Board of Directors Meeting   5/21/2026

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

I am going to call our meeting to order.

I'm going to try to be as lively as Lamar usually is.

He could make it up here this morning.

So we are 1800 diagonal route.

on the third floor in Chesapeake Potomac Road.

If we need to call 911, Mary Stealth, you're assigned to that.

Secondary, Lord Farmer, DJ, CPR.

When we have meetings, DJ is always the first one to raise his hand for CPR, that's why he's assigned here too.

I'm assigned to meet first responders, Michael West, Mr. Westerman, General Counsel's secondary, medium first aid kits.

Matt Jett, I'm gonna ask you to grab that.

over in the King Conference Room.

Stairwells and fire extinguishers, stairwells and bathrooms.

Stairwells on both sides of the elevator, the bathrooms are both on the far side of the elevator.

You need to use those.

If you do need to use the restroom, there is some key cards out here, the orange key cards, you need to take them with you to be able to get into the restroom and get back into our office suite.

If we need to evacuate, we will use the stairwells.

Luckily, we're only on the third floor, we're only a couple floors down.

We'll meet at Ryan Kurtz

Duke, across from Whole Foods.

So just follow us in front of the Fidelity over in Rinehurst and Duke.

Make sure the person sitting to your left is present.

If there is an active shooter, flee, hide, fight.

And for those pretending remotely, please be aware of your surroundings.

For those of us here, be careful of the chairs.

They might pinch you on the table.

So unless I'm missing anything, DJ gave me a look that might have missed something.

We're going to pass it on back to the chair.

Well, good morning.

Welcome everyone again.

It's great to be here.

The last meeting we had, I think it was three days into the job.

So now I'm a few months into the job, but it's great to be here.

I know we have a lot that is going on.

So just a reminder to please silence all electronic devices if you have any of those.

I also just want to thank VPRA and in particular Mike McLaughlin.

Earlier this week, the Commonwealth Transportation Board was up in Alexandria for our monthly meeting and Mike and some other VPRA staff did a great job of giving CTV board members a tour of the construction work that's underway.

So thank you for that.

So with that, why don't we move to do a roll call for attendance.

So Mariia, I'll turn to you.

Ms. Choe?

I know Dallas is representing Ms. Charlie Day.

Ms. Doersch?

Here.

Mr.

Mr.

Ms. Lawrence?

Ms. Mitchell?

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Rhinehart?

Here.

Mr. Watkins?

Next up, we have for public comment, no one has signed up to us.

I want to see, I know we have a few visitors in the room.

There's anyone who wanted to provide public comment?

All right, hearing none, we will move forward.

I want to first mention before we kind of get too much further down the agenda, we know that there are some board members that have some schedule issues.

So we're going to do a slight adjustment to our agenda.

We are going to move item number 11 to happen in March and we will

Move our budget discussion to happen before we break for lunch so we can accommodate taking action needed and try to move judiciously through the various other items on the agenda.

But with that, I want to see if we have a if there's a motion to approve the January 22nd, 2026, VPRA meeting minutes.

And is there a second?

Second.

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no.

And any abstentions?

All right.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, everybody.

I'm going to go through this quickly because really the important thing we need to get through today, we're going to also be a little bit repetitive.

You kept the executive director in the same format as we always do.

And it's really, I happened to just by accident, look at one of the first executive director reports we did about five years ago.

And the way this report is involved is really important because we try to be responsive every stream back.

And I said, I'd go through this quickly.

Now I'm being very rewarding.

But, um,

Look, we're going to go through this quickly.

We're going to talk more during the construction update report about some of the progress that we're making.

The budget's going to talk about a lot of the finance stuff.

So we kept this in the same format, but I'm going to go through it quickly because I don't want to be too much.

The recent updates, we

We want to either get all of the Alexander folks and all the Richmond folks together in one place to talk about strategic planning to do, I mean, team coaching and development, and we did that earlier in May.

A highly, briefly with my folks, we'd be doing a survey afterwards and did a whole sector of persuading skills.

So we continued to grow and evolve as a workforce.

That was, again, very well received.

Also, I was asked by

FRA to speak on a rail technology summit.

I was there with another member of state support service, Patricia Grinford, Maine, and then the FRA was there.

And then as you can see, folks from Amtrak.

So it really shows that Virginia is seen as a leader in state passenger rail and accentuates the pressure that we have on us to continue moving forward.

We continue to have successes.

All right, I want to spend a little bit of time on Shenandoah Valley Trail.

So you all likely remember back in the fall of 2025, we were asked to orchestrate an agreement with the Shenandoah Valley Rail.

It's just sort of a stick and nail rail corridor out west that has not been used for anything of note in years.

Norfolk Southern is looking to sell it, and there was an agreement

and Shenandoah Valley Trail in Shenandoah Valley.

And we had come very, very close to an agreement with them where we would facilitate money that's not ours being used to purchase the trail.

They would own the trail and they would have to maintain the trail.

We would oversee that transaction and then they would do a rail and a trail

This is a good thing for us, we thought, because it mitigated any risk that we had, but it also allowed us to gain access to that rail for the future.

Candidly, that future is not 2030.

That future is not 2040.

That future is probably 2050.

We will continue to expand, and once it gets out to Gainesville,

It's a nice connection front-royal where we could turn the corner and have passenger train service right down to JMU Harrison Burgos.

So it's a good deal for us at that point.

You all approved an amendment to our budget to accept that money from the CTV and then pass it on to this Battlefield Foundation.

Unfortunately, when it went to the CTV, they made a change and they said, look, if there are other foundations or other people that think they can do similar, make similar progress,

VPRA should do a competition and determine which of these proposals is best.

CTB asked us to do a competition.

That goes against our bylaws, our rules.

It wouldn't be a competition, especially since we're about 90% done in agreement with the Battlefield Foundation.

So at the next CTB meeting, CTB called it back and said, you know what?

We're going to continue with the public process.

We're going to have B. have public meetings.

have the community's input and then determine the path forward.

That path forward may continue to be giving the money to us and going to the foundation.

It may be another path forward, but the CTB and VDOT are currently deciding that.

The bottom line is we don't have this line item in our budget.

We never accepted the money and we'll see what the CTB does.

We still feel very strongly that that is a good future opportunity for passenger rail.

The legislation that the General Assembly passed on this quarter said you need to not preclude future rail use, so we feel like it's protected.

But we, VPRA, are in a waiting mode, and I wanted to update you for this because we have voted for the budget amendment.

You likely read the budget and said, hey, where's that amendment?

And so we're waiting for those public meetings to continue.

They've had three so far.

I believe the third one was the last week of April.

We're waiting to see next step fronts who need that.

That is the update.

I think there were, and this is my personal opinion, I'm not speaking to the VPRA, there were a lot of folks that felt like there should be a competition.

And then there were a lot of folks that felt like, well, no, this company, this, this foundation has been around a long time.

They were created to do just this, and they're going to get the communities what they want.

But as I think everyone saw, there were a lot of public comments and the public was concerned that they wanted you to get a trail, a trail with a

If I may, DJ, since I was at that CTV meeting, a big point that the Secretary was making in that meeting is that I think there had been an earlier commitment that VDOT was going to do public hearings and there would be a public process to get input.

That process didn't really happen because things moved more quickly.

And so the Secretary has consistently made it clear of he's not opposed to this project moving forward, but he is opposed to not doing public engagement.

And so it was really to say, let's take a break.

Let's ensure that the public participation process that we committed to as a state previously does play itself out.

And then we can come back after that process has happened to determine the pathway to move forward.

And so it really was, I think,

Some members of the CTV felt like we should just move forward.

Like time is of the essence.

Let's go quickly.

Others felt like, nope, that makes sense.

We should honor the commitment that we previously said as a Commonwealth we would do to have VDOT do those hearings.

And again, I think feeling like that was VDOT's commitment and responsibility earlier.

So it made more sense for VDOT than VPRA to be the lead for doing that since that was in place.

And so that was, I think, some of the tension I picked up in that meeting was like, should we keep moving forward or should we pause for public involvement?

The public involvement process, they have had several meetings and that is going to be moving forward.

So I think everyone shares a desire to make sure that process plays out, not delay things forever, to make a decision to come forward and move that.

So I know

Well, that's good to hear because that's one of the reasons I couldn't vote for it.

It just came out so quickly.

And the local officials were completely blindsided by it.

And, you know, they wanted the process to continue.

So that's good to know.

Any other questions?

Okay, update on our FY26 organizational goals.

We're going to talk more about this later, but we continue to be on track for ridership and revenue.

Even with the service reductions, we found that the trains are really, really crowded.

I'd love to say that that's all because of the great work that VPRA is doing, and look, VPRA, the team is doing great work, but a lot of that has to do with gas being over $4 a gallon, and people don't want to spend money on gas, so they're more likely to take the train.

Historically, you'll find that as gas prices go up, train ridership goes up as well.

But ridership and revenue, we're still in really good shape, even with good service.

Long Bridge continues to move forward on schedule, and you see we pretty significantly hit and exceeded a lot of those goals.

As you go across the river, either on the train or in your vehicle, you can see we are moving quickly, and as you can see, we've got a lot more videos and pictures coming up later.

Key milestones for other projects, we could talk previously about the bypass,

Challenge, and we have made the determination that we are not going to have the shoot fly sub-base completed by August.

We've had some delays because of utilities and we'll talk more about those later as well.

In particular, jet fuel pipeline that goes along that and we've

struggling the CSX and with the kind of Morgan to get that moved.

We feel like we have broken that log jam and we're moving it forward quickly.

But with the time we've lost, we are working with the contractor to try to communicate under that 10 month loss.

But there's not really for us to get that out of state.

So we are going to miss that, that goal.

Thankfully, we did get the fourth track construction started and we did get Franconia and Talorton, or we're on track to get Franconia and Talorton bid out by the end of August.

Those are in good shape.

And then the other update is the platform for New River Valley.

That concrete will not, the pouring has started, but it will not be completed by the end of June.

That was a pretty aggressive date.

Good news is we're still

on schedule to start service in 2027.

That schedule is not changing, but we're not going to get that done.

So there's one where we made an aggressive goal.

We tried to push ourselves.

We tried to push on each other.

We didn't hit it.

We were hoping.

Yes.

Let me answer your question.

Yes.

We started the concrete pouring.

It will not be completed by June.

June was a very aggressive date.

Norfolk Southern didn't expect to get it done by then, but we were trying to have them get it done.

They said it was a possibility.

Now it's not a possibility.

Total project is still right on schedule.

The project end date is right on schedule and getting service to our friends.

Mike, you looked at me funny.

No?

Okay, good.

All right, so that's where we are at 26 organizational goals.

We've actually started with our staff.

pulling together what the 27 goals are going to look like.

And as we've done in the past, we'll bring those to you in the opposite time.

Any questions on goals?

Okay, here's where I'll start to go very quickly.

Passenger service updates continues to be good news.

