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TRANSPORTATION THINK TANK MINUTES FROM MEETING #16: SEPTEMBER 1, 1999

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<> NEXT MEETING: WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 15, 1999 <>
<> Starting at 5 pm, at the APTOS FIRE HOUSE <>
<> 6934 SOQUEL DRIVE <>
<> (just beyond Cabrillo College) <>
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[NOTE: Generally we will plan to meet in SANTA CRUZ (Emily's Good Things to Eat until cooler weather prevails and we return to Cafe Brasil) on the FIRST Wednesday of each month, and in APTOS (Firehouse) on the THIRD Wednesday of each month.]

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AGENDA for SEPTEMBER 15
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[as indicated previously by Emily Reilly. Please send email regarding 9/15/99 agenda items to ereilly@cruzio.com]

1.Spend the first part of the meeting talking about Personal Rapid
Transit. Ed Porter will bring his video. Many of us have seen that, so
please also bring (or email ahead of time) any other information you may
have. I've heard that there is a very effective PRT system in Morgantown
WV. Anybody ever seen it? If you have questions or concerns about PRT,
please send them to me ahead of time also and I'll have a list of them
for discussion.

2. Talk a little about the forum we may host for the MetroBase (more
info about this will be in the minutes), so please think about it and
email me any ideas or concerns you may have so I can also incorporate
them into an agenda item.

3. Anything else anybody wants to talk about on Sept 15 or Oct 6?

Thanks.
Emily

[For those interested in Personal Rapid Transit, the first topic of discussion at the 9/15/99 meeting, more info is available at:

- the Innovative Transportation Technologies website at http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans

- the Santa Cruz Citizen Forums at http://www.cruzio.com/~forums. The Transportation Library has a section on PRT that includes highlights from the above site and elsewhere.]
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SUMMARY of SEPTEMBER 1 meeting at Emily's
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(For those interested, a quasi-verbatim meeting transcript is appended below -- summary abstracted by Michael Singer.)

SUBJECT: "METROBASE" FORUM
GUEST: LES WHITE (SCMTD)

Thirteen people attended our meeting on September 1, 1999: Les White, Dick Little, Mark Taylor, Richard Stover, Debbie Bulger, Jennie Brager, Emily Reilly, Bruce Gabriel, Bill Comfort, Janet Singer, Michael Singer, Kim Chin, Ed Porter to discuss, and perhaps plan for a TTT-sponsored forum on the "Metrobase" (Consolidated Operating Facility for the SCMTD). Debbie Bulger facilitated.

Les White talked about Metrobase, focusing on several questions that had been previously posed to him and on additional questions posed by TTT members. Topics covered included:

- Why does SCMTD need a consolidated operating facility? (Improved efficiency and savings are a requirement for expanding bus service -- current conditions are simply not tenable.)
- Isn’t there a better/another location? (Not a parcel large enough, etc.)
- What about diesel fumes? (Diesel buses will not be idled, and what fumes are generated will be mitigated/controlled)
- Aren’t the buses going to be testing their brakes on local streets? (No, on a dynamometer)
- What about traffic impacts? (Buses will be moved at off-peak hours, and shift transfers will occur in the field. Amount of impact there will be is relatively small compared to existing volume of traffic.)
- What’s the status/schedule of the project/City approval? (Lipton needs a permit to move the ditch, then City will look at the design when it is 1/3 through.)
- What objections/concerns are being voiced? (Mainly the above.)
- What about tax issues? (Property and sales tax issues are complex: SCMTD is selling SC properties worth more than the new site; SCMTD is a sales-tax paying entity.)

Regarding TTT hosting a community forum on Metrobase, key issues and decisions were:

- Is there a need for an independent forum? (Yes, it's a good idea)
- When? (January -- after design engineering firm has been selected and after the holidays)
- Where? (Bayview desirable for Westside location or City Hall for real-time broadcast and e-mail reception)
- Format? (Short presentations. Bulk of time for questions. Have a strong moderator.)
- Who to invite? (Those impacted 1) by presence of facility on Westside and 2) absence of a facility, given lack of other feasible site.)
- Who’s willing to work on it? (All present. 2 or 3 will do 1st cut at format, questions. SCMTD to help with logistics.)

