City Council Study Session

- Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening. This is a special meeting of the city of Martinez City Council. It is Wednesday, March 6th, and it's 5:33 PM. This meeting has officially been called to order. City clerk, can you please call the roll. - Councilmember Jay Howard. - Here. - Councilmember Mark Ross is running late. He will be here. Next we have Councilmember Satinder Malhi. - Here. - [City Clerk] Vice Mayor Debbie McKillop. - Present. - [City Clerk] Mayor Brianne Zorn. - Present. Excellent. All right, well this evening's meeting, we only have one special meeting item, therefore public comment will be after the presentation. The meeting item agenda tonight is the Contra Costa Transportation Authority's Feasibility Study for Expanded Ferry Service. So I'm gonna pass this over to the city manager to start us off this evening. - Okay, thank you Mayor Zorn. Tonight we have Ying Smith, director of mobility operations for Contra Costa Transportation Authority. This has been a many, many months process to probably a year plus to bring this home. This is a partnership between several cities in Contra Costa, including Antioch, Hercules, Pittsburgh, and Martinez to evaluate the potential for ferry service along this northern waterfront corridor. And Ying has a project update to get everybody up to speed before this comes before CCTA in the coming weeks. So with that, I'll turn it over to Ying Smith with CCTA. - Thank you Mike. Good evening Mayor and Councilmembers. Again, I'm Ying Smith, director of mobility programs from Contra Cost Transportation Authority or CCTA. So here would like, happy to give you a report on the highlight of the study. Just a little bit background, we all know that today we have one passenger ferry service in Contra Costa County. That's from between Richmond and San Francisco downtown. And that was based on a study that CCTA led in 2015. And it's funded by our local sales tax, Measure J sales tax. And it's operated by WETA, the San Francisco Bay Ferry, and the service is also supplemented by the RM 3, Regional Measure 3 money. So this is a service we have since 2019. It's a very good benchmark that we have and that serves the entire Contra Costa County and especially in the West County. So as Mike mentioned, that there is strong interest in the communities in Contra Costa County to expand that ferry service. The four cities, Hercules, moving from west to east, Hercules, Martinez, Pittsburgh, and Antioch. And this current study is also championed by the County Board of Supervisors, especially with Supervisor Federal Glover. So here, the study is also funded by these five agencies, the county and the four cities. So including City of Martinez. CCTA took the lead in managing this study and we started in April this year. And today I would like to give you an overview of what we have accomplished. And this is like kind of the agenda where we'll go through, and feel free to stop me if you have questions or we can just keep the questions at the end. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Oh, this is better. Closer to the mic. So overall the project have four main task, ranging from data collection to the initial evaluation, to the cost estimate and then also the report production. You can see we are in the spring. We have finished all the analysis, we are doing the presentation with all the different stakeholders as well as wrapping up the final report. Here, just wanna give you overview. This is the location. The current services are all centered around, granted from San Francisco to the west of San Francisco with our operate service to several East Bay cities, including Richmond. And in Contra Costa County, the four cities that have the interest in the ferry service expansion. The way we do the study, we can see as a simple benefit-cost analysis. On the benefit side we look at the ridership potential. We also look at other benefits to the communities more than just the riders. We also look at the environmental benefits of reducing car trips. On the cost side, we look at the operating cost and the capital costs is separated by landside, waterside, a contribution to the operations and maintenance facility, as well as the vessel procurement. We also look at the need for some locations, the need for initial dredging, as well as the annual maintenance dredging activities. So I'm gonna walk you through the different elements here. First is the demand potential or potential ridership. We, instead of running a ridership projection model, we look at different factors. The reason why we didn't run the demand model is because after pandemic, the travel pattern has been very unstable and we still don't think we're at the point that it is stable enough for us to run the model to give us credible outcome. So instead we look at a long list of factors, including the travel demand to San Francisco, including the transit travel times. The third one is driving travel times, which is a little bit confusing, it's actually how competitive a ferry service is compared to driving as we measure the travel time. We also look at the land use, both in residential and housing developments, the existing and future development. We also look at existing transit connections as well as active transportation connections. - Really quickly before we move on, what is under the word ferry? It's just blocked by the inset image. - Oh. Oh, so that is... Yeah. (City Manager speaks indistinctly) Yeah, it actually says City of Martinez. - [Mayor Zorn] Okay, great. Thank you. - That's such a good point. I don't wanna miss that. We first mentioned Richmond, right? We used Richmond as a benchmark for us to compare. So this is a more qualitative methodology rather than quantitative. We look at each factor, whether for example, the travel demand for City of Martinez, whether you are likely to outperform or underperform compared to Richmond. So the color works in the way that all the blue colors means for that factor, City of Martinez will perform better than Richmond for that factor. The gray color means you're at about the same level. The orange color means for that factor, the city underperforms. So the next one also give you overview of the cost. We look at, as I mentioned, landside, waterside, contribution to a new maintenance facility. And that's how we add those up. So I just wanna go through the methodology very quickly. Now we can jump to... Oh, one more