Board of Directors Meeting   1/16/2025

I'm going to call this meeting to order.

Good morning, everybody.

It's February 16th, and we are going to begin the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority board meeting.

I'm going to start with our safety briefing.

And Chair and Executive Director, members of the board, good morning.

Good morning.

Let's begin.

We are located at 919 East Main Street on the 4th floor in the Piedmont Room.

If you exit the room, make two lefts, look to your left, that's where the women's restroom is located.

If you exit the room, make two right turns, look to your right, the men's restroom.

our assignments for the case of any emergencies, and please, when I call your name, please raise your hand.

Calling 911, Mary Estella Douglas.

In the back, secondary, Michael Westerman.

All right, thank you.

CVR, myself, Namara Bates.

All right, secondary, Joan Robins.

Meeting first experiments, Mike McLaughlin.

Thank you.

Secondary, Steve Pittard.

Thank you.

We will call the security desk for AED.

There's a first aid kit on the table against the wall.

Farewells are located near both restrooms.

There's a fire extinguisher near the women's restroom.

Also, there's a fire extinguisher near the tie-water room near the elevator.

If you don't feel the bad way, we will exit the way that we entered.

We will assemble at North Lightning Capital Square.

Please ensure that the person to your left and your right here

is also there in our assembly area.

If you see something, say something, call security, call 911.

Also, in case of an active shooter, flee high or fight.

Flee high or fight.

For those participating remotely, be aware of your phishing emails or scams, any phishing emails or scams.

Also, know your mental and evacuation strategies.

Are there any questions?

All right, excellent.

Let's have a safe day.

Now, before I leave, please, shipping habits, please walk around this way.

Don't come this way, of course, right here for your safety, please.

Thank you, Lamar.

So welcome to this meeting.

We have had an interesting start to 2025.

And I know that at the last meeting in January, we had some board members that had to leave before we were finished because we ran a little long.

So I wanted to let everybody know I'm going to work really hard to kind of tighten up these meetings a little bit and keep us on time.

I think everybody knows that we have to post our agendas ahead of the meeting and we've built in time for discussion and thoughtful transition for each item so I'm going to ask each of you to kind of keep be mindful of that timeline so we can be respectful to all members and help me try to stay on track and stay in time.

With that I want to emphasize that we welcome all questions and comments

We're just going to try really hard to stay within our timelines.

A second way we are going to do that today is by transitioning from our roll call voting method to a simultaneous voice vote.

There was previous legislation that required votes taken during any meeting conducted through electronic communication.

shall be recorded by name in roll call fashion, including in the minutes.

But legislative changes were made, and that language was removed after the pandemic.

And so going forward, when appropriate, for attendance in certain other areas, we'll have to take a roll call.

But when appropriate, we're going to take a simultaneous voice vote, and then Mary Estelle will call the roll for any participating virtually.

And for those participating virtually, please use the tools online to raise your hand.

If you have a question, we want to make sure and be mindful to hear your comments and questions as well.

So with that, I'm going to ask Mary Estelle to take a roll call attendance, please.

Here.

Ms. Doersch?

Here.

Ms. Drake?

Here.

Mr.

Flowers?

Here.

Ms. Moses-Nedd?

Here.

Mr. Payne?

Mr. Watkins?

Thank you.

and moving on to agenda item number five.

I don't believe we have any public comment.

No one has signed up.

Last call.

Okay, no public comment today.

Thank you very much.

We're gonna move to item number six.

I assume everyone has had a chance to review the November 19th, 2024, VPRA meeting minutes.

Do I have a motion to approve?

Move approval.

Second.

Thank you.

Opposed?

Any abstention?

Mary Sue, would you call the roll for our virtual members?

Oh, he's giving me a thumbs up.

Ms. Rhinehart?

Yes.

Are we able to record their votes?

Well, I can record Mr. Cardwell's because, oh, and Ms. Rhinehart, yes.

Yes, I got them all.

Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Jordan, and Ms. Rhinehart.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Agenda item number seven, board committee membership.

Does anybody have any questions about the new committee membership that is listed and that includes our new members?

No?

Do I have a motion to approve the new board committee membership?

Moved.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

All opposed?

Any abstentions?

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cardwell.

Ms. Rhinehart?

Aye.

Yes, thank you.

Yes, ma'am?

Yeah, I have a question.

So, I'm sorry, I don't have on my

I don't have any, I don't have any notes in front of me, but do we still just have the two committees, compensation and finance?

That is correct.

Personnel and compensation and finance and audit.

Is there a reason why we don't have more than two?

It seems to me I've never been on a board where there's only been two committees.

I mean, I think we could have a legislative committee.

I think that would be good.

I think a governance committee.

I don't know if I need to make a motion, but maybe that's something we should look at for the next meeting is to look at other committees.

I think it's real important for board members to be engaged and just having the two committees.

I know if you're not on the committee, you can listen to the committee, but I think it would be a good idea to get board members more involved to have the other committees, like a governance to, you know, keep up on the bylaws.

And of course the legislative, I think would be a good idea.

That's just my opinion.

but I offered that up to review.

Obviously between meetings, we can certainly have additional discussion and if there's any questions or comments or proposals or ideas on this item, and if you email them to me, we can disperse that to the entire board and maybe plan to have a further discussion on this next meeting.

I agree with Sandy that at least it's good to even look at the parity of the other independent authorities.

I also got an NVTA and everybody was on it.

Nobody, everybody, that's not the Virginia Transportation Authority.

It gets the funding from the gas tax, excuse me, sales tax, additional sales tax.

And I just think it's good.

Thank you for that input.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I noticed that I am starting ahead of schedule, so I don't end on time.

Good morning, members of the board.

It's great to be here.

It's actually an exciting day.

We have a lot of good news and exciting progress to share, so I'll get right into it.

We, with the transition of

The administration on the federal side wanted to make sure that we got our Fed State Partnership grant of $729 million obligated, and that was done in December, so that grant has been signed.

We have agreement terms that we're very happy with, that FRA is very happy with.

and we're now comfortable that our phase one and phase two projects are fully funded and that money's not at risk.

So that was a great news event that happened in December.

We also completed our Alexandria office conference room expansion, so that's, you're looking at the pictures of where we will have our May board meeting, so we're excited about that as well.

Getting to the point where we needed bigger conference rooms and it was cost prohibitive to go out and

So that's another good news update.

Here's our update on our AIT goals.

I highlighted the ones that I want to talk about when I'm happy to answer any questions.

Ridership, you'll see in a couple slides, we actually in December had higher ridership than the previous December, which was the case for a long, long time.

But then as we talked about at the last meeting, dipped a little bit in December, we once again are ahead of the prior year.

So while we're behind our goal,

We had a goal to increase ridership by 3%.

We're behind that goal by about 3%.

So our difference goal is about, we're behind last year by 3%.

Our difference goal is about 6%, but it's trending in the right direction.

Cost recovery, on the other hand, because our ticket prices were so high, revenue has been very, very good.

And cost recovery is much higher than we expected.

We expect to see over the next few months ridership to continue to go up and that cost recovery to go down slightly as the ticket prices go down.

but that's trending in the right direction.

We, in the Long Bridge, we completed the obligation of the Fed State Partnership Grant that I already talked about.

So that was done within the time limit.

And then we also, in November, completed the sale of the Virginia Line back to Norfolk Southern and closed on Seminary Passage.

So all of those are good news.

We continue to move forward.

None of the other goals are at significant risk.

You see the big one today is board approval for the Long Bridge South package.

Hoping you all will approve that today and we'll have a lot more conversation about that.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that as we talk today, we have a lot of good news and progress to report projects that last time were 30% or now at 60% design, projects that were at 60% or 90% design.

Many projects are getting, all projects are getting closer to construction.

Construction is going to have significant impacts on ridership and on train service so I want to just prepare folks over the coming months we're going to be talking about service adjustments and how we can make sure it's like when you see construction on a highway you're excited about getting that fifth lane but for the two years construction lanes number three and four are closed down a lot so

We are going to hit some bumpy roads.

We all just need to go into those wide open.

Thankfully, we've got great partners in VRE, we've got great partners in Amtrak, CSX, so we will work with the community and work with partners to make sure that people know when the service is going to change.

Quick administrative updates here is our, we get this every month, just the employee count.

No hires in January.

We've got 63 full-time employees and eight teams that are out there.

Sent to the board last week or earlier this week, just an update of the org chart and a conversation about the staff augmentation consultants that we have.

Again, we'll continue to update folks as it goes along.

Here's the breakout by gender, race, and age.

You need to be pleased with the balance with the diversity.

One of the things that we have worked very hard on from day one is to ensure that when we break folks into the organization that they are a good fit for VPRA and we are a good fit for them.

Culture is right behind safety as are our top priorities.

We continue to grow that culture.

You'll hear a little bit more from Mr. Vinus later today, just on the progress on how we're doing on that.

Here's our administrative budget.

Nothing really of note to talk about.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, DJ.

But could we have what the FY24 budget

The budget and the actuals at the end, what it looked like, and then have the 25-25.

Thank you.

Just contracting updates at every board meeting.

We update you all on any contracts that are above $250,000.

Since the last report, there are two.

One is permit coordination and design in the Richmond Labor Facility.

That was about $1.8 million to WSP.

And then a project that you'll hear more about later today, the Franconia Delort III track.

We have Jacobs on board to help us do the Fairfax County sewer relocation, which as we talked about last time, we will be reimbursed for in the future.

No budget adjustments in December.

And that is the update on the administrative side.

Passenger service, I alluded to this before, ridership has gone up.

However, in January, the first seven days of January, we had 23 trains canceled due to a winter storm.

Those 23 trains are about 5% of the whole January universe.

Ridership Closely.

The good news is that we worked well with Amtrak and we let folks know ahead of time.

It's always a debate when storms are coming in.

Do you want to run trains through bad weather, knowing that you'll likely delay them, knowing that the crews will be exhausted, that you may have mechanical problems due to the weather, and then you take three or four days to recover?

Or do you park the trains for a day, let the crews rest, and then when the weather subsides, then go full bore and have every train there running on time?

Amtrak I think has evolved and they do a good job with that balance.

What we did see is the 5th, the 6th was a huge cancellation day, the 7th we had canceled fire trains, and 8th, 9th, and 10th we saw huge ridership.

So it depends.

Amtrak consults with us, but they really have the final word.

And then it gets even more sloppy.

