth track and station improvements.

VRE is, let's say, let's not use the lead.

How about the champion?

Because there's so many people involved.

So we'll use the term champion, but it's by no means just VRE alone.

But this project has been mentioned before, it's an additional fourth track and the station improvement.

Essentially,

We're at the conceptual level, just beginning the conception level right now and essentially what will end up is we'll have longer platforms and we'll be able to access that station platform from both sides and we're also looking at enhanced access points to the station as well.

Next slide.

Crystal City Station improvements.

This is a project that, well, essentially we do have a Crystal City Station.

This concept here, this plan here is to relocate that station about 400 yards south of the existing station.

The current station was constructed essentially in the backbone of an S-curve, and so there's not a whole lot we can do with expanding that platform.

So this is a relocation.

We are moving from essentially 30% design into the 60% design phase.

I will say that a major element, if you will, of this station could be the connection between

This station and Reagan International Airport.

Also, and it's somewhat early, but there's some discussions as it relates to making this an Amtrak stop as well.

Next slide.

Here we go.

Alexandria Station Improvement Project.

So this station improvement project, it's rooted in having the ability to remove an at-grade pedestrian crossing, and that's how we get people from the west platform to the east platform.

So what you see here

In the rendition here is adding some elevator towers.

There is already a tunnel in place.

And so adding some vertical circulation and enhancing the safety of this station.

But there will be some platform work and some platform lengthening as well.

So this project is we're about 90% design.

We're actually

going to utilize an alternative delivery method, which you hear from us.

Others refer to it as the contractor at risk, but this is a CMGC approach.

Very well suited for projects.

It's not necessarily a complicated project, but it's complicated in the fact that it has to be.

The complication is the constructability and being able to minimize any kind of interference with the current service out there.

Next slide.

Just finishing our way down the Fredericksburg line.

Next slide.

Franconia-Springfield Station improvements.

You heard before about the bypass project.

This particular project has us, we have a short platform on the west side of this station, so we'll be lengthening that platform and doing some other platform work and working an additional access point to the south to, in preparations or ahead of the third track project that'll go through there.

So again, that's about 90% complete there as well, 90% design.

Next slide.

Station improvements, we did do a platform extension back in 2017.

ahead of or at the same time that the additional track projects come in that area.

We'll resume that if you look down, included these project schedules.

I'm not going to go through each one of them, but if you look down at the bottom of this one, it's towards the end of the decade and beginning into next decade.

So that's a ways out, but we'll have it on our radar.

Next slide.

Bridge Station Improvement, again, something more towards the latter part of the decade.

But this is something that at least we've done some pre-concepts on.

It's not on that, in order of list of priorities, it's not on the top of that, but it is on our radar.

And we'll be continuing some additional design and development work here over the next couple of years.

Next slide.

Ripon Station, which is just south of Woodbridge.

If you look at the yellow shaded area, if you kind of go to the left, you'll see that there's an existing area

that's meant to depict the overhead pedestrian walkway that gets you from the parking lot.

So now back to the shaded area, we'll add another access point there to the parking lot, and of course, lengthen that platform.

Again, this is one that's latter part of the decade.

We do have some development design work done on it, and then as the decade wears on, we'll continue to work on that next.

Thomas Shores, this is a new station.

This station is...

The design for this station is nearly completed.

As the bullet says up here, we're tentatively scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year to start construction.

Now this station is being built by the developer, and of course we're working very closely with the developer and VPRA staff, CSX, to make this one happen, and then this station will end up becoming a VRE station.

Look forward to that one getting going here.

Next slide.

Monaco Station improvements.

This project is, we've awarded a construction contract for this.

And as previously stated, this project not only is to construct and improve station, but also finishes tying in that third track for the Arkandale-Palace Creek project.

As you can see, like I said,

We just set up our construction camera, which means we're about to do something out there.

And just as a side note, we put construction cameras out at our sites where we're doing physical improvements.

And if you go on the VRE webpage under the project page,

for any project that has a construction camera up, you can click on that project, you can look at that camera, and it does have some time lapse features on that as well.

So anyway, just a little plug for the team that put the construction cameras up.

Yeah, we're excited to, if not just for the station improvements, but finally get that third track tied together.

So next slide.

The next two stations, Brooke and Leland, these are platform extensions and being able to enhance the station such that it will accept the additional third track through the area when that will be constructed.

And again, looking at the project schedule, that's more towards the end of the decade.

Next slide.

Similar.

on the island station.

Next slide.

This project is about 90% complete on the design side.

We anticipate getting out there and doing some, hopefully start the construction work on that later this year.

This is essentially, if you look at the yellow shaded areas, it's not

We are lengthening those platforms, but what we're really doing is coming in and rehabilitating some platforms that have just deteriorated over time.

And currently Amtrak and VRE, we don't utilize those platforms.

So it's truly a rehabilitation.

We're also, if you look at that shaded area to the left, kind of hard to pick out, but on that east side platform or the bottom left

yellow shaded area.

We're also adding an access point for the platform.

And currently, and particularly at the peak of our peak when people get off at this station,

They end up getting off and if they're not going over to the parking lot to the right, they're going to parking lots to the left and they end up crossing a pretty busy street.

So we're hoping to minimize any pedestrian and vehicle interaction there.

I think that'll be a big improvement.

Next slide.

And just like I started at the,

Midday storage end, at least on the Fredericksburg line, and at the maintenance and storage facility at Crossroads.

We do have a major project going on out there right now that's under construction, about a $55 million project that's constructing a life cycle maintenance and overhaul facility for us, plus we're expanding tracks out there as well.

Got a couple more years left on the

on that project timeline, but that's going to be a huge, huge enhancement for us on the rolling stock maintenance side.

Next slide.

We'll just hit a couple of projects on the Manassas line.

Bowling Road Station improvement.

This is a platform extension, and it's also a rehabilitation of the existing platforms.

A lot of these stations were built getting pretty close to about 30 years ago.

So as we extend platforms, we're going back in and rehabilitating them as well, similar to the Lorton Station project.

When we're all done, it'll look relatively new.

So this project is under construction, and if you want to go look at it, guess what?

We have a construction camera for this one, too.

It's up on the project page.

Next slide.

Just some renderings of the Manassas Park parking expansion project.

This will include a parking garage at our Manassas Park station.

and hope to be into construction on that project next year.

Next slide.

Prod run expansion was mentioned in your finance report, but this project has multiple elements to it.

We are expanding the existing maintenance and storage facility, lengthening some tracks.

Relocating the station platform itself.

And then if you look at the light blue shaded area off to the right there, that'll end up becoming at least initially some surface parking for us out there.

Questions?

What do you think?

A lot going on.

Thank you.

And I appreciated the extra Alexandria info.

I do have a few questions for you though.

First off, and maybe Jay, you have some answers to this too.

I was curious with the Crystal City Station.

I know with Amazon and the big 100 million commitment they made last week with WMATA around affordable housing and really kind of focusing on Crystal City.

I can't tell from this

How or whether the station there fits in with some of the new redevelopment and efforts around Crystal City.

So I was curious about that.

But a bigger question I have is with all of these, there's just lots of parking.