thing is the dredging. So this is the more technical details, like what factors we look at, what assumptions we make when we calculate the dredging cost. So I know you're eager to get to the conclusion. Oh, one more. It's on the service. So the operating cost is an annual cost. It's ongoing, right? So Richmond is at about $10 million per year, currently. When we look at how we calculate the operating cost, we look at two vessel types. One is what WETA recommends, the Dorado model. This is a bigger ferry. And the other option is operated by Prop SF. It's a private company. They are currently under contract with WETA. In their vessel family there's a smaller vessel type. So we kind of look at two different sizes. They're quite different. In terms of service level, we identified three. We do need to set on, like assume some service levels. And this is the service that's a direct service from Martinez to San Francisco and back. There are other options when a ferry can pick up an additional stop. We don't wanna complicate things in this calculation. We just want to keep this as a two terminal kind of service model. There are three levels you can consider. If we actually start with level three, that's all day, both weekday and weekend. That is what Richmond service is today. And that's the highest level, we assume. Level two is all day on weekdays only. And level three is probably more like a minimum, is weekday peak service only. So we wanna give you different price tags in our operating cost estimate. And here's the pictures of the two different vessels. And the key thing is they are different in sizes. The Dorado model is 320 passenger versus the Billie J is 70. The speeds, the operating speeds are very similar. They don't really make a difference in terms of total travel time. Cost is another factor. The Dorado model is $21 million to purchase, the Billie J is 3 million. And travel time is an important factor. For the service between San Francisco and Martinez it will be about 60 minutes. So that includes passenger loading time and like the time for the vessel to slow down. In any of the service levels, you will need four vessels to run the service. So now here's the results. On the first benefit, the demand potential. You can see the top four factors, Martinez will likely underperform. But the next, a whole bunch of factors, you'll be at at about the same level as Richmond. In terms of job density as well as transit connections, Martinez will likely outperform Richmond. So we have some narrative to conclude. The key, I think the advantage for Martinez is overall has a strong transit connection as well namely you have the Amtrak and also three agencies, the bus agencies actually all merge their services right at the Amtrak station. And the existing potential development density would likely to be higher than Richmond. We think that's a plus. And if no questions I'm going to just jump to, and other benefits, we actually will ask city staff to keep fill in more details for us, 'cause we not only want to look at the ridership as the hard number, we also want to look at the economic development benefits and waterfront access. And I'm sure your staff will have really good input for us to help us put it in the final report. So here's the annual operating cost. This is all in 2023 dollars. And you can see if we look at the least expensive will be service level one using the Prop SF model. That's at about $10.6 million per year. The highest level will be using the WETA Dorado vessel, go up to level three, which is same level as the Richmond service today. That will bring you up to $32.6 million per year. We also list a number of trips on the bottom and just keep in mind, we talk about the capital cost, right? The capital cost is like you have to build certain things so make ferry service happen. Once you run the service, you can address your service level based on the demand. You can start lower and as the ridership picks up, you can move up, like increase the level of service. So those number give you an idea. Doesn't mean that it has to be this level for this vessel type. And then we want to talk about capital cost. There's actually quite a bit of detailed calculations, but I think for today's meeting maybe you're more interested in the big number. If we use a Dorado vessel, that will be about $41 million to build the capital cost. That is the total of landside, waterside, as well as the contribution to the operating and maintenance facility. If we will use the Prop SF model, the vessel, that'll be roughly $30 million. What will be really costly will be the cost of the vessel purchase. That is as high as $101 million or could be as low as $40 million. So those are all the upfront cost for ferry service to happen. And I know this evening, you will consider the waterfront plan and I think for our study it's very preliminary. So we actually haven't even identified where the passenger facility will be. But it's in that general area. It is not specific. So let's touch on a little bit on dredging costs. There is an initial cost of about $1.1 million for the bigger vessel and 750 K for the smaller Billie J model. There will be ongoing and new dredging needs, about roughly 210,000. So all we just talk about are the costs, right? Now let's move to funding. How we come up with the cost. This is really high level. We want to just show you there are different funding sources at the federal, state and regional as well as local levels. And what we highlighted the two fund sources from the FTA, Federal Transit Administration. Those are special set aside for ferry services. So some of the other transit funds, the ferry service will have to compete with bus and rail. But those two fund sources, the Passenger Ferry Grant Program as well as the electric one for the ferry boats, those are set aside for ferry services. So in a way, ferry has more grant funds available to them, but the project has to be more advanced to be able to tap into or compete in some of the fund programs. So I just will bring to you our timeline. As Mike mentioned, we do plan to do other stakeholder meetings at this time and then bring to our board to give them a final report at the April meeting. And one thing, like kind of what is after the study. I would just want to just give you a quick update on WETA's pilot program. This is pretty new. They don't have a lot of details. WETA set aside $2 million in the current fiscal year for pilot