Okay. Good evening everyone. As
my trustees are grabbing a seat. Yes,
it is now 5:01 pm and I'd like to call to order the february 24th,
a td board meeting. Actually,
we're gonna do, we're
gonna call to order the february 24th via board meeting. Let's begin with roll call
vice chair gomez. Present. Secretary malone. Present
assistant secretary cooper. Present. Trustee flores present.
trustee tu will, trustee rena present. Trustee
deon. Present. Trustee howard present trustee
fernandez present and trustee rete present welcome
trustee. A to the via board of trustees.
all right. Uh, we do have a quorum.
please stand and join me in reciting the pledge of alle and the texas flag.
a pp of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america.
and to the republic for which stands? One nation,
underg god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all
honor, honors texas flag to texas.
they under god one.
yeah. Thank you. Got it? That was too cute.
all right. Okay. Thank you.
mr. Duh. Do we have any announcements? No announcements, madam chair. Thank
you. We'll, next,
move on to a special moment for us, uh, swearing in our of our via
transit chief of police. Um, please welcome judge william k. Shaw,
who will serve in vias new chief, uh, who was warren vias new chief
of police and transit security. Joseph richard rose. Jamal, would you like to introduce
both gentlemen, please? Sure. Thank you. Madam chair. The honorable
judge william h. Cruz shaw is a native of houston, texas. As a passion for helping people
in his community, the pastors reflected in his educational, professional and
public service pursuits. Judge shaw served his country as a yeoman,
second class united states navy reserves from 2003 until 2011.
while in reserves, shaw served in san antonio and in singapore. He graduated
from thurgood marshall school of law at texas southern university, he 2009,
and opened his own law practice in the heart of the east side of san antonio in september, 2010.
judge shaw was elected as city council in june of 2017, and was appointed
as associate judge in the 436th district court in bexar county in january of
2019, and was elected to the 436th district court
november, 2022.
rick? Yes, sir. Next up,
if we'll have, uh, you stand there, chief rose, some background on our
chief rose. Joseph rose is an accomplished law enforcement executive with 20 plus years
of progressive leadership in municipal and trans policing. Specialize in
building and modernizing public safety organizations, leading complex operations
and developing policy infrastructure and personnel systems that support accountable
community-centered policing. Schultz was known for his commitment to ethical
leadership, organizational development, and trust-based community engagement. His
leadership style balances operational excellence with transparency,
personal mentorship and strategic stakeholder partnerships. His educational
background includes a master's of public management from the university of maryland,
a bachelor of science in organizational leadership from johns hopkins university and
associates in criminal justice from excelsior university. He's also attended from
penn state university, the police executive development program, fbi, national
academy, session 2 81 fbi, national academy graduate.
and despite that, he's originally from brooklyn, new york.
he began his transit career as a bus operator for new york mta
for eight years. Uh, then he went to the world of transit policing at ada in washington, dc.
from that point, he progressed to municipal law law enforcement in, in, uh, boy
maryland, and made his way down to texas to help begin the start of the
capitol metro transit police department. And we're proud to have him here today. And so, at this
time, I'll leave you chief to, uh, be sworn in by the honorable judge
khaw. Thank you. Without
the line. Can
I me in the back. Good. Okay. Oh, we get 'em. We gather for
more than just a formal appointment. We gather to a firm commitment,
a commitment to service, a commitment to leadership, and the commitment to
the values that define public trust. The role of the transit
police chief carries a profound responsibility. Our tr
oh, okay. The role of transit police chief carries
a profound responsibility. Our transit system is more than buses, stations,
and routes. It's a lifeline of our community. It
protects people to opportunity, education, healthcare,
and one another. The chief entrusted with protecting this system
must lead not only with authority, but with integrity.
chief joseph rose, as you prepare to take this oath, you accept
the responsibility to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct.
you are called to lead with transparency, ensuring that trust between
law enforcement employees and the public is earned and
maintained. Every day, you are expected to lead with compassion,
recognizing that those we serve include our writers, our employees,
and members of our community who may be experiencing vulnerability crisis
and hardship. Now, please raise your right hand.
do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will faithfully execute the duties
of the office of transit police chief, that you'll support and uphold
the organizational policies and practices, as well as the laws of
this state that will perform your responsibilities with integrity,
transparency, and ethical practice, that you'll serve
our employees and our community with fairness, courage, and
compassion. So help you guide. Yes, I do. I do. There
you go. By the authority vested in me, I hereby recognize you
as the trans police. Congratulations, chief joseph rose.
trustees, uh, if you can join me, we're gonna go take a quick photo right here and recognition of
this momentous moment here. Thank you.
well, again, congratulations, chief, welcome to the team.
uh, I also, again, wanna welcome in joining me today, our newest
trustee, ms. Chris reta, uh, steward of this community,
lots of years of experience and wisdom, uh, that she has imparted
on san antonio. So we are, uh, just thrilled that
you have joined our board. Welcome. Thank you. Yes.
we got a packed house today. I I think we need to see this every, every
meeting. Yeah. Let's do that. . All
right. We have citizens to be heard next. Um, yes. I'm assuming we have a few
citizens who signed up. Yes, we do. We have, we have 20 individuals signed up to speak with
one of them. Relinquishing their time to another speaker. Very good. Thank you. We now
come to assistance to be heard portion of our public meeting. The board is interested in hearing
the comments and concerns from our patrons and citizens in san antonio bayar county area.
questions or comments concerning public business or policy over which the board has supervision
and the control may be addressed at a later date by the president, ceo and
or his staff. This process assures that you receive the most accurate response
to your question or concern. Thank you. And via appreciates you taking the time and effort
to share your comments with us this evening. Our first speaker
is mr. William hernandez.
uh, good afternoon, uh, chair
via board, mr. Herra and via staff.
my name is william hernandez. I'm the president of a
tu 6 9 4 retiree chapter, and I'm here today to speak
on two subjects. First, I would like to bring to your attention
the 10 99 irs forms that were mailed out in
2025. I was notified by a handful of members that
they did not receive their forms after advising them
to contact payroll. They were told to come in and pick up a copy.
the question arises of, you know, what happened to the original copies.
they, um, they've talked to, uh, postmasters and they
said, well, it would be sent back to payroll. So if you can have payroll
due, due diligence and tracking down
these original copies because their concerns about, um, identity theft.
and, um, so if you can get with them and have them get with those people,
we appreciate it. Secondly, um, free
rides for all. I was a bus driver for 39 years.
I've seen what happens when you open up the gates and let every wedding in
to ride free at a feel for the
homeless. I really do. But these people will come
and they'll just camp out on the bus all day long. And if
they're riding for free, there's, I mean, I don't know how you get 'em off the bus.
a lot of them are dealing with mental illnesses,
you know, and I've seen it where, you
know, they have a manic episode and it scares
the jitters out of the regular passengers that are riding the bus.
a lot of them, um, they leave the bus un unsanitary
and, you know, they'll defecate, they'll urinate, you know, I,
I've seen it. So a driver will have to call
transit police. And depending how close the transit police officer
is, is to the, the bus is, uh, the re the, the
time it takes 'em to get there. Um,
it is a good political talking point, but it will only de
delay service for regular rider.
I know they already have, uh, free fare for, um, college
students and, and elementaries and the kids, you know, and that's
all perfect. That's, that's fine, you know, but, um,
free for all, for everyone. I mean, I hope you all really consider that, or
not y'all, but city council. Um, thank you for your time.
thank you.
roger. Signs. I,
all right. My name is roger signs, and I am the pastor of south city church,
and we are located at 34 32 south florida street on the south side of san antonio.
and I made a request to have a bus stop moved, and, uh, the bus
stop number is 6 6 8 3 6. And the reference number for my request
is 5 5 6 8 4 0. My request was denied,
and I asked if I could appeal, and they said no. And I said, well, there's gotta be somebody I could talk to.
and they said, I could come here before y'all, and that's why I'm here today. The reason I made
my request to have a bus stop movie, because there's always a lot of homeless people
there, and on sunday mornings, there's a lot of trash. There's empty beer bottles, empty
beer cans and stuff like that. And I'm out there, you know, picking it up. But my
main concern is one time, one sunday morning, I went out there and I was looking, there
was a, a big group of people waiting for the bus. It was about eight people, something like that.
and, uh, the, there's a big concrete bench that's right in front of,
uh, the entrance into our building. We have a gate out there, right, right in front of
the, the, the entrance to the, to the gate. There's a big concrete bench that's part of the,
the bus stop, right? And, uh, there was a big group out there, and our people, the
congregation had to walk around them, walk into the street in order to get
into the gate. And my concern is that I'm afraid somebody's gonna get hit by a car or
something, you know? So that's why I made the request. And I wanted to ask to see, I don't know if y'all could
look, take a look at it again. And, uh, if y'all could move the bus stop, and I wouldn't
even mind if y'all could just move it to the edge of our property, but right now, the bus stop is
right in front of, of our building, right where the main entrance is at
the gate entrance. There's a big concrete bench right there, and that's where people are waiting for the bus.
and I just don't want anybody to get hit, you know, get into an accident or anything like that.
so I would like to ask y'all if y'all could take a, you know, look at that again, if that would be
possible. And I just thank you for your time. That's all I had for today. Thank you.
thank you. Our next speaker, ms. Our next
speaker, mr. Paul baal.
all right. A little weird to be on this side of the, the board table here.
um, madam chair board, thank you for having me. Um,
congratulations, chris. Um,
all right, well, thank you for allowing me to speak today. Uh, for those that don't know me,
my name is paul alua. I'm president of, uh, sera development,
and this year I'm serving as the chairman of the metro sa chamber.
um, I'm here to discuss our position on free bus fairs. One
of my priorities this year is proper infrastructure. Investment free fares
is not proper infrastructure investment. Um, so I have
a letter that I have written to the board that I think has been handed out to you guys.
I'm going to go ahead and read it for you. Um, so since its
inception in 1977, via metropolitan transit has been hobbled by
insufficient funding, rather than the full cent sales tax that
the texas legislator leg legislature made available to municipalities
for public transit. C city leaders chose to only utilize
a half cent back then. Our community has been playing, playing catchup
since. The consequence of that decision was twofold. First,
via, over the course of the five decades, lacked literally billions of
dollars in revenue that its peer cities have dedicated to public transit. Second
via, uh, could not receive federal grants for public transit. The
transit agencies across texas and across the nation received grants paid
for by tax dollars spent by san antonio residents
sent to washington dc the result was a public transit system in
san antonio that has struggled to meet the needs of our community over the past 10 years,
via has started to change this environment, most notably with the passage of prop a.
in 2020, the dedicated an additional one, a sales tax to the public
transit. That additional increment not only provided via with desperately,
desperately needed revenue, but it also unlocked those previously inaccessible
federal transit grants. As a former via trustee,
I know that our transit, uh, system runs a lien operation. Calling for universal free
fairs without providing funding puts all of that at risk. Um,
the metro sa chamber has been a strong supporter of the silver line, uh, including back in
the policy, uh, commitment to deploy a hundred million dollars in
advanced transportation district funds to pursue $300 million in federal grants that would make
the silver line a reality. Eliminating fair revenue without funding replacement
could place that strategy at risk by not just jeopardizing the a hundred million dollars in local investment,
but the $300 million that the federal government is matching as part
of, uh, its grant making process. The fda must confirm vias financial
capacity to operate the green and silver lines. And a $20 million reduction
in fairbox revenue without replacement funding would almost certainly put negative
light on our ability to operate economic mobility,
uh, is dependent on physical mobility. As the chair of the metros sa chamber,
I strongly encourage my former colleagues on the via board of trustees to continue to prioritize
the transformational investments vias making in a rt. Thank you.
always good to see a fellow trustee over here. First, meaning out door.