That's not the right word.

It's more complicated because a lot of times the freight railroads, CSX, Norfolk Southern will say, well, wait a second, we're not going to let you.

Because we've had situations where, especially if it's a heavy snow, they're concerned that there would be trees on the line that had come down and the freight railroad will often say, no, no service today.

Did the freight say off our tracks?

Do you know, Jeremy, if the freight's called?

I think Amtrak called it this time.

It was Amtrak.

Yeah.

And candidly, they run it by us and we support it.

I think if we don't support it, we'd probably have a hard fight with them.

But they at least let us know, which is good.

Now, that's a conversation that we're going to have to have and not today.

But as we have the owned infrastructure, one of the things, one of the many things we have to do is come up with maintenance standards and that decision will become ours.

And in the future, I want to say not so distant, but it's pretty far away, but it's coming fast.

So we'll have to have those same conversations and be part of that partnership discussion.

And as you see there, Amtrak provided alternate transportation where possible.

We had some buses that took place.

We got, this comes out wrong too, not a great day, we got less bad feedback I think from passengers because they knew ahead of time and we didn't have the complaints on Twitter at the station for four hours, so this one turned out okay.

Upcoming weekend service impacts, we talked about this in the fall.

After November, we had some service impacts because of the work that Washington News Station needed to get done, capital work.

We're going to have some more work at Washington Station in January and February, and then as far out in May, although that schedule is likely to change.

Just good for Amtrak to continue to upgrade the infrastructure up there and ensure that it's as reliable as possible.

Here's the ridership chart.

This is overall Virginia monthly ridership.

As I said earlier, the November ridership, I said December, but I meant November.

We don't have December ridership.

November ridership was above the previous year's November, which is a good trend.

We're happy with that.

We expect that to continue.

December indications for the first couple of weeks of December were that ridership was also very, very high.

We'll usually get that about the 21st or 22nd of the month, the final December numbers.

And we'll include those in the final Executive Director's Report that we sent out in January.

I'll just go through these quickly.

Here's the route by route.

Every single route was ahead of the prior year with the exception of, like it's happened before, the Norfolk route wasn't and the Richmond route wasn't.

Part of the Richmond route lagging is the fact that we've got the third Norfolk train and we've got the Newport News train, so a lot of folks switch as the schedules change slightly.

People that used to be on a Richmond train that are going from DC to Fredericksburg or DC to Ashland,

I'm curious, will the

It will likely affect the traffic as people are going there.

It also will affect the work going on in the parking lot right here.

But yes, it's expected that there are many people who in DC you can go to.

It'll be a positive.

We know yet where the parking for Amtrak will be with the new casino because I've been told both things.

I've been told it'll be right there by the building, which would be great.

Okay.

It would be great if we could keep it closer to the building.

Right.

And we have that contract that we agreed.

I think it's like 130-some parking spots.

I don't know the exact number, but... Yeah, it's high, and there's always a lot of cars there.

Here's just on-time performance.

We're in pretty good shape across the board.

There was one place where it was not good in this Newport News and this is, we've got two Newport News trains, so it's two a day.

We had a couple of trespasser incidents where there were police activity, well it's on police activity, where trains were stopped for a period of time because someone was hit by the train or because there was an accident.

When you lose

the other side, when you only have two trains a day, it takes a big hit to the monthly.

So we don't think that that's a recurring problem.

I just think that was an unfortunate month in November.

Now, that being said, there continues to be money that goes into grade crossing improvement.

In fact, there was just one in Suffolk, I believe, that gave money to where they're going to be approving that.

So when we have situations where there are a lot of trespassers situations, we work with the FRA in favor to improve the crossing.

Washington Norfolk, not really much to talk about, continued on the same path, watching Richmond pretty much the same, free community trade interference.

This is the chart, this is actually another good news chart.

If you look at the ridership month by month, November, this compares our ridership, the Virginia ridership, to other big states, Pennsylvania, New York, and North Carolina.

In November, our ridership was higher than all of the other states, and that's

Tastic, especially since we only have 16 trains and Pennsylvania and New York both have more than we do.

So it continues to show that we are attracting riders and because that much is good news.

Cost recovery, I talked about earlier, 89 percent.

That was a big jump.

What does that mean exactly?

I mean, I know what cost recovery means, but I mean, how is that measured?

Maybe it's a better question.

What's variables and is that

And how does Amtrak pay us for that?

So I'm going to explain it in a very simple basis.

Then in each month in the executive director's report, there's a chart that breaks it out.

And so we show you month by month.

But basically, if the cost recovery on the numerator is the revenue that comes in from the tickets,

Okay, but do we get those numbers from Amtrak then?

The revenue from the tickets we get from Amtrak and cost of running the train we also get.

These numbers are wrong.

For example, last month we paid Amtrak $95 to run all the trains, and VPRA had $5 of administrative costs.

Our total costs were $100, okay?

And we had $89 worth of ticket revenue.

I gotcha, okay.

So 89% of our costs overall, Amtrak running the trains and our administrative costs were covered by ticket revenue.

Amtrak does that for every state and they do it for themselves as well.

So for their long distance trains.

And I will tell you 89% is a great number.

I was just going to ask that DJ, I would assume that this is probably amongst even the other state supported routes.

This is probably leading in terms of 89% cost recovery.

Steve, I made a mistake.

I did not make a mistake.

I just wanted to add, because the 89% you've thrown out, our goal is 70%.

That's what I think is a reasonable level to attain.

Exactly.

And as I said earlier, part of the reason why 89 is such a great number.

And look, we'd like to be over 100, but given the ridership come back from COVID and given the cost and we think 70 is more reasonable, 89 is what it is because ticket prices were higher than we expected.

And that's why the ridership took a dip.

So DJ, quickly before we move on, in the future, as we

Right, and so what we do is when we prepare the budget, and we'll talk more about this at the May meeting because this is really akin to the operating budget, not the capital budget.

So Ms. Bushue, I'm sorry, I heard by something.

I gave an example that added up to a hundred dollars of costs.

That doesn't include the capital project costs.

So when we have Long Bridge going to a billion dollars, that's not part of this.

This is just out there.

When we present you the operating budget, the final operating budget in May to approve that goes into effect for July, that's going to say, here's what we think our ticket revenue is going to be, here's what we think the Amtrak costs are going to be based on the agreement, and here's what we think our costs are going to be.

So that calculates into a cost recovery of probably 72% at that point, and then we'll set the goal based on that estimate.

Understood.

Thank you.

In fact, you'll see, now I'm going way too long.

You'll see last year our actual was 72% and we said, you know, that's aggressive based on what we know is coming up.

We don't think we could hit 72 again.

That's why 70 was our goal.

All right, capital projects updates.

You want to do this, Michael?

I mean, it's up to you.

Okay, well, go ahead.

This could be very quick because most of these projects we're going to focus on,

I'm not going to focus on them much because we're talking about them later today.

So I'm just going to highlight only a couple of quick things.

It's an early 729 billion.

For that grant obligation, yes, grant obligation, yes, darn it.

We did receive notice of the award a year ago.

A lot of work goes into

A lot of work goes into an agreement with the FRA.

I give kudos to Michael West and others who have worked on that agreement and getting that grant obligated.

Again, we're going to talk about Long Bridge North and South later on today.

On the South, again, we'll bring in the proposal for you today to consider the contract.

So we're going to talk about that in length later on today.

I'll give you a report check.

A couple of quick things I want to point out.

is that we're 100% designed and we're a deeper reevaluation.

We're really close.

What does that mean?

We've talked about when you have, you get your environmental clearance, but then later on you find out that right away you need to purchase this might be outside.

So disturbance could be some other matters.

You got to get the deeper reevaluation, get it cleared again.

You'll see in a slide later, we're expecting that in February, it might even come in January.

So that's good news, we're moving forward.

And this is one of our next projects, going into the 9th, going on construction really soon.

We're excited about this project.

Frank Coney, Springfield Bypass, again, we're going to talk about this again later today.

I also want to point out, you'll see the variance.

We're actually at your date, actually what we budgeted to where the teams, the consulting teams, the contractor teams are moving along at a quick pace we'd like to see.

Frank Gordon-Lorton, Third Track also associate, we're also going to talk about this later again today as well, a project that we do have to work with the Army Corps of Engineers and Fort Belvoir on some issues working through there because it comes right near Fort Belvoir.

But again, this is also moving along with design.

Some parts of the design are 60%, some parts are 90%.

New River Valley, I do want to stop and talk about this maybe instead of 10 seconds, a minute.

This is moving along.

I want to show the picture on the right.

While construction hasn't begun, early works construction has.

What does that mean?

Norfolk Southern is currently using the old depot that we plan to turn into a train station, but they need to house their people and their materials somewhere.

So at the northern end of their yard, they're building this new facility.

It's actually moving beyond this.

This picture is a couple weeks old.

So they're almost done with their new maintenance facility.

So they're clearing the way, getting out of the way for construction that Norfolk Southern is delivering.

We call Norfolk Southern is delivering the construction for this and they have a sentence to do so.

Something else I want to point out is that Norfolk Southern has received all the bids and they actually have selected a contractor.

However, they're still working through the administrative process of that, so we can't get saved where the contractor is.

Just like we work through administrative process with our contractors, they're notifying their procurement partners of that.

So that's the fact that there's a damn select the contractor for their pocket track and the platform at the Cambria Christian's workstation and also the Radford layout facility about 10 miles west of there.

Lastly, I want to point out that we have to work with the state, various state departments, one of which is the Department of

Historic Resources.

The Cambria Station is a historic depot, so we have to work with them.

They have been great to work with, and we've gotten help from our administration in making sure that it's a priority for them.

We hope to get the memo done soon, and as soon as that memo is done, we can begin construction.

We actually got clearance.

We get tree clearing, as long as it's not at the actual Cambria Station.

So construction will begin in March, and we plan to have a ceremony, and of course, all of you will be.

I'm moving fast.

Any questions?

Pretty much done.

I'm adhering to the Chair's request.

Move along swiftly.

I do want to, we show this every month, the boundary surveys.

We've talked before about this.

You have to do the boundary surveys before you do right away acquisition.

Of course, in there, I mentioned NEPA reevaluation, then you move to construction, and it shows that February date in yellow for Alexandria-Fortrack.

We also received concurrence just yesterday from CSX for Fairfax County right away, which includes

Michael, is that saying that survey issue is over?

