C-TRAN Board of Directors Meeting

0:00 © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Hello, everybody, and welcome to the October 13, 2026 C-TRAN Board of Directors meeting. We'll go ahead and start off with 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. All right, Cindy, how about the roll call?

1:00 All right, thank you, Cindy, and now it's time for the approval agenda. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Not seeing so, I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve the agenda. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? And moving forward. Board recognition time. C-TRAN Board of Directors and C-TRAN staff to recognize outstanding acts of kindness and service to our community from Brianne Brady and Josh Stark.

2:00 Good evening. There you go, Nat. Good evening, everyone. The purpose of this presentation is to acknowledge extraordinary citizens who ride our system. On July 14th, one of our operators suffered a sudden medical emergency while in service and lost consciousness behind the wheel. In moments like this, everything depends on what happens in the first few seconds. Tonight, I want to recognize the people who acted in those seconds and whose actions are the reasons why this incident ended as well as it did. These two people are Breanne Brady, and Josh Starr. Breanne Brady contacted emergency services while Josh Starr communicated with the dispatch center who walked him through securing the bus. Neither of them had any obligation to step in. They were riders on their way somewhere like thousands of others on our

2:58 way. It would have been easy to freeze or to assume someone else would act. Instead, in a frightening situation and under real pressure, they chose to help a stranger and the people around them. I also want to acknowledge the dispatch team. They remained calm and gave clear direction to someone with no transit training and coordinated the response from the moment the call came in. This is the professionalism we ask of our dispatch team every day, and on July 14th, it made a real difference. Safety on C-Trend is not something we deliver alone. It is shared with the people who ride with us. Breanne and Josh showed what it means to look out for one another, and we are proud they are part of our community. On behalf of C-Trend, I would like to formally thank them and present each of them with the C-Trend Award of Gratitude. Please join me in recognizing them.

3:58 Thank you very much, everyone, and I hope to see you again in the future. Thank you very much, everyone, and I hope to see you again in the future. Thank you very much, everyone, and I hope to see you again in the future. Thank you very much, everyone, and I hope to see you again in the future.

4:28 Thank you very much, everyone, and I hope to see you again in the future. Thank you very much.

4:58 if you guys wouldn't mind would you mind having a seat over here and we can ask you a few questions did you scare them away we tried will thank you very much for your efforts and uh it it goes such a long way to see what you folks have done and you stepped up in the moment when somebody really needed you thank you um next up is public testimony or communication uh 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 i will now open the meeting to the public record and i will now open the meeting to the public record and i will now take the meeting for public testimony and i will take the in first person first so carmen de leon

5:55 my name is carmen de leon um i also go by mellow and so on there's a quite a few things on today's agenda so how about we talk about this one t trans existing control has an aging and has identified security reliability blah blah blah so i'm just wondering are you guys going to guarantee that you don't implement ai because as has been even i think the senate has declared ai a potential threat to your systems and in case you don't know about the food in uh overseas because it was done online they hacked into it and they lost millions of dollars in food so i'm saying no ai and be careful with whatever that ridiculous amount of money is and in this one you want to acquire a new property for the what is it

6:55 shekel off corner well that's just great but you know in seattle they handle 70 000 people a game and three hours to park them in and park them out how come they got it all figured out and you guys can't handle what 40 000 or 70 000 on that corner a day you know what we do in seattle what they did in seattle was they made it so that the the freeways go one on top of the other so you're not buying more land and you're not buying more land and you're not buying more land and you're building on top of each other have you ever been downtown seattle where you're driving and you're going under it's so cool it's like a video game i love driving in seattle but what i'm saying here also is that clark county is 50 what is it 5 500 000 people half a million and city of vancouver is only 200 000 so why do they have so much say when they're the minority of clark county anyways and i guess how many minutes okay so i have this um so they want to uh do a

7:49 uh light rail of course and um i've always said that that's a bad idea and um we have another story here of a guy dying and like i've told you before um oh yeah the pictures i put out pictures did you guys get the pictures because um hopefully you're passing around the picture right on that's the picture i've ridden on those buses i've ridden on buses hanging on to the door and that's why i that's where you would want to invest maybe 100 500 million but not billions when you've got uh what is it route 60 with only 900 ridership a day i think this picture maybe may give you a clue of what real ridership is which is a full bus people hurting to get in there instead of begging people to ride those empty buses that only paying four percent of the 96 percent is coming out of everybody's money

