Board of Directors Meeting   1/23/2024

Good morning, I'm going to call the January, I have to look at what day it is, January 23rd meeting of the VPRA board to order.

We're going to start with our safety briefing.

Mr. Banks.

Thank you.

I don't share.

Go ahead.

I don't share.

and those in attendance.

Good morning.

Let's get started.

So we are located at 919 East Main Street.

We're in the PMI room on the fourth floor.

The women's restrooms are on the west side.

The men's restrooms are on the east side facing 10th Street.

The CPR side, Ms. Mary Stell Douglas,

I'm sorry, not the one calling, it's Mary Estelle Douglas.

Secondary is Michael Westermann.

CPR assigns myself, Lamar Bates.

Secondary is Joan Penny.

All right, meeting the first responders.

Assign is Mike McLaughlin.

Secondary is Steve Pittard.

Raise your hand, please.

All right.

We will call the security desk if we need an AED.

The first aid kit on a table on the other side of the room.

if we need that.

The stairwells and fire alarms are at both restrooms.

The fire extinguishers are located near the women's restroom.

There's a fire extinguisher near the closet inside the tile water run, right?

So there are two exits in here, but we're only going to use one today, one exit.

There'll be the exit that we came in the entrance today.

We'll leave out that side over there.

There's a fire alarm

will exit near the stairway.

We will assemble a knife and capitol spring.

And ensure you're perfect to your left and your right.

That is here.

Make sure they're there.

That's very important if we do that.

If you see something, say something.

If there's an act, you should.

You must drive a fleet or fight for the land of the Lord.

For our remote participants,

Be aware of phishing emails and scams and also know your medical emergencies and evacuation strategies.

Do we have any questions?

Thank you.

All right, next up on our agenda is welcome, so I just want to welcome everybody to Richmond again today.

Here, you want to stand here?

Anywhere you want.

You're the secretary, sir.

You better here?

Perfect.

Well, you know, really, I just wanted to come by and say thanks to all y'all.

Give the greetings from the Governor and the administration, and thanks for what you've done.

It's been four years, four really quick years, I think, for VPRA from zero to where we are today.

And obviously, there's incredible progress that's happened in Virginia.

Y'all should be congratulating them on the fact that they're proud of what you've done.

I'm particularly grateful for the work you all have done on the grant side.

Just a small amount of money this year, $829 million to be very secure.

That is fantastic and obviously solves lots of problems in terms of funding, but more importantly to get things going here in Virginia with the plan that we have.

So I wanted to come and say thank you to that.

Most of you all probably don't know me very well.

I grew up in the city of Norfolk.

I still live there on weekends, sometimes when I'm not here or somewhere else.

But I grew up as a little boy.

I'm 66 years old, and I grew up as a little boy, and my father loved the railroad.

So I had a great-grandfather who was the agent for RFP in Fredericksburg.

But when I was a kid, we'd get in the car on Saturday, go downtown, and look at the trains, the Norfolk and Western trains, the maroon trains, the passenger trains that were downtown.

I live very close, as Jim knows, to the North African Western coal piers as well, so I've had that in my life.

But watching those trains downtown and watching the train station, my father would get on a train and go to Roanoke.

It was a big deal to go to Roanoke, go to the Hotel Roanoke where they had lots of conventions.

But I'd always go down to the train station and wave goodbye and just remember those days.

And it continued until the mid-70s.

I used to get in the train in the back of Ghent, Jim, and get on the Amtrak train and go to Farnham City College where I was enrolled.

And they unfortunately got stopped, I think in 1977, I was two years in.

I just always loved trains and obviously they're important to the Commonwealth, important to the citizens, and so what you all have done is fantastic.

So I want to come and say thank you for that.

2023 ridership, up 30%.

I think you were on a roll and you messed up in December.

You broke every month.

Every month you broke a record except December, you were just a little bit short.

And Jen, I think you need to do better.

And that's another reason I wanted to come today to thank DJ for what he's done for us and will continue to do, but particularly Chairman DeBruhl, as you know, who has decided to retire at the end of June.

And so we're sad in a way, but we're happy.

We're happy because you won't be bossing me around anymore.

I'll explain to my deputy that I can be here on time.

And I'll know that you started your meeting 15 seconds late.

I was within the minute, so I was very impressed.

But thank you for what you've done.

But Jen and I have a history, probably 10 or 12 years, of working together when I was on transportation board

working with Thelma and others.

So I've known her for a fair long time and she's an incredible lady.

She does great work.

She's very passionate.

She's hard to sort of manage sometimes.

Y'all know that?

She's an independent thinker and she's passionate about what she does and that we will miss a lot.

So I wanted to come here and thank her in front of all y'all.

Thank her.

So you know, rails can be really important for Virginia now and into the future.

It's resurgence and so again, just I wanted to thank you for what you did and have done and will do.

And tell you we're behind you and here to help you.

And we'll continue to work to advance rail in Virginia.

It's really exciting to see it go.

And I'm glad we were able to fill that hole up.

Mr. Statler, we got a grant.

And you know, the truth is, and I think it's the reason we got the grant,

It's not just Virginia for us.

This is not, you know, Long Bridge is not about Virginia early.

It's about the entire East Coast of the United States.

So we're blessed that the federal government saw the reality of that and helped us out.

So again, congratulations.

Four years.

It would be interesting to see where we are four more years from now.

We're going to have a lot of good stuff going on.

So appreciate you having me.

And I was going to stay and get into the details of the capital budgeting.

Again, thanks a lot for having me.

I appreciate it and enjoy your meeting.

Thank you, sir.

Don't rearrange the room.

Thank you.

Madam Chairman, we have some other guests that could they introduce themselves there?

I'm nervous because they're longtime transportation people, so that maybe will correct me when I ask a question.

But it's just the two of you from outside.

Is there anyone else in the room?

Hi, everyone.

Thanks, Sandy.

I'm Rob Kiernan.

I'm a consultant in Washington.

I spent 10 years working with Science of Japan.

Railway Company, their high-speed rail initiatives here in the States.

And I have a long history with Sandy going way back.

So it's great to be here.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is John Scheib.

I'm with Tentry Lock Attorneys.

Thank you.

So we have no one else signed up for public comment.

If there's anybody else in the room that wants to speak, we can do that now.

Yes, ma'am.

Ms. Bulova?

Here.

Ms. Doersch?

Here.

Ms. Drake?

Here.

Mr. Maestri?

Mr. Payne?

Ms. Rhinehart?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Next item on our agenda is approval of our minutes from the December 6th meeting.

So moved.

Second.

Moved by Mr. Hall, second by Ms. Bulova.

Mariselle, could you please call the roll?

Ms. Bulova?

Aye.

Ms. Doersch?

Aye.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Mr. Hall?

Aye.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

Aye.

Ms. Rhinehart?

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Motion carries.

Adler?

Time for your Executive Director's Report, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's good to see everybody here.

Happy New Year.

I know it's the first time I'm seeing a lot of you.

The executive director's report is in the same format as normal.

The first thing we'll talk about is organizational updates, staffing pretty flat.

We're right around 50.

We've got nine openings and

And as you can see, they're accepted.

We are starting our intern program, so we have worked very hard as kind of a pipeline for talent to get interns in from various schools in different organizations.

And as we continue to evolve, Kim Coleman is our head of HR, and I work for Whiteboard, and we need interns in finance and interns in engineering and interns in planning.

We're really working to get that program to continue to evolve and give us a pipeline for talent.

But we're in good shape on a staffing point of view.

Administrative updates.

Our Alexandria office opened last month.

And so now we are staffed up there.

You see some pictures.

It's right by the King Street Station.

It's within walking distances, distance of the VRE offices.

Multimodal access there.

It's really a great open space for folks to work.

We've got folks up there from VPRA and also from our Long Bridge project as well.

So can I take the next board meeting?

So the next board meeting will be actually in our Alexandria area, be in our office because we're concerned about a conference big enough.

But spoiler alert, the last slide of the board meeting today talks about our next meeting being in Alexandria.

That's true.

We're right across the street from the DRPT Alexandria.

Yes, it's exciting to have that open because we have a lot going on in that area for sure.

Here is the normal chart you see about our gender breakout and our race breakout, our age pretty much consistent with what you've seen over the last few months.

We're pleased about our diversity outreach in all those categories as we acquire new talent, recruit and retain, which is important.

So I want to spend a few minutes on our annual incentive plan goals.

You've seen these before.

We are now

So we're moving quickly, three months and change in our performance here.

These are the four goals.

The first goal, we're on track for ridership point of view.

The secretary pointed out that 2023, we were 30% higher, which is tremendous.

Our goal is to increase by 3%.

I know people say, well, wait a second, you hit 30%, your goal is only three.

But as we'll talk about in a few minutes, it really flattens out once we have year over year comparison of new service.