Oh, so it's still ongoing.

It's ongoing.

I didn't realize it was that big.

Everything we purchased.

And let me, so, yes, the survey issue that we brought to your attention two months ago, we talked about, it's still ongoing, but we have a good plan in place and everyone is adhering to the plan, whether it's the county, whether it's CSX, whether it's the survey folks.

Back then we said, look, here's a problem and here's our plan to fix it or to address it.

SAC's been a good partner.

We met with them, the leadership, and they promised them the resources, the brain, meaning their staff, to make sure that we get the surveys proof.

They pay for the surveyor on their side to oversee it.

So that is all I have.

Right along, just update, and these are November numbers before us.

And nothing that's unusual here.

You see these each month, the sectors are

Director's Report.

I do want to point out here, you'll see a slight uptick in the balance of funding.

We had a decline when we bought the Manassas Line back in September.

You see that the last couple months, the balance that we have is growing.

We've anticipated that.

Going through the end of this year, that balance should grow and hopefully get to around $500 million that we have.

Next slide, you recall from past meetings that we did take some of our funding and we put it out over a four-year window to invest, to lock in the rates when they were a little higher.

And you see here that we're starting to show a little bit of a gain because the Federal Reserve did lower rates recently and we're getting to the point, move forward, you'll see the point that rates are now below where we've locked in

That's game shows and also the LGIP continues to out that's on break.

So we're in good positions.

That being said, talk about liquidity here because we don't want to lock funds in and then not have the funding available to pay for our capital projects, which is why we have the funds to begin with, not to invest.

We're in a really good shape here because we still have about $178 million in the LGIP fund, which is a 30 day window

is what that actual fund invests in, but we can take those funds out every day.

So really good shape from the liquidity standpoint, still feel good about those longer term, the tail you see there, the longer term investments that they're going to match to our needs.

And finally, the last thing here, this is actually showing return, which is the third, these principles go in order.

Maintain our balance, our liquidity, and then return on the investment is the third most important principle.

You see here, you see the line starting to trend down, which is the benchmark.

That's the Fed's fund rate.

And it's starting to get to where LGIP's been exceeding that.

And our managed funds now, I looked just today, the Fed's fund rate is around 4.3%.

So we're actually now exceeding that with our managed funds also.

With that,

Hearing none.

Thank you so much.

We're doing really well on time.

We're going to move to agenda item number nine.

Hey, good morning.

I've got more time and I'm up front, so feel free to ask questions.

So I'll start with an overview since we have some new board members.

I'll go through the typical on-time performance kind of scorecards that I've talked about.

Performance initiatives related to the scorecards because we're always trying to push performance in the right direction.

And then I'll cover some other things, new equipment and service facilities.

Those are not going to be graphic chart heavy.

And then Zach Collier on my team is going to talk about the rider program and how you all can help us with our customer service standards program.

So I thought I would just start with just the picture of Virginia.

So looking at the service in Virginia is largely is north-south in orientation.

And it runs kind of on the east and west sides of the state.

So sometimes, you know, I get the question, can I take the train from Roanoke to Richmond?

And well, if you did, you have to do kind of like a, there is no hypotenuse.

You have to go north and you have to come south.

So this is largely because of our geopolitical orientation to the Northeast corridor, where we were just pulling the Northeast corridor trains down into Virginia.

So one of the things that I've been asked in the past, not to forget, was former government affairs at Amtrak.

He said, you know, what's going on down in Virginia?

There's all this growth.

And other states are starting to follow suit now.

But for a while, Virginia was really this star of like, wow, we're the ones who are expanding.

And it really all started in 2006.

We had a rail enhancement fund program.

and that was actually more freight based.

And so what I like to people to remember is our passenger rail program success started with a foundational relationship with our freight railroads.

They understood the investments that were needed in Virginia.

We understood the investments.

The REF Fund was that first foray into major investments in a privately owned network.

And then in 2009, October, we started a Lynchburg service where we pulled a train down from Washington, DC, used the equipment that was terminating in Washington.

The ridership of the Lynchburg train far exceeded our expectations.

And then we started in 2010, a similar on the east side of the state in Richmond, and we saw similar success.

And then during the mystery fears at DRPT, we saw one of our largest gains in dedicated funding, which was something the envy of many states to see dedicated funding for passenger rail service.

at that time called the Inner City Passenger Rail Operating and Capital Fund.

We had that and we started to gain momentum.

So I'm not going to go through every single one of these, but as you can see in 2012 under district, we took the Richmond train down to Norfolk in lightning speed time.

We did that with state funds.

And then we let's move forward to 2022.

We had the first additional services added because of the Transforming Rail Initiative.

You can see down there in the middle on the bottom line, we added a third Norfolk train and a second Roanoke train.

And so we have more plans for expanding service.

So

A lot has happened to get us to where we are today.

We're building on a lot of momentum.

As we add Amtrak service, which are the orange lines that are broken into this, we have to remember there's already very robust service in Northern Virginia with Virginia Railway Express.

So 16 trains are eight daily round trips on the Manassas Line and on the Fredericksburg Line.

So whenever we are scheduling our service, we are not just beholden to what the Northeast Corridor offers us to pull down into Virginia, but we have to thread the needle through VRE service to make sure it's complimentary.

The VRE service right now, looking on the far right of this chart here in December 24, hit about 83%, which is a recovery from a bit of a plateau during the summertime.

We had a rough summer, but 90% is the goal.

So even though we see this, the 83% is an improvement, you can see that we have not gotten about 90% for ovary here.

The data speaks for itself, and I concur that it's not our preferred reliability number there.

But I'm sure you're going to talk about how we're going to get there.

You know, I really like that historical slide you did.

2013.

2008.

Okay, would you say that that added a lot, DJ, to

Passenger Rail, particularly Amtrak, taking off.

Yes, I would say that it empowered the states to be accountable for their service and it required Amtrak to let the states be accountable.

Before that, just for folks for history.

investment and improvement.

Before that was passed there were some states that paid a ton of money for their service and got a little bit of service and there were some states paid nothing for service and got a lot of service and what was that was intended to do was put the control in the state's hand.

And it took from 2008 to 2013 to get all the states to agree on that policy.

But once that cost allocation policy was implemented, it absolutely put control.

So we can go to Amtrak today and say, hey, we want a third Norfolk train.

Thanks for that.

This is your really good slide though.

Thank you.

So just one last item on the VRE side, you'll see the trains there on the right, the on-time trains, the top five, we had a couple that got to the 100% mark, the morning train to perform best, and then the afternoon congestion, the southbound and the afternoon often struggled the most.

So in addition to the VRE network that you saw on that, we call these the subway style maps,

This is one of our Amtrak routes.

So the orange ones are long distance routes.

They predate anything which it did and they benefit our service.

They go far beyond places like New Orleans, Florida, Chicago.

and up into the Northeast.

And then you have the Carolinian Blue, the North Carolina State supported train that comes through midday, both northbound and southbound in Virginia.

And then our service that we're pulling down from the Northeast quarter that we call Northeast Regionals are the Navy Blue Trains.

And there you can see DJ mentioned earlier about how the Norfolk and Newport News trains benefit Richmond.

And you can see how well served Richmond is because of how everything kind of comes together.

But as you also notice, everything hits Alexandria.

So Jeremy, if I may, Jeremy talked about the orange trains, which are the Amtrak long distance train.

So according to PREA, any train that goes more than 750 miles is a long distance train and Amtrak has to pay the whole cost of that.

And I noticed folks around the table saying, wait a second, the law was passed in 2008.

We didn't have the policy to 2013.

Well, here's why.

What that policy does is that policy says that, hey, in Charlottesville,

Amtrak pays my $100 for station staff.

We had to work out how much of that $100 was a Virginia cost for the state supported trains and how much was on distance trains that Amtrak has to pay the full cost.

And it's a detailed conversation because you can say, well,

Half of the riders are state supported, half are long distance, so you should split the cost in half.

Well, no, there's check baggage there, and there's not check baggage on the state supported trains, so why are we paying for the state?

And those conversations took place across 20 states, and that's why it took so long to get the policy in place.

But what the policy does is it very fairly, and I believe this to be true, and I believed it when I worked for Amtrak, it very fairly allocates the cost based on what your state supported trains use.

For example, and now I'm still in Jeremy's time, sorry, Fredericksburg has VRE trains,

You don't need to, if you're a commuter, know a lot about the station.

You basically get on the train, you get off the train.

So they shouldn't pay a lot for the station.

Long distance folks should pay a lot for the station.

And so breaking out the cost allocation was, and in places continues to be, a huge debate.

The power from Northeast Regionals report, typically they do fairly well compared to long distance, but less than BRE simply because of the distance.

So right now we're kind of plateaued in 60 percentiles.

We were actually even better this time last year at 73 percent.

I'll go over some of the initiatives we have.

Some trains perform much better than others is one of the things I want to understand.

So our morning northbounds often do very well and southbounds coming out of Washington, D.C., that congestion tends to do the worst.

and we will continue to address that Washington Union Station issue and hopefully see everything start to move up.

But we just have some other initiatives as well.

Long distance, the longest distance trains also have the most time to trip up over themselves, but also we're doing better this time in 2023 at 67.9% versus the 55.9% that they were this past December.

And I'll talk a little bit more about one of the trains that is at the bottom of the list there on the right hand side.

what was the Silver Star has become the Floridian and that performance has degraded a little bit with the switch in schedule.

So these are the major initiatives we have in addition to some other trains that we're watching individually, but CSX heat orders, we're going to do a summer pilot.

We're going to adjust schedules to anticipate the CSX heat order being called throughout the summertime.

And then we're going to align that with VRE who does theirs from Memorial Day to Labor Day as well.

Delays of Washington, noticeable improvements.

We want to see that momentum continue and start to see that benefit show up in Virginia.

And then planned work for coordinating with Amtrak.

We have a lot of work on the horizon for BRB and TRB and CSX.

So probably more on that future board meetings very soon to talk about what we're going to do and then some service changes that we're monitoring to see that we don't just degrade service when we switch schedules.

On the heat orders, just as a quick reminder, with CSX's heat order policy, CSX has one of the most conservative heat order policies.

So from 1pm to 7pm, when a heat order is called, if our schedules are unadjusted, there is no way that train is going to achieve its schedule between 1 and 7pm because everything has to slow down.

So we started tracking this several years ago, and we can see the summertime is the worst of it.