8:49 everybody's money and nobody's using it so you know i'm glad you guys had your nice dinner over there but remember some people actually pay for things and they can't afford to have this money wasted by the billions on light rail that nobody has voted for and is actually uh insulting to the historic society that wants to save the bridge next up we have margaret tweet

9:19 good morning c tram board i wanted to bring to your attention the incident that happened on the max this year an elderly oregon man um he was 71 years old and he acted in self-defense when he was confronted by a younger man who exposed himself and remade it made repeated threats to rape the elder elderly man's blind partner and he explained to the judge he was afraid because his partner was under five feet tall and less than 100 pounds and legally blind so this these are the reasons this is the reality of why many women would never ever ride the max and it's just a big concern in the end the guy who was on the max

10:19 that shot himself in self-defense is facing two years in prison and i don't know what's happening to the the guy that threatened him now regarding the c tram board composition i feel the abrupt change to the c tram board giving four seats to the city of vancouver only three to the county and two just two for the smaller cities is completely unfair one big reason is most people in the county do not have a vote on the vancouver city council everybody in the county has a vote on the clark county council so why is it that we're underrepresented again on the c tram board and vancouver as usual is overrepresented not only that to add insult to injury the clark county council chose to put two of their three people who live in vancouver on the board okay so they have four official seats

11:19 plus the two that vancouver unnecessarily handed over to them as well and they have a majority on the board to tax us to put light rail in without giving us a vote it is completely unfair should never have happened and it was uh just all of a sudden you're out of compliance declared the right thing to do and we're going to have a vote on the bridge but it's actually not there is no federal requirement to have light rail on the bridge you can get federal funds for bus rapid transit that's the truth but they eliminated bus rapid transit didn't it was in the initial consideration but then they eliminated it eliminated so we never even knew how many hundreds of millions brt would cost compared to the three and a half billion that is proposed for light rail

12:19 it it was completely unjust and unfair to all of us and lastly i want to note that um they in april somebody was here from washtot saying that light rail would there would be no tolls on 205 but they're doing a study right now they're planning to study tolls on both i-5 and 205 something you never mentioned here next up douglas tweet

12:49 okay hello board thank you um douglas tweet camas um now as c-tran is considering plans for 2045 it's wise to look across the the columbia river at how portland and metro have handled transit transportation for the last 40 years and learn what not to do it's very worthwhile to read a recent analysis by randall the tool of the cascade policy institute it's called the portland transportation disaster the high cost of anti-auto planning and the cost of transportation disaster planning in portland i've attached a pdf you should have a copy of that as well as the link below is a summary of some of the main points um portland's transportation system is experiencing a profound and measurable decline for the past four decades congestion has surged transit ridership has collapsed from about 10 in 1980 to 5 in 2024 traffic fatalities have risen sharply up 150 percent from 2010 even as portland and metro have spent hundreds of millions of dollars

13:49 maybe billions on transportation planning these day the data shows these outcomes are not accidental but are the predictable results of policies explicitly designed against automobiles even though they carry 95 percent of passenger miles rather than plan for the mode that overwhelmingly serves residents needs they're focused on five percent of passenger miles transit walking and cycling this exclusively the region hasn't built a new freeway since 83 has instead pursued strategies to reduce roadway capacity slow traffic and intentionally increase congestion these policies have failed to reduce driving failed to improve transit performance and failed to deliver environmental or safety benefits the evidence shows that use of automobiles remains essential to economic opportunity equity and household well-being there was a study done by the university of minnesota on portland urban area job accessibility and found that the average resident can access 60 times the amount of transportation that a resident can access

14:49 as many jobs in a 20-minute auto trip rather than a 20-minute transit trip this helps low-income residents get jobs meanwhile cars have improved in in cleanliness but and safety but traffic fatalities have nearly tripled in the city since 2015 just hitting through this that this crisis isn't inevitable and clark county doesn't have to repeat it a data-driven strategy one that improves vehicles and roadways rather than restricting them is a much better route to go and he gives some conclusions which i don't have time to go into but rather than blindly following portland's failed example you have an opportunity to build a system in clark county that actually works central to that is stop planning new rail transit lines or dedicated busways instead redesign the bus system to actually serve people and they have he has very specific recommendations some of these i agree with

