Assembly Select Committee on Select Committee on Regional Transportation Solutions

Good morning. I'd like to call to order this Select Committee on Regional Transportation Solutions Informational Hearing. I'd like to thank the Members who are here with us this morning. We probably have one other Member that will join us.

And recognizing that that time of year where timing on calendars is very precious, I want to respect the Members time. And so we're going to begin. If you would join with me in the pledge of allegiance. Place your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible liberty, and justice for all.

I'd like to thank you for joining us today. The purpose of the Select Committee on Regional Transportation Solutions is so important. We are here to listen and learn from experts in the field. And by working together, we can continue to deliver solutions that matter to the constituents in our districts and throughout our great State of California.

California's number one source of global warming pollution is from our transportation sector. As many of you know in this room, taking steps in our transportation infrastructure is the best way to curb our carbon emissions and make our communities safer and healthier places to live. As legislators, it is our duty to serve the long term interests of our constituents and the people of California. Providing sustainable transportation options does just that.

Today we will hear about agencies that are delivering sustainable transportation options, that are creating efficient alternatives to driving, and in turn, reduce vehicle miles traveled and supporting technologies that reduce our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.

Over the years, I've had the opportunity to convene this informational hearing in several different venues, from LA Metro headquarters to the Antelope Valley. I would like to thank my colleagues and friend Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez for welcoming this hearing to his Assembly District. Thank you, Assemblymember.

I would also like to thank the Montclair City manager Ed Starr, and his staff, in particular Mikey Fuentes and Edmund Garcia, for working with my team to help make the logistics of today's hearing happen. And to Mayor John Dutrey, Mayor Pro Tem Tenice Johnson, and Council Members Bill Ruh, who I've known for many years now.

Thank you, Bill, for your longstanding support of the efforts of transportation and regionalizing those efforts. Carissa Martinez and Ben Lopez, thank you for the warm welcome to your city and council chambers. Before I invite our first panel to to be seated, I'd like to give the Members of the Committee an opportunity to make any opening comments that they'd like to make at this time. Mister Fong will turn to you first, thank you.

Good morning. And thank you so much, chair Holden, for hosting and holding this hearing and leading this important Committee for the past decade. And thank you to my colleagues Asamo Rodriguez, Cesar, Sal, and to everyone here today for your leadership and efforts.

And thank you, chair Holden, for your leadership with the State of California and serving the people of the LA and San Bernardino counties for the past decade. As you just heard from our chair, our region is the site for major events, including the 2026 World Cup, 2027 NFL Super bowl, and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

We must use this opportunity to not only prepare for those events, but to invest in infrastructure and programs that will boost our economies and provide safe and reliable transportation for years to come. Transportation is important for so many reasons, for our climate, for our economy, for accessibility, and even for social mobility.

As people depend on different transportation options to access education, training and work. I'm grateful to have an opportunity to have toured the Pomona yard of Foothill Transit recently. And thank you to the team there, to Doran, to the entire team for the leadership and efforts there as well.

We've made incredible progress, but we know so much work ahead and thank you so much. I look forward to today's hearing. A thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member Fong. Senator Seyarto.

Well, thank you. And thank you, Senator Member Holden, for inviting me to join you today. It's always good to get out and find out what is going on, what's the latest technology and how we're going to plan for the future of our transportation. I come from a region, obviously, that is what San Gabriel Valley was 60 years ago and what Orange County was, and Pomona, Walnut Valley was about 50 years ago. And that is a growth, the area, the next ring of growth.

And one of the things that I think we have to remember in the big scheme of things, and while we're having these conversations, is that as those areas are pressured to grow and accept more growth and accept the housing and deal with the imbalance that we have with employment and things like that, it is important to realize that if we frustrate citizens beyond what they are already frustrated with now, those are the people that pay the taxes, and if they move out of the state, they're not paying taxes anymore to be able to Fund these projects.

So we have a very difficult task and that's balancing out the metropolitan areas. And just like this area, Pomona, Walnut Valley, I grew up here. I've seen it. We used to. I moved into La Verne when they started tearing out orange groves to put in our houses and we were a growth ring, but there was no way we would ever be not accepting, but we'd be able to sustain a transit and rail system at that time because we didn't have the density.

And that's what's happening out in our region now in Riverside County and beyond in Coachella Valley. Those are all areas that I represent, and it is important that we, as we do these, but we also ensure that we have the basic road infrastructure that all of these other areas have. Now, if we don't, we are going to frustrate people beyond wanting to live here anymore. And that's already happening. I have four houses on my block that are empty right now from people who moved out of state. It's real.

And so, but also, you know, someday we will be the Pomona Walnut Valley and we will need that transit option. And giving people those, the variety of opportunities to be able to get where they want to go in a convenient, safe manner, that's going to be really important.

And to do that now, to plan for that now is important for the future. So that people also have hope that the gridlock that they feel on the freeways isn't their forever, you know, forever existence. So thank you again for having me this morning and I appreciate it. And all the presenters. I look forward to what you have to say about the transit system. Thank you.

Once again, thank you, Chairman Holden and colleagues, for joining us today. And really thanks to City Montclair for allowing us to have this very informative meeting about transportation. Looking back my 11 years, I'm like, wow, time has flied.

I know, talking with Habib and even Bill Ruh, when I got elected, how this is a very important project and it's great to see it where we're at now. Habib just called me in January, in July, August, it should be done, completed in the Pomona and can't wait to bring it to Montclair and eventually into the airport.

Right. I know that's probably going to be another group of individuals advocating, fighting for that, but I just talk about, we just talk about the transportation, the project. It does moving people, get them off the roads. But also we've got to look at the growth and development it brings to these communities. Right.

Those train stations, the stops that you come along in Pomona, La Verne and here in Montclair, all the things that brings the job to growth, development to the future is here.

And we need to be on top of these things and make sure that we continue to advocate for these projects because it's a win win for everybody and really want to just thank everybody for giving me the time here and look forward to a very productive informational meeting on transportation and what else we can go from here. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember. And each Member will have an opportunity for Q and A after each panel. Once we've heard from our two panels, I will invite the public to come forward for public comment.

Any person wishing to speak during public comment must first complete a request to speed card that can be picked up at the registration table. This hearing is being live streamed and recorded. I want to thank everyone who has joined us in person and online. And now we'll transition to our first panel.

In the first panel, we will hear about how two transportation agencies are delivering transportation solutions and expanding sustainable transit access and connections as I invite Lashawn and Habib up to the panel. You're already there. Good. Got ahead of the curve. That's good planning. There you go. Allow me to share a bit about each of them.

LaShawn King Gillespie serves as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Foothill Transit, the largest primary fixed route bus operator in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys of Los Angeles County. LaShawn joined the Foothill Transit team in 2006 and has served in several positions, including Director of procurement, Director of planning, and Director of customer service and operations.

Habib Balian serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority, overseeing planning, funding and construction of the light rail line from Los Angeles to Montclair.

During his tenure with the authority, he has overseen construction of nearly 14 miles Los Angeles to Pasadena segment, the design build program that came in on time and under budget. The planning, design and construction of the Pasadena to Azusa segment completed on time and on budget and put into service March 2016.

He is currently overseeing construction of the Glendora to Pomona segment, and I'm looking forward to this hearing and hearing more about the Pomona and Montclair segment. Welcome, both of you. And we'll start with Lashawn.

Thank you. Thank you, Assembly Member, holding Committee Members, staff panelists and all of you here this morning. On behalf of Doran Barnes, let me just.

Is the mic on?

How's that? Is that better? It's on. Okay. Nope, there it is. See, I was trying not to get it too close because they usually tell me I'm a little loud because I have a little bit of enthusiasm. So thank you again.

So all of you here on behalf of Foothill Transit CEO Doran Barnes, the Foothill Transit board and staff. I'm honored to be here to present how Foothill Transit is working on expansion, expanding multimodal, sustainable transit access and connections. Again, I am LaShawn King Gillespie and as you heard, I serve as deputy Chief Executive Officer at Foothill Transit.

But what my bio does not include is that I am an almost lifelong southern californian resident who, as many of us here, has had the opportunity to live, learn, work, play in and around this region and throughout this state for many years.

I would dare to say that based on your presence here and by the number of cars in the parking lot, we all understand the importance of this subject and share a vision and commitment to transit access for both professional and personal interests.

Before I move on though, I will answer one of the questions that I think many of you may have right now, and that is, is the picture that you see before you reel or is it photoshopped? This picture is 100% real and was taken at the Foothill Transit Pomona operations and maintenance facility.

I believe it was by sheer luck that we had a photographer there that morning taking pictures of our new hydrogen fuel cell buses during the great California snowstorm. Yes, I did say great because I am a Southern California native.

By way of background, Foothill Transit was established in 1988 as a joint powers authority to provide bus transit service to the Pomona and San Gabriel Valleys of the Los Angeles County and has operated with the mission of providing premier public transit service committed to safety, courtesy, quality, responsiveness, efficiency and innovation. These are the principles that guide our activities every day.

And this morning, setting aside the safety that we'll put on its own pedestal right now as we see some of the challenges faced in public transit in the safety perspective, today's discussion, I will focus on Foothill Transit's role in this complicated quilt pattern of providing regional, coordinated transit service, especially in the areas of innovation and responsiveness.

For the past 14 years, the agency has been leaning in on innovation, especially related to vehicle technology. Here is a brief overview of one of our current initiatives in this area.

What makes something big? Is it how it looks, how it makes you feel? Or maybe how it changes the world? However you define it, Foothill transit is doing it. A brand new fleet of clean green hydrogen fuel cell buses has come to Southern California. This is big.

Yes, it is big. However, when we put into perspective of the service that Foothill Transit provides, it's more than 9 million customers throughout the Pomona and San Gabriel valleys to a service area, a service area population of more than 2 million people across 327 sq mi through the provision of 30 local and nine express routes.

I would say it is big, but we have a big role to fill as the primary fixed operator fixed bus operator in our region where our goal is to use our 359 buses to connect customers from our easternmost areas, which is here in Montclaire.

Thank you for hosting us as well as our service with service that travels west into downtown Los Angeles, with stops along the way that are not served by Metrolink or our other regional partners, or the gold Line, or from our northern service area along the foothill cities of Glendora, Monrovia, Laverne on down to the southern area connections of Orange County for customers needing to make those connections.

So, looking at Foothill Transit's role in the patchwork of multimodal transit access and connections, we fill in the connections to both the metro rail, the Habib's agency, the Gold line, other bus systems and other modes of transit transportation options. I. Would like to take a short detour back to the buses.

Zero emission buses specifically, from my perspective, a sustainable transit access includes the equipment used to provide that service. Foothill Transit has been a leader in zero emission technology since 2010 when we launched the first three fast charge electric buses used in transit service in the nation.

