Okay, I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Sacramento Transportation Authority,

Board of Directors.

For March 13th, 2025, Madam Clerk, please call the roll and establish a quorum.

Good afternoon.

Members, Hugh?

Here.

Kennedy?

Kent?

Maple?

Maple?

Kelsey Nelson?

Here.

Pull a potty?

Vice Chair, Rapele?

Here.

Here.

We'll be here.

Vice Chair, Rapele?

Here.

Rodriguez?

I am done.

Seeing Alan.

Here.

Spees?

Present.

Dalamantes?

Here.

Vang?

Chair Sourna?

Here.

And we do have a quorum for the record.

Members, Desmond, Dickinson, and Gietta are absent.

Very good.

Would you like to read our statement, please?

Dispeeding of the Sacramento Transportation Authority is live and recorded with close captioning.

It is cable cast on Metro, cable 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast

and direct TV universe cable systems.

It is also live streamed at MetroCable14.com.gov.

Today's meeting replaced Sunday, March 16th at 2pm on MetroCable 14, once posted, the

recording of this meeting can be viewed on demand at youtube.com slash MetroCable14.

To make in-person public comments, please complete a speaker request form and hand it to

the clerk.

The chairperson will call your name when it's your turn to make a comment.

Amy Alsleson, written comments by email to board clerk at setcounty.gov.

Your comment will be read it to the board and filed in the record.

Right.

Will you please rise and join our vice chair in the pledge of leaden?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for

which it stands for nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right.

Again, I'd like to welcome everyone to this afternoon's STA board meeting and again,

just reiterate for those in our gallery that you're certainly welcome to address the authority

board on any item on our posted agenda or any item that is not on our agenda.

We ask that you keep your testimony to two minutes.

That way everyone who wishes to address the authority board has the opportunity to do so.

So with that, I'm clerk, our first item.

Comment number one is comments from the public regarding matters not on the agenda.

I have not received any comment cards from the public.

Okay.

Very good.

Then we will move on.

Now the next item on the agenda is our consent agenda.

It is matters two through six.

Does any member of the authority board wish to pull items from the consent calendar for

separate vote or comment?

If not, then I would entertain a motion assuming we have no one signed up to speak on consent

matters.

I'll move items two through six.

Second.

And there's a motion to second member.

Anyone to speak?

We do not.

Okay.

With that, are we doing voice vote?

Are we doing just voice vote?

Okay.

So all in favor?

I pose.

Staying motion carries.

Thank you.

Next item please.

Item number seven is to approve a strategy for the Sacramento Area Council of Government,

State Cog, for County State Transportation Improvement Program funding.

All right.

Mr. Busey.

We're getting right into it.

Okay.

This is item seven.

So this is a good afternoon chair.

Vice Chair of here present item seven, which is a strategy for say cogs for county's

stiff funding program.

So what is say cogs for county's stiff funding program?

So about approximately every two years, the CCC determines the amount of funding available

through the state transportation improvement program or the stiff.

And they work with the regional transportation planes.

These in that case that is say cogs for us, say cogs the RTPA for Sacramento, etc.

Yolo and Yuba counties to program those funds.

Those funds are determined on a county by county basis using a formula based on population

lane miles.

So say cogs historically has pulled the four counties funds together.

It's part of a regional call for projects and they've awarded those funds through discretionary

competitive grant program.

That is the prior process.

So fast forward to that process has gone on from 2008 to 2023.

Fast forward to 2025.

Say cogs board and staff created a working group to discuss how say cogs allocated federal

and state funds.

As part of that process, there was an agreement to essentially shift some of the stiff funding

that comes that is calculated on a county basis to stay within the counties.

So there's about 10% of the funds that are for regional multi-county projects.

And there's about 90% of the funds are for projects specifically within the county

of the counties.

So for Sacramento County, there's 28.4 million available for projects within the county.

And so I think the benefits of this obviously are that we can ensure that the funds that

are determined for Sacramento County stay within Sacramento County, at least 90% of that.

There's still a competitive process and all the various agencies that have projects within

Sacramento County need to compete against each other to compete for that 28.4 million

dollars.

Which leads me to my next slide.

So how can SDA enhance funding certainty?

So there's a lot of interest in having that same level of certainty at the agency level.

Because it's very hard to plan for projects when you don't know if you're going to get the

funding.

You have to wait two to three years between these competitive grant programs to get to see

if you can get those funding.

There's a cost in submitting multiple grant applications and not necessarily getting the

funding, right?

And so there's been very much interest in trying to see if we can work collectively to

structure this stiff ass for that 28.4 million in a way that provides this level of certainty

at the agency level.

And so we already do this through what's called the local partnership program formulaic

process where every, we've done it three times now where we have a transit set aside or

off the top that goes strictly to transit.

And then the remaining funds are based on that same population main lane miles equation.

That's how those are distributed.

And then SDA just sort of shepherds those applications through to the CTC.

So there's a lot of interest in doing this as well at the, for this same funding, but

still trying to meet those competitive criteria.

Yolo County has already began with a similar MOU to take this approach.

And so I had fired the MOU to a few agencies in Sacramento County.

They're very interested in it.

We put together the professional advisory group along with Secah.

We all met and talked through it and figured out, you know, could this work.

There seemed to be support to do that.

And so what we proposed is sort of a partnership approach using a member and

understanding such that everyone agrees to submitting $28.4 million in projects for

the $28.4 million that Secah has to award essentially.

So going to this next slide, this is what we are proposing.

So there would be a rail and transit off the top of 22.5%.

That 22.5% is consistent with the percentage we use for our local partnership program formulaic.

We also looked at prior stip programming by Secah.

It has ranged.

So more on average is right have been right about there as well.

So it's not really a big change from the previous approach.

And then for the roads and active transportation side, that's where we talk about the formula

funding where we do, basically almost like a target, but the population lane miles equation.

And then combined, we would have $20.4 million in asks.

So how would this work?

So we talked about those two buckets.

We had the rail and transit side and the roads and active transportation side.

So we would get a working group for each of those buckets of all the eligible member agencies

that would want to apply for that.

And then we would try to build a consensus among those agencies on what we should apply

for while respecting that geographic balance we talked about earlier.