And I'm curious if there's any multimodal connections that are happening at the stations and if so,

what that could maybe inform us as we think about other stations along these corridors and kind of if you've learned what's helpful to think about that with this design or not.

And also if you're looking at solar or any other things just with all that asphalt that's there with the parking stations.

Those core stations,

there, let's see, Alexandria, Crystal City, Lafont, there's no parking there, right?

So take that off the table for a second.

In terms of, I'll look at Crystal City.

So with the Crystal City station relocation, of course, we're adding an additional access point.

The current station only has one access point.

So we're adding, there'll be two access points there, one on the north, one on the south.

If you're familiar with that area, Arlington County also has a water park development going on there.

So that's the north entrances or the north access point will actually inter integrate with that water park or yeah, the water park development that they have going on there.

The access point to the south that crosses a developer's property that's

developing in that immediate area as well.

Just generally on your questions going head further south as far as parking, multimodal efforts, I will say lots of discussions about, and not just within jurisdictions or within counties, across counties as well in terms of accessibility,

You know, and frankly, just sort of updating our thinking, if you will, when it comes to providing those levels of service.

A lot of that's going on now.

I'll stop there.

We, at several locations, I'm not

I'm gonna list them all off, but we do, you know, with our, with the Potomac-Rappahannock transportation, or specifically OmniRide, we have a lot of connections with them, either directly at the stations or through commuter lots.

And then I will never forget, or I can't forget Fred, you know, Fred Bus.

But on the multimodal connection access issues, I would find it useful.

I don't know if other board members would, but like really what are some best practices or things that we've learned?

I'm thinking, you know, here in Richmond, we've had opportunities to comment on the Richmond Regional Transportation Plan.

and I've been looking to see like are we doing enough in this region or what could I be suggesting as our MPO is looking at how to allocate a lot of money in this region over the next few years and we're all in different parts of the state and I'm sure we all have regional agents, transportation agencies looking at this so it would just be useful to know like

Are there some rules of thumb or things that we could be looking or checking for in our role as good board members to make sure we're doing what we can to facilitate that?

So if it's thinking about, you know, the transit connection and design or some of those other pieces, I at least would find that helpful.

Yeah, let me just follow up then.

with a question on that, Rich.

Back to Crystal City, I was on the board when the, before I left, where the discussion of where the platform should be, there were options, and I think that all got dealt with, but none of us were really talking about Amtrak at the time, or even the pedestrian bridge very seriously.

That is all, that pedestrian bridge is incredibly interesting and exciting that it's going forward.

Back to the Amtrak side of this, you used the term could,

And I'm happy to start with that at least.

We are coordinating with Amtrak on the design of the Crystal City Station so that it will not preclude Amtrak platforms in the future.

It is something that we are very interested in, they are very interested in as well.

It's not funded at this time, but Rich and his team, Mike and our team, and others have been in regular coordination with Amtrak staff.

They've been reviewing our designs at the station and VRE's designs to make sure that we can accommodate an Amtrak station there in the future.

Obviously, with the level of employment that's projected there and the potential pedestrian connection

I mean, the access to the airport is only the icing on the cake, honestly.

It's such a dense place right now, but I would just say as one board member, if there appears to be any obstacle, any challenge to that, I think we should be alerted immediately because

Any new platform that does not include Amtrak is not a success.

No, absolutely.

It's not at all that we are objecting at all to it.

It's really just a matter of some more steps and making sure that the work the VRE is doing right now doesn't preclude some platforms.

A lot of stuff going on in this particular area.

You've got a fourth track project going on.

We've got, you know, the VRE Crystal City Station and then, of course, CC to DCA as mentioned before.

So all of that, what we're essentially trying to

All of us accomplish is, is at the end of the day, where do the tracks have to go, right?

And how do the station platforms influence where the tracks have to go?

And then on top of that, how does the, you know, the pillars for the overhead pedestrian access, you know, where do they land?

And so we're, it's a,

We're more at the end of that process, but most importantly, and Director Mitchell said that, we don't want to preclude some of those other elements.

So the technical questions just are working themselves out.

You have no reason to think you can't get to a possibility, an option.

We'll get there.

Okay.

So funding seems to me to be, I don't want to say this lightly, but I mean, you don't build this kind of station without including an Amtrak station.

So funding will have to be found and there's a way to do that, whether it's with some private money in there as well.

But just, I would really appreciate that we just be kept informed, especially should there be any challenges to and ultimately getting to yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

The other thing I wanted to bring up was, you mentioned solar.

And that's rather a passion of mine.

So anywhere that we have large parking lots, there's an opportunity for a PPA

or Canopies, solar canopies over large asphalt parking lots.

Recently, within the last couple of years,

We have taken, basically updating some analysis that we received to actually, you know, put solar on top of station canopies, on top of the buildings that we have.

Exactly.

And we have not, in fact, we are still receiving some updates or updating information for the former part today.

that I just said, but no have not have not advanced anything into the parking lot.

It's just we have somewhere there's no reason to be because you these are all sort of somewhat cost free if it's a PPA.

You don't really have to pay anything in most instances.

Somebody comes in and rents the space, builds it, and then you get a deal on the energy generated.

So the cap on PPAs has been raised significantly in the last year.

There's no limit at the moment that would be an obstruction.

So I would really encourage you to look into

figuring out how to do the initial analysis or bringing someone in to do that.

And particularly when we're looking at the

at the buildings, the facilities and the station canopies and stuff like that.

I think over the last couple of years, there's just been a lot of information and a lot of things happening in this arena.

So from a, you know, from a resource standpoint or whatever, it's a pretty small lift, I think.

Thank you, Rich.

And I have one other thing, and that is looking at the map.

I realize I haven't been at almost all these stations.

OK, it's a little embarrassing being a board member.

and not having been at hardly any.

I look at the Broad Run station, which I've heard about forever and I've never been, and I see there's hardly any development there, right?

Like buildings, you know, no town, no.

So two pieces.

One is I would think I would take advantage of some kind of a tour.

maybe or others here as well because I know Sharon probably knows every inch of these things because she's the mother of the VRE but I have not and at some point where it might be convenient to actually take some time and actually be on the ground so that it's not just a picture to me and have a little chance to ask some questions

During that period, one thing that'd be very interesting to me would be to know what the local government's land use plan is around each station because what will help us succeed is people.

And if we've got the land, then part of what we're trying to encourage is mixed use development nearby so people can actually walk and get there and have a reason

to take BRE or Amtrak in other instances.

If I may, I actually think that's important, not only for the VRE stations, but also for the other Virginia stations, and even more importantly, for some of these big projects, because you see the maps on paper, and you say, oh, that makes sense, but until you actually walk them, like New River Valley, we walk where the stations could be, you can really see in your mind, oh, there are people here, and there aren't people there.

This is what we should do.

And I'm gonna offer, Rich up as well,

to take a tour.

Certainly, Rich, if you can coordinate with some of the board members on any tour opportunities as well.

I had the opportunity several years ago to do a tour out of Union Station and looking at all the station areas.

But even the opportunity to go see one-off stations at a time is great.