Members voted in favor of hosting a forum in January sponsored, at least in part, by TTT. People should e-mail questions/rumors/concerns about Metrobase they would like addressed at the forum to Ed Porter at EPorter95@aol.com. Please start the subject line with "Metrobase comment" or "Metrobase question".
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Quasi-verbatim transcript of 9/1/99 meeting
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LW: Let's talk about Metrobase in the context of having a meeting, because I do want to chat about that and have it recapped for the group. Metrobase itself.... We're at the same point that I think the District has been at for some time, and that is that there is not another location in the county that is feasible for us to use, that is developable, other than the Lipton site on the Westside. And there are a lot of people that take exception to that and I continue to come back and say, if you show me the property I'd be happy to go down through it with you and see whether or not it works. People have brought lots of sites forward, most of them have been in the seven acre, eight acre, some of them are commercially zoned, some are residentially zoned, somebody came forward with a nine acre parcel that was agriculturally zoned. -- Good, right after LAFCO allows Watsonville to annex, I'll be going after that .... [laughter]

So, a lot of it is the fact that you see property out there that is vacant and it makes sense, why not put it there. And so, what we have tried to do is to go through and say there is some myths and some facts about Metrobase that maybe we need to get on the table. First of all is, people have said the center of your service area has got to be somewhere around Aptos, so what the heck are you doing building it on the westside of Santa Cruz. Well, the center of our service area right now is just to the Santa Cruz side of Live Oak, not down in Aptos. And the service expansion that's planned in the coming years, if we go forward and implement what the Commission has selected as far as investment strategies, the biggest hit in service expansion is going to be on Highway 17, on University service and on westside service, and so that continues to pull the center of the service area closer to Santa Cruz, not closer to Watsonville. And so, when we looked at what would happen, and we just went back through this again last month, what would happen is we took all of the operations and put them back to Watsonville, or even split the operations and put them back to Watsonville, the amount of money that we would take up, just in driving empty buses up and down 1 to position them going into service would take about 40% of the increase in service hours that the Commission and the Board has allocated, that is the difference between 220,000 and 350,000 annual service hours. That's kind of the configuration, so you're trading pay bus operators to run buses up and down the highway, up and down Highway 1, for buses that could be in revenue service.

If we were to take all of our fleet, move it to Watsonville, at the same time we're putting all this service into the other end of the county, bus drivers are going to get up in the morning and they're going to go to Watsonville and they're going to pick up a bus and they're going to drive it out of service, all the way to Santa Cruz, it goes in service, it goes through the service day, and then drive all the way back to Watsonville. If there's any mechanical breakdowns, then they have to come all the way from Watsonville to get it, take it all the way back to Watsonville, and bring another bus all the from Watsonville to change it out, and if the center of our service was Aptos or beyond, that would make a lot of sense. But it's not, it's going the other way. And so what happens is, we pay a lot of drivers and a lot of mechanics just to shuttle empty buses up and down through the county, and that takes money that we would put into service on the street as opposed to running them up and down. It's the same reason why when we look at the plan that the Board adopted, we figure in that we will kick in a $2 million a year savings on Metrobase when that goes online. People say how in the world do you get to $2 million a year. Well, first of all we had Gannet Fleming come in as a national consulting firm to take a look at what we're spending, and take a look at things like fuel prices when we buy off the market. We just got popped with a 13.6% per gallon fuel increase for next year for diesel fuel out of the Arco station that we buy it from. People said, gee, why don't you go down and negotiate. Okay, I go down to Devco. I don't like 13.6%, he says fine, go somewhere else. I don't have anywhere else. Any place that I go to, I have to say will you take 90 buses a day, do you have that kind of capacity to fuel 90 buses. Each one's going to suck about 80 gallons per bus that goes in, so do you have that kind of capacity? No. Thank you very much. Next one, yeah, I've got that kind of capacity, unfortunately I'm down in the middle of the county, so now I'm gonna pay somebody to drive the bus to the middle of the county, people to drive it back, drive the next one down and do 90 buses a day. That way, that begins to eat you up cost wise. So, minimal things that you go into, we service buses every 3,000 miles, we steam-clean the engines when we have the buses services.

MT: You don't have your own pumps?.....

LW: Nope, went out with the earthquake. We've been doing this for ten years.

MT: Is that required or mandated?