So Memorial Day, the Labor Day is when we put in

A number of our trains there on the right.

You can see whether they're coming from Norfolk, Newport News or Richmond.

We're not doing this, the Roanoke trains, but they largely travel on the northern side.

So it's mainly the ones that are going to the RFP.

And so we will add that time.

Amtrak has been adjusting these times.

We're adding two trains that were affected by e-orders that were not part of it last year.

And then this is just a function of certain things.

We took the pin on it first last year.

Amtrak liked that schedule and they took the pin on it first this year based on what we did.

And so we're negotiating that now.

We want to have things buttoned up by March to have that in the system so that customers don't experience much change in what they are doing.

Talking about Washington, the good news story.

Washington since July has seen a 74% decrease in the delays, and this is a concerted effort by Amtrak.

So you can see it dropping from 4,500 on the south delays to about 1,100 for the past two months.

And you can see in orange, the servicing delays continue to be the bulk of it.

On the right side, you can see the gray area are all the trains that were affected, and you can see that this has been a benefit to all of the trains.

As the numbers have come down, and you can see at the very bottom, that's train 93.

If it continues to have a big piece of advice, particularly if everything else has come down, 93 is a stickler and struggling.

What we've learned from Amtrak is 93 is an engine change in New Haven, Connecticut that is often putting it behind schedule.

Jeremy, can you go back to this idea with servicing, right?

Does that

Do these types of delays go into the, lack of a better term, service accountability metrics that we have with Amtrak?

Or is this something different because it's in Washington?

I wasn't sure if like, is Washington considered part of Virginia state supported bit or is it still on the Amtrak side?

It's a great question.

So when it arrived in Washington,

It is still, into Washington is the Amtrak train.

When it departs, it becomes a Virginia draft.

However, our system does have a member that we negotiated with at Amtrak.

It's called through train performance.

And so they are going to report through train performance.

And I forget exactly what it is.

I think it's around 75% they have to hit.

Um, so we'll be monitoring that.

And so to that point, the engine swap there here on the left hand side, that remains one of the largest items to address.

You can see plan work at the top.

We want to get the plan work as things show up on here.

and I know VRE does too.

So we're working on that, but engine swap will continue to be one of the continuous improvement efforts we want to watch closely.

So late engine swaps there on the right continue to be at the top.

Crews arriving late on trains.

Doesn't mean they showed up late for work.

It just means.

that train that they needed to switch to another train and something came in and they were delayed because they didn't have their cruise there.

And then of course things like mechanical and PTC.

What I'll endoke here is mechanical issues of course are addressed if we're proactively maintaining the fleet and minimizing how many mechanical issues we have.

PTC is a good example of where the data only shows you so much.

So if somebody says,

Oh, it was a PTC issue.

That's just the last thing that has to happen in a line of things that has to happen to get a train out of Washington.

So if they're waiting for PTC to initialize and it was something like five steps before that caused the delay and it gets marked as PTC, this is where we have to watch the data.

Was it really PTC, PTC having a problem, or did something in the line happen?

So this is where we, the data gets us to a point where we're watching Washington, then we go out on site, talk to people and observe to find the real issues.

Of course VRE, midday store, is north of Washington.

VRE has to go through the congestion in the afternoon.

And so we can see here the departures, the Manassas Line trains on the top, sorry.

Big Fredericksburg on the top, but NASA's on the bottom there.

You can see the afternoon trains with the most red, meaning they're not hitting their departure times out of Washington, so they're starting off on the wrong foot.

Of course, there are other issues that happen along the way for BRE service as well, but this is one of the ones that Washington is watching.

So that as we see from 1,000 minutes there on the left in July down to 350 in December, we see these improvements.

We want to make sure BRE is continuing to share the benefits of Amtrak's continuous improvement efforts.

I don't have a huge chart for this one because there are infrastructure things that can't be shared.

However, as you think of Union Station, you have tracks where the trains come in and aboard and alight passengers.

As you continue into Virginia, those are K interlockings.

Before you get into those tracks are K interlockings.

We're only talking right now about A and K and then there's a whole host of other alphabet interlockings, the massive yard.

Our outages, the reason we keep having outages is that interlockings on both sides there affecting trains coming into Virginia,

are having rehabilitation work.

And so we had several in the fall, and we had some weekend cancellations.

And so Amtrak's been coordinating with us that we have another one coming up at the end of January.

The system has already cut off sales.

We did that actually, I think, at the end of November.

We have more coming up in February, March, and then May.

And so we're trying to anticipate these so we don't have to cancel people's plans.

We just cut off the sales advance.

And then this is one of the standard operating procedures we use.

This seems to be the one.

We're going to try and look at seeing it, preserving more service, but that would require some new equipment into Virginia, so we can see it in Virginia.

However, this is what the plan is using right now, which you can see the black dots at the bottom.

We want to make sure that there's a round trip to and from each location now.

We'll talk a little bit about the Floridians and what was the Silver Star long distance train that used to go from Florida to the Northeast Corridor up to New York, became

from Florida all the way to Chicago.

This had a number of things that we were hoping would improve some things in Washington and East Station.

The first one would be that it doesn't have an engine change.

It saves diesel the whole time.

So we were thinking this could be good.

And they built some cushion in Washington in order to help with the schedule work coming off of what are now both, you know, the Amtrak Northeast corridor with Amtrak controls.

But now they're going to be on post railroads on both sides.

So they built in more cushion at Washington for recovery.

So how's that doing?

So far, not like we hoped.

So you look at the bottom here, Petersburg, you have the Floridian on the left and the Silver Star on the right.

So coming in is coming in consistently more late into Petersburg.

However, the median times it's about on average, just as late.

It's not like way more late when it shows up late.

So I guess that's the silver lining there.

And then southbound, what we're watching is, again, with that recovery in Washington and no engine change, we were hoping, even if it is going to perform worse, see 62% coming off of post-railroads versus 89% coming off the Amtrak patrol of East Corridor, we're still not seeing anything as it comes into our standards.

So this is something we're watching with Amtrak.

They acknowledge it, so there's probably gonna be some schedule adjustments to this near future.

And I think on this one what I'll show you is we're watching it specifically in Virginia.

So on the right side, you can see the northbound in Virginia, the Floridian is doing slightly better, or you could say on par basically.

And then southbound, the Floridian is doing worse.

And we started looking at the delay codes there and we've seen improvements.

The Floridian is not getting held up as much.

PTI's passenger train interference.

So not as much passenger train interference with Floridian coming south in Virginia.

However,

freight train interference is way up on it.

To Chicago.

There's several other host railroads that has to traverse as well, but it does cross CSX and Florida.

Okay, thank you.

Question please.

So when you talk about freight train interference, what is the remedy for that?

The main thing would be, it's probably a multi-pronged approach.

We want to make sure dispatchers are aware of the schedule change and utilizing the network and crossovers to deal with that efficiently.

So I think that's the main thing, to make the schedule adjustment.

There also could be regularly scheduled CSX trains that we need to

make sure that we're aware, everybody's aware, not just the dispatchers, but everybody's aware that this train's coming in later or somebody didn't expect it to come in at that time anymore.

So there's just some scheduling that we have to socialize and it's just the main thing.

If that helps.

I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly, though, is that with the Amtrak long distance trains, though, is that we will have passengers that are leveraging through Virginia, right?

But the real impediment, right, is that delays here essentially get in the way of the trains that we're paying for, right?

Yeah.

And so are there ways to say that, or I guess

Are there options that we can tell Amtrak?

We're saying, hey, you're long distance up.

It's kind of a mess.

Yes, and it's complicated.

We all know that long distance is a perennial problem for Amtrak, right?

And it's like, how do we create a scenario where it's like that if we can truly sidetrack, pun intended, right?

So that's one of the reasons why we exist is that we're, I'm using your words,

Long distance trains are a perennial problem.

And the reason for that is because they travel over many, many freight routes for a long distance and late trains only get later.

And Jeremy said this earlier, but I'm going to say it a little more bluntly.

What happens is with freight train interference is many times a freight train and a passenger train show up at the same time and the dispatcher says, you know what?

I work for CSX.

I work for the freight railroad because it's all railroads.

I work for the freight railroad.

That's freight railroad train.

That one goes first.

That one's going to go about 35 miles an hour.

We, whether it's a spaceport train or a launch train, wants to go 79.

And when that train's in front of us, we're going to call freight train interference.

When we have our own infrastructure and we spent a lot of money in the Commonwealth of Virginia to buy our own infrastructure, our tracks are going to be passenger-only track.

They're interoperable, so when there are problems, the freight train will go there.

DJ, will it be as clear to the dispatcher in that scenario that they're saying, okay, I don't have to make this kind of subjective call now, it's going to be more...

It'll be clear to the, yes.

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is those passenger dedicated tracks are passenger dedicated tracks and they will be only used for freight in the event of an emergency strong, of an atypical situation.

And on the other side of that, the freight railroads are having a meeting today saying, oh, thank goodness the passenger trains are out of our way.

We know this is a freight only track and those passenger trains won't be on our track unless there's an atypical situation.

Thank you.

It's in a bylaw, DJ, that they're supposed to give the passenger, so they have to pay a fine, right?

If they decide to let the freight train have priority.

When Amtrak was created, part of the agreement of the government to let the freight companies give a passenger rail was Amtrak needs to have the ability to run on any freight track for incremental cost, and they should always have priority.

You're exactly right.

And this is DJ talking, not the executive director of the VPRA, just for clarity.

The fine that they have to pay is much less than the bonus they get when they run FedEx or UPS on time.

Can we go to surfboard to complain or, and this is Norfolk Southern being, aren't they under suit from DOJ for failure of priority?

I mean, we have resources other than, I mean, Jeremy is best in the nation on this.

I'm certain of this.

We have additional resources.

Yes, and we can go to the Service Transportation Board, and in fact, the Service Transportation Board last year created a passenger rail advisory committee to look at these exact issues.

You're exactly right.

The Department of Justice, I believe, is suing Norfolk Southern.

There are a lot of initiatives across the government that are taking place to ensure that freight follow that law.

And to their credit, they're coming to the table.

And part of what, and I agree with what you said about Jeremy, you know,

I've told him that before.

He doesn't believe me, he believes you.

Which is better than litigation any day.

I'm not here to get lawyers rich.

Sorry, Michael.

It's better to sit down and say,

Ms. Moses-Nedd reported that a freight train and a passenger train showed up at the same time and you guys let the freight train go first.