I will point out . Our next speaker,
rebecca vran.
good evening, everyone. Um, chair, vice chair, mr. President,
trustees. Um, I'm here to speak on item number
six, free fair. Um, my name is rebecca vran,
and I serve as the president and ceo of the south texas business partnership.
the mission of the south texas business partnership is to stimulate sustained
economic prosperity across san antonio and south texas.
a critical challenge in achieving that mission is mobility.
connecting people to opportunity and businesses to the workforce
via metropolitan transit has been a valued partner in
addressing this challenge. Vias rapid transit
green line, along with the planned south texas parkway
represent transformational investment in south san antonio.
the green line will connect with the existing brooks transit center,
enabling san antonio residents to more efficiently access jobs, healthcare,
education, and training opportunities throughout the city.
it will also better connect residents across san antonio
to the growing employment centers in south san antonio and south bexar
county rider throughout the city have consistently
asked for expanded mobility options and increased
frequency improvements. The green line is
designed to deliver. Given the significance of this
project, we would be deeply concerned about
any shift in priorities that could jeopardize
the federal grants already secured for the green line. These
funds were awarded based on a clear commitment and
plan, any departure from that commitment risks not only
critical funding, but also the economic momentum and public trust
tied to this investment. On behalf of the south texas
business partnership, I respectfully urge the via metropolitan transit
board of trustees to adhere to its
existing commitment to the green line, maintain its full investment
in the project, and continue advancing increased
mobility and frequency for the south san antonio
and south bexar county region. Thank you for your time and consideration.
I believe you all have a copy of on your, on your dais. Thank you very much.
thank you.
our next speaker is katie farrier.
she greater chamber. Okay.
good evening, chair, uh, board. My name is katie farrier,
and on behalf of the greater san antonio chamber of commerce, I came to speak about item
six. The greater chamber supports a strong,
reliable and financially sustainable public transportation system.
transit is economic infrastructure, connecting workers to jobs and
supports regional competitiveness, while framed as an affordability
and access measure. The proposed pilot program is a structural
policy change that warrants deliberate and transparent evaluation.
first, federal funding implications should be carefully considered,
even though fair revenue is not vias primary funding source, it contributes
to financial stability and is part of the metrics used in competitive grant
evaluations. And today's performance driven federal funding environment,
san antonio must remain strong fiscal metrics to remain
competitive with pure cities. Second evidence suggests
that ridership challenges are more closely tied to service design, including
frequency, reliability, travel time connectivity,
and safety, rather than fair levels. If the goal is increasing,
ridership resources may be more effectively directed toward improving
service quality on high demand corridors and strengthening connections
to major employment centers. Third, operational
and safety considerations matter. Via must remain a
mobility first system focused on connecting people to opportunity.
any policy change that alters usage patterns should include clearly
defined metrics for safety, service quality,
operational performance, and fiscal impact, along with transparent
public reporting. Finally, fiscal sustainability
must remain central. Eliminating fares without a dedicated revenue
replacement source increases reliance on sales tax and public
subsidy. Any funding strategy should avoid increasing the cost
burden on residents or employers, particularly in a period of rising
economic pressures. Long-term stability is essential to maintaining affordability,
public confidence, and business support. We stand ready to work
collaboratively with via and the city to ensure that any policy decision
strengthens not winks san antonio's long-term economic competitiveness.
thank you for your consideration. Thank you.
our next speaker is jessica palacios.
good evening, madam chair, members of the board. My name is
jessica palacios. I'm here on behalf of the san antonio hispanic chamber
of commerce, who represents nearly 900 member businesses, and
we appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. On item number six,
the san antonio hispanic chamber of commerce has long supported strategic
investments in mobility infrastructure that strengthen workforce
participation, improve access to employment centers, and enhance economic
competitiveness. Our support has always been grounded in fiscal responsibility,
long-term sustainability, and the protection of funding streams
critical to transit operations. We understand and respect that the
goal of increasing access and affordability, however, we're concerned
of the potential risk to federal funding.
if federal dollars are jeopardized, the impact would extend beyond the five routes and could,
um, impact capital projects. Our members rely
on reliable transit systems to move employees to manufacturing
plants, healthcare facilities, hos and hospitality and tourism
corridors, and most importantly, um, small job
sites, small and micro business job sites. Um, we believe that
decisions of this magnitude require a clear understanding of
federal implications, stakeholder engagement, and long term sustainability
planning. Um, to kind of reverse course just a bit,
in 2020, our members supported
a, a formally adopted resolution supporting the via metropolitan
transit proposition a, which reallocated the one eighth sales tax
to, to via, and our position has not changed. Um,
I wanna echo what, what members have already stood
up here to say that we are in full support in collaboration
efforts with via and the city of san antonio. Thank you so
much. Thank you.
our next speaker is mr. Robert garza.
good evening trustees. I'm robert garza, 22 year bus operator,
currently president of a tu local 6 9 4. I'm here to discuss
our concerns with free fare for all. Removing fares can increase overall
ridership, increased conflicts, higher rates of verbal abuse,
greater risk of physical assaults, more on board disturbances, delay
of service, and will affect our employee retention. When the bus becomes free,
the respect for the service and the person's providing it drops by opening
the doors to everyone without exception, we lose the ability to protect our
passengers from those who aren't there to travel, but are only there to cause trouble.
you can't put a price on safety, but you certainly shouldn't trade it away for,
for a political talking point. City hall should focus on fixing real issues
in our city, like housing and mental health, rather than try to solve a problem that
does not exist. By eliminating fares, our operators, maintenance
employees, and rider deserve better. This is a rare occasion where labor and management
are 100% on the same page board members.
our safety is in your hands. We respectfully ask that you do not allow this
program to move forward. Thank you. Thank
you.
our our next speak. Our next speaker is amalia soto, and
he has had time, uh, yielded to him by gilbert les.
good evening via trustees, mr. Herrera and mr. Brown. First
and foremost, I'd like to thank all the a two members and the families that are here today. They truly are the
backbone of this company.
my name is amal soto. I'm the a tu 6 9 4 treasurer business
agent. But more importantly, I've been a bus operator for 38 years.
I'm here today to echo what mr. Garza just mentioned concerning free fares. Eliminating
fa eliminating fares is a bad idea, bad business from the negative,
bad business from the negative effect it can have from a financial standpoint, at the safety
and to the safety issues that will arise from the impact of free fares. As
far as the negative effect that will, that will have the, uh,
will have with the company. That's mr. Heda and mr. Brown's job.
but as far as the safety implications that free fares can have, I can
speak on this because a few years ago during the pandemic via was
offering free fares. Many of us experienced a negative effect that free fares
had during that time. Bus operator assaults and disturbances increased,
and that had a snowball effect and caused issues with delay of service and just overall
quality of service in general. Our passengers lost reliability service
due to all of this in general. Uh, our passengers lost
reliability service due to all of this, not just reliable service on the buses, but at
the transit centers too. There was overcrowding and cleanings issues
at the transit stations. The maintenance employees were having a hard time keeping the
facilities safe and clean. Then came the employee turnover. Our
workforce started loo looking elsewhere for work because their safety had been compromised
and their families wanted them home safely. But vias making
progress and we're in a better place now. Via is increasing its workforce to satisfy demand,
and our ridership is increasing. Again. We're adding new service such as
the new rapid, green and silver line. We're excited
that this will create new jobs and opportunities for our community. In
addition, morale is also going up due to these new opportunities. So we don't wanna
go backwards. The value of reliable service only costs a dollar 30, which
is one of the lowest faires in the nation for a major city. But that, that dollar
30 for a bus ride shows that the patron has some skin in the game
and holds them accountable when they ride. So trustees, please
consider the safety of our passengers and employees when making our, when making
your decision. And remember, reliable serves is much better than free service.
thank you.
thank you. Our next speaker is mr. Jd salinas,
madam chair and trustees, thanks for having me and thanks for welcoming
me. To, to your chamber. That's good evening. My name's jd
salinas. I'm with at and t. I'm the vice president of external affairs. I've
been here for, for a bit. And thank you for the opportunity, opportunity to speak.
I'm here today to respectfully oppose a proposal to fund the
free pilot program and using any kind of tax, any
type of revenue. Let me start by saying we understand
and respect the goal, improving mobility and affordability for riders,
but public transit is important for workforce access
and regional competitiveness. But the question before you
is not only whether fair free rides or a worthwhile concept,
the question is also whether the proposed funding mechanism is
appropriate, sustainable, and fair to san,
any consumer tax is worth is the wrong tool because
it increases cost on households subject to multiple federal,
state, and local taxes already being paid.
adding another local tax effectively creates quadruple
taxation, and the result is higher. Monthly bills from
san antonio household and small businesses, taxing
san antonios in the name of increasing affordability is counterintuitive.
a six month pilot offering free fair service on
five routes may be well-intentioned, but if it is funded through
consumer taxes, shifts the burden to san antonio residents and households, including those
who may never ride the bus at all. Simply
put, this proposal does not eliminate cost for sanitary residents.
it just re re relocates them onto monthly household bills.
and if long-term success requires a permanent tax stream, then it isn't
truly a pilot. Instead, it's a policy change
with lasting cost implications for san antonio households
with san with. If the city and via want to evaluate fair free
services, we encourage funding options that do not increase the burden for
every household in san antonio. For those reasons, we respectfully oppose
adopting, expanding any consumer facing tax and quadruple taxing
hard work in san antonio's to fund this pilot project project.
thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you again for having me.
thank you. Our next speaker is diana amador
luna.
this one? Yes. Okay. Hello everyone. Thank
you for letting me talk for a little bit. I have
so much to say. So I have been with via
going in this june for eight years.
as much as I loved my job at greyhound lines, I sh I tell myself
I should have been here years ago because via is a great company.
I have great coworkers, I have met a lot of friends here. Via is
a good company. It has great benefits, great insurance, and
of course the good 4 0 1. I could tell you stories all
night long, but I don't have more than three minutes. So
I did pick my top three stories to tell you whether
they were paying passengers or not paying passengers. I have
been threatened to be cut up in a thousand pieces. Sapd
had to be called out to cadillac, and it is spelled like this cadillac
'cause it's short for kelly and lackland. Um,
I had been also, when I was driving the 26th
route, when I had just finished coming over the bridge, alamo jones, bill miller's,
my bus was surrounded by unmarked cars, doors opened
us marshals, came out with assault weapons. Little to, I
was scared to death. I didn't know what was going on. I thought for a minute they were coming after me 'cause
I had like maybe five passengers on my bus. Little did I know
I had two fugitives on my bus. They said they had been keeping it on my bus.
um, another one is where I was driving the 1 0 2, late at night. I was almost
done with my route. I was at pleasanton, the military. I had 15 minutes left to get
to brooks. When somebody starts breaking my fur box, just
breaking it, he was angry. Starts kicking the mirror on the port primo,
starts kicking my door. Had to call sapd. I was late
getting home for two hours. That's okay. 'cause we get late pay. But I can see
my time is finishing. I have been spit on, yelled
at, cussed at. I have been, um, had windows broken,
doors broken. I had somebody pay for somebody that did not have their fare on the 88
route, only to start jumping up and down, having the bus violently
shake because he said he was the son of god. I have had people
try to ju use their jail card as free. Fair.
yes, we do have free fairs in honor of ms. Rosa parks.
december 1st of last year was the day that we honored her for free. Faires
fia came out with a new program, free fairs for children 12 and eight.