services. Their board has formed a subcommittee to guide staff on how to implement future pilot projects. We have close conversations with WETA staff and as well as their executive director. So we anticipate there will be a guidance document that we can collaborate with them on. So we provide some guidance on how to roll out one or two, a few pilots in the next two years. So we want to show you some recent or upcoming pilot projects in other parts of the Bay area. So there is a hope in terms of how we can move forward with our own service in Contra Costa County. So yeah, our next step is to really engage WETA in the pilot program and be able to position our cities to be in a competitive position to become one of the future pilots. I think that concludes my presentation and happy to answer your questions. - Thank you so much for the presentation. I remember as we said when we walked in tonight, I remember meeting you a year and a half ago when we kicked this process off. So it's so nice to see it, get an update to us. So thank you very much. One quick question, then I'll open up to my colleagues and to members of the public. Based on the final report that you give, will the recommendations for the pilot study, are you going to be recommending one city over another or is it gonna be all in? Or what exactly are your parameters for the recommendations? - I think for this study itself, we're not going to move so far to recommend a pilot because we do have WETA for their process to play out. But we think the next step is for us to engage them. And then, so far the conversation is in a way that we don't think that WETA or CCTA will have to pick one. Really it has to be a collaborative process with the cities that are interested in the pilot and there has to be contribution from all parties. Any successful ferry services, they have funding from different sources like federal, state, and local, right? We see that as more like a winning formula. So this study itself will not recommend a pilot. We would think it would be the next step when we work with WETA, to work with all of you, to hopefully we have at least one winner. - And so as far as the costs go, the dredging page was clearly a local cost, but there didn't really necessarily appear in any of the slides a specific local share. So that's kind of a preliminary statement that there will likely have to be some sort of local match or local contribution. But you didn't really split up in any of the slides except for dredging, is that correct? - Right. Yeah, that's correct. Thanks for pointing it out. Any of the costs, we haven't talked about how to fund it yet. Those are just costs. And I think we don't necessarily have to assume 'cause there's so many line items, right? It's too early to assume who pays for what. We do, like between our regional agencies and local agencies, we do want to have a winning project to move forward to the state and federal level and get grant funding. We haven't seen a successful model that doesn't rely on federal funding. - Right. Right. Okay. Well thank you for that. I have a few other questions but I'll open it up. Would anyone else like to ask her any questions? Do you have any? - Thank you. You know the scorecard that you shared with the benefits, the color coded circles. So you had just discussed that for Martinez. So my question is, you did this for each of the other cities with Hercules and Pittsburgh and Antioch. Was there any kind of comparison to show at this point which city has, you know, better leverage to have ferry service? Is it more attractive at one of the cities than the others based on the scorecard? 'Cause it doesn't include that for the other cities. - Yeah, due to brevity and trying to keep length of presentations down, staff removed from the presentation that analysis for the other jurisdictions. So I apologize for that. I will say, and Ying can add to that, every city was a little bit different. So cities are a little bit stronger in one area and a little bit weaker in the other. So there wasn't an overarching outcome where one was across the board stronger than the other cities. Generally speaking, the study was really demonstrating that there's challenges that each of the cities is going to face associated with providing ferry service. - Okay, thank you. So I would imagine that the scorecard, the evaluation, I'm calling it a scorecard, would be something that would be, you know, will be scrutinized. And you mentioned in your presentation that when evaluating some of these, one of the concerns was having enough residents or having a higher density of residents within a certain walking distance of the ferry service. And you mentioned about future construction or what the future might look like. So I'm just curious, how is it that you evaluated what the future would look like in the downtown area, 15 minute walking, if, were you provided information about the type of zoning we have and some of our future ideas for bringing some additional housing to the downtown area? How did you rate that? - Yeah, that's a very good question. Yeah, we actually got the information from city staff and we also review the draft waterfront plan. So those are all taken into consideration on the future run. I know it probably doesn't quite show up in the scorecard properly, but those documents were reviewed. Your zoning, your general plan. I just want to add, since you talk about like within the walking distance, it's actually many ferry terminals, it's hard to do, they are not within walking distance. Some of you probably are familiar with Seattle, they have many, many ferry services, but the terminal is not close to downtown. So there's always, we have to consider how to connect people to where they live or where they want to go and to the ferry boat, right? So we do have a chapter, that's again details, right? To talk about the first-last mile connection. Our team is pretty creative. We want to look at transit, we want to look at bike and pad. We also want to look at some of the newer solutions like some of you probably know CCTA's share autonomous vehicle. That can be one of the solutions. And even autonomous driving. So we want to like really bring that information even though we're not planning the details, but the solutions can be pretty creative. Just because we cannot bring the housing all the way to the waterfront, you know, for some good reasons, doesn't mean that we cannot connect people to the ferry