Our electric bus journey continued and expanded through the years to include additional fast charge buses, the construction of infrastructure at our operations and maintenance facilities to transitioning to long range electric buses. We have learned many lessons along the way, including that many Members of our community are concerned about the environment and share that commitment to sustainability.

We also learned many, many years ago that there are many who may be drawn to the look of the buses. Maybe buses aren't as zippy as some of the rail projects that we see, but I would say that we're working to make our buses look pretty cool.

That thought was further confirmed when in 2020, we launched the first to double deck all electric buses in the nation. During that time, we received requests from customers calling in to request information on where they could find those buses so that they could take their kids on rides, just to take the ride.

Creating enthusiasm with our community for buses I get a little excited continuing along this timeline to current projects in the hydrogen fuel cell electric bus program that we are very proud of and has been remarkably received by the community, especially younger Members of our community and specifically students.

Foothill Transit has had a partnership with colleges to provide greater access to education, encourage ridership to reduce traffic and parking constraints. Since 2003, this program expanded to the establishment of the Foothill Transit class program, where we are proud to partner with local colleges to offer discounted and in some cases free rides and foothill transit passes to students.

Additionally, we partner with Los Angeles Metro on the Go Pass program where partnering schools can offer students unlimited rides on Foothill Transit, La Metro bus and rail, as well as several other local transit providers for free during the school semester.

And then there is the UPASs program which provides students in several other universities at several other universities to utilize foothill transits, local and silver streak lines using their UPAss. This is true access like transit agencies throughout the country, Foothill transit saw significant decreases in ridership even post pandemic.

However, through these educational connections and other efforts, student ridership has seen the highest level of growth throughout all of our service lines since the pandemic. Again looking at opportunities to expand transit access, Mount San Antonio College has serviced by five foothill Transit bus routes.

In partnership with the college, we opened the Mount Sac Transit Center which created a transit hub for a number of stops that had been located on the streets along the perimeter of the campus.

This transit center has created a greater improved service to the cuts to the students and has improved their experience by having a single location to board and disembark the buses in close proximity to the campus and campus activities. Combined with being able to get there with your student pass, this makes an attractive transit offering.

The agency has been a Member of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments for many years to study and identify regional transit solutions to enhance our communities, providing high quality mobility projects, as well as seeing opportunities to provide linkages to our regional partners and I keep looking over there to my regional partner.

Our goals are not just to connect with these partners, but to look at opportunities to provide equitable, accessible, reliable service and enhancing those connection times. As the agency celebrates its 35th anniversary, we continue to look at future opportunities to enhance mobility through a few projects that I'd like to quickly highlight. We see great promises.

We see great promise as all of us are continuing to improve our environment. So the commitment has been made to expand our zero emission fleet. We currently have on order 24 all electric double deck buses which will replace some of our aging fleet.

Additionally, 19 fuel cell electric buses and the corresponding infrastructure to fuel those buses is underway to be constructed from our Arcadia Irwindale operations and maintenance facility.

Based on the success of the Mount Sac Transit center, we are currently working with Cal Poly Pomona on the development and construction of the Cal Poly Pomona Bronco Mobility Hub, which will enhance the mobility of students and staff at the college and the Foothill Transit forward study and implementation the agency completed its most recent comprehensive operational analysis and analyzed current ridership trends and recommended routing changes to best align with travel patterns.

From that study, we have begun and will continue implementing routing changes to increase frequency, improve regional transit connections, and provide access to popular destinations such as retail and colleges. One of these that is specially called out is the Gold Line extension, Metro L line phase two B Azusa to Pomona Connections project, which we are closely watching, literally.

You may see my car going across some of those roads sometime to see how progress is being made at each of those stations and along the as each of those stations along the corridor are open, we will be adjusting routes and services to meet those demands.

And thank you assemblymember Fong one of the areas that we did not cover here was the the major events that are coming to the region. So we are paying very close attention and how our mobility demands will change and evolve pre and post those major events. So again, as I started in my opening remarks, this subject doesn't only resonate professionally, but for me it resonates personally.

I am so excited to hear, learn and envision a time, hopefully in the very near future, where instead of my choices being able to make the 16 miles journey here this morning in an hour and 51 minutes, using three buses and a 31 minute walk or the 28 minutes drive to get here this morning, I will be able to efficiently, effectively and yes, safely take transit to my destinations. Yes, I do live a little eastern up here, but you know, the sky's the limit, right? And we're ready. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Thank you. And thank you for your perseverance. Habib.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, Members of the Committee appreciate you, including the Foothill Gold line, the other zippy San Gabriel Valley project, in the hearing this morning. It's a pleasure to be here to report on the success that we've had.

I look at you, Mister Holden, Mister Rodriguez, the time that we've worked together very hard to get us to this point. Mister Rodriguez, for the last decade working with you, Mister Holden, for the last two decades, working with you. Three decades.

Okay, I wasn't going to tell if you weren't, but you did so three decades from your time in Pasadena over the last three decades to get us to this successful point.

So I do appreciate you allowing me to come here and talk about the gold line, formerly known as the blue line, the l line, and now the a line. And it's not designated by color, but to most of us it'll always be the gold line.

So with that, I'd like to walk you through an update of where we are on the project and of course, our success. I can get the this is a map of the San Gabriel Valley and LA. Two La rail network. As you can see, it's an extensive network that Metro has planned over the last four decades.

I've been around to watch from the initial planning of that project of all those projects to now we have a very comprehensive map. It was the view of the Legislature back in 1999 to carve out the gold line or the blue line at the time and have the San Gabriel Valley project built by a separate construction authority.

We build the project for metro, and then we turn it back over to Metro to operate it long term. With regard to the project that is underway now, we have built the project in three separate phases. It's roughly a $4 billion investment in public transit.

First, from Los Angeles to Pasadena, was completed and put into service in 2003. The Pasadena to Azusa project was completed in 2015, also on time and on budget. And now in the throws of another successful completion, Glendora to Montclair project.

We broke ground in December of 2017, and it's being built in two segments, and that project is nearing completion. Now, the project that is underway to Pomona, that project segment, it's 9.1 mile. It goes through the cities from Glendora to Pomona. The project began in July of 2020. We're about 91% complete.

The project remains on schedule and on budget. We'll complete it and turn it over to metro in January 3 of 2025. You can see here the construction elements as it's broken down, the freight work relocation completed.

The renovated bridges, 19 of them, or new, newly built bridges, they're completed, and 21 at grade crossings have now been completed through the four cities. The light rail system itself, the track has been installed. The power and train control systems are complete, and now we're in the final stages of systems integration, testing throughout the line.

We do have four stations, as I mentioned, Glendora, San Dimas, Laverne, and Pomona north. They are approximately 85% complete. You can see it's really parking that's being completed and final finishing work at each of the stations, which you'll see up close. Here's the Glendora station. Its construction status.

You can see on the left side of the screen the station canopies, and basically the right of way is all cleaned up and essentially ready for pre revenue testing. And on the right side, you see some of the art pieces at the Glendora station. That's me on the right at the column. These are.

We had an extensive program to design the art at each of the stations working with the community. Here's the San Dimas station. You can see the artwork in the fabrication mode, as well as La Verne station and the Pomona station. Here you see the overall project progress is 91% complete throughout the line.

And with the remainder of 2024, as I mentioned, systems integration testing has been completed. We've completed nearly all of the final grade crossing work at each of the cities. The communication system installation is underway and on schedule. It's gone very well.

We complete all the station work by the end of the year and then systems integration testing also by the end of the year, so that we receive substantial completion January 3. So we're feeling very good about this. Staying on time and on budget.

We believe that the contractor has been a great partner through this as well as the cities have done a lot to make sure that we get this project completed on schedule. We are now letting everyone know of the future station dedication dates.

We are half coming up each of the stations in this early, late spring, early summer of next year. You're all invited. This is a major event for each of the cities.

Of course, they've been planning for this for over a decade, so it'll be a great opportunity for them to celebrate each of the stations that will be part of their cities. With regard to the next segment of the project, Pomona to Montclair, it's about a 3.2 miles segment. It's a shovel ready project.

At this point, we'll be receiving $798 million of SB 125 funds. Thanks to the Legislature and the hard work of Mister Rodriguez and Mister Holden that got us to this point. We'll be working with Metro. They've been the lead applicant since 2023.

And then the funding will be distributed to the construction authority through a signed agreement, we hope in the next month. This is just a snapshot of what we're looking at. At the Claremont station and the Montclair station. We worked extensively with the cities and the planning to make sure the stations were located where the cities liked them.

Also with the parking and the design of the parking and of course, the art. The cities have all played a part in the selection of the artists as well as the the art components itself. With regard to our funding, we have. You can see the construction authorities at the bottom square.

But if you look where the funding is coming from, substantial funds are coming through Calsta, the $798 million through SB 125 $41 million from the 2018 TARCP grant. And then we'll have Calsta metro grant agreements that will make those funds available to us. And then through SBCTA, there's $39 million that are committed.

We estimate that there's an additional $18 million that will be needed. And then there'll be separate agreements that transfer those funds from SBCTA to Metro, who then will Fund the construction authority's work to the tomb of about $896 million.

All of this assumes that we award a contract next spring that keeps us on schedule and ideally on budget based on our estimates. Looking ahead at our project schedule, we'll complete this phase of the project to Pomona in 2025, January 2025, and then we'll begin the work in Pomona to Montclair.

That work will be a process that we've gone through. We began a two step procurement process, a design build process process to hire a contractor, and then we expect a contract award in spring of next year. And it's essentially a 60 month project to complete.

I do want to thank the entire San Gabriel Valley Legislative caucus for all of your leadership that got us the funding. I know it was a lot of work.

Mister Holden's office, your staff, Mister Rodriguez, your staff been excellent to work with, kept a surprise of anything that we need to do in working with the Rubios and everyone that was part of this. We truly appreciate it, appreciate your involvement at every level. We wouldn't be at this point of a success without that. And I'm happy to take any questions.

Members, are there any questions that you have.

Question regarding Foothill Transit, if that's okay. So I see we're using the electric and the hydrogen buses. Do you think, is one of them performing better than the other? Or how does the future look that we may all be all hydrogen, all electric? Just question how that's working out.

This is a conversation that transit agencies across the country are having, as Foothill Transit was one of the first to implement the electric technology. As you can see, we have lots of experience. So during that whole timeline of doing the electric, we found that that technology was not as sophisticated as we had thought that it would be. So we have transitioned to fuel cell electric buses. And the difference between the two is if you drive an electric vehicle, I'll use that as an analogy versus a gas vehicle.

Most of our fleet, the 319, are CNG. Our operators know how to use them. The fueling does not take an extended amount of time. In contrast, you have the electric buses, where we have the infrastructure required, we have the charging required. The en route charging aspect does have some operational concerns.