I wanted to tell you that this is my schedule, which is a schedule for
this. I try to keep it on time because I have my regular passengers
and I have my irregular passengers. So I wanted to
tell you that all the, all the bus drivers
here, extra board and regular passengers, they start coming at three 15
in the morning. So you, you do the math, they're probably waking up
at two o'clock in the morning to be here to get the routes running. Please
do not have free fare. It causes a lot of problems. I'm echo echoing everything
what robert and amalia said. Oh, by the way, amalia 36 years.
safety. Alia, where are you?
36 years.
that's my friend, my coworker. Thank. Alright, diane,
thank you. The next speaker is georgina galong
or kalo. Am I pronouncing that right?
she wanted to speak on route number two.
all right. She, she might have left. Um, our next speaker is
barbara stock.
if I hit it, I hit it.
okay. Am I close enough now? Yes. Hello everyone.
I know it's been a hard week. Um, the reason why I came tonight is
to tell you that I appreciate the service so much.
I know about the, what we're talking about.
I have been on a regular bus just once or twice and experienced
that for myself. But, um, via trans
is a wonderful service. Okay? Without you,
I don't have my independence to go anywhere or do
anything. So I want you to know how much I appreciate
it and my family or my friends that live nowhere
near me whatsoever. Thank you for your service.
we all have issues, but we can all work together and get
things accomplished. Thank you for your time. And
sometimes the buses do run early, sometimes they run late.
and I anticipate that. Thank you very much.
thank you. Our next speaker is sina calvin,
can I make it?
good evening trustees. Um, I had a big, long thing written
down because of the number two and I, but I still
wanted to come and, uh, thank bob cuomo for helping
me get my concerns. Um, elevated thank mr. Herrera
for hearing those concerns, not only mine, but others
that have been expressed and for pulling that from the agenda
and giving us another bit of time to take a
look at that. So I did wanna, uh, thank uh, those
people. I also wanted to let staff know that I empathize with them. I
myself have worked on projects for multiple months or multiple years,
only to have someone or someone's come out of the woodwork
at the last minute and say, what I didn't know,
I'm against this. So I get it. And again, I appreciate the opportunity
to be heard and to have further discussion. Um,
I have lived on magnolia beacon hill for 20 years, and
in 2022 I decided to give up my vehicle,
um, because of the number two, because I have that easy access, half
a block from my house. And that gets me downtown phil harberger park,
roosevelt park, lots of places. So it is an important route to me.
I'm also, um, the planning team rep for beacon hill and
multimodality, and improving biking, pedestrian
access and transit is very important to us. And so I think
if we can keep the number two, we can really work on bolstering
that ridership, encouraging folks in those neighborhoods that live along
the route to see it as a viable way to get downtown.
I do wanna take this opportunity since I'm here. Um, on a separate
topic, I would like to encourage via to look for ways to engage the untapped
households that live along via routes. I know that via recently mailed out
free bus passes for february, since a few folks posted about
that on our neighborhood page. I like this idea. I also think
there would be value in working with neighborhood association
associations and other groups on bus field trips where a coordinated
trip could be planned with a via steward. A fun trip to phil harburg or
park or roosevelt park kind of helps get people over that intimidation
factor. And once they've done it once, believe you me,
they'll do it again. My sister now thinks she's this great transit writer because
I taught her how to do that while she was here. Lastly, I do wanna
register a complaint about the fact that there is no ability to load money online
onto the go-karts. It practically defeats the purpose and is pretty
disappointing in the day of an age of advanced technology. I hope that's
something that's a priority. Um, as to the free bus, uh,
thing, I respect the via drivers. They get me to where I need to go.
I would hope that a limited pilot program would be something that could be considered. Thank
you. Thank you.
thank you. Our next speaker is elizabeth cheney.
hello. Thank you so much for letting, um, us speak. My name's
elizabeth cheney. Um, I'm a member of the alamo council of the
blind, um, the blended veterans association,
auxiliary and a few other, um, groups that
have lost, got lost in my mind at this moment. , um,
I just wanted to speak, uh, about drop off and
pickup spots. Um, we go once to twice a month
to the san fernando, uh, catholic church downtown.
and it seems like we get dropped off at a
spot and we're used to being dropped off and we go back to the same spot to get picked up.
but it's not the same spot that our driver will end
up being around the corner or further up. And
my husband and I are both visually impaired. We, uh, met at,
actually at austin, um, at the blind school, chris
cole. So we're very familiar with capital metro.
and uh, and I don't want it to sound like that we're,
uh, this, we just need it to be consistent
because when we go back to the spot, we were dropped off. That's where we're
expecting our ride to show up. And then they mark us.
no show, but we're where we're supposed to do. And a lot of times there's police
officers outside and they're remember us from getting dropped off and they'll make sure we're
in the right spot and they have to look out and they'll tell us, oh, it's around
the corner and they have to go get it for us. And, uh, uh,
same thing when we go to the, the majestic theater. Um, and
other, and I understand it, um, there might be traffic
or other things going on where they, but it would
really help, especially in major places like the tobin,
they, um, majestic theater, the,
um, catholic church that we could have one consistent spot
to go to. And I wanna say how much I appreciate all of you,
and especially the drivers because of y'all. I can consistently
be at work early or on time. I have never been
late to work. My boss really appreciates it. I
appreciate 'cause I have a paycheck and it really comes in
handy when bills come every month, . So I,
because of y'all, you've given me my mobility back, my able to,
um, be able to get a paycheck,
um, to have my self-worth and having my
children proud of me because, um, I'm working.
I am, um, able to call in, make my rides and
I'm very independent at best to my abilities. I appreciate
all of y'all and I know how hard these bus drivers work,
how hard these drivers, uh, make sure that I safely get
to work safely, get to grocery store, and they make sure I get
safely, get to the doctor's office and I, um,
wanna know how heartfelt I feel about them. Thank you.
thank you. Our next speaker is gregory williams.
yay.
uh, good afternoon. Um, board trustees, uh, ceo herrera, and everybody here.
thank you very much for coming. My name is gregory williams. I've been here at via for three years,
since february of 2023. It's a great place and a great opportunity
for me to be here at via. I enjoy it so very much. But I,
I have to put my, um, put my say in for the no fair free transit,
uh, the nofa transit, um, proposal. Um,
it, it will open the door for, um, many issues. I echo with, uh,
what robert garza, our a tu union president says, uh,
it will open up the door for us. Many, many more issues. I've already like
the way it via is now. I do feel safe and I enjoy my, uh,
job. I enjoy taking all the passengers everywhere, uh, across the city. I'm an extra board.
um, but there are many times where I've been, uh, assaulted verbally. I've
been, um, almost physically assaulted on the bus. The doors have been broken.
I've had rocks thrown at the window. And opening this door for anybody to
ride this bus, um, does propose, uh, a
dangerous risk for everybody on the bus, including the operators. Uh,
the, uh, via pd response is slow. The supervisor
response is slow. I understand. We, we have so many and they can only be
so many places at one time. Um, the, I there's faster
response with sapd. Um, sometimes I'm on the bus waiting for a supervisor
and via pd for 45 minutes. And that's a service delay. People have somewhere
to be, they have to go grocery shopping. They have appointments, they have, uh, some
just somewhere very important to be. And with the reliability of the bus
going down with allowing free rides to the door, the line will be out the door just
to get on the bus. And if someone just unhappy that they can't get on a certain bus, who
knows what they're gonna do to that bus? It's gonna delay it. And the, so there's questionable
people, undesirable people that linger around that are transit centers. I'm not saying
that they're not allowed to ride. Everybody should be able to ride the bus. But the
people that that make the bus unsafe are the people that should
not, uh, the people riding the bus should feel protected from
the buses can become unsanitary already as it is. And there's the,
just the people alone around central plaza, they're just unsanitary
and exposing paying passengers for their security is going to risk
disease in contact with, uh, bacteria. And,
and it, that's one thing that via strives to have is clean safe
opera buses on time efficient. And I'm glad to be a part of that. And
I wanted to continue. I say no to fair trans, uh, no free fair,
or no fair transit. I oppose that. I, I believe that
fair is security for passengers across the city. Thank you so much. That's my time.
thank you.
our next speaker, eloy saara. I believe you yielded
your time, so he does need to speak.
all right, we'll move on to chris morales.
good evening via board. Madam chair, my name
is chris morale. I'm the president of communication workers of america in
san antonio. I'm here to express my opposition to the proposed
expansion of vias telecom sales tax for san antonio residents.
I understand vias needs to secure reliable funding to improve
public transit. And I support the goal of better service for our community.
however, taxing telecom services places an unfair
burden on something that has become essential for everyday life.
phone and internet access are critical for work, for school, healthcare,
and staying connected. For emer emergencies, many
residents are still facing economic pressure from the rising cost of living. And
adding additional taxation would negatively impact on the very communities
that public transit is meant to support. I want to reiterate
my respect for v's. Mission and the important role public transit
plays in the success of our city. My comments today offered
in the spirit of partnership and what the shared goal of ensuring san
antonio continues to move forward in a way that is fair and sustainable
for all residents. I respect, respectfully ask the va
board to reconsider this proposal and to continue working toward funding
solutions that are fair and mindful of the financial realities
of many san antonio's residents are facing. Thank you for your time
and consideration. Thank you
will. Bridges. Yeah.
good evening. My name is will bridges. I'm a driver here of
operator here at via for 12 years. Um, excuse me if I'm not following
decorum. 'cause I thought the mayor was here, gonna be here since she wanted
this meeting and everything. Uh, ms. Herrera and board members and
trustees, I'm speaking today as someone behind the wheel every day. I want to be
clear, free fair is what make buses harder to operate less safe
and less reliable for the riders who depend on our service. When
passengers pay even a small amount, it creates
structure and respect. It sets expectation expectations and keeps
boarding orderly. Without that, buses quickly become a space for
loitering, repeated riding with no where to go,
and a place for unruly behavior. Re removing fares also
increases safety problems. Operators deal with more confrontations,
more unpredictable riders, and more delays. Affairs isn't just
revenue, it's one of the only twos we have that keep
and maintain safe, respectful, behavioral on board.
and from an operational standpoint, free fare slows service down,
increases crowding and strains equipment and staff. As
they said before, I've had people defecate and
other things on my bus who weren't in their right mind or whatever.
and bus change, you know, all of that, that delay
service. Um, if the goal is helping low income
riders, target discounts can do that without, uh, messing
up the entire system. San antonio has one
of the lowest rates in the country.