So we'll talk a little bit

69%.

We're slightly above our goal, which is a good thing.

And Steve will talk more about that.

Long Bridge is our second goal.

We're on track for both of those.

So that's a high five.

The want so far.

The third one is the one I really wanted to focus on.

So this is the key milestones for the other key projects.

Two of the three were in great shape.

You'll hear about New River Valley later today.

The first one was complete contractor selection for fourth track by end of month in May.

And that was where we thought we would be when we set these goals.

We've had some issues with land acquisition, and there are folks on the team that have learned more about the history of railroad land in the last two years than I think we ever wanted to know.

Between records that have passed from railroad to railroad through mergers and otherwise,

Records that have been lost in fires, records that literally are in cookie jars in old kitchens right along the right-of-way.

I mean, there's a lot to unpack there.

And as we go through the land acquisition, we want to make sure that we're getting this right.

CSX is doing the procurement for the fourth track contractor.

We could actually name the contractor well before May.

We could actually have it done in April.

But Early Works is taking place.

We're doing tree clearing.

We've got a lot of work going on.

It doesn't really add any value for us to bring them on board early.

We're not going to need them to ramp up until later in the year.

So while we could make the selection and have them on board before May just to arbitrarily hit this goal, from a business point of view, it doesn't make sense.

We don't need to have them on board until later in the summer.

So we're making the choice to not bring them on board

We will miss this goal, but that's the way things have unfolded.

The good news is that the completion date for fourth track has not moved.

We're still doing a lot of work on the front end.

Again, I talked about clearing, but this is just an example of we set a very aggressive goal and we didn't hit it and we'll hit hopefully most of the other ones, but

to be committed to ourselves as a leadership team and I think to ourselves as an organization that we are not going to make bad business decisions just to hit these goals.

So I wanted to just point that out because that is delayed and we do not plan to bring that contractor on board early.

So any questions about that?

Yes, ma'am.

So I was a little confused, DJ.

That's CSX chooses the contractor.

So it's a contractor that will work for CSX.

So they do the procurement on that.

And then the organizational goals were in good shape.

Our ERP second phase is doing well.

Our PMIS is doing well.

The project management process we've met on.

So the rest of that is in good shape.

I just wanted to highlight that one.

So last board meeting we talked a lot about DBE and SWAM as far as it works in our procurement and we committed to giving you an update at every single board meeting on where we are.

Just a refresher, and I promise you I'm not going to read everything on the sheet, but this is the breakdown of the different acronyms that we follow when we do procurement with regards to DBE, SWAM,

programs.

It's not really a unique position because a lot of folks are in it, but we accept federal money, so that has some rules.

We have state money, so that has some rules.

This sheet right here outlines all of the different categories that apply to DBE slash SWAM.

The next page will show you just a hierarchy.

So people ask all the time, well, I'm a small business.

I'm also a micro business.

Where do I fall?

This is the hierarchy.

So if you qualify on the right hand side, that's where you are.

And it cascades up to the left.

So you can't get double credit is the point.

And then this, we will continue to update you this on every board meeting.

Our goal for 2024 is 10%.

On our discretionary spending through the first two quarters of the fiscal year, we're just over 11%.

So we're in good shape on that goal on discretionary.

It continues to be a focus.

I promise you, as long as John Costanuk is the head of procurement, we won't do a single purchase without hearing the word swim, which is good.

We appreciate that.

John, here, I don't want to...

So yeah, John, I have never met someone more, and I don't say that with hyperbole, who is more passionate about swim and small business, which is great.

And we're glad that you're here to continue to kick us and nudge us on that, make sure we continue to do the right thing.

So through the first two quarters, we are above goal.

We will continue to make that a strong focus for us.

And then we'll be back at the next board meeting to talk about the next year's goals.

Any questions about this?

Okay.

Contracting updates, just two contract updates.

Anything that we award above $250,000, but less than 5 million would report here.

There were two.

One was the independent cost estimator for the bypass.

So what's going to happen is the bypass designer comes in, the company comes in and says, hey, we think that the bypass is going to cost X.

This ICE independent cost estimator looks at that and says, yes, that cost is reasonable.

That cost is way out of bounds.

And we have to work to get a cost that everybody's happy with.

That contract was signed in December, and then in January, we signed the Franconia to the Lorton Third Track, just the right-of-way acquisition plan for that project.

Just a side note, we start this morning...

Yes, Mr. Carney?

Tree clearing?

Okay.

This morning, tree clearing started in the Franconia area.

We received notification, we've been working with the Fairfax County Park Authority,

Working very well with them.

They wrote us a letter last week saying, hey, we've got some concerns about the work that you're doing right alongside the parks.

So we are not doing work right in that area today.

We started further south.

We're going to meet with them over the coming weeks or so just to make sure that their concerns are addressed and that we're mitigating any impact.

Right now, we're working hard in this area to just do tree clearing, just felling trees and chipping them out.

There is

I thought I learned a lot about rail acquisition.

I've learned a lot about bat mating seasons too.

The bats will begin mating right on April 1st.

Any questions about that?

Budget adjustments, no budget adjustments in December.

The budget continues to be in good shape.

Passenger service updates.

We talked about the ridership before.

With the ridership has come very good revenues.

We're in a good position.

Steve will talk more about the budget in a few minutes.

But all the different categories were in good shape.

We've worked closely with Amtrak to fix that revenue blip that we had over the summer.

And the train operations are going very well.

Administrative budget, we're pretty much where we expected to be.

We're a little bit under budget on payroll, which isn't a bad thing.

but we have no concerns about the administrative budget.

Happy to answer any questions that you have on any category.

Pretty consistent month to month.

Jay, can I just ask about the, please, that revenues are up at strong coordination with Amtrak revenue management team, positive impact on train revenues.

I don't know if Jeremy's here, but I always appreciate that update.

He's going to come this afternoon and talk more about that.

But as far as the actual revenue, so Amtrak came, they made a change to their revenue management early in calendar year 2023.

And they'll admit to this, they weren't as open in their communication as they could have been with us.

And it had some unintended consequences that we didn't expect, I guess, by definition, unintended consequences.

The first time we were not made aware, the second time we were, and they basically went automated capacity seat bottling where the train wasn't full, they were going up in the lowest tier pricing until it got to a certain level versus

Allowing the machine to do that, but also exercising some human oversight.

And so we're like, okay, let's see what the AI can do.

And quickly, I think within two months, we realized, hey, it's selling all the tickets at the lowest fare, and it's really impacting our revenue, which the revenue, as you all know, is built into our long range financial plan.

So Amtrak was very responsive and allowed us to go back

to where use the machine but some human oversight.

So that's what DJ said happened about a year ago when they brought in the airline pricing model with tiers.

And this year they kind of turned the machine on completely.

But they have been, I will say, working with Amtrak for 12 years at least.

In this process they've been very good with us, very receptive to

Our concerns, we meet with them every two weeks to take a look at the data from the prior two weeks.

And I would just add that, and they realized this, the airline pricing model makes sense for airlines, but that's where you're going city pair to city pair.

We go Richmond to Staples Mill to Ashland and a lot more complexities.

And to their credit, they've realized that and worked well with us to really stabilize that price.

A certain amount of tickets are sold off that lower tier.

I mean, you know, like DJ said, it's not perfect, but they worked with us to

implemented, and then they tried to make it fully automated and they worked with us on that to say, wait a minute, we went too far.

And the other thing I'll add, they also worked with us, there hadn't been a fair increase since 2018 or 2019.

And so they worked with us to take a look at all nine of those tiers and all the different city pairs.

And we, I think the bottom four or five of the tiers, there was a slight increase.

that they originally didn't want to give us that authority to accept that, but they worked with us and they did implement it and they agreed to do it in a staged approach.

So we could see, we could take a look at what happened with the first piece of that increase, give that some time to see the results.

So anyway, like I said, I think with Amtrak things in my 12 years,

I think that's the important part too.

It's not, when they first started this process over a year ago, they flipped the switch and said, this is what it's going to be.

And we've worked with them and now it's a monthly review.

And we look at it, they give us a ton of data, which is great.

Our folks analyze it and they're open to letting the process evolve.

So we optimize that ridership, which is something that they have not always been open to.

Cost recovery, we are slightly above what our goal was, and we continue to recover from that revenue issue in the summer, but we feel like we're in pretty good shape there.

Obviously, the big outlier here was in FY21 with COVID, it was a big drop, but we're in good shape here.

So ridership, the Secretary stole the thunder December of 2019.

2023 was the first month in a long time where we did not set a record for the highest December ever.

It was still a fantastic calendar year 2023.

We had almost a 30% increase.

If you look at those numbers, we missed the ridership record by about 700 passengers, which was really, really close.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that on New Year's Eve day, there were a number of issues on the northeast quarter.

And so we had to cancel four different trains.