service. - So in your final report, will there be some sort of recommendation that would, like say for Martinez in particular, what things that we can do in the future to have, you know, better leverage us as a, you know, the best selected. So, you know, so that we know where maybe our shortcomings are so that we know how to plan for the future to demonstrate that we're willing to, you know, make some sort of change to, you know, be lined up better, be more in alignment with what they're looking for as a, you know, selected site. - Yeah, yeah. That's a very good suggestion. Thank you. We will. - Okay. Thank you. And I'll let my colleagues ask some questions. - Thank you so much for the presentation. I found it very informative. So, a couple of questions, but one of the things I was gonna just mention at the outset. So in a former life I worked for then State Senator DeSaulnier when he was chair of the Senate Transportation Committee in Sacramento, as Transportation and Housing Committee I should say. And so at that time, WETA was in, WETA, the Water Emergency Transportation Authority, for those who may not be familiar with the acronym, they were in the process of developing their long range development plan. This was now over 10 years ago. Martinez, Hercules, Antioch were not in the equation at that time. And I was actually the lead staff at that time to make sure that hey, while there may not be funds today, you know, that doesn't mean that they should be completely ruled out. And so we were able to make sure that all of these communities were in there. And so I just say that just as background because I'm glad to see that, you know, it was because of those efforts years ago now that, you know, it kind of helped, we're having this conversation today about, you know, feasibility now and we're going into it a little bit more. And so, but one thing I noticed on the presentation, at the outset you mentioned the initial ferry service assessment approach and you talked about the benefits and the costs. I didn't see anything really leaning into the emergency transit, emergency transportation aspect because I feel like that's an overlooked feature. I mean WETA, that's in their agency's name. They are the Water Emergency Transportation Authority. And so, I think just, you know, for what it's worth, I really feel like the communities along the northern waterfront here, it would behoove us to, you know, highlight that, because we had that same conversation 10 years ago when we were fighting to make sure that Martinez was in the long range development plan for WETA. If there is a catastrophic earthquake, it's not a question of if, but when, sadly, many of the freeways, the key arteries may be offline for a little bit. And so we're really gonna need to lean into alternative modes of transportation to keep, you know, our economy moving. And so I would think that, you know, having ferry service, expanded ferry service in all parts of the Bay Area is something that we should all be focused on collectively as a region. So I just wanted to put that out there 'cause I felt like that aspect wasn't really highlighted in the presentation, so. And I appreciate Councilwoman McKillop's question pertaining to the residential density 'cause it does seem like that is a factor in terms of if we want to draw ferry service, and I know I'm very supportive of it, but we gotta have the population center to kind of, to help support that and make the service pan out financially. It's really important. You did mention in the presentation about the City of Alameda and that they had looked at, I guess, putting forward a public-private partnership. Can you talk a little bit more about that, what that looks like? Do you have any information on that? Because I'm kind of curious to see if maybe there's something there that we could perhaps emulate in some way. - Yeah, I have. Yeah, thank you for the comments and the background. On the, I have very limited information because this was a pretty new. What my understanding is the City of Alameda's contribution has something to do with that development and they already have a service. Now they're interested in more service at that particular location. I'm happy to like find out more information 'cause it was a little bit last minute, I would say, it was just in the last one and a half month we get additional information on the pilot. And we heard they just formed a subcommittee and the subcommittee met once. There's really nothing in writing for us. So this is like what we can gather for you. But I'm happy to like really get more detail so we can all learn from their experience. - All right, that'd be great if you could just share that with our staff. We can get that over to us. And then the last bit that I had here was I appreciated the federal, the funding outline. That was really helpful. So hopefully, you know, we have a contract grant writer now that we've employed. So I hope that we can look at some of those funding opportunities to help us, especially as we're getting ready to approve our waterfront master plan revitalization. Did I say that right? It's a mouthful. And then one other thing that somebody had mentioned to me a while ago, and I wasn't sure how viable this was, but you know, obviously there are significant challenges with getting a ferry service up and running. And as you mentioned, you know, you can start low and then continue to scale up as the demand or you know, increases. And I was just given, just curious, you know, kind of given the advent in ferry technology, I know that there's different boats now that are out there. Has there any thought been given to maybe if we're starting small, you know, doing a connector to let's say Vallejo, which is fairly close by to us, and then having that be like a transfer point to then go on to San Francisco, is that something that has been looked at as part of your study? - We looked at the travel demand between Martinez and Vallejo. This is like the same kind of big data chip table we looked at. It's not very strong. In theory one can run the service. It's the travel time that may be a factor, 'cause for someone to travel to Vallejo and come back to San Francisco, that would be quite a long journey. And every time if the ferry makes a additional stop, it is about a 20 minute penalty, 'cause they have to slow down, passenger boarding, and pick up the speed. So WETA runs a service that is San Francisco, Oakland to