Good afternoon. My name is Reva Chamblas. I am chair of the transportation committee and we are going to begin our meeting. Today is Monday, July 27th. Our first order of business is the Dakota land and people acknowledgement. The Met Council acknowledges that the land we currently call Minnesota and specifically the sevenount region is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota who are present and active contributors to our thriving region. As part of the Met Council's commitment to address the unresolved legacy of genocide, dispossession, and settler colonialism, and the fact that government institutions, including the Metropolitan Council, benefited economically, politically, and institutionally after the forcible removal of the Dakota Oate. The Met Council is dedicated to instilling land, water, and people commitments in regional policy. These commitments support the Dakota Aate, the 11 federally recognized tribes in Minnesota, Ho Chunk Nation, and the American Indian Communities representing over 150 tribal nations that call the 7ount region home. Next, we have approval of the agenda. And if there are no changes or requests on the agenda, we will consider the agenda approved. I would like to ask for a motion to approve the July 13, 2026 Transportation Committee minutes. Is there a motion? >> So moved. >> It's been moved. Is there a second? >> And it's been seconded. All in favor say I. >> I >> oppose. Nay. That motion carries. The minutes are approved. And our next item on the agenda is our employee recognition. And we will have Metro Transit present on that with Leslie Canderas. >> All right. Thank you, Chair Chamblas. Council members. Today we are pleased to recognize several employees who have recently represented Metro Transit in impressive ways. Uh first we'll hear about leaders of our pride employee resource group or ERG which is leading active yearround or is leading work actively year round uh but is especially visible during pride month in June including leading events such as flaggraings at our work sites and participation in the Twin Cities Pride Festival and parade. And then after the pride group, uh we'll bring up a second group, uh the team of Hwood technicians who represented Metroransit earlier this year at the American Public Transportation Association's International Rodeo in Salt Lake City. Uh and as you'll hear about that group, they did a fantastic job in this competition and we're very grateful to have them bring their skills uh to our daily work here as well. Uh so with the chair's permission uh to introduce the first group uh I'd like to turn it over to Kristen Thompson and then once we hear about that group we'll bring up Jeremiah Ryder for the rodeo honores. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. Good afternoon uh chair and council members. So this team as Leslie mentioned includes the 2026 to 2028 leadership of the council's pride erg and our lead for metrorransit's partnership with Twin Cities Pride. Together, these employees make tremendous contributions that create inclusive spaces for LGBTQ employees and allies. Um, I'm going to name them first and then share a few highlights of the work. So, we have our Pride ERG chair Nathan Bachan, uh, vice chair Russ Wley, coordinators Nate Frisbee Kro and Ruth Crow Lane, and market development specialist Alice Johnson. Uh, as Leslie mentioned, uh, ERG activities do occur year round, but the celebration of Pride in June results in a ton of planning and efforts in the first half of the year. Um, through this group's efforts and advocacy, programming has expanded over the past several years. Metrotransit's partnership with Twin Cities Pride is a highlight of the season. Employees can staff the outreach booth at the festival in Luring Park or join the parade contingent with their family and friends. A community artist designs a pride themed wrap for the bus that operates in the parade and is still out on the streets today. If you want to track it down, we can help you do that. Since 2024, Progress Pride flags have flown at the flagship council work sites in the week leading up to Pride weekend with a flag raising ceremony held at each facility. This gesture is a reminder that all are welcome here at the Met Council and within our region. The Pride ERG hosts smaller Pride Month events at various work sites and tables at other events throughout the year like the bus rodeo and doors open Minneapolis. The Pride ERG facilitates employee connections by organizing social and volunteering events such as attending Prince Twins Pride Night and volunteering at Open Arms of Minnesota. Pride ERG leaders and I'm especially proud of this are very creative and leverage partnerships to expand their impact. In May, they used a fitforlife miniigrant to fund an LGBTQ plus allyship training. And this training was among the first to seek approval to offer leadership development hours for managers, which is a new requirement um at the council. So, none of this programming would be possible without Alice, Nathan, Russ, Nate, and Ruth who tackle it with creativity, collaboration, and persistence. Uh their efforts helped make Metro Transit and the council a welcoming and supportive employer. >> Thank you. And uh the second group uh if Jeremiah Ryder could be recognized to introduce the rodeo participants. >> Good afternoon chair and committee members. Uh so I get the pleasure of uh introducing to you all uh Chris Rudolph also known as Rudy uh Ramen Rain and Griffin Still. All three of them participated in the international apta bus maintenance or bus uh rodeo and there they took 17th place out of 49 teams. Uh the maintenance rodeo consists of eight individual uh events or challenges that are scored. Two of them are engines and transmission modules, a written exam, brakes, steering, electrical uh systems, HVAC doors, and then a complete bus inspection. These events are uh representative of testing their expertise, their diagnostic abilities, and their attention to detail under pressure. The team standout uh performances that they had were in the engine and transmission modules. uh they came in with a perfect score on one of them and it came down to a time tiebreaker between the other uh teams that participated. The other event they also placed second in an 11-way tie. So they had a nearly perfect score. They missed one uh defect and that uh put them into that 11way tie. [snorts] Um but one thing that's even more impressive than they're showing at the international stage is this group combined has less than 10 years of transit uh maintenance experience. So they're very wellrounded in their knowledge that they're bringing to Metro Transit and they make us proud every day in what they're doing over across the the way here at Haywood uh facility. They're also uh consistently strengthening our operations just by the skills and abilities that they're bringing forth and it shows their discipline and dedication that they provide for Metroransit every day. >> Thank you so much. Thank you so much. [applause] >> Okay, so we're going to have some awards to get out first. The first award goes to Alice. [laughter] >> Hi Alice. >> Congratulations and thank you and Nathan. >> Congratulations to you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Bless. >> Thank you so much. And congratulations Nate, thank you, Nate. And congratulations. There you go. And last but not least, Ruth. Thank you so much. And congratulations. Awesome job. [applause] >> Okay. for the bus. Rodeo folks, come on [laughter] up. And the first person is Chris. Congratulations and thank you so much. Good job. >> And Rudy. Congratulations, Rudy. Thank you so much. >> Griffin, congratulations, Griffin. Thank you so much. >> [applause] [applause] >> May I grab a photo of all of you here? [laughter] Okay. While they go out, I want to say thank you so much to all of your contributions. We really appreciate the work of the Pride Leadership Group, ERG, and um all of the things that you have done for advocacy as well as the APA rodeo. Um that's a national organization and the rec recognition means a lot. There was a lot of work and it showcases the skill and the uh commitment of our employees. And that completes our employee recognition part of the agenda. Next we will have reports. Oh, next we will have public comments and um there are some folks that are signed up. I I have two so far. If there is someone who is not on my list, you can also provide a public comment. I will ask that you keep your public comments to two minutes. Uh please state your name and the organization that you are reference uh representing. The first person is Darlene, I believe. Babber. >> Oh, very good. >> Okay, [laughter] come on up. >> Thanks for letting us speak. >> Um, I'm here representing um opposition to the bronze line, but I'd like to speak to you briefly about how it affects us. I live in um real life cooperative failing village um on the corner of well, it's in St. Paul. Do you all know St. Paul? I don't know. Um, and the bronze line is going to cost $375 million. And we can't find out how many millions of dollars are going to be spent putting a bridge that goes within 55 ft of our senior housing community. Within 55, it's going to go right by my bedroom and living room windows. Personally, I don't know whether people are going to wave at me or shoot at me, but [laughter] it's going to be right by my windows. Um, so I'm concerned about that. I appreciate your comments, um, Chair Chamless, about preserving our natural environment and our culture and, uh, uh, our the health of our people. part of the Bruce Ventro trail is supposed to go up and over this concrete bridge and a lot of the trail for the Bruce Ventro uh people that enjoy that community is going to be greatly reduced. Uh so we're concerned about the whole community, not just ourselves. We also um I just wanted to report on some new reports and projections that we went over today. The purpose, one of the purposes of this huge bridge going right by our house is to bypass a one minute to two minute stoplight on the corner of Phenom Boulevard. And um uh >> Huh. >> Are you talking to me? Oh, I'm sorry. Anyway, a one to two minute stoplight. We We know it's going to cost multi-millions to put in this bridge, but that one purpose, I think, is just really not a good use of that money. And the second purpose or the second report that we've gotten, we determined today from the projections that they're going to be like about nine people on each bus and to bypass um that bridge just does not make sense to any of us. But more than that, we're threatened by the construction there. So those two things, there's many more and I have other people to speak, but we're very concerned about our own health also and the viability of us being able the seniors being able to live 50 ft from a bus line that goes every 12, 13 minutes. Is that correct? >> Oh, thank you all. I just needed to express how threatening this is to some of us. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Next, we have I believe a Sharon Marcus. >> Hi, good afternoon. I'm here again. >> Hello, director and chair and all the council members. Please uh know that uh we are only here to hopefully have you hear our voices. Uh I too am a resident of Failen Village and this bronze line project is not what we're objecting to. What we're objecting to is the bridge. The bridge does come 55 ft. And if you for a visual this is almost 55 ft. Can you imagine being where you are at chair and having a bridge right there? It really uh is intrusive. It's loud. It's uh it's unnecessary uh the bridges and to see if if we could get a new reddraft. I know that Craig Lamont and his uh draft person uh Abbott, Miss Abbott, were going to get back to the board because she even sent me an email that used the word as drafted. This is unfeasible. But I haven't seen anything since. So, I really I really hope that you can hear us that this is something we really are the hallmark of this neighborhood. You see us on Johnson and uh and Failen Boulevard. That's how you enter into the the east side of St. Paul. And we really would like to uh as senior citizens be heard that we're we're you can't dispose of us just over a bridge. Uh the cost is atrocious. There's a better way that could be negotiated, but nobody seems to want to hear it. Um and we went to a ward six meeting the other day and heard that St. Paul is in debt $20 million in debt. So you could allocate some of the funds to help St. Paul uh out of this mess. Um I understand that the Metro Council is put in place by the governor and that's wonderful. You're here because he feels as if you are qualified to be here and you can can understand as citizens what our voices are too. And I'm going to let Mike speak because he was the one that was supposed to get here. I got here a little early. This is Mike Dorser. Okay. Come on up, Mike. Please state um your name again and um the organization that you're representing. Okay. My name is Dr. Michael Dorscher and um I am representing myself as a resident of Real Life Cooperative. I just came from a board meeting of the Real Life Cooperative. They'll be voting on Wednesday on a formal resolution in opposition to the Johnson Parkway Bridge. Uh, and also the resolution will contain some of the the data that call into question the entire Bronze Line project data that that I just received on Friday in response to a two-month-old data request, an open records request to the Metropolitan Council. I appreciate that they did respond, but uh some people have mentioned here nine passengers per bus and that comes from your own data. 804,000 annual passengers, which might sound like a lot, but if you divide that 84,000 by 365 days, and then divide that by 240 buses, uh, which is six buses per hour in both directions, 12 12 buses over 20 hours, that 804,000 comes down to just nine passengers per bus. And the cost of those nine passengers per bus just based on the $375 million construction cost is $1555 per passenger. And that doesn't include any of the salaries, any of the administration costs that uh operating costs that go into running those buses. So, um it's it's a very expensive way and a very old-fashioned way. And in our case, my window, according to the plans that I received from the Met Council on Friday, the window of my unit is 51.75 ft from the bridge. That's 17 yards, less than two first downs for the Vikings >> if they can get them before they have to punt. And I feel like that's what we're being told. uh you get 17 yards away and then you have to punt. And the last thing I'll say as far as numbers is that there are 12 of our units uh 20% of the entire building that face this and are within 50 to 55 ft of this bridge. Those units are likely to become unsailable. Um and if they are that means that the other units in the building would uh suddenly have to bear 20% more cost and that's untenable too. So this entire $10 million project would um be financially untenable at that point. Thank you for considering these facts and we're uh looking forward to uh reddrafts and reconsideration. >> Okay, thank you. Uh I believe that concludes our public comments. Did we get everyone? >> Okay, thank you. Uh next we have our reports from the transportation planning director, Amy Benowitz. Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair and members. Couple weeks ago, Charles Carlson hopefully mentioned that the regional solicitation, which we've been working on for two years, had gone out. Applications closed. We received 175 applications. And now over the past four weeks, my staff has been going through each of those applications and looking at what we call the qualifying criteria. So each application has to meet certain standards of having been in the correct category, be on the correct type of roadway, uh have an ADA plan, those types of qualifications. So, we completed our qualifying review and we ended up with about 22 or so that had questions about them. Um, and then funding and programming met last week and we give applicants an opportunity to submit materials that were missing. So a number of them did submit their materials and so the result being after funding and programming met last week, we ended up with four applications that were disqualified and uh primarily because they did not meet uh federal requirements um or TAB requirements particularly for roadway projects as to the type of roadway they were on and uh we did have one active transportation project that was for a maintenance type activity which we don't allow and so that one was also disqualified. So four out of 175 applications are not moving forward. We still are looking for materials from about 14 applicants and um are pretty confident that they will get the materials in over the next month or two. So the remaining applications are moving forward and we are now entering what we call the scoring phase and during that phase we have agency staff help us score these applications and we currently have over 60 city county MINDOT staff that have volunteered to help us in this effort. So it's really a very big effort. It brings together a lot of the agencies from across the region and we're going to be doing that for two months and then we'll be coming back to you and to the transportation advisory board with the final ranking of the regional solicitation projects. So, >> just wanted to give you an update. It's a lot of work happening behind the scenes and if you have any applicants that are bringing questions to you, be sure to let us let us know and we can help you answer that. >> Well, thank you for that report. It's good to see so many applications 175 um shows the level of interest in um these uh level of funding. Any other questions or comments by council member committee members? Thank you for that report. Then um we have our next report from our Metro Transit general manager, Leslie Canderas. >> Thank you, Chair Chamblas. Council members, uh wanted to just mention we're thinking about State Fair already. Uh at your next meeting, you'll receive an update on our plans for State Fair, our service, our presence at the grandstand. I just wanted to note in case you get questions before then uh we are uh providing express bus service again at the same six sites we are providing uh express service from last year. So that will continue this year. Uh and we're also promoting our regular transit service uh that serves the fairgrounds well. So that includes a line route three route 61 and even uh the green line uh especially if you connect with a line can get you right there. So uh again just wanted to share that uh planning is well underway. We'll have an update next meeting but since we anticipate more fair promotion will happen before that next update. Just wanted to share uh that uh preview. So with that I would take any questions madam chair. >> Any questions? Council member Osman. >> Thank you m just requesting uh could you include the next update some numbers from the last few years like two three years. >> Sure numbers. We will definitely include that and I can say uh last year in 2025 we delivered over 393,000 rides during the fair. So it's a big wrership time for us but yeah we can get um a few past years and numbers just to put that in context. Great idea. >> Thank you. >> Great. Any other questions from committee members? Do you have anything else to report? >> No. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you for those two reports. At this time, we have no items of consent on the agenda. So, uh, we will move on to our non-consent business, which our first item of business is 2026-96, the suburban provider fleet transfer. And coming up is Jod Jansen. Good afternoon, madame chair and council members. Uh, my name is Jod Jansen. I'm the interim fleet manager for MTS. I'm here to present revised business item 2026-96. The original business item was presented to and approved by the transportation committee on May 11th and then was approved by the council on May 27th. As we've been working through the final details of the fleet transfer to the suburban providers, we discovered that FTA circular 5010 contains specific details that are required to be included in the transfer documentation. The attached [clears throat] exhibit provides the list of the fleets that are being transferred and is updated to include those details as required by the FTA. There are no changes to the actual vehicles or the financial aspects of the original item. With that, I would request that the Metropolitan Council approve this amended business item and the support supporting exhibit A document. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. >> Are there any questions of committee members? [clears throat] >> It looks like there are no Oh, one question. Council member Carter. >> Yeah, I was uh looking on proposed action. Um it says current netbook value. >> Can you speak up a little bit? I can. original purchase value of 102.7 million and I just wanted to see I understand the difference between the original purchase value and the um the current net book value of 338.4. >> Sure cons um madam chair and council members the difference between the two so the what's um the current netbook value it shows what's remaining after depreciation. >> Okay. Okay. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Hey, thank you for that clarification. >> Any other questions? >> With no further questions, I'd like to ask for a motion to approve 2026 96 suburban provider fleet transfer. Is there a motion to approve? >> So move. >> The motion has been made by council member Obasakin. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Council member uh Barber. Second. Any further discussion? Without any further discussion, all in favor say I. >> I. Oppose. Nay. That motion carries. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. [clears throat] Our next non-consent business item is 2026-129, the Metro Bronze Line bus rapid transit engineering phase capital contract agreement with Ramsey County. And before us is Craig Lamath. Welcome. >> Good afternoon. Madame Chair and council members, um I do not have a formal presentation tonight to support the business item because I was the last here before the full council on July 8th about uh 3 weeks ago and did mention this was going to be the first of a series of actions that we'd be seeking support uh for uh to the full council uh from this committee. And uh I've got with me on behalf of the project team, I'm presenting this item, but I also have our design and engineering manager, Morgan Abbott, in the audience, as well as our new agreement specialist, uh Jeff Busussy. Uh the item before you is to seek your recommendation of support to uh for the regional administrator to negotiate and execute an agreement with Ramsey Kartney, our key partner on this project. Um this agreement will fund or bring in the county share of the project for the engineering phase which is anticipated to last through the end of 2029. Uh we would achieve uh 100% design by that time as well as environmental clearance as well as starting the the real estate acquisition process um prior to um acquiring property for the construction phase. Uh specifically the amount that uh of county funds that are being brought in are 22,245,000. Um with those funds we will be bringing in also uh separate from this grant agreement uh but related uh $10,35,000 and those two totals together uh will support the project through the engineering phase through the end of 2029. uh at that time uh we'll be deciding on how to address construction and we'll be back before this committee for another capital grant agreement uh for construction at that time. So with that I look for your support to give the authority to the regional administrator for negotiating executing that agreement. Um that agreement is critical that we get it uh moved through now. Uh cuz with that money, we are then going to be able to come back forward in a cycle or two in September uh to be able to award a design consultant services contract uh that will help move forward all of the transit elements uh from a design and environmental clearance standpoint uh for the project, including uh the bridge you just heard about from those who came in here tonight to comment. Thank you for that update. Mr. Lamav, Council Member Obsaken, did you have a question? >> Yes, if it's time. Can I can I ask? Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, uh my only concern is maybe I should ask you before I tell you my concern is um are we going to have a chance to talk to the engineering because we're still hearing or let me let me put this away. We did meet two weeks. Have there been any discussions within the engineers and the bridge the community members are talking about? because I myself I'm also concerned um uh about the about this bridge. So, are we going to get a chance or is this uh Nope, it's done. This is happening. Be quiet. What's the plan? I guess that's my only only concern I have. I don't know if I'm out of line or out of bounds, but I just got to ask it. >> That's a fair question. Uh, council member, I know that um at the July 8th, I believe the presentation, there was more details on uh the potentials related to the design and um the level of design that it was at. Can you explain that? >> Yes, Madame Chair, uh Mr. Vice Chair, uh that's a good question. So, we have not advanced anything since the last time we were before you, and that's because we don't have those consultant resources. Uh as soon as we have those consultant resources on board, um likely in the latter part of September, uh they'd actually be in the project office with our agency staff and starting to work through all of the technical issues facing the project. Uh including a relook at the bridge. Um as was noted, uh that bridge was taken to about a 30% level of design um in the prior Purple Line phase. Um but then discovery of um impediments under the ground, not necessarily where we thought they were, are going to cause us to go back to essentially square one on that bridge design. So um once we have those resources on board, we'll be able to engage with the stakeholders, including the real life community members. So we'll expect sometime in October, uh we want to make sure we meet with everybody, hear technical concerns from their perspectives directly, our engineers can hear that, >> uh before we put any pen to paper. >> Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any further questions of committee members? Seeing no further questions, I would like to ask for a motion to approve 2026 129 Metro Bronze Line Rapid Transit Engineering phase for the capital grant agreement with Ramsey County. Is there a motion? The motion has been made by council member Carter. Is there a second? >> Second. It's been seconded by Council Member Osman. Any discussion? Uh, Council Member Barber. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Based on my position as public works director for the city of St. Paul, I'll be recusing myself from voting on business item 2026-129. >> Thank you. Any further discussion? Without further discussion, all in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. Uh, nay. None. So that motion carries. Thank you. >> So I would like to see if we can have uh that completes our non-consent business items. And I'd like to see if there is agreement to have non-consent business item number one go as consent and number two as non-consent. Y. >> Okay, we will do that. And then next we will have uh Tony Fischer come up and talk to us about regional electric vehicle planning and give his presentation. Thank you Tony. Thank you chair. Nice to be with you all chair and members. Uh my name is Tony Fischer transportation planner in the transportation planning group and I'm going to share with you uh four electric vehicle planning projects we have going on or in various states of um happening. Um before I do that, I'd like to introduce a couple of people um with me today. We have uh Olivia Daroh Havland is a new employee in uh transportation planning helping with um climate work. Right now she's doing a lot of work to evaluate the regional sustation projects you heard about earlier for um greenhouse gas impact and vehicle miles travel impact. And then um hoping to get uh to some resiliency adaptation work and more VMT reduction work um when that's done. And then also um with me today is Rebecca Heisel from the Great Plains Institute. Um she's helping with the second project that I'll talk about today. Um and so let me jump into this. So first up is the EV public charging needs analysis. This was prioritizing public charging in the Twin Cities and that is substantially complete. Um we recently started this electric vehicle um city support project to provide technical assistance to local communities and and that's the one that uh Rebecca and Great Plains Institute are helping us with. And in the uh before the end of this year we hope to procure help with uh EV public engagement project to provide um information to the public and then next year we have planned an EV curbside imple charging implementation cohort project. So, I'll just go into a little bit more detail on each of those. The EV public charging needs analysis um was a PL planning level analysis of the gaps in publicly available EV charging infrastructure in the Twin Cities and then specifically identifying what parts um in of those gaps that the public sector might play. So, the project um generally work did four things. Um we're trying to accommodate and accelerate light duty electric vehicle adoption with this work. We are specifically informing the award of federal funds via the regional solitation with this work. Um so this ends in a prioritized map that um uh a future regional solation we have planned in 2028. We have $7 million set aside for public charging. This will be the core of that prioritization for that work. And then um we did receive a charging and fueling infrastructure grant at the beginning of the Trump administration that was put on hold. if that ever became available, this um this work would help uh prioritize those funds. And then we just generally hope that this work uh this prioritization effort is helpful to cities and utilities and others that are providing public charging in the Twin Cities. So, uh we did collect background work. We did engage a number of stakeholders including utilities and the private sector. And I'll touch on um a little bit of that engagement today. Um we did estimate the future charging needs and gaps and then we did prioritize those uh locations for that investment. Um and that really shows up in an interactive map that uh we built. So we started with an inventory of the current fast charging and level two charging stations. Fast charging is the kind of charging where you might um go from mostly empty to mostly full in 30 to 45 minutes. Level two charging is the kind of thing where um you might want to park for a number of hours or even overnight. Then uh we did a number of forecasts for the number of electric vehicles that uh we wanted to plan for in this effort. That um first line to the left is um labeled A. It represents the Minda Minnesota Department of Transportation statewide multimotal transportation plans goals. So very aggressive, optimistic. Um labeled B um forecast represents um about a 10 to a dozen forecasts from across the nation on what was expected for electric vehicles. So not quite as optimistic as our goals here in Minnesota. And I'll just skip over C for a moment and go to D. D was a forecast that represents the actions of the Trump administration last year. um significant pullbacks in funding for vehicles and charging. And so with this project um we didn't want to be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. So