And then, and still needs to make sure that those projects are competitive and meet both

state guidelines as well as Secah guidelines.

So through Secah's pre-application process, which we'll get to meet with them and talk

about our projects, there's some initial analysis of those projects, determine if they meet certain

grant criteria we can feel.

I think we can come to an idea of that we do feel like we do have a good set of competitive

projects that Secah will likely fund.

Ultimately, we believe Secah will fund those projects and then they will be adopted into

the STIP program.

There's a little bit of a time crunch on this.

So the call for projects for STIP is actually comes out on Monday in anticipation of the board

hopefully liking this approach.

We've already set up some working group meetings, start discussions on those different working

groups on a transit rail and the road and act transportation side.

We, there's a draft MOU that's attached to the staff report.

That's a starting place for discussions.

We've already sent it out to all the member agencies for review.

We're asking for comments by the 28th March and then hopefully by April 10th we could

come back with an actual MOU that SDA would adopt that will allow and then the other member

agencies would adopt shortly thereafter.

Well, applications being due in June 6th to Secah and having all that pre-application

work done between now and June so we can feel comfortable submitting those applications.

So right now we're asking for the boarders to prove the strategy of doing the MOU but

we'll actually bring back the MOU back in April if the board is in is supportive of the

item and I've asked Secah to be here as well and they're willing to answer a few questions

on this as well.

So without open any questions.

Thank you Mr. Buc.

Supervisor Cume.

Thank you chair.

Just a couple of questions.

The first is I don't recall ever doing this previously at STA so I assume this is a

new strategy and then the second question would be is in this proposed strategy would these

funds flow through STA or would they flow to the agencies for their projects directly?

So this is a new process that we're introducing.

It's not it's a process that the agencies are very much interested in and have asked STA

to try to facilitate the funds still flow through Secah so we are just shepherding the applications

through and we're going to basically just help get a consensus on what the ultimate

ultimately everyone agrees to right how those you know the agencies responsible for working

with their own boards to figure out what their priorities and figure out what they're funded

and then STA at a staff level is just trying to help shepherd it through the process so

that there's more certainty for those agencies in the what they submit as far as getting

funded.

Okay great.

Thank you.

Very good.

Director Maple.

Thank you chair and you know kind of in the same line of questioning but how does this

process being differ from previous years and that's been done through STA?

Yeah so I mean the previously what Secah could have done is they had pooled all the federal

and state money together and what's called the regional funding round and then across

those four counties they would all compete against each other for those same amount of

funds to try to get those funds.

That was the prior process and it was a really it was a free for all as far as and there's

a lot of you weren't out we weren't really sure if your project is a funded or not it just

made for a lot of uncertainty.

I would say.

Okay that's helpful and I see that we have a couple of representatives in the room for

me Secah from assuming all here from you about your perspective.

Yeah.

Through the chair when that time is appropriate.

Thank you.

Mr. Feister.

So do you envision so with 28.4 million in the collaboration around those do you envision

that coming to this board in order to have those discussions or do you envision that being

worked out amongst the agency.

I'm just wondering how do we that's a pretty tight timeline to figure out which 28.4

million of projects goes forward.

How do we how do we make sure that that number we can meet amongst ourselves.

Yeah.

So the way I way of structured the MOU is that each agency who's part of the MOU is responsible

for working with their own elected officials to get agreement on what is actually being

submitted for the step.

And SEA is will keep our board informed just separately but we don't have we're not submitting

any app.

Estee is not submitting any applications.

So if there are updates to the SDA board at least as currently proposed it would just

be informational beyond obviously is proving the MOU.

But so with that calculation I know full some it looks like about 1.2 million would be

the calculation but say we wanted to trade with another agency and accelerate our project

or accelerate their project would that trading happen between those agencies or would

it happen at the SDA level.

So SDA staff is responsibility to track all that to keep that we don't have a vested interest

right we're kind of you know we're separate from all that we're not going to spend our

own applications we're sort of like the honest broker in those discussions right.

So we keep track our roles to keep track of anything that happens like that.

So as an example 1.2 million isn't enough you want to have 2.4 million so you want to

wait till not even submitting anything the cycle and wait till the next cycle is there

a way to say hey well there's additional capacity available.

Can we give that to another agency in the near term SDA will track all that I mean but

the idea obviously is that we maintain that geographic balance right.

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

Okay Madam Clerk do we have members of the public sign up to speak.

I do not have any cards.

I'm sorry.

We do not.

But I do see a member or a representative from say call here that is approaching the podium

eager to address some of the comments from directors.

Good morning or good afternoon Mr. Chair and members of the STA Board Eric Johnson deputy

executive director of operations with say cog just wanted to add a few things to Kevin's

presentation.

First of all really appreciate all the agencies within the county coming together with

this solution.

I think it is a good evolution to director maples comment about kind of the history of

this it was all pulled together regionally as a four county thing.

Several years back the federal government came forward and said the elder out in plaster

county cannot program projects federally separately.

And so as a result those two counties are joining this of course is a state level funding

program.

And so it doesn't make sense to include those and so this evolution to have the county

do this coordination through STA makes a lot of sense.

And so say cog will be working to ensure the projects are eligible are moving forward

and it doesn't add more effort to your public work staff to bring project forward.

I will just highlight there is also discretionary 10% of the step funds that will also be going

through say cogs so I think STA will again be working with jurisdictions but there is

an opportunity for funding above the 28.4 million as well.

So thank you.

Okay thank you Eric.

Okay that includes our speakers.

We do need a motion to approve the strategy.

Sure I would make that motion.

Okay it's been moved by director hum is there a second?

Second.

Okay all in favor.

Aye.

Opposed abstain motion carries thank you next item please.

Item number eight is to receive a presentation on the mobility zones project by say cog.

Good afternoon.

This is the wonderful and awesome Kathleen Hanley from say cog she's going to take us through

the next two items.

We're going to start with this one on mobility zones.

Thank you.

Thank you director Bucy.

So as you mentioned I'm Kathleen Hanley I'm part of the transportation team at say cog

the Sacramento area council of governments and we are reaching an important milestone

in one of our largest transportation projects mobility zones.

So I've been on a bit of a road show to regional transportation bodies throughout the six

counties providing a high level update on where we're at with the project.

