Board of Directors Meeting   10/20/2022

Mr. Cardwell, I believe he's going to attempt to join us online in just a few minutes.

Ms. Doersch?

Here.

Ms. Drake?

Here.

Mr. Fisette?

Here.

Mr. Hall?

Mr. Maestri?

I believe he's joining us online also.

Present.

Thank you.

Mr. Moorman?

It's Moses-Nedd.

Here.

Nice to meet you.

In person.

We're glad you're here in person.

I am too.

Mr. Payne?

He's out.

Mr. Spore?

And Mr. Watkins?

Mr. Watkins is here.

Are you serious?

We have a quorum.

Thank you, Maristelle.

Next item, we're going to add something to the agenda before we get to public comment, and that's we're going to have a safety briefing.

Thank you.

Good morning, folks.

We are currently in the Truist Building at 919 East Main Street.

We're in the Piedmont Room on the fourth floor.

The restrooms are located on either side of the elevator bay and the stairwells are located right next to the restrooms on either side.

In the event of an emergency, we will file out through those stairwells.

I will take the lead first.

Joan Pannock, I think you're going to be here all day.

If you could just make sure that everybody gets out, that would be fantastic.

Take a look at who's right and left of you, so when we get down to the muster point, you're sure that that person is there.

There is an AED in the building.

It's on the second floor.

If we need that AED, we're to call to this place.

I have the phone number.

Mike McLaughlin has the phone number and it's sitting right here.

So if for some reason I'm the one that needs it, there's the phone number.

and again at the end of the hall and one more time in the next hallway.

It's going to be right on the floor under the counter and I will be in charge of getting the fire extinguisher only to clear a path to get out of the building.

I'm not certified to fight a fire.

There are first aid supplies in the Piedmont room behind me.

There's a fire alarm right outside the elevator bays there.

Can I get someone to volunteer to call 911, please?

Mr. Dalton, thank you very much.

I'll be your backup.

I am CPR certified.

I will take the lead on CPR.

Anyone else CPR certified?

Dalton, if you'll take the backup on that.

And then whoever wants to go to the AED.

I will keep track of the headcount as we have the number of people in the room.

So when we get down to the most point, we can count that.

Be careful of tripping hazards.

I know we've got the equipment set up up front, so be careful if you're going to walk up and back from the podium and around the room.

I think we've done a pretty good job of clearing space.

The corner is a little bit tight, but just be aware as you walk around.

Thank you very much.

Right there, just in case you need it, right?

I got your back.

I know we have some folks that are coming in for public comment today that we're expecting that I don't see here yet.

So we may just skip over that and come back.

We know at least one person's coming, so you guys will indulge me.

We'll hold public comment and we'll go ahead and move forward with the agenda.

Goodbye, Ms. Moses-Nedd, seconded by Ms. Bulova.

Mr. Cardwell?

I know that he joined in.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

Aye.

I mean, I was supporting all the rest, but when I read the minutes, it really, really lean.

It looked like an agenda.

I would argue that while I totally don't like long, long agendas that sort of are

I would actually argue that we need a little bit more meat.

Somebody is going to go back and try to see what happened at the meeting.

We need a couple sentences for everything for a summary of an action.

and what happened because you'd have to go back to look through a whole range of documents to figure out what actually happened.

We can do that.

Great suggestion.

All right.

Dr. Stadler, would you like to start with your

Thank you.

Good morning, folks.

And it's good to see folks here in person.

The Executive Director's Report is first on the agenda.

And I just want to point out that over the last couple of months, we have made some changes to the format.

Thank you for your feedback, not only that led to those changes and also your feedback since we started the new format.

I encourage you, if there's something that you're not getting from this, let us know because we're happy to add it.

And if there's something you want to see differently, we're happy to have those conversations too.

So just brief administrative updates, we finally, I shouldn't say that so, such exasperation.

We've recently entered into agreement with Amtrak on the Staples Mill parking lot revenue, as I think folks know in 2016 DRPT.

purchase the parking lot at Staples Mill, and we have been working with Amtrak to come up with an agreement on how to split the revenue.

They're responsible for the maintenance costs at the station.

This gives 80% of that extra revenue to VPRA if we sign that.

Now those revenues, they've actually started flowing in.

I think we got the first month's payment.

Because there was such a long period between when

DRPT actually had the parking lot, they transferred it to VPRA.

Amtrak did give us a catch-up payment, so we were made whole for the time that that agreement was not in place, but that agreement is now in place and we're getting that revenue each and every month, which is fantastic.

We also had a strong presence at the 2022 Richmond Folk Festival.

You see a picture of some of the staff there.

Just a good way to get the word out and let folks know that, hey, we do have passenger train service that comes throughout the state.

Organizational updates, our current staffing level is there.

We have six openings that are out now.

We have a couple openings that are specifically focused on, or at least one, on grant writing and the federal grants.

So we're going to send a link out to all the board members.

So if you have folks in your network that could have a positive impact on that or have that skill set, please let us know because we're

We are hungry for the same expertise that a lot of people are hungry for right now in that federal grant funding, so we appreciate your support.

The one new hire we have in October is our new scheduler, John Quack, who I don't believe is in the room, but he's been here for about 10 days and he's hit the ground running and he's hungry to get in and dig into the schedules, which is fantastic.

Here's a high-level update of where we are organizationally from a diversity interview, age, race, and gender.

We feel good about these numbers.

We continue in every hire to stress the importance of diversity as an organization.

The only contracting update is one that you saw in the last couple Executive Directors Report.

This is the finalization of our purchase at St. Julian's Yard.

Actually, there were two different updates.

The price went up twice, but this is the final price, 2.029, and that transaction is complete.

So we now own St. Julian's Yard down in... Budget adjustments this current period.

That's good news.

Here's a quick snapshot of the administrative budget.

As you can see in the footnotes, and I won't read them, this just reflects the budget adjustments that we brought to your attention in the September report and in the August report.

We had to move money around because the building and office cost here were more than we expected when we developed the 23 budget.

So we shifted money sideways from IT to building an office to cover those expenses.

The IT budget will be okay because the ERP implementation will not be until July 2023.

So that'd be next year's budget.

So through September, we're only three months through the fiscal year, but from the administrative point of view, we're in good shape.

Okay, operations update.

This is where we've made some changes to the format and I'm going to go through the high level of the operations budget.

This is the Amtrak budget, the money that we get in revenues and we pay Amtrak for operations.

We are well ahead of the budget from cost recovery point of view, which is the item that I always look at first.

Historically, we've averaged somewhere in the 70 to 80 range percent cost recovery.

That's money that we get from the ticket revenues that goes back to pay the costs.

During COVID it dipped way low and thankfully this year we thought that we would be in the 64% range and we're trending higher than that.

There's another chart next that I'll show you on that.

But this is an outline of where we are from an operating cost point of view.

We're pretty close to where we thought we would be working with Amtrak to sign the final 2023 agreement and then that will reconcile.

Here's the chart that I was talking about with cost recovery.

As you see, we were in the 72-74% range in 17, 18, and 19.

COVID came in 20, and we dipped really low.

We thought that we'd be, I think I transposed that, we thought we'd be just under 50.

And it turns out that we're at 60 now and continue to turn forward.

So, good news there.

Ridership.

We just yesterday got final ridership numbers for September from Amtrak.

And while it was the first month

since July.

So July we had record ridership.

It was an all-time monthly record for Virginia.

August we broke that record and set a new record.

September we dipped down slightly.

However, historically September's always been a lower month as folks go back to school and ridership just tends to dip.

We still had the biggest September ever.

As you see on the slide, we had a 37 plus percent increase over September of 2019.

And you see on the bottom,

The stations where folks got on and got off, our connection to the Northeast Corridor is obviously a big selling point for folks that board the train.

Next slide, you see that same ridership broken out by route.

All four of the September riderships are above what we saw in September of 2019.

The biggest increase was the 64%, 65% in Roanoke.

A lot of that is due to the fact that we added that second Roanoke frequency in July.

But knock on wood, the ridership trend still is favorable.

We'll talk a little bit about the challenges that we have in on-time performance both in this report and then Jeremy later today will talk about that.

So any questions on the overall ridership?

Pricing and revenue management, Amtrak, earlier this year.

District part into two pieces, okay.

District part into two pieces.

It's not necessarily about the ownership, it's about the type of work.

The span of the total makes it a lot different.

because you're dealing with water, and some cars, but this span in DC you're dealing with actually, and also the span of Potomac is a separate bridge from the CSX bridge.

In the district, it's so narrow, it's such an urban area, they have one structure with four tracks on top.

The Potomac's gonna be two structures, two tracks on top of each.

The district over Ohio, Maine, 395.

In addition to this current CSX structure, we're gonna have

In addition to, so there's a current structure, we're gonna widen that to allow for four tracks.

Might be two or three tracks on down, we're gonna widen it to allow for four tracks.

Ooh, that's a great question.

It goes to Ohio,

We have a firm engaged doing 30% engineering, and they're working every foot moving that progress forward.

It's just, I'll say this, we have had historically whatever reason, vendors don't balance timely.

And that also includes sometimes our class one railroads that we work with because they accumulate their cost and send us a bill

So a little bit of what you're seeing is there's some timing of getting bills in from some of the vendors and some of the class workers.

I don't know if you can say where we are there.

When we pass 15% design, we're going up to 30% engineering, which is a big milestone with regard to projects like these.

And then we'll be putting in the condition to bring on an owner's rep.

We'll be putting out some procurements next year, the first half of next year for design-build type services.

And you need to get 30% designs, we'll begin with 30% design before we put out those procurements.

So with that, unless you have another question, we'll move on to Alexandria-Fortrack.

We are moving to

The design plans, as you can see, from 30% to 60%.

Some of them are called AF to RO.

Those are controlling the control points.

And we've also talked in the past about King and Commonwealth.

We talked about the last board meeting.

We're going to have a board presentation later today about King Commonwealth Bridges, which I know some people here, some members,

are very familiar with.

It's obviously the King Street Metro right there.

So King Street Bridge is right there, and Commonwealth Bridge is just a few feet over from it.

We'll talk about that a little more today.

We are gonna have a public meeting for that in November.

We've already reached out to Alexandria and been working with them.

In addition, we also have, we're gonna bring, it's part of the discussion on King Commonwealth, we're gonna bring to you later today a resolution to go with the extra funding to allow CSX to continue to design

Bob and King Commonwealth Bridges.

And again, there'll be a good presentation later today.

I'll move the slide.

Sorry, thank you.

So, we'll bring to you later today a resolution asking you to allow us to increase the budget to allow for King Commonwealth to be included as part of the FORTRAC project.

The Dr. Andrew Fortrach project goes from about a half mile west of the Alexandria station all the way up to the river's edge in Rosslyn, the Rosslyn Interpoint, which is right near the Long Bridge Park.

So King County Office has to do the project while we're undergoing the Fortrach work.

With regards to that, Mr. Fisette,

The design is for DJI authorization to move up to 30% design.

We're working with CSX and just a couple million dollar increase to get up to final design for King and Commonwealth.

We need to catch it up with the design work for Alexandria-Fortrack.

Alexandria-Fortrack is at 30% design.

King and Commonwealth bridges, we need to start catching it up so we can do the work simultaneously.

We don't want to have to go back later and do the work at King and Commonwealth.

Might as well do it while we're doing the Alexandria-Fortrack work.

And again, we'll have a presentation on that later today by fine Constantine.

It's to say that the expenditures, as far as we have work progressing, and you're going to hear the same with all of these, that the vendors take time to send us the bills.

We push them in our contracts, we have, you know,

I suspect firstly that it's going to change.

I've already seen certain vendors coming, they've sent a bill in, we've been working through to approve it, and they're asking for them to get paid, and because rates have gone up, I think we're going to see a real change there.

