All right, I would call this meeting of the government affairs committee to order.

First order of business is approval of the May 5th minutes.

Do I hear a motion?

Yeah, all those in favor?

Any opposed?

Motion passes.

All right.

We've got some briefings today.

First is from Kelly Porter.

Railroad grade separation projects.

Good morning.

Can you try to can you hear me?

All right.

I'm gonna try to stay on track.

So let me know if I derail us.

Oh starting August Fresh there.

All right.

All right.

All right.

So back last D, this June, I'll adopt an Australian tradition team in a very robust.

Six days in that plan.

Safety was number one.

Economic development competitiveness.

All classes of this program.

So I'm gonna talk not just about hard infrastructure like bridge and success.

The accurate proposal crosses are also gonna talk about today about how we're incorporating some of those roles into what we do.

We've got over 200 accurate crossings citywide.

So one of the highest numbers in the city of Texas, we have over a hundred thousand vehicles impacted by these accurate crossings in the city.

We've had quite a few uh injuries and fatalities at these costs.

So we know that as our population grows, there continues to be additional conflicts in here since before the civil war.

And uh they also have major impacts and quality of life from just the ability to be able to get to and fro.

And then part of safety isn't just conflicts between the uh rail vehicles, it's also public uh first responders and the public safety element too.

And so you'll see some of that pepper down here as well.

So our railroad uh crossing um priorities are really thought through based on federal, state uh programs and the goals of those programs, and then also of course our local uh priorities here.

But our number one focus, of course, is safety with upgrading these casings.

Um, and then of course, we want to make sure that people want their Amazon packages and other things delivered to them and car or whatnot, that they can the trains can bring those things to you.

We want to integrate those into our overall network and really create a coordinated effort in allowing for uh safe and efficient movement of people and goods.

And that's that's really uh a hallmark of what a lot of these federal and state programs want to look at and how these projects are prioritized.

So I'm gonna talk to you specifically about one project that's like the number one on the list uh that you might have gotten.

It's on the next slide.

I'll talk to you about 26 projects that we've identified, but I'll talk to you about the the number one on the list.

Uh that's 23rd indicator.

We have seven at grade railroad tracks in one place in a span of maybe 300 feet.

Generally, our federal and state programs are going to uh prioritize projects that uh they want to see number one conversions of existing at grade crossings are gonna be the number one priority.

So you got seven there.

So that's one reason why this crossing does rate really highly.

And if you've ever been up there, which I've taken some of our Congress folks up there and and others, it is a sight to see because you wait for one train, another one's coming through, and so it's just like that in that area.

But we've had quite a few issues there.

It's a big project.

Um, it's almost a hundred million dollars, but we do have applications in uh with TechSot for the state bill 1555 funding.

And since we have such a good relationship with TechStot, and this project has also been raised up to a state priority, it was also submitted into a federal state partnership uh program to DC to uh receive some federal funding.

And the thought is is that potentially the funds that would have been allocated for the project in the 1555 program, instead of giving us that whole amount of money in the and that program was only 250 million dollars, so you can imagine for 98 million, we could probably use some of that for match.

So any day now, we will hopefully see a press release, and I'm gonna claim it for us that we're gonna get the funding and get get get that project funded and get going or whatnot.

But that is currently in the hopper right now.

I will also say that you know, we've got 26 projects.

This isn't all the grade separations that we need, but we've got 26 projects and 26 projects we've identified through our priorities.

Notice if there's any Aggies in the room, I have Texas AM Transportation Institute up there because they helped us prioritize these things for the mass transportation plan based on some of these uh different uh uh criteria.

But the um with this amount of projects, we have to have good partnerships.

So I'm happy to say that not only is 23rd and decatur in that was submitted by the city of Fort Worth, but we've got alignment from Text Dot and the County on these priorities as well.

So the county has submitted into two federal programs, the Bonds Ranch West at Old 287 or Saginaw Main Street.