I know that in the future, we actually would like to start being able to move around our VPRA board meetings as well.

and potentially combine those with some site visits of local rail facilities.

We're still working out all of our logistics in terms of in-person and hybrid meetings, but in the future, we would expect as well to be able to do some other meetings around the state where we can also go look at some rail facilities too.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rich, for the overview.

Just one quick question for you with respect to the Potomac Shores slide.

Again, a private developer is constructing it right at the point where

where construction starts, we'll start sharing some of that information as well.

But we've always had this understanding, just a professional understanding that any of that type of information goes through the developer.

So we've generally just kept it out.

And that project as well, I should note, was one that was actually facilitated by our Ark and Delta Powell's Creek

Third Track Construction, and the expansion of the Quantico Station as well.

Those projects were all integrated in order to be able to get the approval from CSX and the capacity improvements to construct that station.

But yeah, the developer is the ones actually doing that.

Mr. Stor?

I had a question for you, Rich.

How many of these projects are financially constrained versus the seems to be a gap of several years in some cases?

So let me sort of set it as a baseline.

So the projects that you see in there, our six-year improvement plan or our capital improvement plan from starting in FY22, about $840 million, about 86% of that's funded.

So the projects that we're talking about here, maybe with the exception of Woodbridge and

and Brooke and Leland, since they are in those out years, those would not be funded at this point.

Yeah, so we've obviously been monitoring very heavily what's going on at the Hill.

A number of these projects, though, do include DRPT or now VPRA funding from prior years.

So a lot of them actually do.

I think I know there's still some funding gaps on the L'Enfant, Fourth Track project.

Is that correct?

There's still funding gap there and broad run expansion.

But I think the majority of the other projects are fully funded.

So it's a combination of, in some cases, state funding, in some cases, federal funding or local funding.

There's some NVTA funding and a couple of those projects as well.

Just going back to that, our six-year plan,

The 14% that isn't funded, Broad Run expansion and La Font station or track projects, the largest part of that.

And there's, in some cases it's not just DRPT funding, there's also some smart scale funding.

in a number of the I-95 projects there.

The VRE submitted a smart scale application several years ago that funded a number, a series of improvements.

And in addition to that, some of the projects on the Manassas Line are receiving some funding out of the I-66 outside the Beltway session payments as well.

So yeah, so it's some DRPT funding, but then some other sources of Commonwealth funding along with, as I mentioned, some federal and global as well.

Always fun.

Okay.

So next on the agenda we have the investment policy and I believe Steve, we also have a guest here as well to introduce to the group.

There is a slightly out of order in the package, but there is a outline included in your meeting package of the proposed elements of the investment policy, which I believe is right before the VRE presentation.

Chairman Mitchell, and I don't know if we can put the outline up on the screen.

Yep, great.

So I just wanted to take just a few minutes of your time today to talk about getting an investment policy adopted for the rail authority.

As you saw in my earlier presentation, we do have a fairly sizable amount of funds.

for $200 million, June 30th, we'll have.

And so it's very important that we go ahead.

I know I've talked with you all about that.

You gave me direction, authorization to use the LGIP program, but we need to go ahead and get this policy adopted.

So my goal is to

Give you a brief outline today and introduce the Wells Fargo team who are included in that banking services.

We also included investment management services in that same RFP.

So I want to introduce you to them and then talk through the outline and

Going forward, work with the finance committee.

I'll write a policy, work with the finance committee to review that.

Also share it with y'all for your input also.

The goal is working towards a July board meeting adoption of this policy.

So with that being said, at a very high level, in a governmental entity, we're gonna have a very conservative investment policy.

Just state that right off the bat.

Be very similar to other governmental entities in the Commonwealth.

Like, I think if you take a look at Northern Virginia Transportation Authority and Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission, you look at them, they have sizable funds.

If you look at those policies, we will be very similar in nature, essentially.

Allowing investments in U.S. government securities of a short duration, and that's pretty much where we're going to be, follow this Commonwealth of Virginia's overall investment policies and the policies of the Treasury of Commonwealth of Virginia.

So with that being said, to jump into the outline here,

Three main objectives, and these are in a priority order.

So first and foremost is capital preservation.

So we want to preserve our principal balance.

Because in theory, we should be utilizing that balance to build these large projects.

Liquidity, the abilities, whatever we invest in to get those funds and utilize them when needed.

And then finally, third primary objective will be to optimize return.

with the first two objectives in mind.

The next section in policy will talk about the roles and responsibilities, the role of the board, the role of the various DRPT staff, as well as investment management.

And then finally, I'm gonna just talk real quick about the constraints.

We talked about liquidity, also the time horizon,

short-term, long-term, what's that horizon?

And then finally, I wanted to put on this quick outline about bond proceeds, and there are probably

Looking at 25 is when we're looking at potentially issuing debt.

So in this initial investment policy, without knowing exactly the details of the debt structure at that time, I didn't want to assume how it would impact investment policy.

So I do want to point out that I will not include that in my draft investment policy.

My plan will be to come back in a year or two years when we have a little better definition of where we're going to be going with

that debt issuance.

And I think also it will give us time to look back and potentially tweak the investment policy after a year to two years of what we have.

So that's the plan with respect to bond proceeds.

And with that, I'm going to now just introduce the Wells Fargo team and then let Patrick Dixon come up.

And I think we have Frank Marchione who's going to be joining us online to take us through the rest of this outline.

Good to be with you today.

I'm Patrick Dixon with Wells Fargo.

I represent our Virginia government banking practice.

We do business with a lot of agencies here in the Commonwealth and we're fortunate enough to work with Steve and his staff and the procurement team at DPRT to find out I was a banking contractor earlier in the year.

That was also done at a time when folks were coming up to speed with your own accounting process and so that had a great outcome.

Today we're really just going to talk to you a little bit about the investment management policy and the development of that and how important that is and then also how separately you managed to count.

and bring some value.

Hey, can everyone hear me?

OK. Can you hear me?

OK, good, good, good.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And first of all, thank you very much for having me on today.

Really appreciate that.

First of all, I've got to confess that I asked the wrong questions about this meeting because had I known it was going to be an in-person meeting, I would have been delighted to be there because you would have been my first in-person client meeting of any kind since March 2020.

I blew it.

I didn't ask the right questions, so I'm doing this from broadcasting from my office in New Jersey.

Sadly for me.

But anyhow, as Patrick mentioned, I work for Wells Fargo Innocent Management, which is, of course, the asset management arm of Wells Fargo.

And specifically, I work for a department within that organization that helps our institutional clients with short duration fixed income portfolios where capital preservation and liquidity are almost always the primary objectives and then

You know, factoring in those two primary objectives, how can we optimize return on behalf of the organization?

We've been doing this for 35 years.

I've personally been in the business longer than I'd like to admit, but just to give you an idea, I started in this industry when Ronald Reagan was still president, so I've seen plenty of situations and

And so, you know, and we help, you know, a wide variety of public entities, corporations, insurance companies, not-for-profits, universities, so on with portfolios like this.

And a big, big, big part of the process for us is indeed helping the institution, whoever it is, you know, craft the appropriate investment policy for the specific situation and every single one of those investment policies

Given the fact that it's reflective of the operating model of the entity is unique in some ways.