All of the vendors, including the Class 1 railroads that we work with, are going to want to get their funds in as fast as possible.

We'll see that.

Then I'll say the other thing is we get a ERP system in place where they ought to do a lot better job in estimating a course.

So we estimate what we actually owe.

Any other questions?

So another project we're going to highlight, Franconia-Springfield Bypass.

Again, this is near the Franconia area.

It's a bypass that'll allow decongestant freight and passenger trains south of the Franconia Station.

We did have, we do have a 30% design team, Parsons, on board.

They had delivered their draft 50% design just to keep miles from house down and borings are being done and finished, as you can see, on October 7th.

This is a,

A key project also to be coordinated with the Franconia Third Track Project, which I'll get into here in a second.

Before I move on to that, Steve, anything you want to note on that?

Same.

Same to you for?

Again, the Franconia Third Track Project, which really starts up near where the Franconia Bypass is, is a route project down to Lorton.

We are actually working with Fairfax County and VDOT with some components of this with regard to

Newington Road and Route 1 bridges that are important.

We want to be able to work with Fairfax and VDOT to make sure that the road widening they need is going to be done.

We're going to be expanding the bridges over Newington and Route 1.

So we are working on that agreement with Fairfax and Route 1, working with our General Counsel on that.

But this project is moving forward.

This project will be led by CSX.

All of these projects here.

We're working with the finance committee this morning.

We had this as a topic of discussion to work on a process to have a better annual spend plans for the life of the capital project.

And I think honestly what we're seeing here is we had two years ago pre-COVID TRV became reality.

We also had to work through a very significant agreement, not only CSS, but more like Southern.

Those agreements took longer than I think any of us ever imagined.

And then on top of that, COVID happened also.

Next slide.

I'm not going to go over all of these.

I already mentioned the new internal one bridges that will be done as part of the Frank Coney Lord and Third Track project.

We are close to signing on what we call project authorization notice with CSX for the signing A project, Potomac Creek, Third Track.

That will be a template for the signings B and C. I do want to stop and talk a minute about New River Valley.

As you recall, back in July, actually back in June, we closed our

Negotiation of Norfolk Southern, we talked about that at our July board meeting.

There's a couple set of projects with regard to River Valley.

One is the station area, really from the Virginia line.

We're planning to take a left hand southward turn down to the mall area.

We are bringing consultants on board.

We have selected a consultant.

We're in the final stages of working with them to get us to 15% design for that work, 15% design and the rest of the NEPA planning work.

improvements from the Virginia line down to where the station will be at the New River Valley Mall.

There's also another set of projects.

We're about 28 miles of the Virginia line.

We're making improvements to that 20 miles, including a tunnel and some other track improvements.

We're also bringing in a contractor to get us to 30% design for those improvements.

But the goal of getting service to New River Valley Mall in 2026.

I just wanted to point out, we changed this so when you see this chart, anything that is different from the previous month will be in bold.

And that way, you're not looking at the same sheet every month and saying, oh, it's just the same.

We do hold four-lane meetings with our folks in New Bern Valley.

We just had one on Monday with our planning and engineering team.

I was on a call as well.

I was also out there in Montgomery County, which is the county for New Bern Valley.

Oncoming County Chamber of Commerce.

So we're out there quite often with our team, one of our planners is out there as well.

So we're getting to know us as we try to move this project forward.

This is one of those projects, though, that, again, is not level design of many of our projects on the 95 corridor.

Can we continue our timetable?

Sure.

This is our capital and operating grants expenditures, which it is a fairly significant amount of funds that we have allocated to certain grants and working with our grantees.

And what you see, the main note here is there's a negative expenditure, which is a reversal of the June 30th report.

And then those bills are still waiting to come in to be paid and then that negative amount will go away.

And I think other than that, same idea as we talked about capital projects, we just talked with the finance committee a while ago about a way to actually do a better job of estimating our annual spend plan on these capital grants.

The other item I'll point out here is a lot of these are with the area Rich can jump in, but they had a lot of these,

projects lined up as far as grants working through VDOT, getting smart scale projects.

Before we actually made TRV, the TRV Initiative reality.

And then once that reality hit, we all sort of stepped back and said, we need to make all these projects work together.

And so, plus COVID had those two factors and it has been reshuffling in the deck, so to speak, of all the projects.

We have now a grant manager on board that's working.

I know myself and some of my staff are talking with Mark Scoville at the area on a monthly basis.

So anyway, the goal here, these capital grants are important.

There's a significant amount of funding dedicated to them.

Hi.

Some updates on capital and operating grants.

So with regards to Norfolk South, I mentioned we closed at the end of June.

There are some projects they're undertaking.

So I mentioned the kind of two projects on the V-line and the River Valley.

They're undertaking some projects.

One is Nokesville to Calverton double track, which is Nokesville to Calverton, a few miles south of the Manassas.

There's a key gap there.

There's only one track that'll add a double track that'll offer continuous 22 miles of double track, which is key.

for our state supported trains for Roanoke, but also you mentioned earlier Creston trains, the Cardinal runs on there as well.

So that'll help that a lot, but it's also indirectly helps VRE, because if those trains are late because of the single track come to VRE territory, that can mess up VRE trains.

Mr. Dolan, thank you for nodding.

Another project Norfolk Southern is also doing is the Roanoke West Yard as part of our grant to them, 36 and a half million

to allow for tracks to be built into Roanoke Yards.

So we'll have efficient movement of passenger trains through the Roanoke Yard, because people are familiar with where the Roanoke Train Station is.

To get West New York Valley, there's a huge yard you got to go through once you leave, once you depart the station.

So we wanted to make sure during negotiations that we weren't going to get caught in that yard.

Because if we didn't have the right legal agreements and the right construction project to have the bypass truck to get through the yard,

A 45-minute trip could quickly become a 15-minute trip or even longer.

We are working with Norfolk Southern to make sure they're staying on track.

Those projects should be done well before we need to start service in 2026, but they are necessary.

The West Yard one is necessary for us to start service.

We can start service to New River Valley until that one is done.

Other projects that are ongoing, legacy projects, we call it in Arkandale and Powell's Creek.

For anyone who might take the tracks, you see some, Arkandale and Powell's Creek is generally about nine miles situated around the Quantico area.

And this goes hand in hand with the next project, the Quantico Station, because like I mentioned, Quantico is kind of in the middle of it.

CSX is administering the Arkandale and Powell's Creek, it's actually a third-track project, we call it a four-track, we're getting a little aggressive here, getting ahead of ourselves, we'll have to correct that.

Sorry, the third-track project,

plans to add a foretrack at a later date.

The Quantico Station worked, so that was, Chief Sech is doing the Arkandale, the Pella Creek work, and VRE is doing the Quantico Station work, and just took the train down yesterday.

Through there you can see the pedestrian overpass, the structure has been put in place, and VRE is doing a great job keeping us updated on what's going on there.

The last project is also a legacy project, was Newport News Multimodal Transportation Center,

We broke ground on how hard to believe it's been a couple of years now, broke ground on that.

But the Commonwealth is a big contributor to that.

Over $20 million from the Commonwealth to the Newport News Multimodal Transportation Center, that should be open in 2023.

So with that, any questions on any of these projects?

Maybe I ought to ask Jennifer about this.

What's the status of another port connection out in the valley along 81?

So there is a legislative study the port and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership are working on to look at the viability of another inland port.

More likely, Southwest.

That study I don't think has been completed yet, but it's due soon.

I think that's the hesitation you hear with me.

This corridor to the New River Valley is secured for passenger rail.

That doesn't preclude freight, and the more we can do to separate passenger from freight improves the freight fluidity side and our ability to help continue to feed that engine at the Port of Virginia.

So that's part of our message.

We're working with North Carolina right now on a

a federal grant to do some more study.

This is out of the Southeast Rail Commission, which generally focuses on passenger, but talking about how we can use the investments in passenger to help us on the freight side.

So that dialogue is happening not only here in Virginia, but also with our partners in North Carolina and further into the Southeast.

Oh my gosh.

I'm thinking it's due by the end of the year.

Thank you.

I have a question.

I may embarrass myself here, but you just mentioned it, and it's sort of, I realize everything we do, the more we can separate freight from passenger rail, the more on time everything works better.

We're going to grow the system.

Do we have a chart or a picture that shows us these major routes through the Commonwealth and how many tracks there are, where it's actually separated,

or where we have, where we're putting in the fourth track, either now or in the plans.

That I think would help visually me understand where we actually are gonna have those long stretches of freedom and where we still are vying and at somebody else's, we're just gonna have to react to other issues and problems.

and to follow up the last part of this is where do we own the right-of-way?

Where could we put more track because of the deals that we've created, where we own the right-of-way?

So that's a great point.

Well, I carried this around in my notebook where we have single track, double track, and third track.

Hopefully we'll be able to add four track to that soon.

We're going to do some report track projects.

So this is something we can distribute.

I actually worked with Mike Totham, Mr. Buell's staff, Mr. Buell's staff on this.

And we do have some information on our website as well that we can probably get efficiently regarding the rule of what, and also with regard to the rule of what,

not until some survey work is complete on the DC to Petersburg section, we own right of the way.

And in some places, so it's not always as simple as it may seem, but with this third track in the ground from DC to Petersburg, we'll own it, but we'll also own enough quarter to lay a third and a fourth track.

So we can get you something, we have some things, and it is why I carry this around, because it's important,

It's not easy to add passenger trains when you only have one or sometimes even two tracks.

And it just gets to right away.

I mean, what opportunity or possibility exists?

And I will just add from the DRPT perspective, we're working on the statewide rail plan that we update every four years.

That we have put some language in there to spell out where we have purchased corridors at a high level, not as specific as what Mike is speaking to.

But I think your point as to how many tracks we have in different corridors, I think that's important.

And I think that's something as we're in public comment right now, we've gotten a lot of really good and very helpful feedback that's going to make that plan better before we finalize it.

I think that's a change and that's something that we can put in that

Planning document as well to be another resource because that does build the bridge between how passenger and freight

And I mean, at some level, the planning is still in DRPT's part, right?

So VPRA doesn't really have the planning role here, which is always, you know, we always wondered about that, but that's the way it stands.

So it strikes me that the DRPT should be thinking about what's the aspirational goal.

It's maximum separation, if not perfect separation, right?

How do you get there over what period of time?

How much right away do you have?

And some of that may be overlaid in terms of sequencing.

Where are the biggest problems?

You know, where are the biggest backups?

Where is the track actually competing with more freight and other things?

I think that would be helpful.

Jennifer?

Does it hinge on your study?

This map dates to 2012.

Right, so we have new flat maps that are done.

The folded map like the one in your hand is Mary Olivia sitting in here right now and

It's completely out of date.

I have one that's newer on the wall in my office and it's out of date.

So there's a draft 2022 Virginia statewide rail plan.

That does include maps and the other resource that's out there is DRPT has an open data portal.

It's data.drpt.virginia.gov and all of our line work for the rail network that feeds the rail map is all available on that in a searchable GIS format database where you can go on there, pull it up, zoom in.

So here's another question.

What role do we have?

We have worked very closely with DJ and the team at VPRA on the development of the rail plan.

And so, you know, to that extent, I mean, certainly, I think Emily was here last.

We did a rail plan briefing at the last meeting.

Rail plan's out for public comment now.

We're happy to

I mean, we're looking for comments from anybody.

So if you want to, we can do a one-on-one briefing for you.

If anybody in the board wants that, we can do that.

It's final.

Let me just add back to your original statement, Mr. Fisette.

We are now, we're putting a third track in and there's potential for a fourth track eventually.

We are making sure that the retaining wall that would be in place is moved over far enough so when and if we put a fourth track in, it just drops right in.