On that slide we are not the PCT.

I apologize.

Okay.

Supervisor Hume.

So today my presentation will cover sort of forming items the overall scope of the mobility

zones project.

It's pretty complicated so I'm keeping it very high level but I'm happy to dive deep

with anyone today or offline if you have any follow up questions.

I'll talk a bit about the methodology that we've used to identify parts of the six county

region to focus on.

We call those places zones.

And then of course given this body today I'll have a focus on the zones that have been

identified in Sacramento County and see if you have any questions or discussion.

At a high level the mobility zones project has two main phases.

The first is focused on identifying about ten roughly neighborhood or community size

areas for us to focus on for additional analysis.

We call that the defining mobility zones phase of the project.

The whole second half of the project is all about trying to improve transportation in

those ten places that we've identified.

At a sort of finer grain level there's right some sub steps there and really where we're

at in the project is wrapping up that whole first phase of defining mobility zones.

So that's why I'm out here trying to raise awareness and get feedback from other bodies

since we're reaching kind of that key inflection point where we've honed in on the places we

want to focus on and are going to move towards identifying transportation improvements in

those places.

The mobility zones process uses a really collaborative approach.

So on the bottom here you can see the three types of quarterly committees that meet for

the mobility zones project.

The first is our five community committees we have one per county with you but instead

are combined.

So those are community based organizations, nonprofits, neighborhood association leaders

who get together with us every quarter and really like guide and inform the development

of the project.

So when I say you know we decided this we took this approach that's the we I'm talking about.

I sort of staff those committees of community bodies and they've been really in the driver's

see on decision making in this project.

The second two types of committees are about partnership with staff.

So the municipal committee includes representatives from every city and county across the six county

region so that's like your public works or community development staff depending on the

size of your city and then the technical committee is the regional bodies.

Our transit operators the air districts, mud like all those partners who are really important

for delivering transportation but don't fit into the other two categories.

So every quarter I meet with those folks they roll up to a task force and that's really

the structure that's drop in driving the decision making so far and we keep the say cod

board board informed at key milestones.

So the process towards figuring out right six counties is very large trying to choose

ten neighborhoods and six counties is a big challenge.

So at a 10,000 foot level the way we've done that is first by identifying demographic

or equity need across the six counties.

You'll notice there's a list of demographic indicators on the left there things like income,

cost of living, education level, race and ethnicity and what we did is use census data to

determine where are the parts of our region where lots of those issues are concentrated

in the same place.

Can I interrupt for a sec?

Please.

And forgive me if you mentioned this earlier I'm trying to multitask like most of us up here

but so if I heard you correctly said picking ten neighborhoods use those words.

That's right.

Ten neighborhoods out of two and a half million population six county region.

What scale, what is your, what is say cogs definition, your definition of neighborhood at scale?

It's been a very challenging definition and we've chosen not to have a specific one right

because what constitutes a neighborhood in an urban place is a very different geographic

and population scale than say in a rural community in an unincorporated area.

So what we've been doing is working collaboratively with partner agencies and communities to understand

like is this a neighborhood as you understand it and going with a locally informed definition

on a case by case basis?

Yeah good luck with that because I can tell you from recent experience in fact that if

you, I'll just by example point out you know city of Sacramento for years has had you know

maps available to the public that clearly delineate what the city considers to be neighborhoods

right.

Some of those neighborhoods especially in let's say communities that have been developed

and occupied over the last you know two three four decades which I would you know is a

long time made of Sacramento someone that's aging in place would consider new neighborhoods.

You know we were a county in a city here that is brown since 1850 at least formally.

So I guess where I'm going with this is that I think if you were to ask ten different

people kind of delineate for me your quote unquote neighborhood you get ten different

answers.

Case in point recently a few of us attended a quote unquote South Sacramento community

forum.

I was one of my first questions was as it relates to the map that that the leaders for

that forum put up to begin the conversation because again as a native sacrament I would

have never thought that is what constitutes quote unquote South Sacramento from a geographic

standpoint it was much much broader included places like vineyard you know and included

places like South Oak Park but also you know met of you and so I think you just need to

be very cognizant of the fact that it's a sensitivity that is not just relative to maybe

formal maps that line a web some municipal website somewhere but certainly people have

very very strong feelings about what constitutes where they live.

Absolutely I appreciate that that's definitely been our experience I think it's well right

one of the many challenges of working at the regional level at say cog is the diversity

and perspective and trying to deal with these issues that are really different depending

on the place.

I'll say what we also heard a lot about is that folks's transportation issues aren't

necessarily within a commonly understood community but at the border at the crossing point

right how do you get from one side of stocked into the other how do you get from one side

of 80 to the other north of the river and so as we move through here you'll see some

of our zones actually encompass more than one neighborhood in a socially identified way.

Sorry to interrupt the flow.

I think the conversation.

Yeah okay so right the very hard process as we've discussed so trying to pick ten places

in six counties started with mapping equity so we did sort of a roll up of each of these

equity indicators.

What's unique about the mobility zones project is that we didn't wait each of these equity

indicators equally in all six counties.

What we've heard consistently is that each county has a slightly different need and this

is allowed for us to have some differences in whether we focus more on income or more

on race and ethnicity or more on seniors depending on what we heard were the bigger problems

in the different counties.

So after we developed that map that identified okay from a demographic perspective where

are the highest need areas in our region then what we did is develop a similar map that

focused on where are the highest need from a transportation perspective.

So where are the places where there aren't enough cars for how many workers there are

in a household or where there's a lot of truck traffic and crashes where the pavements

bad and more importantly where are the places where all six of these things are happening

all at once creating a real transportation challenge.

And so that identified the kind of highest priority from a transportation need perspective

and if you're a picture in where I'm going here we took the equity map and we stacked

on top of the transportation map and identified 23 places in the region where you really see

both happening directly overlapping or really right next to each other and identified those

as sort of the long list of potential mobility zone options for us to focus on.

There is a web map available I believe it's linked in the staff report if not I'll make

sure Executive Director Busey gets it back to you all but you can see all of this analysis

down to a fine grain detail click on any census block group in the region pull up a table

that shows you exactly what indicators we saw and how we ultimately came to the decision

on the 23 places for the long list.