15:49 these i don't but i think they're well worth considering thank you thank you next up bruce barnes good evening board and my name is bruce barnes for the record um first and foremost i want to address something that has uh been brought to my attention from an article on clark county today uh counselor fuentes is under an investigation for ethics violations and i don't think he should have any voting power on this board period until that's resolved similar to kim harless in her situation she actually went through the whole process took her lumps like a man and i think that that's the way this should be as well because i don't think that anybody that is that is funding themselves with county taxpayer dollars

16:49 and double dipping should be on this board thank you for that secondly i took a trip up to marysville yesterday and ate breakfast uh along the light rail system where the maximum amount of people that were on that light rail were 13 people the minimum were four watched 16 of the trains go by it was just like what are we doing here i mean i do like the way they did the above ground light rail because it definitely uh saves space but they also put in these just massive light rail stations like you see down in los angeles right which is is pointless when there's you know seven people standing out there um i think it's a waste of money i think it's a huge waste of money i also ask at this board for them to uh research with the ibr team how many pillars are on that bridge and what is it going to take to actually put those pillars in if we can only be in the the water system for three and a half months at a time that's that's a deciding factor of how long this project actually takes and

17:49 i'd like to know where all that money was spent ahead of this with the ibr team i'd like an itemized uh example of where that money was spent i mean we have already spent millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars on something that hasn't even had a shovel full of dirt yet and so those are my huge concerns here i mean all these counties are going away from electric garbage trucks uh lg gas garbage trucks my friend buys garbage trucks that's what i was in marysville for uh bought a brand new garbage truck from 2017 didn't even have 74 000 miles on it looked like it was brand new for 2500 they're getting rid of these things he's selling them to the city of gresham for 46 000 right he just bought 14 more today in utah they're going down to los angeles because they're still using the lg gas ones the problem is is the state of washington has shut all those facilities down there's only two gas stations up in seattle that you can even get lg gas at you know what i mean

18:49 and you got to be trained to fill the truck up so anybody that buys them has got to be trained to be able to use that lg gas phillips station but gasoline and diesel are never going away i mean i think everybody in this room is probably smoking crack cocaine if they think so it's it's an impossibility people need to get to work i i couldn't get to work if i was still working in the trades so anyways i appreciate your time thank you thank you bruce anybody uh online no sir all right and we will move along to the consent items my name is william burke and um i'm coming in at this time with a couple of requests that might not be voiced by the staff but um they really want the uh employee appreciation day

19:49 back again i guess there was an employee appreciation day that people that rode on the routes could you know make contributions or whatever directly to i don't know how that worked out but it's my understanding that's been kind of faded out doesn't exist anymore so that was something that you know the the morale that's um out there with the drivers and stuff like that there's a loss there there's a loss they're feeling like the picnics you guys used to have and stuff like that just isn't there so i said i'd be the voice and i'd put that out um in regards to the air filtration system i appreciate what you've done for me um but with regards to the um filters that go inside the uh thermo king on the gilligs and on the free flyers could you partner with another district that uses the same models in order to save you guys money because they're replacing

20:49 on those is every six months um basically every 10 000 miles or something like that but with the variants in the covid and other pathogens that are becoming um more introduced into our system right now it's very important for those uh filtration systems on those buses to really be doing their job because they'll affect the drivers the drivers won't be able to make it and they'll be out sick and that just puts the stress on um you know the other drivers that have to fill in and it becomes a human resources problem that it's actually work comp so if it's something that's not preventing them from harm's way and it makes them sick it actually is a work comp issue and it needs to be looked at like that so so i think if if you could partner with another district in purchasing those bulk you know and then making the logistics a distribution

21:49 something aftermath but in getting those prices down because they're about 40 bucks each for the free flyer the large ones this is really all i have to say but thank you for hearing me thanks for coming in all right next up we have the consent consent items was there anything that anybody would like to pull from the consent agenda do you want to hear a second i'll second there we go we got a motion and a second and all those in favor aye aye opposed okay we are going to move on to action items contract award electronic access control replacement staff report 26-039 julie thank you filling in for tim tonight so i'm going to try to get through his notes the best i can

22:49 um so 26 staff report 26-39 is requesting the replacement of c-trans existing amag electronic access control system which currently incorporates secured electronic access controls to 70 interior and exterior doors and vehicles gates across c-trans facility infrastructure and provides seven additional access control points doors and gates in the administrative building on the 65th campus in 2024 an assessment of the access control points and gates in the administrative building the assessment of our current electronic access control system was conducted by hargis engineers who identified vulnerabilities associated with our system including proximity card technology and unencrypted communication between the card readers and access control panels the assessment also identified aging and malfunctioning readers and limitations with the existing amag symmetry software and potential access control performance during network outages these conditions increase the risk