I've been all over the world, all over the country via fares
are really low. As a driver, I want a system that's
safe, reliable, and workable for riders and operators. Free fair is undermine
all of that. Mr. Herrera and board members. Please show the mayor, mayor
that the employees that you are responsible for in matter and say no to free fares.
thank you on that. And I don't know if I can say this, but for the
mayor, you know, as an operator, I enjoy my job. I strongly disagree
with making faires free. Free sounds nice and all, but in the end, someone
has to pay for it. Making buses free doesn't make transportation
free. It only shifts the entire cost onto taxpayers and local businesses.
and if you really wanna help out people, don't
raise the cps. Don't raise saws,
you know, eliminate fares at the airport, you know, city
municipal building, uh, parking lots and stuff like that
on the bus. It's just gonna make more issues for us as drivers.
and that's pretty much it. And thank you all and
no to free thank
george perez.
george betis not here.
all right. Jack finger.
oh, good afternoon, ma'am. Madam chair, another members of our board.
uh, my name is jack m. Finger and route number
two. Well, you say you're, you're going to probably leave it as it is, but that hasn't
ha that has not happened yet. And so I'm not celebrating just yet.
okay. Um, you,
my comment is that you need to fire, fire the
jerk or jerks that are responsible for this debacle.
yeah, . I don't, I notice that, uh,
, I notice that none of you were at
one of those hearings that this came up all 24. No,
the 25 of you were there. J just of two or three staffers.
look where and look where the notice
is on this change. Buried, buried deep inside
this pamphlet. Two thirds, half, two thirds deep in
there. What is via trying to
hide? I don't like my tax dollars.
going to such, yes, deception.
round number two is upon a major thoroughfare blanco road.
it's been around for decades. I repeat decades
yet you bury this bad proposal.
what does it say to be replaced? Replaced
by routes 6 49 and 5 0 6. When
I an average writer, see that I start to
panic. I don't read any further. 5 0 600
and 500 routes are beyond loop four 10. I don't see
anything indicating where it's below that. So
and so now, maybe my panic would've been assuaged if I'd seen some maps
in this thing. Where are the maps? And I was told,
well, we wanted to save a little bit of money and not, not put 'em in there.
huh? Excuse me. What
stupidity? You've had 'em before. So you're saving money this time,
huh? We,
the, you would be able to, sir, you still be able to
transfer at five points and ride downtown? Excuse me. This
route number two is a major route. I shouldn't have to transfer anywhere.
please don't let this go forward.
and on another subject regarding free rides, uh,
did, does it ever occur to you? What happens when you give away something free? People
will start disrespecting it. They start trashing it and filthy, filthy. That's
what happens when will happen on our buses. Thank you.
there are no other citizens to be heard. Very good. Thank
you very much. Appreciate everyone's comments. Uh, next we're gonna go
ahead and go out of order and address item six first, um, which is presentation, discussion,
and board direction on request received from the february 11th, 2026
b session at subsequent subsequent communications from mayor jones
related to via operations and services. Mrta, would you like to
begin the discussion please? Thank you, madam chair. And as we pull together
the agenda, I, I should say the presentation, um,
we're gonna, we're gonna bring up a slide here that we're gonna, we're gonna walk us through the, um,
through the agenda.
so before we walk through the analysis, I wanted to briefly frame how we're
approaching the fair, free question and why the agenda is structured in such a way.
this is not a single policy conversation. Fair free touches every dimension
of this organization. It touches our strategy, our customers,
our workforce. We're hearing that tonight, our operations, financial
legal frameworks and our long-term commitments to the community.
that's why today discussion is organized around the core
responsibilities of not only management, but of our board
and the opening and the operating realities of, of via.
we'll begin with the strategic alignment because every major policy choice should be
measured against how the strategy of this board has, that this board has already
adopted ie that keeps antonio moving plan, uh,
is our guiding framework for building a system that people choose to
use and for delivering on commitments made to voters. The
first question is whether fair free advances or distracts from that north star,
that strategic alignment? Next we'll ground the conversation, the ground,
the conversation and customer priorities. We're not speculating about what
rider want. We are bringing forward what they have told us through thousands of surveys and community
engagements. This section also intended to anchor our discussion in rider
reality, not assumptions. We then will address safety workforce
and operational issues and impacts. This is about the people who
run the system and the environment in which service is delivered every
day. Safety for our employees and our customers. Service reliability and our
ability to attract and, and retain operators are not secondary
considerations. They are foundational whether this system works.
from there, we'll move into the financial, legal and federal considerations. This section reflects
the board's fiduciary responsibility. We walk you through the financial
realities, our financing instruments, our revenue bonds, federal funding posture,
and the long range financial plan. These are, these are constraints within
any policy change must operate. We will also review
our existing fair program because the affordability is not new to via,
we have been delivering and supporting affordable programs for decades. And we
will show how targeted responsible partnerships already remove barriers for
those who need support the most without destabilizing the system.
and finally, we will close with a summary and staff recommendation and of course, seek
board direction, um, on that. Our intent today
as management is to provide you a comprehensive fact-based framework so the board can
exercise its governance role with clarity and confidence. With
that framing, I will turn it over to the team to begin with that and we'll kick it off
with strategic alignment. Thank you joe. Gary, uh,
rod sanchez, senior vice president of planning development. Uh, I've been
with via for, for two years. And, and I wanted to share with the, the group
I came to via two years ago because of all the exciting, transformative
things that we were doing here. It was building the green line.
it was, you know, adding to our via link service. Uh, and it was the,
the better best plan that attracted me to via I went the city. I was happy 30, 30
years there. Uh, but this stuff was really the stuff that I wanted
to do. 'cause this is the stuff that transformed the city. This is what makes a city, uh, a great
city to live, work, and play in the city that I want my kids to grow up in. So that's why I
came here. Uh, as john gary said, you know, our, our mission here, our north star
is to build a system, uh, that our writers, uh, want to ride.
that our writers choose to ride. And you don't do that, uh,
by going to a conference room, putting up a map and drawing a bunch of lines. It doesn't work that
way. It's not that easy. Uh, you build a system that people wanna ride
by engaging them in meaningful conversation by having that conversation about
our services and what they want to see in our services, where they
want our services to go about frequency, about expanding our service. You know,
what is it they want? That's how you, you get to the system, uh, that
that works for everybody. You know, we've done this at via
over a decade and, and it's funny. The same things
come up over and over again. You know, that our customers tell us that they want from us.
it's improved frequency, it's reduced travel time,
and, and they wanna feel safe aboard our buses. You know, they wanna know that they're
safe at the bus stop. They wanna know that they're safe, you know, on the bus. I mean, it's funny, I
was having a conversation today, uh, with somebody that said, you know what? My daughter attends utsa.
I want to, I want, I wanna know that she's safe when she's on your bus. Those are the things over
the last decade that our customers have told us. And when you look at what we're doing,
you know, improve frequency. We have to keep san antonio moving plan. We have the better bus plan.
we have v link. All things are designed to improve frequency, reduce
travel time, it's all those things. Plus we're looking at improving our technology
to, to improve that travel time and keep people safe. It's funny, today
we just introduced our new chief, you know, and he's, you know, uh, in charge
of a department that's growing, you know, to face those, those issues.
and here are the plans that, that, uh, are kind of our founding blocks, if
you will. And we start out with, with, uh, with the mpo plans, uh,
mobility 2040, mobility 2045, and the city's sa tomorrow.
these are all building blocks that we build our plans upon. And all these, you know,
know plans have, you know, one thing in common, they weren't built in a conference room.
they were built having those meaningful, engaging conversations with the community.
and then with via, we started out with our vision 2040 plan, our via
reimagine and then our keep san antonio moving plan. The vision and,
and the reimagine plan. Those are, those are good visionary plans, but the keep san antonio movie
plan, that's where the rubber meets the road. Those are our, that's a, a funded plan,
uh, where we're starting to execute some of these things that our customers want.
and what have we learned from all these plans? What have our customers told us they want
faster travel time, they want shorter weights. You know, these are things
in the better bus plan. They want late night service. They want expanded service.
once again, those are all things that we put in the better, better bus plan when we've heard from
them. They want new express routes and they want direct services. Once
again, better bus plan sa tomorrow. Uh, these are all
things in those plans, uh, 'cause that's what we've heard from our customers. So with that,
I'm gonna turn it over to our resident expert on, uh, ks a to kinda walk you through
a few slides. Mm-hmm .
thank you. My name is manger koker. I'm a major
capital program officer. I have been, uh, working on
these plans for many years or keep san antonio moving
plan, as ron mentioned, is culmination of lot of community input
that we received through mid-range long range plan via vision,
uh, 2040. And we are reimagined. It is also implementation
plan, which is based on a td two sales tax
and leveraging that 82 a t two sales
tax for our federal funds. So that is the plan. Um, that
plan has three major, um, transformative
pro. Uh, the
guiding, uh, four principles, uh, form the basis of
these transformative projects. More frequency direct service,
which results in faster trips, shorter wait times,
more simple and convenient mobility options that result in
improved service coverage and connections. And this overall results
in increased frequency ridership and customer experience.
the plan is designed to improve the existing transit system, expand
mobility options, and invest in our capital and technology.
uh, there are three projects which we are going to shortly go over.
I'm going to do advanced rapid transit or via rapid rod is going to
take over better bus plan and via link via rapid
delivers, faster travel times, broader access, stronger community
and economic connections that will transfer our urban mobility.
the these lines will provide reliable, high frequency,
faster service seven days a week with help of
dedicated bus lanes and priority transit signals
via green line, which on this map is north. South direction.
connects the airport from the north through downtown
to the brooks on the south, uh, with 10.3
miles of infrastructure improvements. The construction on this
project is underway and has al this project has already
received federal funds via silver line, which connects
san antonio's east and west communities. Also intersects
this north side line and together it forms a basis
of our network. Vi is also applying for,
uh, a cig capital improvement small starts grant
for the silver line. And I will get into financials a little later.
alright, so I'm gonna geek out for
you just a little bit. Uh, I'm, I'm a planner and, and, uh, you
know, the father of planning is daniel burnham. And, and one of his famous quotes is,
make no little plans. They have no magic to stir
men's blood. So that's not what we do. We make big plans and, and I think
the biggest plan that we have is a better bus plan. Uh, this is a plan
and it's one of the most exciting plans that we do. This is, this is where it's where it's all at.
uh, this is a plan that we built with our customers for
our customers. And what do our customers tell us? They want more frequency. They
want us to expand our service and they want more direct routes. They want to go where
they need to go. And when we're all said and done, uh,
we implement this plan. We'll have the green line, we'll have the silver line.
uh, every single one of our routes will have a frequency better than 30 minutes.
and we're gonna go, we're gonna direct those routes to where people want to go. Uh,
when we presented this plan to you last year. Uh, you
guys are really excited about it. You said, great job. We're happy with what
you're presenting. Uh, but this was designed to be a six year implementation plan, and that's when you
guys frowned and said, no, it's not good enough. Uh, we, we want you to put this great
service on the ground sooner than that. Uh, so that's what we did.
we rolled up our sleeves, uh, worked with our finance department.
uh, we hired a ton of operators, uh, and, and we figured out how, how to
do that. So happy to report that at the end of
25, uh, before a year had passed, 24%
of this better bus plan was implemented. This year, this year alone,
were planning to improve 41%, 41% of the
better bus plan. That includes over 45 routes. So at the end of, at
the end of may, actually 65% of the better bus plan
will be implemented. And on the streets, you know, it,
it's gonna take us till 2031 to implement the whole thing. That's because
we gotta get the silver line on board and we gotta tie into the silver line.
but the vast majority of the plan will be, uh, implemented by that time.
but, you know, here, here's the better plan is just a perfect example of
we, we heard our customers, we listened to our customers, and we're delivering to our customers
what they've asked for.
and I wanted to share this, this slide with you. This was, uh, this was kind
of a reimagined ski slope slide, uh, which tells, you know,
we, we asked a simple question to potential riders. We said, at what frequency
would it take for you to take our service? And, and that's what that,
that slope represents, uh, is, is the interest in taking our service.
at the bottom of the slide is, is the, the frequency in minutes.
so you can see at 10 minutes, 84% of
those folks we asked, they said they would be interested in taking our service if we're delivering
a 10 minute frequency. And then it kind of falls a little bit at 20 minutes to 64%,
about 20% at 30 minutes. And then the bottom drops out.
when you're beyond 30 minutes, somewhere between five to 1% of the people
said they're gonna take our service. So that's not good. And what's really not good, what
the red represents in 25, 70% of our service
was in that 20 to 60 or the 30 to 60 minute service. So we weren't doing
very well. But now with the better bus plan, with 65%
of it being on the ground, after may we flip the script, we will flip the script.
in may, 72% of our routes will have service that's
better than 30 minutes. So the team has done a great job doing that.