I mean, there are some consistencies, certainly, but every single one of the investment policies that we work on are unique in some ways.

And we'd like to embed all of that.

You know, uniqueness, if you will, into the policy itself.

But, you know, Steve mentioned and talking to him earlier, we talked a little bit about this prior to the meeting.

And you can see in investment policy, there are, you know, he mentioned roles and responsibilities and objectives, as well as some constraints.

But then you have to decide specifically how to craft the policy with investment language that will help you out.

And of course, that does, as Steve mentioned, has to abide by the investment code of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

I can tell you that having taken a peek at numerous state investment codes is that Virginia has probably one of the best I've ever seen of the 50 states in the union.

Virginia seems to pretty much get it right in terms of the ultimate in flexibility, adaptability, and all of those great things that investment professionals would love to see in a state investment code.

But, you know, specifically, you have to choose some very, very key elements of an investment policy for a portfolio like this.

And the ones that will influence the investment outcomes, if you will, are going to be the different investment sectors in which an investment manager can invest, meaning what different kinds of short term bonds like government, government agencies, corporate bonds, bank obligations, so on and so forth.

The credit ratings of those obligations

Keeping in mind, these will all be investment grade.

I mean, these are all super high grade securities that we'd be talking about because capital preservation and liquidity are the primary objectives.

And then you want to make sure you have a very diversified portfolio.

So you need to make sure you're not investing outside of government securities, not investing too much in any one security.

And that's typically defined by the sector, meaning, let's say, corporate bond as well as the credit rating.

You know, you can take a little more latitude investing in a triple A rated corporate bond versus a single A rated or even a triple B rated corporate bond, all of which are all of which are approved by the Code of the Commonwealth.

And then, you know, this is probably the most important decision you have to make and will influence the returns.

The greatest historically will be, you know, what we call the exposure to the yield curve or the maturity, the limits of the individual securities, as well as the overall portfolio as well.

And given the fact that these are all super short-term high-grade securities that your exposure to different parts of the yield curve in terms of maturity of the investments will be the primary driver of your investment experience, both in terms of return potential as well as any sort of potential volatility that might be in the portfolio.

And then to make sure that your investment manager has his eye on the ball and is doing the right thing, you take all of those specific elements you've already agreed upon and you assign benchmarks to the portfolio to make sure that the portfolio manager is doing their job, basically trying to exceed the benchmark within the framework of capital preservation and liquidity.

So those are the important elements.

Deciding specifically how those get embedded into a policy, of course, requires a significant amount of conversation and input between both parties, the investment manager, as well as, you know, the finance team at the authority of whoever it happens to be.

You know, because there is opportunities for you to, you know, get incremental return.

If you know you've got the time for certain parts of the portfolio, whereas, you know, sometimes for certain parts of the portfolio, you know, there's inequity needs, you need to keep

Video, maybe.

You may want to try your audio without the video.

Okay, I just turned off my video.

Is there anything else at this point?

I think the break was pretty much done.

Yeah, I just wanted to add that, you know, I said that, you know, I made the money building a lot of projects, but I do plan to 67 million dollars that we collected in May.

I do plan to aggressively work with all our funding partners and collect funds as a

expeditiously as possible so this is important and it's something that you know I'd like to get the policy in place.

It's going to be very conservative and then I think from there we would step into any sort of movement of those funds out of the LGIP program where the funds are today.

So just wanted to say that and once again

I gave you a couple of examples to maybe go look at for comparison.

I'm going to work on a policy, work with Wells Fargo on a policy, and then get that to you all for your review and option in July.

Any questions for Mr. Pittard?

Mr. Fisette?

Just since I missed the start of the meeting, could I follow up with you later to hear about this?

Sure.

Okay, sure.

I did have a question.

And, you know, I'm going to go back to one of my passions being environment, climate change.

Clearly rail is a great thing because it's electric.

It doesn't rely on fossil fuels.

So we are the alternative.

We're the future.

In investing, there's a lot of ESG investing these days.

The policy that you're drafting

to come back to us has several objectives, right?

And there are three there.

I do believe it's something that would be within the board's purview to the degree that we'll be approving an investment policy, but I am interested in hearing from perhaps from Wells Fargo and your experience with other clients or portfolios as well in terms of how other examples of investment policies may have outlined social and environmental goals as part of that.

increasingly.

Patrick can certainly welcome to come to the podium.

The one thing I would point out is that we are going to limit this to securities that are backed by government within the United States.

It would be very helpful to understand that a little bit more then by the time we get it back.

I mean, I would just think our board supporting something that was, you know, investments in fossil fuels doesn't make sense.

It's kind of counter to the mission of the organization.

I'm not sure what I should be pushing.

Ah, I guess I pushed the right thing, Ms. Bulova.

No, what we will have in the investment policy, probably a stipulation of AA or higher US government backed securities.

So it could be a locality,

I say US, I don't mean federal.

I mean a government within the United States.

But as far as a credit rating, it's in the policy actually stipulating AA, AA minus, AA plus or higher.

Correct.

Okay.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you very much.

We have two more items on the agenda along with our public comment and what I'd like to propose in the interest of time is that we kind of keep moving through the next two items.

We do have lunch available but let's see if we can get through these two in our public comment before taking a break.

Hopefully that's okay with everybody.

Great.

So next, Mike McLaughlin will be up here presenting to us the authorization of the property transfers and I believe also going through the Amtrak and VRE agreements as well.

I do also want to note that we have Joe Jagman from the Attorney General's Office here with us today, who's one of our advisors, Lisa Wright as well, but have also been assisting us with these agreements.

So thank you again for having me this morning, and I too want to laud the help we've received from the Office of Attorney General, especially the last two years.

Michael Westermann, who presented to you last month, is on a well-deserved paternity leave, so he presented to you on some transfer of agreements from DRPT to VPRA for the CSX agreements.

We'll be doing something similar today for some other agreements, but Michael Westermann,

Lisa Wright, many other lawyers too, some outside counsel and also some consultants have been very helpful.

Again, it's a huge team effort.

I'm lucky enough to be standing in front of you today representing all of them.

But there's been a lot of work in the past, really two years plus, but the last two years have been really intense.

So we wouldn't be here without all of them.

So the first one today, I believe, is one of the simpler resolutions last year to approve.

Next slide, please.

So I'm gonna give you a little background.

There were some properties that DRPT holds, and we're going to ask you today for a resolution to transfer the property interest over to VPRA.

And the one we've identified is the Amtrak Staples Mill Station.

That is the one just north of here in Henrico.

There's actually a good map, I believe, on the next page.

So if you can see the lighter shaded green on the left-hand side of the page and also smart polish on the right-hand side of the page, those are additions to the parking lot that DRPT purchased.

Amtrak owned kind of the more middle shaded areas and that is staying within Amtrak hands.

So what we're asking you today to transfer over from DRPT to VPRA are that

and again, the darker shaded green on the left-hand side and the small parcel on the right-hand side.

Those are properties that hard to believe we opened a few years ago.

I remember being out there, it was warm out.

