C-TRAN Board of Directors Meeting

0:00 [Music] Good evening, welcome to the July 14th C-TRAN Board of Directors meeting. Would you please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next up, Cindy, will you please call the roll? Yes, Matt Cole. Present. Will Fuentes. Bart Hansen. Present. Kim Harless. Present. Tim Hein. Present. Sue Marshall. Here.

0:58 Ann McEnerny-Ogle. Present. Eric Paulson. Here. Joshua Waitz. Here. Glenn Young. Here. All right, moving on to the approval of the agenda, are there any additions or changes to the agenda? I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved, Paulson. We have a motion and a second from Paulson and Harless, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All right, moving on next to public testimony or communication. Testimony is limited to three minutes, we ask that comments shall be respectful and courteous to all. As a reminder, you can email comments to the Clerk of the Board, and these will be accepted as part of the public record. We'll now be opening the public testimony, I will take in the first person first. And starting with number two, do I have a, where's Eric?

1:56 Oh there we go. Eric, this starts with number two, do we have somebody online for number one? Oh, there's no number one. We're going to start off with Douglas Tweet. No, that's red. This red is on. Okay, not green, all right. Okay, thank you Board. My name is Douglas Tweet from Canvas. So last month, and I submitted this today, you should have a copy of it. So I believe it was at last month's workshop it was proposed about a light rail possibly extended throughout Vancouver urban growth boundary over the next 20 years of putting it in the plan.

2:55 I believe this is completely unnecessary. From a recent article by Representative John Lee, C-TRAN's annual ridership peaked in 1999 at 7.75 million and it dropped to 5.9 million in 2019. Before the pandemic, it reached a pandemic low 3.3 million in 2021 and now has recovered about 4.9 million. But that's still 37% below the 1999 peak. Meanwhile, what's happened to Clark County's population? That's 26 years span. That's a lot of time. In the U.S. Census Bureau from a year ago, there's a little over half a million, 532,000 in Clark County. In the 2000 census, it was 345,000. Now, so basically population has gone up and ridership has gone down. So let's quantify that with a per capita. We divide ridership by population, we obtain the per capita ridership,

3:52 and that's an indication basically of popularity, maybe the size of the market of people who want to use it. So if we take a look in the table, we've got the 1999-2000 time frame. The per capita ridership 26 years ago was 22.5 boardings per year, per person. In 2025, that dropped to 9.2. That's a 59% drop. Now, if we want to increase that per capita ridership, we have to go up by two and a half times to get to numbers. That was 26 years ago. That's a lot. And 26 years ago, everything was done with buses, with satisfying people, with serving people's needs. It's not expensive. It didn't even have BRT. So there's absolutely no need to spend billions upon billions upon billions of dollars expanding rail throughout Clark County, ripping up roads and all the rest.

4:48 And if we take a look, well, what about Portland? Portland's got light rail all over the place. Well, as I reported, I think it was a week, a month ago, ridership has dropped on max light rail and the ridership is a third to one half of their forecasts. So there is a big drop and light rail is not the answer to increase ridership. It's just wasting an awful lot of money. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Margaret Tweed.

5:28 Good afternoon, board. This meeting is being recorded and summarized. The C-TRAN board is called the Clark Transportation Public Benefit Area, yet it's transformed into the Vancouver Transportation Area by altering the board composition. Vancouver now has four board members plus two county members who represent mostly Vancouver districts, six out of nine seats on the board. At the county board member from North County District five and seven out of nine board members are pushing light rail against the votes of citizens. Two token lesser city representatives seem open to affordable transit options like buses and vans that run on roads that serve all. In 2012, every city, including Vancouver in Clark County, plus limited areas allowed to vote in the county, rejected the C-TRAN ballot

6:25 proposition to extend Oregon's TriMet Max light rail into Clark County over an I-5 bridge. In 2013, an advisory vote to oppose any light rail project in Clark County unless it is first supported by a majority of voters in a county-wide vote of the people was passed by 68% of voters. That 2013 vote is reflected in a 2022 Clark County resolution to oppose every light rail project in Clark County unless it is first approved by a majority of voters in a county-wide advisory vote of the people. The resolution is posted at the Clark County website and should direct policy decisions, yet it has been ignored by all the Clark County councilors now on the C-TRAN board. Clark Councilor Belcott from a mostly county area district two upheld our votes and urged far less

7:19 costly bus and van service and was abruptly removed from the board for it. Roads are the lifeblood of our communities, connecting residents with needed goods and services, public, private, and commercial vehicles. At a recent workshop, Vancouver board member Paulson pushed for transit oriented development built around a fixed rail system stating that would catalyze much more development. Vancouver board member Ogle asked this board to give Vancouver time to put forward a plan to include light rail within the city limits and the Vancouver urban growth boundary to be included in the 2045 plan. Portland took that approach with both street and whatever. Anyway, light rail and another rail system in downtown businesses are closing and fire sales of once active business buildings have been reported often in recent months where