I say all of that to say we don't know. I believe, my belief, my personal belief, and I think the belief of many agencies who are going through this will be it depends on the technology, the advancement in the technology, as well as we may see that as a combination.

When you look at some of the brown outages that the state has experienced over the years, and if we were to have 100% electric fleet, what that would do to our customers, that gives me pause. Where the hydrogen. There's some gives and takes on that area as well. The cost of hydrogen is extremely high right now. I know there's a lot of efforts being made to bring that cost down. So, long answer. But the short answer is I believe it's going to be a combination of both of those technologies.

Thank you. And I think that makes sense. Thank you.

All right, well, that was one of my questions was, so where are we headed, electric or hydrogen fuel cell? And you've adequately answered that. So are there CARB credits that you guys get as an agency? Do you get them for the hydrogen fuel cell as well as...

I'm not sure we get them for the hydrogen fuel cell, but I'm going to venture out and say I believe so. Because hydrogen fuel cell buses are an electric bus. It's just the way those batteries are charged. And I am getting a science lesson in that every day. But we will confirm and just make sure. But I do believe that we are receiving those credits.

Because I also am looking at these as an opportunity for you and the agencies that are involved to let us know in the Legislature what we can do to be helpful to kind of get some of the hurdles out of the way so you can be successful in getting, you know, accomplishing your mission.

And so when we are not allowing CARB credits because somebody is using hydrogen fuel cell when there is zero emission way of powering or energy production, I'm sorry, we really should be giving that. And so anyway, I want to make sure that you guys are getting the funding that you need and to be able to be successful. And part of that is getting credit when you are moving to very expensive, because I think the buses are pretty darn expensive.

Both the electric buses and the hydrogen fuel cell buses are very expensive. And then also what you had pointed out with the infrastructure challenges. Going a little bit forward, there's other agencies to the east. You say you live to the east. Well, so do I live to the east.

And the reason we lived there is because we couldn't afford to be out here. And so we bought houses out that way and are part of that growth ring. What is the interagency cooperation in trying to plan these future rail routes? Because these will have to be extended someday and they can extend all the way down into the Coachella Valley. And so, you know, we have, you know, the Omnitrans, the RTA, RCTC, those are all transit agencies in the Riverside, San Bernardino area, as well as SB, the San Bernardino transit agencies.

So is there coordination going on so we can identify routes and kind of buy those lands now so that we have, we're not faced with trying to acquire them through eminent domain in the future or, you know, like they had to do on the Foothill Freeway when La Verne built a bunch of houses in the path of the freeway.

Well, as far as our agency goes, our statute takes us to Montclair, and we look no farther than Montclair. We've had conversations with the County of San Bernardino in the past, but at this point, that's our jurisdiction. And we look forward to other agencies being created as we were, to take the project even further east.

I would hate to see a situation where the east areas that are just developing are not anywhere near putting in transit, have different lines. And so we wind up with disconnected lines between counties when, someday, I think the idea is it all kind of congruent, it all works together.

And so I think that's important to have those discussions earlier than later, so that as those areas are planning their rail system for in 20 or 30 years, when they can get it in, that it will actually work with our, in conjunction with the ones we have now. Let's see, the Claremont and Montclair stations that you were talking about, those are already in, aren't they? Because I've seen transit for Metrorail. Are they sharing that or are they...

That's Metrolink, is currently there, and they will be combined stations in the future. The Gold Line doesn't reach Montclair and Claremont at this time. That's the next phase of construction. But they will connect with Metrolink.

But with the Gold Link. I mean, not the Gold Link. The Metrorail is already gone. It goes through those areas already, and they have train stations set up in Claremont. I know it's just south of the Village, or part of the Village, actually. And then Montclair is just across from the fire station, is that correct?

Yes, and we'll connect with both those stations.

Okay, so that's not a huge conversion, right?

Well, I think it's huge that we're going to make that connection.

The connection is awesome. You don't have to build a whole new station. That's what I was getting at.

Yeah. Our stations will be new, and then there'll be some reconfiguration done at both Montclair and Claremont stations to accommodate the connection.

All right. So with that, I would just leave with both of you. Please communicate honestly with the Legislature about your needs and what it takes. Because we have to find additional funding beyond, you know, we take in our $29 billion of funding every year, but we have to find additional dollars beyond that. Because we can't keep taking away from other important projects to make another project more important than that one.

Because then we have this imbalance, and then we have unhappy customers out there who go out and get their U-Haul and all their families away, and we don't want that anymore. So, anyway, thank you so much for that. Great information, really exciting projects, and look forward to being able to jump on one once in a while. Thank you.

I'd like to just pick up on what the Senator was identifying as making sure that counties are coordinating. And I don't want to, but I think that that's really the sort of underlining message. And I think we made an effort to... We had an invitation out for SBCTA to be a part of this discussion, but I think they have a lot of their key members who are out of town. But notwithstanding that, you know, there's going to be a successful project in the high speed rail with Brightline from Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga.

And we, at our hearing last year, they gave an amazing presentation. And I know that the Assembly Member and the Senators that represent the high desert are looking at a Palmdale connection to that high speed rail as it makes its way into the Rancho Cucamonga San Bernardino area. And I would also say that, and we'll hear a presentation on the Ontario airport. It is another regional hub that can bring in other communities and other counties.

And with the Gold Line actually serving LA County and a portion of San Bernardino, County, which we're in, is the kind of project that we want to see utilized because we're dropping a very long planned project called the A Line to San Bernardino County doorstep, 6 miles from where we...

I mean, from Montclair to the Ontario Airport is a major connector. We'll hear from one of the other presenters from MTA, where resources were made available to MTA to start the study of extending the A Line to the Burbank Airport. So, to the Senator's point, the vision of this committee when we first put it together was to try to find ways of creating regional connectivity. And what better hub than to have an airport on the east and an airport on the west connected by a rail system.

So I think the conversations have been longstanding and I think that there, certainly within San Bernardino, County, is a priority to connect to the airport. But I think it's also a priority of trying to find ways of utilizing regional or dollars for San Bernardino County to connect San Bernardino communities.

But not to be lost in that is that linking counties, even in Orange County, to the airport could be an amazing hub. The future is bright on all of these efforts. I wanted to real quickly from both of you, can you kind of give us an idea of, and I think we're having a clear idea of where the Gold Line will be by 2028 in the Olympics. How do you see, or have you even begun to envision a project that will be completed in Pomona that still can be linked to the airport?

Has there been any conversation about how that's being integrated now in terms of visitors that are coming into Ontario Airport? And I can save this conversation or this question for the Ontario airport as well, but Gold Line having any conversations at this point? And then Foothill Transit, what's your piece of how we're going to provide accessibility and transportation for so many people coming into this region?

So the Foothill Transit piece is we're all in. I can tell you that. We're all in. From the conversations and the direction that we've been receiving from LA Metro, which is the lead agency in all of this. The bus requirement is going to be approximately 3000 buses to take both the customers, I'm sorry, the passengers I use, customers in my world. I apologize.

The customers, the athletes, all of the parties who are going to be coming in around the region. The LA Metro fleet is approximately 1100 buses. So there's many discussions about where we're going to get the buses, operators, mechanics from. Foothill Transit's specific role will be to make sure that we are providing as much service as we can for those games, as well as the other games that you mentioned, as well as making sure that we have the core areas of our service area taken care of, making sure people can get to their medical appointments and the schools and those types of things.

Even though there's a lot of activity going on. We have some preliminary discussions about how many buses, where those buses are going to come from, if we're going to retire some of our bus, or delay retirement of some of those buses to lend to those efforts. Right now it's a lot of discussion, and we're putting those pieces together. But I assure you that we have a full team on board looking at each of those aspects.

And the one area that we're specifically focusing on is the ADA areas, making sure that we have those accessible vehicles ready and available to transport those customers, both for the Olympics as well as the Paralympics. And then looking a little bit closer, the Super Bowl, which is coming soon. And so we're going to have a lot of practice between now and then on these mass events. And I guarantee that we're going to put our 110% efforts toward leaning in on each of those to make us successful games for the country.

Thank you.

And Metro is the operator, will be the one that decides the schedule. I expect that they will increase their service during the Olympics, particularly making sure that they have headways probably in the seven minute range at peak times. That's what I would expect, but I defer to Metro.

Okay, well, we'll raise that question again when they join our second panel. But I just want to thank both of you for your presentation, and certainly we look to your leadership and certainly you've demonstrated that. And your agencies have been very successful. And so I really want to appreciate that because transportation infrastructure is so important, but it is so hard to sometimes get funded and resources that can come from state or local.

And in the case of the Gold Line, local supported it for much of its existence with regional tax measures that they said, this is important, and we want to make sure that it gets done. And when there were gaps, the state had to drag them in kicking and screaming.

But we were able to do that to make sure that those gaps were filled. So it's a fascinating process of seeing these projects from beginning to end. And when you ask or describe how long we had both been a part of this, and when I think 30 years, that's a, that's a long time. And considering, I'm only 40 now.

But let me just say this, as we conclude this segment, and we talk about the Gold Line, and now it's A1, you have been a part of this for a long time. And someone else who has been a part of this project that has been by your side for a long time is Lisa Levy Buch. And so I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to both of you for your long standing commitment to this project. Because you literally rode the wave, the highs and the lows.

And for a project that had to be taken away from the regional operator based on legislation that then State Senator Adam Schiff was the lead on in creating the Gold Line Authority, to seeing how successful design build and on time and under budget, that doesn't happen very often. And so with your leadership and also with Lisa's, I just wanted to have an opportunity for this committee to say thank you. And if you'll join me at the podium, join the committee, I'd like to present both of you with a token of appreciation.

Thank you.

And now, and now, as we, before we transition into our second panel, I wanted to recognize Council Member Bill Ruh who wanted to share quick comments.

Thank you, Assemblymember Holden, Assemblymember Fong, Assemblymember Seyarto, Assemblymember Rodriguez, and Assemblymember Friedman for being here today. Especially, thank you to Assemblymember Holden who has seen this project from the very infant stages to what it is today. We appreciate this. And when it eventually makes it to the City of Montclair, each of you will have my personal invitation to join us on that day for the ribbon cutting and the official rides and all of that.

The Gold Line or the A Line or the L Line or whatever we're going to call it again, is important to the regional development. Yes, it's important to the City of Montclair, where I'm a lifetime resident. I was born in this city. But it's a way to move people through a region and our transportation network and components tie together. It's not just light rail, it's not just heavy rail, it's not just the bus, and it's not just an automobile.

Each one of them plays that integral role, tying all of this together so we can move through the region, get our students to school, our wonderful universities, Claremont, the University of La Verne, Pasadena City College and many others on this line. Moving people to work, moving people to recreate, this is all important. It's also something else that sometimes is lost in this. The good jobs it creates for the residents of the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire, helping to lift them up, move them up that ladder so that they can afford to live the life most of us grew up living. So I appreciate you being here today.