I remember about this time of year as well, Director Mitchell and others being under a tent.

That was a large expansion because this is the largest, sorry, the most traveled station in the Southeast outside of Washington, D.C.

Staples Mill is.

So it was important to expand parking, also expanded access, before you can only get them from Staples Mill Road.

And now you can, there's access over by Bremner and Compton.

There's actually a little McDonald's over there.

So there's access from multiple locations, which was important as well.

Also improvements were made to the facilities up by the stations, the road up by the station to allow for

better taxi or their shared services access and also bus access as well.

So if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer any questions on this.

As you can see, the huge expansion of parking spaces from 288 to 599.

Been there many times myself.

It is paid parking for anyone who's been there.

You can do with an app.

I do have a question.

So this is a station I use all the time.

I live nearby.

And if we had a larger map, you would see this whole area is just massively underdeveloped.

So my question is, if I recall, the statute that created VPRA does not allow us to undertake any development activities.

But if Henrico County really focused in on this area, this whole area could be just an incredible mixed-use community.

with like a real anchor around the station.

It's a great question.

I did not tee Director Zimmerman up for that question.

I look over my shoulder to Emily Stock, the planning manager at DRPT.

Her team, people are working with Henrico County on a master plan for the Staples Mill area because we realize it is an area that is right for development.

They're interested in doing something there.

In fact, we connected Henrico

with people in Raleigh at their union station down there, which is beautiful, because they're thinking about doing something that is much more in line with what you're describing.

So as far as the legalities of what's presented, prevented, not prevented, we can look into that.

So am I correct, though, of like, I thought our enabling statute said we cannot do

And I'd have to go back and look at the legislative language as well.

I think when the legislation was being passed and created, there was, I think, some effort to make sure that it didn't interfere with localities' ability to develop or to determine land uses in the vicinity of stations

so that it would, I'm trying to think how best to say this, so as not to interfere, again, with the localities, determinations about land uses around the station areas.

No, understood.

I think we would like to continue to look for opportunities where we can partner with the localities to do

some adjacent development as well.

because I remember a big provision in the CSX agreement was the ability if we're getting, we or VRE have that own the land or the station that we can go up from it as well.

And also we've thought about that as well as developments happening in Spotsylvania.

I believe there's development going in well.

So we'll look into the legalities of it, but practically speaking, who might be the, the question might be, who's the champion?

You use a word Mr. Dalton used earlier.

We just have to work with that champion

but Henrico County has definitely come to us quite a few times.

I'm sorry I didn't send that question in advance.

You could have asked the legal team, but that was just my one issue.

I just want to make sure we can develop at this station.

If I could, just a comment, not a question, but hearing the question, and it does relate to the one I mentioned earlier about understanding what the local government's plans are around the VRE stations.

Having been involved with Metro for a long time, decades, I've really come to believe

that as it relates to Metro, which is a little different than VRE and significantly different from Amtrak, but I don't think the public should put a lot of money, public money, into Metro stations unless the local government's gonna take advantage of that money.

And too many stations, particularly in the east side of the DC area, oh, they have that to date.

So to me, there's a leverage point.

You're going to get an investment of all these public dollars.

You've got to show you're going to use them and put them to good use by doing the development around that investment and justify the investment.

So it may not be quite the same for Metro, which now they're looking at how to how to do the development retroactively around stations where huge investments were made primarily in Prince George's County, but in others as well and accessing it.

I just think it's worth thinking a little bit that way as we make large investments in local governments' land to build our network.

Any other questions on whether it be the issue of Staples Mill or the resolution we had before us, which is to authorize the VPRA Executive Director

So we have a decision brief that was in your package as well as a proposed resolution.

Again, that would authorize the property transfers and the staff's recommendation to... Any other questions?

Anyone like to make a motion regarding the resolution in front of us?

Joy, would you please call the roll?

Those in favor say aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Butler Painter?

Aye.

Ms. Caldwell?

Aye.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Fisette?

Aye.

Aye.

Ms. Butler Painter?

Ms. Caldwell?

Aye.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Mr. Nichols?

Ms. Zimmerman?

Aye.

Ayes have it.

Thank you.

So the next item on the agenda again is the assignment of the Amtrak and VRE agreements.

We do have a decision brief and a resolution that's part of this item as well.

Me too.

And again, this is very similar to what Michael Westman presented to you last month.

Last month, we asked for and gave us the authority to move that

CSX comprehensive and other rail agreements from DRPT to VPR are asking the same for the Amtrak and VRE agreements.

Next slide, please.

Just waiting for the screen to change.

Next slide.

So there are three Amtrak agreements.

The passenger rail improvement funding and partnership agreement, really there's three similar agreements kind of mirror each other.

There's a funding agreement with Amtrak, master prop lease agreement with Amtrak, operating agreement with Amtrak, and very similar with VRE.

There's a funding agreement, a ground lease agreement, and operations and access agreement.

So there's a lot of parallels between the two.

I do want to note, of course, and we'll get into this, that both parties have worked with closely, will continue working closely,

and by the nature of there being funding agreements were major partners we came to agreement with before we needed those agreements before we can come to agreement with CSX.

Everything was timed together.

So there's quite some number of planes landing at the same time back in March.

And again, we're coming to you today to transfer these over to the VPRA.

Next slide, please.

We'll start with Amtrak.

Sorry, so overview, again, I kind of mentioned these in three agreements, both Amtrak and VRA follows the seven agreements you approved last month.

And basically, VPRA will be bound to DRPT's duties.

Next slide, please.

The Amtrak agreements, nice picture of Main Street, which is a well-developed facility we hope to continue to develop around, one of the themes of today.

Next slide, please.

I wanted to show this graphic you've seen before, but the bottom line of all these are the increased service.

On the right-hand side of the graphic, you see the six trains that will be coming along the RFP corridor going to Richmond and places either east or south, whether it be Norfolk, Newport News, and so on and so forth.

That's in addition to the five state-supported trains.

Those are all state-supported trains.

State supported trains are in blue, whether it be the dark blue or the light blue, and the long distance trains are in orange.

I do also want to note that the agreement with Amtrak and with CSX also allowed another train on the Roanoke Route, which I talked about earlier,

but that we still have to come to definitive agreements from Norfolk Southern by the end of the year.

So that dotted blue line on the far left-hand side, we had negotiated that with CSX and Amtrak and luckily the agreements are coming along with Norfolk Southern.

So hopefully we'll meet that soon too.

And again, this is more of a doubling of state support and service in Virginia.

And all these trains will be going not just to Washington DC, but the Northeast quarter.

It's very important for people in Virginia to have that one right connection to whether it be Philly, New York, Boston, so on and so forth.

So next slide, please.

So the Amtrak funding agreement, Amtrak invested 944 million.

That will go into the construction.

We talked about the construction projects earlier for phases one and two.

Again, phase one and two should be done circa 2026.

That's phase one, phase two, circa 2030.

And what does Amtrak get in return?

They get the exclusive right to operate the six new train starts, seven if we come to that agreement with Norfolk Southern, which is moving along nicely.

And they also basically exclusive intercity operator between Washington and Richmond for 30 years after the final new train start in phase two.