Alameda. It's like a little triangle. It makes sense in that case. And it's short distance, right? In the longer case, additional stop is doable. But we just have to consider the penalty for the first group of passengers got on. And did I answer your question right? - Yeah, no, I think you did. I didn't think about that added time of like docking and unloading and loading the passengers. So I think your point's well taken. So thank you for expanding on that. Thank you. I have no further questions. - Thank you for your report. It's very informative. So is, I mean Richmond seems like kind of the gold standard that we're comparing ourselves to. That's wonderful. Is Richmond profitable or it needs federal funding? - It does. It's needs heavily subsidized. Currently the Richmond ferry is funded by Measure J, our own local sales tax, plus Regional Measure 3. And when we did the study, with the standard is we'll have a 40% ferry box recovery. So that means the ferry box have to cover 40% of the cost. But because of pandemic they cannot really insist on that policy now. Currently the Richmond ferry is about 10% recovery from the ferry box. So it still requires subsidy. - Yeah, yeah. You know, I think we all are excited about a ferry. I just wonder if it's going to be able to carry its weight, so to speak, and if we're gonna get it funded of course. And I know that everybody compares it differently, right? I think that we excel in parking and infrastructure, right? But yeah, I'm excited about the bike paths, you know, getting in and out. And what type of ridership are we going to need to make ours viable? - I think if WETA still insists on the 40% recovery, the ferry has to be pretty full. I don't have the exact numbers but since the reason why we didn't do it is because they're not insistent on that policy. They're revisiting it. So we don't have that number to work with. And at the beginning I mentioned that we didn't run the ridership projection model because the current model is really before pandemic, right? And today's post pandemic, we think it's stabilized now, but no one knows for sure and the modelers haven't updated to reflect how people travel the remote work and also San Francisco is not drawing as many trips as it did before. It's quite a drop that affects, like in a way today's not the best time to do the study, but it could be the best time. 'Cause when you look at all the regional services, BART and ferry, they're all down, right? And Golden Gate Transit, they're all down. But doesn't mean that it won't come back up, right? It probably just, it's just matter of time. So we don't have the ferry, the ridership projection, I would say, to answer your question, we probably need to really move to the pilot and run some numbers. And when we have more data and really focus on one location. On the pilot, the concept is not necessary about ridership. Just a little bit more detail. It could be an opportunity to test new ferry technology. We didn't touch on that this evening 'cause it's just quite a bit of information. We did look at the zero emission, even though we don't have anything ready, like there's no technology ready. But there are several of them under consideration. WETA is very active in testing different ferry technologies. So they hope use the pilot could be several things they can test. The ferry technology could be one of the things they can test at certain locations. So we, at least from CCTA staff's knowledge what we understand, the pilots where we can like really pay, should pay attention to and see how that works out. And really be in close conversations with WETA, both at the staff level as well as with among our elected officials. - [Councilmember Howard] Very good. Thank you. - Do they allow dogs? (people chuckle) - Did everyone see that you came in with a dog? - I came in with a dog anyway, which I have got assigned babysitting duty. One question I do have on the figures that I looked at before, did they include the Concord Naval Weapons Station population that may someday be coming as part of the study? - Yeah, the land use projection for 2050, that's included. But we did it in a more qualitative way. It's included but we're not doing the projection. So anything that's in the 2050 horizon that is included in our study. - What's been the usual downfall of most ferry systems, aside from lack of ridership? I mean, usually there's a reason for a lack of ridership? What is the major reason or two that causes these enterprises to fail? - I think the... Let me put it this way, the most successful model, you have intense land use for people to at least, either both on the job side and the residential side or both, right? And geography comes into play. That's why we have a map. The map is important 'cause at some locations the ferry is a direct service, while your land route is more going around, right, some barriers. So the geography may come into play to say, wow, if you run a ferry, you have a more direct service to the destination. So those are the good model that also contribute to ridership. And I don't want to pick on dredging alone, but Martinez doesn't have the most challenging dredging situation, some cities do. And that is not only the initial cost, but the ongoing cost. So that adds to your annual cost. When we talk about Richmond's ferry, we talk about like $10 million to run it. It doesn't have a dredging need, right? If you add another $2 million in dredging, I'm just throwing the number, so that really add to their operating costs. So the money not only go, you have to pay for not only running the boats back and forth, the labor and fuel, right? You have to pay for that cost at a pretty high price. So again, Martinez doesn't have the highest dredging costs. So in a way it's a good thing. - Thank you. - Before I open it up to public comment, I did have one follow up. So I find that, just so we, I don't know if you heard us giggling about the dredging costs because you know, we talk about dredging our marina quite regularly because we do have, you know, issues with siltation. There's several people here that have boats in our marina who've been very frustrated over the years that, you know, can't get out of the marina at low tide, right? So that dredging is a important word in Martinez. Back to the slide where you have how we perform against Richmond. To use dredging as an example. That's something that we have control over. Is there anything else that we