The ridership, as we saw in January, when we came to buses, you see the kind of ship went down, but it continues to be on track with what we've seen in the past.

The buses have been really a big success.

They were so successful, in fact, that after January came, we had people in Richmond saying, hey, we want a bus too, so we added two buses to Richmond.

They are very well utilized, highly utilized, so that's a good news story.

Here, you see the ridership for the four different routes, and then in the bottom right, you see the express bus ridership pretty much as expected or higher than expected, so

It's broken down route by route.

You've got all this information.

No real surprises from what you've seen in the last couple of months in the off.

Additionally, in the interest of not being repetitive, that's we on our operation services team is willing to do a presentation that what we looked at in this course, I'll just call it the journey presentation.

It's not available.

So we need seven.

She's going to do.

And here you see a little more about the buses.

You see the ridership on the buses.

You've seen how we're doing.

The big story is that just like you've seen over the last few years, our ridership per train out there is higher than the states that we compare ourselves to.

So it continues to show that in Virginia, people, if you've got a train, people get on it.

Really is positive towards Long Bridge.

When we go from what's currently six trains to 13, you're going to see these ridership numbers continue

Customer Service Standards, this continues to be watched by all of the other states because we're the only state that has the customer service standards agreement with Amtrak.

As the chart on the bottom shows you from the beginning of time and then it goes down as time progresses, you see the first line across the number of reds versus the number of greens is very high.

Now we've got all the greens except for one, so it shows that Amtrak folks are paying attention to it and exploring high.

which means that our customers are getting the service that they're paying for.

On the cost recovery, we've talked about this the last couple of months, 94% is incredibly high, but it's artificially high because last year when we finished the year, our capital project allocation allocates way too much to capital and we're going to fix that and you'll see it fixed in the budget.

I'm happy to answer any questions if folks have them.

And then here's the operations by route through March because we're still the 21st, we don't have the final date of April date.

Okay, capital project update, I'm gonna turn over to Mike, but we've talked a lot about the rapid pace with which we are moving forward.

You see the picture here, this is of Long Bridge North.

That's the tressel that's being built over the Washington Channel.

Our internal team, this is just folks that are being their employees.

I said, you know, it'd be nice to show the board a video.

And I said this like a Friday afternoon at two o'clock in Monday.

They said, hey, take a look at this and see if you like, yeah, it's your performance time here, it's really been good.

Paul Internal has literally done over a weekend our ability to be hired on the floor.

for DRPT and VDOT along the CTV members who are doing our district hearing.

And there have been a lot of compliments to VPRA that have come up, particularly those we had in the new river valleys.

Folks very excited about that progress and the pace of the construction that's underway.

Folks are excited about Roanoke and the station redevelopment opportunities around there.

And so it's just been exciting, whether it's been in Hampton Roads

out in Roanoke or other parts around the state where folks are really watching what's happening and are excited about that work that's underway.

So just wanted to relay that and kind of report from the field as we've been up and about.

Mike.

We, as DJ said, we are consistent with our EDR every month.

We put it on our website.

But when we have board meetings, we also have construction update reports.

So I'm going to skip through a lot of these because some of the good folks in the back of the room are going to come up in a little bit and discuss them.

I do want to point out, though, we have been having Long Bridge public meetings.

It's been well received.

And we are honest when we're out there.

We tell them what we can and can't do.

And that has been well received out there in the area.

One thing I do want to point out came up in the finance committee meeting.

Our chair did ask about our spend to date.

We didn't have the data right in front of us at the Finance Committee meeting.

As you can see, we've already spent on Long Bridge North, $275 million.

Now, a lot of that is the activities you see in the water.

Also, you have things like insurance and bonding and mobilization payments that are big upfront payments that are being made.

But these numbers are a lot bigger than they were in previous years.

So I just want to point that out because this did come up at the Finance Committee meeting.

So thank you.

Next slide.

And again, for all these, we're going to have construction update reports also with some videos, I'll show you in a few minutes.

Long Bridge South, the big part here is the test piles that we're going to show you a video on in a little bit.

And again, you see that actual 81 million spent on Long Bridge South, again, being the, sorry, I mentioned Long Bridge North, that's the work at Main Avenue, and this is the work over the Potomac.

I'll change the report track again, we'll come to the construction update report, but this is the area from

just about a half mile south of your seminary yard and Telegraph Road all the way out to where Long Bridge begins at the aquatic center.

And these numbers I should keep in mind are from March.

A lot of activity happening in April and May.

So these numbers will look a lot higher.

And I think the next one that can come off, I can guarantee you more than 2.6 million has been spent for anyone who's looked out the window and seen the construction cranes in Dallas, you can confirm that

This is numbers from a couple months ago before the big construction activities have happened.

Next slide.

The bypass, we're going to talk about this again later on today.

Again, also $199 spent this year to date.

And this year, this year meeting the fiscal year.

So these are July 1st through the end of June.

So we are coming up toward the end of the fiscal year.

Next slide.

Franklin & Lorton Third Track.

This is a project that will be going to procurement

Hopefully this summer CSX will be releasing the procurement.

So a lot of that money will be the $11.4 million spent so far is design money spent.

CSX, we're working with CSX closely.

This is intertwined with the Franconia Bypass Project.

Some construction activities have happened though.

Up here we call CP Beltway, which is north of the Franconia Station that CSX is basically in the groundwork for.

of some signal work that's happening, signal towers that will be going up.

We don't really provide oversight.

We do it with them, yes.

New River Valley, again we talked about these already mentioned it and we'll probably be up here later to talk about that.

I was out there a couple weeks ago and I was before that I was out there a couple months ago.

It is amazing to see the amount of work that happens just when you go out every month or two.

A couple things I do want to point out here that are not in the construction updates report.

These are two projects that, oh sorry, the Rowan Yard project is a project that has to happen for

Service to happen in New Bern Valley.

We need to fix the work.

We need to get a mainline track through Roanoke Yards.

So that is a project that we need as a precursor to, and that we'll be finishing up, we believe later in 2026, time frame Rob's in the back room nodding affirmatively, yes.

The other project, Nolks and Wick Calvertine, is a seven mile double track south of Manassas.

They'll provide a lot of fluidity between Culpeper and Manassas.

That doesn't have to be done for the New Bern Valley work to happen, but still an important project.

Next slide.

Rob's going to talk about the siding projects, especially D, E, F, and C. Siding A, though, is a project that's coming first.

And for those Fredericksburg people, they just conveniently, for me, have to be sitting next to each other.

The actual road, not the train station.

And our director of planning, Christine Pix, has been meeting with our PAMPO TAC

Technical Advisory Committees, and others, to let them know that, to the various folks in the fan folder, that that road get closed, there'll be detours and so on and so forth.

And we'll continue to communicate to you about that.

That, if people recall the Leon Road Bridge, in some ways it's its own project, it's the same project, but we had to go out for a different procurement for the road work, whereas we did the procurement for the road work and CSX is doing the procurement for the track work.

Next slide.

And again, these are the siting projects.

So this is all related to siting A. I mentioned the road work and kind of got ahead of myself already.

So you have the track work, you have the Leland Road, and you also have, so in areas like Stafford and Fairfax, when the utilities need to move further agreements with CSX, we are working with them and spreading and doing the work for them.

because we have the capability to do so so they can continue to do what they need to do.

And they're paying us back for this.

This is money they're paying us back for.

And that's also the case in Fairfax County as well.

And again, Ron could talk about all these sightings further down.

I guess my question is for these preparements.

CFS is handling the procurement.

So do they use audited FRA rates?

How is that?

So we do all the environmental work and a lot of the public relations and all that work.

So we're very intertwined with CSX.

So CSX does go to their bench for design work.

And we notify the board before CSX.

We're going to talk about that later on today with Franconia Lorton.

Jessica talked about that, how they're going out there.

We're going to be keeping you informed.

When these get to the point of going into construction, we're going to be updating you more and more.

Most of these, all these projects here are just entering 30% design.

These side of the project.

So on some projects, if there's federal money, there are flow downs from the grant that CSX has to comply with.

And if there's not federal money, then they don't.

So we've got to watch that very closely.

And that's when we talk about the budget, there's the fundability of the funds.

Now, CSX obviously has a bunch of unions that work for them.

So they've got agreements that they've got to

And that is on some of these projects, especially, I believe, like Siding Sea, I believe, which is, is not, it helps only Amtrak and freight trains, it doesn't have to be a re-turbatory.

Projects like that might tend to have more Amtrak money.

Next slide.

Richmond Area Projects, I want to point out how all here at Richmond are a labor facility.

We did receive 59 from CVTA.

Mariia, I believe you were the first ones to let us know we received that money.

Thanks to a gentleman from CTV as well, Mr. Davis, that helped us with that.

And we're also applying, there'll be a slide later, some of these projects we are applying for federal money as well.

And we're in the midst, we should find out in the next month or so, on money for Richmond Rail Facility, for Stanton Station,

and so on and so forth.

Also do want to point out, as I pointed out in Finance Committee, that the Richmond to Raleigh grant has finally been obligated by FRA.

North Carolina's lead on that, we are joint applicants, but for projects like Max River Bridge, that actually is kind of a big deal because it's our first chance of getting a look at what the scope would be for that Max River Bridge.

Right now, it's a single track.

That's the only single track in a two-track area.

It impacts Norfolk, it impacts trains down in North Carolina.

We have a staffer dedicated to working with North Carolina DOT and also the VDOT so well, because there's a lot of interface with I-85 especially in this area.

So that's another one I wanted to point out this page.

So it's good news that that conceptual engineering, if you are, has been kicked off and they have a deadline to finish by first quarter of 2027 with the conceptual engineering.

So we can get an initial cost estimate of not just projects like Atlantic River Bridge, but the whole

75 plus miles of Richmond to Raleigh S-Line project.

Again, for those who aren't familiar, this would be more along the I-85 route.

Currently, the route to Raleigh goes along 95, then it kind of cuts back northwest.

It's not the most convenient route.

This would make it more competitive with car travel.

Other capital projects, a lot of thoughts.

Another one I want to point out.

I know Dallas is here from VRE.

That is the last mile, if you will.

of our dedicated eight miles of passenger rail, two-track passenger rail corridor.

So that's a very important one, one that we need to finish, that uniformed bridge and alligator four-track are done and other projects are done.

If a lot of fine project isn't done, we don't get to add, go up to 13 Amtrak trains, we don't get to add weekend trains in VRE.

And as the project has a lot of FTA money on it, VRE and Dallas were working on this before VPRA existed,

and they have gotten to the point where they're in procurement.

So we can't say too much about it, I think, right?

Because we're in procurement, but they want to point out this important project moving far along.

And as you can see, they have some proposals due later this month.

Newington Railroad Bridge is a part of the, for a budget we keep it separate, but it's going to be part of the Franconia-Lorton procurement.

And one we're working closely with VDOT and CSX on.

I already mentioned the Fairfax County Utilities, so thank you.

And this is the summary.