And again, phase two is about 10 years away.

Amtrak will also get dispatch rights after

Completion of Phase 2 in 2030, they'll get dispatch rights just north of Alexandria, is what Mr. Dalton called his core line, that Alexandria up to Washington, DC.

Amtrak will get dispatch rights for the trains in that area.

They'll get it for south of Alexandria after we continue that maximum feasible separation.

I mentioned earlier that we will have a four-track envelope to build

other than Ashland, pretty much all the way from Washington, DC to Richmond.

So as we continue to get more separation south of Alexandria, because we'll have that separation north of Alexandria with two passenger tracks, two freight tracks.

As we continue to build out that separation south of Alexandria, Amtrak will get dispatch rights there as well.

We'll also have a 24-month trial period to optimize service once Amtrak gets the dispatching rights.

And this is something I was actually on the VRE board meeting at Friday.

Optimizing service, what does that mean?

There's a lot of trains in this corridor.

Near Long Bridge, there's about 80 a day when you include freight and all the VRE and Amtrak trains.

And this is an opportunity for us to see how we can better manage the trains not conflicting with each other.

So some of these schedules have come up organically over the years, but with us adding new

VRE and Amtrak trains, this is an opportunity for Virginia, Amtrak, and VRE, and CSX and others to try to optimize the service.

We're also doing a 24-month trial period.

We're planning to do something similar with CSX soon, so in the near term.

So we don't want to, we're not just going to wait 10 years to try to optimize service when Amtrak gets dispatching.

We're going to be doing it in the more near term because, as I was mentioning to VRE Boarding, a lot of the conflict is actually between

Amtrak, and VRE trains in this area because there's more of them during rush hour than there are CSX trains.

So that's something we're going to continue to do.

We actually, in the CSX and Amtrak agreements, we're creating committees.

The teams already meet daily, but the teams will be meeting monthly and quarterly as well to review data on how to better improve service in the area.

Virginia does have rights to terminate dispatching to Amtrak if they don't meet certain performance targets.

That's very important to us.

Not only are there certain performance targets, not only can we terminate the dispatching rights, but there's also going to be a lot of improvement plans if they don't meet their performance targets with regard to dispatching.

Amtrak also, moving on to the right-hand side of the page, has the right of first refusal to provide maintenance of Virginia's tracks after the phase two completion.

And that is something that was negotiated again, part of the Amtrak agreement.

Next slide.

And if anyone has questions as we're on the slide, please don't hesitate to ask, jump in.

Additional Amtrak rights in this slide, they do have the right to first refusal to purchase our track.

We're purchasing from CSX in the DC to Richmond corridor, the S line from Petersburg to North Glen.

And again, the S line kind of follows along the I-85 corridor.

We've talked about that in the past months.

That is something that is not yet developed, that S-Line is a former rail reporter that has been abandoned, so that needs to be developed.

Amtrak also has the right for design and construction review, but it's limited to dispatching, interoperability, safety, and operations.

They can request changes that fit within the right-of-way

We have a lot of environmental clearance and we want to fit things within the right of way.

If it fits within the right of way in project budget, then do not cause delay.

And the changes will be at Amtrak's cost.

In case you're wondering what an example might be, there might be an Amtrak station they might want to build a spur off of to have another layup track or maintenance facility or something of that nature.

If they want to do that, they can do that at their own cost as long as it doesn't cause a material delay to the other projects because there are some penalties

Other projects are delayed.

Our key responsibilities of VPRA are to provide the balance of the phase one and phase two funding.

So they're bringing $944 million to $3.7 billion agreement.

We'll get to the CSX's funding here in a few minutes.

So the Commonwealth's bringing just under $3 billion to the table, and we have to retain that responsibility throughout the next 10 years.

and also another responsibility is operations funding.

Not just the capital funding, but they continue to fund the six new trains.

So those who might not be familiar with state supported service, 209 service that was started in, I think Congress passed it in 08 and I think it started in 2009, is that the states basically pick up all the costs that are incurred within the state.

So the six trains that I mentioned that we currently have, five in the Richmond area corridor, one in Roanoke corridor,

Amtrak calculates what their costs are in Virginia, and then we pay that cost.

We have Jeremy Latimer, I think you're here somewhere.

He and his team worked.

It's a chore that's a daily chore to make sure that the numbers line up right.

So we fund all the operations.

We fund maintenance too of the train cars and the stations and so on.

So this agreement here is to continue funding those six new trains, seven if we get the Roanoke train, which it looks like we hopefully should, for a 30-year period after the end of phase two.

Another key responsibility is to keep the projects on time.

And that is that we complete phases one and two before long start date end of 2032.

But if you remember from the

Mr. Stavely is the Executive Director of the report.

The date we plan to have finish of phase two is actually 2030, so we do build in a little time here.

We understand, everyone understands, sometimes things can and do go wrong sometimes in construction projects, especially in a tight area you might have.

We do plan to have Long Bridge completed by 2030, so we have a long stop date of 2032 to build in some flexibility.

But as we continue to move further on in preliminary engineering final design for Long Bridge, in a few years we'll be able to re-baseline that long stop date if something has arisen that we need to push it out further.

We don't plan on it, we don't see anything at this moment, but things do happen as we all know in the transportation and construction industry.

Next slide please.

Remedies in case of default.

So this is what happens if one side doesn't hold up the other side, doesn't hold up their bargain.

Amtrak can halt payments to Virginia if we do not proceed on our projects.

They can purchase assets, such as I mentioned the S line.

Again, the S line is really just land at this moment, this abandoned corridor.

And then the question of what happens if we default to certain different periods of time, if we default before the end of Phase 1, Virginia must repay Amtrak its funds, it's contributed.

After Phase 1, we'll

refund them the money that they funded after phase one, but we're still gonna get those marginal improvements.

We're still gonna get three new trains for Amtrak.

We're still gonna have the benefits of the Franconia third track, the Alexandria fourth track, so on and so forth.

So we're not gonna repay them everything.

We're just gonna pay them the funds that were being paid for phase two, if you will.

And again, we'll still get the marginal cost of the three phase one train starts.

And our remedies are,

If Amtrak does not provide the service, then we can convert the train slots for use by VRE.

If for some reason Amtrak decides not to provide it, then these slots that we've retained from CSX are very valuable, as people know.

It's not easy getting slots from a freight carrier, so if they're unused, then we'll be able to convert them for slots to someone else, such as VRE.

And again, one of the remedies is the long stop date.

Well, that they'll allow us to some flexibility there if need be to re-baseline that.

Next slide, please.

So master of property lease.

I think we sent all of you a matrix that also lines out some of this.

You think

Often people think that trying to delineate who owns a station or platform is easy, but as you can see from the matrix we sent you, it can be quite complicated at times, and sometimes someone can own an east platform, someone else can own a west platform, as Mr. Dalton and many others know.

And this is the, long story short is that Amtrak Master Property lease in Washington-Petersburg area,

Richmond, and Petersburg, Richmond, Staples, Mill, and Petersburg are ones that are being, ownership is being transferred to VPRA, so we'll have a lease with Amtrak.