we averaged that um pre-Trump administration forecast with a a current a more current forecast. And you that shows up in line C and that's kind of a middle-of the road forecast that we're using for this effort. And that would represent about 30% of light duty vehicles in the Twin Cities being electric in about 20 240. And uh just the math based on the number of vehicles in the Twin Cities, we'd have about 1.2 million electric vehicles that we want to serve with this charging network. So um with the number of vehicles we were able to use a um a tool provided by um the national renewable energy lab that uh called EV proite and one of the major inputs is the number of vehicles you're trying to plan for and then the output is the number of charging stations that um you should anticipate to serve those vehicles. And so it it did output a level one um number that's uh like the wall outlets that you you see here in the room. But uh more importantly, the level two estimate is about 80,000 um public charging ports needed and over 6,000 fast charging ports needed in the Twin Cities. And just for reference, that is about 2% um or the current chargers that we have in the Twin Cities represent about 2% of those numbers. So um with the forecasted vehicles, the estimated number of charging uh needs in the future, we uh we looked at the sense of track AC across the Twin Cities and uh looked at uh where vehicles are stopping and for how long. How long is important for which type of charger is going to best serve people and then where they're stopping is important for the the level of demand. And so with that information, we were able to take those regional um charging needs and split it up across the Twin Cities by census tract. And then we did support subtract uh existing charging stations to get at uh a a gap number for charging in the future. So some of the stakeholder engagement that we did um we really were trying to center perspectives u of people most likely to to rely on public charging um probably don't have charging at home. Um and really thinking about two different audiences. Um community groups, organizations, and leaders who work closely with residents who could provide insight into equity considerations and uh charging access barriers. And then we uh work directly with community members who are less likely to have at home charging um especially um people living in multif family housing. So, we did uh conduct 13 one-on-one interviews um an online open house that reached 262 participants and we did three presentations to neighborhood and residents groups in the Twin Cities. Uh the feedback we received from that engagement was strong support for priorit prioritizing future public chargers for residents without access to home charging. um everyday and long dwelltime destinations are the most preferred charging locations because those are just um fit best with people's daily schedules and and limits the interruptions to their their lives. Um they they they found charger reliability, safety and maintenance as important as charger location. U we've heard a lot about um chargers not always working and that is definitely something a lot of people are concerned about. the industry is improving on. Um what we heard also that uh public charging is essential not supplemental for many EV users and future um users and affordability and price transparency are barrier are barriers to EV adoption today. Um public charging investments should align with transportation and community goals. So um once we had those um the needed number of chargers in the Twin Cities um split up by census group, we wanted to prioritize that and again we're trying to think about um people who don't have access to home charging. And so um we built a framework based on the regional development guide and transportation policy plan goals. Um we didn't address all the goals but um a few of them here. um in uh to address um climate change, we want to site uh chargers at hightra locations. Now, this is also uh an area where the private sector is likely to um to really take the lead. And so, you can see that we didn't intend to weight this heavily, but um just because of the large financial cost of DCFC direct current fast chargers, we did weight that a little bit heavily for those fast chargers. Um thinking about equity and and in inclusivity um we wanted to prioritize chargers for residents uh without access to home charging. This is largely about multi-ousing um trips um sort trips that come from multi- family housing um residences. And you can see we um we waited that at almost half of um the weight for this. And then we did also wait um trips represented representing low-income populations um recognizing that more and more electric vehicles are becoming available as used vehicles and so the costs are coming down and that um there are benefits to to the residents in terms of uh lower fueling and maintenance costs. Um and then we did also look at um healthy and safe communities. We wanted to prioritize um traffic specific air pollutants. Um we we got this data from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, but the data was a little bit dated. So, we did not weight this especially heavily. We think we're going to have an opportunity before the 2028 solicitation to update this data. So, uh we can re revisit that waiting then. And then we wanted to to to not leave people behind and to recognize the the value of serving um geographic balance, rural trips, these rural town centers. Uh these are other places where the private sector is likely to leave behind. And um these are also places with where people drive a little bit more than average. And so it's a it's a really great uh bang for the buck in terms of um climate benefits if we can switch some of those vehicles over to electric. So the results um will be found on an interactive map shortly on our website. Um this is just a screen print of the level two charging. You can see generally spread out throughout the Twin Cities generally um concentrated where our populations are concentrated and where those trips are concentrated and similarly the fast charging map I think um from a broad brush is um very similar. So that was the results of that prioritization study for public charging that um we hope to use in the regional station in two years. And then I want to touch on the uh EV city support project that Great Plains Institute is helping us with. Um so the goals for this project are um to filter and organize information that local governments need to accelerate electrification. uh to provide information and resources to local governments in a manner that is most useful to them and to support local governments to take practical and actionable steps to toward EV adoption and charging infrastructure deployment. So, um, to implement this, we've, uh, Great Plains has developed a, uh, technical assistance plan, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, but, um, then, uh, they are charged with delivering that technical assistance plan to township, cities, counties, and tribal nations that are, um, that are interested. And then, uh, also creation of some additional resources for participants um, and local governments. And then along the way just receiving feedback from a p project management team that represents uh local governments um the transportation committee today um transportation advisory board and its subcommittees. >> So um this technical assistance plan uh will support local governments to take practical local actions to support EV infrastructure deployment and electric transportation. Um we think that it's largely going to be made up of cities that are interested in this. they have a lot of touch points with electrification but we want to make this available to um townships, counties and tribal nations. Um generally we will frame this around two um cohorts um lasting 10 months. So we'll have monthly meetings with those groups and then um we are going to use a working title of EV community support even though we legally have a EV city support title. Um, just apologize for the confusion, but um, we have a legal title and we wanted a title that's just a little bit more plain language. So, um, the technical assistance, as I mentioned, largely focus on these cohorts, monthly calls, we'll have a different topic each month, discussion, experts, um, time for Q&A and assignments for local communities. We will have, uh, direct assistance with these communities. um GPI will have a meetings with the individual communities at the beginning, middle and end of the project of the cohort. And then um there's opportunities to schedule other time as needed. And then we want to have um two workshops where we have a little bit more time to do a deep dive on topics that people um are especially interested in or think require a little bit more time and energy. So I'll just uh two more quick slides on a couple of future projects that we have coming up. We do have budgeted um an EV public engagement project. Um like the EV city support project um is serving cities. This project will serve the public. Um this is a a a new and uh fastchanging technology and the public has a lot of questions, a lot of confusion and we just want to be able to get out there and answer questions. um whether that's um county fairs or ride and drives or kind of go where people are and provide them the most up-to-date accurate information we can about the types of vehicles, the char the ways you can charge your vehicle whether that's home or away. Um different grants and rebates that are available through uh utilities in the state and other places. Um talk about the benefits of EVs or private and public benefits. Um things people should keep in mind. Um and then as I mentioned doing doing just going where people are for this project. So that uh hoping to get that going before the end of the year. And then um we have uh in the draft budget for next year is a curbside charging implementation cohort. Um curbside is really along streets uh street parking um as a charging opportunity. And so we want to bring together local governments that are interested in this. Um summarize best practices and um put there are a lot of different private sector partners out there that we can um put in front of um communities. Uh we want to gather some data um just general data but also street by street data and then um put in front of these local communities um potential um approaches to to be getting CH curbside charging implement in their community. Um why this approach? Um we think it's a an important approach