Why'd that happen?

And what can we do together to make sure that does not happen again?

We don't want to fight.

We don't want to say, oh, you owe us $40 because you let the train go first and want to prevent the problem.

And to date, there was a lot of turf war when we first started these committee meetings, but they started to be very productive.

Jeremy, did I say anything you disagree with other than some of the points that might add to be, yes, Amtrak is supposed to get preference and there's debates about what that preference looks like and the way I've heard it couched is, is it an ambulance where we hear it coming and we know we need to get out of the way or is it a presidential motorcade where we know it's coming and everything has to wait until it passes.

So there's some debate in the industry about what preference looks like.

And in reality, it looks more like an ambulance.

But the third piece of that, though, is, is it an ambulance?

Is it a motorcade?

And speaking of that, because my question is, and I know we have a very aggressive plan and it's going to take a long time and a lot of money, but on this topic of freight getting out of the way, what about the issue of sidings?

What about the issue of Appomattox River Bridge?

So that we create ways, because our passenger lanes are only like Richmond North.

They're not south.

Yeah, I would say Appmatics Bridge is a big project.

It's just not part of phases one and two.

You're right.

And when Transforming Rail in Virginia was created,

We didn't want to come in and say, hey, we need $18 billion to fix everything in Virginia.

I get that, but I'm just saying that's a solution for what we're talking about when we get to the point we can do it, to build more.

That's what we did for the Norfolk train is we built those sidings, Norfolk Southern built those sidings.

Right.

And that's why in our project portfolio, I'm sorry, Mike, we have a siding here and a siding here because there are choke points that CSX worked with us to identify.

We said, look, we want to alleviate congestion.

Here's where we need sidings.

And selfishly, a lot of it was north of Fox Bay because that's where we have 16 more trains.

And that's where the VRE service is.

But you're right.

Because we're talking about the Florida train, so that's going south.

Right.

Right.

We are close with North Carolina DOT and working through a $60 million currency grant received a few years ago.

It needs to be obligated by the FRA.

I mentioned the obligation Gary talked about earlier.

We agreement with North Carolina to focus on the Appomattic River Bridge portion so we can get a 30% sign

So we can get an idea of what our true cost would be.

As you know, you've been over it.

It's not an easy project.

It's pretty high up.

You have to go from rock to rock to rock.

I don't know if those are technical terms.

So we are focused on that.

That is the only single track in a double track area, to your point.

So that is something that we hope to move forward in 2025 to sign for that.

We do need that grant from the federal government though.

I'm glad I asked the question.

Thank you.

Mr. Jay, I was just going to ask a question.

So just looking out from the spokes of the wheel, the states that surround us, I mean, we're coordinated with this goal.

So just using the Floridian line as an example,

You know, is every state along that line following the same rules and putting the same priorities?

We have great partners in North Carolina.

We have a great partner in Maryland.

You'll find that in South Carolina and Georgia, speaking of the Floridian, they're not as focused on passenger rail at this point.

But North Carolina, we talked to, as Mike just alluded to, if not daily, certainly multiple times a week, and we make sure that everything we're doing aligns with what they're doing.

And it is one of the worst performers.

To that point, we have actually taken a lot of these charts and graphs and things that you see and we have meetings of states several times a year and the one we had last summer in Chicago, they gave me a pulpit to kind of show what Virginia is doing and Amtrak's response to that was they showed up in Norfolk in September to say they are hiring resources to do similar efforts with other states because it caught people's attention.

I said, wait a minute, you need to start showing us, it's not always blaming the frames.

If I were to ask everybody what's the biggest problem for on-time performance at the RFP, which I've been doing over the past couple of years because I just want to kind of prove my point.

If everybody thinks it's FTI, it's great, and it's not.

It was Washington station, which is our Amtrak.

The data pointed us to a different direction, and that's why it's such a success to Amtrak recognize it in service performance committee meetings, and they ate a little bit of broke, and they started working on it.

Good for you, Charlie.

And so it's been a real success.

And I will also mention the Arkendale project recently completed.

It's the third track of nine miles that we're working with CSX dispatchers to make sure they utilize that.

And so we've seen some successes where they started to lead trains around each other because of that nine miles.

I just wanted to add that DRPT is also involved with the compact with North Carolina.

And so that helps our ability to talk with the other states that the North Carolina Virginia compact has now included the Southeast Commission.

Emily, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but we have been in communication with them and have a grant from the federal government to do additional study into the Southeast.

So, enough about Floridian.

A little more of an FDI, not going to go through all the colors that you see on here.

Look at those friends, the peaks and the valleys.

So, there were some hurricanes over the summer, and that actually ended up rerouting some freight traffic through Virginia.

So, when we look at July to August, we actually saw more FDI, hardly because of some rerouted traffic from that part of the south.

And then it started to come back down as things started to recover.

But then CSX has anticipated more intermodal traffic during the holiday season, which picks up in November.

FTI was expected to go up.

We did see it go up, starting to come down in December.

So we hope to see that trend continue to decline.

But FTI, I guess as Washington Union Station is improving, is starting to show up as another thing that we need to watch closely in order to see the benefits accumulate the trains all the way down to Norfolk and Newport News.

Speaking of,

Newport News, and the Norfolk Southern portion that was greatly improved, as well as the service that is in Roanoke and will be extended to New River Valley.

Our arrangement with Norfolk Southern allows us to start doing this with Norfolk Southern.

So everything I just showed you, so everything in orange is where we are not going to get, and we're going to start that this year, hopefully as soon as next month.

And the difference is our second Roanoke train has a premium paid for, basically the same as what VRE pays for access.

We pay a premium for that second Roanoke train,

But we don't pay it in full if the on-time performance isn't up there.

So we have a regime that will kick in as soon as Norfolk Southern finishes some of those construction projects.

So what we've done here on the lower left is to just start mapping where we are today with our 75 to 84, 75, where would we be discounting that rate?

So we would be at about a 20% discount on the rate that we pay for that train.

So what we're basically saying is we're now paying customer, we have priority, you have this much time, I don't care if CSX delivers an hour late,

You have this much time between these cities to move that train.

And we're paying a premium for it or we start taking away money.

So that's going to be part of the arrangement with Norfolk Southern when we start these.

And that was negotiated through the Western Red Initiative.

And so let's chart some good news here.

Amtrak is going through procurements to replace their existing fleet.

Yes, they're called Amtrak Arrow.

They are Siemens trains.

So you see these on the bright line of Florida.

They look similar to trains that are running in Germany today.

Already we're seeing new locomotives from Siemens show up.

Started using them on the long distance service.

When we had some issues with the locomotive serving in Virginia, Amtrak started using the new locomotives on Virginia service to improve our reliability.

This is a good news story.

The first trains are promised to the Pacific Northwest.

They will be tested on the Northeast quarter this spring, probably throughout the year, and then they'll go out West.

And then as things start to deliver on the Northeast Corridor, they will not show up en masse in Virginia.

You're going to start seeing them kind of intermingled with the old sets as they ramp up delivery.

And then hopefully by 2030, there should be a full arrow train sets in Virginia.

We worked really hard with Amtrak to make sure their business case accommodated all the growth in Virginia.

So they don't have a locomotor change.

Okay, that was my question.

The Flowers actually do that.

And in Virginia, where we typically have to move it in a triangle to turn it around, these are push pull.

Yes.

And so when you, when you train in your 2010 Mazda for a 2025 hybrid,

you have to upgrade all the service facilities because everything's different, right?

Now a computer, it's not something you can just get a wrench and get the love slash, hope it works.

So when we look at the service facilities in Virginia, the Newport, the New River Valley one is going to be funded by Virginia.

We're going to build it to accommodate Arrow at a minimum, but we are also looking at more space for Amtrak to come later with IGA funds and upgrade with things like a pit or anything else they want.

But we're going to do this one because of the tight timeline, Southern building it for us,

This one's Virginia only, not federalized.

However, with the extension to five round trips and Richmond trains, we're going to be building a new facility at Polka Yard in Virginia, and we're working on a funding agreement where we want Amtrak to invest and pay for anything that's above what we would have done for the first equipment.

So they have IIJ funds for working out a funding agreement for them to pay for their share, and then Amtrak

because we've already got stable, fished service facilities in Norfolk and Newport News Camp Track will just do their improvements at those facilities with their IJA funds.

All right, that's my portion.

So Zach Collier is going to come.

So Zach Collier on our team is the one who manages all our access in the Amtrak system to pull off the data and everything that we have, do surveys, and he does a lot of work with every department in the agency.

Well, to say Zach is a daily VRE writer, by the way.

Zach and his wife, actually.

Oh, they buy VRE daily?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Same.

Good morning, y'all.

Madam Chair, we're certainly mentioning my name is Zach Collier.

I'm a member of the operations team here at VPRA.

And to first set the stage here, I just want to give a bit of background as to why we're doing this.

We work with Amtrak, work to develop the customer service standards agreement.

And over the last year, we've together many different departments at Amtrak and Gold Transportation, Hong Kong Work Services, folks at the VPRA, to set up the standards that hopefully

to ensure consistent service for our passengers.

What I want to describe on the point here is that you're able to access the survey, and you'll see a number of points here, loneliness, on-time performance, experience, and it's important, as you represent multiple parts of the state, we'll get feedback from

Folks in Northern Virginia, feedback from folks in Western Virginia, hopefully Central and Southern, all over.

And it's a great tool to sort of collect real-time feedback and sort of work with Amtrak to capture those pain points.

I just want to stress here that this is not really a punitive effort.

It is not a punitive effort.

It's a partnership program with Amtrak.

And the focus here is across the state, not just those major borrowers.

Another point I'd like to make here with the customer service standards is that if you're a first-time rider, it's important to get your feedback because that first impression really does make a difference.

About 30% of our riders on a monthly basis are first-time riders.

And so it's important that we have that level set, quality of service each and every time.

And if you're an inter-season rider, you know it's important to see what you notice between trips, small and large.

And so what you'll have, how you need access to the survey, is there's a small business card in the board packet with the QR code and a URL link.

You'll be able to either scan that QR code or enter it in on your laptop, any mobile device, and get access to the survey.

That link will remain the same.

So you can go ahead and favorite that.

The book market will of course be available at lunch or at the board meeting should you have any questions about access.

And, you know, that survey is readily available for your onboard experience and at the stations.

So as you can see, the survey platform allows you to take pictures.