So that long list of 23 places includes six within Sacramento County those are shown

here they are Ben Ali Swanson, Florent, the Delta which is sort of like Delta shores

to Central Delta, Western Rancho Cordoba, Rosemont, McClellan, ARC sort of area and then

a sort of sunrise mall, sunrise Boulevard corridor kind of area in Sacramento County.

I'm going to click to the next slide and we're going to go from six to three which is always

a very challenging thing to do right I set up front we were trying to find 10 places

to focus on in the region fundamentally that means prioritizing and pairing down and

we hope to be able to return and think about some of those other zones in Sacramento County

and the other parts of the region in a later phase of the project we're just only scope

to look at 10 right now.

So the three that we've prioritized using that collaborative process with the community

are Ben Ali Swanson, Florent and Western Rancho Cordoba, Rosemont.

I included these slides here they have a ton of detail mostly for your interest and

also for any members of the public who may be tuned in and want to understand what is

it that we saw in these places that made them kind of rise to the top.

So these zone profiles have a bit of information on each of the areas and what it's sort of

high level needs are from an equity or a transportation perspective and really what I'm interested

in is any clarifying questions you all have about the process that Sae Cog is using and

where we're going from here or any feedback folks have about the transportation needs in

these three places.

And with that, happy to take any questions.

Great.

Thank you for the presentation, Director Maple.

Thank you, Chair.

And appreciate this and this is not my first time seeing this presentation but it gets

better each time.

So thank you so much for your work.

It really, especially on Florent, I was really glad to see that move forward as one of

the priority areas we know that there's a big need there in the, it's definitely a population

center as well so serving a lot of folks.

I attended a presentation this week called Humanizing Transportation in Sacramento.

I want to make sure I add the right name.

And it's a group of UC Davis students that presented it at Civic Thread offices and

it was, they were focused on Florent as well as in the Delta Pessoa area but they actually

pulled together a bunch of data.

They did interviews with people who are living in the area and I felt it was very interesting.

So if you want, I'm happy to share that with you and get you connected.

It might help your work.

I appreciate that.

So Vic Dredz, a key partner on this project.

They're delivering all our outreach for Mobility Zone so I'll connect with Chiara and

get it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Director Maple, Director Pullo Patti.

I'd like to understand the Western Rancho Cordova.

Is it Rosemond?

That's in the County of Sacramento or is there an overlap with the City of Sergeant Cordova?

Yeah, so at the stage we're at right now, we've sort of identified this is the general

area we'd like to focus on and we've been having individual meetings with City and County

staff to better understand what boundaries we should draw sort of the conversation,

and I were having on that kind of challenging.

Where we're leaning right now is a, and I'll have draft boundaries out in late March for

staff to review.

But as I recall the conversation, it was largely pretty evenly split but not covering

all of Rosemond or all of Western Rancho Cordova sort of focused on the City County

boundary area generally speaking and some of the trail and river connections.

Other questions?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public question to address the authority

board?

We do not.

Okay, very good.

All right, we do need to take action or not.

There's no action for this presentation.

Okay.

Thank you very much for being here and educating us.

Next item, please.

Item number nine is to receive a presentation on tolling 101 and draft mission, vision,

and values by the Capital Area Regional tolling Authority.

Awesome.

Good afternoon, Chair.

This item was requested by our CARDA representative, Creative Talimantes, to bring back some of

what's happening at CARDA, right?

So what is tolling and we're going to talk a little bit of mission, vision, and values.

But Kathleen Hanley is so awesome that she works for both Sae Cog and CARDA.

So she's going to present on this item as well.

Thank you.

Very good.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

I'm going to keep a very high level again with this presentation as well.

Tolling is a very complicated topic but my presentation is going to focus on sort of a

five minute of the big picture.

Why do we toll?

How does it work?

What's its purpose?

Transportation Network.

Then we'll talk a bit about general tolling concept so that as Director Talimantes and

others continue to provide updates throughout the year on how CARDA is going.

You all have a good foundation of what is happening and tolling and what are sort of the fundamental

issues.

And then we'll do a brief overview of the draft mission, vision, and values that we've

developed for CARDA as an organization.

I'll take a step back.

The Capital Area Regional tolling Authority or CARDA is a joint powers authority between

CalTrans, Saicog, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, and YOLO Transportation District.

Largely created to facilitate the creation of an express lane or a toll lane on Interstate

80 in YOLO County, which will be the first toll facility in the Sacramento region.

The Sacramento Transportation Authority is a non-voting sort of prospective member of

CARDA because as we'll get into, we imagine the toll network developing over time and

including parts of Sacramento County.

So you will have non-voting member Director Talimantes on the CARDA board.

Okay, at a big picture, 10,000 foot on tolling, I think really foundational for us to address

that there really aren't free roads.

I think this body knows as well as anyone that we have increasing transportation needs

and diminishing transportation funding to take care of those needs that we have.

And really what unpriced roadways do is they create maintenance costs that we have to

find from somewhere else, right?

You find the grant money to build the road and then you have to come back and figure out

how to maintain it for years and years and years.

What the one advantage of tolling is is that it can sort of self-fund the maintenance for

the project and sometimes the operational improvements that are needed for its whole

road.

So it's really kind of recognizing the fact that our roadways cost money to maintain and

sort of self-funding some of that maintenance need.

The second piece is really about congestion management.

So as our region continues to grow, we can't necessarily widen our highways to keep up

with the demand, right?

We're all seeing kind of increasing congestion on our highways, especially in and out of

our downtown in Sacramento County.

And in order for us to be able to maintain a high quality of life and have some kind of

reliable travel times on our highways, we do need an ability to kind of influence and

try to shift trips where we can out of the peak or onto other modes.

And pricing highways does help that with toll facilities, right?

Folks can choose to travel at a different time or choose to take a different way of travel.

And it results in sort of better, more reliable operations of the highway system.

We see this in lots of other regions.

And those better and more reliable, kind of less congested highways benefit everyone, right?

Better travel speeds also benefit the folks who aren't in the tolling, who are traveling

in the unpriced lane.

They also see those benefits from congestion reduction.

The Saicot has a long range transportation plan called the Blueprint this year.

It's also the 2025 Metropolitan Transportation Plan and Sustainable Community Strategy.