to serving um people without access to home charging. Uh a lot of people uh rely on um street parking and if the charging is there, it's pretty convenient for them. And then u especially people in multif family housing and uh potentially lower income neighborhoods. Um we also think curbside charging is important strategy in commercial streets and this could be urban areas or it could be small towns. Um but this is where people park and a certain percentage of the cars are going to be electric and so a certain percentage of the char the parking spots should be um have charging available. Yeah, there just a lot of um new and changing business models again in this area that are they're pretty exciting and we want to bring that information to our local communities and hope to start this project next year. With that, I'm uh happy to answer any questions. >> Oh, thank you for that presentation. Um this is a very interesting topic and uh very innovative in um technology. So of course um I have a lot of questions. I'm sure our committee members have questions. My first questions is regarding um the charging in single family homes. I know that the decision was to focus on multifamily homes and in previous meetings um I think we asked about the cost of light duty charging for single family residential homes. I was curious about that especially as it relates to rural communities that are spaced out that may need uh something in their home. >> Chair and members, that's a great question. Um, the vast majority of charging is anticipated to happen at home. Um, it's uh it becomes easier if you have a a newer house with 200 amp service. It becomes easier if you have an attached garage. Um, it becomes more difficult in an older house um or a detached garage. And so, um, the cost for installing, uh, home charging could range from, um, really almost free. Um, if you have level two charging, the the type of, um, outlet that serves a an electric dryer, you might not know it, but you might have a a level two charger already at home. >> Um, I myself have been living for four years on a level one charging, which um, requires a little bit of acrobatics, but it's not um, not too terrible. Um but really um when we're aiming for the regional sustation funds that that aren't eligible aren't allowed for um that private home um are more are for the public use um that's why we focused on public charging away from home. So um things like at a grocery store, things on a a public street um places the public have has access to. >> Okay. Council member >> PCO, Madam Chair, members, what role is uh Excel Energy play in in this as well as the public utilities commission. That's quite a bit of infrastructure uh if they're not at the table. That seems odd, but it uh how are you working with the other public utilities and in XL for example? >> Chair members, another great question. Um the public utilities commission expects the utilities in Minnesota to provide transportation electrification plans I believe every three years and Excel has had um some plans in the past. They've done a lot of work um they they they helped uh I think I understand a lot with the behind the meter work for our electric buses. They've helped with the um car share program in the Twin Cities in St. Paul and Minneapolis. again with a lot of the behind the meter work getting power to the site and then let other people take over that um that final implementation. So, uh they are they're doing quite a bit. Um you know, for them I think electric vehicles is um it's a it's a revenue opportunity, but it's al it's better than that. It's actually an opportunity for them to really balance the demand on the grid across the day. So where um you know we all get home at at 4:00 and maybe turn on the air conditioner, turn on lights, turn you know whatever we turn on, they see their peak demand at I believe it's 4 to 6 p.m. during the day. The electric vehicles can be set to charge overnight or if there's excess solar power during the day, they can be set to to charge during the day. So utilities um are looking at different um pricing models to kind of push that demand in the right direction and really um improve the grid for everybody. Um but then specifically we did reach out to Excel and other utilities and ask them if um the types of things we were talking about needed to be planned with the grid and um they said for the scale that we're talking about they're not too worried about that grid capacity. really um grid capacity is going to come into a play when you're talking about a large um you know like an Amazon warehouse wanting to charge a 100 vehicles or uh charging semi trucks at a at a you know at a kind of a gas station pick list. Council member Pekco. >> Yeah, man. Again, I had I used to work at XL Energy and and that before that NSP and we had when we moved transmission lines, the question was where you bury them or the overhead and then who pays for that? Then how much land do you lock up while you're doing that both in the plannings and then and then to reimburse and somehow pay for it is that's what I'm looking for as far as what is done. It's not whether they can approve it or not, but what their role will be in actually the design of of what we're talking about. >> Chair members, um, at this at the scale of the the work that we're talking about, um, probably say four fast chargers per site in a lot of or even 10 fast chargers per site. Um, it's not going to impact the grid at that level. [clears throat] >> Um, that's going to be really more about um, the Amazon warehouses. um you know those kind of large fleets that want to electrify uh definitely need to be coordinating over many years with utilities about um where those transmission lines are. >> Council member Barber. >> Thank you, Madam [clears throat] Chair. A couple of things. First, I'm really glad to see that you're looking on planning for two years down the road for the how to [clears throat] work this into the regional solicitation. Um totally understand some of the need for this. I live in a 100-year-old house. That electrician told me, "Sorry, you can't put in a charger." I said maybe because I have a gas stove like you know and so it becomes a real problem for people in a lot you in in a lot of different circumstances the ability to do um put in a charger for an electric car. Um one example um or one of one of the communities you might want to engage with is actually Shaki. Um they have this great space which in downtown Shakabe that um during the day has parking for the downtown businesses that has electric charges chargers in it but then it's a space that they actually activate for public events um in other hours. So um like they've done something really creative there which I think could be a great model for different places. Um also I'm really happy that um you're building up a technical assistance program because some communities have been doing this others are looking for guidance. >> [cough] >> It's almost when I look back at solar panels and solar policy, communities didn't know what to do. Especially some of the rural ones don't have the same staff and um especially our rural centers and so they're always looking for ideas or resources. So um if there's anyone I can connect you with, just let me know. But um um I think it's also um the key you mentioned so you're going where the people are. So I can tell you the people of district 4 will appreciate that. So thank you. [clears throat] >> Thank you council member. >> Thank you madam chair. members echo what my uh colleagues have said. Um, one question. Did you mention you've done some environmental research on on these yet or? >> Chair, members, we do have data from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency about where transportation pollution is impacting people the most and use that to help prioritize. >> Thank you. >> Some of the charges. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Followup. So um I have a I don't know um I don't want to say ignorant question but um my con don't say concern either but I just want to know um what's the impact of um these charging stations knowing that number one we're going to have more in the future or number two in such a cold uh place as uh Minnesota you know versus Las Vegas for example has there been any studies done on how much is is the charging station using more hour uh for example um vers in December January versus in Las Vegas something like that just just I would love to know more you don't need to answer me now but I would love to know more about that >> if chair remembers I give you just a little bit if if you don't mind um so u winter is different especially in Minnesota with um the cold cold you know two or three weeks we get in January >> um so it's especially different in that >> the the vehicles um use more energy Because um whereas a gasoline vehicle you're using waste heat to heat the the vehicle, with an electric vehicle, there isn't no there isn't waste heat and so you have to use um purposefully um use energy >> to um to heat the cabin and there are different strategies to minimize that but it does use more energy in the winter. >> Okay. >> And then also the the vehicle is charged more slowly in the winter. Okay. Especially those cold cold days. And so um we did uh try to think about that um >> a little bit with this project. >> Awesome. Thank you, M. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Council member Carter. >> Yeah, I just I I'm pretty sure you said this, but um just wanted to be clear. So, in our area, our metro area, do we offer um a lower electrical rate in the evening? Because uh that's I heard you mention that's when most people are going to be charging. I have a plug-in hybrid. That's when I charge. So, is there a lower rate in the evenings? because some some metro areas offer that and some don't. >> Chair members, um uh every utility gets to do their own thing to some degree. As I understand it, um Excel Energy covers the majority of the Twin Cities and they have um different programs. Um you can go you can convert you can switch your whole house to a lower rate overnight, but it is a higher rate during the day. So you you need to shift your charging and you know washing clothes and other things to overnight if you to benefit from that kind of a program. Um they also have um EV charger specific programs. Um and I'm not really familiar with the pricing models, but they are um intended to benefit people who charge overnight. Any other questions? Thank you so much, Mr. Fischer. Um we appre we appreciate the presentation and are looking forward to seeing how everything rolls out um through these next couple of years. >> Thank you chair. >> We have one more information item on our agenda and the next item is quarterly service change and workforce update with Shanta Hesmati and um Jonathan an >> welcome. >> Good afternoon. Oh waiting for it to come up. There it is. All right. Thank you for having us here, Madam Chair, council members. My name is Shantaa Hijmati. I'm principal data scientist with Metro Transit in the office of performance. I'm here with my colleague Jonathan Anne, the assistant director of route and system planning. And we're here to give you our quarterly service change and workforce update. And I want to start by just taking a moment to ground us in our 2026 Metro Transit Forward goals of building ridership, increasing rider uh employee rider and community satisfaction, and preparing for a flawless Green Line extension launch in 2027. And you know, these goals, they really they feed on each other. You kind of can't have one without the other. And so Jonathan and I are going to talk about things that impact all three of them. Right now, we at Metro Transit are navigating some short-term challenges, but we are working towards seizing some long-term opportunities that will improve our service, increase satisfaction, and build ridership. And I want to give you a road map of what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to start out with the workforce update. So, I'm going to start with just some overall general workforce trends at Metro Transit. I'm going to move on to a deep dive um in bus operators and some of the um short-term challenges that we're navigating and the long-term opportunities that we see on the horizon. Going to talk a little bit about Renew the Blue and our operator work for us. That's on my mind certainly because I take the blue line to work. Um and then I'm going to hand it over to Jonathan who's going to give us the service update and talk about some better bus routes that are going into place, some improvements for service reliability and construction. And finally, a network now progress update and a look ahead to 2027. So let us start with the overall workforce trends. All right, so you've seen this plot before. This is Metroransit's total headcount since 2016. The green line is our monthly average headcount. And that green wedge off at the end, that is our budget target for 2026 with 100% staffing at the top and 90% staffing at the bottom. And you can see that after a period of strong growth, our headcount growth leveled off in mid to late 2025 and has really only just started to head back upwards again in the past few months. At this point, we are unlikely to hit the top of that range, but we do hope that we can hit the bottom of it still. And before I go into today's deep dive, I just want to give you a quick overview of the whole workforce. Uh, sorry for the giant table. I'll I have some arrows that'll help walk through it. We are starting to make up ground in bus operator hiring. I will dig more into that in just a moment. For train operators, we are currently on track to be fully staffed for the Green Line extension launch. In frontline maintenance position, there's a pretty big gap that you can see there. About a third of that are public facilities workers and public facilities technicians. Um over the past several months, we've actually been working through some challenges with respect to onboarding capacity and space capacity for those folks. But as of this week, like right like today, I believe, we have actually finished solving the training capacity problem. And so we've got 86 interviews scheduled and we expect to be able to bring on up to 10 new facilities staff about every two weeks from now until the end of the year or until we hit the budget target. All of the other groups within frontline maintenance currently are very close to uh within 10% of fully staffed or they're within 10%. Police and CSOS are on track to be within 10% of fully staffed by the end of 2026. That's the first time I've been able to say that since the pandemic. Trip staff, you probably noticed I started breaking these ones out. This is a new thing. That group got big enough that I could break it out. Um, and we could split it into its own category. Hiring is on track in this group. And then, of course, we have everyone else. Uh, with this group, we are on track to net about the same number of hires as last year. So with that overview, let's talk about bus operators where we are navigating some short-term challenges that will lead us to some long-term opportunities. All right, so this plot shows how our weekly operator headcount compares with our scheduled service, our planned service. The green line is our weekly operator headcount. The red dotted line is the number of operators that are scheduled for a given pick. So every time you see a big step up or step down that is the next pick and this is the number of operators that we would need to complete our network [clears throat] now implementation. Now our current plans call for network now to be completed by the end of 2027 and you can probably see and we also see that our current operator headcount as as a constraint to the pace at which we can deliver on those plants. All right, let us talk about boss operator hiring numbers. So, the last time I was here, I said the good news is we are keeping pace with attrition. I have slightly better news this time. Now, I can say that our headcount is increasing and we are back to where we were at the beginning of the year. Now, you've all seen this plot before. I'm going to go over it again because I know there's a lot here. The orange lines represent total hires. Uh the dotted lines are last year, 2025, and the solid lines are this year. The green lines represent net hires. So that accounts for attrition. Again, dotted lines are last year and solid lines are this year. And this green wedge is our budgeted target headcount for bus operators for 2026. The bottom of that range is where we can maintain our current service. But we want to expand service right now. So we want to be aiming for the top of that range. Uh, another wrinkle here is that since Minnesota Paid Leave Act went into effect, we are actually seeing that operators are working fewer hours than before, which is just another reason that we got to aim for the top of that range. >> So, if you are feeling a little concerned, as I've said before, and as I said last time, our fundamentals are strong. Uh, first year retention among bus operators has been holding steady at uh, preandemic levels for over nine months now. And as we've been doing a lot of hiring for train, trip, public facilities, maintenance, and more positions, bus operator transfers have actually increased significantly in the last couple years. Now, this has the effect of pulling down the net bus operator headcounts in the short term, but this is really a long-term win for Metro Transit because those employees are staying with us and growing their careers here. So, we do currently have a lot of hiring to do, but right now it feels like we are headed in the right direction. We have also had a bit of a bumpy road in the last 10 months or so with incoming bus operator applications. Hope is on the horizon, but we are expecting impacts for a few more months here. This is a plot of the average number of applications per day of bus operator applications for each month since January 2025. And at this point right now, we are in a very different position than we were this time last year. Previously, when we took down the posting, uh you can see that's back in February 2025, we reposted to extremely high applicant numbers. And so last August when our posting came down, that trend changed pretty significantly. And even after we started ramping up our marketing efforts in January, the applicant numbers were still down. However, with a recent large media buy that just went into the market July 1st, we're actually seeing significant improvements in our applicant volumes even before like this is data that's coming in before the end of July. Uh this really bodess well for us to fill up our upcoming operator classes and hopefully continue the progress that we're seeing with net hires. And I want to add that one piece of the challenge here is that when hiring slows down, it takes us a long time to recover momentum because it takes a long time to get a bus operator out on the street. Even with improved time to hire, it can take up to 5 months for an applicant to become a fully functioning bus operator. And right now we are working to protect our current service, operate a large-scale bus replacement for Renew the Blue all while we are facing operator shortages and increasing absences. So despite our best efforts, we are seeing some impacts to our service and that is what you're looking at here. There's also a lot going on here. So let me talk about it. This really noisy salmon colored data are the number of trips each day where we were not able to deliver on our full service schedule. blue are winter weather events. You can see that they're often associated and green is the trend line that is trying to make sense of that really noisy salmon colored data. So the change in the green line may not look like a lot here, but in July 2025, we were typically having about 30 cut trips on a given day. It's a fairly typical number for us over the last two years, barring major weather events. In July 2026, our typical number was more like 57 cut trips in a day. >> And you can see that the number of cut trips got really volatile around May of this year. And 27 more canceled trips might not sound like a lot when you consider that we operate like 7,000 trips on a given weekday. That means that we're typically delivering over 99.2% of our trips successfully and fully. But from a writers's perspective, a single cut trip is a big deal in their life. And if you're on a high ridership route, that could impact up to 70 customers on a single trip. We don't like to see these cut trips. Uh so we will be tailoring the pace of our service expansion to our operator availability. Jonathan's going to tell you more about that in a minute. Now, there, as I said, hope on the horizon. As the 70-ish operators that we currently have in training graduate and hit the streets, they will be alleviating these service disruptions. So, the foundations are in place for us to rebuild those operator numbers, reduce these service disruptions, and renew the blue line. Speaking of renew the blue line, let's talk about that and how that relates to our operator