A lot of these numbers are already in the individual slides.

So I was going to pass by this as a summary of your data actuals.

Same with the Western Rail projects.

Railway acquisitions, we talked to you about this a couple of years ago.

This was, we feel like we're at a good point here.

We had the survey work that we did, which was different from the original valve maps, valuation maps we had with CSX.

So we trued up the quarter, if you will.

So we feel a lot better about this now.

We are in the midst of completing a lot of acquisitions.

So when you get to that point, you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Next slide.

So grant status update, you can see what is currently out there.

Now we did apply for 174 million for the Occoquan River third track.

That's not just the Occoquan River Bridge, it's four plus miles of track as well.

So from

Almost Lorton Road all the way down through Woodbridge Station.

This will give us money for design and for project development.

So that's a big one.

That'll be a big, Aquana River Bridge itself will be a big bridge, but so will Route 1, Furnace Road.

There's quite a few bridges in that.

So if you're wondering why that's only for design, there'll be a billion dollar plus project.

You'll be honest now to do that four plus miles plus quite a few bridges.

Also, I'm not going to read all these.

You see the build grants.

We are applying for some of them in the same, from different programs.

We've been told in the past that FRA likes that flexibility.

So they can mix and match what they need to do.

Obligating the grants is important as well.

As you can see, this luckily, not luckily, fortunately, our staff have been working hard and we are, more and more grants have been obligated.

So this should, this part should grow and this part should shrink as we move forward.

I think we've gotten a very good cadence with FRA and their staff.

Mike, can I just one thing that $729 million, that's a FED state partnership money, right?

And that's locked in, committed, obligatedly, right?

100% ours.

Yes.

I talked to FRA last week.

The gentleman I talked to, the deputy administrator says he likes to work every time he goes over the bridges, whether it be in a train or a car.

So obligated, we're all set there.

That is, that was money for a Phase II project.

We determined, we elected to put it just on Long Bridge projects, both north and south.

It's off the federal books.

Well, we've not collected all of the money, but it's reimbursed to have it drawn down.

Okay.

But the level.

The level of risk there is what we're trying to do.

It's obligated and set aside.

The unobligated ones are always at risk because Congress can make decisions.

Right.

I mean, we just know that some of these federal dollars are considering potentially being clawed back.

I know that Steve worked really hard end of December to make sure it's obligated.

If that's confirmed, anything under the federal grants obligated to fall into the, we've got a grant agreement.

And similar to, there have been other high profile projects where they have grant agreements and folks try to pull the money back and they went towards it and they can't pull it back because this is a side agreement.

So we feel comfortable.

And especially since we're continuing to make progress, we're continuing to make deadlines and fund grants.

So that stuff's low risk.

And since you brought that up, I know there's a lot of press about a month ago where the president released the president's budget.

That happens every year.

Pretty low for transit, pretty low for public transportation.

That's the first shot across the bow.

That's nothing.

It's obviously something that we're watching closely, but we're not concerned.

Congress, House, and Senate have a lot to do, and we're comfortable that the good projects that are moving infrastructure and transportation forward, which is awesome.

Nothing to be alarmed about yet, but we'll watch it.

Thank you.

And then the only other thing I can butt in here, so continued butt in, I guess.

Under a waiting obligation, the second one there is a $56 million grant that we received, a CMAC grant for guest communication.

We came to the board last year.

and asked you all to give me the authority to enter into an agreement with DOT to have that grant agreement signed.

Unfortunately, when you all approve or give me the authority, I have that authority for 90 days and the final negotiations have taken longer than 90 days.

So what we're asking for today is to have you re-authorize that authority and give me that.

And spoiler alert, we'll talk later about the bylaws.

The bylaws very clearly say, when you give me the authority, I get it for 90 days.

We're going to ask you later to extend that time.

But for right now, what we're hoping to do is make a motion and give me the authority to once again enter into agreement.

We think it's going to come within the next few weeks.

Sure, it is part of Virginia's CMAQ apportionment.

So just, and let me know if I'm jumping ahead too.

We did it that first.

The CTP provided that allocation to the project and by that action started the pathway to move it from highways to rail

That's a very good point.

On that grant statement and everything else, the discussion on grants, we apply for from the FRA or Youth Office of the Secretary.

If I could also just notice if you go

That one, I just wanted to flag the Richmond layover facility that I think it's the city of Richmond, correct?

Let's put that in for SmartScale.

So just the process for that, that's for SmartScale 7, which are those applications are currently under review and analysis.

They're looking at the pre-application status now and then

VDOT would get back to applicants to let them know if they are invited to move forward to the next phase of the smart scale.

That would come before the CTB for final consideration of smart scale projects that would be funded.

I think that action happens in December for grants that would happen next year.

So just flagging that and that process that moves through.

So that may also be something as hopefully it continues to move forward.

That will be a discussion with CTB members to

And that's the- Okay, state grants, okay.

And we've asked, you can see on the chart, we've asked for that from a number of different places.

So we've got an Amtrak commitment.

We've got a CVTA commitment.

Yeah, and original air facility is important because we need a place to put the trains when we're done Long Bridge and other projects in the Richmond area.

and three or four trains or so, depending on what the schedule is, whether they're layover or overnight, we need a place to put those trains.

And then, I don't know, for CMAQ, do you want us to take action now, or should we leave each other?

Okay.

So, could we get a motion from someone on the board to approve ratification to execute CMAQ?

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Anyone abstain?

And again, this is the summary of the year to date work so far.

A lot of this work

is one that I pointed out that takes that yard to move out.

And I think that's it for me.

Just that it's, you know, it is infrastructure week, right?

And so it's nice to, it's nice to, you know, see, I think, you know, there's a lot of products around the country that say people are still talking

We still remain on target to meet the current year's

Revenue Estimate.

This is something I'm watching closely, just changes in driver behavior with gas prices that this may be of concern that we watch through the summer if these higher prices continue and affects their behavior.

So we're keeping an eye on this.

Next slide.

This just provides a view through March related to our investments and earnings.

We've earned $20.5 million to date based on those investments.

Next slide.

Through April 30th our gain of 1.9% which is slightly lower than our gain we reported in our January meeting but we still feel like that things are performing as they should.

And with regard to liquidity and the balance of the investments, this just provides a view of where we are today and the makeup of that.

Obviously with the maturities less than a year, this is something we'll be watching related to managing the resources available and the projects and their behavior and where we'll be drawing against our investments outside of the LGIP versus here and whether we need to rebalance this portfolio going forward.

That's likely a summer activity this summer for Selma and Charlie and I.

So we look forward to updates in this area.

Any questions on the financial stuff?

Laura, talking about the reallocation, are there like places that you think about, that you're thinking about, like is it commercial paper, right?

There's some potential there.

We have some recommendations for METER to consider in the next couple of months and whether we would take advantage of some opportunities.

Is it still governed by the same investment principles, right?

Of course, ma'am.

All right, administrative updates.

Just current staff count.

We've got interns coming on board, which is always exciting.

They serviced a good pipeline for

and you see the interns listed there.

We have one non-intern hire starts next week, I believe, in financial planning analysis, and then you see the interns there going forward.

Here's a snapshot of our administrative budget.

I'm going to have to pull it up.

Later I'll be reporting to the board before school.

That's a good question though.

I'll get back to you.

Some of the gentlemen and the ladies in the back of the room I think might have the information, so we might go to get that to you before the board meeting.

Thank you.

They changed the name of what used to be the BTOP grants, but it is set up specifically for offsetting employer costs for hosting interns.

Virginia has a target to increase the number of internships.

Thank you.

We just made a minor $3,000 change from IT services.

Contracting updates here.

Anytime there's a contact over $5 million, we notify you all five days in advance, and then anything over 50 we bring to the board.

Anything 250 or above, we just put in the EDR, and here is the list of those contracts.

Okay, supplier diversity.

We're going to be changing the way we update New York.

Reminder, these are the categories.

that we track against.

Here's our spending through the most recent quarter.

You see we've got 4.78% of spend.

Again, this is on the discretionary spend.

We have a lot of non-discretionary spending.

We've got to get money in CSX.

We've got to get money in the bulk of something.

We've got to get it to Amtrak.

This is below our goal.

And the reason I said that there's going to be a change is the recently lost paths that have made it different on how you can determine or make a determination to guess I'm a small business.

Yes, I'm a minority owned business, female owned business.

You no longer can just say this is me.

You've got to actually prove where you've been disadvantaged.

And so it changes the way we can look here, folks.

You're close and we're going to talk about it more later.

So we're going to talk about it during Michael's legislative review, but we may see differences on how this is reported going forward because of this change.

And asking questions, I yield my time.

Thank you.

All right.

Oh, really just an opportunity for me to tee up some of the folks in that room to come up.

And most of these folks should be familiar.

I know Charlene Claywood in New York today, she is taking another important meeting we have.

So Ian Langan, who was one of our Long Bridge ladies, can be here.

So with that, I'm going to let them have Cody.

We'll jump right in.

It's just a good summary of the projects, though.

We reported a project that are under construction here.

So and as you can see, very happy to say we have a lot of stuff.

All right, we'll jump right into Long Bridge North.

All right, so we had a lot of exciting activity going on on the project.

We'll get into the listed activities here in a second.

But first, I want to remind you of the phasing that we're using to achieve the project here.

And in the project map, if I can make my pointer work, okay.

Railroad North is the top right of the screen.

Railroad South, obviously, to the bottom left.

So Phase 1 looks to build out a temporary alignment on the western side of the corridor in order for us to, at Main Avenue, start disassembling the bridge.

So you'll see a lot of photos of that here coming up, but that's what we're after for Phase 1.

Phase 2 then shifts to the east side of the alignment,

and there are several activities that SFJD, Skanska Flatiron is advancing in phase two as well.

Before we leave this slide, we'll call your attention to the upcoming activities.

We don't have any photos of these, but in a very short time, a matter of weeks, we are going to make a major maintenance of traffic shift on Main Avenue.

Currently, we're in the northern maintenance of traffic area.

We're going to make a shift to the southern and that's all for the phase one work at Main Avenue.

And really that shift allows other upcoming activities, including retaining wall G and the abutment at Main Avenue to take place.

All right, so getting into the activities.

You see on the left hand side that is Craft Wall D on the very left.

Crash Wall C rather, that's Early Works package four.

And on the right hand side, that's Crash Wall D and F, that was an Early Works package that was completed last year.

And this bay underneath Maryland Avenue Overbuild is where the temporary alignment of track three will shift from the right side of Crash Walls D and F, and we'll end up in this bay here.

So we're ready to construct track here on the northern portion of phase one.

So that's a great new story here.

And then you also see Skanska Flatirons Field Offices located in East Potomac Park.

Even if I can't address, we'll see.

And it belonged that way?

Correct.

There was a stub track that was used for storage that ran in this area.

We demolished that track in order to make room to make these accommodations.

Again,

Maryland Avenue Overbuild.