So good, bad, and indifferent.

We would love your feedback as you travel across the state.

We've had about just under half the VPRA staff in this program.

over the last year, which is a good feedback.

And it's important to just continually get that real time.

So for next steps here, of course, we need to coordinate with Amtrak and resolve these outstanding items.

This is absolutely a continuous improvement effort where we are updating the questions, adding questions, removing questions, and recently republished the second version of the survey in December.

And, you know, as owners and operators of the Amtrak service, it truly is important to ensure that we are able to turn around these responses and be about anything.

So with that, I would encourage you to take pictures, utilize those free response text boxes, you know, turn those anecdotes into data.

And again, we'll be available at lunch or after the meeting should you'll have any questions.

May I ask you a question, Zach?

Where do passengers get this card?

Oh, okay.

No.

They do help for CSIs or Customer Satisfaction Index.

And so let's just say every 10%

It'll be given a survey, not the same survey, but a similar survey.

I gotcha.

Does VRE have this type of program in place?

It's a good idea.

Terrible.

So I would add one other point to this sort of program.

It is very important for us to collect data.

As a rider, it's easy to pick out what's going wrong or what's not so good, but this is an equally great opportunity to catch folks doing things the right way.

So if the announcements are clear and work really well, if the cafe car had plenty of seating,

whatever the opportunity might be.

So Zach mentioned it earlier, it's not a gotcha, it's a mutual partnership.

I promise you when on board staff here for management that they got a compliment from a survey, they repeat that positively.

So we gather the data and we meet with them on a regular basis.

They've been very responsive.

That's part of the customer service standards agreement that we signed, and we actually rate them on a monthly and quarterly basis on how they're doing, and we set standards on cleanliness, on Wi-Fi, and on 15th and 17th grade.

from Washington, D.C. performance.

It's really well done.

Again, not to channel the stores, but that's all Jeremy.

That Jeremy, yeah.

I did take photos by chance on the train here.

I'll show them to you at lunch, Jeremy.

Thank you, Zach.

Any other questions?

Concerns update?

It's supposed to be delivered at noon.

Okay.

But we'll check.

Hang tight.

So I'm debating what time to make sure we're back.

As everybody can see by the agenda, we're going to break for lunch and then everyone's going to return and go into closed session, but we need everybody to return so that we can read

our agreement in before we go into closed session.

So with that, we are going to go ahead and recess for lunch.

It should be here since it's supposed to be here by noon.

I'm going to ask everybody to be back.

Let's say 12.40.

We will resume and go into closed session when we come back at 12.40.

So with that, we are in recess.

It was good.

which was, you know, that's the important part of the game.

Everybody, we're going to come out of recess.

Back in session.

As I mentioned before, we went on our lunch break.

I move that the Board convene in a closed session pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3711A29 for the discussion of public contracts relating to VPRAs

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you.

Aye.

Any abstention?

Thank you.

We are now moving into closed session.

Thank you.

Hold on one second.

There's a clarification question.

Can you vote no for parts of the budget?

We're doing the budget conversation later.

We're just voting in closed session.

Okay, just want to make sure.

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

Thank you, and for this, we do need a roll call vote to confirm.

With that, Ms. Bushue.

Proof.

Ms. Doersch.

Ms. Drake?

Aye.

Mr.

Flowers?

Aye.

Mr. Jordan?

Aye.

Thank you, Ms. Rhinehart.

Mr. Watkins?

He's absent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is DJ Jordan here.

I don't have any questions.

I'm watching your chat as well.

So hearing none, we will move on to agenda item in open session number 12 revenue sources.

Chair, just a couple of quick minutes.

I attend this slide deck to really just be a point of reference that people can refer back to.

So that being said, I'm going to move through a lot of information very quickly.

So you'll see later when Shannon takes you through the budget, we're using the financial planning window today at $7.75 billion.

This pie chart shows you the breakdown of what makes up the funding sources for that $7.75 billion of its pay.

Also, it's important to note this is from before we started.

Through FY31, we may complete the capital projects program.

There's over 40 different sources of funding and so I'm not going to try to target 40 sources with the slivers.

So I took the liberty to put them into seven different categories and we'll go through each one.

So the first one is our dedicated Virginia Passenger Rail Authority revenues and our enabling legislation.

We were dedicated to certain funds coming from the transportation

Nation Trust Fund.

That's about $170 million a year over the next six years on average.

In addition to that, the other source that considered VPRA funds, there were some legacy rail programs when Passenger Rail Authority was created, and there were balances of funding that moved over about $400 million.

Next slide.

This is actually the detailed

of the actual Transportation Trust Fund, and it shows the major source.

There's a lot of other forms of funding, but these are the major sources of funds that go into the Transportation Trust Fund, and it shows how that broke it down between highway maintenance, what used to be called the transportation trust fund now, comes down, rail gets 7.5%, and then of that 7.5%, we're getting the 93% here at the very bottom.

and that equates to that 170 foot slide.

So our passenger ticket revenues, so showing you in this box envelope with the revenues where you see it's been a significant increase.

We're talking about everyone coming on the very backside of COVID.

And very quickly, we talked about cost recovery earlier.

Historically before COVID, it had been around 70%.

We weren't quite sure whether we'd get back there, but in three years, we were back at 70% off the cover.

And I'll say this, there's been discussion before.

Every few weeks, Jeremy Lau represented earlier.

Jeremy and his team, my team, we meet with Amtrak, and there is a lot of work going into trying to balance the revenues, the fares that we charge, because there's a whole, it's sort of like airline pricing, where it's a tiered structure.

So the fares we charge versus the ridership, and it's a balancing act.

And I will admit, congratulate Amtrak because they have worked very well with us the past couple of years.

They've allowed us to even propose a fare change for just our fare structure in intrastate Virginia, which they very before had been very tight to the best, did not want that sort of partnership.

I would say I think it is more of a partnership today versus us that we're very appreciative of.

So the next piece is $821 million worth of debt.

And we have I-66 inside the Beltway as a source that basically is being allocated by the transportation board

through an agreement for that facility.

There was a flow down agreement that's been signed by NDTC, EDOT, and DRPT, and DRPT, I guess that actually, that agreement actually transfers to us.

The other financing is taking our Amtrak ticket passenger revenues, and that's about $210 million.

The next couple of slides, and we'll talk a little bit more in detail about these two sources.

The I-66 originally was going to be about a billion dollars of proceeds going to our initiative to happen.

After COVID, traffic patterns changed.

We're down to 578 million in our plan today.

The debt will be issued by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

VDOT will lead that effort.

We're working with them.

They've been very collaborative.

We started that effort.

So tier one,

You know, there's several levels of studies for the total and revenues to get to what level of financing is, eventually getting to investment grade.

We've done the Tier 1 study.

We're getting the Tier 2 study, I believe, beginning here in January with PI.

So a lot of work is going to happen.

It's really a two and a half year effort.

We're going to get a credit facility through

Build America Bureau at USDOT, and to go through that process of doing those total and revenue studies, and then the process of working with Bill and me, it's about two and a half years.

So June 27 is our temporary planned time for that.

This debt will not be a liability of this organization.

It will be a liability of the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

It will be financed through the totals off of I-66 inside the belt.

Excellent.

passenger ticket revenue.

So this is an innovative approach to leverage debt.

Our dedicated Commonwealth Rail funds that I spoke about just a moment ago, we're not allowed in our neighboring legislation to leverage those for debt.

So we're not allowed to issue debt against them.

As a result, and the reason for that is the Commonwealth did not want our debt to count against their debt levels.

As a result, when we were putting

National Railway Authority together that the idea came up.

Carving off the passenger revenues and saying, can we take those out to the markets and issue them against them.

And we've done some work with Build America Bureau to see if the facility might do.

And they pretty much said, since we didn't have complete control over the fares, that it probably wouldn't work there.

And so at this point, we're looking at municipal markets.

Can we go to the next slide, please?

So, and I think the biggest thing to say here is when we did this, we put $210 million on our financial plan day one from this source.

We were very conservative.

We only used the six trains that existed at that time, not the 13 trains that you're going to end up with in 2031.

So only the revenues from those six trains were utilized, and it was a very conservative approach.

So when you take all 13 trains, that's going to pay off the revenues.

You could think there's potential room for a lot more than $210 million of passive debt.

That being said, it's very important here.

If we do this, we have to make sure that the dedicated Commonwealth Rail funds can cover our operational costs, the total cost of our equipment, and cover the maintenance costs on all the assets that we've acquired and were built

So that's a very important caveat and we've done a lot of work to define those maintenance costs and those operations so that we can better estimate what is, is it $210 million, is it $300 million?

And another thing I want to say here, I think this is more of a longer term solution for this entity that it's not a one-time, we're going to issue $200 million of debt.

Maybe we issue $100 million of debt in the next,

around 29, I think is our output.

And then we may come back three years later when we're working on, you know, somebody mentioned Appomattox Bridge earlier, maybe in 2033, the revenues from the trains could allow us to issue another 200 million dollars.

So it's a longer term source that may go at several tranches of debt issued over time.

Last point, this is a liability of this organization.

State transportation funding, so not including the I-66 funding we talked about earlier that CTV is in control of.

There's another almost a billion and a half dollars of funding coming from the CTV.

And the main point here really is that they control those allocations.

And as you will hear later, we take our budget to the CTV by February 1st each year.

That's the reason for it.

They're a significant investor.

and some other governmental subjects.

Before we leave here, I do want to mention CMAQ funding has been dedicated for operations.

It had been, gosh, honestly been on the books probably seven years, a portion of it.

And a lot of hard work by my team, legal teams, operations teams to work with.

FRA, FHWA, VDOT, I think over a two-year period, but sort of a landmark type agreement where we're actually using those CMAQ funds to pay for operations of certain trains.

I won't stake my life on it, but I do believe it's one of the first in the country where these funds are being used for inner-city passenger train operations.

I just feel important to say thanks to everybody because that was a monumental effort, a lot of work just even to decide which entity was going to contract with us took a lot of.

Next slide.

Amtrak Capital Contribution, we've talked about this before, it's $942 million.

It's 3.3% of the Phase 1 and Phase 2 required qualified investments.

This schedule shows when they're making funds available to us.

It works basically if they advance us the funds and then we true up based on expenditures.

They advanced about $79 million to us.

So we're trying to catch our expenditures up, but then we'll go back to the schedule.

These are when the funds are available from that.