We don't have to move walls or do anything.

We're right in the exact, well even worse than not precluding or better than not precluding depending on what side of the wall you're on.

We're making it so when it happens, when it becomes reality, it just drops right into almost a preset place for rising tracks.

Well, thank you.

I'm going to try to move through these pretty quick.

This is really just a summary of what we've seen.

If DJ talked about the operations, I'll just add there that that's actually positive, really positive news, adding on to what DJ said.

We actually have a positive variance on our operation.

D.J.

reiterated our cost recovery, very strong from mass transit capital projects, grants we already spent on.

This is a slide really, this is our dedicated source of revenue from the Transportation Trust Fund and we just track it each month because we know about the historical trends so we know when there are

The main variance you see here is last year, the revenues were very strong, and in the middle of the year, and there was an adjustment to send us those funds that had built up for those previous eight, nine months.

The main point, other point here is we're on track so far for the year to make our $183 million.

I will say, starting next year, the phase-in period of the 21 initiative is over, and that flexibility of allocation to move, and we're going to be getting around $150 million, $155 million will be the estimate going forward, and just slight growth projected from there.

Next slide is basically showing where our cash and investments stand and did.

Since the last time we spoke, we updated our investment policy.

We have gotten our investment manager contracted.

We did send $100 million to that investment manager.

The remainder of the $525 million, approximately, we either have

have an LGIP either in their extended maturity or just their regular portfolio.

The other point I will point out here is, and it may not be easy to read, but on the right-hand side is an axis that points out our interest earnings from a monthly perspective.

That's what it's charting.

And if you go back to December, January time frame, we were 5,000, 8,000, that's the earnings.

The two things have happened.

We brought a lot of revenue and funds in, and then interest rates the last three, four months have gone from almost zero, essentially, to well over 2%, almost 3% at this point.

Next slide.

The next three slides, in fact, are taking you through reporting on those investments where the investment policy dictates three

three governing principles and they are in priority order.

First being principled as liquidity and then return.

Obviously we're not in the business of trying to make a lot of money in investments.

Our business is to build these capital projects and run the service.

So with this slide you'll see there is an unrealized loss on both

the extended maturity, EM, and the money we sent to Allspring.

And that's because they make investments.

So I'll take Allspring as an example.

Sent them $100 million at the beginning of August.

They invested in T-bills.

Ranks continued to rise.

The T-bills they've purchased now have to sell them immediately.

There would be a slight loss.

We fully expect to maintain or carry all of these investments to their maturity.

and expect no actual realized lawsuit.

The next slide gets into liquidity and this is someone also gets a list of reporting back on our investment policy so as far as the mix of investments that we sent the $100 million to Allspray.

They put 35% of it into commercial paper which complies with our policy.

The other 65% they put into T-bills.

That complies with our policy because the policy actually you could put a hundred percent.

Here the point is we have a weighted average maturity that the maximum weighted average was two years.

We could have an individual investment that could go to five years.

The maximum average, weighted average was two years.

I think you look at it, you'll see we're trending to a lot

lower maturity time frame right now and that's because there's still a lot of uncertainty where rates are going to go.

I don't think anybody right now would say they think it's level at all, it's going to keep going up or keep going up.

So I think we're in a good spot there as far as maturity.

Next slide is our return and once again we set a benchmark as the LGIP which is the

Portfolio managed by the Treasurer of Virginia.

See the Allspring did, for both August and September, did beat that benchmark.

100 million centile investor manager did outperform the benchmark.

Extended maturity is below that benchmark.

But if you look back to the months prior to the rapid increase in interest rates, you'll see the extended maturity was returning almost double with the LJIP.

I think we also, as we move forward, we have to think about long term, over what time frame do we evaluate the benchmark?

Because it's probably unfair to look at one month and say, oh, everything's great.

It's probably unfair to look at two or three months.

I think you have to realize all spring purchase treasury bills, and they're going to mature over the next year and three months.

If rates keep going up, then a return might not be as far with LGIP that's paid a 30-day maturity and they're able to turn over and buy higher return security.

So we have to think as a finance committee, we talked about this earlier, and then board, what is the period over which we evaluate?

I think this last slide is

Just a slide I had mentioned, I know we definitely internally are looking at every opportunity to find more funding and looking at every federal program that comes out and working to get different funds in to help us.

If I can, in case you're wondering why some of these look duplicate, FRAs, Christie Program, and State of Green Repair Program, both out roughly at the same time, and when we had talked with FRA, we wanted, Ettrick Station was important to us, and the S Line, that's the Richmond Railway Program was important to us in North Carolina, so they'd indicated it's okay to apply for both projects out of both programs.

So that actually gave them FRA flexibility, so if you see the

and why there's two S line requests for funding from FRA because again it gave FRA that flexibility and it worked out because we got the funding under the Christie program because FRA is able to look at the programs holistically.

I do also want to mention that the MPDG program is a combination of the mega program, infrared program, and rural program.

They have announced the infra-grants, they have not yet announced the mega-grants, and we expect that hopefully in the next month or two, and we've been talking to FRA about that as well.

So also with the congressional directive spending, otherwise some of my folks call it earmarks, we did have some success there in working with the Senate side.

We want to note that those for both New Bern Valley and Newport Station are in the Senate bill,

They're not in the House bill, and just like any piece of legislation needed to be made into a conference report.

So that 1.2 million for Newport News Station and 2 million for New York Valley is not yet money at hand, but there is a decent chance we can get it out of what is now known as omnibus appropriations that I think they're trying to wrap up after the elections.

Great points, Mike.

Pretty much it, there is an appendix, the slide used to get which shows each of our trains and the operational revenues and expenses by train.

It's really there for y'all.

It's a fairly busy slide with a lot of numbers, so we thought we could put it at the end and allow you to look at it if you have time.

Any more questions for the team?

All right.

So we're going to go back on the agenda to public comment.

I don't have anybody signed up, but Mr. Fabalis is here and I know that he has let us know that he was late on the train.

I meant to go somewhere.

I'm going to go to the podium.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Again, my name is Jay Corvallis.

I'm here on behalf of JBG Smith and the National Assembly District to share our perspective on the value of VPRA's work and highlight both the opportunities that that work has created.

My background, JBG Smith is a

Middle State Investment Trust with 15.5 million square feet of mixed-use assets in transit-oriented sub-markets in the DC region.

This includes National Landing, where we serve as Amazon's development partner for their second headquarters, as well as the development partner for Virginia Tech and their innovation.

National Landing is the largest walkable downtown in Virginia, one of the most transit-oriented places in the country.

More than 70% of trips in National Landing are taken outside of single-occupancy vehicles.

We have the busiest VRE station in the economy.

We're growing fast.

More than 8,000 new residential units, 8 million square feet of office, and more than 25,000 jobs are on the way.

All of that growth relies on the extensive and growing multimodal network.

It allows tens of thousands of residents, employees, and visitors to travel to and from the neighborhood every day.

DRB initiative to more than double VRE service and national landing is critical to our long-term growth.

So suffice it to say we're major proponents of the VPRA's agenda.

Let me highlight three particular priorities for national landing.

First is marked run-through service that would bring Maryland commuter trains across the river into Northern Virginia.

Business community at national landing is keenly interested in this primarily for its ability to help them attract top talent from across the region.

Our analysis shows that implementing runs-through service would open up

bring an additional 765,000 Maryland residents and district residents within a commuting distance that do not have a convenient commute to national landing today.

That's a huge advantage for businesses trying to hire talent.

We know from Maryland is firmly behind this and last year passed legislation to encourage its MTA to negotiate an agreement

through run-through service in place.

And we hope from DJ's update to the Greater Washington Partnership on Monday that they're having talks.

In fact, there's a framework that the two parties are collaborating on, which is very encouraging.

So we're very glad to hear that.

Thank you.

The second item is the New Passenger Rail Station and Airport Connection Plan for National Landing.

BRE's received funding to replace its existing Crystal City Station with one that can accommodate the new service planned as part of TRV.

At the same time, Arlington County and VDOT are advancing plans for a pedestrian bridge that would connect the station to National Airport.

Taken together, these projects will create the nation's leading air-to-rail hub while providing passengers across the Commonwealth with new travel opportunities.

It's also a complex, multi-stakeholder, multi-jurisdictional effort that at the moment has no clear path to full completion.

As the owner of the track, sponsor of the key enabling projects like the Alexandria Fourth Track,

and a steward of the Commonwealth's overall passenger rail network, the VPRA's leadership can have a positive influence on the outcome of this transformational project.

Finally, with the growth I mentioned in the national landing market and the link to the national airport, Amtrak is very eager to serve VRE's new station.

The entire community, including the business community and national landing, is very eager to have

We know that VPRA shares this goal and appreciate its work thus far to make that happen, including what we understand to be an agreement between VPRA and Amtrak to build a high-level platform at the new VRA station.

However, given the uncertainty of the overall station project, at the moment, there's no station for that platform to connect to.

Here again, we believe VPRA's leadership can have a positive role in the outcome of this project, and we look forward to being able to provide guidance to the public and the interested stakeholders as to when and how

when track service will be brought to national land.

None of these priorities I mentioned would even be possible without the TRV initiative, which is without a doubt the most successful, ambitious state rail program in the country.

And I say that as a proud New Jerseyan.

I hope my comments help show how this work is supporting economic development in the Commonwealth and creating new opportunities for passenger rail.

You listed three

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mary Stell, we did not have anybody else that had signed up for public comment.

So we will conclude our public comment period.

Yeah, go ahead.

It's really more for us to, because I happen to live in Northern Virginia and I happen to live in Arlington where, you know, I had something to do with creating Long Bridge Park, which we're going through and by every time I exercise, I look out at the tracks.

So I know a lot of these and people know me.

And so I get calls from economic development people about the marked trains run through from bicycle ped people about the, you know, pedestrian bridge,

about the platform.

So because a lot of people really do want the Amtrak, which I know is going to happen, but right now Amtrak doesn't stop at the Crystal City Station with those, you know, essentially many, many hundreds of thousands of people.

So one thing that I'm a little bit up to date, I think, on those two in particular, the MARC run through and the Crystal City platform.

But my question is, how are we communicating

to the other people out there, the people that call me.

Because there are a lot of stakeholders in the business community and the bids, the activists, the citizens.

And if we have an understanding with Amtrak about the platform, I don't know how anyone else knows it.

And I know, I think I know it,

Can I add, not only does it give folks comfort, but it gives us a sense of accountability as well.

We've committed to it.

VPRA, Beery, Amtrak.

Amtrak will begin service at Crystal City at this date.

If it's out there in the public, then there's the accountability that makes sense.

Mike and I actually talked about it this morning and we

We're very excited about the agreement that we reached with VRE and Amtrak on them stopping eventually at Crystal City and then doing the high-level platform.

That's true, too.

It's a really good point.

It's not just information.

And I think the other piece of that, if you don't mind me adding, is part of it is also communicating what time frame that happens in.

because you know managing expectations is going to be so important as we work to deliver this program of projects and we've talked about that a lot with the New River Valley but I think we need to do the same thing in the 95 corridor to keep out there that we are we're working and these things are going to take time but we have a schedule and we're sticking to it and I think being able to relay what decisions have been made and then what the realistic

And there's some things that don't work until there's Long Bridge.

And I think we've got to be very upfront about that.

And that creates a timeline.

So on the Crystal Cities platform, something can be done about that.

And then if I could have just asked on the mark run through, could you give us a sense of the dynamics of that conversation with Maryland, who's evidently a little more aggressive about it?

On the Mark Runthrough Service, we actually drafted a memorandum of agreement with Maryland to just establish roles and responsibilities.

We sent that draft to them a few weeks ago.