and, and what's amazing is we're seeing the results already. When
you look at our ridership numbers, people are responding to this service. Our ridership is growing,
especially on those routes. Uh, where we've improved them
also in the better bus plan is, is via link. And in via link
this, I, I call this our coverage service. 'cause this is, the service is
kind of in the perimeter city, uh, where you have cul-de-sacs, you have
kind of verland streets, you have topography. Uh, it doesn't
work to bring a 40, 60 foot bus out to these areas. Uh,
but it makes a lot of sense to do an on dam, on demand service, like via link.
and in the better bus plan, we call for 10 10, uh, via link zones.
uh, we have six of them on the ground today. Those are the ones in purple,
uh, with the southeast, uh, trustee gomez being the latest and
greatest as a couple months old. And we are already seeing great, uh, uh,
numbers and ridership there. Uh, since 2019, we've been
delivering this service. Over 2 million people have used it this last year. We've
seen a 35% growth in that, and about 500, 500,000
people take this service, uh, on, on a yearly basis. So, once again,
talk to our customers. They've told us what we wanted and we've delivered, and they've responded
by, by using our service. So with that,
uh, that concludes man juries in my presentation. We're
available to answer questions if anybody has any questions for us. If not, we'll turn it over to leroy
trustees. Do we have any questions at this moment? None. Okay.
madam chair? I do. Yep. Vice chair gomez. I, I just want to,
for clarity, the 70% flip occurred over
a one year period, one and a half year period. What wa what was that time again?
it was 25. At the end of 25, and it will occur
in may of this year, in may of this year when we put 65% of the better
buss plan in effect. So after the may service change,
literally routes that were over 30 minutes comprised 70%
of our routes. And now literally it'll be the complete opposite. That's
right. Okay. Thank you that that was in response to the direction that you gave
us when we, I, uh, when we present the plan to you. Thank you,
madam chair, members of the board, leroy allway, chief of staff.
as we transition into the next part of the presentation, we also wanted to take
a moment and really reinforce for everyone
that what we're delivering on today was also a promise that
we made to the community. In november of 2020, when the community overwhelmingly
supported reallocating the one eighth cent sales tax to the advanced transportation
district for the keep san antonio moving plan.
as you heard, rod and manger mention what we're developing and
implementing with the keep. San antonio moving plan is the backbone of a reform
revitalized transit system for our community.
success for us looks like a system where people choose
transit 'cause it gets them where they want to go, where they need to go
on time, safely, and with dignity.
the plan that is on the screen before you at this moment
encapsulates that the launch of two via rapid lines, more via
link and the better bus plan. That's how we grow
ridership, how we improve the system, and in line with the mission, vision,
and promise that the board has put in place as the last year,
how we are also the driving force for our community's growth and success.
I'm gonna be joined by terry travino to walk through what our community
and customers continue to tell us about their priorities for our system.
and again, just wanted to reinforce that what we're delivering today, we
told voters we would deliver in november of 2020, even
recognizing that that sales tax did not start coming over to via until january 1st
of this year. So it would've been very easy to wait six years
to start seeing that plan come to fruition. This agency
didn't wait, and as you just heard from rod as well, we are even
accelerating faster. The plans we've put in place to deliver for our community.
thank you madam chair and trustees. Terry
tino, senior vice president of marketing and communications
marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.
I'm here to provide you data and feedback on
behalf of our customers and our community.
customer feedback is at the core of all things we do to deliver service
and provide value to our community. We have a dedicated staff
of subject matter experts in the field of customer feedback and surveys
who work on collecting, synthesizing, and delivering
insights on the pulse of the region, including customers, future
customers, and members of the larger community. Our main,
main surveys focus on customer satisfaction, which measures
what existing customers think, feel, and experience.
we also measure net promoter score. It is the gold standard
of future growth and focuses on brand loyalty,
gauges, customer experience, and we administer community
value surveys and market surveys, which identify value
drivers conduct gap analysis,
optimizing pricing and packaging and improvising,
improving in, uh, retention. However,
survey vail, validity and reliability are critical to providing
trustworthy research. And our survey results work within
nationally accepted validity scores evaluated by
neutral third parties. Our data is very consistent
across the mentioned survey channels. Fair free service
is not a top of mind request from our customers.
we ask about bears and affordability, and it simply
does not resonate as a primary concern or barrier.
what writers are asking for consistently and clearly
is more frequent service, better on time performance,
shorter travel times, and a system that they can rely on.
these themes show up again and again in our surveys
and our feedback. In fact, 89% of
non-customers surveyed agree that even though
they do not use via services, they are glad they, there
are plans to improve public transit because either they or
someone close may need it in the future. This
overwhelming overwhelmingly concludes that our community
sees the benefit in transit that is available for everyone.
since 2021, via has conducted semi-annual customer
satisfaction writer surveys, we do this to ensure that we understand
the perspectives, perspectives of our existing customers
to identify, analyze, and improve customer sentiment, to boost
retention. This allows us to deliver on what matters most to our
existing customers. Our most recent cu customer satisfaction
survey shows that existing customers are largely
satisfied with what they pay today. That's an important data
point. It tells us that for most writers, the
fair level itself is not a primary barrier in
using transit. The primary barrier is whether
the service works for their daily life. Overall,
our customer surveys show significant satisfaction with the via
system on average, and most recently, 87%
of our customers say that they're satisfied or very
satisfied with their experience on our existing system.
that's compared to a transit industry average of 76%.
and importantly, more than half of the survey respondents
have said their experience has improved over the last
year. Our net promoter score is the highest
in the transit industry and falls within the range of world
class across all beloved brands.
now we look at what actually drives ridership growth.
the data is clear frequency, reliability,
and usefulness of the network. When service improves,
ridership follows, when service is unreliable,
even free fares don't overcome the inconvenience.
as we continue examining customer feedback, we routinely
ask what's most important to them on time performance
has risen to the top of most important features of
our system. In each of our last three customer
satisfaction surveys. In the red summary box,
you will see the top three important factors have
been consistent on time, performance, service
coverage, and weather protection. Once again,
we do not see in our surveys that the cost affairs is prohibitive.
in fact, 98% said they are satisfied
or very satisfied with our current fair structure.
on the left hand side of the slide, we summarized what our customers
are most satisfied with and least satisfied with.
our customers say they like the ease of purchasing,
fare, trip planning, and access to
stops. They tell us that we need to work on weather protection,
weak weekend frequency and security at our stops.
and they tell us they see tremendous value in the cost of
their affair. Not that it isn't an obstacle.
last summer in a community value survey, which
measures the public's perception of the worth,
benefits, and price of quality ratio of a product and service,
we reached out to writers and non-writers. We found
broad support of v's. Plans to improve services,
quality service and price is a key
dimension of feedback. And those surveyed agree
that our planned investments will help those most in need
across our community. That a strong transit network is
foundational to economically competitive city to an
economically competitive city. And that public transportation
is an essential aspect for workforce development.
as a result of this feedback, we know and are committed
to overserving the underserved, we do this through working
with over 120 nonprofits who
purchase discounted bus passes to provide to their clientele
population
in the same community value survey. In terms of the
questions of how do we broaden our customer base,
the top responses from residents in our region
include safety, more transit options,
higher frequency service, the delivery of our advanced rapid
transit program, better technology. And
the continued expansion of via link
absent from this list is the cost of fares.
as a as survey after survey has shown us, our customers
feel they're getting a significant value for the fares
they pay, and the cost is not prohibitive.
in other words, it is not a barrier to ride.
thank you. And
with that, we're glad to take any questions on this segment before mr. Brown joins
us at the podium. Okay. Trustees, any questions
trustee? Thank you, terry. This is amazing information. Uh,
just wanna get some clarification. So this is a lot of great data
and I like that you presented not only customer data, but
uh, data from non-writers as well to try to understand what are some of those barriers.
so just to clarify, um, you mentioned there, there
wasn't any comment on cost of barriers being, um,
cost affairs being a barrier for non-writers? Only 2%. Okay.
and then was 98% said our, they were, they valued our
fair structure. Was this a statistically valid survey or how do we
make sure that we were, we got sample size from, uh,
majority of the population? Yes, absolutely. As, as me, uh, mentioned earlier,
um, survey validity and reliability is important to us. We work
with third party vendors, um, to administer the,
um, to administer the survey reports. And we always work within
nationally accepted validity scores. Are there any
ways of how, um, so thank you.
are there any, uh, outlets outside of a survey where we are receiving feedback
from non-writer and writers to understand, um, how
to turn them into writers or how to remove any barriers for them to become writers?
yes. Um, I covered some of our surveys, but when we
talk about voice of the customer, we get the voice of the customer through many
outlets, surveys, focus groups, tele-town halls,
um, writer intercepts, so meeting people at the actual bus stops.
so voice of the customer is really a matter of how we go about collecting
data in a ma in various manners.
trustees, any other questions? Uh, I as a follow up to that, and that's where I was
going trustee, um, uh, fernandez was, uh, who conducted,
do you have, um, the company that did conduct the surveys?
yes, we do. So for our customer satisfaction score, uh,
customer satisfaction survey, which is administered twice a year, that is done by
trans pro, who also does other, um, transit industries within,
uh, within the industry. In addition to that, our net promoter
score is also administered by trans pro. That's done once
a year, and that's an industry-wide standard. Um, I should say that
that is a, that's a standard amongst all brands to survey
once a year. Um, we have a community value survey
that is administered by a company called base bass lease.
and lastly, we do a market survey, which is also administered
by mark, um, trans pro. So we work with third party vendors
to, um, to develop and, um, synthesize data
and gather feedback. Great. Thank you very much. Mm-hmm . Uh, trustee
question? Sure. Um,
outside of, uh, oh, are these surveys only administered
digitally or are there any no, ma'am. We, we
collect, uh, we collect survey feedback in many different ways.
we collect it via, um, bilingual phone,
telephone in person, electronically, digitally.
um, we understand that we have to meet our customers where they're
at, and so thus the way that we collect data is, um,
reflective of how our, our, our community is, uh,
is structured. Mm-hmm . Absolutely.
good. Okay. Thank you.
good afternoon, madam chair and trustees, pleasure to be before you today. My name's tramell brown,
deputy ceo. Today I'll be talking to you about
the operational impact and safety impact of a fair free system and a fair free
service. One of the things I'd like to start off with, operator safety
is rider safety. A safe system begins with safe operating
additions for all of our frontline employees. The biggest thing
to remember when operating conditions become more volatile, operator stress
increases. When operator stress increases safety
risk also increases. More importantly, protecting operator safety
protects our rider safety. One of the things I wanted to stress today,
it's like you'll see their safety's not negotiable. It's not only our priority, it's
something we take very seriously. There's an increase affordability cost that takes
place. We've learned this from nationwide examples as well as our own lived experience.
most of what you heard from the women and men behind us that spoke, uh,
on their experiences happen here in san antonio. These weren't canvassed
from agencies from across the country. This was lived experience by people who
actually did this job. What's important also, is that listening to our frontline
is as important to us as listening to our customer. We canvas their thoughts,
we listen to what they have to say. Say we have safety committee meetings. One of the priorities
is that, is to be there to support those that support the community that they
move. So we have a symbiotic relationship that works well.
operators are also essential workers. For those that were here, and remember the era of covid,
we were the ones transporting those that were essential to other
moving parts of this, this community that we live in. So if we want more service, we
must be able to attract and retain operators. Without them, we don't have a transit system.
bless you. Next slide. So at this point,
I'd like to talk to you about some of the operational impacts.
fear free does not eliminate costs. We've already learned the herd already that it shifts them.
universal fair free would increase supervision demands and reduce operational predictability,
which is something our customers have come to enjoy. They don't only know the operators,
they know the bus, they know what time it's gonna get there. They are norms that would be disrupted.