underperformed that you can report to us today that the council might be able to make changes or invest in moving forward? Because obviously, you know, WETA's not moving forward tomorrow, but are there items that we might have control over that you'd encourage us to put more effort or invest in? - So the scorecard, thanks for that name. I think we should call it that, rather than the color-coded thing, right? We should call it scorecard. It actually only deals with the demands potential. And so the cost side, like landside, so the city has control. We're not saying you have to pay for all of it, but with your waterfront plan, that's something you can do to like help with the access, the parking, right, get those ready. And you already mentioned the land use side, to intensify your land use to resupport the waterfront. And I know you already have quite a bit of activities. The waterfront is pretty active. That's definitely a plus. In terms of what, granted we cannot do much about dredging besides the cost. So travel time, that's something you have no control over. So it is what it is. And I think it's just, I appreciate what you said, is like what the city can influence or can control, focus on those. Political support. Even though we don't put it on the slide, we all know that's super important to have that consistent support from all of you, from others and from your community. That will be really important. - Thank you. I know that you have the political support up here and I'm gonna open up to public comment and we'll see how it goes. We hear this all the time about people who are so interested in ferry service. We're always being asked, you know, the question. So it's very satisfying that we've at least made it this far, which I think is quite a bit further than we've made it in the past couple of decades talking about this. So thank you. All right. So I only have one speaker card but I know that there's at least a couple of people who are interested in speaking. So I'll start with Eileen Jones, and then if anyone else would like to speak, just raise your hand and I'll call on you. (no audio) - Oh that wasn't on. Oh, so you didn't even hear that I moved 32 times. - I heard you. - Just online people that- - (laughs) But I'm now here in Martinez with my husband and we love Martinez. One of my concerns is of course the financial. And we in Martinez would be paying for a bulk of this, I would imagine, with whatever it is. And the police force for one, whom I have deepest regards for, there would have to be an increased police force. They already are full, I believe. And so there would be more with security down at the marina if it is a successful venture. Not to mention the roads also, streetlights downtown. I would imagine that would also be part of Martinez's expense. But I thought it was a really interesting presentation and yeah, if we could swing it, if it's possible to do it. There's also the air quality. We already have the refinery with the problems with that, with cars coming, I do not see it being, the ferry being successful because of pedestrians walking from our area down there to catch it. So it would be people driving to the ferry station. - Or bicycling. - That's my feeling on that. And thank you Councilmembers. I think all of your questions were great. So you answered, my questions were answered because of yours. You're all very good. So thank you. - I half interrupted while you were talking, but I want us to remember that cars aren't the only way that you can travel. You can travel by bicycle and there's also, as she mentioned, CCTA has autonomous vehicles. There's potentially bus service. So if we keep thinking. Yeah, think big about transportation options. (people speak indistinctly) - Brie loves bikes. - I totally do. Anyone else in the audience would like to speak with us? John, go ahead. - [John] John Klopp, is it okay if I ask questions to her to answer? Is that possible or? - The way we've done this in the past is she can take notes on the questions that you have and then she can come up and report out at the end. - That's fine. - If that works. - Thank you. Yes. So I guess the first question I had was regarding the transit times and the way I looked at it on the scorecard you had there, Martinez was red in terms of transit times, with the transit times of approximately 60 minutes, I think it was. I'm wondering what time of day you're talking about when you talk about those transit times. And the reason I say that, I had federal jury duty in San Francisco in December and had to go to Civic Center Courthouse every day at rush hour. And it was more than two hours each way in the car. And I would expect most or the majority of the times when the ferry would be full would be during demands like that when the transit times by car are much longer. So I just wanna make sure that's considered when we talk about the transit times. And then the second question I had was why is it three times as much as Richmond for the annual cost? That seems large to me and it's not that far away and I'd just like to try and understand why it was so much more. That's all I had. Thank you. And I very much support the ferry if it's possible. Thank you. - Really quickly, since you still have time, John, when you were talking about the transit times, are you talking about the scorecard where it like might compare times to Richmond, therefore it's longer? - Yes. - Okay. - And then specifically it had 60 minutes for from Martinez, but it then it had red, I think, on the scorecard for transit times, so we were worse. - Okay. (no audio) Is there anyone else who has any comments? Yeah, go ahead. - Hi, I'm Darrell. Thank you very much for the presentation. I'd like to add, I would've loved to have seen the breakdown of the score sheet for all involved too. So if there's some way to get that posted in the future, that would be fantastic. I was wondering is WETA evaluating as a part of the feasibility, the realities behind having a ferry in certain corridors? Like I was trying to imagine, with Pittsburgh and Antioch, the impact of a ferry going through Sassoon Bay. If you've ever noticed the density of fishermen out there and whatnot, it seems like it would be kind of madness between the shipping channel and ferry service if you're talking about having seven boats going there in rotation. Something to consider in the reports as you're scoring these things, I would think. The other thing I wanted to comment