They got it back to us a couple days ago.

They actually were pretty comfortable with what we sent over, so I think we're very close on that agreement.

Again, that's just roles and responsibilities.

We want to make it very clear

that, number one, until Long Bridge happens, there's just not capacity there.

But there are other challenges that exist that need to be dealt with.

One is the capacity at Union Station.

The only tracks that run through at Union Station are the lower level tracks.

There are not a lot of them, and they're already pretty full, especially until we get the dual-mode locomotives there.

All those locomotives, which take up a lot of capacity.

The cross-platform ticketing is going to be a challenge because you don't want a situation, we don't want a situation where someone's waiting for a train and they've got a VRE ticket and it's hard enough now when they try to get on Amtrak train, we deal with it every single day.

Adding a third service there, we've got to make that complex ticketing and revenue situation agreeable to everybody and that's not going to be easy.

And then finally, we've talked about this before and I'm sorry,

The fact that Maryland has not yet contributed any money is a big deal because they will get a lot of revenue from this service.

I'm not saying dollar for dollar that's got to be reconciled.

Thankfully the Maryland team has said we get that and we understand that you are putting a lot of money, Virginia, VRE, into infrastructure that we shouldn't be able to take advantage of for free.

Having that awareness is very important.

So there are other challenges.

Spending way too much time on this

You asked me a very simple question and I've blown it up.

We have an MOA that's almost finalized that at least gets those roles and responsibilities in place.

Well, and that kind of an MOA would be a public document?

Right, so we have to be careful with that.

Yes, we want it to be a public document, and I just put a ton of pressure on Maryland.

However, both parties need to agree that it's public.

For example, we have deals with the freight railroads.

They have been fine with us posting them.

Other entities we have deals with don't like us posting them, so those are not public.

Just to leave it, I would hope that the two

Conversations are connected because somehow we have to get a sense with the board, but also the public of where it's going.

Because if the goal is, what is the goal?

And if it is 20 to 30 or after Long Bridge, then there are lots of things that can be done and worked out before that to make sure it isn't 20, 40, or 50, that you're already got everything in place to move forward.

It's the principle of it, really.

No, and it's so along this line.

There's an advocacy group, and I'm trying to remember who they are, their name.

I'm on their mailing list and participated in one or two things that they've done.

I can't remember at this point what the name of it is.

But the bottom line is, first of all, transportation, as far as expectations go, sometimes moves glacially.

Much more complicated than people realize, and especially what sounds really simple, why can't you just run, you know, MARC and VRE, you know, across the state lines, is much more complicated than, you know, than that.

And it gets to funding, it gets to governance, you know, who is responsible for making, you know, decisions about

about stations and passengers and how do you pay for your passengers.

So anyway, a lot of work is being done.

There is an advocacy group.

I think they try to push out information, but it doesn't trickle down necessarily to the people who are calling Jay or who are asking me at meetings

Why aren't we doing something and where are we?

So anyway, there's a way that we could... VRE is really good at, you know, sharing information with our passengers.

You have your regular newsletter.

I don't know if you've ever put something in about this particular issue, run through service and

I think the opportunity here is all of the, I'll just say, contributors directly to the success of the potential of the relocated Crystal City Station, as an example, exists in this room.

So I think it's really that communications piece and maybe just putting a focus on not just what VRE is doing, but

what the rail authority is doing and to some degree what Amtrak is doing over there.

Just lift this up somehow and of course on a regular basis update that.

And VRE can contribute to it but I guess we have to add Arlington County now as well to that discussion with the

you know, the CC to DCP project or the pedestrian bridge.

So there's a lot of things going on here.

A lot of good things going on here, but yeah, at the end of the day, let's give ourselves credit for the work that's going on and lift it out there and make sure the public's aware of that.

And if I may, I just want to add, oh, I'm sorry.

I just want to add, I thank you for bringing up the complexity because it's not just a, hey, let's start trains.

If there's a Maryland train that is in Alexandria and gets stranded,

who pays Rich to save it or who pays Amtrak to save it.

I mean, the insurance, there are a lot of things to Mr. Fisette's point that folks can start talking about now, because it doesn't just you flip a switch and happen.

I was just going to add, people have been working with Rich on this, on the Crystal City Station for three years.

And we're a coordinator, as one of the people know, we're coordinated with them.

We've shown Rich and his General Counselor draft their framework equipment with Mark

because they are one of the key influences players here, because they'll be, Mark wants to utilize V to E stations, including the new, as I mentioned, relocated station.

The current V to E stations move about a quarter mile south to match up with that national landing pedestrian overpass to National Airport.

And the part of the agreement that we've alluded to today is an agreement with Amtrak and V to E and VPRA to allow for

and Amtrak to use the very low-level platform that's constructed in the 2025-2026 timeframe.

And then, again, Amtrak will be able to add on to the end of that platform.

In 2030, when the Long Bridge program is complete, because Ms. Bulova is correct, the complexity of the train movements as well, which we haven't really gotten to, we need all the Long Bridge to be done, the four-track project work to be done to allow for the

We'll retrain movements before we add the Amtrak station up.

Amtrak will be able to utilize the very low-level platform.

It's also two edges.

The key to that right now, the Christmas Day, much like a lot of fun, it's just one side platform edge.

It's a big deal that VRE is adding a new island platforming that allows for two edges.

Two edges means two trains come in at the same time.

That is a huge deal, and part of that complexity is both the mesh itself.

I just want to mention that we do work with Rich.

We talk all the time.

And we also worked on an agreement previously with our general counsel that VRE is contributing $200 million, as DJ mentioned, to larger programming projects.

And we have been upfront with Maryland that, as DJ said, they've acknowledged the fact that we've put a lot of money in, VRE's put money in, and hopefully we'll be able to work on that.

We have some time because we're not looking to add our trains.

One, and I know our website's really good for a young organization, but when somebody had asked me about public comment, I thought this guy, Jay,

I went on to look at public comment.

There's nothing on our website about public comments.

Who might want to add it about how it works, how you do it if you're in the public.

And secondly, you did copy me on the email you sent.

But as a board member, I would think letters like that should go to the board.

So that if something comes that you know, from an outside stakeholder,

that is relative to our agenda and the work we do, we should all be getting a copy in our board packet or somewhere along the way to be able to see it and understand it.

This person may not have come today.

Thank you.

All right, moving on with our agenda.

All right, Madam Chair,

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks Mike.

So Fyfe Konstantin, VPRA Engineering presenting on a recommendation to approve a design budget for

the King and Commonwealth Bridges.

So I will start with giving a quick background on where these two bridges, King Street and Commonwealth Avenue in Alexandria, fits in with our VPRA's phase one work on our current Alexandria fourth track project.

So the Alexandria fourth track project, as you can see there, is a $210 million budgeted project, six miles long,

Extending between Alexandria and itself up to the, you know, what they call the Wausman RO, which is on the DC to Virginia interface.

For those who know Arlington, it's right up next to the Aquatic Center, the new Aquatic Center.

So the fourth track project will add an additional fourth track that CSX is leading being built on the east side of Cornwall.

The track is built via our VPRA, Virginia will receive one track, the westmost track being conveyed to us.

So I think Mr. Fisette talked about, you know, doing this build correctly so that we actually see separation.

That is the intent here.

And what is a unique attribute of King and Commonwealth Street bridges?

They were not originally included in the TC to RFA EIS document at Rod.

So the fourth draft between Alexandria and Roslin are environmentally clear based on that TC to RFA Rod.

And hence the reason the bridges are within these projects limits, but they're not included in project delivery to date.

So I will leave

And I did want to touch on the fact that those bridges are very proximate to VRE Alexandria Station and it's being coordinated with all of the construction in the corridor because as we understand rail corridors they're very captive so one project within the rail corridor affects many others.

So of course we have the Crystal City Station that we talked to and our ongoing Fort Drak project as well.

All of these are highly coordinated as we have conversations with the City of Alexandria to start our coordinated work there.

King Street comes on the left, so this graphic over here, you can see Alexandria Station all the way to the left, so this map goes to the right, where right is north, and the King Street Bridge is about

100 feet away from the end of the Alexandria Station platform.

And Commonwealth Avenue is about 500 feet north of that.

So they're very, very close to each other.

And I just wanted to give some context as to where the station is, those bridges, and how it fits within the corridor to the east.

The long white shed that you see, that's the Lomata Metro, King Street Metro.

Taking a quick look at the King Street Bridge.

It was built in 1905.

I'm significantly older than myself.

The King Street Bridge is almost 120 years old.

It's an open deck structure.

So it is very old technology causing a lot of geography issues.

Also limits the separation that we're trying to achieve

and the geometry that we're trying to hit with this TRV intent on our separated corridor.

So standard vertical clearance posted currently at 12 foot 11 has been hit multiple times.

I think Mr. Dalton can attest to that.

Sort of very constrained horizontal road, the alignment below.

Now we're not in the business of fixing the roads, but we certainly want to do what we can with our projects to coordinate enhancing the entire community and environment.

That's such a bleak story in a critical sense.

It actually has decent vehicle clearance.

However, it's as old, same deck type, keep in deck.

So if you can imagine any train traffic or debris-laden spit that comes from the top can fall to the traffic bubble.

And it has limited horizontal clearance, 26 feet.

So if you can imagine that you're going through a very narrow tunnel,

It constrains again what the city can do underneath that bridge.

So where are we?

So, and I will use my notes because I can't see the very edge of the screen there, but what we're trying to do then is the fourth track project, as we described, causes VPRA to necessarily require modification of the bridges.

So we are triggering the modifications that

The CSX is actually under contract with us performing work.

We performed a feasibility study to analyze these bridges concluded in spring to get a sense of like where we go next.

So if you think of the analogy of your car, you have a 12 year old car and the radiator goes out, right?

So you replace the radiator, it's brand new, but it's 12 years old.

So the next thing to go is the water pump.

And then, so we went through that,

It's 120 years old, so a simple repair wouldn't suffice.

So then we looked at rehabilitation, and rehabilitation would be so lengthy and so problematic with interrupting that the recommendation that we have, I guess, landed on a decision of where we would like to take this would be a full replacement.

Of course, then it actually corrects most of the defects and improves many of the things that you saw below the bridges as well.

Again, we're not going to address the street side work, but we will certainly create an approved envelope to do more with.

So some of the things that will trigger reduced life cycle costs, extended bridge life, of course, improved safety, the current bridges, as you see in this photo, not too clear, but I think you can see that there aren't any walkways for train stop across these bridges.

You don't really have a safe walkable platform on the surface.

So the new bridges will contemplate adding these King Street Bridge, and this is what we're seeing in this photo here.

They are physically separated, but they're not separated to the best of what the alignment could improve to.

So then it gives us the opportunity to fully separate, put a new structure in there that improves the surface, the alignment, and have a better picture on the next one, so hold for that.

So to reduce, of course, we will improve the vertical clearance to 14 foot 6.

We have tested a 30% design, so we know that that's possible.

We have reviewed it with CSX as our partner rail corridor operators, and it has not degraded the rail alignment.

So we think that we have a very good solution that we'd like to continue advancing.

Of course, with the replacement, it will also reduce rail operational delays

and service delays and other things, and improved, as we see here, route and pedestrian access.

So you can do more with bike lanes or, you know, potentially a city can enhance their roadways and so on.

I'll move to the next slide.

So here's Commonwealth Avenue.

So if you can look in that picture, the tracks going into and out of the bridge actually has a really nice profile.

Right at the bridges, you can see that it's all squiggly.

So

You know, what we intend to do is, Commonwealth specifically, those four girders that you see sticking out there, they're all one unit, so we can't further separate.

We're building really nice alignments into and out of it, being constrained by those bridges itself, and it's already old.