one of the things that's important is that resources that are redirected towards
expanded supervision or response are resources not invested in service
frequency. More importantly, fleet reliability, route
expansion or on time performance, increased complexity, makes consistent
performance or harder to sustain. So I'm
gonna use some, some terms and phrases. So forgive me, uh, for
not waxing poetic, but some of these are vernacular that we use in transit.
and so I'll, I'll kind of do like a rock scheme across the water and give brief examples
and understanding what it is. But I'll yield to any questions that you have before I, I
complete my time here. So the first step we have for service adjustments
is daily efficiency and service adjustments. And that's on time performance.
this will be greatly impacted. Again, this was a lived experience that we saw. It's not
something that we estimated. This is due to additional space or buses that are needed
due to increased calls for service related to capacity issues. Spacers
are a term that we use loosely that we use to provide resources
to regulate and deal with bunching and stacking of buses.
when one bus starts to run late, it affects the bus behind it. And so we'll use
other buses almost like accordions and deploy them from different
areas throughout the city that are in the field. And the dispatchers, much like an
orchestrated movement, will kind of wave the baton and start to send vehicles
all over the city to alleviate congestion. You've seen this happen in the airline industry.
we do that every day. There are hundreds and hundreds of people that help us provide
the daily miracle that gets most of the people that need to get where they're going,
going without even understanding what's going on behind the behind the scenes.
so back to the capacity issues that will create standing loads.
that means every seat taken the aisle almost completely full.
that leads towards pass ups. We have policy, we have procedure
that require the operator to call and contact the dispatcher anytime we pass up.
anyone that at a service stop, that's our commitment to customer service
outreach and impact. And when that call happens, the dispatcher has a couple of options
that he or she needs to do. First, let's get that person
picked up and addressed. Also, how do I find the people who need to
do that? So they start to wheel their magic baton and find the solutions for this.
the problem we have with that is these repeat pass up,
become service adjustments. People get frustrated, the service reliability
is impacted. They're literally watching the bus they would normally get on to get to work on time.
pass them by because they can literally see people almost standing at the fair box.
we saw this, we lived this experience before.
um, one of the things that you also understand is for the calls for service,
most often those are bus stoppages. Those are
service disruptions. And that's something we're gonna talk about a little bit further as we go on
right now. We'll move into the resource management operators is
an important resource that we have and operator availability and the use of that is paramount
to just getting service out. The transit industry is unlike many where
there are actually platforms of work where we have employees that are on
the ready just in case someone calls in sick, just
in case someone's not able to come and pull that bus out on time.
we have someone already standing by that within seconds will
get their assignment, go out there, jump in that vehicle, and get to the start
point and pick up a customer. And they never knew that wasn't the one that was supposed to pick them up.
that's another example of the daily miracle. Whenever we have a
situation where we're dealing with a fair free situation like this, we have an
increase in those operators, what we call reserves or standbys, and they're always
on the ready, but they're also the ones that are used to fill spaces. So
if all the operators pull out for the daily pullout that morning, they
stay here, they grab vehicles and they go wait in the field. In some areas
that we call the hole, if I told you I'd have to kill you, but this is, this is,
uh, high transit iq stuff. But these are just areas that we deploy from
that are regionally located that help us get there in the most timely manner to some of
these places where we, we see a lot of these things happening. We'd have an increase of operators
each day just to stand by just to meet the additional demands. In addition
to the standard work that we do every day. That would be our
new life. If we were to get involved and to move forward into even a pilot program that began,
additional buses would be needed, uh, we would have to dip into our spare ratio.
the fta requires that we have backup buses on the ready to go out and call
for service. It's not acceptable by the ft a to have a transit system that
says we're all outta buses. Sorry, we, we we can't pick you up.
you're on time. Performance will be affected. So we, we have to have those vehicles always
on the ready. But what's worse than that? You have to have the operators to drive the vehicles.
and we heard before from the famous dream team before I got here,
that we've done well to follow up on what you've asked of us to do. And
that's make the priority the people. And in doing so,
we have to have a support group that helps that happen as well. There's also
additional daily buses that need to be maintained. Service cleaned,
the readiness for every single day, that's
on top of what we normally do. So to have a fair free system
that deals with some of these, and these are just the smallest ripples, uh, of that type
of service to provide, we would always have to staff up,
reprogram, re-strategize, and move forward. Next
step we'll move into the safety and security area. Code
of conduct compliance is one of the biggest things that would be the bucket or the
box that you heard most from the women and men that came up to speak
about what they remember. When we had a situation where we had fair free service that was going on.
code of conduct sets the service expectations for all of our customers.
it's behavior, the acts, the rules, all the safe service
measures that create kind of the decorum, the environment that they're used to. They can
tell what's normal by the adherence of that. When people are
outside of that, they can tell something's a little bit different today.
it's not a regular trip to get where I'm headed to now, operator
engagement of code of conduct issues have a greater opportunity
for conflict than enforcing the fair. I'll say
that one more time. Operator engagement, just them engaging
the people who are performing outside of the acceptable code of conduct behavior
has a greater opportunity for conflict than enforcing the fair. Because
most of them end up with not only a stopped bus, but some
being removed from the bus. There's another impact that
happens from there. The customers who routinely ride and they're trying to get to those,
uh, quality of life opportunities, get to their job, um, get
to their, their school, get to medical assistance,
these are delays. And what's so bad about is what we saw is they could
predict the delays. They could tell that if someone was at a bus stop and
they got in with no shoes, no shirt,
and some foreign substance just dripping from their body, this is
not dramatic, this was just tuesday.
they knew that they may not get to work. They would make
comments like, keep going, pass 'em up. They
just did not want risk, the opportunity to miss, to get
to that undisrupted trip that they've grown to be used to. And so during
covid, we saw a lot of this that was taking place. Now, the reason that it's an
issue more so than the fair is because now it requires the operator to not only
stop the bus, they now have to call and communicate with the dispatch, right? Because
now it's time to mitigate that. So we'll have a supervisor, someone that will come on board.
the operator will employ deescalation training as they get as part of our regular
dna. But now they have to engage this individual
when they say, why is the bus stopped? And now they've also gotta manage the
crowd of people who thought they were going that way. And now they're trying to figure
out, is the next bus right behind us, or am I gonna have to get off and just try
to walk or find a friend? And so people would start to get their cell phones out all
the time. That level of engagement doesn't happen in a fair free
situation. I'll tell you why. Because in fair free situations, people
come on board, they can state the fair if they don't have it, you know, they can go grab a seat,
but literally anybody who's sitting watching a vehicle drive by
can just jump on board. They don't even have to have a destination. They just
need to have a, a zest for adventure. And they would get in there and they don't know the
code of conduct and they caused different types of issues. And it just became a problem that
got exacerbated. And we saw that. Now for the pilot
fair free program, even in that situation, there's
a new level of conflict that the operators never had to deal with. If
we were to engage in that, anytime someone who was on one of the free
lines, and I'm air quoting here, one of those free lines every time
they transferred from that line, right? Because our system
is a web of connections. Once they got off of that
line and got into a paying line, now we got the old traditional fair
conflict. What do you mean I have to pay the other bust didn't charge me. What are
you talking about? And we're not talking about market saturation where people understand
they had a chance to read, they had a chance to listen. This is just every day.
not everyone's gonna play by those rules. And especially people that aren't traditional
travelers. It's an adventure for them. So there's a lot of conversation that has to take place. That's
a whole nother reintroduction of a, of a fair conflict
that happens across the country. Now, most of
the code of conducts commonly result in service disruptions where there will
be a stopped bus, there will be a supervisor involved, and they'll
come and triage a situation, determine does transit police need to get engaged or can
they just remove that person from the vehicle, have a conversation with
them, educate and inform 'em and decide it's okay if you to jump on the next vehicle behind.
that way this bus can continue in service and allow people to make their connections.
those are all precipitated by operator call for service and
operator doing exactly what they're trained to do. They see something, they say something
and they want to get this mitigated to keep the vehicle environment safe. Uh, bus
exchange due to sanitary issues. That's something
that happened a lot. People would come and bring different types of items on the bus that,
uh, have leakage and seepage and things of that nature. And we can't
have people sitting in foreign foreign liquids. That means that seed
is unusable. We'd have to have people deploy in the field just to intercept
that bus, clean that bus so we can still keep the seating capacity as necessary.
others include customers that are exiting the bus due to escalating situations,
customers not wanting to ride because the environment and reliability of service
has completely changed. We literally saw people who were
afraid to wait at the bus because the volume of people who lawyered
and congregated at the bus stop, they would wait 20, 30, 50
feet away and then make their way to the bus after that group decided to
get on or off the bus.
the most common one that you heard about today, and one that that's memorable from any
agency that have lived, uh, this example, uh, is what we're calling
day tripping customers. These are destination list customers.
some occupy seating in high volume on buses and only exit after
engaged by the operator. We literally mean that they are riding
from one in the line all the way to the next with no expectation
of exiting and then repeating. And they'll do this until
someone engages them. Some remain seated at bus stops all day.
they congregate and signal the operators that they're waiting for the next bus,
rarely ever boarding to get on the bus. Right now, today,
in our regular service sweeps our transit police, our supervisors,
they'll engage people who are sitting at bus stops, that are watching buses go by. They've
missed opportunities to board. And that's an opportunity for us to engage and say,
sir, ma'am, this this region, this area you're at is for our customers that are rioting.
you know, you want to grab a seat, you know, you could please sit elsewhere. And
now we have supervisors that are getting into conflict. This is just the life that we've lived
before. Um, so it's reminiscent of that area and that's why you heard some of the energy that was used
by some of those that spoke previously. Some ride to stay in the air conditioning environment
or simply just escape the weather. If it's raining outside, buses are packed. Nobody
wants to get off. And if they get off, they'll get back in the next bus completely
wet and just repeat. This keeps going on and on and some ride just to have a
safe place to sleep. We see a lot of that. We've had a number of assault and
instance that took place from operators who are merely just trying to do a welfare check
and just ask, sir, ma'am, are you okay? And the person wakes up and,
and just a different place, um, that doesn't
fit the surroundings that they're in and have gotten into situations with other customers on board.
we also have this, it creates capacity issues, standing lows and calls for
service and bus stop loitering. These scenarios have proven problematic
for customers. We had call ins, we had calfs. We have the information from
what we lived through before. And so I just wanted to be sure that that's the one thing
you hear even outside of via outside of our region this day, tripping or what industry term
is usually round tripping. That's the first tipping of the scale.
then we have this additional security presence.
you know, an increase in system security will be needed just to handle the higher volume
of on bus concurrent calls for service. If we change nothing else
and we have more people using the vehicle, then more at a time and more buses
on the road. It's almost a law of averages. Your, it will increase
the probability that you'll have more concurrent episodes that you have to address. You
have to deal with an issue. Um, bus stop safety calls
for service will increase greatly. We saw this before. It was the fact that people were
afraid to even go to the bus stop because they weren't sure if the people there
were going to ride if they were not. We saw petty crimes
increase. You know, unfortunately, um, there are some that prey on those that waited
bus stops, uh, and it used to just be a senior citizen thing. Now it's just
a crime of availability. And so they know that people who are waiting for the bus generally will have
a fair, definitely have a cell phone and just other things that most of us keep
close to us just to make our way through the day. And it just became target zones. We
actually partnered with sapd to try to address these type of things if we saw those
things. And so we continue to work and maintain those relationships. But it, it
just takes our, our operators back to a life that they've lived before and it's
just not a, a pleasant experience for them. There's also
a see something, say something reporting response times increase for suspicious behavior.