Thank you so much. Especially Assemblyman Holden. You've been such a champion for this. Continue the good work you're doing and everybody continue to be the advocates you've been to help build this region, make it stronger and connect everybody. We go across city and county lines every day. We don't think about it. They're already connected. Let's continue to connect that. Thank you.

Thank you, Bill. Thank you. And let me acknowledge my other colleague, Laura Friedman, who kind of snuck in on me there, but I want to thank her for being here. And as the former Chair of the Assembly Committee on Transportation, she has been very much pivotal to a lot of the good success that we're seeing here as well. Now, as we introduce our second panel, which includes leaders from organizations that have demonstrated the ability to deliver solutions through community engagement and collaborative planning.

Today we will benefit from receiving testimony from Sarah Dominguez from SCAG, Michael Turner from LA Metro, who has also been a part of these projects for a very long time and we appreciate his leadership, and Steve Lambert from the Ontario International Airport. Sarah Dominguez is the Manager of Planning Strategy for Southern California Association of Governments.

In that role, she oversees the agency's environmental analysis and performance measurements - team, measurement team, as well as the development of Connect SoCal, the long range regional transportation plan sustainability community strategy. Michael Turner is the Executive Officer, Government Relations, at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In that role, Michael Turner manages the agency's government relations department.

His team is responsible for advocacy on all state and federal legislation affecting transportation and transportation funding. On behalf of the agency, Mister Turner has worked on metro sponsored legislation related to a variety of transportation issues, from infrastructure financing, innovative project delivery, congestion, pricing, and the legislation authorizing Measure R.

Steve Lambert serves as a strategist, consultant and public information officer for Ontario International Airport. Steve has been involved in some of the most important transportation projects in the region, including the ... Line, West Valley Connector and Brightline West, as well as Ontario Airport's dramatic growth since its return to local ownership in 2016. I want to welcome all of you, and we'll first turn to Sarah for your presentation.

Thank you and good morning. I'm happy to present to you today on Connect SoCal 2024, our recently adopted regional transportation plan and sustainable community strategy, and kind of give you an overview of the regional planning level. We like to say that we kind of plan at the 10,000 foot level in collaboration with partners at the local level. Next slide, please. Thank you. So to give that big picture perspective about what our role in the region is, we provide a leadership role.

And by that, I'm talking about the 86 Member regional council that we have, and that's represented by elected officials from cities and counties across the six county region of SCAG, including tribal governments as well. And so we're developing policies, strategies and plans such as Connect SoCal to help define what the vision for the region is. But SCAG, as an agency does not implement. We do not have a local land use authority. We do not operate any transportation programs or develop any capital projects. So we rely on partners like LA Metro to actually implement the plan as well as local jurisdictions as they make their local planning decisions.

And then scag has an evaluation role. So not just formally through our federal performance measurements, but as we develop the plan, we look at how are we doing as a region and meeting those goals that we set for ourselves and using that to augment and develop our next set of plans and policies. So, speaking more specifically to the regional transportation plan and sustainable communities strategy, this is a federal requirement and a state requirement. So this is one of our primary responsibilities as a metropolitan planning organization for the region. On the federal side, we need to update this plan every four years.

We need to look long term, looking at least 20 years into the future. And in contrast to some other plans, such as the state level California Transportation Plan 2050, we have to be fiscally constrained, meaning that every project in the plan needs to be supported by reasonably foreseeable revenues. We have a number of other requirements related to conformity and public involvement. And meeting all those requirements is necessary for the projects in our plan to get federal transportation funding. And then on the state requirements side, unique to the State of California, is SB 375.

So that means when we're developing this plan, we also need to look at the land use pattern. So how are we going to grow as a region? How is that development integrated with our transportation network that will allow us to reach greenhouse gas emission reduction targets from passenger vehicles? And meeting that state requirement is necessary for us to be able to get SB 1 funding from programs such as Solutions for Congested Corridors and the Trade Corridor Enhancement Program.

So in the past about four years, since we had our SES accepted by CARB, our 2020 plan, we've received almost $2 billion from those two programs to our region. So both meeting both of these requirements is necessary to keep the region moving forward in terms of being able to build the projects that serve the region. So now talking about Connect SoCal 2024, our most recently adopted plan, which was adopted in April of this year. Really what this is doing in terms of long range planning is we take the existing regional conditions, understanding where we are as a region, working with our local jurisdictions to understand their adopted plans.

We do a lot of different research and trends analysis. You know, where are we going in the future? What's the demographic projections? And then a lot of coordination across the region, because what we're looking to do is see where we're headed alone, you know, in terms of everybody's individual plans and what do we need to do together as a region, what are our barriers that we need to be able to address and be able to move forward to reach our regional goals.

So one more slide on the process, just because it is important, and then I'll go get to a little bit of details on the plan itself. So I had mentioned that this is something that we have to do every four years, and it takes us about four years to do that. We'll be starting really soon on the foundations and frameworks for the next cycle. But in terms of how we develop the plan, we have a lot of different working groups and technical advisory committees, including an Aviation Technical Advisory Committee, including Transit Technical Advisory Committees.

So we're meeting with a lot of the technical experts at agencies and local jurisdictions throughout the region to understand so that we have the correct data inputs for our plan. We also engage with the public, so we have a number of public workshops we did both in person and virtual for this last cycle, and we collect information from the public through a survey. Now, we have almost 19 million people in our region, so we know that we are not going to reach everyone.

So one of the strategies that we have developed for the past two cycles in order to get input from underrepresented communities, is partnering directly with community based organizations throughout the region. Now, in terms of the government to government collaboration, I do want to highlight these last two bullets. Two of the most important kind of ingredients to the plan, in terms of on the transportation side, the project list, we get that input directly from the county transportation commissions. That's who we work with to develop that project list.

And then on the land use side, to understand both the current and future land use and development pattern for our region, we work directly with jurisdictions. So meeting with most of the jurisdictions throughout the region and getting their input on the data that we have for the plan. So now getting more into the plan itself, it's really focused around four key pillars, which is mobility, community, environment and the economy.

And so working with our stakeholders and members of the public, we asked about what is our vision for the region in 2050, which is the horizon of this plan, and what we heard and developed for that vision is to have a healthy, prosperous, accessible and connected region for a more resilient and equitable future. And what that means in terms of mobility is being able to build and maintain an integrated, multimodal transportation network for communities.

That means to develop, connect and sustain livable and thriving communities, for the environment, to create a healthy region for the people of today and tomorrow, and for the economy, to support a sustainable, efficient, and productive regional environment that provides opportunities for all people in the region. So as a snapshot of the region in 2050, like I said, we have about almost 19 million people that live in the region today, and we're expecting to have that grow by about 2 million new people. And the addition of 1.6 million new households. So a lot of new households compared to the population projection.

But that's thanks to what we're seeing at the local jurisdictions for their work in the planning for housing. And in terms of the development pattern, we're looking at that being a little bit more efficient than it is today. So a lot more households and jobs located near current jobs, near current amenities and near transit. And then I'll speak a little bit more about the investments in the plan next. But I do want to highlight that the plan represents almost $752 billion in investments.

And what those investments in the development pattern will lead to is less congestion, so lessen delay per person per day, and the achievement of meeting our greenhouse gas emission reduction target from passenger vehicles. And we're doing this through things like over 4000 new miles of bike lanes, almost 200,000 new miles of transit revenue service.

And the RTPSCS has more than 2000 projects listed in it. And what this means for the economy is that we anticipate to have about $2 in benefits for every $1 invested from the plan. And that's coming both from the direct investments in the transportation projects themselves, but also from increased regional competitiveness.

So I want to highlight a little bit more about the plan investments because I think it's important to note that, you know, almost two thirds of this plan's investments are for operations and maintenance. And what that means is that we are at the point in the region that we are more about maintaining what we've already invested in. So in terms of, you know, a state of good repair, fix it first strategies and maintaining our transit operations as well. And then when it comes to that, 37% of capital projects. I want to point out that about 100 billion is for transit and rail.

The next biggest slice there is goods movement, which includes grade separation as well as a number of the other buckets of capital projects and program expenditures noted there. So I want to close that out by highlighting some of the ways that we work together with other stakeholders in the region to make this plan happen. How do we actually implement? Because like I mentioned at the beginning, SCAG doesn't have local land use authority. We are not building any projects directly ourselves. So we're working through kind of four key ways. One is the collaboration policy leadership.

So not just with the development of the plan, but how are we helping cities develop model ordinances, doing regional plans like the Last Mile Freight Program to help reduce emissions from the goods movement sector. We also have a role in federal funding administration. So making sure that we're helping those federal funding programs help flowing to the region.

We also have a robust data collection, analysis, and research teams that help us to understand what's going on in the region. How do we inform those policies and strategies based on the best available information? And then lastly with local technical assistance. So that's both technical assistance in terms of helping jurisdictions with GIS training, hosting Toolbox Tuesdays about best practices throughout the region, and then also funding programs like our longstanding Sustainable Communities Program, which helps to fund local projects.

So over the past about 10 years, we funded about $70 million in projects throughout the region, like helping jurisdictions do either specific area planning or developing an active transportation plan. And those programs are consistently oversubscribed. So we are always looking at ways to help our jurisdiction to implement their local visions. And so I think I'll leave it there and - but happy to take any questions.

And we'll take, we'll post questions at the end of the presentations. But thank you for your presentation. Michael.

Thank you, Assemblymember. And I want to thank you for working with us over the years on, I can think of a number of issues we've worked on with Assemblymember Friedman, with yourself, Assemblymember Rodriguez. Honor to be here today. So pleasure working with all of you. My name is Michael Turner, and as you mentioned, I'm the Executive Officer for Government Relations at Metro. And we are unique with respect to transportation agencies in California because we have three key functions. We are the regional transportation planning agency, and in our case, LA County is like a region.

SCAG is the regional planning agency, but we're one of the largest counties in the country. So we, if you compare us to other counties in the state, we're effectively a region. We also operate the regional transit service, meaning the regional bus service and rail service. And then we work with our municipal operators, such as Foothill Transit in this area. We also administer the four local sales taxes, which have all been approved by the voters of over a two thirds vote margin. So what that means is essentially, if it moves on the ground in Los Angeles, we have something to do with it.

We plan for it, we operate it, we pay for it. We're governed by a board of 14 members that includes the mayor of the City of Los Angeles, all the county supervisors, plus representatives from all of the sub regions in Los Angeles County. One of the things that our CEO notes that, you know, we're talking about big.

I don't mean to interrupt you, but since you were on that point of sort of the structure, can you take a moment just to show how San Bernardino County, the relationship similar and how , and how you guys work together. So I want to interrupt your presentation.