So our plan would be to, further separate, actually have two tracks that are freight, two tracks that are passenger, and of course, improve the alignment.

We are looking to advance the design concurrently with the Fortrack project, because if you imagine in a world where the Fortrack project is done, there will be Fortracks in the corridor, the space that we're intending to use on the very east side where the Fortrack will be laid would be gone, additional service would be added because we have hit our service goals, and those bridges would still be lacking, making it

It would be more complex, limited access, costly.

And I did want to note here that CSX has an $800,000 preliminary engineering task that has currently begun in September.

We expect a 30% design to be completed by the end of the year.

So moving on to our last slide here, board requests and recommendations.

So currently we have an $800,000 application.

Under the executive director of design, we are requesting an authorization for additional budget up to $2.3 billion for an all-in $3.1 million to continue through final design.

Questions for FYAD?

Just one.

Phenomenal presentation, very helpful.

One question, the last slide with costs.

Additional costs in here includes NEPA clearance structures, NEPA clearance for structures.

Didn't we already have that budgeted just separately, just not part of the fourth track project or not?

Aren't we doing NEPA clearance when King and Commonwealth are separate projects, separate from fourth track?

So as Farhan mentioned earlier, the BCDRVAA cleared the four-track projects, not clear King and Commonwealth.

Right, right.

Yes, that's what this is.

It had NEPA money for other projects, probably New River Valley, but there was not NEPA money for King and Commonwealth until August.

Now in August, we had, so before August, we had zero money in the budget for King and Commonwealth.

In August, as you may have seen in the executive director report, if you took it from zero to 800,000, it's within

our authority to get it to 30% design to see if it was worth doing now.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, this is the station I've used the last two board meetings to get here.

So I know this one better than any of the others, and I'm really, really excited about this.

It's an efficient use of money to do one big project, pile this one in at the same time, I think it's very efficient.

and I know VRE is doing a lot of work soon too.

My question would be, interconnectability is really important.

We've just talked about, it doesn't matter who's trained or anything it is, it's connecting everything, like national landing, pedestrian, bike, VRE, metro, everything's there.

You have a metro station right across the street.

And I know from being on this site, it's very confusing to walk around this station.

You can look at the sidewalk and not figure out how to get there.

My question is, is anyone doing, can you build into this at the same time?

So I do want to point out the graphics on the bottom, that it's going to widen the, so when you,

In some ways it's gonna shorten, let me do this the opposite way, it's gonna shorten the walk from up on the very Amtrak side.

We're gonna come out, because of this getting widened, it's gonna be a shorter walk to get to the sidewalk, safe, quicker to get over it.

Now I see your point, but I just used yesterday as well, I was up in Alexandria as well, and you used it as well, got on the train there, the Newport News, sorry, the Oakland train coming back.

And we'll add more better signage,

to get to Metro, but it's gonna be a much quicker walk.

Yeah.

I would just ask, honestly, I've stood up on that.

As you walk off the platform and you look down and you see the street and the sidewalk, there's no way to get down.

You have to walk all the way backwards and go around.

Granted, you'll be easier to go under.

It'll be a safer, wider sidewalk.

But isn't there a tunnel that goes between the two right now that you could actually

There's a lot of history with this and we can unpack it, I think in conjunction with the concepts that's being proposed here.

Yes, we looked at it, and I'm just, like I said, I could spend all day on this, but nonetheless, but we did look at it and

and partly the, I'll just add in the constructability, the cost of the tunnel for what the advantage was or what the, primarily from the customer experience, if you will.

I mean, go back five years ago, we were looking at doing a $20 million tunnel project to reduce the walking time, if you will,

or some of the passengers getting off at this station by 30 seconds.

So I mean, that's what we were sort of faced with.

Not to mention the fact that to construct this tunnel under the requirements of CSX, and I'm not, you know, very legitimate requirements, to continue and not impede traffic over the top, freight and passenger traffic over the top was just becoming

Well, it just wasn't feasible at the time.

And I don't know as much about it as you do, but I thought there was a tunnel.

It's currently a tunnel between tracks three and two.

Well, it might be that offline.

I just need to get a little understanding of this because like you're connecting these other big projects, I love that idea.

I just know that the pedestrian experience there, even with a new tunnel, is not a good one.

So I'd love to know how we are going to redesign the thing a little bit, or a lot, whatever, to make it.

We had some meetings with Alexander, in fact, I've already met with the mayor, about our staff have met as well, about that they are looking at this as a great opportunity as well.

for improved, not only vehicle, but pedestrian and bicycle actions underneath.

And the connection to the metro can be much better.

And I think we'll have a widened path to be able to do that.

And that might be a cost-effective way, as Rich was getting to.

I think we're going to save a few seconds here just by doing this.

With better signage, with clear, it's going to be cleaner as well, as you know, walking under there.

It's an old structure, as Firewall pointed out.

So there's a lot of opportunity there.

We'll continue working with Bob Janja, because

We continue the theme of the day today is cooperation amongst multiple entities.

I think we should be able to do exactly what you're doing.

Okay.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second by Moses-Nedd.

Any further discussion?

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Mr. Cardwell?

Aye.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Mr. Fisette?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

Aye.

Mr. Watkins?

Aye.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Good job.

Next item on the agenda is FTA core capacity presentation.

Mr. McLaughlin, you're up.

Okay.

This is the CICIG.

I can do it?

Yes.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So this is something that came up recently.

We've been working with the Federal Transit Administration, something called a capital core capacity grant.

FTA has a capital investment grant process often referred to as New Starts.

I know some of you are familiar with it.

It helped define the Silver Line extension, Maryland Purple Line.

We found out recently that even though we are eligible to receive federal grants, the FTA has an extra step to take for us to apply for what we call a CID grant.

So I'll go over this briefly, but I will take a few seconds through these slides to talk about this.

Again, this is a great program the FTA has, one of the few, when it comes to especially the public transportation to allow for multi-year grant opportunity.

We did enter

into the FTA's process.

They accepted us in November of 2021 for a core capacity project.

That's something that's relatively new, started in 2012 and now 21.

You do need a median rating or better to get approved for funding, and this can result in a lot of money, up to $600, $700 million for Long Bridge.

There's other projects around the country.

I think phase one of Silver Line was about $900 million or so.

It's significant money, one of the largest pots of funds

and we work close to VRE in this as well.

And again, the chart at the bottom.

So we're in project development right now.

You have two years that once you enter to exit, we're already one year, almost one year in, we have another year to get that.

What are the projects we're looking at?

It's the Long Bridge project, the Alexandria Foretrack project, and also extra train sets for VRE that will be needed as part of the Transforming Rail in Virginia, the extra

VRE trains we're getting from the CSX agreement.

We already talked at length today about the Alexandria and Fort Jack projects.

I don't think we need to get into that, but that is one thing I want to point out.

The Alexandria station, right near the Alexandria storage yard, is where the two Manassas line tracks come in and the three Fredericksburg line tracks come in.

They also carry Amtrak services.

You can imagine there's a fill point.

So adding capacity, another kind of theme of the day today,

is what we're doing here.

It fits the court capacity program well.

So our project is predominantly Long Bridge, but also Fortrack.

Here's the project budget.

And with regard to schedule, I already mentioned that we're currently by one year in.

What you need to do to enter and exit the project development is you need a 30% design done, which actually was

is in the process of being done for Long Bridge.

We talked earlier today where 15% design will be a 30% design in the middle of next year.

Also for third track, fourth track, we're already there at 30% design.

You also need to finish your NEPA clearance, which we got clearance from FRA.

FTA just needs to bless that.

So they're in the process of blessing that.

We actually had a conversation with FTA yesterday about that.

So we're moving along with the goal.

to get into the president's budget and then get a full funding grant agreement by early 2025.

So we need to get in the president's budget and be recommended for a grant in 2024, hopefully then to wrap the goal to try to get our full funding grant agreement in early 2025.

So hopefully that was quick enough, but not too quick to give you some background on what CIG is.

And here's the board action.

Again, to approve the observation for the VPRA to apply,

All right, questions for Mr. McLaughlin.

All right, so the action before us is to authorize VPRA to apply for FTA funding and to get all those procedures in place.

Do I have a motion?

Move for approval.

Second by Mr. Delandro.

Any further discussion?

Ms. Bulova?

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Mr. Fisette?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

She just stepped out.

Motion carries.

Right.

Okay, so once again, we're here to propose a minor adjustment to the committee assignments.

You'll remember there are two sort of working subcommittees.

One is the Finance and Audit Committee.

The other is the Personnel and Compensation Committee.

So the recommendation of staff is for this board to

Approve a resolution that would add a fifth member, fifth appointed member, to personnel and compensation.

The appointed member would be Mr. Fisette.

The net result of adding Mr. Fisette's fifth member is that when you take the Finance and Audit Committee members, both the automatic and ex-officio members under our bylaws and the appointed members,

That has six members.

We'll have the people number of six members, the automatic ex officio and appointed members on the personnel and compensation committee.

So we'll have membership numbers on each committee.

So with that, take any questions.

Any questions for Mr. Westerman?

Hearing none.

We have an action before us to modify our personnel

and Compensation Committee assignments.

Do I have a motion of approval?

By Mr. Cardwell.

Any further discussion?

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

Aye.

Mr. Watkins.

Motion carries.

So with that we're gonna that concludes our action items we're gonna take a break for lunch reconvene at 1.10 a little bit a little bit later than scheduled but we'll reconvene at 1.10 and we have informational presentations this afternoon do you want to

All right.

You're welcome to bring it in here to eat.

Thank you.

Julie, let's proceed.

I'm thinking maybe five miles.

So I agree with you.

All right, Jason, are we back live?

All right, thank you.

So next item on the agenda, we have Jeremy Latimer.

We're not gonna make him go last this time,

So, starting with this map, just as a review, so this map actually we developed because of our coordination with North Carolina to get the development of a DC to Charlotte corridor.

But you can see we essentially have three segments, and the segments we're talking about today is the Transforming Rail in Virginia, so from Patrick Petersburg up north to Washington DC.

That's the purview of the service performance committees that undertake the analysis we're going to see.

One of the reviews is from last time.

I'm going to probably do this a couple of times so that everybody understands.

Customer on-time performance, the percentage of customers that arrive at a station on time is the federal standard, a fairly new standard.

They're starting to publish.

We have two quarters, I'll go over that in just a second, of that data.

But what we do in this committee...

So the FRA has published customer on-time performance, again, that federal standard.

So for the Richmond Newport News and Norfolk route, the first quarter, which again, October 2021 to December 31st, was 74%.

And then the second quarter was at 75%, so the steady 13%.

And then Verona was at 31%, the first quarter, and dropped a bit to 77%.

Starting with BRE, this first slide is kind of the report card slides of how we're doing.

June, July, VRE is hovering just below 90 percent mark, for a lot of reasons that are also affecting Amtrak for that.

But also with VRE, one of the significant factors we're contending with is some conflicts on the NASA side with trains that are coming north this morning, getting into Washington late and then turning them.

It's also complicated by a number of other issues that happen throughout the day and getting southbound on time then becomes even more difficult.

Let me just say here too, the on-time performance numbers that we give to Jeremy and his team, they're based on our criteria and our goals and our criteria is

less than five minutes arrival at less than five minutes at the end line station.

And our goal is 90%.

So Jeremy alluded to before as the national standard for passenger rail and stuff, but frankly, a commuter rail operation could not last very long at 80% and

at those metrics.

So I'll just say all that.

Yeah, it's been challenging as you could see throughout parts of the summer, heading into September, challenging today.

In terms of the Manassas Line, I will say there are some operating changes that NS has gradually done out on that line that has resulted in now,

at a level where it's really impacting us.

It's not just impacting BRE, but Amtrak as well.