But for those trains, we might have hit it.

Of course, there are 30 other days where things happen, so we just don't know.

But we were really close, and Amtrak continues to be a good partner for us in working to ensure that the onboard experience is one that links people.

Here is the separation route by route.

We were very close on Norfolk.

We were very close on Newport News, Richmond.

We were much above the previous year.

And then Roanoke, we were down.

As I said earlier, December 31st, we canceled some trains because of the Northeast Quarter, and oh, two of those were Rono trains, and I'll just leave that there.

That said, now we're excited about January.

We can start setting new records, which is good.

These I'll just do quickly.

We've got the ridership and revenue per rider for each of the different routes.

We track this very closely, and we work with Amtrak on everything from station dwell time to ensuring that the trains run smoothly.

and continue to expect strong ridership.

And then that's that.

Okay.

I'm not going to go through on the slide because we have a lot going on and we can cover questions now or questions later for the Capital Project.

So there's a couple of things I do want to point out though.

So we're going to go right to Longbridge.

So we awarded contracts for Longbridge North back in December.

The next day we got a $729 million grant.

The biggest bulk of that was so we can move forward to Longbridge South.

We fully funded for Longbridge so this RFP is moving forward.

In early February, we are releasing the RFP.

It's a two-step process.

We have the RFQ and the RFP, just like we did for Long Bridge North.

We've talked to you about it.

We have definitely not forgotten about Long Bridge South.

Very important as well.

This is the spam over the Potomac, including the pet bike bays as well.

And again, we'll be releasing to the shortlisted farms in early February, the first start of February, the RFP, the South Package.

That is design, build,

North was the progressive design build.

There's a lot of simulators, but also some different processes we go through.

We have already seen the Skanska Flatiron people up in our North Virginia office, and it's quickly gone from an office that wasn't even existence to an office that is often full, which is a good problem to have.

It's busy up there, and the Skanska Flatiron people, as well as the Long Bridge partners, which is WSP led, are up there often.

I'm up there once a week.

TJ's up there once a week as well.

We have a going back and forth office quite often.

It's exciting to see that activity up there.

Alexandria-Fortrack, we do have our draft plans submitted from CSX.

CSX is leading this one again.

We're leading Long Bridge.

We're leading the Fortrack project.

We're going to talk to you a little bit later about the King and Conwell

Bridges, that are also working closely with VEON.

That's coming during the capital updates.

We've talked about that with the board in the past.

We're going to talk about that during Steve's capital updates.

Franconia Lord from Third Track, T.J. already mentioned, the Franconia area, the tree felling that's happening, so we can use some geotech in the area.

This project was also another one that you awarded in December to Flatiron Herzog.

And again, we're seeing them in the office as well.

Same with

Sorry, that was the Frankel-Larkin Third Track, not been awarded yet, CSX project.

The bypass was a flattering Herzog.

Of course, those two projects have to be coordinated together.

On the capital projects update, one of the projects I want to mention is the S-line.

We have a procurement out for 30% design for the S-line all the way from literally just two blocks away from Main Street Station all the way down North Carolina border.

That's for 30% design.

Those submittals are due February 1st.

So those six packages, we've showed you the map before, but I've never forgotten about that either.

Up to six packages for the S line, 30% design, that's very important.

So we can get cost estimates, things like the Appomattox River Bridge, which is also going to help Norfolk, such as the Ettrick Station, which is going to help a lot of the trains that move north and south as well.

So we're excited to get those cost estimates back.

And we've had some meetings with our client in Amtrak and FRA just in the past two weeks.

about moving the Richmond and Raleigh project forward.

Other notes, I do want to mention that the CAFO operating grants, a couple of projects that are going to be complete this year, which will be the Arkandale and slash Quantico project that CSX and VRE are leading.

So we'll make sure everyone gets invites to that.

I think we're looking at summertime.

for completion of the Quantico project.

For those who have taken the train, you've seen the activity up at Quantico.

They're building the pedestrian overpass and laying it on the track in that area.

Another big project that we're excited about and working with Newport News on Newport News as the lead is the Newport News Intermodal Center.

That also, I think, in the same summer timeframe is scheduled to be open.

That is moving up toward Bland Boulevard, a little closer to the airport.

So another ribbon cutting

that we're looking forward to inviting you all.

Not sure if it'll be before or after our next board meeting, but roughly about that same time.

Happy to answer any questions.

Again, we have a lot going on throughout the Commonwealth.

Just want to give those couple highlights.

So what's delaying Newport News?

If you look at the station, it looks complete.

And I don't know if Oliver

I'm sorry to put you on the spot.

Oliver's been tracking it for us.

The final track work is happening in early February.

CSX is going across the main line with insulin stuff over to the Newport News side of the track to actually get to the track.

So we're doing that now.

Then there'll be the testing and commissioning phase after that to make sure everything's good to go.

Lineup will probably say April or May at that first service study.

Any other questions?

And we're going to get to New River Valley.

We're going to get New River Valley, King County, and some other items.

I'm just going to go through these real quick.

It's pretty much good news.

Our Commonwealth Rail Fund revenues are on track for the year.

We're still doing really well as far as our investments of the balance of funds that you've been able to collect, making a good return.

And I wanted to spend a moment on this slide.

I think everybody knows rates went up.

The rates have pretty much leveled off and the expectation is in the next year to two years rates will decline.

So you see finally the note that I put that we expect the LGIP EM and the investments that were made a while ago that when rates went up, there was a slight market value loss that wasn't realized.

But now the EM has actually

got back to where there's a gain now because the rates have declined and they were sitting at a nine-month rate.

So they're invested in interest rates that are higher than today.

So expect the same thing with the remaining government securities there that we will not have a permanent loss.

And the reason I'm taking a little time here is you'll see liquidity.

So these are our three principles, preservation of our principal balance, first, liquidity,

and then return is our third priority because we really are in the business of getting a bunch of investment income.

We're in business to build capital projects for rail infrastructure.

So liquidity is a big concern because we have these huge projects, we have a big balance of funding and we're getting ready to take advantage of those higher rates and potentially invest in longer term investments still within our five-year window

as prescribed in the Investment of Public Funds Act and prescribed in our investment policy, but potentially locking down some of our funds for two, three years, four years to lock in those four and a half and four percent rates that we could get today so that in a year when they're at three percent, we're actually burning more

So it's going to be a little bit of a transition.

We got a new investment manager.

So I did want to call that out and talk a little bit more about it later when we look at the investment policy.

With that, this is the return slide.

We're doing very well.

The majority of our funds are in the LGIP, which has been probably the best spot to be for the last year with rates were going up.

It's still over 5% return.

and that's what's going to change.

We're going to instead move to more longer term government security versus LGIP is like a 30-day maturity that they're constantly buying and selling.

It's a state run.

The last slide is our grant funding.

We talked a lot about J-29 minimum.

Steve, excuse my ignorance, the Long Bridge grant that we received, that was from FRA, correct?

Oh, we haven't negotiated that yet.

Generally, federal programs are reimbursable as we incur expenses.

We bill the feds and they pay us back, but it's not

I just want to note that some of the FED state partnership grants, especially the Northeast Quarter Grants and some national grants, they have a Facebook account.

Our notification that Congress noticed did not have that.

So, for instance, the South Carolina Bridge and the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, it was noted that, yes, they got money from the FY22, FY23 conventional

Future Years Program.

Our 729 did not have that.

It's all from the current FY22, FY22 grant program that FRA released for that NOFO.

Does that make sense?

So FRA is moving towards somewhat of an FTA-style, FFTA, for some larger projects.

In case you or others were wondering, our notifications do not have that.

They call it a phased funding approach.

During IIJ, we'd work with our congressional delegation saying,

You only know if you get 50 million this year, 29 million.

Yes.

So as you're, I know how familiar you are with the FFT program.

Some projects do have the face funding approach.

The good news is ours doesn't have that.

So even if Congress doesn't appropriate future years funds,

And let me just add to that, if I may.

As soon as we sign the grant agreement with FRA, which is probably still a couple of months away, that money becomes obligated, which is important because when they do reviews, they look for unobligated balances.

That full 729 will be obligated when we sign our grant agreement.

The FRA program is, if I say first FRA, multimodal grants, there's an asterisk, in case you're wondering what that was, we also apply for the same Long Bridge and Phase II projects.

Since we're awarded, the asterisk shows that it was removed.

That is a USDOT grant.

The MPDG is the opposite secretary.

It's brand new.

That's $36 billion nationwide, $24 billion for the Northeast Corridor, $12 billion for the rest of the non-NEC states.

Our $729 was out of that $12 billion, and we've already allocated, even though it was only two years funding, I think we were told, two-thirds of the State Partnership money that came out of IIJA has already been

either awarded or part of that phase funding approach I mentioned.

We can go back for a different set of projects.

Right, a different set.