Sure. I would say two things about that. I would say one is that each of the counties have a County Transportation Commission. And in our case, we are a combination of a County Transportation Commission and a transit provider. That's not the same in other counties. In Riverside and San Bernardino, for example, separate entities. In our case, they're combined. To me, one of the important points of that is that the decisions about those structures are made from through a bottoms up process.

I think, you know, there's been a lot of discussion in our county about the structure of our board and who should be on our board. But for our purposes, and I think this would apply in most counties, it's important that those decisions are made through a bottoms up process. In our case, the balance is having the mayor of the City of Los Angeles, the five county supervisors, and then representatives from all of the subregion. I think there's nine, if I'm getting my numbers right, there's nine COGs, councils of governments in Los Angeles County. And the partnerships we have there are important.

When we do our transportation plan, our long range transportation plan, our short range transportation plan, we work through a bottoms up process with the COGs to develop that. And that is very important in order for those programs to succeed. One of the things you'll hear from our CEO is Stephanie Wiggins, is that she says, people first.

Everything we do should have a people first focus. And I think you'll see that through our presentation. That, and that was actually title of our panel is the community engagement. Because community engagement, we talk about big, lofty terms about regional planning and a lot of technical things we do. But at the core of it, it has to be engagement with the community, and we have to ensure that what we're doing is going to serve those communities in which we're building the projects. I think you'll see that through different parts of the presentation.

One of the first issues we have to address now, I think everyone is aware of is the safety and security issues on our system. As I mentioned, we have one of the largest transit agencies in the country. Our ridership, if we're not past Chicago, we should be past Chicago soon. But we have one of the largest and most complex service areas in the country. And we obviously have, as with other parts of society, we are facing safety and security challenges.

What we are doing here, again, following Stephanie's lead about having a people first approach, we're taking a layered approach to addressing those issues on our system and what this reflects is that for the things we're experiencing, the solution isn't always sending out somebody with a, a badge and a gun.

In a lot of cases, there's other kind of assistance that's needed. And that's where we have this structure, where we start with transit ambassadors. Transit ambassadors are street teams where they're, you know, they're out in the system. You can see they're wearing green shirts so people can see them. They are there for a variety of reasons.

They help people just navigate where they're going, how to get your ticket, how to get on, you know, where, you know, how to make connections, things like that. But they're also there to help connect people to services. If there's something going wrong, they can contact the police. If somebody needs some kind of counseling, they can provide that.

They're also equipped with Narcan, and they have saved a number of lives on the system because they are equipped with Narcan. We also have homeless outreach teams and mental health crisis teams because in a lot of these circumstances, what we need to do is help connect people to services, not necessarily use law enforcement to address that.

So we have implemented essentially our own homeless outreach program that we have funded. I want to thank Assemblymember Friedman for working with us on legislation to help incorporate those issues into the state and local planning so that we can become more a part of those services. But we have been very successful in contacting individuals, getting them into permanent housing, temporary housing, and in a lot of cases, our contact with people experiencing homelessness is the first contact they have with any system. So we become the point of contact that helps connect them to other services.

We are also revamping our essential police and transit security system, where we have both metro in house security and contracted security, and we are rebuilding a metro police force. If you go back in time when there was, we used to be the Southern California Rapid Transit District, there was an RTD police force. We now contract with the sheriff, Long Beach Police, and LAPD, and we're transitioning that to be in house police. We're also experimenting with new technologies and how we can use those to help secure the system. Part of that is controlling access to our stations.

We've had some challenges, of course, with fare evasion and what happens with people who are essentially not paying fare but then going into the system and committing crimes. So one of the ways we've addressed that is to start with a tap to exit program. If you're familiar with our system, when you go in, you tap. That opens the gates. You can go in, but there's no requirement to tap out. So we've tested that at the North Hollywood station, and the board recently expanded that to an additional 10 end of line stations. So that'll help us control access into the system.

One of the important things we've been working on, and this is an initiative I know we've worked hard to get through - attempting to get through the Legislature, is student transit passes. And these passes serve not just K-12 students, but they also serve community college students. And you have the numbers in front of you.

This has been a very successful program, but I want to talk about more the sort of human aspect of what this means to students. A lot of community college students, not just actually - college students in general, have housing insecurity, food insecurity, transportation insecurity. If we can help take care of one of those issues, it helps them address those other two things. And if those kids can get to school, they get a career. So we're one part of a problem.

We're working with the State Superintendent, we're working with the County Board of Education to see how we can collaborate so that we solve one of those problems. And then those kids get careers, those kids become successful and independent, but they also become transit riders. And we have had very good success with this program.

You know, it's not just a matter of having a lot of people signed up, it's what they turn into because they do become dedicated transit riders. We've also done a lot to look at connecting the rail system to airports. That has been a major issue in Los Angeles County. We are happy to note that later this year. I know the clock is ticking on 24, but we are going to be opening the major rail and bus connection to the airport. This is a project about $900 million, primarily funded with state and local funds. There's no federal funds on this, but it is a major improvement to connecting rail transit to the airport.

This is, if you go out to the site, you'll see there's a huge complex that is both the rental car facility, the new Uber and Lyft lot, our station, and the combined parking for LAX. It's all connected by the People Mover. And our station will be opening later this year. It connects to the K Line. There is a huge bus and plaza with connections to all of the regional operators. There is a large bike hub because we have found that a lot of people that work at LAX use their bicycle, and so we have a very large bike facility for people to store their bike, shower, go to work.

We have huge customer service facilities and as I mentioned, it's a direct connection to the People Mover. The other way we're looking at connecting to the airport and this is through a line item in the budget that Assemblymember Holden, you secured. This will look at how we can make connections from the A Line to the Burbank airport. I know the ultimate goal out here is to have the A Line. It's still a change that has to happen up here.

But ultimately that line, I know the desire here is to connect that to the Ontario airport. We're looking how we can also connect that to the Burbank airport through the study. We at the phase now where we should be starting that study in the next couple of weeks.

Can I? Because I know that Assemblymember Friedman also represents that area. And as she moves on to Congress, I'm sure she'll want to find ways of staying connected. So I think that - she doesn't seem very excited about that. But I just wanted to make the connection because we had talked about this a while ago, and I know Metro has made its way to the place of where that process can begin. So I think it's going to be exciting, especially in the context of planning, which this part of the panel is focused on. So thank you for that.

Yeah, we've also, I know, work with the Assemblymember on one of the things Assemblymember Friedman has been focused on is all the connections to Burbank airport, because we have Amtrak, Metrolink all connect right out there. So this is another thing bring to the table. The other thing. Last thing I wanted to mention is another line that will help connect to LAX. And this is the extension of the K Line. If you know the Crenshaw Line, a very important line reaching down into South Los Angeles.

This would be an extension north that could ultimately go up to West Hollywood, but that would provide a rail connection through the heart of mostly the City of Los Angeles, but up into potentially West Hollywood, down into the airport, connecting to the Metro Airport Connector. So with that, I think I will close. Unless.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. My name again is Steve Lambert, and I do want to thank the Assembly Member and the panel for giving us the opportunity to tell our story.

As a 23 year resident of the Inland Empire, 16 years in Upland, I'm thrilled by the emphasis on connectivity, the innovative projects that are literally coming down the pike, and the emerging narrative of the Inland Empire as a premier destination. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a second.

I also want to give a shout out to Mister Roo over there, who's been a dear friend to our family, as my wife has navigated the world of public service as a Member of the Chaffee College governing board. So, Mister Roode, thank you.

I'm here today representing Ontario International Airport, which is just an awesome story to be able to tell. Our mission is to boldly seize every opportunity to connect the Inland Empire to the world. And you can see a map of some of the destinations we have now. More than 20 direct destinations this year, Ont.

Will exceed 7 million passengers served. That's up 75% since the return to local control in 2016. Now, the all time record for Ontario was 7.2 million before the great Recession. Then it went through a period of sort of ownership questions and really neglect.

In 2016, it returned to local ownership through the Ontario International Airport Authority, which is a joint powers authority between the City of Ontario and San Bernardino. county. And almost immediately, we started seeing renewed interest in Ontario as an airport from the carriers. And of course, the population growth here has been a big contributor to that.

We're about to announce 43 consecutive months of year over year growth, which makes us one of the only airports in the world that can report that. We were one of the first airports in North America to fully recover passenger volume from pre pandemic levels.

And again, a lot of that is the extraordinary team we have at OnT, but also it's the region we serve and the growth that's occurring here. And it's not just population growth, but it's economic growth. This is a wonderful area.

We ranked just recently number three among midsize airports in the US by JD power for customer satisfaction, and number two among all airports in California. So there's a real emphasis on enhancing the customer experience.

That's not only when you are on the airport property, obviously, but it's when you get there and the time it takes you to get there. We now have two international destinations in Latin America and. And Taiwan. And we're expecting at least two additional Asian carriers in the next six months. So there's a lot of excitement happening there.

So let's talk a little bit about the IE mentioned that I've lived here 23 years. I'll never forget moving to the Inland Empire from New England in January. I hadn't seen sunlight in 300 days. And I wake up on a Sunday morning after flying into Ont. I look out, the mountains have that beautiful frosting of snow.

The sun was out, it was 55 degrees. I thought I'd landed in heaven. And I still feel that way. We're now the 12th largest Metro Area in the US and we're soon to be number 11 and before long will be number 10. And think about that.

Is there another area in the country where you have two side by side metro areas that are in the top 10? The answer, of course, is no. So it's really been a remarkable story. We have 4.7 million people today. I love Sarah's presentation.

We do work with a skag, but San Bernardino and Riverside counties are the fastest growing segment of Southern California. We've got these vibrant employment sectors. You know, we talk a lot about logistics and how that would. The biggest employer in San Bernardino county in the Inland Empire is healthcare, with more than 200,000 employees through the IE.

And then Ontario itself generates nearly 4 billion in annual economic impact and supports 30,000 jobs. So what are we looking at?

Yes, the Inland Empire is a big part of our market, but we're really a Southern California airport and we've done studies that have shown that when you factor in commute time, 10 million southern Californians live or work closer to ont than any other airport. So that's Inland Empire, that's San Gabriel Valley, that's portions of northern Orange County.

We recently had our designation from US Customs and Border Patrol enhanced. And what that means is that it opens the door for more international flights. In the past, we've had very limited customs and border patrol resources to process not only passengers coming in internationally, but also cargo volumes internationally.

And one crazy thing, China Airlines, which makes a great deal of its revenues from shipping cargo in the belly of its airplane when they're transporting passengers. When those flights came in, the cargo had to be put on a truck, shipped to LAX and then back because we didn't have the appropriate customs and border infrastructure. That's changing now.

And so it opens up to more international flights and also more cargo. And skag. As part of the most recent connect SoCal projects our capacity at 36.2 million by 2050. Think about that. We're at 7 million now. That's five times where we are. Will it actually take a shaped that way?