uh, sleepers, people who did not wanna get off of the bus. People who
were performing different types of transactions on the bus. This was a group of individuals
that were mixing with people who remember that it used to be okay to
just put your head down and take a nap or check your phone, use the wifi
or whatever. There's just quality of life interactions that just got engaged on
that bus, that it just left people a a bad taste in the mouth.
and more importantly, the risk factors. What we have is service quality
definitely will be impacted. Service reliability will be impacted. Safe
service expectations by our customers. What is the new normal?
now, if we have a free fare situation and we go back to standing loads
and we're not even getting into the situation that would happen for people with disabilities
who are waiting. We've only got two wheelchair locations on
that bus and we have people who have used wheelchairs to get to
the bus stop and it's not theirs. We won't even talk about how they got it, but
they'll use it. And when they realize that there's no more room for the wheelchair, they just leave
it at the bus stop and get in and walk in, and then they'll just get off later on. We've
seen that again. This is another lived experience. Um, vehicle and bus stop, cleanliness.
it just happens anywhere. You have a larger concentration of people. Think of any major
city where you have a lot of people living. You're gonna find some issues where,
where sanitary conditions need to be addressed, which includes more touch points
and the customer sat satisfaction experience. Uh, definitely be impacted.
uh, next slide. So some of the budget investment
recaps that we've done for safety, uh, through the years that led up to this time that we're
in right now, uh, was workforce additional resources as
far as security supervisors, operators, things to build a stronger
infrastructure. Just allow us to deal with the volume of, of work that we have, right? It's
not about just the bus that's traveling down the road. It's the amount of people who are in
there, the transferring and everything that takes place. There's a lot of people that are getting where
they need to go. Equipment. It was this era that I spoke
of where we introduced the operator barrier doors. We did an
emergency procurement to make that happen as fast as we could because
the operators were getting spit on at a high rate, the highest
rate we'd ever seen in our organization's history. Now, I've
been involved with safety and a lot of things around here for a lot of years, but
I can tell you I cannot recall the volume of people who were just spitting
on operators. They were throwing drinks, they were throwing everything. We literally had
to start with a curtain system just
so there's some type of division between them. It accelerate all the way up to,
uh, some of the industry's best and top operator protective barriers.
I mean, we didn't just grab the first thing on the shelf. We even found the ones that had the greatest air circulation
just to deal with any feeling of of claustrophobia or
anything like that. The operators love it. We use a tu to get involved. They literally got to pick the ones
that worked. We teamed them up with our maintenance teams. We wanted to make this successful.
we wanted to make it work, decrease the spitting greatly.
but they still have people that are trying to throw punches. They still have people that are throwing things at the doors.
this is something that we put in place because that era spawned
that behavior. It's still suitable now. And so we still maintain them. And you'll
see the rest of the industry has, has done the same thing. Everyone's working in that, in that same vein,
um, as far as equipment, we have dispatcher console and police technology. There's
just so much more available now to find the issue,
find the solution, and allow them to connect in our standard mo our
standard practice. It's not if we have a threat or a crisis or situation
that we always have to send the transit police officer there because of
our joint law enforcement center. We'll find the first badge and the the first
law enforcement individual that's closest and just get them there, even if it's just to hold the
situation down. But we've got that vibrant relationship with the, the law enforcement community
here, and we, we still enjoy that. Okay? Um, for education
and the training and development, deescalation training is something that we champion. We've done it for
a long time at a high degree. So much so it's baked
into our dna for all brand new operators. We have biannual, uh, refresher
classes that are for operators and other employees as well. But deescalation is, is
critical. Uh, it's just necessary. We have customer service
training, which is very important to us. But more importantly, we're, we're proud to introduce
a fact, a collaborative effort between many of us within this room, uh, to
bring an ambassadorship, an ambassador level of customer service to make
sure that every employee that receives a check that spells
via on it has some degree of a customer centric focus
in how they deal and welcome and assist any customer who might need
anything for. It's just to be way finding or just to find a, a comforting
gesture of, hey, you're at the right bus stop. The, the bus should be here shortly.
if you didn't know, you can call this number and read that number to 'em and they'll
be able to tell you when that bus is gonna come. You could even text the following. And just
that level of service is something that's a pedigree that we want to be all about
our culture. We've heard that earlier. Also, uh, we're bringing back something that
was very successful. Uh, and, uh, just show you right here.
this is the, uh, a folder from the s four task force. See
something, say something. This was a collaborative effort between
across section group of administration,
maintenance, hourly employees, the a tu executive board
and a number of others that got together. We'd get together every month and
we would go through and identify hotspots and systematically go through
and clean things up. And you, you'll hear in other conversations, I'm sure
in the future, that it was phenomenal. It was birthed, it was spawned during
this last situation where we had free fare. We realized it was a service thing that
we had to add, um, just to make sure our customers felt
welcome to a clean environment. And they didn't have to fear being at bus stops. It literally had
operators who would call in for someone that they've passed twice.
and that information would go from the dispatcher to the transit police. And that would guide
our, our metrics as far as street sweeping and just making context saying, hey,
listen, you've been here for a bit. Which bus are you trying to catch with the
free fair system? That doesn't work anymore. They can make up a
bus number or move one block down and jump on the next bus. Um, the other
thing that's important about this is the other safety committees that we have
and the, the ease of hazard reporting is something that's also increased, and
that's just another example of how we prioritize safety. If we can go to the next slide, please.
hiring recruitment and retention is something that, that we're proud of. You know,
this board challenged us, uh, in a very positive way to let us know
we have to do better. We are not box checking. We, we wanna win this.
and so we took that to heart and a number of the folks behind me and everyone
else got together and figured it out. We got it done. We've done it so well.
we had a chance to start to accelerate the better bus plan. Some of the things that
we've talked about with the impact of on time performance, the increasing use
of reserve operators, all the women and men that are there to make sure that supplemental bus
service still makes us keep the same on time, desirable, uh,
headway that people want it, it takes a lot of people. I can tell
you right now in front of this full board, that if we were
to go for fair free, those net gains that we got from all the hiring,
all the buses that we have would then all be given towards
supporting that pilot. And if we go beyond that,
we won't have those same assets that we needed to continue to accelerate
the better bus program. That's something that, that should be
said. Uh, it needs to be known. We have the people, but
their use has been diverted. And so I'll just briefly go through some
of this. It's, it's important for you to understand that this is the culmination
of everybody being asked to be bigger and think bigger. And so
these solutions, they worked not just a little bit. They worked a lot.
and so just to catch up those, we have new trustees that are here. Um,
we had to increase job fair participation by moving events to evening hours. They used
to be just during working hours when most people are work,
right? We just missed a whole demographic of people. Uh, we extended same
day contingency offers marketing communications, team support, outreach through
media outreach and local news coverage. Right now. You can watch any news
station and you'll see there's a job faired via on this night at this time.
and that's refreshing to see. We implemented, uh, deferred retirement
compensation to retain tenured full-time bus operators. We have a hundred
operators enrolled in this, this strengthened long-term workforce ability.
it's a program that hr had got together and put their wits there and found a
way to say, listen, if you were gonna retire, we may have found a way
for you to stick around for another 18 months. And so there's some bonuses involved
with that, and it's an aggressive program and it worked great. Um,
we also have this where we have enhanced interview protocols and strengthened pre-employment requirements
using talent click and dlt, physical and drug screening. We just
cleaned up and strengthened some of those thresholds that were there and
just made them more efficient, made it easier to get through, but it gave us what we needed to where
we can get better candidates that are more customer centric rather than someone who just saw
the hourly pay. Um, this greatly reduced their attrition.
and then we had the recruiter incentive program, which has done well, but every single
thing that you've just heard me mention every last one of them is impacted
by this last bullet at this current time right now, today,
literally at 7 0 2, I can assure you this. I just heard two today.
we already have. And we're hearing concerns from the new hire candidates that just got
here, current trainees, existing
operators that are working. Some may still be in this room, some may have been here earlier
on, whether or not this is the right job for them. This is all anticipation or
increased safety concerns related to fair free service. And that conversation
has only been around for about three weeks. It's already reaching a saturation
point where people are trying to figure out, is this a place I thought I was when I got here.
it's obviously changing, and I think that's why you saw some of the, the energy and the effort
from those behind me. And I think that may be
the last slide. We'll pause for any questions. Uh, madam chair
on this section. Any questions? Trustee ?
is this it? I'm gonna stay for round two of the applause. ,
thank you for your time. Got one. You have one question, justin gillion, I have question. I I
think you're the one, um, for the reserve operators. So they may
just be here waiting all day. Do they have like a full 40 hour
week? Yeah. How many times are on the bus, that sort of thing? We, we do
that. That's a great question. There is an entire infrastructure, um, that's in
our working conditions. And I'll give you a brief example what it is. Um, that
operator, he or she may come in in the morning and be assigned and be here from 4:00 am and be
on what we call reserves arbitrary, let's just say till 8:00 am.
and if they don't catch out, in other words, if everybody shows up for work and they're a need
for that, some of them may be told to come back at a later time. Okay? Or some of them may
actually just be given a bus and be sent out to one of the holes to just hang out and
wait to be sent out and deployed. One of the things that we do have to augment that
irregular lifestyle and workday is what's known as a guaranteed 80.
that clause is in our working conditions. What that means is that as long as you show up,
as long as you show up and be prepared to work, you don't miss and you're not late.
you'll get a paycheck for 80 hours, even if that day you work six and
a half or whatever the case may be. It's, it's just the investment, kind of the
cost of doing business that this industry actually does to ensure that
we can get that bus to that first customer on the first trip of the day. And that's,
that came from the old railroad, uh, commission. That's why that term is extra board
and reserves. They all come from, from the railroad industry that we began from. So,
okay. Thank you. You bet. Trustee howard, just have one
question. Yes, sir. You, you talked about the issue of when it was
first happening, when there was free riding and the loading of the buses and the unloading.
I'm wanna get into the area of obviously the issues that the driver
are experiencing could be mentally disturbing, but has there ever been one with a physical
assault created some, some, some of, of an injury injury
that was medically in that in nature? Absolutely. Um,
you know, that that is a yes and not in a, in any small form of the nature,
not just here across the entire country. There were entire mandates that came
from, uh, the fta, this one and it, you know, kinda getting transit
geek language. But sms, which is safety management systems, um, these
protocols that came from bipartisan, bipartisan infrastructure bill
required agencies to start to track those, uh,
identify those at different levels and report that through our national transit database reporting.
that way they can just synthesize all the activity across the
country and just take the pulse and find out do they need to make greater mandates to keep
everyone in this industry doing that job much safer. So by all means, there were some that,
that were far more than just verbal and tossing of cups and coffee. Um, there
were some that that actually attacked operators, um, some that even
off of the bus. We've got cameras and things everywhere, and usually people,
uh, who have, uh, warrants or a a police involvement background,
they'll wait till they get off of the bus. 'cause the belief is, well, nobody can see me. Well,
we've got cameras outside the bus too. Thank you. You bet.
trustee flores. Thank you madam chair. Uh, tramell the slide
that listed out what you guys have learned from previous,
um, times where you had these kinds of disruptions, had service adjustments,
resource management, safety, security, and all the risk factors that you outlined for
us. Did you have an opportunity to go back and assess what
the financial impact was of all of that during that time? In hindsight,
were you able to assess a percentage cost to all of those risk
factors based on that prior experience? We, we did, and I don't
have those numbers in front of me, but what everyone had to do was take a look back
once everyone kind of survived covid and just kind of like, whew, we made
it. And there was this look back to find out what, what was the destruction, what
was the impact? Um, and the ft a and ata, the american public trans association
encouraged people to do that. And so everyone galvanized at and and grabbed
that information and most of 'em got submitted to, uh, some of the national reporting, like
tcrp, uh, trb, these agencies that synthesize all these things.