23:48 of unauthorized access and reduce the reliability and effectiveness of c-trans facility infrastructure based on the results of that assessment c-trans issued an rfp in may 2026 for the replacement improvement of its existing electronic access control system c-tran received a total of four proposals as listed in the staff report and based on the evaluation results and the proposer's ability to meet the requirements of the rfp convergent technologies is the recommended provider for the eacs improvements the total cost of the proposed contract is not expected to exceed 455 700 of over the course of the six-year contract term this amount includes an assumption for washington state sales tax and a ten percent contingency for capital expenditures the contract covers the capital costs for hardware installation and five years of licensing support and warranty costs and this is covered in our adopted 20 25 20 30 capital budget under the

24:46 line item for the c-tran 2030 2045 agency initiatives any future budget will be addressed when we do the next budget development process so in conclusion we are requesting that the c-tran board of directors authorizes the chief executive officer to execute a contract with convergent technologies for the electronic access control replacement project at a cost not to exceed 455 700 over the contract term so again happy to answer any questions yes i've got a question with regards to this the way that society is turning into you don't own anything anymore what i'm curious about is you said that the licensing is for five years what happens after that do we still own the equipment are we going to have to pay additional funds for them to work the system or anything like that or is it going to be that we flat out own it and it will continue to operate without any expense to the

25:45 the company i believe in this case we are purchasing the equipment so the licensing would be for the software the back end system that supports it okay and so are we going to have to continue to pay to to receive updates to that software yes that there is an ongoing cost component to that piece yes okay whereas the system that we have now i'm do we yes we do this this is an extension of the existing system it's just basically updating it bringing it uh asset maintenance so to speak okay just static curiosity were there any rfps that didn't have any kind of a software system that we had to subscribe to not for these types of for the electronic controls you're always going to have the back end system to manage for the badging and what have okay all right thank you thank you chair um thanks julie uh two questions one of them is um as per um the previous question

26:45 um by commissioner young um it looks as though the contract covers the cost of hardware installation and then the five years of licensing as you describe it but not ongoing software upgrades it's all built and then i'm going to invite staff because i am covering for tim on this so i don't have all the details but it's it's not it's the ongoing support which includes those the regular updates and whatnot that you would get okay so it's all built in okay thank you and then um secondly for the not to exceed 455 000 that includes the 10 contingency correct yes is is there a provision to have this come underneath that this is not to exhibit is there a provision for it to come underneath it that cost yeah contingencies are not built into our contracts those are there if there is a need to um you get vandalism on equipment or something happens you have the ability to replace if we discover there's a door

27:45 that we needed to secure for threat or vulnerability we would be able to add equipment to a door that's generally what we do with the contingency is for those um minor changes or adjustments that we have to reconfigure for a particular in this case for a potential access point so is there an incentive for the contractor cut to come in underneath and not succeed they don't get the not to exceed amount they what we will award to the contractor is going to not include that 10 percent got it so that 10 percent is only for ctrans use for an unforeseen condition thank you any other discussion or questions do i hear a motion motion to approve action item number one call

28:45 contract award electronic access control replacement number 26-039 second we have a motion and a second no further discussion all those in favor say aye aye opposed moving forward to i action item number two fourth plane extension bus rapid transit brt expansion project property acquisition authorization staff report 26-40 board resolution br 26-006 newton parker thank you chair members of the board as you know we've been working hard on advancing the design for the fourth plane extension project we just completed our 60 design review both internally and externally with the city staff we are on target to be at 90 by the end of the year and then we will be seeking permits by q1 of 2027. as such we would like to start the right-of-way acquisition process

29:45 this is the same process that we used for highway 19 highway 99 and the mill plane brt project i will note that it is contingent on us completing our nipa process we are um excuse me on schedule to complete that by the end of the year as well there are 17 files for fourth plane extension that's about half of what we had on highway 99. so the proposal before you this evening is that the c-tran board authorized the ceo and c-trans staff to negotiate for the property acquisitions along the fourth plane brt project corridor by adopting board resolution br26-006 questions answering questions right is the totality of this the extension within the vancouver city limits yes okay

30:43 any other questions do i hear a motion did i hear one motion to approve uh fourth plan extension brt expansion project property acquisition authorization staff report 26-040 second and we have a motion and a second by councilmember harless um all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed excellent moving forward action item number three mill plane bus rapid transit uh brt project chakalov westbound station property acquisition authorization staff report 26-041 board resolution br26-007 randy you're up again thank you so this should sound familiar this is similar to the