8:15 rail runs on city streets as it does in Portland crossing the tracks is hazardous and pedestrians are killed. I'm thinking of Aaron who was a high school junior 16 years old when he was hit by a TriMet train using the pedestrian crossing at the station in Gresham. Here we have in 2022 48 hours apart max trains hitting people and if you look back in the years there's many incidents. We have a woman attacked and robbed at a park roads transit station, a max train rapist sentenced, and more. Thank you. Thank you. Next up Carmen De Leon. It's not green. Oh it's working. Yeah so my name is Carmen De Leon and I go by Mellow. So the first thing I'd like to say is that you know the the trust of the public is of the utmost importance

9:14 and you've lost it. When I figured out I guess one of you said that that these what are they vine stops or actually max stops because you're charging you're already charging the public for max for light rail stops because those are not buying stops those are for light rail. So you already have it in there to trick the people into believing that they're getting the vine when actually they're getting uh uh stuff for light rail that we don't need. We're not Europe. We don't even have two thousand two hundred thousand people so can we please stop taking people's money for your fantasy that we live in Europe because we don't. In 1994, 2012, 2013 Clark County voters rejected light rail. Why aren't you listening to the public? Why don't you care what the people have said? Why don't you understand that people want their freedom? They want their cars. That's why I have suggested jet packs because if you put a hundred thousand people in jet packs you would

10:12 get rid of a hundred thousand cars but you guys don't want to look at the future. You want to look at the past trains from a hundred years ago that are over budget and on the other side of Mill Plain there are hundreds of I don't know how many miles of unused railroad tracks but yet you want to finance more. It doesn't make any sense at all and I looked at your little agenda and you talked about safety. Well guess what I got on the max the Mill Plain bus and I was yelled at and threatened by the driver. I went to another one and the chick driving was yelling and screaming at me and being rude so yeah I understand safety but you know if you're gonna if you're gonna dish it out don't you can't expect not to get it back so when you've got drivers being aggressive to excuse me but my leg was hurting that day and I used my cane a little old lady with a cane and that's who your bus drivers want to yell at and you wonder why ridership is down maybe because the riders are being threatened by the drivers the drivers are just treating us like crap thank you very much

11:11 and they told me that they were going to educate the guy and not fire him because you're desperate for people to drive the bus because you don't have enough employees go figure huh anyways the drivers are rude you're running off fumes you're running off the welfare ride because this is all government funded I like I said I've been on that max I mean the the the vine I tried to pay I push I pushed it won't even light up it's been like two three weeks I haven't paid because you guys haven't gone out there and fixed the thing that collects the money because who cares you've got the population's money by the billions and you're just going to lie to them and say hey this is for vine when actually it's for light rail and that's not right because you would be saving money if you made actual bus stops instead of light rail bus stops that nobody wants and you should put it to another vote to the public and see where they stand on light rail because most people don't want to pay a billion dollars to go three hours on a bus ride or max do we have anybody online

12:10 we do all right caller if you could please unmute yourself when I give you the option to

12:22 unmute yourself star six to unmute yourself thank you this is joe consular sure I'm trying to uh this is joe consular can everyone hear me yep all right thank you mr chairman this is joe consular I just have some comments for the ctran board I understand you are still playing around with trying to partner with trimet I got some news for you august 26 2026 will become bus get in for trimet 34 lines will have the server suggested

13:18 max green line will be trimmed instead of going from quakumas into downtown portland quack the green line will be trimmed from quackumas to gateway transit center cutting frequent cutting a direct ride for many citizens and also frequency among its route I highly encourage ctran to reject any extension of max and to tell trim it to heal myself there's just no way this is going to work and of course as we all know and we're all transit fans here buses are the blocking tackling passing and catching of transit football it's the basics and

14:11 when you have a you want to partner for transit agency that um it's making massive cuts to buses you have to ask yourself is this a network that you want to partner with there's also been negotiations with the trimet union between climate management and the trimet unions regarding your you know regarding future layoffs uh why add to that situation I know all of you public servants have your heart in the right place but it's a question you have to ask yourself you have to care about the little people and about that the last few miles and the first few miles to white rail I know this as a regular sound transit rider that I still need buses to connect to sexy white rail around sound transit I I know it's frustrating to hear these kind of

15:08 comments but ctran if representative john lay is correct you have 200 million dollars cash on hand you have uh investment earnings you have ridership going up a dramatic and um you know you have a lot of cash on hand uh and you have a successful bus rapid transit system that you should simply expand to and from max and save some money for both parties that is my advice council this evening I want to thank all of you for your public service and and your continued commitment to listening to the public thank you thank you and that ends public comment now we're going to be moving over to action items oh I'm sorry we're going to be moving over to the consent items and does anybody have anything they would like to pull from consent

16:03 do I hear a motion I move approval of the consent agenda this is marshall second we have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye okay moving on to action items action item number one adoption of the ctran public transit agency safety plan ptasp and safety performance targets staff report 26-029 with con with chief uh operating officer in that job good evening chair and board of directors um as you know I'm Annette Shaw the chief operating officer but I also serve as chief setup as ctran's chief safety officer and today I'm asking that you adopt ctran's updated 2026 public transportation public transportation agency safety plan and our