Hard to tell, but we have to be on the forward edge of not having the kind of mess that people currently experience going to the other big airport in our region. So transit access is the key, and this picture is what you see at LAX right now. And we want to avoid this at all costs.

The community supported Ontario's return to local ownership and we have a responsibility to serve this community and avoid the kinds of headaches that they might see elsewhere. So we work closely with our county transportation partners, SBCTA, but also omnitrans, which is a very big participant here, and we want to leverage the opportunities that Brightline west will bring.

Talk a little bit more about that. So the West Valley connector, it's a 100% zero emission bus rapid transit system, 19 miles from Pomona to Victoria Gardens. It'll link Ontario with two Metrolink systems, the San Bernardino line and the Riverside line, and multiple activity centers along its route. It's under construction and is expected to launch in 2026.

Cucamonga station. I mentioned Brightline west again. I'm a big advocate of the Inland Empire. I think we're about to present and build and unveil probably one of the most interesting, dynamic, beautiful transit hubs anywhere in the country. Right at Cucamonga station, it'll be the intersection of Metrolink's San Bernardino line, which is, I believe, its busiest line.

It will be where Brightline west comes in. And we're going to talk in a minute about the direct connections to Ontario. An important part of this, this equation is the recent aero line between the San Bernardino metrolink station and Redlands. That's a nine mile connector that has now Low emissions.

But it's about to introduce the first federally approved hydrogen powered passenger train. So ont connect. We talked a little bit about this before. Omnitrans is now offering free shuttle service between the existing ranch, Okamonga station and ONT, and it operates throughout the day. Soon it will become something far more sophisticated.

So SPCTA has shortlisted two companies, two design build companies, to build a 4.2 miles tunnel between the Kookamonga station and OnT. The SPCTA board has allocated $190 million to this project. I believe the total cost is about $500 40 million. It'll operate with autonomous zero emission vehicles.

At 1.0 the boring company was involved in this, but they are no longer involved in it. And the planned launch will coincide with Brightline west. So theoretically in time for the 2028 Olympics. And I mentioned the airline America's first hydrogen powered passenger train. If you haven't taken a ride on it, I encourage you to do so.

So, continued challenges and opportunity. We need to provide more direct transit connections to and from Riverside County. The growth of the IE, we may add up to a million more people by 2050. Funding for future projects and expansion. The current measure I funds for San Bernardino county are accounted for and the potential for an ont transit center.

The bigger vision is between our two existing terminals to build what could be an international terminal with a transit center as part of that and have that be the main entry into the airport.

I didn't mention the gold line because I didn't want to overlap with all of the other conversation that happened today, but certainly happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you. We'll turn to the panel. Well, the three of us. Laura.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to leave in a few minutes.

I wish there was a better train because I have to go to Santa Monica from here. Thank you. So, yeah, I apologize if I have to leave. I really do appreciate all of the presentations. Certainly appreciate the years of partnership with all of you and for all of your hard work.

I am curious about the Ontario airport's continuing plans for the tunnel with the vehicles and why at this point that makes more sense than just a light rail, which seems like it carries a lot more people, a lot more efficiently. Why, without boring companies still pursue that particular project?

Well, I can't speak for the boring company, but in terms of why there's interest, it's because of all of the activity that's converging at the Cucamonga station between. Brightline, between.

No, no, I'm asking about the technology. Did you say that that's a tunnel that's going to have what is going to run in the tunnel?

I'm not the best person to ask that. It would be autonomous zero emission vehicles, but I am not.

Yes, that's what I'm wondering as to why that's still what the justification is for that as opposed to a more traditional type of shuttle.

Yeah, I think the most appropriate group to ask that would be SBCTA. Okay. And Omni Trans.

It's what it kind of was. I mean, right. Look, I've written something that makes a lot of sense at the Boston Logan airport, which is a bus that runs through a tunnel, which makes sense. I was curious as to whether this was that model, which to me is perfectly reasonable.

Less money than putting down tracks or what they've been talking about in Vegas, what they have in Vegas with a bunch of teslas running through a tunnel. So I was just curious if you.

It's more of the Vegas model.

Okay. Okay. I'm not sold on that as a model, and I don't know that anyone in Vegas is super happy with what they have. But, you know, at some point, I'd love to hear more details about that, but thank you.

And let me just. Thank you for making time to be here. Turn to Senator Seyarto. But usually these Select Committee hearings are on the off year of an election year and other things that are pressing for Members. So as Members have to go. We really appreciate you being here.

Thank you. Yes. Don't be afraid of the express lanes on the 10, all the way down. It'll get you almost to Santa Monica. No, not for the express lanes. You just peel off a couple of bucks. All right. Yeah, they just completed those not too long ago. It's great.

So anyway, I think part of the answer to what Miss Friedman had brought up was so that that traffic is underground, not overground. And we don't want to make the same mistakes. And they're not really mistakes, they're just evolvement that we have at LAX. It is an above ground nightmare.

And if we could get some of those off the above ground where people are just trying to get from Westchester to the South Bay cities and also into the Hawthorne, Inglewood and those areas, that would have been really good foresight. And so anyway, I kind of disagree that that might be something we don't want to look at.

I had a question on La Metro last. You know, we've had. We put aside $5 billion, as you know, to help stabilize our rail systems, both La Metro and also San Francisco BART system and the associated 19 metros that they have up there, and that's.

This is the last year, I believe, that they're going to get their 1.0 whatever allocation. And I'm kind of curious with the increase in ridership, is that fueled by well paying riders or is that fueled by offering free rides for students? Where's that 1 million person ridership coming from?

And is that expected to help with the revenue situation or am I going to have to deal with this in budget next year and the next year after that?

I'd say it's sort of an all the above approach here. We are fortunate that we've just reached our millionth rider. So we have had a very strong return in our ridership from pre Covid levels a large majority of our riders are from really the lowest economic levels in Los Angeles.

And so that is, that's where a lot of our riders, transit dependent ridership. And so our board has worked very extensively to look at reduced fare programs and such as the GOPass program. But we're also looking at other ways we can connect people who are in existing social service programs so they can access transit.

And that's a big part of our ridership. We obviously want to grow that. And I actually serve on a transit transformation task force that was actually legislation that Assembly Member Friedman authored, where we're looking at how across the board in the State of California, we can transform transit so that we get more people writing it.

That was actually almost a two part deal with the state where the state provided that funding. But then we also created this task force so we can look at the long term challenges.

What we have decided to do with that money really reflects the bottoms up approach in Los Angeles County, where we, one of the ways we need to increase transit ridership is by getting the transit service to those very transit dependent populations.

There are significant parts of Los Angeles County where we have transit dependent populations that don't have access to the rail system. So what we're doing with this funding is, as Habib mentioned, we're completing the gold line through Los Angeles County, ultimately into San Bernardino. county.

We are using that money to help Fund the Southeast gateway line, which is a light rail line that will go from Artesia all the way to downtown Los Angeles. Ultimately, that funding helps leverage federal funding for that project. So we're using it for those purposes.

There's also funding in there for zero emission bus purchases where we are working with our municipal operators to do a joint procurement. You know, there's only two bus manufacturers available in the United States now, which is quite aware.

So the price for those buses reflect that.

And our CEO has served on a White House task force to address that. We've just issued one of the largest bus procurements in the country using that money so we can help standardize bus purchases. But that's how we're using, that's how we're using that money long term.

I do want to address the issue about, like, are we, you know, where.

Are we going forward is my question, because that sounds like you're using that money, but there's going to need to keep using money.

Yeah. And I think at the state level where, like I said, there's the, the transit transformation task force is looking at this now. We've not looked at funding issues we're looking at like, you know, what are some things that transit agencies can do to increase their ridership? How can the state best partner with us on that?

I'm always hesitant to get into a funding discussion on something like this because I think ultimately we're going to have to get there, but we've got to look at, quite frankly, cap and trade. Cap and trade expires in 2030.

There's some funding for that that's available to transit that could perhaps be increased, maybe made a little bit more flexible. We need to look at, for example, how high speed rail investments are made because that's also a part of cap and trade.

There are some things that can be done on the high speed rail system that would ultimately be in Southern California that could provide benefits now and are, like I said, ultimately need for the future line. So there's a variety of things we're going to have to look at at the state level.

Some of those are capital, some of those are operations. But, you know, they're, quite frankly, difficult discussions because, you know, I know how hard it was to work out that last arrangement, and that was, that was one time fun.

Right. In part of that last arrangement, we talked a lot about the difficulties with the ridership, which was people didn't see it as reliable, safe, or clean.

And those were some of the things that I see, and I'm glad to see it, that we're trying to address. And some of them overlap, you know, being reliable and safe with, with the people that are there to help the ambassador program and those things, I think, help with that.

Right.

But eventually we have to get that ridership back that is not, you know, just the students or the people that are in areas that that's their only transportation because those are areas where we're getting minimal gate receipt and therefore the box, so to speak, the fare boxes don't necessarily sustain the system.

And so we have to figure out how we get those other people on board so that we have some more ways of sustaining the system without making the pot for all of the other transportation issues in California a lot smaller because other areas that are growing right now, including the region that I represent, also need transportation dollars to do the infrastructure, basic infrastructure.

And in the world of transportation, cars, buses both need roads, even electric cars need roads. Then you go to the rail system as density accommodates that and the different types of rail that are available. And we're trying to make that transition. And every different area has different levels of where they're at.

So those are the things that hopefully you can work with the Legislature and making sure that we know what we need to do to allow you guys to be successful.

And thank God the Ontario airport has resurrected itself, because that is a goldmine for us, not just financially, but from an economics perspective, but from a use and convenience for the people that live out and have braved the heat of the Inland Empire. So thank you so much for all of your presentations.

They're very, very helpful and I encourage you to continue to work with Legislature to address whatever it is that we need to do to make you successful. Thank you.

Before I ask just a few questions and make a few statements, I just wanted to remind the public we're going to be transitioning into public comment. So if you'd like to have a question posed, there are cards that you can fill out and present that to the staff and we will surely get to them.

I wanted to just first of all, on what the Senator was highlighting in terms of taking advantage of the eagerness of Members to want to try to find ways of connecting into the regional planning and how projects come out of that, and then how the state can play an effective role in finding resources.

And the goal line is certainly, or a line has been and certainly highlighted today as a kind of project that boasted the support of an entire caucus of San Gabriel Valley, but also La County delegates who weighed in on its support and funding. And with the San Bernardino county has a delegation as well.

And Senator Sayarta, I believe is the chair, or former chair of the San Bernardino. You were the chair. Okay, he will be the chair at some point of the. But just to highlight the fact that there are legislators in the San Bernardino, county, including myself, that has a portion of San Bernardino county and also La County.