31:42 previous resolution um except this is for the uh chakalov westbound station on mill plane um we want to again start the right-of-way acquisition process this project's a little bit ahead of fourth plane extension we're at about 75 level of design um the nipa end of it is completed that was part of the original mill plane project so we don't have to wait for that but we could start legal descriptions and um appraisals straight away after if assuming this gets approved so um there are two files on this project so that should help so the proposal before you this evening is that the c-tran board authorizes the ceo and c-trans staff to negotiate for property acquisitions for the chakalov westbound station by adopting board resolution br-26-007 question from the directors

32:40 to approve action item number three second we have a motion in a second to approve further discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed moving forward into communications and i don't have any communications does the board have a motion to approve this motion um we're quite grouped tonight ryan helps out i'll help you out um no i let's see it wasn't this past week in the weekend before um i signed up to do the 10k at the portland marathon and i had an errand to run uh downtown vancouver so i was like you know what i'm just gonna you know i'm gonna ride the bus and then do the transfer down at delta park and and

33:34 ride uh uh the light rail in just to see what that experience was and i mean admittedly it it took longer than if i had driven but i didn't know what to expect because of the uh i-5 construction at the rose quarter um but the biggest takeaway for me was uh especially on the southbound trip the coach operator was awesome and you know clearly i i didn't tell him that i was a board member or anything like that i just walked on and uh he was super helpful to a lot of people and um i don't they just really stood out to me and it's just a testament to the quality of our people so it worked excellent any others all right let's hear from our chief executive officer thank you chair and board uh this week we want to it was a moment to recognize our customer service team so i want to thank the customer service for everything that you've done for us thank you so much for joining us today and i want to thank all of you for joining us today and thank you so much for joining us today and

34:29 everything that they do for c-tran and making uh our customers our community uh able to ride rides um we celebrated them last week with conjunction with national customer service week but with the reality is that the team is taking care of our writers and community 365 days a year throughout the week our representatives enjoyed some special treats in the call center including a coffee bar and soda bar that was uh sponsored by the management team they all seem to like their small gestures but they're on one way we can make sure our employees feel seen valued and appreciated just as they work every day to make our writers feel supported so thank you again to the customer service last month we had our c-tran hosted our own local rodeo for the first time in more than a decade it was a great opportunity for team building while also showcasing the skills of our operators and maintenance team members events like this give employees an opportunity to demonstrate their skills challenge themselves and have fun with their colleagues a big thank you to

35:29 all the c-tran employees who volunteered their time to make this event possible i also want to thank the visiting transit agencies that came out to support us and compete and a special thank you to our college for allowing us to use the parking lot on its main campus for the driving portion of the event this was a success and we look forward to continuing this tradition moving forward and last one and then this past week i was had the opportunity to travel to chicago for the apta transform conference i also attended the people forward leadership reception with dr carol parka walsh who whom we continue to work with it's always valuable to connect with transit colleagues from across the country hear what others are doing and share some of the great work happening here at c-tran in the southwest washington area i also was honored to be able to be a part of dr carroll's people forward leadership podcast to share a little of my own story and more importantly highlight the incredible team we have here at c-tran one message that can

36:28 continue to resonate with me when we empower people to grow and thrive in their individual individual roles we elevate the entire organization so i came away this week with a proud work that we're doing and excited about the opportunities we have ahead and that is all excellent just real quick could you help us with the acronym apta i'm sorry american public transportation association so it's all transportation it can even go to not just uh transit it can either be air air uh filled or um other rail thank you sorry yes so there's a there's rail at conferences that happen as well during different throughout the year next up we can hear from legal hong um i don't have any update but thank you for asking chair all right

37:22 all right all right well then we will move into the executive session executive session rcw 42.30.1101g to evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for the public employment or to review the performance of a public employee there'll be no action taken in the opens there will be no action taken in open session uh time is estimated at 20 minutes and the second which is executive session rcw 42.30.1101 is the executive session rcw 42.30.1101g if needed litigation or legal risks of a proposed action or current practice that the agency has identified when public discussion of the litigation or legal risk is likely to result in an adverse legal or financial consequence to the agency there will be no action taken in open session time is estimated at 20 minutes and it is right now 607 so 40 minutes would be 647. and we will go into executive session

38:20 rcw 42.30.1101g