17:01 2026 safety performance targets so for those that do not know who are unaware why do we have the agency safety plan because we take fta formula funds we are required to maintain a written agency safety plan this plan documents our approach to managing safety this plan gets reviewed and updated every year by myself the and the uh safety committee so we have the main uh update that we had this year is our safety risk reduction program mitigations in response to missed performance targets for the 2025 reporting year the updated p task includes new safety risk mitigations identified and recommended by the joint labor management safety committee we also have updated uh safety performance targets the annual safety

17:57 performance targets have been updated based on a three-year rolling average of data submitted to the ntd and that encompasses fatalities safety events injuries system reliability and transit worker assaults one piece one piece of uh good news that I would like to uh note is that transit assaults on transit workers have dropped consecutively with ctran for the past three years we're very uh very proud of that so again we ask that the ctran board of directors authorize the chief executive officer to adopt the updated 2026 ctran public transportation agency safety plan and updated safety performance all right comments

18:48 thank you i i would just ask if you could possibly maybe highlight some of the differences in the plan versus the old one yeah so when we anytime that we miss um our safety uh performance target the safety committee um we have to come up with a risk mitigation on why we miss the targets and a corrective action for those targets so what we did was we updated the um the plan we put an appendix in there of the targets that was missed what our corrective actions were and including the the dates that we're going to have them correct other comments

19:39 do i move approval of the updated uh ctran public transportation agency safety plan second we have a motion and a second and no further comment uh all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed all right that is approved now moving on to communications one from the chair i was riding the 71 last night and i tell you it was um it was a memorable event as a lot of the stops on 71 are under construction especially in the northern part of vancouver um i'd like to remind writers to uh take that into consideration being safe going around the construction areas to get to the crosswalks and utilize those uh that's really

20:32 all i have uh communications from the board tim thank you chair two things um leon i'd like to thank you for your update always appreciate it and then just a reminder uh and thank you to ctran for providing uh transit um and uh during canvas days on july 25th that goes over very well and it's very efficient and crowded downtown so thanks very much okay chair if i could i just want to also thank the ctran staff and uh for their help with our fourth of july ridgefield's fourth of july celebration it is always a success and we have the last couple of years had ctran provide shuttle service from the junction all the way down to our downtown area and that has been an enormous assist to us and i think we're estimating somewhere around 10 000 people coming into town that day and so the shuttle service that you

21:30 provide is immensely helpful so thank you for that we appreciate your partnership any other comments moving on the chief executive officer thank you chair and as mentioned with the fourth of july celebrations we did participate in the ridgefield shuttle service everything we carried right now the preliminary numbers are about 1200 passengers that we transported each way so uh enjoy being able to participate in the parade and of help with the challenges of parking and everyone getting around the traffic there and also we also participated in the occult freedom parade as well that weekend so thank you to all our operators maintenance employees supervisors and support staff who help make these events possible and represent ctran so well in our community um update for our the 2045 plan if we recall last month we had a meeting

22:29 to discuss our 2045 plan as we've continued to develop the draft plan there was some topics and conversation of wanting to adjust the future of ctran and so we've been working closely with our regional partners particularly the city of vancouver to ensure that we're building a shared vision with the partners for the future and transit in clark county this plan will reflect just how much ctran has evolved and the momentum we've built over the past several years our investment in high capacity transit quarters have been incredibly successful successful and they've increased capacity improved travel times driven ridership growth across the system and supported economic development and housing opportunities throughout our community at the same time we're planning for what's next clark county continues to grow and our transit system must continue evolving alongside it so that means thinking beyond today's solution and remaining

23:27 flexible as new technologies emerge and transportation needs change our goal is to preserve and strengthen our network of existing and future high capacity quarters while ensuring we have the flexibility to adapt as the region grows we're not bringing a final plan tonight but we will continue the conversations through the next few weeks until our september board meeting and at that time we will look to have more updated information to share clark county fair is coming up next month they it's just around the corner once again ctran will provide free shuttle service from eight locations throughout clark county mastering it making it easier for families to enjoy the fair and reducing congestion shuttle schedules and information is available on the website and your you'll continue to see promotional outreach over the weeks ctran will also be participating in upcoming community events as mentioned by member tim hine battleground harvest days sorry

24:27 canvas days grand parade grand parade on 25th battleground harvest days on july 18th and listeners our days celebration on july 25th as well so we encourage everyone to stop and say hello if you're attending any of these events and i'd like to thank those members board members that i've been able to meet with over the past few weeks tim hine will fuentes glenn and eric thank you for taking the time to meet with me and i look forward to meeting with the others that we i know we have scheduled in the future the next few weeks and once again reminder that the august board meeting is cancelled we will be concluded we will re we will start back in september thank you legal counsel huh you have any okay thank you thank you now we're going to go ahead and adjourn and then go into executive

25:22 session pursuant to rcw 42 30.1101b to discuss potential property acquisition this time is estimated at 20 minutes and no action will be taken and it is now 5 55.