And it includes a real long range look at sort of by 2050, where do we think there'll

be toll lanes within the region?

And so these two maps kind of give you a sense of the extent of where we see toll facilities

going.

The left shows you by lane type.

So we have single lanes in green and dual lanes in blue.

And on the right, a sort of timeline of how we see that approaching.

So if you're moving left to right, right, you have the Interstate 80 facility in Yolo

County.

That's starting construction this spring.

And then ultimately, seeing looking at I-5 from the airport to downtown, starting to

think about Cap City Freeway in 99, right?

Some of the most congested facilities in Sacramento County.

So that's one of the reasons in addition to Director Tom Ots' request.

I really want to make sure this board has a good awareness of tolling, given the importance

that Sacramento County will play in the tolling picture overall.

Although CARDA is a toll authority as a government agency, it's really unique compared to a lot

of other government agencies, right?

In a lot of ways, a toll authority is a business.

It has customers.

It has to be financially healthy.

Sometimes it has debt service.

So there's a real kind of focus on the financial picture and revenue, not different from a

local sales tax entity.

And a real understanding that the value that the customers place on the toll facility is

really, really important.

And there's also, of course, a greater sensitivity.

I'm sure you all are thinking about how your constituencies will react to the concept of tolling.

So it's something that we're really aware of and have to be a lot more sensitive to,

compared to other types of transportation.

There are a lot of toll facilities in California.

This sort of web map shows you with the green bubbles.

Each of the types of toll facilities that exist, both express lanes, which are toll lanes

that exist alongside unpriced lanes, and then full toll facilities like toll bridges or

toll roads, which are primarily in Southern California, the toll roads.

What you can see here is each is connected to a blue back office.

So there is kind of a complicated network already existing in California of different toll

authorities and back offices.

And so CARDA is really joining this happy band of toll authorities and really getting

Sacramento connected into these partners, thinking about the statewide network.

Okay, now that we understand sort of what tolling is and how it works, some sort of fundamental

right tolling 101 general concepts.

Before you continue, I just want to ask, I have a few directors in the queue.

Do directors want to let her finish or ask questions now?

I want to do at the end.

And?

I want to do at the end.

You say?

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So if you think about how a toll system works, right?

Some of you will have likely used the Bay Bridge, I think at least as far as a toll system,

but maybe you are familiar with an express lane in the Bay area.

There's the two basic parts of the toll system.

There's the roadside system that exists on the highway.

And then there's the back office system, which is the sort of brains and the back end of

how the back of the house, if you will, of how it all gets put together.

So on the roadside, you have systems that detect the vehicle.

Our drives under toll, Gay and Shree, and we determine there's a car there.

And then it also identifies the customer.

Toll systems, don't see people.

They just see license plate or toll transponder, toll tags, the little fast track thing you

stick in your window.

So that's what the roadside system does.

It says this car with this license plate went under at this time, and this is what the

toll price on the sign says.

Then all that information gets bundled up into a trip.

And that gets sent to the back office who says, okay, I matched that license plate with

director maple, director maple has a credit card on file.

Let's charge the toll transaction.

And then also processes any of the kind of customer service pieces involved in the toll

system.

Does some auditing, right?

There's a lot of finances and money moving in that.

So it's a really detailed kind of fiscal piece of the toll system.

I mentioned the term transponder, toll tag.

We use them kind of interchangeably.

You may have seen some functions of these.

We call these form factors.

These are basically the shapes that toll transponders and tags take inside the guts.

They're all the same.

They use the same technology.

And in California, they're all interoperable.

So if you have one of these from the Bay Area or Southern California, you'll be able to

use it on cardous facility and vice versa.

And the real difference is just, you know, some of them declare occupancy, some are cheaper

or more expensive.

And so that's some of the issues will weigh on which piece of equipment we want to roll

out for Carda.

And in my mind, we do some or maybe not any of them, but do are they transferable vehicle

to vehicle?

They're not intended to be generally speaking.

Whether folks do that is another question, but they're generally supposed to be associated

with a particular vehicle.

And the reason I ask is because just in this example that you have with the illustration

of the various types, some are semi permanent.

People whip out of their, you know, glove boxes and put on their dash to make sure it registers.

So I was just curious about kind of what the rules are.

So, you know, obviously if you have a sticker applied, you're not going to be able to transfer

that to another driver.

It really depends.

We can't enter it.

And so that would be an example of a business rule, right?

So Carda will sit down and say, these are the rules around when you can move a transponder

or not between vehicle.

Generally, right, you want the redundancy of having a transponder and a license plate

both on the account so that if you have any issues, you know who it is.

You have two ways of confirming who used it.

I think the way that it currently works is you have your transponder and you have your

account and then you log in on what vehicles are under that account.

And then you can go through the tolls and it just, so you have one, but you can register

three or four cars under it.

Absolutely.

This is our toll program manager from our consultant, Sam Solz.

He has all the details for you on how this all works in the Bay Area.

Hi, and yeah, we'll use the Bay Area because it's so close in proximity.

So in the Bay Area, you are allowed to move the hard case transponder vehicle to vehicle.

You can also have your license plates on the account.

So with something happens, we can still identify the evestablished account.

You've told us who you are.

Sticker tags are a lot more affordable.

So a lot of agencies that have sticker tags, you're right, Kevin, that you don't rip them

off or, you know, chair, sir, you leave that on the car that's associated with the plate

and it does offer the redundancy to make sure that we can see that vehicle and kind of double

identify it.

And so when we talk about business rules and policy of what we want to roll out, that cost

of the tag being more affordable with a sticker tag is benefit to that.

And then hard case tags, they're all passive technology.

So the old battery tags, that's kind of gone away.

The switchable tags and other ones that will come up from Southern California or the Bay

Area would still be able to be read.

Does that help?

I have a question for you while you're up here.

So currently, if somebody is going through the Bay Bridge and they do not have fast track,

somehow it picks up the license plate.

And so you don't even have to stop in pain anymore.

If I remember correctly, and that was took place in the last couple of years, a car just

goes through and you get a bill in the mail.

That's correct.

So you're talking about post transaction payments.

And when someone does not have fast track, that's correct.