But that delegation is very important because when you are looking for, for solidarity and support, a built in unit of legislators, Assembly Members and Senators who can then wrap their arms around a specific ask and then to be able to work through the budget process where it may have fiscal priority or if it's policy, then certainly to help, as Michael pointed out, happens occasionally with the, with La Metro and Laura Friedman and others have authored legislation in that space.

So I just encourage Skag and others to really maybe even look to make presentations to the delegation so that they have. And I think that's happened in the past.

But just to stick a point a pin in that, I also wanted to just ask when we talked about in your presentation about goods, movement and understanding what we went through or came out of a pandemic, which was a hundred year pandemic, and what impact that had on supply chain.

And then ultimately, it's hard to plan for those type of things. But can you kind of look at lessons learned or how we can maybe prepare better for responding to movement of goods when we have certain kind of catastrophes or unexplained impacts that impact our supply chain?

Sure, and unfortunately, I'm probably not the best one to speak to that.

We do have a really strong goods movement team at Skag, but I would say in terms of what we're working on with that kind of understanding, those dynamics and vulnerabilities in the region, not to mention that, not just that specific incidence, but just how the region has grown. We have two of the largest ports in the world.

We have, you know, we're serving the country in terms of goods movement, and that doesn't mean just our transportation, but in terms of land use and warehousing facilities. And a lot of that is based in the Inland Empire. So what we've been working on, we have a number of different programs related to goods.

Some of that is last mile freight. So how are we reducing the emissions of the goods movement within our region and looking at ways of, you know, more?

This isn't something necessarily that we would implement again, but just looking at how do we keep goods closer to where they're going to end up and work on how goods are moving within the region. Also, another role that Skag is playing is in the, based on the state goals, is transitioning the goods movement sector to zero emission.

And that requires a lot of collaboration, not just with the poors, but with the private sector and just creating the infrastructure.

So I think for us it's, yes, we were understanding the pandemic and those hiccups and kind of just the management, but also how are we taking a broader look at how the goods movement sector fits into the regional transportation system and to our goals in terms of the economy and I, the environment, appreciate that.

Steve, you're one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Inland Empire that I've had the pleasure of meeting. And I appreciate your commitment. And so I asked the question in terms of, since some of the conversations revolved around expanding regions and getting regional activity and connectivity.

The Ontario airport sort of sits right in the middle, not only of San Bernardino, county, but Orange County and portions of La County. And that's part of your market. When we're looking at projects like the gold line that's going to complete, are there other projects that you can see feed.

And you've mentioned Brightline and others that might come from that. In terms of extension, is there a conversation happening around Orange County and what that looks like in terms of connecting to the airport?

Right. Thank you for asking that. We want connectivity from everywhere. And I know the President of our airport authority has made really clear that, you know, any and all ideas would be totally welcomed and encouraged by the airport, Orange County being one of them.

There is nothing in the public sector that's being discussed, but I think everybody's looking at the Brightline model as a largely private driven type transportation option. And could those apply to Orange County, to Riverside County in other parts? And I know there are discussions around that, but nothing concrete at this point.

Gotcha. Well, I know that the value of this Select Committee over the last eight years has afforded me the opportunity and Members the opportunity to really start to look big picture.

And I think that to the extent that there continues to be a Committee like this moving forward, which I suspect that there will be, the Senator certainly is poised to chair a Committee like this because I think that having that kind of information gathering and solidifying around projects that we can. Because it's going to take a while.

Whatever it is, it's going to take resiliency to stay in the game and fight for a while to make sure that whether it's federal funded or local, it's going to require a broad base of support to make that happen.

So I would just encourage there to be an ongoing program of outreach to make sure that your priority issues are and SBCTA's are making its way to, I think, some amazing leaders who are going to want to wrap their arms around them.

No, I couldn't agree more. I think that the key word in all of this is collaboration. No one project is going to fill all of our needs if we think that a 4.2 miles tunnel from the Cucamonga station to the airport is going to fix everything. Not realistic.

So it's going to take this variety of things and a variety of different jurisdictions willing to kind of cross that, that barrier and work together. I totally agree. And I mean, you make a good point. The airport could be a catalyst for that. It's exciting.

Thank you, Steve and Michael and Sarah, for being a part of our second panel. And I'd like to thank Lashawn and Habib for being a part of our first panel.

Your presentations were very illuminating, and I think it all, when you leave a hearing like this, you want to be thinking, you know, it's not going to provide all of the answers, but it is going to provide, hopefully, some thought provoking pathways that can be opened up for communities to be able to come together and to make their voices heard.

If La County had not engaged and allowed for there to be a regional tax measure m measure r over the years, I'm not sure where the gold line would be. So regional support and community support for seeing the value in these projects is going to be paramount. And I think that's hopefully communities are going to.

This is being live streamed, so I'm hoping others who are paying attention to this is going to be a part of their engagement with local city councils as well. We're going to, before we turn to the public comment, and again, I thank all of our presenters for being here.

And I'm encouraged by the collaborative and community centered approach to transportation planning and operations shown by the providers in our region.

Policymakers, planners, advocates and governing bodies have a lot of to consider as we plan for more sustainable future and protecting our environment while getting people and goods to where they want and need to go, together we can deliver better transportation solutions.

And so I thank you all for being here and we look forward to now hearing from the public. We'll turn to. But before we turn to the public comment, Senator Scioto, let me just turn to you if you have any closing comments that you'd like, like to make.

You know what, I don't have any closing comments, but I did have one more question. Outside of funding, what's the biggest frustration? And very briefly, you can say it in one word if you want. Biggest frustration you find in being able to accomplish the mission of your agencies. I think getting consensus, okay, consensus from public, consensus from.

I think it's layered, it's all of them. I mean, but it's critical to our being able to succeed. I mean, we have to have consensus. Consensus at a project level, consensus at a board level. Go up.

Sarah, no. Using his.

Well, you took away the number one, which is funding, and I think you knew that and that's why that was off the table. But if I can just use a moment.

I was remiss in my presentation not to appreciate the upholding of the regional early action program funding for the region, because that was the biggest infusion that we've ever had to implement the Rtps. That's been huge. So then beyond that has been.

And if it's not, yeah, collaboration, I think for us it's just the, you know, the complexity of the region. I mean, for us, we're dealing with almost 19 million people. We have all kinds of different sizes of jurisdictions and, you know, all kinds of different needs.

So I think it's just for us being able to manage that complexity and be able to serve every resident equally and equitably across the region.

Great. Steve, can I give two answers? You give two answers.

Quickies along the lines of collaboration, the artificial geographic and jurisdictional barriers that exist. And then on top of that, just the pure geography of San Bernardino county alone is 20,000 sq. Mi. I mean, it's immense.

The region we're serving, certainly a challenge. And my closing comments are that for one thing, thank you all for your valuable presentations and giving us information. The biggest thing for legislators to know is how they can be helpful, not hurtful.

And sometimes we create processes and we create a laws that really stand in the way of people getting their jobs done.

And those are things that as you go forward and find frustrations, because I know there's some other frustrations out there because I see them on the city levels all the time, in the county levels all the time. And that is when the state is being less helpful and more intrusive than they need to be.

And the only way we know we're doing that is if you're letting us know and how we can be helpful in ensuring that you have a pathway to get your mission accomplished. So again, thank you very much. This is all extremely important, especially for the future.

You know, I won't be around to see all this stuff, but my kids certainly will be, and maybe my grandkids as well, if they still live in our state, and I'm hoping they will.

But for all of your efforts, that's why they would be there, is because you guys are making the effort to make it so Southern California and California in General stays a livable place, and that's what we need to do now.

So thank you so much again and appreciate me being able to be part of your panel today or the discussion. Thank you. Thank you.

So we'll take our first speaker, and time is limited to one to two minutes. Brian Yannetti, who is representing the Rail Passenger Association of. California.

Hello. Good afternoon, I think it is already, Chair Holden and Senator Seyarto. And thank you to the City of Montclair for having this meeting. I am vice president south of the Rail Passengers Association of California. My name is Brian Yanity, and our organization has long supported electric trains like the Gold Line light rail and the inner city high speed rail Brightline West. But we have been opposed to hydrogen trains. In all this talk about hydrogen today, there is no mention of where it's actually coming from.

For example, the hydrogen that's going to that aero train between San Bernardino and Redlands, which should have been an electric light rail line from the start. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's coming from an Air Liquide plant in Rancho Cucamonga, from natural gas hydrocarbon fossil fuel sources and being trucked with a diesel truck 10 miles over to San Bernardino.

With all those emissions and public health and safety impacts of having a big hydrogen tank on the highways. It's just hydrogen rail has had a very bad track record. In Germany, the first two passenger railroads which introduce hydrogen trains is a complete disaster and just recently announced they're not moving forward with them. They're going to scrap them.

One of the regional lines around Frankfurt, which introduced hydrogen trains, they had so many cancellations and so many breakdowns, the passengers were so angry that they offered free service for two months or free tickets for everyone for two months to win riders back. So I hope that doesn't happen here. So please go with electric trains and not hydrogen. Thank you.

Appreciate that. Melva Denman, update on driver part. Welcome.

And thank you so much for allowing us the time to do this. My name is Melva Denman, and I am a former driver, but also on the committee for Rideshare Drivers United, and we are based right now in Los Angeles. I'm just going to read this quick note. Who we are. Rideshare Drivers United is a grassroots organization of more than 20,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in California. We are an independent organization of drivers run by drivers advocating for fair treatment and pay for platform drivers in California.

Our context for addressing this gathering is Uber and Lyft drivers have become an essential piece of regional transportation across California and especially our big metropolitan areas over the past eight to 10 years. A 2020 report showed that over 250 million rides were completed in that year in our state. We have a dire situation here among our drivers.

Driving those many rides are people like us, estimated to be more than 100,000 of us in the state. There are almost no safety regulations for the industry, and with Prop 22, the exploitation of drivers is hard for many to even understand. Our pay study in 2021 showed that drivers, after expenses in accounting for our complete lack of safety, net benefits afforded most workers, we are making less than $6.20 an hour.

Hi. I congratulate what you're all doing here. It's a very big step, and we have our part.

I'm sorry. Tell me your name.

My name is Yasha Timenovich, volunteer for Rideshare Drivers United. What I want to tell you is that our basic safety, our net unemployment, workman comps, and disabilities, we don't have it. That's gone. Health benefits. As far as Prop 22, we all know it doesn't help us. The health stipend is completely not there because we're all getting Medi-Cal. So benefits doesn't work with us. Deactivations happens on the constant. Six out of 10 drivers have been thrown under the bus. What do we get out of it? Nothing. Where do we go?

We don't know where to go. We go to another company. What else can we do? So while we provide essential transportation to the people of the state, we work under horrible conditions and often take ourselves filling up gas. Between that or getting piece of sandwich, hopefully we could get something by the end of the day.