on was just the idea earlier of Vallejo service. I agree with everything that was said as to reasons why you might not just do it as an extension. But when I noticed there were different service levels one and two, is there any way to hybridize that such that perhaps in your non-peak times we could have a fleet that splits between going to San Francisco and going to Vallejo? For example, on the weekends, being able to easily get to Napa and other areas or to bring Vallejo folks to us would be quite wonderful and perhaps it's a way of leveraging a fleet we'd already have to invest in, even if it's not fully utilized for the purpose of going to San Francisco all the time. So just a thought. Thanks. - Thanks, Darrell. Anyone else interested in speaking on this item tonight? Alright, can you check the virtual audience please? - [City Clerk] This is public comment for the agenda item. For those attending via Zoom, I'll call for a show of hands once. Only those who raise their hand at this time will be submitting public comment. If you wish to make a comment, please use the Raise Hand feature now. All right, we have a total of one hand. Trevor, I'll ask you to unmute. - [Trevor] Yes, Hello. Can you hear me? - [City Clerk] Yes. - [Trevor] Great, thank you so much. I was just going to submit a question as well to ask whether a short hop service was considered with our neighbors across the bay at Benicia. It seems to me that that would be a similar situation with the small triangle that was described for the short hop Alameda Ferry, Alameda and Oakland Ferry. So I'm just wondering how that was considered and whether that's, or whether they're having a different visioning process. Thank you. - [City Clerk] Thank you. I have no further hands. - Great, thank you so much. Would you like to respond to some of the questions? - Let me, maybe not in the order. I have to remember which one. So in terms of short hop or like making different location, different stops. As mentioned earlier, your service, how you run the service, that's the flexible piece or the softer piece. The capital cost, that's the hard piece. So, once you can run the boat, you can run it like if the weekend demand is go to Benicia and Vallejo, as long as they have the ferry terminal ready, then you can run that, right? If that makes sense to capture the ridership. So hopefully that answer the question. We didn't necessarily run the numbers in the feasibility, right? Feasibility we're trying to answer like what, how much it costs, what are the strong points of the city versus what areas you would need to consider to improve. So versus how we develop the service. So you can have many options to choose from. In terms of how busy the waterway is. That becomes a more environmental assessment when we actually get to the next step. The seven boats or four boats, that's your peak demand. And at any given time, right? You only have one. For people who want to go to San Francisco, they only see one boat per their schedule. Because such a long distance you need to have four boats to go back and forth to meet that schedule. So it's not like four boats or seven boats going into the waterway at the same time. So, but in terms of traffic in the waterway, that's definitely something needs to be further studied. There is just a clarification on the 60 minutes. That is the travel time between Martinez and San Francisco and the Richmond service takes about 35 minutes. So that also explains why to make the same schedule you need one additional boat to make the same schedule, 'cause it just takes longer for those ferries to go back and forth. There are some questions about the travel time. So we used a shorthand in the scorecard and the long description on the second bullet point on the scorecard is transit travel time to San Francisco is, which travel time by transit is 40% shorter than travel time compared to the Richmond's ferry. And I know you have one of the speakers have a comment about... Let's see, it would be the second bullet point. Wait. So it's actually in this case all cities will underperform compared to Richmond. It just takes longer. Unfortunately that's the case. Any other question I didn't address from the audience? - But just to further clarify, the 60 minutes in transit time, that's by water, by ferry? - By water, yeah. - Correct. Okay. Yeah, just wanted to double check. - Yes. - Thank you. - And I think, we were trying to whisper back and forth, but I think the point you were trying to make is that it inherently will take longer to get somewhere by water that's further away. So that's not necessarily a negative, but if you can compare the travel time by water to the amount of time it takes by car to get to that same destination, then that becomes sort of green, right? I think that was more what he was trying to, 'cause if you compare somewhere that's closer by water and by car could be comparatively the same and then there's no added benefit to taking a boat. - Yeah, actually that is captured in bullet point number three in the scorecard. We need to rename that, call it transit time competitiveness. So that's like if you would take drive, like simple, whether ferry is competitive and in this case Martinez is not. Maybe that's where Richmond has some advantage, the Richmond service, because their water time is a very competitive compared to driving. Because if driving they have to go around, get on the bridge and all that, right? So the distance actually help them. And I guess another example is actually Alameda, is a really good example. They definitely have that advantage. So, but I would say our scorecard shows in Martinez compared to driving, transit is not that competitive in time. So that is. When I look at other city scorecards, they all get the same color, same. So with the four cities we study, then no city is necessarily have that advantage in terms of saving time if you take transit, if you take the ferry. - Richmond's ferry terminal, it's near the Craneway pavilion, is that correct? Or where is their ferry terminal in relation to their Amtrak station? - Right next- - It's by the freeway. - They're not close. They're not close, yeah, - [Councilmember Malhi] They're not close? Okay. - And there's no easy transit connection. I did that myself one time. Someone has to pick me up. Yeah, quite far. - [Councilmember Malhi] Okay, I'm trying to remember. I hadn't- - Yeah. Yeah it's actually in terms of Richmond Ferry, their land use is not as good as it should be. So it's all mostly car access, AC Transit provides the connection there. But yeah, it's nowhere close to the Amtrak station. - Whereas we have an Amtrak station- - Yes. - Very close by. And as you mentioned we have bus service that's operated by multiple transit operators as well. That's already there. So we would wanna lean into that, you know, and I think where our challenge is, is I think, you know, it's no secret, is we have some short-term and long-term sort of infrastructure needs that need to be addressed before, you know, to bring, make ferry service viable and pan out. And so I think again, I really appreciated your part of the presentation where you talked about all of the funding opportunities that are out there. 