LW: I can't put pumps in on River Street because when the pumps came out as a result of the earthquake damage, the City put a flood zone overlay right on top of River Street and said you will never put pumps back in again.

MT: You'll put pumps in out there?

LW: In Watsonville?

MT: No, at Metrobase

LW: Oh, yes. Definitely.

MT: Does that reduce your cost?

LW: Big time. That's a heavy hit in and of itself.

ER: That's part of that $2 million?

LW: That's part of the $2 million. Not driving buses to steam clean in Watsonville every day is part of the $2 million.

BG: Not only that we have fuels, CNG [compressed natural gas].

LW: Conversion to CNG, so we have both and as you convert the fleet to CNG then you use less and less and less diesel, and so you have a direct pipeline in. And that answers some of the air quality issues.

So, the pump issue is a huge one. That's probably, if you look at the District's been doing that for 10 years, my guess is that item alone has probably been $10 - $11 million worth of cumulative service lost to the community in that period of time. Somewhere in that neighborhood as time has gone through, just because when you go into the...., what will happen is if you have the ability to handle 40,000 gallons or more, you can go into the bay area fuel consortium, which means you buy right along with Muni, and AC Transit and Valley Transit, Central Contra Costa, SamTrans, all of those go together. They buy futures off the commodities exchange, so they know what the price is going to be, plus that's somewhere in the neighborhood of .20 to .30 cents per gallon and where pumping right now, 800,000 gallons a year just in that one component, setting aside all the other stuff that goes with it. Underground lubricants, you buy them in bulk, they drop them into a 5,000 gallon underground oil feed, now we buy it a quart at a time, or a drum at a time and pump it out. All of those things went by the wayside when Watsonville went down, and then what little maintenance went on at River, when those things had to come out after the earthquake and the City put the flood zone designation over the top, none of that could go back in. So, that's one of the big huge problems with regard to that. If you look at all those, that's a $2 million a year hit with all of those things combined. We've calculated that in starting with 2003 as a savings, multiplying that out to 2003 to 2015, that's 12 years worth of savings, that's $24 million worth of service, and that's part of that 350,000 hours of service.

MS: First thing I'd like to do is give very high marks to Mr. White and company (probably Kim's effort) for their effort on the web pages devoted to Metrobase. They're excellent, they have excellent frequently asked questions page, site plan and all that's up there for those of you that haven't seen it. And I would suggest that you take this tape that Bill is making here and add all of your remarks that you just put here, which are very compelling arguments, to that. And also, prior to any town meeting we have, we'll advertise the fact that this information exists on the website so that people can review that before they come to the meeting.

DB: I would like to ask a question, and then Emily, and that is, it seems to me that there are two issues and I'd like you to address each of those issues. One issue is why there needs to be this consolidation of services. I don't think you'd get too many people arguing against that, there are compelling arguments for that. The other question is why this location and I'd like to spend, I think that's where the public concern is going to be, and I think that there needs to be more information such as how many acres do you need, you talked about the service center which I think is pertinent to that. I'd like to know what the problems as you see it would be with this area and what the advantages are to this site versus ...

LW: Let me start with "why to consolidate" is a lot of reasons. You take out a lot of the redundancy. If you have three, four different facilities. For example, we have three general inventory areas. We have a fleet re build area that's in one building over the old Kentucky Fried Chicken processing warehouse. We have another central storage area and then we have another service running repairs. They're on different streets, different blocks, different locations. I have six parts clerks. I could use three if I'm in one location, so that's three people's salaries that are redundant by having to do that. I've got to triple stock. I've got to have fuel filters over here, and oil filters and so forth, and I have to have them over here, and I have them over here. And it's because a lot of our work happens at night when the buses are in. It's not like we can just go down to Kragen and pick one up . We got to keep them in stock in all three locations where work is going on. That triples my inventory costs of what I have to have there in order to have parts available for people when they're at work. That's part of why you want to consolidate, because you get those efficiencies, aside from the fueling, the servicing and those components. Getting to the issue of the westside. To build a facility that will accommodate the volume of buses that we have now or that we anticipate having under the MTIS scenarios, we need have between 19 and 20 acres of site, and you could potentially squeeze it tighter and we will because this site is not 100% usable. It's going to have a set-back requirement from the relocated channel, it's going to have landscaping set-back requirements, it's going to have a set-back requirement from the rail right-of-way on the backside, it's going to have a set-back requirement and a soun, light, and noise berm requirement on the Swift Street side. And so all of those will encroach into what becomes actually usable property. But for this size of system, you should have somewhere between 19 and 20 usable acres.