So important to note there that they've been a good partner working with us too.

Next slide.

Federal funds.

This is actually, when you add in the CMAQ funds, it's over a billion dollars of federal funds.

13 different awards, so a lot of different agreements to work through.

The FRA's still getting their feet on the ground, but they've come through significantly.

I think today, I ended up just under $900 million of that little over a billion is now under contract.

So we've come a long way in the last two years.

and I think we had a meeting the other day, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we thought by the end of this year that we're in, we will have all those 13 awards under contract.

Next slide.

Local contributions, here we have BRE, we had a funding agreement, when we first started out, we had an agreement for them to provide funding, about $193 million, a little bit of pay goes,

with a variation to it.

This does not include the $155 million that they committed to us for the Manassas Line purchase.

So when you add that, VREs contributed about $350 million towards our program.

The District of Columbia item here is about the pedestrian bridge on Long Bridge, and then the NCDOT where

During the engineering we talked about earlier on the Appomattox, basically from Richmond down to the state line, they're providing us a certain amount of funding to do that design work.

I think it's 15% design that we're going to do there.

And last slide.

So just to reiterate, a lot of different funding sources, it's a lot of different

Funding Partners, they all have different rules.

Sometimes they want an agreement, sometimes the CTV is allocated, we're good to go.

So a lot of work going into managing this and then collecting it.

That being said, of that 7.55 billion, we collected 2.1 billion today, and I think that's great.

Generated $70 million investment income.

My team deserves all kinds of work.

They're sitting over

All kinds of tools for that.

It's a lot and it's generated to help us pay for these capital projects.

And lastly, we're always looking for other sources of money.

I'm going to ask a really stupid question.

From the federal perspective,

Virginia looks dysfunctional when it comes to transportation, just by how we're organized.

So you said the CTB gives us money.

The TPP has that money.

And then they have the authority to allocate it as they see fit.

Yeah.

So in most states, you know, you don't have to deal with, usually the Secretary of Transportation is more of a policy person.

somewhat budget, but really more policy.

But in Virginia, when you deal with transportation, the Secretary of Transportation handles, you know, all modes, freight, transit, highway, airport, everything.

And it's just so unusual because that's usually not how the states are, or most states are organized.

Like I think Big Dot owns all the roads unless the county opts out, right?

Yeah, I think they own all the roads unless the county opts out, correct?

It's also important to remember, Richard, to note also too that the CTP is also the receiver of the state's federal highway apportionments too, right?

So what you just described were all the state

No, no, no.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Mr. Pittard, and thank you to your entire team for all their hard work.

All right, as we assume you're here to bring the capital budget before our board so that we can pass it along to the DPP by our February 1st deadline.

So that's a reminder, the two components that the CTV is really going to be looking at and approving are the capital components, so capital projects and capital and operating grants.

They're not going to get our one-year operating budget.

We bring that back to you all in May.

So with that, let's jump into the capital portion of our budget, starting with our high-level view of the financial planning process in the next one.

Thank you.

Okay.

As you guys have heard us say over and over again, this process occurs, well, there's a lot of work going on within capital projects.

our sources.

So we're kind of drawing a line in the sand and saying, hey, at this point in time, these are the changes we're reflecting in these main categories.

So the sources have gone up within this financial planning window from August to January, $13 million.

More good news, we are showing that uses have gone down $35 million.

And what that has done is increased the management reserve combined amount of $48 million.

Starting with the sources.

So this is a really busy slide.

I don't know if you guys notice this.

Accountants really like to reconcile everything and this is a testament to that.

So let me walk you through it.

We have two different timing windows that we're trying to squeeze all this into.

So as you just saw, we're going from August to January for a financial planning window.

However, we're improving the management reserve within that.

So

What we're trying to highlight is in Q1, you've actually approved part of this already.

We came to you and we showed that, hey, revenues increased and we had some changes in uses.

We didn't need as much money for our operations in 24.

You've seen that.

Q2 is really what's changed.

So let's talk through what we're seeing as far as the sources.

So we have an $11 million increase.

Most of that's related to our grant awards.

So we got a CRISI grant on Staples Mill Station.

We got an earmark for Edgerth Planning.

And then we also were able to work with DRPT to reallocate an old grant to be able to use it for sorbet work.

So that was great to be able to put that funding source back into our plan.

So another increase.

If you add up the blue, the sources, that's our $13 million of increase in sources.

The changes in uses, we're going to talk about that on the next slide.

And then what you can see here, that $30 million manager's reserve increase is what you've approved in November.

And then we have another $18 million that we're going to ask you all to approve today.

So now we're done with our reconciliation exercise.

Let's go onto the uses side, which I think everyone is more interested in here.

Okay.

At a high level,

What this is showing is by budget component, what are the overarching changes?

We'd like to classify them this way so you can kind of see what's really changing in the overall plan of the projects.

As you can see, most of what we're seeing is that's net-based budget changes.

This means the project's already in the plan, we're just showing some changes, and that's what we're gonna walk through.

There is one new budget item, obviously it's minor.

We're seeing changes in all the budget components with the exception of I-95 forward.

So on the next slide, thank you, we're gonna go through the capital budget changes.

So first, Western Road corridor, Cambria platform and Radford layover.

As you guys know, DJ mentioned this and my friend mentioned this, we are at final design on this project.

We have refined this cost estimate specifically on the parking lot.

There are additional retaining walls and stormwater drainage that we have to do as part of this project.

So we're updating this to that final design.

The next section and the other capital projects, this is all good news.

So all of the money coming into the plane here to be able to spend relates to grant awards.

So we have that ETRIP station planning, so we're bringing in that earmark so we can go ahead and expend the dollars within the budget.

The next two are related.

They're both at Staples Mills Data Good Repair.

We previously had the match money in this platform improvements line, but we need to move it down so we can expend it within that specific project line.

We also brought in the FRA money to that line, bringing it to that $13 million budget.

Last section here for the capital portion is the capital and operating grants, really minor changes here.

So we have the VRE passenger grants.

As you know, we administer these grants on behalf of VDOT for VRE.

So some minor changes were reflected.

And then now that the NS agreement is executed, we had to update the NS track access fees to align to that agreement.

So that rounds out the capital budget changes.

So the last section here, this is really what's driving the decrease that you saw in the uses.

So, as you know, we're not bringing the one-year operating budget to you right now, but in order to do our financial planning process, you have to forecast out the operations because it's a huge chunk of what we expend at VPRA.

So, the changes look significant.

You are familiar with most of these.

So, what's driving that $51 million decrease is our significant underspend of budget in 24, which you guys already researched.

So, the Amtrak operations, that decrease is related to the pre-02 and 9 methodology that was updated.

So we were able to, it was a boon for us, we were able to remove that money from the budget, freeze it up to spend it somewhere else.

Similarly, the operations administrative costs, when we did our 24 budgets, we did not assume we'd have a cost allocation plan in place.

And then we did.

So we were able to appropriately take those expenditures and put them onto the capital projects where the level of effort was occurring.

And so that ended up being less money spent on operations here.

The other one I'll highlight is

the VRE access payments, and working with VRE and Mark Schofield over there, we did adjust these access fee payments to align the current service plans.

We were holding some old for-risk centers, so we went ahead and refined that.

That did reduce the amounts that we pay over this kind of long financial tiny window.

That is capital budget for this year.

I mean, obviously we went over operations, so if you go to the next slide, that puts us here.

So January 16th, we are gonna ask that the board recommend the capital budget be sent to the CTV to meet our deadline.

Diana, you speak really fast.

Like trying to absorb, make sure I don't have a question before we move forward.

Ms. Doersch, did you have a question?

Are we looking for a motion to- Yes, we're looking for a motion to approve.

FY26 capital budget for submission to CTB.

So moved.

Second.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Yes, I'm coming for Ms. Rhinehart and Mr. Cardwell votes aye and Mr. Jordan votes aye.

Motion carries.

We're going to move on to the next part of this presentation.

I'll slow down with this one.

No, you're doing great.

All right, so let me go to the next slide for me now.

Before we get into approving the management reserve opportunity, we just wanted to quickly reorient what the purpose of the management reserve is.

We've got new places.

We also approved the policy back in August 2023.

So we just want to go over this super quick.

So what we are very proud of here at the APRA is that we have a balanced financial plan.

We have enough sources to actually fund all the capital projects.

It's an important process for us to keep that in balance.

So what we did right on the onset is we set aside and we have some sort of best practice to make sure that we can continue to fund these projects and we don't end up where we can't complete something.

So that's what we're showing here.

We can balance the sources and uses.

Inevitably, something is going to come up, right?

So there's going to be a high likelihood that that useless number is going to need to increase.

So we have that unallocated funding that can come in and cover that to make sure that we can still complete all these required projects.

Similarly, on the sources side, it could be that, like Steve mentioned, we're doing a lot of refinement on that debt.

We could find out we can't actually issue it for what we need, or there's other changes with the CRF because of taxes.

So you may be using that unallocated funding to make up for a source as well.

So it's just keeping that kind of that scale and balance

It's the purpose of the Management Reserve.

Within the policy, we also put guardrails on about how we want to spend it.

And when I say we, I mean you.

It's your reserve.

You guys are the ones that dictate how we can spend it.

So we have the priorities here at the bottom.

First is operations.

That's what we're here to do.

We've got to run the trains.

Money will always be allocated there first.

Second, we highlighted the required projects and how the required projects have been defined is these projects, once they're completed,

bring new service to the Commonwealth.

So I-95 quarter, you got phase one and phase two.

Those are the required portions of those.

And then also Cambria Project out in Weston Rail had extension to New River Valley.

So that's what we consider the required projects.

And then all of that feels good.

We get to a point where we're confident in the numbers.

That's where you can do new projects, things that you don't necessarily have to do, nice to have.

So that's how we've structured the management reserve.

We have done this because on the next slide, you're gonna have to skip through some animations on this, sorry.

On the next slide,

What you'll see is that the balance is pretty high.

This is the highest balance we're going to ask you to approve.

However, there's a lot of work going on in those required projects to make sure we can fund them.

But we do anticipate that probably at the next board meeting, we're going to be reducing this to make sure we can continue to cover all the costs of those projects.

So that's the end of this slide here.

I just want to add one thing, and Shannon, you said it, but I want to put a finer point on it.

This is a management reserve.

That's the Ford's reserve.

So if there's nothing that we can do, can spend on this without your approval.