And we're working closely with them to see if we can't get them to change a few things.

But nonetheless, I'm just going to say, because you're standing up here and doing this, this process, in terms of all interested

Stakeholders, Operational Stakeholders and stuff like this.

It's just been a fantastic process.

It really just has lifted just a lot of, in some cases, some dirty laundry and stuff like that.

But at least we get to sit with multiple stakeholders and really dive into what the root causes are and how we can correct them.

Some of them are systemic.

Some of them are like what we're dealing right now on the Fredericksburg Line or CSX.

They're out there doing a very large tie and resurfacing project out there, which will only benefit us all in the end.

But we have to weather the storm, if you will, while they're doing that very extensive maintenance.

So anyway, I didn't want to take over, but I just want to say this.

The first time in my career that we've gotten so many people from different entities together,

essentially hats off and really dive in into this stuff.

And the data's pointing us in the direction to have some conversations, get eyes on the ground and understand what's going on.

So looking a little further into VRE, so looking at some of the top delay minutes of Amtrak interference, and I'm going to start saying that once we have some things like heat orders, or we have some trains coming off of the NASA line that aren't on time, once things start to get out of schedule,

And you start to have conductors reporting what's in front of them, right?

So an Amtrak train's in my way, but that Amtrak train in this way may have been because of another issue.

So we have to recognize that when we look at these delay minutes, we're trying to get to the root of galaxies.

Slow orders, because there are a number of tie projects going on and actually in the south, as you see winter come in, you start to see gangs further south as the warmer weather still allows work.

CSX interference, again, is with fee orders or whatever else going on.

A simpler train sitting out in each other's way because things aren't scheduled.

So moving into the Amtrak analysis, so on the left side here you have the Virginia trains, the Northeast Regional trains, and on the right side you have the long distance trains.

You can see over the course of hours, we've been hovering around between 60 and 80%.

We want to get above 80 to 10.

We are starting to see a little bit of a trend upward on the Northeast Regionals, but they are stronger performers already because of a number of reasons, but one is the shorter distance that they travel.

Long distance trains really suffer for a number of reasons, but heat orders, we didn't see some details on that, are finally subsiding here in September, so we're starting to see an increase in performance of the long distance trains.

So looking at these kind of bubble charts, looking over here on the left, the top three delay categories by month.

So what are the delays?

And WTR, weather delays, is where you see heat orders.

So through the summary, you see the yellows at the top, we had heat orders and there were a number of events, a number of storms, like two major storms in those weather delays as well.

But for the most part, heat orders being issued every day really makes it hard to achieve an on-time performance day.

And once that happens, everything slows down, everything gets off schedule.

So we see that as a large challenge on the CSX network.

Then we look at the top three delayed trains by month.

So 79 to 80 are the Carolinian trains.

So those come through midday.

So heat order is in place already.

So they are affecting those trains.

And 125 there at the top is our southbound.

I should notice, I think it's to Norfolk actually.

But that's good for me, I'm sorry.

But it is an evening train southbound and affected by the heat orders being in place.

For most of the Virginia trains you'll see in a second,

They are warning northbound to get away without effect by heat orders.

Where are the trains that are affected and where are the delay minutes happening?

So, VP, Virginia or near Lafont Station all the way down to Alexandria, you see that brown box there staying in the top three.

So that's, that includes the Long Bridge.

So, there is some work going on, track work going on now there.

We have heat orders, we have congestion, so that stays in the top there.

But you also then see Richmond, Petersburg, so that includes something like At the Yard, which is a major congestion point.

And you see Washington Union Station, which of course you have a lot going on there.

DRE, marked service, Amtrak trains switching out from diesel to electric.

There's just a lot of room for error and congestion in that area as things come in and out of Washington Union Station.

These are going to be kind of a progression of slides to show you how we perform over the course of the months that we've been tracking, starting here in April.

So what I would point to is here at the bottom, you see trains coming into Virginia from the south, and you can see their performance coming into Virginia late.

First on-time performance in Virginia, you're already required to step against you.

And then if you look in the southbound trains coming off the northeast corridor, which is controlled by Amtrak, we have much stronger performance.

So we want to see trains come in on time if we can because it really helps us to deal with the issues you see in our corridor.

So as we see temperatures were rising in the summertime, we started to see performance decreasing.

So just to flip back and forth again, you see like the southbound trains, which were in the 60s and 50s, they come through Virginia and heat orders were starting to take effect at the end of that month, a few days, but you can see performance was dropping.

We are seeing the northbound trains that are Virginia trains are very high performers again because the northbounds are morning.

The northbound Silver Star, and we talked about this one last time too, the Silver Star is a long distance train.

This train was in a situation where, because of crew shortages with Amtrak, they combined the equipment with the Silver Meteor.

And so you had double and triple stops at stations.

They tried to hold to its original schedule.

They started getting off of schedule very early on down in Florida.

So they would arrive anywhere from six to 12 hours late in Virginia.

And that's a train just kind of like a bowling ball through the network consistently.

And they never arrived.

So that was a big problem.

So we did an analysis to show how that train affects all of our trains as well.

We've shared that with Amtrak.

We also learned about the Carolinian train coming out of North Carolina, having some issues on NS and they have been talking with NS, Amtrak has been talking with NS to try and improve that.

Moving into July, feed orders continued to increase.

So we started to see, we continue to see drop in performance.

We also saw some performance drop coming off the northeast, so you see down to 74% where we were very high starting out and then reaching the northeast corridor at 66% for our trains in the morning, so heat orders were affecting some of our trains there too.

August, you'll see in a minute, was the highest month of heat orders, so still struggling there with trains coming into Virginia late.

A slight improvement of trains coming off the corridor in August from the northeast

And then in September you see a jump and just, I'm going to flip back and forth real quick, you can see the southbound trains.

They did jump up a little bit, not as much as it was like when we see heat orders look to the side, so we're hoping to see even more in October, but stronger performance coming off the northeast corridor.

How did we do with those top delays?

Well, you can see here the sheer scale of the heat orders.

We worked towards August, so

Almost 3,700 minutes of heat orders, and the next highest one is at 2,100 or 2,500 by September for freight train interference.

But you can see the scale of the heat order is the single largest challenge we're dealing with on CSX because it affects every train once it's in effect.

Freight train interference is something that we're working with on CSX, and Amtrak train interference of course went up as heat orders went up because everything was in effect.

And then slow orders because we are starting to see more track work.

So just to bring that all together, we are watching the Carolinian service and looking to see if we can contact performance with the first sighting in North Carolina.

We were watching a train 99 coming out of Washington.

That's an example of getting trains in through each one.

I really hope those have a lot of performance here.

That train, again, direct to their credit, was train 99, had never left on time.

It's a Saturday-Sunday train.

It has started to move into the 15-minute window.

It still hasn't hit the on-time point, but we are seeing improvements, and they are watching it closely with managers on the ground.

There's no replacement for people going out there to see what's going on there.

Silver Star has finally separated from the Silver Meteor.

We are watching it every day.

It did not do very well yesterday.

We're hoping to see improvements in its performance so that it would help to create and start to run on the time of the 19th and operating vision by the time they get here.

So Silver Star and Silver Meteor are now separate.

We're hoping to see an improvement on that.

The heat orders again, with heat orders in effect, it really just hurts everything.

These trains, if they are off, it's just going to be exacerbated by having to slow down as you come through Virginia.

We'll always have to contend with the slow orders because we need to do track work.

But as we expand the network in four tracks, that also gives us flexibility to have some tracks in operation and others under having track work done.

One of the things I want to mention for a deep dive that we're starting to do with this group.

So the trains here, they were the ones with the most minutes of delay, heat related delay.

So we were looking at also an analysis of where trains were showing up and dwelling because they were getting there early.

And we didn't do anything with that extra time in the schedule because as we were recovering from the pandemic and because heat orders were coming into effect, we thought that extra time may go away.

What we actually started to see was that on some trains it didn't.

So where we were seeing heat orders and increased dwell at stations because we're having higher ridership and actually also because we have not enough crews with Amtrak so we're only opening one door in some cases at very busy stations now, we still had this cushion.

So we're starting to do an analysis where we look at which trains are having additional time to dwell at which stations.

And we're going to see if we can redistribute that schedule to better cushion and set customer expectations.

So we're just starting that.

We really started getting into it last Friday and we have several more meetings on that.

So this group is going to continue that work.

We're going to continue to collaborate on the performance trends we're looking for to try and find solutions to those trends as well.

We're doing that deep dive into the no delay.

We're discussing heat orders separately with Amtrak and CSX.

There's a lot to find out there.

It's very complicated.

We are also looking across the country at what heat orders look like on other post railroads and when those are triggered and how it affects traffic to trip to the speeds drop as much.

So Amtrak has done an analysis.

They do show that up to 80% of the heat orders incurred in the United States occur on CSS.

That means this is an outlier for our area of the country.

So there are things to learn about why things are done this way in East Coast, because Norfolk Southern also in Virginia does not have that

That same number of heat orders.

I will also, just to be fair, CSX does do this out of safety precautions.

So we obviously don't want to make any drastic changes or request any drastic changes until we understand those heat orders and their reasons and how they benefit us.

There were a couple derailments in the early 2000s that resulted in where we are today.

We're going to review station dwell time performance.

That's something that we've started to do this.

Just even anecdotally, getting on a train where you see one door open or two doors open and we're having record ridership and so you have a large horde of people waiting as people are coming through to get off the train and then the train can lose its time in Alexandria and just that time continually as it goes down into Virginia.

We're also, as we get time behind us, going to start looking at the acquisition schedules we put in place July 11th.

We started looking at the three month mark, but that still has a lot of heat orders in it.

We want to get at least a preliminary look into it and probably a good year behind us before we really want to do anything major with the schedules, but we're looking for any chronic issues there.

And then one thing that we're coming up upon is that we want to make sure Amtrak knows this level of analysis is happening in Virginia and that Amtrak is putting, you know, not just the folks on the ground and the managers that meet with us, because we do have manager meetings, but like,

get it all the way to the top at Amtrak.

So we're going to try and get to the Amtrak board and show them the kind of analysis we're doing here in Virginia, how this affects not just Virginia, but also the trains that go beyond Virginia.

That's one of our next steps.

And now Director Stadler is working on that.

Is there a solution?

How can you address that?

or how can someone address it?

There's a lot to talk about and a lot to learn.

And I think what is changing is that Virginia now is a partner, an owning partner, business partner with CSX and that quarter needs to understand why CSX has these rules that have been in place since 2008.

And just for an example, doing an analysis of what heat orders do elsewhere,

There are certain temperatures that trigger a heat order.

Does it need to be that temperature?

There are certain maintenance rules that need to be in place or inspection levels that need to be in place to have, you know, a sense of comfort with lifting what we have today to make sure we don't do something.

And then we have derailment and we go right back to where we started to work.

It's all about safety in that sense.

So I think Rich, you said it best in that what starts as an engineering discussion ends up as a legal discussion.

So we have to navigate that very carefully, but there are solutions, just a lot of,

Analysis Needed First.

That helps.

Also, if I may, we also modify the schedules.

We know August is hot around here, and if we change the expectation of the passenger, suddenly the train's on time.

Yes, it takes longer than it does in December, but at least then passengers aren't pulling their hair out saying, I can't believe we're 20 minutes late.

Madam Chair, I'll just say,

and one of the departing acts of our former chair, Sharon Bulova, at the VRE Operations Board level was we did connect seasonal schedules on select trains, the trains on the VRE service that are the most impacted by heat orders, understanding that that doesn't fit for all,

you know types of service or whatever but back to what Jeremy said it was about really it wasn't necessarily to get the metrics up it was to meet the customer's expectations right so we were able we've done it I think three summers in a row now three summers and it's very effective from a from a customer perspective very effective so they're they're just not they get it from memorial

First Service Day after Memorial Day till Labor Day weekend, that their schedule has changed and it's just reset the expectations.