And the Buckingham Branch, and that, Buckingham Branch, for those who aren't familiar, the Cardinal Service, which is three days a week, travels from Washington, D.C. to Charlottesville, and then out west to Clifton Fords, West Virginia, Indiana, Chicago.

Stay at the lines on that stop, we will have a,

and the property lease with Amtrak and also at Charlottesville.

Charlottesville has got a little asterisk, if you will.

Amtrak has agreed to fund the ADA responsibilities there on the Buck and Ambranch-Charlottesville station, not to be confused with the Norfolk Southern portion of the Charlottesville station.

And so they'll be constructing those improvements in the next seven years and we're acquiring those right at Charlottesville in seven years.

So that's, again, a little asterisk there at Charlottesville.

Master Prop Lease is also taking your terms with automatic renewals.

Nominal rents, you'll see this nominal rents again with VRE later on.

Amtrak, since there's nominal rents, Amtrak will take care of the maintenance.

We, other than at Charlottesville, VPRA will have ADA compliance responsibilities.

And I think we talked to you about that in past months that we did adjust the budget to allow for those changes.

and Amtrak will indemnify VPRA for injuries at stations.

We're actually going to be getting that here in a little bit.

Next slide, please.

And this is, again, more on the property lease.

I'll try to move this along quickly because as Director Mitchell mentioned, there's lunch coming.

So permits Amtrak to use their VPRA-owned facilities.

That makes sense for passenger service.

The improvements, Amtrak can undertake improvements with advance notice.

With regard to other stations, it provides Amtrak's the right, this is a good point I wanted to raise, but Crystal City, as some of you mentioned earlier.

In our funding agreement and in our master lease and operating agreement, there are Crystal City provisions.

So it's not a matter of do we want to, it's a matter of the technical how.

And it's a tight corridor there.

There's National Park Service land on the south side, on the south slash east side, if you will.

So there's a tight corridor there,

We have these agreements with Amtrak that are being transferred over.

There's a stipulation, Section 7, I remember, from the Amtrak funding agreement, also, again, the property lease, that we will work with Amtrak to construct a high-level platform.

And that's some of the how, because we want to make sure that there is interoperability with freight trains and with VRE trains, which do have some issues with some high-level platforms.

So the plan is to basically construct

Amtrak platform, the south end of the VRE station, the VRE station wouldn't have the high level because their train cars are not compatible with it, or the south end of the

Crystal City platform would have the high-level platforms.

But also have joint access ways to the platforms and also be able to use that pedestrian overpass, as you mentioned, that is so key to connecting the airports, that multimodal, that's also where it's come up again today, at Crystal City.

Many of us here in Richmond are the prime people that might want to take a one-seat ride out of National Airport, hop on a train, get off at Crystal City, walk over to National Airport,

get pretty much anywhere around the country from there.

And there are also some nuances at Ashland.

There's some newly constructed platforms, and Amtrak will have an easement there as well.

So next slide.

Operating agreement.

As you can see here, and I'll try to move this along more quickly, Amtrak will have access to our VPR rail lines, which makes sense to carry out the rail service.

We cannot, one key thing here on the left-hand side, we cannot dispose the rail lines used for regular Amtrak service without approval.

That makes sense.

Amtrak has a lot of rights and we don't plan on disposing of rail lines.

There's a reason we purchased these rail lines.

So we cannot do that without Amtrak approval.

Preliminary service plan, we have been refining this and actually

If you saw the CSX agreements last month, there are some preliminary service plans.

And I mentioned service plans is down to the minute at some points, but we'll continue to refine those.

As with any passenger train schedule, you continue to refine those.

We'll continue to refine those as we're working on the post-acquisition trains, especially.

Some of those probably will be starting in the next six to 12 months, both on the Amtrak and V-Recite.

And again, Amtrak has write a first

for usual maintenance after phase two.

Next slide, please.

So with regard to liability, Amtrak will indemnify the Commonwealth for injuries and damages to Amtrak employees and property, Amtrak patrons and third parties.

However, on the right-hand side, VPRA will have responsibility for its own property.

So there's some nuances here.

So again, Amtrak will have liability or any damage they may cause or hurt they may cause to their own employees and their own patrons and third parties struck or collided by Amtrak, also for all the fuel or chemicals, fuel or spills and such of that nature.

VPRA's liabilities, we will have a $125,000 annual risk fee for five years

And that's not just for five years, as Mr. Eggman helped me out with.

That five years, that $125,000 fee is fixed for five years.

After that, it will adjust.

So I hope that makes sense.

So the $125,000 annual risk fee is static for the first five years and will adjust after that.

So the risk fee will continue on after that.

And again, VPRA is responsible for own property regardless of who's at fault.

We will maintain the $5 million cash reserve to ensure proper repairs, and I did confirm with Mr. Pittard that that isn't our financial plan, and that is being taken care of.

We need to obtain property insurance for the bridge over the Potomac.

I would say it's the Long Bridge, but the Long Bridge is really a series of bridges.

The span over the Potomac is what people think about, but we have to retain property insurance for that.

The biggest risk, if something were to happen, which is the span over the Potomac.

There are five, six other bridges, but the biggest, one of the Potomac's the biggest one.

We are obtaining property insurance for that.

And contractors must identify Amtrak, that makes sense.

When they're doing work, contractors will identify Amtrak.

And the last bullet, we already obtained liability insurance and Amtrak is additional insurance.

We went through that paperwork, I think, back in March or April.

Next slide.

Yeah, so Mike, before you go on, does anyone have any questions for Mike about the Amtrak agreements?

So again, bottom line here is we'll be increasing VRE service.

We'll be adding six more trains on the Fredericksburg line, 75% increase.

We're also introducing late night weekend service.

As someone who used to work in Washington DC,

and when I was up on Capitol Hill, probably at the same time, a couple of you others here were there, I was starting to think about starting a family, thinking about, well, maybe I could live a certain place, but at Capitol Hill, you don't know what time you're getting off work.

And I saw Mariia kind of laughing over, I just, you don't know if you're getting off work at five o'clock or eight o'clock.

The last VRE train and Amtrak trains are in that six, seven o'clock time slot.

So I think a lot of us in that, and especially, not just, I just used my example of Capitol Hill,

The 21st century economy, a lot of times we're not all working nine to five hours, working different hours.

So we want to modernize the schedule for the 21st century.

So both the Amtrak and VRE new train service we'll have late night.

That was very important to me and I've heard from others as well.

Also weekend service.

For those who get the monthly VRE pass, you'll be able to use it on the weekends.

So we'll be able to closer knit the communities from the Northern Virginia areas to Washington DC.

Traveling during the week on our pass, I often used to do this in Chicago, take my kids on a weekend to go see a ballgame, go downtown to get something to eat.

So hopefully we'll be able to move the region closer together by ending this late night and weekend service in addition to the six new Fredericksburg trains.

And we did, because of the first eight miles of the Manassas Line are on the CSX corridor,

We did negotiate some time slots for we to be able to increase VRE monastic service as well.

So that's what you see the left hand side of the page.

Next slide, please.