We had to do this crash wall work, right?

We had to bring up the crash wall, strengthen them in order to protect the structure overhead, right?

So next, we recently completed CSX Duff Bank.

There is a Duff Bank that runs through the alignment that holds five fiber tenants.

This is located up in the right-of-way.

And what we're doing here is relocating it to a place where we can then further deconstruct the right-of-way and then build out new infrastructure.

So the right-hand picture here is the connection of the existing CSX Duck Bank to the new alignment.

And then on the far side, you see this in East Potomac Park, just adjacent to the old National

Park Service Headquarters.

This is where it'll actually jump into another duck bank and temporarily run underneath Washington Channel.

Again, this is very important for us to start taking down old infrastructure, right?

While we have completed a section of this, there's more to come north of here in order to completely get this out of the way.

All right, next, I'll call your attention to the left-hand

That is the Maryland Avenue overbuild and the crash walls that we saw about two slides ago.

Again, this is phase one construction.

We've completed the northern portion inside the overbuild and we're working our way south, right?

The construction you see in both of these photos is actually retaining wall L construction along the western side of the corridor, and that's going to support temporary track three, but it will end up being a permanent track alignment.

So we need to get this retaining wall in place in order to build track on top of it.

Then you see on the right-hand picture, but in the left corner, that's Main Avenue, what we call Maiden Lane, where they're working on the foundation elements, Maiden Lane.

So that is that northern phase of the maintenance and traffic scheme.

There's a cast-in-place section on the left-hand side, and this is a drilled shaft post and panel wall on the right-hand side.

All right.

Activities I talked about were phase one.

This is SFJV pulling activities in phase two forward where they're able to.

This is supportive excavation work at Ohio Drive.

They're doing this on the east side of the alignment again.

They'll build out this wall

as temporary law to support the embankment and then begin the bridging foundations behind it.

Next, we see the Washington Channel Trestle.

DJ touched on it a little bit earlier and gave you a different vantage point.

This is very important because once we move into that maintenance and traffic south area along Main Avenue, this trestle will actually feed the job, right?

So equipment and material that are sizable that we don't want to bring in by road on Main Avenue and further create congestion on the roadway.

We're going to bring in separately through National Park Service land, bring it across the Washington Channel and land in the marina, the former Washington Marina parking lot.

We recently were, Amtrak actually was recently able to acquire that property.

I'll ask a quick question.

It'll be removed.

This is temporary.

And can you just give me coordinates on that?

The boat's in the area.

Ohio Drive is where a lot of people park for cherry blossoms on the right-hand side.

Okay, good.

That's helpful.

And then we move into Main Avenue Foundation construction.

On the left-hand side, you see here two micro tiles are in place, and then the pile cap, right, which is the beginning to really come out of the ground for the foundation at Main Avenue.

So again, I told you we're working in the northern maintenance and traffic area.

This is that work that's taking place, building out the northern abutment and Pier 2.

We shift south.

That's our opportunity to start to do the same work, but for Pier 1 and the southern abutment.

All building out the area where we can then shift the track to the west and then start disassembling this existing bridge.

This is the critical path of Long Bridge Law.

Any other questions on north or south?

All right, so right now, the Long Bridge Rail Partners, which is the tri-venture of Trumbull Way, FAY, rather, and Wagman.

Right now, they're engaged in their test pile program.

They have completed the test piles out on the water.

We'll see some of that activity in some short videos here in a moment.

built out their marine access bulkheads, which is allowing them to walk equipment on and off the water.

And then upcoming work that we don't have photos of, they're going to start construction of the rail bridge, both on the Virginia side and the DC side and shore for her.

Once those are constructed, we do have a time of year restriction through July activity on that

All right, so those recently completed activities.

On the left-hand side, you see the Bradley Point lay down area.

In this area, the Mount Vernon Trail also runs, and we are realigning that trail.

It's heavily utilized by the Viking community.

Bulkhead has been constructed.

You see the Wamani Yellow Line in the background.

This is the Virginia Shore.

On the right-hand side is the existing Long Bridge.

Here they've got a crane that recently completed the test file and is actually walking off the water.

They are currently reassembling the same crane on land in order to perform the land side test file.

All right.

Actually, a short time ago they completed, so it's no longer ongoing, but completed this obstruction probing.

There is existing scour protection in the river bottom, which is just sizable rocks that exist around the existing piers.

That's put in place to ensure that during flood conditions, the foundation isn't undermined.

So some of that

Based on some of our survey work, look to be in the pathway of our aisle layouts for the rail bridge.

We have determined that those obstructions are not in our way, which is a very big win for the project.

And these are both taken from the DC side.

And how close is that?

Where are the testing structures there?

These are, I'll say the search and probing actually took place where the final alignment would be.

The test pilot will perform the close vicinity within 30 feet or so, right?

I'm Jeremy Rogers with the Long Bridge Rail Partners.

We are here for our test pile program.

This is our 36-inch test pile.

What we're doing is driving this pile to make sure that all of our engineering assumptions are accurate for the depth of the pile and the capacity of the pile.

We are also checking, we'll be monitoring sound, so how much noise is traveling through the water when we're doing the activity, and we're also going to be checking

seismic activity on the river bottom while we do this to also make sure that that data corresponds with what the assumptions were made in our engineering.

After this pile is driven we get a lot of data gathered from that.

Then there is another test we do to this pile is a statinamic test and what that does is

This is the test that, that test rather that Jeremy referred to.

Oh, okay.

Everything went well, went off safe.

That's a standard test.

We've performed two of those in the water so far.

So we've got two more to go, both on lakes.

A lot of things were on the seashore.

A lot of effort went into communicating with the greater community about what was going to take place.

This is a controlled explosion.

I'm sure that we're reaching out to them.

Yeah, we actually, Ian, sorry to interrupt, but we do a lot of public meetings, community meetings, and we had one a couple weeks ago, correctly, but Naomi, who's on our team, was speaking there, and said, look, this is what's going to happen, this is what it's going to be, and they just were standing ovation, basically, for her honesty and just her standard, and it was people that were like, I've never seen a public meeting like this.

Alright, I keep having questions on this.

Yes, so they're sending

Force down into the pile, right?

So basically I've got a wall, and I think that wall can withstand a 30 mile an hour thing.

I think you've done that now.

All right, one more person out here.

This hatched area is our work zone.

You see the red existing path running right through it.

In order to safely maneuver in this area, we needed to relocate the trail.

The relocated trail will actually hug Mount Block

The George Washington Memorial Parkway and the sneak underneath the bridge just adjacent, the existing bridge just adjacent to the parkway.

Obviously, pretty impactful work.

DJ, do we have all of our funding sources for North, North, South identified?

Does it include the PTA money in either North or South?

Good morning, Madam Chair and Board.

My name's Jeff Peltier.

I'm Senior Director for Engineering and Construction, Northern Virginia.

We're going to continue our march south and get on Alexandria's fourth track.

Certainly not as glamorous as its neighbor to the north at Long Bridge, but no less important.

This is where we're picking up where Long Bridge leaves off, building out the four-track corridor another six miles down into Alexandria.

We're building this.

This is really the busiest, most congested rail segment in Virginia.

That's where the five tracks come together.

The tracks from south in Richmond and Fredericksburg meet up with the tracks from out west, Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Manassas.

So we've been under construction with CSX in the lead since January, and we're going to continue doing this really for the next 18 months to a year, two years to get it done.

The work that we've been doing in the last few months has really been involved in getting our site set up, access, staging, those sorts of things.

With CSX's contractor, they have a site contractor, Fay S&B, that is doing the work, and then CSX is also self-performing some of that work.

The work that we're focusing on right now is that we have three control points or areas where we have switches, crossovers, signals to move trains around in the corridor.

One is at the very north, Long Bridge is called the RO interlocking.

There's another one right about the midway point in Alexandria called Slayers Lane.

There's another one at the end called the AF interlocking.

So we've been working on the RO interlocking and Slayers Lane control points.

There's a lot of work that's going on.

Just set up the track, set up the track that's going to be coming in and get it ready for four track operation.

And once those control points are done later this year, we'll start marching the fourth track down from Arlington into Alexandria.

We are still working on utilities in the Alexandria corridor, as Ian alluded to earlier.

There are five different fiber optic utilities that are along this corridor that are in different places.

And what CSX has done over the last two years, they've built a common duct bank, as you saw in Ian's photo, and have been wrangling those five fiber optic tenants to actually get into that common duct bank so that we can build our track.

Right now, where those fiber optic lines are, are where we're planning to put in infrastructure.

And it has been a challenge.

We've got all that duct back in place.

The cable is pulled.

Just the last piece that we need to do is actually splice the new cable into the system and turn it on.

It's called cutover.

We were planning to do that by the beginning of this year but then the conflict in the Middle East happened and the Federal Government Department of War said no cutovers, we're not taking any fiber optic out of service, you need to wait until things have cleared up and we've actually just started the cutovers again this past month.

They started at the beginning of May and they're going to continue through the end of the summer.

Just a couple of photos of what's been going on.

I mentioned this is RO, so that's the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

that you see on the left there.

There was some out of service track that we've demoed out.

We started getting that ready to go.

And on the right, you just see some of the work we have to do just to get the site ready to bring in all these prefabricated track panels that are assembled and plants off site.

They're brought in by rail, and then they're assembled on site.

And again, you see some of these hints that we've been doing to figure out where the existing fiber optic and utility lines are.

Those are all getting moved into a conduit that's on the other side of the tracks.

And that's all processing.

So that's been ongoing.

And then over here, you also see some additional signal work that's going on.

This is the work at Slater's Lane.

Again, not the most numerous stuff in the world.

It's correct, but it's also being done under the existing

freight and passenger traffic, right?

So again, most congested segment of track in Virginia, anywhere from 50 to 80 trains a day, we have to maintain that traffic while we're doing this work.

Some of it's happening at night, some of it's happening on the weekends and whatnot.

So it's very important that we get it done when we can.

And just off to the right, as I mentioned, these are some of the right-of-way acquisitions we did for the project to get staging.

This is off in Alexandria.

You can see just very far into that photo is the Potomac Yard Metro Station.

This is an area of land that the city jointly operates with Metro and we've been able to use it as well.

So some good partnership going on there between all the organizations.

Okay, Alexandria Station improvements came Commonwealth Bridges project.

This is probably our most advanced project in the Northern Virginia area.

I think we've explained it many times before we have multiple projects that are just across the street from us here.

In fact,

If you're listening carefully, there's that ringing noise that's in your ear.

That is the sweet sound of a vibratory impact pile hammer.

Only an engineer could love, but that's progress.

And welcome to it at some point today, you can go out and see the work that's been going on with the three cranes that are out there.

Great to see.

And we're really moving forward with VRE in the lead.

So as we've mentioned many times before, we combine the bridge project with the Alexandria Station improvements project,

VRE and Dallas' team is in the lead with Kakosin Construction Company doing that work.