But if we were to apply for name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond to Raleigh, name of project Richmond

New River Valley, Norfolk, whatever it takes, we could apply.

It's a brand new grant.

Christie's also bumped up during IIJA.

Right, right, right.

Right, right, okay.

They combined two years worth of funding, the FRA did,

The first round of funding, they'll put out another, don't follow up sometime in the next, sorry, notice the funding option, for Christie and Fed State in the next few months.

Sometimes they wait on a full year's appropriations from Congress, sometimes when, sometimes they don't.

So we're looking forward to another round of grants for Christie and Fed State partnerships.

And what is our partnership to Fed State partners?

What do we have to contribute to that?

Our contribution is the, Steve, it was previously 75% of phases one and two.

I know you have a slide on us.

What's the state?

So of the $4 billion or so in funding

Took credit for the money that had already been allocated.

Yeah, I was just getting ready to say that.

I knew where you were going with that.

I took credit for what we already had allocated.

So we already contributed, and that's just, we don't have to do any matching, any anything.

Correct.

Thank you.

The federal share got larger.

That's what it is.

So we're in the clear.

I mean, really.

Well, I didn't understand that.

I was going to, DJ kind of said this, now we've got almost a billion dollars in federal grants and we need to get them under contract.

I didn't get that.

That's wonderful.

And that concludes the Executive Director's Report with the certificates from others.

I will start off with this one and just say we provided a briefing on New River Valley several months ago and the team has done an incredible job working with our consultant partners to get the work in the New River Valley corridor to 30%.

So I'm going to kick it off, and if I can ask Christine to come up.

She is a resident NEPA expert, but we're excited to have Christine over.

She came out over a year ago.

If I may, Christine didn't write NEPA.

So a quick background, I also want to recognize that Director Reinhart is also on as she represents this area, so I'll pause for questions for Val.

Just some quick background, though.

We have been negotiating with Norfolk Southern and there might be some of them who are actually beginning those negotiations.

And we came to an agreement and in 2021, we had a press conference.

And then in 2022, we finalized that agreement.

It took a little longer than we expected.

And that agreement, basically the agreement was second train to Roanoke because there was only one train to Roanoke.

So second train to Roanoke.

and both would extend to New River Valley once the projects were complete.

We'll show you some of those in a minute.

And the second train to Roanoke also happened the same day that the Norfolk train came online and that is a picture from the folks in Roanoke with Mr. Bulova in the front tower there.

Yes, yes.

But you can still feel very excited to be out there.

And yes, thanks, Mike.

Like DJ said, I didn't write NEPA, but I'm here to help us navigate it and navigate the whole federal planning process.

And I just want to talk to everybody about a new program from FRA.

It's the corridor ID process.

And what it is, is a new program from FRA to basically line up corridors and to get in

and the project pipeline.

And that's what we're doing.

We're playing within the rules.

We're getting on the project pipeline for New River Valley, as well as all of our other projects.

So where does the quarter ID process fit for New River Valley?

We believe that the New River Valley as an extension of the Northeast service from Roanoke, we're in that project development phase, the yellow arrow there, rather than way back to the systems planning phase.

We're not starting from the beginning.

We're starting in the middle.

Because of that, I think that we're going to get to our project sooner.

If I can, to Ms. Sheeve's point, quarter ID is part of the IHA as well.

So this was new in IHA, it took them about a year or so to get it up and running quarter ID.

And there are grants associated with

Right.

And so DRPT applied for the corridor from Washington, D.C. to and through Bristol and was selected for the program.

So even if you're already much further along, there's another example of obviously Washington and Richmond is very far along.

This program is grant program.

Thank you.

That's a question.

We got $500,000 for this corridor.

We got $500,000.

DRPT also applied for the Commonwealth Corridor, which is in East West, Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, across the state.

We got $500,000 for that corridor as well.

And it just puts us at the very, very beginning of that purple arrow on corridors like the Commonwealth Corridor where there's not a lot of work done.

to be at the very, very beginning and start from a early planning perspective that developed those corridors.

This is very different, but we have to follow, we now have a defined process to follow planner by trade, like my defined process that makes me happy because I know what my pipeline is.

Exactly.

We're just making sure we're getting into the project pipeline and to be able to apply for those future federal funds later on.

So specifically on the New River Valley, the project development process, it always starts with an idea.

Our idea was, let's get new service out to the New River Valley.

How are we going to do that?

We started with the feasibility study as the first step in the process.

Then now we took another look at preliminary engineering.

We're going to talk about that a little later.

And then we'll move on to 60% design.

We also need to do NEPA.

to be eligible for more federal funding and to make sure all of our environmental impacts are captured.

And then of course, moving on to final design and construction.

So where we were kind of in the middle there between feasibility and preliminary engineering now, we're going to move into the NEPA phase combined with the 60% phase and then move the project forward onto final.

Let me talk a little bit about NEPA.

Again, don't check the passenger.

NEPA, it's a federal law requiring agencies to consider any environmental impacts and actions, and we have to evaluate alternatives for any of those actions that we take.

And it also, we have to look at the public decision, a public input into the decision-making process.

So, NEPA, I always tell people it's not a document, it's not a binder full of things.

a process, and we have to follow that process.

So why do we, VPRA, need to do the NEPA process if it's a federal project?

Well, one, for federal funding.

We have some federal funding currently on New River Valley, or if we want future federal funding.

And then two, based on our design and 30% that we've looked at, we've also done environmental screening, we think we're going to need an Army Corps of Engineer permit.

And then that

takes us into the NEPA realm as well.

We also have some potential environmental impacts for cultural, historic, and endangered species.

Back to those bats, they are out there and they're around.

Oh yes, I thought there was another slide.

Okay, we're good.

Let's talk about the feasibility study.

The feasibility study was that first step and what it looked at was where can we site a station?

and that's what these were, looked at various sites in the New River Valley.

However, it didn't look comprehensive at the entire route.

It didn't look at the infrastructure that we needed to get to the valley.

It just looked at a station site location and how to get to the station itself.

Back in real quick, in case you're wondering what the blue circle on the bottom is, that's Norfolk's

They have about four times the amount of traffic on that main line as they do on the Virginia line.

They indicated during negotiations that they would very much prefer us to go on the Virginia line to the new River Valley.

That is their main line up and down to the south, to the southern U.S.

So while that was on there, we had to explain, because there was a lot of questions about that from River Valley, that was a site that some people there preferred on their main line.

We had explained this within the

Again, I mentioned the NEPA and again, why we need to do NEPA.

We got that two million year mark, so that kind of triggers us into the NEPA phase.

And again, our preliminary desktop reviews showed us that we're going to need an Army Corps of Engineers permit.

And you see all that water that's along the

the rail right of way.

We got to look at that.

We need to understand where it's going and we may have to divert.

We may have to do some things.

Our engineering team is looking at how to minimize and reduce impacts, but again, we'll still need that.

Both actions trigger us into that NEPA process.

Also with NEPA, we need to do a purpose and need statement.

I won't read everything up here, but basically it tells us

what the purpose of the project is and describe what we're going to do and the why and the how to get to the project.

We're saying the purpose is to increase mobility options and then why we're going to look at those regional mobility options because 81 is at capacity.

What do we do?

We're going to give another option for travelers besides 81.

to go alongside the rail.

Any questions?

Again, let me state that we're showing you this purpose and needs statement.

It's a draft.

We're going to put that out to the public on the 29th.

We're going out to the New River Valley area for a public meeting, and this will be out to the public at that time.

We have more steps to do in planning.

We are doing a service development plan.

We are looking at what it will take, maybe some operations, and then also with the engineering efforts combined.

We're looking at a spring 2024 this year to accomplish that.

We're in the middle of our pre-neo vote.

We're going to go out to the public again at the end of the month on the 29th, and then we'll go back out to it again.

This is going to be a continual cycle of reaching out to the public, keeping them informed, getting their feedback, and do iterations as we go.

And then after the alternatives analysis, we're going to launch into the full on NEPA.

And at that time, we're going to take one of those three alternatives that you'll see in a moment, narrow it down to one,

compare it to a no-build, and then talk about all the environmental impacts.

That should take about a year.

Again, more public outreach, more stakeholder outreach, and then we should be done with NEPA.

And while we're doing NEPA, we're going to take the final, we're going to take the design further so we can keep refining as we go.

And if we can, I'd like to acknowledge a lot of people are going to be out there with us.

We also have the honor of being in front of you today,

We've said before, we're not doing this ourselves.

In fact, we're just electing us to be up here.

Jenna, Jerica, Colin, Oliver, John and Faya might be out there at times too.

They're the folks that are going out there and make a lot of it happen from the event to the talking points.

And we're excited to have this team on board because they force folks like DJ and I to drill down on our facts and our figures and our talking points.

We could have an old session just on public engagement, but we know time is short and we're not going to have that.