So if someone does not, so when it was during the pandemic in 2021, that the Bay Bridge system

was converted to what we call all electronic tolling, where cash was no longer offered at the

kind of point of sale, at the bridge entry.

And what that does is it forces the agency to send a bill, usually because there's no way

to pay.

We don't call that a violation.

You send it in voice and that can pay.

That's based on the registered vehicle owner's address.

And so when you think about how long it can take to find that person and pay that bill,

getting those front end having fast track is our preferred first method.

But yes, it is a customer friendly way to go recoup costs, especially for infrequent

or out of town travelers.

Yeah.

I thought it was fantastic.

Thank you.

As technology progressed enough yet considering the internet of things where maybe there are

any agencies anywhere in the country or elsewhere, I suppose, that are able to use mobile phones?

Sure.

So mobile phone collection has been talked about for a long time in the toll industry and

nationally.

And there are certain apps and certain areas that you can put in a license plate and pay

your toll.

Maybe GPS located.

Automatic vehicle identification, we call AVI, the fast track, is really the most sure way.

It's the easiest to capture in a real life sense of people driving under the gantry.

So it is still a very highly preferred method.

And recently in California, that was the adopted technology for fair collection.

And it is a Title 21 that's held by CalTrians that makes sure that everyone's using the

same thing, which is why all the fast tracks work everywhere.

And that was a recent change so I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Fast track will be the standard for an operability within the state of California.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Okay.

So we've talked a bit about the transponder that goes in your car.

This is the typical roadside system that it integrates with.

This is a typical, right?

So you shouldn't be picturing this is exactly what's going to be on Interstate 80 in Yolo

County, we're keeping it very general here.

So right, the vehicle passes underneath the toll point.

There are some readers on the gantry.

That's what that metal piece over the highway is called, that both read the transponder in

the car that can detect the size of the vehicle sometimes, capture the license plate, capture

the car from a couple of angles.

And then there's the sort of roadside, fiber and electric and all of those pieces on the

system that bring all of that information together so that it can be sent to the back

office.

There's a lot of redundancy in a toll system to be able to capture the information from

different ways.

Then as I mentioned, the roadside packages all that off and sends it to the back office.

These are some examples of the kind of thing a modern back office does in a toll system.

So it does all of the transaction processing associated with the account, the credit card

transaction, the customer service.

Someone says, hey, I got this in the mail.

I don't know what's going on.

They can walk them through, get them set up with a good account.

Make sure all of that billing works.

And then also does a lot of the reconciliation from the accounts that are coming in from

the roadside system and the revenue that's going back out to Carta and make sure that all

of that information goes together.

And also does a lot of the enforcement and violation or invoice management, right?

When things don't go down the happy path, when they don't have a transponder and we don't

have an account with them and we have to sort of find out from the license plate who this

person is and get them to pay the toll.

The toll host is the brains of the toll piece, right?

So this is where all of the information from the roadside system is put together into

what we call a trip, which is like the neat package that someone in a back office can

take, where it's associating a vehicle, a time the trip was taken, how long, how much

they were on the toll facility, what the price was at that time, and putting all of that together,

understanding how the pricing might change throughout the course of the day and reconciling

all of that information to go to the back office.

We've talked a bit about pricing.

I want to give you a sense of some of the toll policy issues that Carta is going to be

wrestling with over the course of this year.

These types of pricing mechanisms is one example of the kind of toll policy issue just

you have an inside of what conversations are going on over at Carta.

So there are really like three main types of pricing structures.

The first is a fixed toll rate.

That's like the Bay Bridge, right?

It costs you X amount of dollars.

You go across the whole thing.

There's really no time of day change, generally speaking, or you don't go halfway across the

bridge, it has a fixed price for the whole facility.

Then there's two ways of doing facilities generally for express lanes.

The first is time of day, which is also called variable.

That means that you pre-set before the trip takes, let's say for a month or something,

you say from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. this is what the price is going to be, from 7 a.m. to 10

a.m. this is what the price is going to be, so on, so forth throughout the day.

You run that pricing scheme and then you look back over a month or a quarter and you say,

okay, did that do a good job of managing congestion?

Did that do a good job of what our goals were for the toll facility?

If it didn't, then you go back and you adjust and you say, okay, let's tweak up the morning

and we can tweak down the afternoon because of what we saw in the sort of actuals.

It's a very manual process of looking at how much traffic there is and trying to adjust

the toll price to get your intended outcomes so you have a good facility that's not congested.

The dynamic has the same desire but it works more automatically.

So you sort of set some parameters for it and it adjusts on a kind of minute by minute,

second by second basis on what's actually happening on the toll facility to adjust the

price in real time, depending on what the actual traffic is on the facility.

You put a lot of parameters in place on how much it can jump up over so many minutes or seconds,

but in general, what that allows you is to catch unexpected congested periods, right?

Sometimes it snows and all of a sudden everyone's driving from the bay area through our region

to get up to Tahoe that it's way higher than normal morning peaks or it's memorial weekend

or something like that. The dynamic can capture that unusual peak and adjust the price of the toll

accordingly. So these are the kinds of policy issues that Karta is going to be wrestling with this

year to figure out how our system will run. We talked a bit about license plate transactions

versus toll transponders. This gives you a sort of sense of how revenue is or isn't captured

using this various system. So if we start at the top of this tree here, right, we catch all our

transactions are captured at the lane. About 1% of those are orphaned, right? There was snow on

the camera or someone didn't have a license plate on their vehicle or a transponder. We just like

never really got a trip in general. Then 99% get built into trips. Some of those are non-revenue,

right? It's an ambulance or a bus or something like that that we wouldn't charge anyway.

Of the 97% that are told, those are split between who has a fast track transponder in the car

and who has to be processed by a male invoice or a violation using a license plate.

It's really important to understand that as Sam mentioned, we basically get almost all of our

fast track transactions. They have a very high accuracy level. We have a credit card or pre-paid

account associated with fast tracks. It's very easy for that whole transaction to get processed.