This is a very challenging project, a lot of work that has to get done in a very tight corridor.

And not only that, it starts off hard.

It's not only these projects that kind of builds up to a crescendo of work, it starts off with some of the hardest work right up front.

And that's what we've been doing over the last few weeks here doing the jump span work, which I'll show a few photos of here in a minute.

In the last few months, the contractor for coasting, they've mobilized in at the old parking lot, the gravel parking lot right next to Alexandria Station.

It's called the Callahan Yard now.

We've taken it over for lay down and office space.

We did a great job with us, BRE, negotiating with the City of Alexandria.

They used to use this as a parking lot for their city vehicles.

They've actually been able to move off site and we're using it now for the project.

And then you see here all the work that we're doing in a very tight space.

three very large cranes, some of the biggest cranes you'll see in the region doing this work.

And it's, again, just wonderful to see in here.

I mentioned challenging work up front.

I actually briefed this at the board meeting back in January.

What we need to do, again, to keep building this work while maintaining all the rail traffic that we have in the corridor, we essentially have to build the bridge while it's still operating.

So what we do is this thing,

A practice under the banner of what we call accelerated bridge construction or ABC.

We're building these things called jump spans.

And what the jump span is essentially extending the bridge, building a bridge behind the bridge, and creating a space to build the new foundation for the new bridges.

So we essentially create this new span, excavate it out, and you start building that foundation behind the existing bridge while the existing bridge is still in service.

And we have to do this at three locations for all three tracks.

In the area, so there's nine different jump spans that have to get built, and we do them over the course of three different weekends.

We started the first one beginning of the month.

That took, I think the outage started on a Friday, we went into a Wednesday morning.

We have the next jump spans that are starting next weekend on track two, and then track one will be two weeks after that in the middle of June.

So many activities that have to happen in such a short space of time to make the jump span go into operation.

I'll just go through a couple of photos of the work that has to happen.

CSX comes in, shuts down the track, actually cuts the track out and removes it.

The contractor, Kakosin, comes in and starts putting in these sheet piles, which is what you're hearing getting driven right now, which is supports all of the earth that supports the track.

And then over here you see some cylindrical or circular piles that are actually supporting the beams for the jump span.

Those have to get driven in as well.

And we're under some pretty strict requirements from the city on noise.

They have to be done during daytime hours.

They have the really short window to get all these piles done in time at three different locations per weekend.

You see again here where the track was actually cut out in the areas getting prepared to see more of that.

The sheet piles right here getting vibrated in place, and then the cylindrical piles that the beams go on, those get cut off to get that span going.

These are the actual jump span beams that were getting installed.

Once they're installed, back filled, put into place, CSX then comes back in, puts that track section that they cut out back on top of the beams, and gets the track in service for the next morning.

This is what it looks like after it's done.

You see, you wouldn't even know the difference.

But that's the beam that we just showed with the new track on top of it.

And we're running VRE and Amtrak trains the next morning.

I also mentioned too, we are under a mandate from the FRA to keep two boarding edges at Alexandria in play or operable at all times.

So we've built out a new platform

at Track One, which was previously really never used at Alexandria Station.

So now we have an ADA accessible platform, and we're able to use Track One now when we take the various tracks out of service when we're putting these jumps back in place.

So it's been a great operation, a ton of work going on, still a lot left to do before June.

And then we can actually start building the new bridges and start building the track, the platform as well.

I would love that, thank you.

And yes, you could hear the hammer a few minutes ago.

I'll point out to sort of repeat, but 83 trains a day roughly.

And so between the noise restriction at night and 83 trains a day, that doesn't leave a lot of time to build things, right?

So it's a very complicated dance that we do.

Back to the fourth track for just a moment, the two diamonds on that, the VRE stations within the footprint of the fourth track.

The nature of this, it's a very complicated choreography between projects and a delay in their project could have a benefit to ours and vice versa.

Like it's this weird sort of thing where there's things that we have to do first before they can come, or things that they have to do first before we can come.

And so when any one of those things gets off, it can complicate things even

even more.

So for instance, the fiber optics and things that we're dealing with there, we have lay down areas where those fiber optics have to go, handholds for those.

So it's very complicated.

I applaud the VPRA team.

We've been working very closely together with them and will continue to work very closely together with them.

Having these baseline schedules are very important and working together very important.

Now our next opportunity is... Shout out to Amtrak, working closely with them to make sure the operation is continued.

A lot of changes for passengers the past few months, and you will see the re-employees out there.

Some of us will often go out and train early and help people out.

Amtrak has had people out on the platform for every train that's out there, whether it's me or Amtrak.

So kudos to another good team effort.

During the outage and only during the change.

So when we do these jump span installations two weeks ago, we took out King and Commonwealth Streets both.

And that is the complicated nature because the proximity of these two bridges and the track geometry, you can't do them.

They have to all be surfaced and lined all at the same time.

We built, we literally built three bridges in five days.

and then turn around two weeks later and do it again, and then turn around two weeks later and do it again.

And so it's like starting a marathon in the spring, right?

Literally, you know, 800 yard sprint.

So very, very difficult and very, very exciting.

I mean, it really has.

I think it wasn't.

It's almost like it flows better.

It might be better actually with Dallas instead.

The outreach work between our two agencies especially has been one very, very good effort.

My project manager, Jason Boyd said it's been basically two nights a week.

He's been at every two evenings a week at the Rosemont or Crystal City outreach to these community groups working with Meredith and team.

So it's been very, very good.

One clarification, the requirement for two platforms at a time was not FRA.

That was the RE.

Yeah, they liked it.

We mandated that in the contract.

But I would also just add in addition to VRA and VPRA and Amtrak, Seth, I just want to

We need to also acknowledge and thank the cities.

I think their staff, their elected officials, everyone, it really has been a full team effort.

And I know they hear often first and foremost from citizens about things.

And I think it's generally been a very positive and productive partnership between everyone with that.

But I know having just been with the mayor of Alexandria and others, I heard again, generally positive things, but

I know a lot of coordinated outreach and communication happening with that.

So thank you to our, our local community partners.

And really, really, really would encourage folks if you haven't had a chance to just go across the street and look at this, cause you can visually see it.

Like you don't need, sometimes to do things you have to, you know, get in some weird convoluted space, but like literally let's go to the Amtrak station.

So we can do certain activities tonight, but much like the Long Bridge project, those activities are limited by city restrictions, right?

So the noise, it is, I mean, you heard the staff man and driving those piles.

It's a very loud operation.

You don't want to be doing that at three in the morning, but.

But there are certain activities we have to do at night that can only be done at night between trains.

And so it's been very, very busy.

I should also note we're building out some new crossings in the area as well to be able to move passenger traffic throughout the existing platform configuration.

The ultimate goal of the project is to eliminate these crossings so you don't have passengers walking across tracks.

We will have elevators when the project is done, but just for moving people in this temporary configuration for the next two years, we have some new crossings, both for people and for equipment.

Okay, marching further south into the Franconia area, the Franconia Springfield Bypass continues.

And as DJ mentioned, we've had some challenges with utilities, we are working through that right now.

But there is still work that's ongoing.

By the end of last year, beginning of this year, we'd acquired all the property that we needed for the project.

We've built out all of our access to the site.

I think I've mentioned it in the board meetings in the past.

This is about as remote as you can get and still being in here.

And it's a hard site to get to.

You have to acquire property just to get to this site.

We have our access built out, our staging built out, our contractors on site doing work.

We have drainage that's underway.

We have two retaining walls that are underway.

We are fabricating.

We're just about to start the order for structural steel up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania to start doing the hundreds of pieces that have to get built for the bridges.

So there is still a lot going on.

The thing that is kind of a long pole in the tent right now are the utility relocations.

We have two fiber optic companies that need to move.

We have Verizon MCIs out there as we speak relocating lumens right behind them.

and then Kinder Morgan with the jet fuel pipeline is going to take place starting this summer.

So still a lot happening on the bypass, but we have run into some challenges on the utility side.

Not the most exciting photos in the world, but these are critical to the project.

This is a former Enterprise Rent-A-Car parking lot that we've acquired that is right on the tracks.

The tracks are just to the left of that photo.

This is just the best staging area and best access so you can get to the corridor in the area.

And actually, as DJ mentioned, looks totally different now than it does in that photo, because we are building it up and putting drainage in that area and doing lots of good things.

We also have crossings that we're building for equipment across the existing tracks, so we can keep the traffic of dump trucks, loaders, and things like that.

There's a lot going on in a really small area, and we've just been building that out over the last few months.

And you see a little bit more of that access that we're building out.

Again, this is a corridor that hasn't been touched in 150 plus years.

We're now making it accessible to build the bridge that we need to here.

And then I mentioned we have two big retaining walls.

The other thing we have to do is actually build out the space for the bypass bridge.

It is a pretty tight corridor.

It's got some very steep slopes in some areas.

So we're building some of these top down walls.

On the left there is a soil nail wall where we actually start at the top.

You inject these horizontal anchors, you put concrete face on them, and you actually start excavating down instead of building the wall.

So that's what we have going on right now.

As I mentioned, we have Verizon and MCI are out there right now doing utility relocations.

Franconia, Lauren, third track.

I know Mike mentioned it.

We are not yet into full construction.

CSX plans to procure their contractor later this year, but we have been doing some early work in this area.

For the bypass, we actually have to remove an entire and interlocking switching area called Ravensworth interlocking.

So we worked a package with CSX to actually do that work early on.

In a place that's just north of the project or just between the Beltway and Franconia Road, we're actually calling it Control Point Beltway for that reason.

We've been building that out since last fall.

So the site work happened last fall.

Back in March, CSX did all the track work.

And now they're working on the signals.

Where can we expect the signals to go into effect by the end of June?

CSX has to do that work themselves.

They have kind of roving crews that go around the country doing this signal work.

It's scheduled a year in advance.

And we get on the calendar for June.

So that's when they're going to be there.

And this is just some of the work from that track work that happened back in March that was going on.

As I mentioned up in Alexandria as well, these panels come and some of them get assembled on site, but a lot of them get fabricated offsite, brought in on rail cars, put off to the side, then put into place.

I think we have a video here just showing some of the work that CSX forces do.

This is where they're actually cutting out some of the existing track to make room for that special track work that's going in place.

You know, like everything else we're doing, very busy corridor, we have to do this work at night when there's as few trains as possible.

And this is actually the same group later on putting some of those track panels into place.

Matt, if I may offer

And one of the things that's been very good about this close coordination is, for instance, when we were out for a jump span or when we will be out for a jump span construction at King Street, for instance, it affords CSX an opportunity to go do this sort of work at Slater's Lane, right?

So we're just sort of piling on one another and benefiting the projects who are benefiting each other.

We've also been prepping for the utility relocations that are to come.

There's a lot of trees that had to come down.

We have time of year restrictions on trees.

The moratorium for tree clearing started on April 1st.

We got a lot of our tree clearing done in February and March.