DB: How big is that site?

LW: That's a 20 acre site. And that's the biggest that's out there. So when we start looking at how we squeeze, we'll stand additional construction costs probably by going double story on the Admin and Operations and Maintenance buildings, as opposed to single story just to conserve the size of the footprint that's left on the property, in order to maximize the amount of space available for bus parking and service level parking out there. You have to be in an industrial zone, and even in an industrial zone you have to get an Administrative Use Permit over the top of that. A lot of property that we've looked at people continue to come back to Nigh lumber and the Skyview sites, both of which are zoned commercial. Nigh lumber is A) not big enough, but even if you could assemble all of the properties that are either for sale or you could take to get to that, you're talking about 14 usable acres, and you're talking about to get 14 usable acres, I've got to go lot-line level right against the senior citizen mobile home park and senior center out there. They're not going to be real pleased about having, and I mean no buffer or anything, just a cement wall, and a bus on this side and the senior citizen set of folks on that side. If I go across the street to the Skyview side, the drive-in, assuming that the flea market people don't kill me, again I've got a problem, it's commercially zoned. Assuming that, I've got to go in both of those cases and get it rezoned out of commercial and get it into industrial, which means I have to have the Board of Supervisors love putting it there. Secondly, I'm now looking at an 11 acre parcel, not a 14 acre parcel, and thirdly I'm going to go zero lot line to all the affordable housing that's on Soquel, I'm going to back right up to and I'm going to wash buses right next to those apartments at 11:00 at night. And so I've got the same kind of adjoining use problem that you've got in all the other sites, only with no ability, with this site you've got 20 acres which I'd rather have as totally usable, but I can dedicate part of that through double-decking the facility to buffering back so that we're not impacting adjoining uses. Those sites are so tight that I've got to go zero lot line just to get everything in, so I have no ability to buffer what the adjoining uses are. Lastly, we go to Harvey West Park, and we looked at cluster options in Harvey West Park. With the current configuration in Harvey West Park, there are no parcels of property.... When I say configuration, the general plan as it is now enforced, has a 100 foot set-back from any designated riparian area, corridor or just free-standing riparian area, and therefore, you have to, for example, like the City corporation yard, you've got a pond in the back, you've got to strike an arc of 100 feet around that from center. The creek that goes along the side of Costco, they'd not be allowed to build there now, because you'd have to go 100 foot back from the center line of the creek. There are no build-able parcels, and in fact had that been enforced at the time that Harvey West was being developed, the buildings we currently lease would not be built, Costco would not be built, U.P. would not be built and the City corporation yards would have to leave. So, when I go out there now and say that this 100 foot set-back requirement which is being enforced as result of litigation with the City is in place, even if I condemn Costco or U.P. or the corporation yards, which is my favorite, I can't use it after it's done because I'd sacrifice so much land to the set backs that there's not enough left to use for the buses. And if you went to point zero center on our service configuration, Harvey West is closer than the westside, there's no question. That's probably where we're going to end up is Harvey West/River Street area is exactly dead center zero to what the center of service dispersion is going to be. That's the real problem. As you start going down through these sites, you find out that there's not a lot of alternatives that are out there. Having said all that, our people are just as worried about Mission as the people on Mission are worried about Mission. And, what kinds of things can we do to mitigate operationally what happens with Mission. First of all, you start off when you look at the pulse in current service, and even where we project where it will expand, they're preceding and succeeding the peak, so they're not out there right during the peak hours. Secondly, you put them out in mini dispersions, so in other words, you don't allow more than three or four at a time to go out of the yard, so you don't have a team of 20. They're going out at 5:30 in the morning and they're coming in at 10:30 - 11:00 at night.

DL: They must come in and out various times during the day, cause nobody works that long. Somebody has to bring stuff back and give it a driver to get it back out of there.