workforce. So, Renew the Blue is a unique short-term pressure on our workforce, on our transit system, and of course on our riders, and it will lead to long-term improvements in service and satisfaction, but there's no denying that in the middle of it, it feels like a challenge. What you're looking at right now is a zoomed-in version of a plot that I showed you earlier, and we're basically zoomed in on right now. So, the green line again is operator headcount. The red dotted line is the number of bus operators that are scheduled. And we're currently right here about part halfway through this June to August renew the blue shutdown. And you're probably wondering about this. What is this big gap here? Uh there's this significant gap here between the actual number of operators and the number that we would fully need to cover the blue bus replacement service. So the question is what happens when we don't have enough operators to schedule a short-term spike in service? And this time at least, the answer is that we plan for half of that bus replacement service to be driven by operators who choose to work overtime. So this is a slightly different version of that same plot. This time incorporating the split between scheduled service and overtime service. You can see that there's now an extra line here for our current renew the blue pick. That red dotted line is the number of operators that we have scheduled. And the orange one, sorry the colors are not looking great, but the one on top is the um voluntary overtime that we are counting on to run that blue bus replacement service. This is how we make the math work to both run the replacement bus service and protect our current service. And you can see that once the shutdown is over, we theoretically have a little extra leeway here, which should allow us to make some modest service improvements. But I do want to acknowledge the toll that depending on overtime like this can take on a workforce. >> When the August pick begins, our bus operators will be coming off of 52 days of sustained overtime. And we're going to be about a week out from state fair service, which is another 12-day period of sustained overtime. So, we do have some leeway, but we also want to be mindful of what we've been asking of our bus operator workforce. So, just to tie all this together for you, our big story right now is that successfully navigating these short-term challenges will lead us to long-term opportunities. For instance, it can take a long time for an applicant to become become a bus operator that is ready to drive the bus and take passengers, but we're clearly doing a good job training them because firstear retention is holding steady at levels we have not seen since 2018. When bus operators move to other jobs in the organization, it contributes to immediate bus operator shortages. But this is a long-term win for Metro Transit because we're keeping that talent in the organization. Late 2025 and early 2026 were marked by lower volumes of bus operator applicants, but the new full-time media buy that we have in the market is already paying dividends and building up that pipeline. And finally, Renew the Blue is putting temporary pressure on everyone. But when we finish it, we will have a beautiful refreshed blue line and more flexibility for our August pick. So, we know that the fundamentals are in place for us to seize those opportunities in the long term. And right now, we are in the process of calibrating the pace of our service expansion to our operator availability. And for more on that, I'm going to pass to Jonathan. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and council members. Once again, Jonathan an assistant director of routing system planning. Uh, thank you, Shantaa, for adding the important context of where we are in terms of our workforce challenges. As she alluded to, you may we may have to deal with some short-term constraints on how fast we grow and how we protect our services in the near term, but our fundamentals are strong and our we're continuing to make progress in delivering the network now improvements. On that note, I'm excited to share uh some previews of our upcoming service changes and followed by some progress updates and network now implementation along with our 2027 outlook. Uh we'll kick off our August PI preview with not one but two better bus route projects. Uh better bus route 14 mostly serving Minneapolis and Northwestern metro and also better bus route 74 mostly serving St. Paul and East metro area. Uh this better bus route program uh improves the local bus routes uh with some uh quick lowcost improvements uh stop consolidation route simplifications uh to make some noticeable differences but in a quick way uh to enhance our customer experience. Uh we've been implementing better bus routes on a one or two per year cadence so far and this is the first time that we're actually implementing the program two routes at the same time. So I'm very excited about it. Uh on top of that, we we're adding more improvements to uh ensure our service reliability and how we react to our construction that's been ongoing this summer season and happy to share more updates on that too. Uh starting with better bus route 14. Uh mostly serving the West Broadway in North Minneapolis and Bloomington Avenue in South Minneapolis. We're simplifying it routing to have one route pattern with no branches with some exceptions of school services delivering a more easy to understand and leable route to our customers. uh since June 2026, we already implemented some stop uh rebalancing uh stop spacing rebalancing to roughly every quarter mile. Uh while we're reflecting some of the feedback that we heard from the public engagement process on some stops to retain and some routes to keep. Uh we're also really excited to introduce a high frequent service uh 15 minute frequency on route 14 on weekday from 11 amil 6:30 pm. Uh we are streamlining and discontinuing some of those branches including the 14D branches but we're not really leaving our customers behind. We are introducing a new route route 48 that will replace as an alternative for the 14D branch mostly running on Douglas Drive through Golden Valley and Crystal. Uh this will add additional service also on Glenwood Avenue uh in Harrison neighborhood of Minneapolis as well. Uh riders will still uh retain a one seat ride to downtown that was the often requested from the 14D branch riders. Uh and route 48 will operate on a similar level as currently existing 14D branch uh hourly service 7 days a week. Uh moving on to better bus [snorts] route 74. Uh mostly serving Randolph Avenue uh in St. Hall and also Seventh Street, both east and west uh 7th Street. Uh we are also simplifying its routing to have one raw pattern with no branches with some limited exceptions of school services. Um uh once again along with a stop spacing rebalanced to every quarter miles or so. Uh and on top of that, we're also excited to introduce high frequent service uh 15-minute frequency on Route 74, 7 a.m. to 7 pm on weekdays and also on Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 6 pm as well. Um, we are cleaning up a lot of branches including a 74G and K and S branches that are mostly serving north and northeast of Sunray transit centers. So, as an alternative just like what we did for route 14 and 48, we're introducing a new route uh streamline route, route 215 that's running between Maplewood Mall and Sunray uh transit center uh straight on the Mcnite Road. Yeah. So all the uh routes that are serving Beaver Lake and Midville neighborhood of St. Paul and Maplewood uh will be uh served by the new route uh route 215. Uh it will operate once an hour or again seven days a week very similar to our existing service level. And to our minimize customer impacts, we're currently writing those branch services. Uh we're scheduling those uh transfers between Route 74 and 215 uh with a time transfer at Sunray Transit Center so that uh the the travel time disruptions are minimum. Uh on top of that the near the Maplewood Mall you can see those yellow dotted line there that's our current routing of the route 219. Uh route 215 this new route will serve this Lydia Avenue segment to access the transit center from Magnite Road. Uh so with this changes to minimize those duplicate um segments of Lydia Avenue, uh we are also realigning our route 219 to better serve Whitebear Avenue north of the Maplewood Mall Transit Center and also County Road E uh to to additionally serve new destinations on County Road E. And we're currently not anticipating any noticeable travel time disruptions and changes to our current 219 customers uh including trips to and from Century College as well. Uh in addition to those better bus route changes, we're also adding extra trips in the afternoon on the beline and route five to better accommodate uh peaky high school demands uh when crowding when the high schools lets out after the school day is over uh to better uh manage those. We're also adjusting schedules on several routes noted here on the slide deck. Uh I'll highlight a couple of those notable changes including uh route 725 uh that currently terminates in Ocio city hall will be extended about a mile north to Decatur Drive in Brooklyn Park. Uh there's a new residential development and commercial developments happening. This extension was often requested by both uh city of OIO and Brooklyn Park. There were able to accommodate with the schedule changes and time saving from those new schedules. Uh also route 667 and 673, their downtown terminal will be moved to fifth street transit center uh near Target Field, which is an off- street facility with a dedicated operator restroom and also customer waiting facility. Uh that's a lot better upgrade from on street layover locations for both of our operator customers. Um, in addition to that, uh, as always, we're adjusting our services to ongoing, uh, new summer and fall construction impacts, uh, so that we can continue to deliver reliable service to our customers. Uh, there will be, uh, pretty heavy intersection constructions at 46 Street and Hayawata Avenue. Uh, there will require detours and additional travel time. This is a busy transit herb with, uh, blue line light rail, connections to MVTA services, and aine BRT serve. So, we are uh preparing for that by adding some travel times on A-line route 7, 9, and 74. Another major construction that's been uh disruptive and that's been ongoing uh this construction season is Franklin Avenue construction uh between Franklin and Lindale and Frank Franklin and Chicago. Uh so we're updating a route