And this, again, not a very glamorous photo, but it's a big milestone for us to be able to get the trees down.

and some of the Fairfax Water utility relocations that we have to do right around the Franck County Springfield VRA station.

Exactly.

You still might want to know.

Question.

Did I understand you correctly?

So who owns that?

Some of it's temporary just for construction and we'll return it back to the owner.

Some of it is permanent.

And in those cases, it actually depends on what side of the corridor it's on.

So if it's on the part of the corridor that the VPRA owns, we will keep it.

Chair,

Robert Ingby, Senior Director of Projects, overseeing projects that are not in Northern Virginia, as we affectionately call ROVA, or the rest of Virginia.

Let's start off with a little bit back to some more glamorous stuff, some teasers of what's coming.

So we've worked with the team for New River Valley, NS, the engineering folks, and creating these renderings.

These are exactly the 90 some odd percent, in fact, what you can

Envision to be done once we get out there and finished in 27.

So including colors, so brick color, socket color, roof color, all those things are now selected and coordinated.

And the next one we'll show will be the building as well.

And we'll take a look at that.

But you'll see you'll see the high level platform with the stairs, ramps, there's 150 odd parking spaces, the one way bus because there's a one way facility one way in one way out.

Long, long platform canopy 900 and

60 feet with two thirds of that covered by the canopy with a gap in the middle for the building.

We do have some ADA spots as well as some EV charging spots as well.

So this is the utility building that is, if you were to do this project to start with, you renovate the building, the original building.

We don't have that option.

We can do this a little bit backwards, right?

So

In here is all the electrical, networking, comms, everything that basically makes the platform work when trains come and go.

So to fire up the pins, all those things.

So this is a separate building that we own.

The building down in the middle or to the left there is the old station 1906 building that's going to be renovated after this project.

So

It's very close, but not quite.

Real quick, let me go back real quick.

So everyone gets their bearings.

That's heading toward Bristol.

Where's Beth?

Yeah, thank you.

That's heading.

That direction is Bristol.

Just kidding.

All right, so here's the building from the track side.

So keep in mind, this is the dedicated passenger track for the platform and the station.

This is one of the two main lines that NS has out on that project.

It's one of their busiest lines, heads off to the Midwest.

So that's the 1906 building.

So that rendering is actually from the architects that are working with the station authority to provide that.

So that is actually true on color and all the different selections as well.

So again, you can see we've done a lot of work trying to make those

Those two different projects coordinate and a lot of kudos to the team for keeping those all straight.

You see a little bit of the high level fence right here.

That's due to the close proximity.

You can almost reach out and touch the building when you're standing on the platform.

And we didn't want people accessing the roof or doing silly things.

So we ended up raising that fence in the back as part of this design iteration with the rendering center.

These have been a great tool and also a great PR thing also.

Now we're going to start shooting these out publicly.

All right, so some of the wet climber stuff.

All right, so we're out there.

This is a project we are delivering next year.

We're excited to stay on track.

DJ did allude to, we had a threshold to get that concrete done, but we are making good solid project progress out there.

Excuse me.

So you can see it's recently completed, drill pillar foundation.

So that was really to set up the platform canopy.

There's 114 of those.

Those are all done.

There's a lot of signal work being done.

If you remember, I think we showed one of the previous presentations.

We were doing cellular concrete, which is a lightweight fill that looked like layers of Cool Whip that we built up to make the platform, or make the parking lot to grade.

And we'll show you what that parking lot's starting to look like and shape up.

That parking lot retaining wall is done now, which is a fill wall.

You heard Jenna talk about top-down.

We did a bottom-up wall for the parking lot.

We're also doing a top-down for the peephole street, and we'll show you the picture as well.

The layerwork site's been a little bit quieter.

It's been sitting

Doing a little bit of electrical work.

Big, big thing for the, was actually a win this past week.

We ordered the modular building for Bradford, which has been a long time coming.

So that's where the crew will get change orders, get orders for track and crew orders.

The station site has been very busy.

Platform walls and pilatures are going on.

You'll see some progress in some of the photos upcoming.

Over at the layover, we do actually, we haven't shown it this week.

Just happened.

Ballast came to town.

So now the tracks were unballasted for a couple of months.

Now Ballast is in.

Light falls went up this week and you'll see that as well.

So on to some pictures.

So on the left, it's a big thing to get the signal crew out there.

They've been out, they've installed some canaries.

We've had a couple of different ones.

This is actually the western one at Cambria.

This picture on the right is actually

Standing above the parking lot, looking east, so this is actually the MOW building for Norfolk Southern that we built as part of this project.

This wall is actually the wall I was just talking about.

You can see some of the old, this is the cellular concrete getting filled in with some subcase that is now completely for that next picture.

But here's the wall again.

And now we fill it up.

So if you all remember, this grade here is about 15, 20 feet down from the depot.

And Frank, it's this whole parking lot, so when you pull in, it's not this big, steep slope, right?

So now this is starting to shape up and look like the parking lot, so this is actually the islands between, if you remember the rhetoric.

There are bike racks, so not specific parking per se, it's like a dedicated space, but there are racks around.

All right, onto concrete.

So these are actually pictures of the wall and pilasters for the platform.

On the left is all the formwork.

And you can see that's actually the gantry, the signal gantry in the previous picture.

So this is the western side of the platform approach.

Again, 960 feet worth of platform.

We are about over a third of that now.

We have another pour coming up this week.

Fingers crossed the weather is not ideal the rest of this week.

So we're going to see some rain out in Christianburg area, but we are working forward on that.

Keep in mind, high level platform.

Underneath there are hundreds of feet of conduit that we have to install for forms of electrical and pounds.

So that's up next as well.

And then comes the columns for the canopy, as well as there will be precast planks and a topping slab for the ADA compliance.

And right here is a pump truck, right?

So again, a tight site for us, one way in, one way out.

Best way to service that with a pump truck for the pores.

And I think just a candid picture with a straight in the back.

So we've got an active corridor that we're working right next to all the time.

So this is a less glamorous wall, but so on the left is the, this is again, a different type of wall.

We've heard a couple of different ones.

This is a soldier pile lagging wall.

So those piles, they're galvanized.

They actually get drilled and then set in concrete.

There's 110 of those.

We are over halfway on them now.

You can start, this is actually the wall looking overhead.

This is west.

I'm sorry, East to West.

So this crane is actually one starting to set the lagging.

So what we do is we drill the piles in and then we start to excavate.

Then we slide those panels in.

Or anybody asked that it's not the finished product.

So on that goes a nice precast panel that basically slides in on the H files.

And there's almost like a, almost a fear of playing Connect Four, right?

And slide those in.

And they have a nice form lying around them.

They look like an astral stone or a block.

They're coming, they've been ordered, but they're all very custom as well.

This wall is at the tallest point, about 20 feet, and right behind it is Depot, right?

So this is the busy little street down in downtown Christiansburg.

So we do see a lot of traffic there.

And again, we had to put this wall in to make enough space to get the buses and traffic.

All right, moving over to Radford.

So these are the two new layover tracks.

Like I just said, in this picture we're unballasted.

They are now almost ballasted.

They're in process.

G-pile wall to separate us from the Norfolk Southern yard.

There'll be a fence around the entire perimeter of this for Amtrak folks.

On here will come the modular building.

On the left is electrical pads and pressure pads.

So a lot of power that we need for the new aero trains when they come.

Real quick, that direction is the Christiansburg Station.

There you go.

So the train will be coming from that direction here for the layover facility at Radford.

And that is Radford University track and field.

There's softball and baseball in there.

A lot of the sports are on the left-hand side of the picture, most of the academics on the right hand.

Downtown Rapids on the right-hand side of the picture.

Yes, correct.

And there's a bridge right here, the University Boulevard.

This is actually a drone shot, but it's a great spot to stop and look over if you're ever in that area.

Back up.

We're not using 2027 as, oh my gosh, we've got 365 days in 2027 to get it done.

We're pushing for early, but we are under promising and overjoyed.

I told Cynthia as we were watching the amazing work

Longbridge and others said, that makes getting it to Bristol seem like just easy peasy.

Well, those three responses doesn't have one for that.

I will say this, though, that we would have to negotiate with Norfolk Southern to have a stop in

Our agreement with them does contemplate that.

So it's definitely on the table.

And as we're building the labor facility there, we're building a high level platform.

So we could use the platform we're building that the maintenance folks will be used to clean the train and service the train.

Aren't college kids like a big part of the demographic?

So Jeremy question, right?

Yes, so let me ask the question directly.

Yes, that's what I know.

But to expand, really that generation, whether they're in college or not, they want to stare at screens and they don't want to be bothered with driving and getting gas and being all that.

So that generation is huge for our question.

And Amtrak will tell you that if you've got a station in a college town, it is a heavily utilized station.

Yeah.

Pat, to that point also,

Our conversations, University of Tennessee is all over about conversations for that exact reason.

Well, we started Lynchburg in 2009, there was an estimate that there'd be 30,000 riders and it turned out to be 100,000 riders.

And I remember before there was a big fight because the CFO was really kind of a jerk and

Hey, if this isn't funding itself, you're going to have to come up with the money in Virginia.

And then Virginia said, okay, we'll take that risk.

And then 100,000 riders came and there was profit.

That's right, DJ.

Alrighty.

Let's move forward again.

I just want to note, we do have some folks leaving around noon.

So if we can

Move quickly for the next few items.

My name is Jessica Eglen.

I'm the Government Affairs Manager with VPRA.

This is the first time I've been speaking to you, so I thought I'd introduce myself.

We're just going to do a quick run through of this General Assembly cycle, give you guys some updates on what we were focusing on.

So these are just some of the key dates.

As you can see, this was an even year, so it's a long session.

So it's 60 days long.

It began on January 14th and ended here a little while ago on Saturday, March 14th.

Next year will be a short year, 45 days.

So when it says long, it's really not that long.

It moves just as quick as those short years.

Some dates that are important that are coming up is, of course, the governor has until this Saturday at 1159 to take actions on any of the bills that have not been finished since reconvene session.

She's taken action on a lot of bills this week.

I'm not sure how many she has left.

I'm sure there might be a couple, but most of the bills that we've been tracking have already had action taken by the governor on it.

And then, of course, any of those bills that don't have delayed enactment clauses on them, they'll be effective starting July 1.

Our priorities this session was, of course, really focusing on the two bills that we had, HB141 and HB446.

Westermann is gonna talk more about those later, but they were just mostly general cleanup bills, some legislative fixes that we've noticed over the last five years that we thought would be beneficial for us in the future.

There were over 2,000 bills introduced this year, so of course, one of our big priorities was making sure that we went through

vetted all of those bills for any impacts that they might have on VPRA's ability to operate in the future.

And then, of course, monitor any of those bills as they move through.

In some cases, when applicable, we would meet with the patron of the bill and work with them to address whatever our concerns were, putting in an amendment that solved whatever our issue was with it.

We had a couple of those bills this year.