But don't want to, I don't want to, I'm trying not to minimize the public engagement.

And terminate.

Last but not least, I mentioned the permit.

So we're, while we're out there on the 29th, we're going to meet with the core reps and we're going to go out to the site.

We're going to visit it.

We're going to kind of talk through some things and that's half

My job is getting the right people in the right room or the right site to talk through things.

We're also working with the Corps to get a part-time staff member devoted to our projects.

This will be big, not only for New River Valley, but for our RFMP projects, because if we can talk directly one-on-one with the same staff member every single time, then they understand us, they understand our projects, and we can establish a better working relationship rather than a new person

just reviewing our permit and not knowing all the background details.

So we're looking forward to that coordination with the Corps.

We're also, again, why we're bringing the Corps in early on the NEPA process is we're trying to establish a modified merger process.

VDOT does this a lot and they do it all the time.

They bring in the Corps during the NEPA phase.

Corps says, okay, this is a good project, we support it.

So that way, when we get to the permitting at the end, the Army Corps of Engineers can't say,

Well, you can't get a permit, so you can't bill.

And that would be the worst case scenario.

So bringing them in early to help us mitigate any environmental missteps or anything in the process.

So I will stop here.

What is the body of water that you're going over?

I think that's a slate branch.

It's like a creek.

And that's a good question.

There are bodies of water that have water in them all year long.

That is one of them.

That is one of the bodies of water.

You'll see on the Google Maps.

If you go to the Google Map, they just show you the slate branch.

If I have that wrong, they're nodding, so I got this one right.

Good luck.

And some of the other bodies of water you see alongside the tracks, that could be, they're often there, but also could be higher water based on runoff in the rain, or obviously we're dealing with mountains, so you have a lot of runoff.

See the Rona person nodding, he understands all about that.

But that, this body of water right here, and this is just, this picture is taken from the Huckleberry Trail, which for those out there, it's a trail that goes north and south from Virginia Tech to Christiansburg, crosses over the V-line,

and there's a decent amount of water west of the tunnel.

Before we move on, Ms. Rhinehart has a question.

She's remote, so I want to give her an opportunity to ask that.

Yes.

Good morning, Chairman DeBruhl, and thank you all for the opportunity to participate remotely.

Apologize I couldn't be there in person.

Just a big picture comment regarding the Southwest enhancement and extensions.

I know that looking big picture for the future potential for 2 and 3 Bristol, there are a lot of implications that involve this new River Valley, whether it's the site selection, a lot of the decisions that are being made.

And I want to make sure that we

do our best to mitigate things that could potentially make it extremely difficult beyond what is already difficult to get it to and through Bristol so that when we make choices around that New River Valley site selection that we keep in mind whatever choices we make how they impact that potential for to and through Bristol as it is important that we consider all Virginians ability to have access to passenger rail

And just for what it's worth, I was on a call with our Tennessee legislators this morning and they are actually looking.

They have legislation to develop a specific passenger rail division within TDOT, taking their kudos and

vision from you all and what you all have done so very well with Virginia Passenger Rail here.

So I hope that we just keep that in mind moving forward and appreciate all the hard work that's being done.

This is not an easy lift by any means.

I just asked one question and

I know you didn't write NEPA, so I just want to put that disclaimer out there.

Just as an observation, I think the co-sharing of the Corps of Engineer staffing personnel, I think that's an excellent idea.

Former congressional life, I used to beat my head against the wall dealing with our Fort Worth district office, so I think that is a great idea.

We've got a lot of water, we've got a lot of issues that we're, because we're doing the 30% design, we're now looking at.

We also have the bats, we have the, I could go through the laundry list of things that we're looking at, but primarily it's, engineering wise, it's a tough site.

It's hard for

All of the infrastructure, but as well with the narrow corridors, all of the water tends to funnel towards the rail line.

And that's why we're going to need that port permit because all of the water seems to want to run alongside the rail and it acts as a stream next to everything.

And it's in lower bodies of water and lower line areas.

So we're getting there.

And with regard to Director Hall's question, there's various levels of environmental studies you need to go through, but categorical exclusion should be the easiest one.

Then you move to an EA, environmental assessment, and then the environmental impact statement, some of you are nodding your head, some of you know this.

Categorical exclusion, if you were staying completely in the right-of-way, not having any impacts outside of the right-of-way, I know there are probably exceptions, but the rule of thumb is that categorical exclusion is a CATX, people call it a lot easier.

We're adding some elements here that are likely maybe to move us from a CE to an EA.

We're not presupposing the NEPA, but that is what I think what we're looking at.

What we're leaning towards.

What the FRA will make us lean towards.

Just to follow on to that question just a little bit.

I guess it's good that you're leaning towards an EA and not a full-blown EIS, which could impose tremendous complexities as well as time where we've got some tight timelines.

I believe so.

While I indicated there are environmental things that we need to look at, I think there are ways we can mitigate through altering the design or reducing impacts and narrowing the corridor.

I think we are good on an EA.

There could be other reasons to go push us into an EIS.

It could be community,

And that is, one, our purpose and need statement.

And back to that element was we wanted to do a competition.

Community-wide, reflective of the community, taking it out to them.

We think that the purpose is to provide more options, improve mobility in the area.

Maybe we miss something.

And that's why we're going to take that out to the community and ask them, did we get it right?

If not, we'll take their considerations and could probably amend that draft purpose and need statement.

And then that sets the tone for, again, why we're doing the project.

If the community says you forgot something, we're happy to include it.

There's definitely a milestone when you clear that NEPA hurdle, whether it be CE, EA, EIS.

When we cleared the EIS for DC to Richmond, that was a big deal about, I guess, 2019, I believe.

And for Long Bridge, 2020, both of them in September, I remember that.

Those are big deals.

So clearing this NEPA process, and I, too, feel comfortable it'll be in the EIS.

I don't think this rises to the level of an EIS.

That's still a very good question.

We have to keep an eye on it.

Any other questions before we move on?

Okay.

And some of this is some background.

We did brief you last spring, I believe it was, on New River Valley.

So if I go too fast, please stop me and ask questions.

Real quick, there are two things, there are two parties involved in getting New River Valley.

The VPR LED improvements, which we're going to go into detail about here in the tunnel.

track, platform, so on and so forth.

We do.

Okay.

So the 20 miles we purchased, that was completed at the end of June.

That was part of the violation agreements.

Norfolk Southern owns from Roanoke Yard to Salem Crossover, so about six miles or so.

They would have to, part of our agreement was we don't want to get caught in their yard.

So we are part of some funding to what Fluxelden does to make improvements to the yard.

So we have some dedicated tracks to get out of the yard.

It's very important to us because yards can really slow trains.

We know that on the DC to Richmond corridor.

So we'll be at least 40 miles per hour getting out of the yard.

They're moving forward with the work.

We do get updates from them.

There's also another project for the North Florida Caverns.

That's a double track for adding south of Manassas.

That's not that's not necessary to be done to get to New River Valley.

but that's just, I do want to mention that project is also part of the agreement.

They'll also be doing positive train control.

28 miles away on is just the middle part of a longer, much longer Norfolk Southern stretch.

So it makes sense then to do the signaling and do the positive train control.

So those are the elements we need to do to get to New River Valley.

Kerman milestones we mentioned.

So after we completed the agreements with Norfolk Southern,

We quickly went to our planning and engineering benches.

We secured STV, a well-known engineering firm, brought them on board, and then we got to a certain level of design.

Then we moved forward into the last summer for 30% design, and we talked to you about it, and we're bringing you the results of that today.

Again, they did give us some documents, and we've been working through that.

We extended our finalize in mid-December just in time for this committee

and they do include updated costs and schedules that we're going to get into here in a minute.

So we got our nomenclature right and so we got our maps right.

Alternative A is the Cinnabar Road site that is east of the tunnel.

The map on the right might not be clear in this room.

That is still central New River Valley.

It's just east of the tunnel of the Merrimack Tunnel and it's between Blacksburg and Christiansburg.

Alternative A is Cinnabar only.

That would mean a platform, layer facility,

parking lot, so on and so forth at Cinnabar.

Alternative B is the platform, the only station would be at the mall.

Their layer facilities always could remain in Cinnabar for all these options.

The alternative B is the mall site with the platform, and they would have to go through the tunnel for that.

Alternative C is if you wanted to get to New River Valley quicker and have a temporary site at Cinnabar, you'd have a temporary site at Cinnabar,

and our final destination site at the mall.

And we're going to get into more detail here in a minute.

So the state of our road site.

Paul's estimate has come out to $366 million.

Step five, our New River Valley budget of 2024 was $166 million.

Our 2025 budget, and Steve's going to present here soon, is including the lowest cost option.

We do have that money available.

So $366 million to get to the state of our site.