So the access and operating agreements, again, a lot of this is starting to sound familiar because it's some of the same things with regard to Amtrak.

VRE will get service access.

It's also very, should note is very important as part of the CSX agreement that the VRE service was becoming permanent.

It was very important, too, we heard from the VRE folks and the board members and from VRE.

And VRE will have that access.

And again, as I mentioned in the previous slide, service unlocked in Phase 1 and Phase 2.

VRE will have the right to operate these new starts.

We plan on having VRE operate the new starts for as long as they can.

There are some provisions in the VRE agreement, though, that if something were to happen,

and the board makes a decision that they're not going to operate then.

VPRA could work with Amtrak or others to operate those slots, but that's not our intention.

We hope to work with VRE and have them operating for a long, long time.

And again, the passenger schedule to continue to be refined, we're quite often having conversations with VRE, Amtrak and others to refine the schedules.

With regard to indemnity, VRE will cover any losses to claims arriving from VRE service, and they also backstop.

They have their own liability insurance that they maintain.

Next slide.

So, there are funding commitments estimated at $215 million.

There's really just, it's split up two ways.

There's Sea Rock funds, the commuter rail operating capital funds were something that were done as part of the larger Metro.

agreement, I think it was three years ago, I want to say early 2018, C-ROC was established back in, I think that was the General Assembly session of 2018.

So they'll be using those funds for both back debt and also PAYGO funding.

So they're going to, and that comes out to roughly $215 million when we say estimated at because you're not quite sure when you're doing some bonding what the exact dollar amount will be.

So that was quite a large commitment from VRE for the $250 million.

Again, one of those commitments we needed before we closed the deal with CSX.

Next slide.

Much like we talked about the ground lease and premises with Amtrak, in regard to VRE, 13 passenger stations will have a lease with

with VRE, and also one we worked closely on, actually Mr. Dalton showed a diagram earlier, their Crossroads Lifecycle Facility.

We worked closely with them.

We got right away from CSX.

We were able to add this as part of the, in fact, one of the last minutes, I think Rich and I talked on a Saturday where we signed into final agreements so they can add some more, some track at the Crossroads facility just south of Spotsylvania.

and again these mostly are stations except for the one at the Crossroads facility.

There are some other land and platforms and again that was on the matrix we sent to you in the station buildings of Fredericksburg and Quantico.

Much like with Amtrak, nominal rents of one dollar a year and VRE is responsible for maintenance.

Next slide.

That's it.

And just like the other one, we're also going to ask you today to approve a resolution.

So we're going to ask that you authorize the assignment of these agreements from DRPT to VPI.

So we do have a decision brief and resolution in front of you.

Would anyone like to make a motion to approve?

Second?

Second.

Joy, would you please read the roll?

Everyone say aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Brother Painter?

Aye.

Mr. Cardwell?

Aye.

George?

Aye.

Mr. Hall?

Aye.

Mr. Moorman?

Aye.

Mr. Nichols?

Aye.

Ms. Spore?

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

We have our next item and our last agenda item is public comment.

And first we are going to start with anybody in the room that signed up.

We have one person here.

Just as a reminder, since this is the first time we're doing this in person, we are limiting comments to three minutes and we do ask commenters to respect that limit as well.

We do not do or provide responses at this time in this format.

It's really for us to

here input at this point.

So we have one person signed up in person and that is Rob Whitfield.

Good morning, Director Mitchell.

members of the Virginia Public Rail Passenger Authority, sorry.

I've followed you from afar for over a year.

Even though I talk funny, I've lived in Fairfax County for over 40 years, and former Chairman Bulova is well aware to many transportation meetings at the Northern Transportation Authority, the Transportation Commission,

and so on.

And so I come at this as a long time resident of the county and part of the challenge we have is that this rail plan doesn't really benefit the majority of Fairfax County.

Where there could have been a benefit would be to improve the Springfield Station but it appears from, I was told by somebody that Amtrak once served Springfield but that doesn't appear to be part of your present plans.

I don't know the reason.

I can tell you I've emailed to Director Chairman Mitchell several times since 2018, suggesting that location is a multimodal transportation center because of its proximity to I-95 and the 495 beltway.

And at the time in 2018, the site in Springfield next to the

and the train station, Franconia-Springfield, was being considered by the FBI for new headquarters.

Unfortunately, and then I reminded Ms. Mitchell again in January of this year, the new government has decided to reopen the competition.

I've heard absolutely nothing in response.

And so here we have the largest county in Virginia, very little by way of benefit from the plan as it sits at present.

So I hope that can be revisited.

Now, one of the major challenges to your plan is in many parts of Virginia, express bus could serve some of the more distant localities far more cost-effectively than trains.

There probably is a good case to make for improving trains between Richmond and DC.

And one of the problems with the plan we have at present is it doesn't appear to address the completion of what's called DCRVA.

I've lost track of what happened to the, it's called the Gateway Project in 2016.

And all I can tell you about the Long Bridge Project, and I've talked with Steve Patel a couple of times, I don't know where we have the authority to use Virginia taxpayer money for improvements in Washington DC.

The Potomac River,

is either in DC or Maryland, and it's not in Virginia.

So I've asked Steve to provide the guiding legal authority allowing Virginia, or more preferably, to have the district provide funding appropriate to its economic benefit from this proposed set of improvements.

The backbone of the plan, as it seems to have been presented here I think in February, is Mary Hines, a CTB member from Arlington County, has proposed tolling I-66 inside the beltway, and the plan presented in either February or March seemed to suggest that the next six years there would be $920 or $930 million in tolls

and Toll Back Debt, Toll Road Back Debt.

And frankly, this ain't fair because Arlington County doesn't get their commuters, reverse commuting on I-66, don't pay anything.

And so I guess I could keep going on for another 20 minutes.

The bottom line is this board needs to establish an independent oversight authority.

This was not properly done in the, I've been involved with the Silver Line for 15 years now.

And the board that was created by Governor Tim Kaine and then Chairman Gerry Connolly provided for representation by the government agencies, by Loudoun County and Fairfax County Chief Executives and County Board Chairs.

but the toll road users who are paying 50% of the project costs are not represented in the Dulles-Carter Advisory Commission.

So what I would ask you to do is to, and I would see outgoing Finance Secretary Aubrey Lane as being an ideal person to head an oversight committee and Marty Noe from Prince William County.

So I have ideas how this should be done.

Okay, so all I would ask is you've got to establish a dialogue with the public rather than just making autonomous decisions.

And I'd be pleased to participate in future events.

It's a little hard to get here from Northern Virginia, but I did my best today.

Thank you.

Is there anybody else here in the room that would like to address the board at this time?

And I'll ask our IT team here, is there anybody on the line that has signed up for public comment?

Nope.

Okay.

Well, with that, we've now gone through all of our items on the agenda.

And so at this time, we are ready to adjourn unless anybody, any other board members have any other questions or business at this time?

Great.

Well, thank you all for being here.

We do have lunch for the board members in one of the training rooms off to the left here.

And I really appreciate all of you being here today.

It's great to see you in person and look forward to seeing you all again in July.

Motion to adjourn.

We have not been using a motion to adjourn at the previous meetings.