Most of the time, they deal with things like easements or eminent domain, usually in that space of kind of increasing our cost of doing business.

Of course, we spent our General Assembly educating and informing new members about BPRA.

It's Virginia, there was an election last year, all hundred House of Delegates seats were up for reelection.

So there were a number of new members that we wanted to just make sure that we met with, let them know who we were and what projects we were doing, especially new members with projects in their district.

And then of course, always trying to work to build relationships with those legislators, making sure that they feel comfortable and bought into what we're doing that

We're accountable for the work we're doing.

We use a lot of taxpayer money on these projects.

So we just want to make sure that our General Assembly is aware of what's going on.

And of course session is a great time where they're all in one place to talk to them about those projects.

As I said, there were 2000 bills.

So it's not just me who's looking over them.

We have a really great legislative review team, which consists of a couple staff members from each different area of VPRA that helped me go through the bills to make sure that

They indeed either don't or do have an impact on VPRA.

We have a daily process I go through.

I look through the bills, anything that I think might need additional sort of monitoring, embedding.

I put it in Excel sheet and I let my wonderful colleagues who are sometimes smarter than I am in that space take a deeper dive into that to make sure that we aren't missing anything in the process.

And then of course, we wanna be able to do our jobs without some of the great partnerships that we have.

So of course, connecting with DRPT, VDOT,

and all of our other stakeholders like Norfolk Southern and CSX to make sure that we're on the same page about legislation as it's moving through and that they knew what we were doing and what our two pieces of legislations were about.

Thanks, Jessica.

And by the way, before I say anything about the bills that got passed this year, I have to say Jessica did a tremendous job for the team this year.

We probably talked five times a day during session.

When the snow and ice was coming, Jessica looked at me and said, I don't know what to do.

We have all these meetings with senators the next day.

I think I'm going to sleep in the office.

I laughed.

She wasn't joking.

So she really dedicated herself to our bills and did a tremendous job.

And I just kind of went where she said and did what she said and went on successful.

All right.

So we had two bills this year.

One is HB 141, the other one is HB 446.

We split them into, the first one is what we call general cleanup.

The second one had to do with land use.

So we kind of separated them out.

I'm not going to go way into detail, but I'm going to tell you generally the substance of each bill, what we're accomplishing.

HB 141, the changes in the law because of that require us to change our procurement rules.

So the next slide, I'm going to talk about some updates we have to our procurement rules.

After that, we'll ask for a motion to adopt the changes that were in the procurement rules that went out in the board package.

So that's where we're headed with all this.

So starting on the left, HB 141, after five years of operating, realized that there were some gray areas in the law.

We realized that some of our sister agencies like VDOT, DRPT had the benefit of certain exemptions that we thought we should have as well as a transportation entity.

So the majority of the changes in the law that we introduced through HB 141 is simply clarifying some exemptions or gaining for ourselves some exemptions that we didn't have.

I won't go into each and every one of them, but the top one's a very good example, state grievance procedures.

There's an act in the law that gives state employees access to state codified grievance procedures.

We're different.

Our enabling access, our board has to adopt previous procedures for our employees.

That was done back when we started in 2021, 2022 timeframe.

We have this conflict because when you're looking to go to Virginia, we're not explicitly exempt from state previous procedures.

We don't want to have a situation where

Some employee wants to pursue grievance procedures and we don't know which one applies.

You know, there's one argument that the state wants to do.

There's one argument that our board adopted wants to do.

So just as a cleanup measure, we had an explicit provision added to the code that says VPRA is exempt from state grievance procedures.

It follows the exact model that authorities like ATC and Virginia Port Authority have where they're explicitly exempted from state grievance procedures because their boards also adopt specific grievance procedures for those two entities.

And the same is true down the line.

You can look at every single one of those.

One of our sister agencies has those exemptions.

So we said, hey, treat us like you treat VDOT, treat us like we treat the port.

So we have more flexibility under law generally, or exempt from certain fees when we talk about our projects.

The very last bullet point down here, that is the one unique feature of our bill.

Nobody else has this.

This is a procurement related change.

We go out and we hire, we use what's called bench contracts for engineering firms.

We will solicit offers.

We will hire four, five or six firms all at the same time.

We'll say you're on the bench when we need you, we'll tell you, we'll issue task orders.

The problem with that is under the existing law, there were very low thresholds.

You can see for a project, you can only spend $2.5 million.

And for the entire term of the project, the entire term of the contract, you can only spend up to $10 million for any given firm.

We found that very limiting.

So we would have new projects pop up.

We would need to issue a task order and hire an engineer to start design work.

We would be capped at $2.5 million for this new project.

Well, we often need to spend more than that.

And what you really don't want to do, you don't want to start with one engineer firm

and then midstream switch to another one.

Because the work product, they can't handle those off very efficiently.

Besides that, if we went through a traditional procurement and said, okay, this is going to cost, we think $10 million to design.

Let's go, let's start at the very beginning and do a competitive procurement for this project specific design work.

Since I can,

While no other entity in the state might have the $10 million caps, the freight railroads don't have the caps for design.

North Carolina doesn't have caps for their North Carolina DOT.

Rail Division doesn't have caps.

We talked to them.

So what we're asking for is to act more like a railroad, like some other states might do with regard to railroad activities.

So I mentioned Occom River Third Track.

If we, some elements of that, rather than taking nine to 12 months to do a procurement, we can go to our bench, which we're renewing this summer, and give someone a task for one entity up to nine, $10 million.

instead of the much slower process.

So, thanks a lot, John.

But this is something we worked with ACC Virginia on for over a year.

We started meeting with them in March of last year to work through these changes to get their support.

Thanks, Mike.

So, that's the summary of HB 141.

HB 446 is our land use bill.

This is the key here.

It aligns our quick take process with what all other condemnation orders in Virginia have to follow.

Quick take makes it sound like we're rushing in without notice and taking private property.

Notice how we're doing.

There's a very prescriptive process where we notify landowners, we go through a platting process, an appraisal process, we make offers and try to negotiate.

So it's the same process at the point where we cannot come to a voluntary transaction and grow in price with the landowner.

We will go file

Papers in court, we'll pay money into court, the landowner will actually have access to the money that we pay into court.

And while the trial happens, there will be a jury trial that happens that determines the valuation of the landowner, says the value is high, we say it's lower, and then there will be a jury trial to determine the actual valuation with the landowner, ultimately gets paid.

During the years that that process might take, we actually get access to the land and get to undertake construction activities so the project is not slowed down.

So we talk about quick take, that's what we mean.

Instead of having to wait for the whole core process to play out, we get earlier access to the property and get to undertake construction activities during the time where the core process is playing out.

We have very broad, very robust quick take powers.

The problem is we don't have to follow the process at all.

The other people, the condominiums,

The state have to follow.

We also don't get to follow the process.

So we're, we're filing documents in court that don't look like what court clerks are used to.

We're paying deposits in court in a way that they're not used to perceiving money.

So we said, we need to clean this up.

We need to be like everybody else.

So the, we got the law passed that said, Hey, you VPRA must follow.

It's titled chapter three, title 5.1.

Just like VDOT, just like other condominiums, you have to follow this process where we file certificates and quick take process.

And that's something that clerks are used to.

And it puts us in the exact same procedural posture as all other condominiums.

I heard that we need to hurry up.

So I won't, we have a few other sort of minor features of the bill.

One is that, hey, if we condemn land and acquire it, and later we want to sell it, we have a duty to offer that back to the prior owner.

uh exactly like VDOT does and then there were some categories well we didn't really technically we did not expand the categories of land that we've condemned there are some very specific statutes that give VDOT the ability to condemn specific types of property we're looking at saying okay we have this broad authority but then there's this very specific statute and we're not in it we don't want to have to argue about whether we have this authority or not so we went ahead and claimed that out okay so because of

This change here with how we do our engineering bench contracts, those prior thresholds were reflected in our procurement rules.

We had to update those thresholds.

So we pulled our procurement rules out.

We haven't updated them since 2022.

And we said, OK, what needs to change?

The red line was the board package that went out.

Just as a quick summary, here are all the substantive changes.

First, we said, look, where there's a federal requirement, we have lots of federal money in our program.

There's a federal requirement that applies that takes priority over our procurement rules.

We had to update the definition of professional services to include financial advisors, insurance brokers, because the law behind that changed, so we updated to mirror the law.

There are certain federal thresholds for micro and small purchases, which are non-competitive procurements.

Under $15,000, you can do a micro purchase, which means you can just buy what you need to buy.

Under $350,000, you can do a small, which is rather than doing a long, formal, drawn-out procurement, you just get three quotes and you can purchase from the best quote you get.

The prior thresholds were $10,000 and $250,000 respectively.

Since the federal limits went up, we have proposed to change our rules as well.

Section 3.25, we already talked about our bench contracts and those thresholds, so we reflected that in the procurement rules.

Section 4.3, this is very minor, but what we found ourselves doing on a very large mega project is we not only have a performance bond that guarantees performance of the contract, we also get a guarantee from the parent corporations because often what we have is a sole purpose entity that's created to undertake the project.

So what it is is a second layer of security.

So the entity with actual financial needs to perform is the one who's also promising to perform the contract.

And then section nine, we removed the requirement for DBE, Disadvantaged Business Enterprise usage plans from our solicitations.

Well, why did we do that?

The legal landscape on DBE has changed drastically in the past 18 months or so.

This past October, there was federal guidance that came down that basically said, not basically, it said, look, this historic practice of saying, okay, if you're in this racial category or if you're in this gender category,

Your business is automatically deemed disadvantaged and you count toward contract goals.

That's gone.

And what they said is all DBEs need to be reevaluated.

And then you need to look at the actual statements of the owners of the business and then have an affirmative duty to prove historical advantage.

And if they can't, then they're not going to be listed as DBE.

So what that's done is that's thrown us into a posture of, okay, everybody who is

and has been a DBE, is now being reevaluated.

And nobody is being, who's applying to become a DBE now is being granted application.

At the moment, everybody's kind of in this hopper being reevaluated and has to get re-certified under new rules.

So we don't want to look at our contractors and say, tell me which DBEs you're going to use, or tell me what percentage you're going to use, because they can't really, because we don't know what's going to happen on the back end of this process.

So we said, okay, we kept all of the small business, the state level designations, swam plans inside of the procurement rules, but we've removed the DBE plans.

And what the procurement rules say now, if adopted, they'll say, you know, when a DBE requirement applies, we will follow the program requirements and kind of leave it at that because right now it's kind of unknown how it's all going to shake out.

So I'm happy to answer any questions about the

Any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Osmond.

So we need to take Board action to approve this change to the procurement rules.

So I'm looking to see if there's any motion to approve proposed changes to procurement rules.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further questions or discussion?

Say nay.

Aye.

Sorry, forgot about ourselves.

Anyone else online?

Sorry.

All right, anyone opposed?

Any nay?

Anyone abstaining?

All righty, the ayes have it.