That is what the service start

in 2028, I do want to mention, as Christine mentioned, the Army Corps of Engineers, there's less water east of the tunnel.

So there is a chance the Army Corps permit could be much quicker.

West of the tunnel, the Slate Branch Creek, as I mentioned, when you combine the east of the tunnel, west of the tunnel, there's so much water for those two combined to get to the mall.

It's going to be a lot longer Army Corps process to go through the tunnel to get west of the tunnel.

So this timeline, if things went well,

I've worked over the years, and I've been involved in this from the beginning, so I share some blame in allowing us to put out some cost estimates and some dates.

Deja will never ever let me do that again, that are not reasonable and based on 30%.

We did that at 0% design before back in 2021.

These estimates are based at 30% design, and it is possible that service date could speed up.

Oh, Turnip B, which is the mall only, again, the layover at Cinnabar, 785.

And that will report, we know the length of that permit.

That'll be one of the longer permits.

And you can also see here, so the layover site, just east of, the tunnel goes under 460.

So 460 is kind of the dividing line of east to west New River Valley, and there's Christenburg in the south, and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg in the north.

We would have to build a conducting track.

We're going to go, after you get through the tunnel, we have to build a conducting track.

I also saw on some previous slides, by the way, a slate tunnel.

That is only 800 feet long.

That is much lower in cost.

The tunnel, the Merrimack Tunnel, is a mile long.

A mile long and it is one of the narrowest in the Commonwealth.

1908.

It's both getting from Roanoke to New River Valley is the next step to get to Bristol.

To get

So they're both on the route to Bristol that we have negotiated.

Well, as we negotiate with Norfolk Southern, they want us to stay out of their main line.

They want us to stay out of their main line.

The connector track there, that connector track, that track does not exist now.

That is Greenfield.

That would connect to what we call the Blacksburg Branch.

That really just serves a courting site, which is just north of the mall, just a couple of trains a day.

We would have to add, I think, 3,000 feet.

We'll give this a slide coming up, of connector track.

To Bristol.

The only way to get to Bristol is through the tunnel and building that connector track.

Yes, thank you for finishing up there.

Sorry.

What's the condition of the tunnel?

14 feet.

Yes.

Yes.

And this is this is what we call the hybrid with the temporary at Cinnabar and then still going through the tunnel to connect to track to where the model tech costs $951 million.

In case you're wondering some of the costs, this is again a mountainous area with a lot of grading, a lot of retaining walls.

Those are some of the highest elements of costs out here.

In case you're wondering, while I have this up here, the feasibility studies at one point did not book East and Center Park because the grade is such that when you think of Amtrak's minimum, however, during the 30% design, we reached out to Amtrak and met with them.

They said, actually, you can make it work there.

You just need to do sufficient breeding and retaining walls.

And because there's not much of a population on that section, it is relatively a straightaway.

We thought that would be the best location for layover site and possibly a platform site as well.

This is just a summary of what you've just seen, kind of put it all on one page.

Sometimes we've been in meetings and get to the point and go right to this, but thank you for indulging me and letting me get through some of these estimates.

Do want to also point out that the Cinnabar site does include parking and an access road, and you're kind of building that on the side of a hill.

Again, that grading cost is high there.

So all these include parking, none of them include a stationed facility, a stationed house.

Our rail plan that we've had in the books for quite a few years now, the Commonwealth gets you there in the track and gets you in the platform, and then we work with locals to identify a suitable site for a stationed house, so locals will have a stationed house, if they want one.

There's plenty of places in the Commonwealth, a lot of beauty stations, that have a canopy with no stationed houses.

Illinois right now does not have a, as the director of road economics said, does not have a stationed house.

I think they're working on it.

And we're happy to work with them.

And we actually, I believe, are clearing environmentally space for the station rail so they don't have to go through the CEA process that we mentioned.

So we want to do that all in one false swoop.

Let's see how narrow it is.

There are some sections of the tunnel that are so narrow that it'll be difficult for passengers to even get out if something happens, even get out of the train and then walk along.

So one of the things we're doing is

We'll be notching along the base of the tunnel so there will be an egress on the ground.

I'm also going to flip around to right here.

Also going to be adding some vertical shafts.

A 15-story and a 20-story vertical shaft to get up.

Because if that pathway is blocked on the ground, people need to be able to get out.

If there's been plenty of tunnel incidents in Washington, D.C., in Chicago, New York, and other places, that you want people to be able to get out.

Smoke inhalation especially is a major

and if there is a fire itself, a smoke inhalation.

So hence why we're also adding fans.

The pictographic on the left shows you the fans.

Only.

Only by freight.

Only about six freight trains a day and night.

going through there based on that FRA.

Once you introduce people into the trains that you've got to worry about.

We're introducing people.

We want everyone to be able to get out and everyone to get to safety.

And this is an old tunnel.

And for new service, NFPA 130 is recommended.

When I worked at a transit agency in Chicago, if you're building anything new, you build an NFPA 130.

That is the industry standard.

And that's the standard we'll be following here.

So in case you're wondering how we come up with

The two shafts to get out, we're following the NFPA standard.

Why we're coming up with the fans, we're following the NFPA 130 standard.

Those who are involved in transit definitely understand NFPA 130 transit agencies used quite often.

I did skip around a little bit because there's questions about the width of the tunnel, so I'm going to go back a little bit.

We're also going to talk about the connector track a little bit here too.

You want to point out that during 30% of design, we did some boring samples.

Unfortunately, the samples for the Merrimack Tunnel were not great.

They actually were very poor to pull.

What does that mean for us?

That means the cost of the shafts would be more expensive.

If you're not building in hard rock, it's going to be more expensive.

So that is one of the cost drivers as well.

The Slate Hill Tunnel, which is not where the Slate Branch Creek is, it's a little further east, 800 feet long, that is much better rock.

But again, that's only 800 feet long and Amtrak train is 850 feet.

So,

Thereabouts, so Slate Branch, again, not much of a cost driving there because it's so much shorter.

Again, mile long for Merrimack, only 800 feet for Slate Branch.

We actually had one of these boxes upstairs.

Oliver brought it in from the boarding samples.

And it looks and feels like coal, even though it's not.

The connecting track, this is again, looking west, coming just through the tunnel.

and you would have to take a left-hand turn, go south to the connecting track to get to the mall, about 3,000 feet of a long connection.

We briefed you last year, we thought it would be 300,000 cubic yards to be removed, double that, 600.

Again, another cost drive, 62,000 dump trucks worth.

And that's when I'll be turning to the engagement team to talk to people of newer values.

Chucks are going through, Derek and Jenna, please take the floor.

We have a lot of dump trucks going through.

Hopefully not.

We don't know the route yet.

We haven't gotten that far.

That's a lot of dump trucks and something to keep in mind.

I talked about this a little bit forward.

So next steps.

We're at the end here.

We're going to progress the 30% into 60%.

We already have our regular scopes.

We'll be putting that out to our engineering bench.

We have two planning bench and management bench.

This will be put out to our

We have to put out an RFP because the procurement director in the corner, the cost is too high for the engineering bench.

We have to put out an RFP.

We have a certain cap based on our enabling law.

So we'll be putting it out as an RFP in February.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the V-line grade crossing safety study.

In case you're wondering what that means, a few of us have high rail days.

The public crossings all have gates, at least two gates.

There's a lot of private crossings that might provide a farm, and also we see farm equipment out there, we see playground equipment.

We want to go out and make sure that folks that are aware of trains going to be coming.

The new aerial trains, which we've talked about in the past, are going to be much quieter.

I mean, the current Amtrak trains are much quieter than freight trains, but people out there are used to hearing a freight train coming up a little mile away, and it's true.

Whereas the new Amtrak trains coming are going to be much quieter.

And we don't want, of course safety is the number one priority.

We truly, we start this off with a safety briefing.

Safety is the number one priority.

So we're going to be doing a study to determine if, it could just be some simple cross button.

It could be, hey, if you have a crossing here, but you also can get to the main road over there.

We'll work with you and see what can be done.

We don't think this will be a

I've got DJ in my head, don't say what the cost might be.

You can still plan, you know.

If you say it when you know what the cost is.

I know what the cost is.

We'll be doing a planning study internally to get ready for the FRA's Great Crossing Safety Elimination Program, also new to IAJA.

So we asked for a few million dollars.

We need to know what to ask for.

We need to know what 30%, if not 30% of 15% of design costs are.

What does it cost to put in a rural area?

You might not see gates, but you might see a crosswalk that the light might go off.

So some kind of warning system, I think, would be good.

Again, I already recognized the community engagement team.

These folks have been great.

They've been keeping us on our toes, making sure we're trying to be as strong as we can.

Darren already mentioned, I think, in Chiarica's point, Jesse and Saul-John.

Actually, Thursday, we're going to be out speaking to New River Valley Station Authority.