LW: Now, what you do is you do on street, what every other transit system in the country does, and we're going to learn to do, is you do on street relief. You have to understand, and if this sounds whiny, it's just because we've neglected our capital needs for a long time. Most places, including the systems that I've managed, when a driver goes on duty they do not go out to the garage and pick up a bus, unless they're the first driver in the morning. They go to a bus, they have a radio system where you simply enter a code or card swipe in your ID, that goes back to the central dispatch, and they know you're on the bus. That's your time clock, they know you're on duty. We don't have that. We have a radio system that was made in 1974, the 450 land transportation frequency facility, that is somewhere between a walkie-talkie and what the FAA uses. [laughter] We keep telling the Board we have good news and bad news. The good news is we're not worrying about Y2K, the bad news is, it's because we don't have anything with a computer in it. [laughter] Nothing that could come up would be a problem. But, truly we should have gone to 800 megahertz, with global positioning and automatic vehicle location and driver ID years ago. The plan that we put into place with that money the Commission identified for the Transit District, includes money for a complete installation of a new radio system with on-street capacity so that the drivers go to the bus, the bus doesn't come. So that you don't have this constant platooning back and forth, and shuttling with buses back and forth. They go out, they stay out for the day. Our buses that we buy have a 125 gallon capacity of diesel on the tanks, and so they're going to run all day. The average route that goes out at 5:30 in the morning and comes in at midnight or 1:00 in the morning for the University, is pulling down about 90 to 95 gallons. You've got 125 in the bus, you've got adequate capacity to do that without having to bring it back in and do a midday fuel and pull it back out. So, that's one of the strategies that we would use. But there are other things, people say, you're going to take them out and you're going to test the brakes out in the streets all around our neighborhoods and make all kinds of noise. This facility will be designed to have what they call a coach dynamometer inside. What that means is, the bus goes in and it goes on a set of rollers inside the shop, inside a closed building with all the, there's a trunk that comes down and grabs the exhaust and that's all cleaned before it emits out from the building. Then you bring it up to speed on the rollers and you do all the brake diagnostic and everything there. The bus never leaves the building. So you don't do on the road types of diagnostic testing. And those are things, again, that you don't put in a three bay converted chicken processing plant, you put it in a new facility.

ER: We're not going to be able to smell diesel the way we used to be able to smell the juicy fruit?

LW: No, you're not going to have clouds of diesel hanging over the area for two reasons. One, this Board has made a commitment that no other Board in the West Coast has made anywhere, and that is, with one exception, and that is that they are going to completely cover all of the bus parking. And the only one exception, I commend it to anyone who's going up north, is this is patterned after North Base in Seattle. North Base in Seattle, same kinds of siting issues as we have. Same size facility, about a 200 bus facility. North Base in Seattle, if you go there, you will see the maintenance building and employee parking and that is all you will see. Because what they did is put a lid over the top of all the bus parking, and put a park on top.

ER: Can we have a park?

LW: We don't know, that's one of the things that has to be discussed. The Board is committed to the......

In any event, there are things that can be done, and the Board has already made the commitment and the budget has been built for all of the buses to be under cover with air capture systems when the buses start up, and we don't do 45 minute idling, the buses start up and they go. They don't sit and idle and all this sort of thing, diesels don't need to do that. And so when they start up they're out of there. When they start up they'll be underground, there is air filtration systems that will pull the diesel, filter it before any air goes out. When they pull out at the end of the driveway, which will be parallel to the railroad tracks, take a left onto Swift and go onto Mission, yeah there's going to be some diesel emission. That's why you put them out in groups of two or three or four, you don't let 10 or 15 go out at one time, and you give that time for that to disperse. If you go out there and stand right next to the bus when the buses are going out the driveway, you'd probably smell something. And by the time they're out of there, that's going to be the end of what you have during the course of the day. So, those are the kinds of things that we're looking at to make sure that the facility is more compatible, and you have to look at the fact that the Board is made a commitment with regard to CNG and so over time as you transition the buses over to CNG, the interesting thing is that in San Bernardino, where they just did the very same kind of thing and a very similar location where the facility was put on-line, the neighbors were more concerned about having Compressed Natural Gas on the property, than they were about having diesel on the property because they were afraid the buses would blow-up. And so, you get, that's a discussion that people have to walk through.

ER: I wanted to tell you that whether or not the Think Tank decides to have a town meeting kind of a thing doesn't really depend on even whether we agree with you about it. But, what it is important that we get to before we leave anyway is, do you want to do this? Should we have a town meeting? What questions should we ask, where should it be, when should it be, what role can we play, who else should we invite to come, and let's just be sure to cover those things. I need to hear all this too, but I didn't want us to forget that.