Thanks.

Mr. Fisette.

I just want to applaud the VPRA for this.

Honestly, you know, we're about capital projects and all that, but we're about the service delivery and the customer, too.

That's a big part of our success in the long term.

And the fact the VPRA is in a position

to do what Jeremy's doing, which is convene, facilitate, moderate, problem solve, identify the problems, and work towards solutions.

And honestly, it's gonna be a long haul.

Like you said, it's the beginning.

But I really applaud us for jumping into that, because we're the right organization to do it.

So the question I have is about the customer piece.

Is it feasible that part of the solution is communication to the rider?

Yes, that is, we do need to have some talks with Amtrak about how we can better do that.

I know if there were, with Amtrak, less frequently, much less frequently, we'll have heat orders in the Northeast Corridor, and that gets posted on their website and gets blasted out to customers.

That does not happen where it's much more frequent.

I think that is a great point.

Just like you said, you end up standing on the platform with people and you find yourself in a position where you're answering questions.

DJ and Jeremy know very well when I ride and I end up in Ashland where there's no communication.

It's an unmanned station.

You know, when something's going wrong, I feel compelled to help folks on the platform.

And there had been a train that was over an hour late.

and the train after that was coming through.

That's the one I was getting on and I was like literally helping people on the platform figure out which side to be on and whether or not they could get on the train and having a board or something that communicates to folks what the expectations are.

That is also true.

I think all my friends have me on speed dial now if they ride the train.

But I think that customer piece and being able to communicate expectations, I will say that day, I almost missed my stop because we were so early getting into Alexandria.

I was on a call and I looked up and we were in the station.

Wonderful presentation, Jeremy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jen.

All right.

Hi, I'm Shirlene Cleveland.

I'm the Senior Director of the Long Bridge Project.

We are here to talk about the RFP, the second RFP that we've done.

for project management support services for the Long Bridge project.

I'll explain more what that means when we try to start off with a brief picture of what we're going to build out there.

This is a visualization done by our bridge architect and what things can look like once we're done.

This was recently approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts this summer, so we already have an approval for this concept and feel very confident moving forward with this.

Just for an overview, I know earlier Faya Constantine was talking about the Alexandria Fourth Track Project.

This is the next project to the north.

Again, this one then starts by the Long Bridge Aquatic Center on the left hand of the screen and extends north to the Montfont Station project done by the RE.

The LMS of the project, you can see the numbers are the various bridges that we're building for the project.

The most important one, obviously, is the Long Bridge itself, which is the second bridge for passenger rail over the Potomac River.

We're also number two is the bike pedestrian bridge that we're building and the NDC will own as mitigation for the project.

That will terminate at East Potomac Park, but obviously the rail corridor continues on through the project.

The next bridge is number three.

That is our bridge over both I-395

Then after that, the corridor necks down a bit.

Until this point, we're basically building a separate alignment that things get very constrained from a right-of-way perspective after this point, and so it gets much more complex.

We're basically going to be rebuilding all of the tracks on a corridor that's already being operated with all the trains.

It's going to require a lot of moving of the tracks around so that we can keep the work moving while the trains keep operating.

So the next bridge is 4, 5, and 6, our existing two-track bridges owned by CSX.

People will be rebuilding those to four-track bridges, again, while keeping the trains moving.

And, Sharon, if I can, we talked about this earlier.

Those are the examples.

In the district, there could be one structure going from two tracks to four tracks.

And then, Patty, you asked some questions about that earlier, so I'm just alluding to that.

Yeah, I know.

So for this one down here on the bottom, everything in purple is structure and everything in red are retaining walls.

So we are basically either building bridges or retaining walls for this project in order to take the new two tracks all the way up to one lot.

And finally, I don't want to forget number seven.

We will be widening into an existing pedestrian bridge at Main Avenue.

And so number seven, we will have to build a new bridge to replace that bridge.

that is owned by the Portals Group or the Mandarin Hotel now called the Salamander Hotel is located.

This slide just shows the different sections of the project just so that you can get a different flavor for the various portions of the project.

Number one is parkland, basically the Long Bridge Park by the Aquatic Center and then also the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

Number two is the bridges over the Potomac River.

Number three is East Potomac Park, and then four is getting more urban into the main avenue area up into the portals development.

To talk about different project phases, the project has been around for some time.

It started off in 2011 until 2020.

It was run by the District Department of Transportation.

And then when the Rod EIS was signed, it was transferred over to VPRA, which is where it is now.

We're in this box here with the gold around it.

And what we're here to talk about today is the last gray box there in that box, the gold box, is the procurement of the project management support services contract.

They will be needed in order to help us get into the final box, which is getting to the procurement of the construction contracts, final design, land acquisition, permitting, and everything basically that's needed to get this project to completion.

So we're completed so far.

We've done 15% design.

You can see the soil boring rig that was out in the Potomac River last month was collecting soil borings, utility research and mapping, survey and property research, tree survey and arborist evaluation, as we will be taking out a lot of trees, but it's probably a lot of invasive species.

I've done the thorough survey of what's out there and then plans for the landscape design that will take its place.

Stakeholder coordination, we have a ton of stakeholders on this project, as you can imagine, all of the different permitting agencies, all of the various agencies, whose lands we touch, neighboring property owners, et cetera.

And then design approvals, again, I alluded to earlier that we did get approval for the bridge concept from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, and we also went before the National Capital Planning Commission and got their preliminary approval.

So next steps, and again, we will need this PMSS contract services for us to get to beyond the 30% design,

to procure, well, right now we're procuring that contract, but then we'll need them also to do the contracts procurement for construction.

And then moving on to utility test fitting as well, because we know we have a ton of utilities out here.

We appear to have a lot of conflicts.

Now we need to know how deep they are to see how many of them are real, because some of them could be quite substantial.

Okay, so what is the Project Management Support Services contract?

A site-specific professional, architectural, and engineering

Consultant to provide engineering, construction, and project management support services for the Long Bridge project basically means they're going to be helping us oversee the project, oversee design, oversee construction, and just keeping the project on schedule, on budget for the duration of the project.

They will be basically acting as an extension of VPRA staff.

And in the picture, you can see the visualization for the bike pedestrian bridge that will be built as part of the project.

Again, that was also approved by the Commission of Fine Arts.

So specific items that they will be handling, scope details, again, oversight of engineering, design, construction, quality, safety, cost, budget, schedule, change orders, documentation and reporting to the various agencies that will be overseeing this project, drafting of procurement documents, environmental studies and permitting, as you can imagine, getting environmental permits to build the bridges, especially in the waterways is going to be a huge undertaking.

And this

A consultant will be overseeing that effort, making sure all the permits are in a timely fashion.

Stakeholder coordination and the drafting of agreements in order to get the core capacity grant that Mike was talking about earlier.

One thing they look at is having these agreements with third parties, and so we will be looking for this consultant to help us draft those.

Civil rights compliance oversight, obviously very important.

Public affairs outreach and communications, and then property acquisition and utility support.

So the various phases of the project, I mean the contract itself, we talked earlier about the phases of the project, this is the phases of the PMSS contract.

Different services will be required depending on where we are in the project's life.

This will be for pre-construction, looking from when you will award the contract, which we hope will be in January 2023.

That would extend, we hope, into the third quarter of 2024, which is when we're targeting getting our full funding grant agreement and we cannot start active construction

until that occurs.

So we would be going through the design phase, you know, getting permits, utility acquisition, I mean, utility coordination and movement of utilities, property acquisition, all these activities you can see on the first bullet.

And then we would move on into construction, which we do get that full funding grant agreement.

And the PMSS would be helping us oversee the whole effort, including the percent of quality, safety, et cetera.

And then finally, in 2030, if all goes well, and it should,

By the fourth quarter, we should be opening to additional service, and then we would enter the closed construction phase, which would be contract closeout, the final documents, management, basically just handing over the project to warranties, that sort of thing.

And so next steps, we are currently doing a qualifications-based selection, so we can't talk too much about what's going on right now.

We are going to be determining the top-ranked consultant soon, and then we would begin

Salary Negotiations, basically.

And we'll be coming back to you in January to get approval to award that contract.

I just want to say it's amazing.

It's a little daunting.

Thank you.

Anyone on the phone have questions?

Moving so quickly.

All right.

Mr. Cardwell is just fine.

All right.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Jerrica Goodman, the Director of External Affairs and Communications.

And this past September, we conducted our first public awareness campaign on Rail Safety Month.

You all may be aware that every three hours

An individual or a vehicle is hit by a train.

It's a very serious, mostly very fatal interaction.

And so as an entity that has been charged with improving and expanding access to rail, but also we've committed a value as ensuring safety and reliability that we also have to commit to

spreading awareness for rail safety and educating the public.

And so I'm just gonna go through some of the activities of our rail safety campaign and some of the outcomes.

We've partnered with a lot of different folks.

Some of their representatives are on this Lord BRE, DRPT, Amtrak, CSX.

So I'll get started.

So as I mentioned, we did a month-long campaign

to spread awareness and educate the public across Virginia on rail safety.

And we did a focus a week on different aspects of rail safety.

So safety at grade crossings, passenger safety, so what you do when you're boarding and alighting, a word I recently learned like six months ago.

Rail safety education for K-12 children, young adults,

and then pedestrian and driver safety, which is extremely important.

Some of our activities, including getting the governor, Governor Young, to issue a proclamation declaring September Rail Safety Month.

It's National Rail Safety Month.

We want it to be declared here in Virginia's Rail Safety Month.

We updated our website, created a landing page for rail safety.

It's virginiapassengerrail.org backslash rail safety.

You can go visit that site.

and created some toolkits, a general toolkit.

We sent them to legislators and then we had constituency specific toolkits.

So for photographers, photography is actually a big issue for rail safety.

People like the aesthetics of railroad tracks.

People do engagement photos and all of those things.

So getting that information out to photographers was really effective for us actually.

We got a lot of great feedback from photography associations and media outlets

on that toolkit specifically.

And then we had outreach events at Amtrak, at the Amtrak station, and with our partners at VRE, at Woodbridge, very early in the morning, still dark, but it was a very, very great event, reaching out to people, handing out real safety education materials, making sure they're aware of what to do, where they need to be standing, making sure they back up if they got too close.

When the train was coming in, people get really excited.

dash onto the train, but hey, back up a little bit, and then making sure they're aware of all the signs.

Our director, DJ, did a rail safety op-ed in the Virginia pilot.

You can find that.

They did it a little bit after, but it was great because rail safety just didn't stop in September, so we continued all that link.

Very great op-ed, DJ.

Of course, social media was our biggest piece, and I'll show you some of those outcomes.

And then this is just some photos and some of the social media we shared at some of our events.

That's Woodbridge, like I said, very early.

Our Children's Museum exhibit, we added some additional rail safety features.

The blue ENS sign is also now at the Children's Museum exhibit.

That's at the station.

Train Day, which is a huge event for

Train and Rail Enthusiast, we tabled there, making sure that while you're excited about trains, also be excited about rail safety.

And then, like I said, keep my clients off the track, making sure that photographers and the media are aware of rail safety.

And then really simple messaging on social media, stop track tragedies, see track, think train.

And then one of our core partners, Operation Lifesaver Virginia,

was really helpful in picking those messages.

And that's the Operation Lifesaver representative with the Children's Museum.

The children just loved the coloring books we produced, and the families were grandparents, moms and dads taking in the messages.

But then just a little bit on outcomes.

We interacted with over 225 individuals at all of the events we attended in Central and Northern Virginia, which was really great for our first time.