And next week, we have our own open house that's part of the FRA's official open house, almost open house with a capital H because it's part of the official FRA NEPA process.

And that's just the beginning.

In fact, we've been doing this for two or three years.

They know Calvin and they're trying to get him by real estate out there.

He's out there tomorrow.

We're going to continue to be out there just because we have these two meeting dates and that doesn't mean we're not going to be out there.

We're going to be out there continually throughout the life of this process.

So I know I threw a lot at you.

I'm trying to figure out, again, the safety issue of getting people off the train and out of the tunnel.

200 feet, one mile long with the tunnel there.

That's the, I believe?

the longest tunnel in Virginia.

And it's only 14 feet wide and some sections actually bows in.

So it's hard to get out of the train.

Yeah, you notch along the base so people have a way to walk out.

We don't want to have the 30% design of a living butano cell.

Yes.

The whole way from Salem to New York Valley slow track, except for a couple of small sidings, not the three mile length that's a freight railroad.

Yeah, there's only, this is the secondary line for Norfolk Southern and checking the FRA charts and how many trains go through Great Crossing.

There's about 30 trains a day here.

Their main line has four times that.

Certain days are pretty boring.

To that end, Mike, if Virginia makes these investments to upgrade the track, put on the connector, will the freight continue?

Is it in assets using it?

Freight will continue using it.

They pay some maintenance fee.

That's in our agreement.

Morgan Griffiths is the local Congressman.

He's appeared at a couple of our events.

He's attending some of the meetings.

We're keeping them up to date.

Okay, good.

And we did pre-brief Secretary and then some of the

Oh, yeah.

Mayor Christianburg was at the May 2021 event.

I think it was AMC, in fact, that they held at the mall site.

and plus other local officials.

So we've been continuing to meet with them.

I want to give Ms. Rhinehart an opportunity.

She had put a comment in the chat.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but, you know, I'm looking at it, of course, through the lens from the Southwest

to the northeast and the concern that I've heard from many is once we make a decision about which site in Christiansburg will be that site through the feasibility study and the actions of this board, have we looked at how that changes the potential impact for cost to extension to and through Bristol?

Correct.

So Beth, for this work, it's really a question of how far do we go and what funding do we have available?

And that's what VPRA will determine.

And we're going to take both options east of the tunnel and west of the tunnel to 60% design so that we can give this board as much information as they

can have to make an informed decision about how this board allocates money to provide that service to the New River Valley.

As I mentioned earlier, DRPT applied for the corridor identification program.

We received a $500,000 grant.

That will enable us to continue to develop what it takes to get through the New River Valley to Bristol.

That work and what it takes to continue on resides with DRPT responsible for the long range planning.

of Rail in the Commonwealth.

So we'll continue to have that dialogue.

We'll update this board as that gets underway or that process gets underway.

So, so alternative A,

And this is back to Ms. Bushue's comment.

This is why the coordination with the local officials is so important.

We can get them service quicker if we focus on the site that's east of the tunnel.

If we work towards the mall site, it's going to take longer and it's going to take more resources than we have available to us.

Is there a difference in ridership?

The difference in location is minimal.

The amount of time it takes in a car to travel from Radford University, which is just west of here, or Virginia Tech or Christopher Town Hall is the same to both locations, give or take one minute.

So, the ridership difference remains to be determined, but I just gave you an idea of the difference in distance, so I'm not sure

I should note that there is a Huckleberry Trail.

There is a community college at the mall site.

So there's roughly almost 600 million dollars difference in cost.

We have not done an official ridership study.

We did one for the longer term.

But we have not done a ridership study that the industry often does, the difference between the two.

I think a local, when you talk to one of the local officials, they point out the center of our site, there's nothing developed around there.

The mall site is more developed.

Considerations that you need to keep in touch, you need to keep in mind.

That's correct, exactly.

We are simply providing service in New River Valley.

It doesn't preclude getting to Bristol.

I would imagine that the local officials are looking at it.

If you stop it on the east side, they may never get Bristol.

If you come through, there's a commitment that we are going to go to Bristol.

because you're right, it's a lot of money.

I guess my point is it's not a simple decision.

If you're going to go all the way to Bristol, if that's the goal, that ought to be the driving factor.

Thank you again.

To the points made, I understand that this is a totally separate issue than the corridor ID feasibility study, but I still, again, think that if we don't consider down the line, no pun intended, what the site selection choice could mean to further expansion to and through Bristol, I think we're remiss not to look at the big picture, understanding they're separate decisions to be made, and that's not what we're talking about here.

I want to be clear and make sure that you heard what Faye had said earlier.

None of these alternatives preclude further extension to Bristol.

We're not considering anything that would preclude that in the future.

I do think we've learned a lot through this process

how much it's going to take to improve some of the infrastructure and some of the very preliminary work that was done on the extension to Bristol and estimates and cost and time.

I think we've learned over the past couple of years that we were highly optimistic on the cost side of what it takes to make this happen.

I think, Beth, to your point, that's going to inform

So, yes.

Christine, this is for you.

So, the NEPA is from Salem Crossovers?

Correct.

With the blue in there and the orange in the sail crossroads.

Oh right, I know that.

So it goes from there to where's the ending?

This would be the connector track and that's what we own too.

Does it include the connector track, the NEPA process?

We will.

We will.

Let me back up.

Our alternatives analysis.

We'll take into account all of that.

We'll narrow it down before we get, that's before we get to the NEPA process.

Officially, when we start NEPA, it will be one of those alternatives.

Right, exactly.

Okay, yeah, now I get that.

And that is twofold for that reason.

One, the feds have a new guidance that BAs need to accomplish within one year.

Right, I get that.

28.

Yeah, good, thank you.

Yeah, okay.

This track that is built, it's not going to be a high-speed rail corridor.

It's going to be regular track, so it's already there.

So maybe in those areas.

Okay.

Okay.

You're right.

The vast majority of this is within the rail right away.

When you're building a platform, you will have some parts right away that might be where any buildings were taking it.

In case you're wondering about what kind of right-of-way, I don't think it's any building or any facility to think about that feature.

It's not trying to minimize the landscape around there.

Sometimes you think about you're taking a building, nothing like that would happen.

Michael's question, I wish that map went further.

If, you know, thinking bigger picture, you know, we have a corridor ID plan, potentially go to Bristol.

If we don't go to Bristol, where do we, where's the, where do we go?

It goes up to Radford, and it's an old coal one, and it kind of does some loop-de-loops.

I don't know if that's an official term.

It's easy connecting, but it doesn't.

You'd have to make another connection much further west.

And I think when we looked at that, it's not easy to connect.

Yes.

To where?

Okay.

All right.

It does actually get a little flatter when you go about 10 miles west of Whitethorne.

And then it gets back up in the mountains again.

But yeah, it's an old coal line, but they still use some extra coal.

I mean, if you're familiar with coal lines, you have to why you see a lot of the

Jagger pieces here and there that go into coal mines.

I think that's also part of the study, the connection.

I also want to point out that working with FRA and Army Corps is going to be part of the determination as well.

I want to minimize that.

Oh, correct.

Right.

And at the end of the day, it's not our environmental document.

It will be FRA's environmental document.

Mr. Pitter.

You may have said this, but I just want to make sure it's clear.

So we are recommending in our capital budget, represent after lunch, to fund to the least costly alternatives at this time.

We do have the funding available.

That's a very good point.

Just because the funding for one alternative is in the budget does not mean that's the staff's recommendation.

A placeholder, yes.

I'm not taking it to get down there.

I'm taking the train down.

There's a connecter bus to meet you at the Amtrak station.

Yes, you do, River Valley.

Okay.

I'm not taking it.

So, Alternative A, which is after lunch, we'll talk about our capital budget, doesn't preclude

Service to Bristow, but it does stop short of where you kind of like for your station to be.

Right now with the budget, the recommendation is going to be that we fund to this lowest cost alternative.

As these guys continue the work with NEPA, continue the engineering to advance both sites,

Right.

And the alternatives analysis is a combination of all the things.

It's financial analysis, it's operations, it's environmental, it's engineering, as well as the public.

So we'll take all those things into consideration.

We'll present them to you.

I'm glad I was just going to say I'm glad you made that clarification because my question was going to be funding to this lowest amount today that doesn't achieve the goal that I think there's agreement on that is the larger picture.

Will we incur, I know we'll incur greater costs because of inflation.

However, will that be a more costly project going forward?

Very clear.

Just because we're putting alternative A or funding that level in the capital budget or recommending that level, that is not a decision for that alternative.

That is all just a placeholder for future decision.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Very good briefing on a very complex issue.

We are going to break now for lunch.

We will reconvene at 1245.

I'm heading out that way.

I need to have some serious body shots.

Budget for fiscal year 2025 and management reserve.

Thank you.

and everybody.

We go through today our proposed capital budget.