Once you get involved in the mail, as you can imagine, things get very complicated, right? They don't

update their address with the DMV because they moved. Now we can't find them associated with the

license plate or folks don't get back to us. So the fall off of revenue from license plates is

pretty steep. Those are the kind of trade-offs we want to figure out at CARDA is the convenience of

being able to pay a license plate versus the complications and the cost that it is to CARDA to track

down and actually get that transaction paid. The draft mission and vision and values for CARDA,

so this is a new agency that works closely with a lot of transportation partners and is really

kind of introducing a new type of transportation into our region. So we wanted to establish really

what is CARDA trying to do and achieve. So the draft mission statement really focus on operating

and maintaining the roadway pricing system. So CARDA is not intended to be a planner or a designer

or an environmental clearer or a constructor of toll facilities, right? We do that in partnership

with CalTrans and STA and our city and county partners who want to deliver these projects.

And what CARDA does is receive it once it's built and operate it and maintain it really for the

benefit of all of the communities in our region. Ultimately the vision for our roadway pricing

network is that it's efficient and connected especially across county borders and that it's really

like a key piece of the multimodal network that it helps buses run more efficiently especially for

commuters getting in and out of downtown and that ultimately it can be a reliable source of local

funding. All caveat we don't anticipate YOLO 80 being a big money maker early on, right? These

facilities are expensive and there's a lot to work out but I think we should we should dream and

we should vision right for roadway pricing to be a source that we can all use for local match

and other things to chase more money for our region. There's a list of values here I won't read

each one out loud just to sort of say that like other towing authorities CARDA is really focused

on safety, reliability, customer service and responsibility making sure we're sort of good stewards

of what we have and then the fifth one is sort of unique to CARDA it's not common in other toll

facilities and is really the partnership piece. CARDA was formed as a joint powers between these

regional agencies where the first towing authority with CalTrans at the table and so CARDA's real

intention is to try to build a regional network that works for everybody so we don't have you know

individual different toll facilities with all different rules confusing our drivers and our

customers. I know it was a lot to process but hopefully give you a good overview and I appreciate

the request from director Talamontas to have us here today and happy to continue to share

information back or take any additional questions you have. Very good thank you for the presentation

director Talamontas. Thank you Kathleen you did a wonderful job and her PowerPoint is pink and

I love it it's so colorful it makes it so fun. I think if we're all here on this dius I may think

we're all nerdy in our own ways but I don't know why managed lanes gets me like so happy to just

hear the presentations and learn more about it. So I did request a director you see to put at the

end of every single agenda item comments for CARDA so that I can give you guys monthly updates about

what happened in the previous meetings even though I don't have a vote I am the representative for

STA and I want to make sure that it's not just my voice being heard but everybody's here and

then I'm keeping you guys in the loop of this policy even though it's not impacting Sacramento yet

the policies that are being made right now in YOLO for the 80 are going to directly impact us here

in Sacramento for the i5 and so I'm just trying to make sure I'm just you know getting everybody's

input. So just at the February meeting we had a really robust conversation about pylons and tubular

delinators. I did not know it would be such a controversial item between the engineers on the

CARDA board. Learned a lot about that. Also learned about stripe buffers or lane stripes and the

differences between cars coming on to the freeway and getting off the freeway and what is more

dangerous or not dangerous and so those conversations are going to be continued if we had at CARDA

and we also decided on the back office system we had the two options of either you know

doing using the one the Bay Area has which cost about two to four million dollars or starting

one from ground zero where we would like be able to do everything but that was ten to twenty

million dollars so we decided to do the cheaper option and then we're going to start the executive

director recruitment firm search in January 2026 and so at this March meeting we had hours of

operation we're debating whether we do five a.m. to eight p.m. seven days a week which is kind of

what we're used to right now where you know when you're trying to link to Roosevelt it's set these

are these are the hours that you're using the Carpool lane versus having flexibility which is 24

seven so say that there's a Kings game and we're anticipating a lot of traffic on the i5 or on

the 80 you know we can change the pricing to make sure that we can continue with the flow traffic

and so those are two conversations you know they were continuing to have we're going to explore both

options as we move forward and we are going to start you know for the total collection there was two

options fast track required and then fast track or pay by play and so the committee decided to do

fast track required so we're just going to do an aggressive outreach program once it comes online

and it's going to be all hands on deck and no well flexibility for the first year for that so we

decided and so I'll do monthly updates if you're and you're if you're really interested in it please

just let me know I don't know pylons pylons that sounds awesome right thank you director Tal Montez

director Kent thank you are we all agree that director handley is awesome so my following

remarks have nothing to do with that foregone conclusion I'm concerned about the sentiment of

the public although I have no direct knowledge of what that might be especially in and around that

corridor I will say that generally my read is that there isn't express preference for a

collectivist approach to transportation enhancement capacity management and regulation of traffic

and congestion and what I mean is there's a preference for raising the water level so all

vessels are lifted off the ground meaning whatever is required to enhance this corridor is handled

by existing taxation mechanisms the criticism is going to be you're setting up an extremely

extensive ERP system is just mentioned by a talon ttm system you're going to be monitoring vehicles

in a more invasive manner than has been done with an opt out system and the idea is that running

it like a business looks like privatization to many of the public in the sense that it you know

it's one there's always a case to be made for selective taxation pays you you know you pay to play

but there's another case to be made for regional access to any sector

regardless of the destination the source and the destination so I noticed that in the previous

agenda item which is not related to this one I admit the call for community engagement was a

high priority not mentioned in this case so I presume this is proceeding but I see some concerns about

perception I appreciate that I think of course this is a number one issue with tolling right is

building general awareness for the value and the benefits I'll say there was a lot of engagement

on the development of the project the concept of this has been around for years in your county

whole environmental process lots of engagement on getting the project started

even the 10,000 foot level I walked you through today why it was really detailed and engineering

so one of the challenges is engaging folks with where they're at on tolling and what we've learned

from other regions is that a lot of times it makes sense to do that as we get closer to the facility

actually being open and how does it work and where can I get a fast track account and how can I

understand what the price is going to be and and sort of those pieces so we're keenly aware of it

and and I appreciate the comment thank you and one follow up question how much toll revenue do you

have to collect before you pay for the agency we're working on a detailed traffic and revenue study we

didn't initial one before as part of the development of the project that showed that it would certainly

pay for its own operations with potentially some excess revenue and we're getting those detailed

estimates through this spring here summer we should have an updated report where we can give a more