Right. And I don't mean to cut you off, we're just taking one to two minutes, but you both. Well, but you combined, and I think we're like at four. But that's okay, and I appreciate it.

Very close. Sorry, guys.

Let me just say this. We're trying to stay to a really tight timeframe, and you're a little off subject of what was the focal point of the hearing, and we're not... And I want to make sure you get a solution to your question. So if you have a question that you'd like for us to maybe carry to the right agency, then we're happy to do that.

Okay, I'll just go straight to the question. Since we all talked about like the Olympic Games and other major events, how other people, as part of transportation, going to get around major cities without any blockages. Like what happened in Las Vegas with their Formula 1, the Strip circuit. When there was a lot of blockages, drivers, transportations, no one could get. It was impossible.

So you want to... Yeah, I just want to hone in.

How are we going to get around all that?

I appreciate that, and it's a fair question, and I think that what we can probably do is we'll take that question, and we'll figure out. It may be more than just one agency. It may be local, it may be state. When I say, I said regional, it may be state. But let us take that question and get an answer for you, put you in touch with the right agency that can get you what you need around that. Because I know that the local planning is LA 28 for the, for the Olympics, but there's Metro, there's also the state and others that might be able to get you some answers to that question.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Justin Simonson. Simonson. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Justin Simonson. I'm a Claremont resident. Two questions. First, as far as the stations go, I'm hearing about potentially a new transit hub in Ontario. I'm hearing about a new station in Rancho, and we have the Gold Line extensions that I'm very excited about. But the pictures weren't very promising.

We're regularly hitting 115 degrees fahrenheit here in Claremont and Montclair, and that's 120 out in Ontario. It's gonna be hotter in 10 years. It's gonna be hotter 10 years after that. Do we have infrastructure in place in these new stations that will allow people to actually comfortably use the Metro? Right.

If we can't make it more comfortable than driving, driving on the LA freeways is hell. But if we can't make it more comfortable than that hell, we're not gonna get ridership from anyone aside from those who have no other options. And my second question is about funding. I keep seeing freeway expansions, more lanes added, and we know that only adds to freeway congestion. So why are we still wasting money on that? Thank you.

Thank you. Would you... Is there someone on the panel that would like to maybe take the second question? And then on the issue of the planning for making sure that the stations are reflective of climate change and addressing the needs of comfort.

I can address the shelter issue because that is a big challenge we face. And the board has been grappling with that because we have a significant number of transit, of bus stops, primarily around the county. So the ability to provide shelter to those people is very important. Not supposed to talk about funding, but that will be a significant funding challenge if you think about the thousands of bus stops we have around the county.

And the board is doing an ongoing public conversation around how that is going to be addressed. So maybe we can direct Mr. Simonson to a Metro Board meeting that that might be on the agenda or how would you direct?

Yeah, we can get the website, get them the information to contact to our board meetings and there's some other information about what we're doing about that on our website.

Sounds good.

Then if I can address the roadway expansion from a regional level and what's in our plan. The majority of, like I had gone through, like the breakdown of the budget for the plan is on operations and maintenance and then on capital projects, there are some roadway projects.

I didn't call this out, but in terms of the highlight for the plan, a lot of the investments in roadways for transitioning to the regional express lanes network, which is aimed at helping with overall congestion. And then in terms of how we developed the plan. So any capacity expansion projects that may be in there, a lot of them are legacy projects that have been in the plan and in the County Transportation Commission project list for a long time. So I think I can't speak to any of those in particular.

But in terms of the big picture, the majority of the investments in the plan are operations maintenance, then transit, and then there's some goods movement projects, to address kind of to your question, make sure that we move goods efficiently through the region.

Appreciate that. And as we, when we adjourn, there may be an opportunity for quick mingling amongst those who have additional questions or clarification. Our next speaker is... I'm going to just say the first name or is the last name Abdul? Welcome.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking me to talk, Assembly Chris, Mr. Chris Holden, Mr. Kelly. I represent drivers that companies that do charter carriers. Okay. I'm a veteran too. And when it comes to logistics and transportation mobility, I understand because I was deployed to Afghanistan too.

So we companies where the charter carriers are trying to figure out how do we play a role in filling this gap on the mobility aspect. Okay. And another concerns we have is mostly safety issues like dropping off, picking up people and making it accessible for us to come in. Okay. Into those areas, like those metro areas, airports. Actually, I was at a lower meeting yesterday. So coming in to pick up people, you know, that is going to be making it easy for us to just transport back and forth. And the other thing is, I run a company here and I run companies in other states. All right.

And how do we companies in the charter carriers compete or fill in this gap instead of Uber or Lyft monopolizing the system? Because what you guys are doing is, I mean, California zone is huge. I've been to a lot of countries. My mom is from Edinburgh. Edinburgh has a very good transportation system.

And I feel this is going to probably take 30 years or four years to do, the way I see it. But we feel that Metro, I do have a lot of certification from Metro. I did get my certification from Metro, and I do feel that we need to be brought in, into this because companies into transportation serving California itself, not only Southern California, we are lost. And we're trying to figure out what's going on. Thank you.

Thank you. Michael, you might want to... I know that in the description of what you're doing, you had mentioned the LAX project and how there would be kind of a carve out for Uber, Lyft, and I'm assuming charter would be a part of that. But maybe you can elaborate.

Well, the facility we're building is the metro airport connector, is a connection for our K Line, the regional bus service, and then there's a separate Uber and Lyft lot that LAX is developing. We'll have to check about how charter carriers can access that, because I'm not sure how that works. I mean, we have a very large bus facility, but I'm not sure of how the charter operators fit into that. But we can certainly follow up.

So you raise a good point, and I think it's certainly one that...

I'm sorry, but they actually combined. Yeah, but what happened is they actually combined charter carriers. We TNC together, which they're not supposed to do. Even in the city, you know, I mean, they have taxi zones and they didn't include charter carriers. We pay a lot to the. To California and to the city, and we are like, okay, we are left out from everything.

Let me just suggest, I think that Michael's indicated that there may be a conversation to be had and maybe some direction.

They actually... Actually sent me an email. I just saw the email just now, but I'm still gonna have the meeting with LA County, LA City to discuss, and some of us are still gonna come, you know, but we just taking it step by step.

Thank you. I appreciate you raising the issue. Appreciate it. Bernard Karmatz. Welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the panel today, and congratulations for all the information you're presenting. I'm retired legislative liaison with the state transportation, and I'm just addressing and reflecting on a study that was done by a Claremont College professor regarding the impact, the environmental impact of the growing hub of warehouses in Riverside County. And I wanted to get some additional comment from the Senator in particular about what is being done to address the pollution and the environmental issues that are surrounding that growing issue. Thank you.

Thank you.

For one thing, the governor just signed a bill that I did not agree with limiting the cities' and local agencies' ability to control a lot of that. Part of the discussion of that was the diesel particulate that's going to be admitted from these various warehouses.

And, you know, you have to also take into account where those goods come from eventually and where they get distributed to and the response of companies to help meet the demands of consumers. Nowhere in my last... 20 years ago, I could never order something online and expect it to be at my house at 3:00 in the afternoon.

And now that's almost a demand that consumers have. They want that convenience. In order to meet that convenience, they have to have distribution centers that are centered in areas that are located central to San Diego, east of us, northern, up in the desert areas, and also some Orange County.

So the diesel particulate that you're talking about is going to go away, right? We're doing electric cars and electric trucks. We're spending gobs and gobs of money doing that transition. And so eventually, that's not the issue. The real issue with the warehouses is they're not particularly attractive if you're living in that community.

And the trucks, whether they're electric or diesel or whatever type of fuel they use, they're large, they go slow, and they obstruct your vision when you're trying to drive. That's what's irritating to me. I don't know how to get past that. Because when we have goods movement in California, we can't just hold it all at the port and then have all the trucks trying to get to the locations that they go now. So it's more convenient for them to move those goods, especially at night, to get them into those warehouses.

So those trips traffic into the various locations, various retail locations that they need. They'll be able to do that without clogging up even more the freeways of the 60, the 10, the 210, you know, all of them that come east. And so, you know, there's a balancing act to be had between consumer demand and what we're building and also what the private industry sees as the need and an opportunity. And so right now, the cities, there's been some pushback by cities, and we need to allow the cities to do that. What we did was state intervention.

And now we've also closed the door a little bit on the local agencies as far as their planning about truck routes in their communities. And then also we've put some expenses on those cities because some have already done their circulation elements. They already have their truck routes, but now they have to open it up again and do that.

So there's a balance. And for me, it's about local control. Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and all the cities that are in there are perfectly capable, and they also have very accessible elected officials that can deal locally with the problems as they present locally. There's no one size fits all in California.

We keep trying to do it, but it doesn't work. So that's what I have to say about that issue. We'll be monitoring it to ensure that the consumers get what they want, that the companies are able to be successful, that we're not creating more traffic than we would ordinarily if we didn't have them, and that they fit in with what we're doing.

The last thing, I did want to mention one more thing. Where a lot of these are being built are on the corridors of the freeways, along the corridors. And that's exactly where the environmental justice folks don't want houses to be built. So the question becomes, what the heck do you put there? And also they do provide a buffer between the freeways, the corridors, the train corridors. If you think the 215 freeway, for instance, they provide a buffer between where the housing tracks are and the freeways.

And we have one of those that we built, and it wasn't a warehouse, it was just a shopping center type of thing in Murrieta, where we had a neighborhood that all they heard was freeway noise, and now they don't. And so it kind of protects them from that, too. So there's a lot to it. And I hope I explained it in an appropriate amount of time and appreciate the question. Thank you.

I just want to, and again, I appreciate all of the questions that were raised. We also had questions that were brought to our attention on the live stream, and so we'll be responding to those as well. And I just want to, again, thank the staff and the mayor and the City Council from Montclair for their hospitality today.

I want to also recognize and appreciate my staff because, you know, I'm not nearly as effective as I appear to be if I did not have some great folks working with me. And I just want to call them out. Matt Lyons, who's been sort of my assistant to kind of keep the meeting moving comfortably.

Catherine Del Rosario, and also Matt is my deputy district director that represents the eastern part of our cities in the district. Catherine Del Rosario, my district director, in the back. Thank you, Katherine. Ann Hickambottom, thank you for your great work. Timme Mackie, thank you for your support.

And Karen Wingard, who you met as you checked in, and thank you, Karen. Without that kind of support, then, of course, I'm not nearly as effective. So I want to also recognize them. And this is really kind of our, our last meeting of this type. And, of course, I term out at the end of November.

But this has been an amazing experience for me. And I think we've been able to collaborate on the local level but also on the regional level to get some good work done. And it's not just one Member that does it, it's a community of people who come together and voice their concerns. And those who spoke at public comment, this is part of the process, too. And so I thank you for that. That being said, thank you for all being here. This meeting is adjourned.