two schedule this August to better reflect the actual travel time that we've been observing this early construction season so far so that we can also uh deliver reliable more accurate schedule to our customers for relying on those route two services. >> Uh today's July 27th meaning uh all the schedules are already available on trip planner so you can go back and check out and trip your trip plan yourself as well. Uh metrorransit.org short news stories already available online. All the details and uh PDF schedules available on our website. Uh looking ahead on August 6th, uh we will publish a new story and connect with the social media and ad campaign and platform announcements coming up on August 10th and the big date for our August service change will be Saturday, August 22nd. On that note, I'll move on and uh talk about some progress updates and what we've been doing on network now on network now implementation side and what to look for uh looking ahead in 2027 as well. when the council uh indoors network now framework back in March 2025, you set us on a path not only to changes driven by uh COVID 19 pandemics to to react to it, but also to build a more robust, more attractive, more accessible transit system, including these goals as our key measures of our progress. with the implementation of the uh upcoming [clears throat] August PI big changes. I'm happy to share that we'll be more than halfway there of our in terms of our service growth measures and amount of services that we're going to put on our streets. We'll be 23% bigger than December 2023 baseline uh in terms of the amount of services we have on the street. Out of 71 routes that we said we were going to improve its frequency and span, we have improved 50 out of 71 with 21 remaining to go. Uh out of 26 routes, we have 25 routes with 15 minutes or better frequency on our network with only one short of completing this goal, which will be Metro Gline. >> Uh and we're about halfway with Metro Micro implementation and uh restoring suspended routes as well. Uh we started one micro zone in North Minneapolis uh prior to December 2023. Uh so far we added four and four more to go. Uh we so far restore six so far with six remaining to go as well. And this is a representation of the same information that I just shared in terms of progress updates uh but by routes with darker colors representing the the routes that are already implemented and improved with some lighter shaded colors represent our remaining work items and routes to be improved. So I'll pause here briefly for our council members but also for the public who's watching and who's going to make a reference to this uh so that is so that they can see like is my route improved yet? Is all the routes that affect my community improved yet? So they can take a look at it and then see uh see how the implementation progress is going. And moving on um I'd love to just wrap us up and bring us back to the narrative of the workforce and its impact to our services and our pace of growth as we started our presentation today. uh the workforce size and how fast we can hire and how well we can retain our workforce uh really drive the pace of our growth of our system and how fast we can uh deliver everything we're set to do according to the network now plan. So this year so far we've been really focusing on amending network now to account for the connecting bus services. uh we had a lot more time since the adoption of network now to reflect and refine further on how we can better connect the green line extension to our existing bus network and also we recently concluded the the the mandated highway 55 transit study uh the result of that recommended a new bus route connecting uh Plymouth and downtown Minneapolis on a new local bus route. So folding that new route into our existing network, how we can better connect it to other routes in the system and how people can make better connections to it. So we're looking to update our connecting bus service plan with this amendment. And considering the current workforce situation that we've been talking about, our near-term outlook we laid out today, how far we need to go to deliver network now. Uh we believe that it'll be unrealistic that we can deliver everything on network now by end of 2027. With that uh we will be reviewing uh and revising our timeline for computing completing network now improvements based on our available operator resources. So we will come back to this body with additional information on network now implementation and amendment uh soon in the near future. To summarize uh to uh sum up our discussion today, boss operator hiring is still the biggest constraint uh in our pace of growth. Hiring is the name of the game and but our fundamentals are strong. Successfully navigating these short-term challenges will lead to a long-term achievement in service, reliability and satisfaction. Continuing progress in delivering network now with current labor force situation and future needs for large projects in 2027. We have three transitway openings scheduled for 2027. Gold line extension, green line extension, metro gine phase one. 2027 will be a big year. So we want to be mindful of those uh when we account for our labor force growth. Therefore amendment is needed to get feedback on those connecting bus plans so that we can deliver those projects really well but also evaluate the completion date for the network now implementation as well and bring us all back to the final August 2026 quality service change happening on our streets Saturday August 22nd. Thank you. Uh and I welcome your questions. >> Well thank you. That is a lot. um metror transit >> forward plans as we can see is very uh complex and interconnected including um how to maintain uh our operations uh and um how to uh plan our operations and maintain our buses. I do have a question and that is regard regarding uh the mandated study for highway 55. We did have a recent uh presentation on that, but I'd like to know a little bit more about um the source of that mandated study, how it came about, and um to remind us again, as well as are are there any anticipated or potential mandated studies that might uh uh crop into our um our network plans? Uh I can't speak to uh madam chair and and council member I can't speak to other uh transit studies that are mandated that I'm not aware of at this time uh but that is uh legislated mandated by our state legislature um I think back in 2025 if I recall correctly >> okay >> yeah chair Chamblas we can follow up on yeah the year that we were directed to do the highway 55 study and I believe there may be we'll follow up with you but I don't want to go just from my memory Yeah. >> Yeah. I think it's important um especially for policy makers to kind of understand like the process and how we might be impacted um by um external uh mandates uh such as you know taking a study to that actually leads to a new route. Um council member Obasaken. >> Thank you madam chair. Council members just a comment just uh Jonathan Shant thank you thank you for your presentation. Um, you know, I speak well of I I you guys are awesome. Metroransit, your GM. I just want to thank you specifically for being transparent. Uh, it's a very transparent PowerPoint presentation you have. You know what we need to work on. You're showing us we need to work on this and you're working on it and I appreciate it. I've worked for many many companies which I wouldn't mention but uh I always get to come in my office one day and uh sir we have a problem and then Houston we have a problem and everything explode. But I love that you're showing us what's happening. You're telling us what needs to happen and you're not you're not just hoping, you're working on it. So, thank you. Kudos to your GM as as well. That's all I got to say, man. >> Thank you. Other comments from council members or questions? Council member Carter? Yeah, I was uh I know we have a shortage of drivers, bus drivers, and I was just wondering how does that affect uh overall profits in in terms of uh the overtime that's being put out to cover that shortage? >> Council member Carter, Madame Chair, uh council members, thank you for that question. I am afraid I do not know much about the overtime. Um see if there's anyone in the room I can pull a friend. Here we go. Here's my friend. I'm voting my friend Miles. Totally [laughter] fine. Thanks for that, Shanta. Madam Chair, council members, great question, council member Carter. I think the the when you look at the bus operation as far as the overtime percentage of it, it's not the overtime itself. It's looking at the overall holistic piece of the operator getting operators getting rest time, right? So, there's a rest time requirement per contractual that we want to we want to look at as well. And then um you want to implement that with what is without going too much in the leads is spread time on a particular piece of route. So so there are some routes where operators when they bid they can have built-in overtime on a route, right? But we want to keep that those minimums low. And so right now to your question specifically when when we're looking at the current operator shortages that we're dealing with um we we'll look at it where we have what is called a a a cut list right of certain routes that we want to share the wealth evenly across all all our service. Um the good thing is in the June piece of it we never it was very it was limited. we rarely used it and I think we're going to anticipate the same thing for uh for for our August bid. But then we gauge that um with operators again coming to work. I think the overtime piece of it and I think we all acknowledge is the Minnesota paid leave piece of that's that's a factor that we're also dealing with that we didn't anticipate early on. But as it stands now, I think we're we're we're we got a good pace. As you saw in the graph, our our our numbers are upticking. If we keep that pace where it is, I think we'll have a good percentage where we're we're not spending a lot of overtime and we won't have a lot of tired operators as well. >> Thank you. Thanks a lot. >> Thanks for um offering up that additional information. Any further questions? >> Thank you so much. No further questions. So that does um complete our information items for today's meeting. Uh do we have anything from Amy Venowitz on uh on your uh area? >> Nope. No, madam chair. >> Okay. And then also Lesie. >> Nothing further. Thank you. >> Okay. With that um that uh completes our agenda for the evening. Uh this meeting is adjourned. >> So I'll see you in that run. >> [laughter] >> What?