LW: For our purpose, the Think Tank can do whatever you folks feel is appropriate, our preference at Metro would be that it's meaningful for people to have folks that have done this in the room, being done this meaning built these facilities, I've done this in three other communities, but done this being in the room where they can answer these kinds of questions and give living examples and pictorial examples of how these things can go down. With that in mind, we are in the last stages of employing an architectural engineering firm. We went out with a RFP last month, we received 8 proposals from national firms, we've short-listed to three, a group from the Board is going down on Wednesday and Thursday of next week is going down to the Los Angeles are to take a look at facilities that these firms have designed, brand new ones that they've put on-line, and to talk to people in the proximity of there to see how that's work. That's going to be Wednesday and Thursday of next week. The following Wednesday and Thursday they will interview and rank these three firms, and from that the Board will then authorize us to negotiate a contract with the firm that they have ranked as number one. It is the intention of the Board in October to execute a contract with the preferred architectural engineering firm. I say all that, because I think that from a timing standpoint that if you really want to have a meeting that brings people together to ask the experts that build these things in all settings all across the country, November or December is probably the very best timeframe, I know that starts to get into the holidays, but these folks in their work scope they have to be available to interact with the community, they have local subcontractors in all three proposals, some have used Mesiti-Miller, some of them have used other folks, Mark Primack is in some of the proposals, there is a number of people at the local level that they have subcontracted with and that will depend on which one of the generals get the contract, but they've done this in other places. WaterLeaf out of Portland is one example, they're the ones that did the North Base in Seattle where people had really strong concerns, that was a six year siting process to get that accepted by the community, and the result of that was covering the bus parking and putting the park on top of it, and dedicating it over to the community. But other places have put daycare centers in, they've put mini-parks in, they've put community centers in, there's a variety of things that have made these become part of a community as opposed to just intruding. And these folks can answer those questions, but they won't be on board until the end of October to do that, so I would encourage the group, if you really want to use the time the most effective way possible, bring in the folks that are going to do the design and grill them.

ER: Who else would you suggest needs to be invited?

LW: I think that as many people as you can get, from both sides, you've got people that are going to be impacted from the existence of the facility, and they need to be heard, and carefully listened to, and you have people that are potentially impacted by the absence of a facility because in the absence of being able to do something better than what we can do, we will go back to the Commission and say no, thank you very much for the $124 million, and I'm being very candid with you, we will downscale the bus system to about a 40 bus system and that's what we'll have. I have right now, I can not, I don't even have room to park the buses that I'm getting from Discovery on Highway 17 anywhere. The last lot that I've got will take about 7 or 8 more buses and that's a month to month lease from Plantronics out in a grass field that's going to turn to mud when the winter hits, and I'm going to get 16 buses to run Highway 17. So I have to go to the City and say will you allow me to park 8 buses overnight, every night on-street in Harvey West. I have no other place to put them. And I've already leased a lot from Produce and I park buses there, I park buses in the employee parking at night at River Street, I park buses over at Dubois in employee parking at night where they do heavy maintenance, and I park buses over on Golf Club where the employees park during the day where they do heavy maintenance, and I park buses at Plantronics in their grass field.

DL: Do you have a permit from the City to do all this? They've approved everything, right?

LW: A permit for what?

DL: To build the facility?

LW: No, right now there are two things happening. We are in final negotiations, we've come to an agreement with Union Pacific for the right-of-way to access in and out of the site along the rail right-of-way. We're in final negotiations with Lipton, and the only barrier with the negotiations with Lipton is whether or not the City....

DL: not the Lipton plant?

LW: No, it's the 20 acres that they own there. And they are before the City Council now with a request for a permit to relocate the ditch that runs down the center over to the original location. The ditch that runs down through the center originally was located along what will become the property line on the Lipton side of the property, north-west, that ditch used to run along there. And in the 60's with permits from no one, they just moved it over to the center of the project where it's at now. Because you didn't have to do that back in the 60's and that was to accommodate the installation of the rail spurt of that plant. They needed to change the elevation, so they shoved it over and just dug out a location and ran it out there. What they're asking for now is permission to relocate that back to spurs that were on the property come out the rail spurs. The rail spurs come out and they wanted to relocate that ditch back to its original location. They need a permit from the Coastal Commission to do that. The Coastal Commission subrogates its responsibility on the permitting to the City of Santa Cruz as the implementing agency, so that is now in front of the City. That will be the last thing that Lipton has to do as far as preparing the property for sale and sale to us or whoever. And at that point in time, we hope we will be able to finalize negotiations.