comfortable number we have some other directors in the queue but I'll just follow up a little bit

on on director kent's comments and just there's a little bit tongue in cheek but kind of serious

anyone involved with tolling and authorities that would be responsible for that

must read the power broker which is the biography of Robert Moses who took great advantage

of the development of New York City's bridge and tunnel authorities and not in a good way so

director rodrykas thank you Kathleen that was very informative I have a question about the

tolls and using the license plate reader with no fast track will those invoices then be linked

to a registration a vehicle registration if unpaid that's typically how it works so we the

the facility the roadside system takes picture of the license plate we process it first of course

we check has someone already registered this license plate with a fact's fast track account like do

we know this license plate if so then we can process payment and then usually what happens is you

go through the DMV to understand that person's address sends them a notice most tolling authorities

offer a sort of oopsie first time hey you're a first time customer maybe you didn't know if you

sign up for a fast track account will wave the additional fee so Carter will be looking at something

like that but yes it works through the DMV in the mail which other than I think I'm sure DMV will

say well there's a now a price to us for processing that that's right the other I just want to use

caution that you know if you use fast track only you're going to get those fallouts of people that

say are visiting California or you know driving through a some unknown so there's going to be I

think there's always going to be that fallout people that you're going to have to chase for the

invoice that's it thank you thank you director mr. bucy yeah just just want to point out just a

couple things from this presentation but one of them is you know the the network that was there's

being proposed as part of the 2025 mtpsc s through 2050 will affect all the the entirety of the

county and all essentially all the cities for maybe i don't think and so it's important that

st a who who kind of represents all those agencies has a voice and that's why we chose seems like a

year ago now I don't know to have at least a non-voting director role in here that's why

kareena tom months is on on the board and then separately I would say as part of sacogs 2020 mtpsc s they

did have assumptions about what the ultimate buildout of the towing would look like but it's I believe

it's going to be much more prominent in there 2025 plan to go through 2050 and there's a heavy

public outreach component of that so I don't know if I have that correct but my understanding is

this can be much more well documented and there's way more outreach related to that you were going

to do really different place than we were in 2020 on the tip issue of tolling right was sort of like

a maybe someday in 2020 and now it's we have a project under construction so certainly a different

tone it plays a much bigger role in this time's plan yeah all right very good again thank you for

the presentation and worked do we have anyone's time to address the board on this item we do not

right very good this is presentation only no action required so with that we will move on to the

executive directors report wonderful thank you very much just a couple of updates I wonder

provide so back in November the board approved some legislation specifically related to sd a

authority to improve that and as well as to allow us to do a sales tax measure that's not

necessarily county wide but could be a subset of the cities or or the county and a few of the cities

right so that bill is moving forward it was introduced as assembly bill one two three I mean one

two two three sorry it was introduced by assembly member win in correll we have cruise strategies

under contract who's assisting sta and getting this bill through the legislative process we've

had several meetings with the legislative scolding sultans to review the bill language between

bill myself and and we've reached out to a few of the agencies asking for letter support so we

appreciate those letters that we received but that that bill is moving forward we'll continue

provide updates through this executive director's support on that set of so that separately I want to

bring up you know we have a we're required to do and a performance audit every periodically of the

measure a and so we are in the process of completing that performance audit and working with the i-talk

or independent taxpayer oversight committee on that and we will end up we believe we'll be bringing

that back to our April board meeting with some some what we believe will be some improvements to how

we manage measure a and manage it more effectively so that will be coming up and then on a board

outlook just for next for this upcoming meeting a couple of things that will be on there is I

talked about SB one local partnership program for me lake funds so we'll be bringing back an item

on that related to how we might similarly program those funds and then I think we have also an item

relates to the budget that will bring back as a kind of a preview before we actually see the budget in

may so thank you very much thank you mr. Bucy any questions for our executive director

a seen-un meant clerk suspect we don't have anyone signed up to speak on this matter we did not

all right very good then we are on to item 11 which is comments and reports from authority directors

any comments reports we'll get to your report in a minute over here none okay with that I do want to

take this time to say first of all thank you to director Bucy and our vice chair we had a

we had a good conversation yesterday as part of our standard briefing or was it two days ago

I forget now uh in any event as directors will recall we had uh discussed at some length I

think it was at the last meeting the fact that there seems to be uh growing interest and there's been

a maintained interest I'll say in how we structure our committees with regard to these

authority board to thoughtfully and methodically address to very specific subjects one being

a new funding otherwise the development of a new measure that I think we can all agree is going

to be extremely important seen as we've had uh mixed success over the last several decades and

but it is such an important revenue stream to fulfill the mission and to also address the needs

obviously in our respective jurisdictions and those needs of our constituents so we have received

a number of expressions of interest and serving on that particular committee the other committee

not sure if we have an actual name for it's kind of the role of STA and that came out of a very

spirited robust discussion last time at our board meeting and so it's been left to

me as chair this year to make appointments to each and so I want to take this time to just name

those appointments as well as leadership within the in the committees respective committees so on

the new transportation funding committee uh rich Desmond Roger Dickinson Eric Guerra Kelsey Nelson

Siri Pallupati Bobby Sing Allen and myself will serve on on that committee and I'm going to

appoint uh Mr. Guerra to that uh chairmanship as he has been quite friendly the only one that

has expressed interest to me directly about serving as such and then when it really regards the role

of the STA committee I would like to appoint Pat Hume David Kent Justin Raithel Bobby Sing Allen

and Kareena Tla Mantes and I would ask that director Hume serve as the chairman of that committee

so again just in the interest of making sure everyone hears from me at the same time what those

appointments are I just want to make time here today to announce that and I do want to also say

thanks again to everyone who has stepped up to serve in these respective committees we're all very

very busy people and this is additional time that you will lot to make in some very very important

decisions as it informs this this body so thank you to all and with that I would ask director Tla

Mantes for report on Karta well I guess already did that but I made a confession at Karta that I've

been on my sister's fast track for the last 12 years of my life my license plate readers on her

account so I've been to having it for free and so anyways I confess to her that day because it was

on now public records so I figured you guys should all know too that's edgy my day earlier

all right thank you any other comments from directors for the good of the order

see none if there's no further business before this authority board we stand adjourn