As you know, each year you have to submit that to the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

And then Jen just asked me how the clicker worked and get it up to work.

Anyway, so you all know each year we have to take it to the CTB.

That's by February 1st.

It's in our code, our neighboring code legislation.

And this week we'll present it to them, and then we'll go back hopefully in March and ask the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner to approve our capital budget.

That being said, that legislation, our code section, does say that we shall submit an operating plan.

And so we have

Pended that operating plan.

It's very preliminary.

It's part of that financial planning window that if you recall, when we do our budget, we look at the entire life of our capital projects, which this year we did add a year to that topic.

So basically adding that year and then taking a look at operations we have to do to figure out the total sources of funding.

and then this total usage because we definitely want to be able to operate our trains.

It's because we've learned from past years that we have enough data today to bring you a good operating plan.

I recall last year there were changes between draft and final, and this year we decided, look, use a preliminary in that process, come back, and in May we'll have a much better plan.

We'll look at Amtrak.

We'll know what our next year's contract is going to be for operations.

We'll have a better idea of where we are as far as staffing and payroll costs.

Our administrative budget will be a lot tighter.

One other thing we're actually working on

Cost Allocation Plan so that we can get true cost of all our capital projects, true cost of our Amtrak operations, and our goal will be to have that.

Our plan will be that it will be implemented by July 1st.

That, too, will have an impact on our operation.

So, with that being said, this is a high-level group, and I'm going to take you through this, and I'm going to hand it over to Shannon to take all the detail.

But at a real high level, the main things I would like to make here are, in May, you recall, we had a significant unfunded balance, $705 million.

And that was how our budget came.

You had a shortfall.

We asked you to have faith in us that we had different ideas of how to fill that gap.

We had a lot of talk that we got these kind of grants, and we were able to fill that gap.

So it's a day.

I can say that there's an equal sign up here when we're looking at January of 25.

Our sources of funding equals our uses.

So that being said, there are within this plan, I'll steal a little bit of detail.

We've got $1.31 billion, $829 million, you add a year of FY31 revenue, this is $330 million or so

and then we also, you heard we've been working on with Amtrak our ticket revenues.

Those changes to our ticket revenues when we pushed them through over a six-year window of planning had over a hundred million dollar positive impact.

So those are the big forces.

On the uses side, sticking with where we were last May, the unfunded and required projects, we thought that as a priority

That's priority one, take care of that on funding, 705.

In addition to that, there are the FY31 expenses.

So we added in the 31 sources of funding.

We have to add in the 31 expenses of running the trains, our administrative costs.

So that's about, there was 335 million of revenue, I think, and then 10 million of expenses.

And then finally, there were a few parts.

and the required projects on the sidings, there were some budget adjustments as we moved closer through engineering.

And as we talked about earlier, the Western Rail $200 million adjustment.

So those are high levels in the form of the budget.

Overall, very positive news.

I'm going to hand it over to Shannon and then Mike's going to come up a little bit later and talk a little more, like we added the FY30 schedule and also

So I am going to dive into the details on the sources and uses side.

Before I do that, I just want to note we're doing this a little bit differently this year now that we have our policy in place.

We are going to be showing these sources accumulating into a working management reserve, and we're going to make recommendations on where to take those sources and put them on uses in the plan.

So that's what we're going to walk through now on the sources side.

So overall, as Steve mentioned, really positive year.

We brought in a lot of sources to our plan.

On the left-hand side, you'll see that people who update you all will be familiar with this.

This is what you approved back in December for our management reserve balance, the changes impacting that balance, and we're going to talk through

is the FY25 financial planning window changes.

So we're bringing in another billion dollars into our plan.

So revenue sources all within the plan, but adjusting assumptions underlying them.

So Steve noted a lot of that being our Amtrak revenue.

So as you've seen in the EDR report, our actual revenues consistently beat our budgets.

We've adjusted the,

The assumptions are conservatively bringing another $74 million into our plans.

Another one to note is the $20 million on our interest and realized gains.

So forecasting what the interest rates are today and what they will be in the near term, we do feel comfortable and confident we'll be able to bring in more revenues related to our investments.

And the last one, as we're shifting that financial planning window out the year, we are picking up additional year of revenues.

What this is made up of is another year of our CRF revenue, so our Commonwealth Rail Fund revenues, and then another year of our train operation revenues as well.

So if we shift over, we're picking up those revenues, as you'll see in some later slides on the USES side, we're picking up those expenses as well.

So as you can see, we've got our growing amount and sources.

So this ties to our financial planning window that we talked about before.

So we got this $6.4 billion that we had last year, and now we've increased that to $7.7 million.

and along the bottom you see that management reserve balance growing as well.

Yes, this is cash-based.

I know the 7.7 would be accrual, but the 6.5, that's accrual too.

It's all accrual.

So yeah, what are we looking at?

So this is a bit of a different look, just to kind of show it a little bit visually for how that accumulation is happening in the Management Reserve balance.

So that gets you to the $1.4 billion that we brought in over the year.

And then the next slides, we're going to have $1.2 billion of recommendations.

We're going to take that money and put it to different projects, contributions, and grants.

What that will leave us with is $130 million in our Management Reserve.

And that's what we'll be doing, documenting where we're going to go with those uses.

So with that, we flip over to the uses side, because I know that's the big bulk of this is where are we going to be spending these dollars we brought into the plan?

One point could be, you know, there's a lot of money to explain where we're putting it.

So we broke it down into kind of bite-sized, digestible pieces.

So it's four categories that we're really looking at.

So we have that we're going to be funding our previously unfunded balances, our first category.

The second is that we're adding the uses.

So we have brought in the sources for FY31.

We also have additional expenditures going out in that year.

So we're adding that as a category as well.

We have some net-based budget changes.

So projects already in the plan, but we're changing the budget estimates for the products.

And then we have new budget items as well.

And this, of course, is by our budget component.

We're going to go to each of these in detail in the next slides as we move through the uses side.

OK.

Starting with our most complicated corridor, like we usually do, is the I-95 corridor.

So at any point on this, please stop us.

So what it's going to show is the detail on the project.

For capital projects, we're also going to detail the estimate level.

So how good are the budget estimates informing the numbers that we have up here for FY25?

Then we have our FY25 budget, FY24 budget, and then the change between those two years.

and then over on that right hand side, those again are the categories explaining the changes that you're seeing here.

So we're going to start with the unfunded balance.

We were able to fund those phase two projects we had previously said were unfunded in the prior year.

We're able to fund them with the new sources we brought in funding that $699 million shortfall.

I'm going to pause as we've been briefing, we'll get a lot of questions like how does this tie back to the grant we got for the $729 million?

What we have here is 699.

When we wanted to do our application, there's also an unfunded position on the Long Front Fourth Track, which is a VRE project, and it was $30 million at the time.

We needed to complete that project to get the service, so we included it in that grant application, and now that we got the full award, we're actually able to go ahead and give that $30 million to VRE.

to climb off on the completion.

So you'll see here we do have a $37 contribution.

It's just in the new budget items.

We're trying to just make sure it's clear.

So wanted to head that question up so that gets us back to the 729.

Moving on to the base budget changes.

Steve already mentioned this, so we do have some adjustments.

All of these relate to our sidings.

Now that they are actually under contract with CSX and we're moving through range-naring,

We have a much better understanding of what it's going to take to deliver these projects.

They're required, so we do want to reflect the budget estimates in this capital budget.

Then our last item, the new budget items.

We've already talked about the L'Enfant contribution, bringing that FORTRAC fully funded position in VRE's capital program.

And then we're also going to be recommending that we do the construction for King and Commonwealth Bridges.

As you'll remember, we did fund the final design for these projects.

And now that we have an informed cost estimate and we have the funding available, we are going to recommend we go ahead and fund the construction of this.

And at this point, Mike is going to come up and he's going to talk about this project in more detail.

OK.

Thank you.

And before I start, the Lawn Fawn project, this question comes up a lot.

We purchased, or middle of purchasing, rail line from CSX.

And it's really important to get to a place called C.P.

actually in Washington, you say that was confusing.

That is two passenger trains from Virginia Amtrak going into Union Station, trains going to CSX and Virginia Avenue Tunnel.

The last nine-tenths of the mile and post, Long Bridge, for instance, ends at mile and post 111.5, Lawn Fawn Project begins at 111.5.

The last nine-tenths of that track we need for a dedicated two-track corridor is the Lawn Fawn, what we call the Lawn

But we're going to put a foretrack around the current platform, which make an island platform elongate the platform.

It's very important that we added that to our Fed State partnership application, because without that project that's in the qualified list of exhibit of the projects for CSX, we would not get the service that would come with doing Long Bridge, the sidings of the projects, because you need that dedicated two-track corridor.

So I just want to point out, because this question has come up before about

So it was on various books before.

They're a great partner with us, which is a great segue.