We can't just say, oh, I think all the projects are funded.

I've got a new project.

Then just, I think it's following up on what Steve said, I want to make sure.

Tomorrow, VRE's board approves $155 million for us.

That would be added to management?

No, it's paid over a series of years.

The way the current agreement is structured is paid over a series of years.

This is officially executed, that's when we'll bring it in and you'll see it in the next update.

Oh, so it'll be a lump sum in the reserve.

Relatively, if, you know, we vote on to approve this.

If we didn't approve this, where would the $48 million go?

I'm looking to the lawyer.

I know, speaking of policy, I don't, it wouldn't be allocated anywhere.

Thank you, Ms. Perry.

At the risk of going too far in this, the reason why we do this is, to your point, Ms. Doersch, if you all didn't approve that $18 million, the proposal would be that one of you would say, hey, instead of adding that $18 million to reserve, I'd like you to add it to this, or I'd like this study to take place.

I mean, it would have to be allocated somewhere.

It wouldn't just send the ether.

But the reason we bring it to you to approve is for that, hey, if you've got a different or better use for it,

Are you looking for a motion?

Thank you.

Yep.

Do I have a motion to approve the management reserve?

So moved.

Second.

Thank you.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any abstentions?

Yes, can you tell me who seconded it?

Mr.

Flowers.

Thank you.

I just, I wasn't, yeah, sorry, Ms. Doersch.

Mr. Jordan and Mr. Cardwell have both voted aye.

I believe Mrs. Rhinehart is still.

Thank you.

Moving on to agenda item 14.

I'm chair of the items.

I'm going to go to the next slide, please, Jonathan.

The three items under this that we are waiting for people.

The first one is with regard to the Franconia to Lorton Third Track project.

This is a project that has been in our capital for a long time.

It is fully funded.

It's over $300.

All this when we went through the Alexander Fourth Track project.

We have a pan of them in a project authorization notice with CSX.

CSX is doing this project for us.

We agree we have a pan within this authorization notice that takes us through the design work.

Once we are comfortable with the design and they are comfortable with the design, we then do a project addendum, which allows us to, if you go to the next slide, allows us to have them do the early works.

Those were just pictures of where the project is.

It's a six mile project and we've all been through this before.

What it allows us to do is you all approve the addendum, you authorize me to sign it, and then once that addendum is signed, it allows them to start procuring the construction folks, it allows them to do some of the early work to include tree clearing, etc.

And it just sets the roles and responsibilities.

It's a straightforward agreement, it was sent out ahead of time.

We're asking for you to authorize me to sign that and actually begin the project.

It's fully funded in the budget.

We can't, if we were going to spend any more than what was in the budget, we'd obviously have to come back to you all.

It's a project that right after fourth track, you'll see construction moving on.

Any questions?

Do I have a motion to approve the Franconia to Lorton third track project addendum?

Second?

Second by a second.

Thank you, Mr.

Flowers.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Any abstentions?

Mr. Jordan is LA.

Ms. Rhinehart.

Mr. Carter.

I haven't got Mr. Carter's votes yet, but that's all right.

He got it.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

The second request we have for you is to reauthorize the VRE funding agreement.

In August, at the August meeting, we presented the whole Manassas Line deal.

Part of that Manassas Line deal was a committee

to give them certain rights that we talked about in August, you all gave me the authorization to sign that agreement.

However, it has not been approved by the VRE board yet, and our bylaws clearly say that any authorization you give me lasts for 90 days or past 90 days.

So what I'm asking you to do is just reauthorize that same agreement.

Terms haven't changed.

It's everything we've talked about.

VRE board is considering it tomorrow.

Thank you, all in favor?

All opposed?

Any abstentions?

Yes, Stel, you want to check the votes for our remote participants?

Mr. Jordan, yes.

Thank you.

And again, for our remote participants at any time, if you want to unmute yourself and ask a question, please do not hesitate to do so.

You know, we make these decisions, but then we never know the outcomes until four months later.

By then, I kind of forget, with all due respect.

Is there any way that we can be informed, like make sure, you know, everybody comes forward with their money tomorrow, so it's Friday?

Is that your board meetings on a Friday?

We can do that.

And we'll do that tomorrow and then you'll also see it in the January Executive Director's Report, assuming it happens.

And then the third thing we're asking for is the Long Bridge child package.

I was supposed to brief you on this, but Mr. Kostner came to me and said, you're just going to be turning over your left shoulder and saying, did I say that right, John?

Did I say that right, John?

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for giving us some time at the end of a very long one session.

We'll move through it quickly.

Very excited.

This is good news.

We are presenting today on Long Bridge Self contract package that we just as a quick reminder, this is my court duties.

I will present on just a quick reaction.

what we're doing.

Mr. Kostner will take the procurement activities and my question of the council will go through the core tenets of the contract.

However, it's a good day.

We're in a good place.

We've spent a lot of our time and thought getting to

and Long Bridge South package, just a quick primer.

It is, it encompasses items one, two on the slide there, which are the main bridge crossing elements across the Potomac River.

It starts in the Arlington side in Virginia and extends to the Long Bridge Park there where it touches down that purple bar.

So it is a double track rail bridge.

Pedestrian Bike Bridge.

Just as a quick reminder, of course, we've started this process, the formal RFP process, since February, and John will reiterate that.

And we're here today, where we are briefing the board, January 16th, looking for a full contract.

Thank you for pointing out Abutment B and talking about its importance.

Absolutely.

So Michael, thank you for that.

I didn't want to wax boy, I can, but that is a key critical element.

So for our project, we begin, if you consider south to Richmond, page left and north to Union Station, page right.

The Abutment B that Michael describes is on the page right.

on the NPS that we're making use of, and what's critical about that is there is a contractual

obligation on the contractor for the Long Bridge South package to have that allotment completed by a milestone date because it's critical to the interface with the Long Bridge North package where they must meet and join so that we have a continuous corridor.

Of course, we bid the projects to manage their various risks via two contracts, but in essence, it's one continuous corridor.

So that element has been addressed in our contract.

Thank you.

Thanks.

You mentioned it's been a long, exciting and rewarding procurement process.

I actually was looking at the pictures on a fun note.

When we started this back in January of 2023, we did a

Industry Day, and I did not have a beard.

When I was showing some of my team and my wife, next time you see me, I might not have a beard.

But we did just want to remind the floor, some of y'all have been along with us for the whole ride.

Like I said, it's been a long and exciting and rewarding procurement.

You know, we've been doing board briefings as we progressed along with the procurement.

You know, it started back in 2023 when we were updating the board on just the project itself.

At that time, we were looking for your approval when we were awarding the PMSS contract to help us start this procurement.

And it's just along the way, as we've been progressing, we've just been updating the board.

So we just wanted to drop some reminders in here.

Some of you have been with us, some joined later.

If you recall the last board meeting in November of 2024 behind closed doors, we went into greater detail about the procurement and the preferred proposal.

And we shared with y'all some of the details.

And at that time as well, we did remind you that we would come to the board today seeking approval.

So we just wanted to provide a recap of this long and exciting procurement process for Long Bridge South.

To get into some of the details, a quick high level reminder of what we talked about in some of those updates.

It was a two-step procurement.

We did the RFQ, where we identified and shortlisted qualified firms.

That was back in 2023.

We also had the RFP, which we provided to the shortlisted firms, and that allowed them to submit their price and technical proposals, and that was in 2024 in February.

VPRA was lucky.

We received compliant proposals from each of the shortlisted firms.

One of those was a joint venture comprised of Trumbull Corp., Fade S&B USA Construction, and Bagman Heavy Civil.

They go by the joint venture name of Long Bridge Rail Partners, and they are the preferred proposer.

We also had a compliant proposal from a joint venture, Archer Western Trailer Brothers, and that was comprised of Archer Western Construction LLC and Trailer Brothers Incorporated.

Now I just want to put a note here for the preferred proposer, Long Bridge Rail Partners.

They are a joint venture comprised of Trumbull,

and then it's FAY S&B USA Construction.

Now I noticed this morning that you will see in certain materials they have a business marketing name of FAY S&B USA Construction and if approved in some marketing materials and if there was any press releases you may see that name but the actual entity is Joseph P. FAY Company and that will be what you see in the resolution and the actual agreement itself.

We did want to remind the board today as well, if the board approves, VPRA will be looking to award the resulting design-build agreement to the preferred proposer, which is the joint venture of the Long Bridge Rail Partners.

And as a reminder, we will pay a stipend of 1.5 million to the unsuccessful team.

All right, thank you.

Okay, so a design-build agreement that the board will be asked to award to the preferred proposer, and John just went over.

So what are some of the key features of the design-build agreement?

Well, first of all, everybody who learned about the north package progressive design-build agreement structurally, it's very similar.

The real key difference between the progressive design-build on north and the design-build here is here we have an actual lump sum price on the day we award the contract,

We did not, as you heard earlier, we go through a de-risking process to in the past 60% design, which is when we use an independent cost estimator on north and we negotiate the final price from the construction contract on north.

Here is a more traditional design and build agreement where we have today a lump sum price from the winning offeror that is hardwired into the contract.

And that's the price we expect to pay for construction

That price can go up.

How can it go up?

It can go up in two different ways.

One, just like on our Long Bridge North contract, we have 17 defined relief events, 17 tightly defined relief events.

If one of those things happens, a protective design builder, they can come back to us and ask for more contract time and for additional compensation.

That's different than the industry.

In the industry, typically a design-build agreement says anything beyond the design-builders control, the design-builder can come back to the owner and ask for additional money.

But we've highlighted to this board before, when we do our design-build agreements, we take a different approach.

We try to tightly define those scenarios where design-builders come back and ask for additional money.

The other way you can go up is, you've heard this already today, there's an 180-day scope validation period starting when we issued a notice to proceed, which should be in a week or two after we sign the contract.

There's an 180-day period where the contractor gets to go onsite, validate the documents that they're provided during the procurement, validate the field conditions, find all the things that they could not have known about during the procurement.

the things that weren't baked into this $695 million price.

They get one chance to come back to us and say, here are all the things we found.

Again, they have to be things they could not have known about before.

So we'll likely have a claim at the end of that 180-day period that we'll have to negotiate with the design builder, which could make the lump sum price go up.

The beauty of this regime is after the scope validation period, the risk flips.

Design building can no longer come back to us and say, oh, the field condition is different than what we learned about in procurement.