All right, so what we're gonna do, just to make sure we have enough time, we're actually gonna jump to item 15 to discuss the budget, and work through that, and then we will kind of see where we're at at the end of that, how it might devise our agenda.

And while they're getting ready, I just want to point out

Later in the day, we're going to talk about the project planning updates, what we want to do, and similar to what we did last year.

Last year, we asked you all to approve a budget with the knowledge that three months from now, we're going to have more information on the infrastructure that's going to be associated.

This afternoon, we're going to hear about the sightings that are going to be procuring government.

So what we have now for the sighting projects is our best estimate, but we know we're going to come back in August, September, October, and give you our

So the ownership kind of changes that conversation a little bit.

Just be advised that what you see in the budget for the signage, we all know is going to change and we'll hear more about that.

Lauren, I do that.

Yes, there's contingency on those projects.

I'm really excited that we didn't have to speak today.

So good morning, everybody.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Selma Nanovich.

I'm the Director of Financial Planning and Analysis.

To start off, I'll try taking a look at a summary of our budget process.

So the VPRA budget consists of three core components, starting with capital projects, capital and operating grants, and operations.

And please note that our operations include Amtrak operations and our administrative

The two capital components have to go to the CTB for approval and the capital budget was provided to the CTB by the February 1st deadline and it was approved on April 22nd.

So next we're going to take a look at our larger VPRA financial plan which compares our sources and uses from inception of

Our program to fiscal year 31, which is the completion of our four capital program.

So the top section we looked at during the January board meeting, so we're not going to take a look at that again.

We're going to focus on the bottom section of the slide, which includes changes since our January board meeting.

So our sources, which is

Our revenues increased by $0.8 million.

Our uses, which are our expenses, also increased by $24 million, causing a decrease of $23 million in our management reserve.

And taking a deeper dive into the primary drivers that are causing the increase in our sources, we're going to focus on the right

table of the slide, the left side we talked about during the January board meeting.

So there was a $0.3 million increase in our sources related to a Chrissy Ehrmakul award that VPRA received for the Alexandria fourth track project.

There was an increase in the DC Pedbridge contribution of $4.0 million.

and that was offset by two decreases in the Stafford utility reimbursement of $3.3 million and a decrease of $0.2 million related to the access fee payments that we make to VRE.

And then on the next slide, we're going to talk about the changes in our uses.

So this slide just shows an overview by budget component.

So we're going to focus on the April update column.

So in the I-95 corridor, there was a $3 million increase in our net base budget changes.

Other capital projects saw a decrease of $9 million, and our operations section increased by $30 million, excuse me, for a total change in uses of $24 million.

So we're going to...

Dive deeper into each of the budget components.

We're going to focus on the peach colored lines, the rest of the items we talked about during the January meeting.

So these are changes that happened between January and May.

So we are comparing the amended fiscal year 26 budget to our proposed fiscal year 27 budget.

So starting with Long Bridge north and south, the north component

Project budget increased by $1.5 million.

The south component increased by $3 million.

And both of those are related to the district DOT project oversight costs that were not previously included in those project budgets.

Next, we're going to talk about the Potomac Creek Third Track.

So this is project Siting A.

There was an additional $2.5 million increase in that project budget.

in addition to the increase that we saw in January related to utility expenses that are not covered by Stafford County.

So these are expenses that VPRA is responsible for and will not be reimbursed by Stafford County.

And lastly, the Potomac Creek Third Track.

So this is the Stafford Utilities portion of that project.

There was an increase of $1 million related to or fined their first sign up.

There were no additional changes to the Western Rail Corridor, the $2 million we talked about in January.

So in the other capital projects component of the budget, the Manassas Line Capital Maintenance increased by $9 million, and this is as a result of refined estimates that were provided to us from Norfolk Southern.

related to the capital maintenance of the M-Line.

There is no additional change in the capital and operating grant section of the capital budget.

And the next couple of slides just show our expenditure plans for our capital projects.

And there's more details by project that were included in the board materials that were provided to you all.

I'm going to pause to see if there's any

Questions to the capital side of our budget.

Okay, so since January, when we talked to you then, within a couple of weeks of the service changes that occurred on January 12th, and we made note that

Based on lessons learned, we come back to you with any changes that we recommend related to operating costs.

What we found is that the most extensive change that we have related to operations has to do with a change that we're recommending working with Amtrak on and have proceeded to implement, which is opening up what is considered deadhead cars, where there's additional capacity available in these trains that start in Virginia where we remove service, particularly in Richmond, and we're opening up an additional car

to passengers.

And that affects not only availability, but ticket pricing as well.

And so we've worked with Amtrak to estimate what it would take to bring on an additional conductor, the staffing, the Wi-Fi, the cleaning responsibilities, all the things that goes along with opening that capacity.

And that value is about four and a half million dollars.

We felt that was best related to the operations going forward.

And so this change of 32 million

represents a five-year impact of that change throughout the remaining construction and the reduced service.

And so that is the most significant change in the operating budget that we're recommending since January.

Related to asset maintenance, we have refined budgets provided by Norfolk Southern for a slight adjustment there.

Related to operations administrative costs, we have an overall change of $2 million.

We've had additional refinements of costs, but mainly our safety and security improvements have been added as a new line item.

We have property that you need to take care of that's beyond the rail asset that we have a responsibility to maintain safety.

And then in other operations, this decrease is primarily related to refined bus service costs.

So as we brought the buses online and also entered into that procurement,

Our estimates were a little bit too high related to what we saw in the procurement results.

A good news story in that area.

This slide just provides a view of the amended current year budget against the recommendations for fiscal year 2027.

This slide provides the details of the administrative budget changes for VPRA.

With regards to payroll benefits, our staffing remains pretty much the same in terms of assumptions year over year.

The biggest adjustment here is us making adjustments for our retirement costs for the agencies and what we get passed on to us through VRS.

Pension adjustment has been provided based on what we've learned over the last two years.

With regard to professional services, we have a planned depreciation study related to the property that we have.

We'll be updating the financial plan going forward in the upcoming months.

We also have recommended adjustments in our IT area related to cybersecurity and penetration testing.

They get grouped in that category.

And the biggest change here also is related to a station study.

As we're making improvements to the rail and adding capacity, it's very important that we look at stations and take a look at any recommended improvements going forward that we can not only recommend for funding, but seek alternative funding to make those improvements and working with Amtrak going forward.

In the area of IT, as we've brought systems online and having the systems amortization across, that is really just the driver of these costs.

We also have additional reporting responsibilities related to using our internal financial systems, make sure that we're getting the best data out of it to make recommendations.

And we're also looking for a grant system implementation.

We have tremendous alternative sources

Managing those is quite cumbersome and we're looking for solutions to help us work a little bit smarter related to seeking reimbursements.

And then for building and office related costs, we've had a decrease year over year.

We had some one-time expenses for building improvements that are no longer in the budget.

In terms of the other employment costs, we have other employee costs just based on historical spending,

as well as future needs.

We're looking at a new human resources and payroll system.

What we have works for us, but we're not 100% happy with it and we're looking at opportunities, but we don't envision a tremendous cost increase there.

One of the biggest items here is also planned groundbreaking and what it's going to take to do that event and the expectations around it.

We have a small,

An 11% increase related to insurance costs just based on what we have incurred to date and future needs.

We've also adjusted our third party projects administration budget.

Again, this is included in our administrative budget, but it represents money provided by others.

And then as I mentioned earlier, property management.

This is a new line item in our budget related to improvements that we need to make related to signage,

Ben Sane, or other improvements that are needed at these sites beyond the actual rail.

Any questions on those details?

This provides an analysis of a comparison of our administrative costs to total expenditures.

Obviously, as the capital program is really kicking into high gear, this graph is trending in the same way we would expect.

And then in terms of the management reserve, with those adjustments that we described related mainly to the Amtrak operations, our management reserve is decreased since our last quarter to $89 million.

And we still have about 23% of our remaining program to get to final construction pricing.

Any questions?

I just want to note, particularly for those who might be listening in case you're wondering why we didn't have a lot of questions on that, I just wanted to

Notes meeting that happened last month.

I think it's on April 26th.

We do have a separate finance and audit committee that Member Doersch is our chairperson for that.

We had a very robust discussion in that meeting about a lot of these budget issues and about particular projects where funding was added and budgets for those.

So I just want to assure anyone listening, we do have robust discussions.

I don't know.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say nay.

Anyone abstaining?

All right, the ayes carry it.

Thank you very much, both of you.

All right, let's do our time check.

I think that was so fast and furious.

We can go back to, should we go to the bylaw insects?

All right, let's have that conversation.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all.

Every year, we take a look at the bylaws, bylaws were created back in 2020.

We look to make any acquired change, recommend change here in this cycle.

We look at what we did last year.

Last year, we made the change actually on the bottom.

We had discovered an issue where the executive director's authority to move money back and forth didn't allow for new projects.

The example was we had a siding.

We worked with the CSF and decided that that siding was in a place that was good, but would require us to place a high barrier, which was very, very expensive.

We talked to the exec.

We moved the siding north a little bit.

Take that coffee, move it out, save us a significant amount of money.

They said, yeah, let's look at that.

Let's study that.

Well, when we wanted to study that, we had to create a new line item to study what would be a new siding.

And I didn't have the authority to do that.

So last year we did a bylaw amendment that would allow me to not only move money back and forth without increasing the budget, but also to create a new line up.

That, I think that authority is in there now.

We are now coming back this year to ask for that same modification for both the passenger service budget and for the administration budget.

It comes in play.

For example, Amtrak comes and says, hey, we've got a new line item.

We've got new train sets.

We're going to create a maintaining arrow.

Why not?

Or some other required line item.

We would have to come back to the board and get approval.

What these changes allow us to do, it allows its media authority to create a new line item up to a certain percentage of the budget, 1.5% of the budget.

and of course it would be transparent.

We showed you the executive director report, we talked about it, but it prevents us from having to get the whole board together to vote on a new lineup or to make small movements like that.

So we're looking for that same authority that we have now under capital and capital projects to be extended to the afternoon service and the administration.

The other thing that we need to do is what we talked about earlier.

The bylaws currently say, when you give me an authority to do something, I've got 90 days to do it, as we've seen with

and partners across the board, freight railroads, Amtrak, DOT, sometimes it takes longer than that 90 days, so we're asking to extend that authority from 90 days to 12 months.

I've got one.

On extending that to 12 months,

I don't, I wouldn't want that.

Number one, if we're bringing it to the board and we've got 12 months left in negotiation, I think we're bringing it too early.

The other thing is that we've got three members every 12 months that rotate off.

And I don't want to be in a situation where I'm now signing something that less than 75% of the board has voted on.

Okay, look, we

speaking for the current leadership.

When the changes, we bring them to you.

No surprise, you can say that all the time.

So we're not going to get bored for something and then do not hear about it for 12 months.

All right.

Thank you.

I would just note that I think that in the transparency, which is very noted here,