'Cause I do feel that, you know, 'cause I'm very sensitive to the fact that I would never want to put this burden on the taxpayers of Martinez when I know that all of these funding resources are still out there and have yet to be fully exhausted. That should be a measure of last resort for us because I do believe that there are these opportunities and I appreciate, again, you highlighting those for us. 'Cause at least it gives us some sense in terms of where we can look to help bring something like this to fruition. So, thank you. - I did want to convey my biggest concern when I imagine what the ferry system might look like. You know, I can see it. You know, we have our trust land use plan, we have sort of like a general idea of maybe where the ferry might be able to go. I can see all of the parking, I can imagine people using it. Where I struggled is access from the freeway. So Martinez is located very nicely between Highway 4 and 680. But in order to actually get to where we have put this proposed ferry location, it's all very small residential roads. And so was that part of this discussion? To compare to Vallejo as an example, when you get off of the highway to go to the ferry, they've now expanded it into like a four lane, right? Two lanes in each way with a median. You can go pretty quickly to get to the ferry terminal. Here, you might get stuck behind a train. So was that part of this analysis? And if so, do you feel like that would be a limiting factor or could that be something that could be addressed as part of a long-term design? - We didn't go that far out for each location 'cause it's really a high level study. And I think that would be something one has to study in the next steps. Maybe it's also a balance of, one has to estimate how many people will drive and park and how many people will take transit to get there or some are nearby to be able to walk or bike. And that also determine how much capacity you need for people to drive over there. So our study doesn't go that far, but we can see that will be several things we need to study to get to say whether the highway will be a constraint or not. At this stage I wouldn't, I think it's too early to have that conclusion. - Does anyone else have any comments? I was just gonna say, does staff have any comments? Go ahead. - I just wanna provide some additional information in response to Councilmember Malhi's question. So looking at Richmond as the example, their Amtrak station and their ferry terminal are over two miles apart to give you kind of a numerical standard. (no audio) - Are you repeating the question you already asked? The city attorney's not here. So yes. Could you wanna just tell me one more time and I'll ask it again? (John speaks indistinctly) Oh yes. He just re-asked the question earlier about why our cost estimate was three times that of Richmond? - In terms of the operating cost? Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with how many boats we need to operate. So I know it's not like 35 minutes versus 60 probably doesn't add up, but that's how that the math comes in. It is a longer distance. You need to have more ferries out there, another crew to run the service to be able make that service. So yeah, we're talking about it's roughly three times as much, yeah. - I just had one closing comment just to kind of piggyback off of what Satinder Malhi said about emergency. You know, if and when we have an earthquake, I don't wanna say we will, but I know we will. But you know, we have two bridges that are right here nearby and also in Antioch there's bridges, and if any of those bridges were to fail, water transportation would be very important to deploy not only, you know, people to where they need to be, first responders, things like that. So the ferry service in Martinez or any other city could be very, very beneficial for emergency and as Satinder said, it's the, you know, WETA has emergency in its name. And so I think that in addition to thinking about the costs, in addition to thinking about all the infrastructure and operational costs, I think there should be some consideration about public safety and the benefit to public safety for the potential of an emergency or a disaster in the future. So I would hope that that would also be something that would be evaluated in looking at the feasibility of deploying ferry service along this waterway. 'Cause it could be instrumental to saving lives in the future. - Yeah, that's a really good suggestion. We do have that in the scope. We just wanna make sure we have that in our document in a more comprehensive way to document the benefits of emergency services. - Well thank you so very much for the presentation. Mike, was there any follow up or close up the staff would like to include in this discussion before we wrap up the meeting? - No, that pretty much covered all of it. This has been a longstanding process. I think we approved this in the fall of 2022, if you recall. Yeah, and so finally, it's great to get this data and look at this in the lens of the overall waterfront plan. There are a lot of considerations, a lot of things that we know regarding our marina and you know, some of the pluses and minuses that we have in front of us. So it's good to continue this conversation 'cause I know ferry service has been something of interest to councils past and present and the community as well. So yeah, it's been good for us to be part of this process with CCTA. - Great, thank you so much. I have never said this, we are ahead of schedule. (people chuckle) So I'm gonna adjourn this meeting and we'll start right on time at seven o'clock for our regularly scheduled meeting. This meeting is adjourned. (no audio)