And then in terms of social media, the average impressions, so that's people or individuals and accounts who saw our posts, about 500 individuals or accounts was the average for each post throughout the month.

And we posted about three to four times a week.

And then our emails and website coverage, individuals who opened or read our Rail Safety Month emails was 42% and 37% is the industry average.

I think these outcomes show that people were entrusted in the messaging.

We got great feedback from the individual toolkits we sent out.

The message permeated through.

We had one of the last days of World Safety Month, we went to the Long Bridge pedestrian bike bridge, big check handoff from Senator Warner and the Vice Mayor of Alexandria, Amy Jackson, was there and she had included

that rail safety, it was Rail Safety Month and pedestrian safety was the theme of the week.

And we had prompted her, but I got so excited when she said it, I like gassed because she said that she had just seen the message organically.

And so for me, it was there because that message was permeating for folks.

And so I think it's really important.

We're gonna continue to spread that message and awareness throughout the year, but especially in September.

Thank you very much.

All right, last item on our agenda today is a federal funding update.

This is going to be a tag team.

Randy and I have the unenviable position.

trying to make it as thrilling as we can when we're talking about federal budgets and funding.

Can everybody hear me all right?

We're good?

Okay.

So just quick overview of the agenda, but I'll skip through that real quickly.

Wanted to start by giving you all just a really brief overview, reminder.

I think pretty much everybody here is familiar with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, IIJA, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law,

But this was really a very historic level of funding that was invested into rail at the federal level.

We were looking at about $102 billion.

As you see there, very specific again for rail.

We had about $66 billion in advanced appropriations through the IIJA.

And so that's funding that is both authorized and appropriated.

So that's funding that

is readily available for these rail programs through the IIJA.

And then another $36 billion is in the authorized funding.

So that is funding that does still need to be actually appropriated in order to be used, but there is authorization for it in the bill.

And it covers a five-year time period.

So the federal fiscal year is 22 through 26, but a very historic investment, the likes that we have not seen before.

And it's also, what the IIJ also did with this funding and their approach to a lot of this funding was really taking new, we began to take a new strategic approach to how the feds are thinking rail, a much more long-term multi-year approach.

And we'll talk a little bit about that in another slide or two.

So we have already received some awards of this funding, although technically this was

Technically, this was federal fiscal year 21, so slightly before the IIJA funding, but a program that is also included in, continues to be included in the IIJA.

This is the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement or CRISI grant.

Pretty much does what it says on the tin.

It funds projects, improving safety, efficacy, and reliability of inner city passenger rail.

So we applied for, we're the recipient of

Two grant awards, $6.3 million for Ettrick Station.

I believe y'all have probably heard about this multiple times from Mike and Steve that we received this funding.

And then also another $50 million for the Richmond to Raleigh cohort to get to 30% design.

North Carolina was the lead on that grant, but we were a partner for that.

And of course, this is funding that is administered by the FRA under IIJA, and these were awarded back in June.

But of course, there are upcoming funding opportunities.

So new round of CRISI grants, the Notice of Funding Opportunity, which was just back in September.

The team at VPRA is working hard and very diligently now to pull all of our ducks in a row before the December 1st due date.

We are putting in a grant application for funding for the Franconia Bypass.

It's a $100 million request.

So there's about,

It's a billion dollars in funding for this federal fiscal year for the CRCC program in the IIJA.

That's after set aside.

So that a hundred million dollars is a strategic ask.

We don't expect any project to be awarded more than about 10% of that one billion.

So we went in for that hundred million and we'll see what we can hopefully get of that ask.

We're also partnering with North Carolina Department of Transportation

They are the lead on the application for an additional CRISI grant.

That'll be for 60% design for Richmond to rally and will help us continue to advance that S line project.

Also wanted to point out Congressionally Directed Spending.

So these are formerly known as earmarks.

The funding for these comes out of the allocation

for the Chrissy Grant.

So that's why I'm mentioning it here.

We have worked previously with Senator Warner and Senator Payne's office to put in several requests for these EPS spending packages.

We have two which are in the Senate Appropriations Bill, $2 million for New River Valley and $1.2 million for Newport News.

As you are probably aware, we are operating now at the federal level.

We have a continuing resolution

So we hope that after the elections in November, we will have a federal budget.

Can I raise one point about Richmond and Raleigh?

We talked about Richmond and Raleigh, but it also benefits Norfolk because it goes all the way to Richmond and Raleigh.

And one thing we're looking at is improving, making improvements to the Appomattox River Bridge for anyone who's taken the train out of Norfolk.

If you come north, and I see Ms. Drake's nodding her head, she doesn't refer to.

Jay, I'm sorry, Mr. Fett earlier was talking about single track, double track.

It's only one small section of the Richmond to Petersburg part that's single track.

It's the Appomattox River Bridge.

So of course you have a bottleneck.

So what Richmond and Raleigh do is not just about Richmond and Raleigh.

Part of the 30% design, hopefully 60% design plan, hopefully for your money, part of the design plans are to add another bridge over the Appomattox.

So that will hopefully take care of a choke point

for the Norfolk trains as well.

So I don't want people to think it's only going to benefit the rally.

It's going to benefit the three, now three round trip Norfolk trains as well.

We talked about it earlier and Jeremy kind of alluded to it too.

If you don't have enough, there's a lot of things that go into reliability and on-site performance.

If you don't have enough capacity, there's only so much you can do.

So one of the other big things in the IIJA was the creation of the corridor ID program or corridor identification program.

And what this really does, we could do a whole, maybe I shouldn't say this, but we could do a whole presentation alone on the corridor ID program and the intricacies of it, but from a very high level overview, what it does is it's gonna be establishing a project pipeline for rail projects.

And it'll be the key vehicle for directing

ongoing and continuous federal investment in developing rail corridors across the country.

Right now, FRA is requesting expressions of interest to be submitted for different rail corridors, so end point to end point.

And we also expect a specific RFP, traditional funding is expected in Q4 of 2022.

But you can see on this graphic here,

When you get into the corridor ID program and the progression of funding, one of the key funding sources for projects in the corridor ID program will be the fed state partner grant.

And so what is that?

This was an existing grant program, but it did receive significant revisions under IIJA.

Originally, it started out pretty much a state of good repair.

Those were your applications.

and scope for the grant program.

Now it's looking at performance improvement.

It's looking at the expansion establishment of new inner city passenger rail service.

And it also incorporates funding for planning environmental review and final design.

So it's a much more expansive grant opportunity.

We are awaiting the notice of funding opportunity for this upcoming Fed State Partnership grant.

We are also working to

submit an expression of interest for the corridor ID program for the corridor from the East End to Charlotte, North Carolina corridor, so inclusive of S line.

This new multi-year corridor approach is much more aligned with where I think we as a Commonwealth are, particularly in comparison to a lot of other states in terms of our long-range planning.

So very excited about this program, very excited about the opportunity under the Federal-State Partnership grant.

In addition to the funding that was very specific for rail and administered by the FRA, in the IIJA there are additional opportunities for funding that are administered by USDOT.

There's the RAISE grant existing.

You might be familiar with this.

It's previously called the TIGER grant and BUILD grant.

There's also a MEGA program, which is a large infrastructure project assistance program

and then the INFRA program, which was Infrastructure for Rebuilding America.

You can see the large funding opportunities over the course of the five-year period that are provided for in IIJA.

We've already received some funding through these grant opportunities, these broader grant opportunities.

The first being a $20 million raise grant that we just received for the Long Bridge pedestrian bike project.

This was referenced earlier with the

and Jerica mentioned that we had a great little event with Senator Warner announcing the award of these funds the other week.

And we're looking at some upcoming funding opportunities through these other USDOT grant pools as well.

So there was a combined streamline application called NPDG for the mega infra and an additional, a rural grant awards.

We did apply for this.

for the Long Bridge Project, put in an application several months ago now, requested $300 million.

With that streamlined application, they made individual awards for the different grant pools.

So the infra awards have been announced, but we are awaiting the mega award announcements and hope to.

I'm hearing that we should hear them any day now, but we'll see on that.

You'll certainly be among the first to know how that application pans out.

Finally, I wanted to just briefly touch on the fact that there are a few additional other federal funding opportunities.

Mike went over the CIG for capacity grant.

You all had a lovely vote on it earlier, so I don't want to belabor the point there, but just mention that, again, this is part of the bigger picture of how we as an authority are looking at federal funding opportunities.

And then, of course, I believe that Steve has mentioned some loan financing opportunities

A little bit different tact, obviously, than the grant programs, but again, part of our larger picture for broad-based funding, looking at possibility of TIFI loans and RRIF loans moving forward.

For everyone's information, Randy Selick, Director of Rail Planning and Environmental

just to run quickly through what DRPT is doing in the grant world right now.

We are assisting Buckingham Branch with a CRISP application.

It's for, we're providing some and staff support.

We are providing match using some of our existing pre-programmed rail reservation funding.

And it's for tie replacement and resurfacing of crossings,

and the Richmond and Allegheny Division between Dallas Mall and Cribble and Clifton Forge, and then between Orange and Gordon's Bell.

And that submission is due by December 1st of 2022.

We are also contributing to the prison application for the South East Railroad Commission, the South East Railroad Commission,

We're revised back for that and also support on the application.

And it will evaluate the Southwest Rail Network to look at potentials for improving rail operations, network fluidity, and we also are providing center support for that.

And as the other Chrisi grants, it's due December 1st of this year.

Did you have a little possibility to do that program?

Brand new program for this fiscal year.

between 500 and 600 is authorized for FY22 through 26.

For FY22, 573 million was the total that was available.

You can use it to improve, close, or separate public or private crossings.

So it's the first federal pot of money that you can use at private crossings.

And FRA has expressed interest in particularly corridor solutions for crossing.

Something that would close several crossings with a green separation and potential improvements to others, things like that.

They're looking for that.

One of the major differences with this program, say compared to something like Christie's, there's no formal BCA.

That may be because grade crossing improvement programs tend to not do very well with DAs.

They tend to cost more oftentimes the benefits you get out of them.

I think they recognize that, and so that's that.

You do need to state the benefits of the program, which you don't need to do.

We are assisting Plan RVA, which is the regional TPO, in a grade-crossing elimination program grant application for Bond Road in Ashland.

And it will replace the existing grade-crossing with a over rail rail grade-crossing

And right now you have issues with queuing, you have issues with potential collisions.

There are no other great separated crossings in the town of Ashland.

And so if you have a long freight train stall, then potentially you close off the entire town from east to west access.

And so you have a nearby firehouse, you have a school that uses the crossing.

And so as part of the DCRBA project, EIS,

Edeba Clarence, and a 30% PE for this crossing.

So that provided a good starting point.

It's roughly a $40 million project total to go from final design through construction.

And that was submitted on the 11th and provided staff consultant support.

And VPRA also did provide a letter of support.

DRPT, we did submit our own application from four rural crossings, one in Stafford, one in Spotsylvania, and two in Hanover County.

These also had the benefit of being in the DC to RVA corridor, so we had previous depot clearance and PD through the DC to RVA EIS.

And all of the crossings were upgraded to four quad gates, which

Greatly improved safety.

It makes it very, very difficult for somebody to drive around the gates, which is something that, believe it or not, people do actually do.

We are the applicant.

We are providing match.

Cali is also providing local match.

And that was submitted on the 10th of this year, on the end of this month.

And BPR is also providing the letters

and with all these projects, obviously, they're a PRA territory and so we'll be coordinating closely.

Also with VDOT, VDOT will be carrying a lot of these projects, all these projects through the runway and construction phases.

If I could just add, there's one more thing that I wanted to mention and that is

The DRPT is also working on a letter of intent for the corridor ID program for rail through Bristol into Tennessee.