DL: How many employees will come to and from work on this site?

Les White: Initially, over the course of a 24 hour day, 300.

DL: So you adding roughly 600 extra trips a day on Mission?

LW: The current calculation is that we're adding in total on a 24 hour track, 890 trips to Mission and it depends on whose numbers you look at, but the impact of that, that's 800 total on the Swift/Mission interchange so it's 800 in addition to the 15,000 that's there now. If you look at Chestnut and Mission, it's not even 800 anymore because you have to take off everything that's going to the University and turns left on Bay or goes up on Western. That will happen because that's part of the discussion with the University. Separate topic. It comes up to be 800 compared to the 49,000 that the Chestnut and Mission and which of the other screen lines they use, so you can get an idea of the impact. Quickly on the University, we hope to displace a lot of the shuttle traffic on campus and accelerate more to-and-from campus service with express bus service and local service ... By being able to operate bi-directionally. The university is committed to allow us to do that as soon as they make their bidirectional -- the clockwise stop -- accessible to people with wheelchairs. . . .

[Debbie suggested going around the group to see how people felt about TTT hosting a community meeting on Metrobase.]

BC: Whether we do it or not, my concern is whether we can do it well...

BG: If we can wait until we can get the consultants on line, the consultants can present to the neighbors exactly what the impacts will be.

ER: I'd like to see us take it on if we're in agreement that we can do a good job and if people are willing to spend some time on it. I'm ready to do whatever I can. I'd like to see it held on the Westside. I'd like to see someone from the University and the City on the panel. I'd like to see a list of questions. I don't think it should be a dog and pony show. It needs to be in a way that the neighborhood and the community doesn't feel like they're being preached to.

RS: I'm not sure why we should be sponsoring this if it's something that Metro will be doing as well...

LW: There's no question about the fact that we will have meetings along with regard to this project. The question comes more to whether or not it's appropriate to have at least one opportunity where you look at maybe a more impartial group. Obviously we're going to come out with a more biased approach. In other project development, one of the things I've found is that it's hard for people to make choices unless they can visualize what you're presenting them with. Operating in Vancouver, we brought in a consultant for a much broader based issue. What he's done is a visual preference survey. Basically, it's like going to the eye doctor and saying do you like this or do you like that. In this case, on a smaller scale, all three consultants that are on the table right now have done literally 20 40 of these facilities around the country. If we were to ask them to put together visual flag presentations of alternatives so people can look at what's possible and get an idea of what they like an don't like. From a facility design, that gives people input into the process. The other issue as to how buses are deployed and how they impact on Mission is more of a straightforward mathematical issue and that people can or cannot tolerate going down Mission. But as far as how the facility footprints on the property, people can have a lot of input into that process if they feel a) they're going to be listened to and it's a legitimate process, and b) they have some idea of what you're talking about. I can try with words to paint a picture and I guarantee that if I give each one a piece of paper when I got done, we'd be off something different because each of you would pick up a mental picture of what I was saying and it wouldn't all be the same. With a visual survey, people can get an idea of what is possible. One of the things that came out of that in the Vancouver situation was that there seemed to be a great revelation to planners up there. We like trees, we like the look . . . the result of that was a new general plan. That was what the city was attempting to do. It came out totally different had the public not participated. These were big groups. The same kind of thing that on a micro level we hope to do here. This has got to be a facility that when it's done, people have got to believe it's an asset, the majority. I have done this before.

If you bring out people, both sides, ones who are interested in the service, and ones who are interested in how the facility is designed, you would not just come out it figuring they'd been shined on my Metro. I can't tell you whether that's a factor or not. It seems to me that more people would come out if they figure that there's a middle party that's sponsored the meeting. Most people feel the government spends time to manipulate them.

DB: I have mixed feelings ... I don't know how much time I want to devote to it. It would be strengthened if there were multiple sponsors ... maybe one of the newspapers, Sierra Club, neighborhood associations, ... January would be better than doing it around the holidays. University presence might be problem. That might get us onto other issues. People are generally frustrated when they have to watch a long presentation. Keep speeches to 15 minutes or less. The bulk of time should be spent answering questions and concerns. I am still not clear about disadvantages of this location: I've heard increased traffic on Mission, I hear diesel emissions, testing brakes on public thoroughfare. Are there other objections that have been raised?

LW: People believe this will be similar to the Gateway facility with massive lighting so it will be like downtown wherever in the middle of the night. This Board has made a commitment that everything is underground or under canopy so you have directional lighting rather than having light leakage out of the sight. Noise is a big one. You're doing everything inside. You build the building so you don't have sound leakage out of there. Those are things that are done now. There are going to be those folks who want it to be a green field. Lipton just wants to sell it.

ER: Also there's the question of the taxes...

LW: Let me address the issue of tax roll. I think these are legitimate questions. We currently own property in Watsonville, at River Street where the current facility is, and we own property on Golf Club where the running repair facility is. The value of those facilities, just even the two in the City of Santa Cruz, exceeds the value of that property as it sits today. So we would sell those facilities because we're using the money from the sale of those facilities to help offset the cost of building this one. We know what those facilities are worth because we've got people lined up to buy them. They will come in and demolish what's there, even in the flood zone. We would put more value on the tax rolls from the stand point of property tax than what we would pay half the tax roll on this facility out here. Secondly, we are a sales tax paying entity. There is no exemption for public transit. So if we move everything to Watsonville, aside from all the other cost implications, Watsonville gets all the sales tax.

DL: I believe that we should do it. I favor Bayview school or even better is City Hall to be on live television. Much better if it's live. Also, if it's at City Hall, people can Email questions. And January would be the best time, its got to be after the holidays.

LW: Normally the design process takes 10-12 months, we're allowing 18 months to give people the initial opportunity to have input on the project and we designed that into the schedule.

JS: Regarding Debbie's point about whether there are any valid objections, ... Is there any organized opposition?

ER: No, but there are people with big opinions who want me to put a petition in the bakery.

JS: It's not as if there are people who could advocate for different sites. It's more like let's get the community involved in designing this so we get what we want. I think it's good for the TTT to do it. Reducing automobile use means promoting the bus system. Though I'd also like to see us be neutral moderators. I like the idea of the Mission St. Business Association also having a neutral oversight role. I agree about UCSC maybe being a distraction. I like the idea of live TV and email.

ER: One thing I heard a consultant say that stuck in my mind, is people can wallow in negative fantasies, and that can happen here. It's important that we have images of what it could be, that's really, really helpful. And I'm not attached to having someone from the University, but I think there's a problem with decisions being made, and they're not there to say "Yes, that's the way it will be"... It can work if we have a strong moderator.

MS: City Council members should be invited to observe and maybe ask questions.

JS: Celia Scott is acting as a consultant on this. I think it would be great to have her up there so people know they're getting the straight facts about the COF.

ER: Yes, when I heard Celia talk about it, I was impressed. That's a really good idea.

MS: Do we have enough information to make a decision?

DB: OK, I'd like to ask, number one, how many people are in favor of this? And number two, how many would want to put time into this?

JS: I don't think it will take that much time, since Metro will be doing some of the work...

DB: Format, questions, etc. -- won't take a huge amount of time. Maybe two or three people come up with a plan and the rest modify and comment on that.

[Unanimous positive response to both of DB's questions]

DB: Is there agreement that it should be in January?

MS: When will the City Council be voting on this?

LW: The CC will deal with the relocation permit issue anywhere between September and November depending on how that comes forward either as a categorical exemption or a negative declaration. That's between the Council and Lipton. ... The Council will not get the issue of the Administrative Use Permit until we are at the 35% design stage which is well into next year.

DB: TTT members should email questions to possibly include, if we have a volunteer to collect them...

ER: Maybe we could ask for rumors and concerns from neighbors, ...

JS: Maybe put a sheet on your [Emily's] board.

[Ed Porter said he could manage the collection of emailed input, and would talk about PRT at the next meeting and show his videotape (maybe a 20-minute presentation). Meeting will be at Aptos Fire Station. Dick Little noted that the RTC will be developing the RTP (Regional Transportation Plan) starting with the October meeting.]


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