and just to find what does that mean, you know, where was most of the costs and how was
it, how was it utilized? Remember there was all types of programs also where you
could, uh, get access to dollars, right? To help address some of those burdens
that you took. Um, but what your question is about is exactly what
led to the ability for everyone to create emergency procurements, to
get barrier doors. That was the fastest solution to providing
an opportunity for the operators to still want to come to work, uh, and just
keep the doors open and keep service moving. But I don't have them in front of me. There, there was
a look back to just find out, you know, what was that fiscal hit, uh, to make sure
we survive it and, and learned and live well from it. And many of those standards are still there
'cause they just became best practice for, because dealing with masses of people.
you bet. Trustee flores, our next section actually is going to dive into
some of the potential financial impacts on the agency as well. Great. Thank you.
good evening, madam chair, board of trustees. I'm jermaine chubb, vp of fiscal
management and cfo. I'm going to discuss the, uh, financial impacts of a fair
free, uh, policy here. As you've heard, uh, many, excuse me, as you've heard many
times tonight and other presentations, a fair free program is not free. There
are costs that associated consequences that must be considered. Um, financial
impacts are very real and we must have a financially, uh, stable system
to deliver on the transformation that our community has told us that they desire
by their vote and their ongoing request to this agency. If you look
here, our, our, our fair box revenue is integrated into our financial plans
that are submitted to the fta. Our fairbox revenue is needed to
support our financial capacity and stability, uh, demand divided fta
and their ongoing, uh, grants for the, uh, green line.
um, I note also that we're currently spending these grant dollars for our green line and
we're awaiting a decision on the silver line as well. And so
lastly here, it has taken via almost 50 years to get to the point where
we are today in, in a financially, uh, resilient state.
and via must continue to show that ability to operate and maintain the system for us to,
um, for, for decades to come for us to maintain financial
support for these capital projects. Moving on
to the, uh, next slide here. When management approached the board
with our capital and operating plan for approval in, uh, late september
of, uh, last year, uh, we showed a $1.1 billion capital
improvement plan here. Uh, this plan includes $793 million
in spend for ks a and includes spend of course on the, uh, green
line, silver line and second o and m facility, those ks a projects there.
uh, it also showed, uh, 126 million in spend for revenue vehicles,
another $58 million for passenger and operating facilities.
and you'll see here that we, uh, set aside $100 million as contingency
spend to support the delivery of ksam as required by
our federal partners, as we stated, and the cover for the lack of contingency that we
have in a multitude of projects that are within this portfolio here.
and so you can see by our financial projections here that that plan, and
of course, the um, operating spend that we needed to incur with
the, uh, next five years here actually yielded, uh, favorable results
in terms of achieving the boards are requirements for debt service
coverage ratio, and days cash on hand. This is how we determine if a capital plan is
affordable for us or not. And so we show here in that green box here, you see
that each and every year we achieve at least a 1.3 times or
better debt service coverage ratio. That's management's planning
threshold. The board's threshold is a slight bit lower than that and we didn't
wanna plan to that level, of course, and that threshold is 1.15 times. And so,
uh, we were doing good from that standpoint. And then when you look at dave's cash on
hand, we achieved 126, well, I'm sorry, 126 days or
better in the five year timeframe. The board's threshold is 120
days or better. And so we, we achieved that as well. And so the board
approved the capital and operating plan for the organization. Now I want to take
a look at what would happen if we actually had some impact to our fairbox
revenues. And so we'll go over to the next slide here. This slide here shows
the results of a full, fair free policy on the organization.
so it amounts to this, uh, 5% revenue loss or so. And so
you can see here in the, um, chart here that a fair free policy will
result in that full $18 million loss. If you just look at
our fiscal year 26 budget, we plan for 18 million in spend
and fair box revenues, all of that will be wiped away. We made an assumption
here that let's just say that we knew that this was gonna be our policy before the
year started, and we plan to remove all of the costs associated with fair
box collections. And so you see that as a savings here in the chart here
above. And then on the operating, um, side of the house, you heard
tremmel brown's conversation and presentation about all of the impacts that this
fair box, this free fair policy would cost for the organization.
and if we wanted to maintain the level of service that this organization
desires, there would be quite a bit of cost. And so what we did
is we programmed what we, what we believe is a modest 5% impact to
our fiscal year 26 operating budget here. And that's that $16.3 million
that you see here. I note here below that, that I believe these costs could
be within a range of five to 15%. And so at the
5% impact on our fiscal year 26 operating budget, we would have a
total financial impact of $33 million at
that 15% that could be as high as $67 million.
and so moving forward to the next slide, this particular slide here shows, uh,
partial fair free policy here, or 3% revenue
loss. And so in, in this situation, we assume that, um,
of course our fairbox revenues, we maintain 40% of our fairbox
revenues. And then in terms of the operating impact, we
just took a more modest number here, assuming that we'd have slight, um,
slightly less impact here. But looking at the numbers here, you could see that
you would have the fair box revenue loss of 10.8 million. We would
no longer have the fair collection savings because we're still collecting faires.
and then we would have about a $9.8 million operational impact
on the modest end, resulting in a total financial impact of $20.6 million.
the next slide actually goes over the impact of both of
those scenarios. And you can see here in the, uh, middle here, we
talk about that 4 0 4 fee, uh, policy here, that 5% revenue loss.
and, um, you look squarely at the debt service coverage ratio.
and over those five years that we talked about fiscal year 26 through 30, where we
were showing an achievement greater than the boards required 1.15 times,
we now have a minimum within that timeframe of negative one times,
meaning that if we had debt service in a particular year of $20 million,
our net revenues to pay debt service that year was negative $20 million.
and our minimum debt, um, I'm sorry, our minimum days cash on
hand in that timeframe was 78 as well. And so the board
would not accept that. Management would not accept that we would have to go go back to the drawing
board. And so we talk about some actions that we might need to pursue to, uh,
cure this. We would need to look at stocking all of our major capital projects,
the green line, the silver line, checking on m facility, better bus
plan, and or make significant cuts to our operation. And when we
talk significant, it would be a major cut to our operations
that we have today. Looking at the, uh, 3% revenue loss
scenario, similar results. We have a negative 0.2 times debt service
coverage ratio. We have negative 71 days cash on
hand and of course another, um, program that would not be acceptable
by management nor the board standards. And we're still looking at stopping silver
line second on m facility, better bus plan and again,
and or major cuts to the operation. And one of the reasons that these numbers
fall off so significantly is once we get to a point where we
are no longer financially, uh, resilient, the ft a is gonna look at that
and they're gonna pull all of the grants that they've promised us thus far
and what we're planning for in terms of silver lining. So you have to take those out
and then we have to overcome that in some manner and we're just unable to do it.
and I would say lastly here, and so we, we've shown how it's, it's really
unaffordable for the organization to consider this fair free policy, but
we also have legal challenges as well. We're actually prohibited from allowing a total fair
free, uh, policy here. And so with our fairbox revenue bond
issuance on december 1st, 2020, we have a special coveted
within that, uh, within that bond agreement that says that no
free service of the transit authority shall be allowed to any customer or
other person except for children under five years of age who ride pursuant
to v's. Policy. And so again, we have
an inability to afford the, uh, changes that we talked about. And certainly we have
a legal restriction as well. Do you wanna go
ahead and go through? Okay,
so now I'm going to go over three things. First,
the factors that fda evaluates for the overall
award of the, uh, capital investment grant. The second one is
going to be overall rating for vr, rapid lines
and inputs to that, uh, rating. And then the
last one, I I will cover impacts to the cig grant
due to fear free policy. This chart here
shows, uh, it's complex, but it shows the
two areas where we look at rating. Um, to be
eligible to receive cig construction grant, all proposed projects
must go through a multi-year multi-state development process
outlined in the law. Fda is required to evaluate and rate
cig projects on statutorily defined project justification
and local financial commitment criteria. Both are rated 50%
and a project must receive at least minimum or above
overall rating to advance through the steps in the process
and receive construction grant awards. So that's the framework we use.
then I'm going to go to the next, uh, step which dwells
deeper into local financial commitment.
um, as part of the 20 year financial plan that is
required to be submitted for the, uh, grant,
we look at three areas, the current conditions with capital and
operating, uh, condition. Second
one, which is most important in today's context is commitment
of funds. It includes fairbox revenue, current and projected
local sales tax and current and projected any other funds
which we might receive. And the third one is reasonable
of capital and operating cost estimates, planning assumptions,
capital and operating funding capacity, including total debt
capacity. All this together helps us look
at these where we are today with the rapid green line. We have,
uh, a grant agreement, full funding grant agreement with fda
basis of which included fairbox revenue
and some of the financial germane explained before. And that
grant is $268 million
silver line. We are in the process of submitting our final
grant application, and both projects currently are
rated medium high, which made us competitive
and eligible to receive this grant next line.
so a fair p policy also threatens greenline
construction and evaluation of silver line grants as fda requires
financial capacity to deliver projects and operate those projects.
requirement to demonstrate a sustainable financial plan to fda
is a key requirements of sustainable financial plan includes
meeting via policies related to debt service
coverage, cash in hand, and uh, also demonstrating
funding for service and capital needs without
impacting the service, the existing service for next 20 years.
so we must identify replacement funding sources
or cost reduction plan without impacting existing service.
if we proceed with fear-free policy.
in worst case, our inability to secure local funding sources
whether taxes or fair fares as promised in
the financial plan, can also, uh, expose us
to potential paths in the grant for, uh, green line
construction so they can stop, draw down our existing grant,
or in the worst case, terminate grant agreement for the green line.
it also, uh, may ask us if we cannot have
local, uh, sustainable financial plan in the two
scenarios that jermaine mentioned, they might ask us to
repay those grant uh, awards. This also
jeopardizes our silver line grant award.
madam chair. With that, we're glad to pause and take any questions about the financial implications.
trustees, any questions on the financials? No,
we are good. Thank you so much.
and then priscilla's going to join for the last section of this presentation.
good evening. My name is priscilla ingle, senior vice president of customer
support, customer care and support. And we're here to talk to you about the fair
programs that we offer to the community for those who are seeking,
uh, access to our service. We have for decades provided affordable
transportation with numerous discounts for the community. And I can tell you
that over the decades that I've been here, we've really been very progressive
in providing services so that no one, uh, doesn't
have the opportunity to use a service to get where they need to go. So we do have
existing discounts in place and we also have a very robust program
that we partnership that we have with area nonprofits for them to
be able to acc have their clients access service as well.
the partnerships are welcomed. We're glad that we are able to work with partners
and with, but to be able to do that, we need to have funding in place, and
that's where the fair comes in and we reinvest it so that we can put
other programs in place to help those in need. Next
slide. So this, uh, gives you a snapshot of what our faires look
like today. And while they may look reasonable to all of us, there
are unfortunately some communities that can't afford fair, but we do have
programs where we can help them get where they need to go and be able
to use a service. But as you can see on this screen, we've got
four year children. Four years are younger, ride for free children, five
to 13 can ride at half fair. The via trans rider can always use
our fixed route service free, and they can also take a
personal care attendant with them free as well if they ride the bus. And we
last adjusted our fares in 2015. So it's been a while since we've,
uh, been able to increase our fares, but that kind of has been intentional. We've put
other things in place to help us, uh, work with our customers to get them where they need
to go with and without them having to feel the, the pain of having
to spend more money than they have. Next slide. So this
gives you a snapshot of the, uh, discounts that we have. And, uh,
we're, uh, our team spends a lot of time, uh, growing
the programs that we have in place. We have our, um,
semester pass that we offer to college students. Originally
it was just targeted to students attending college, but then,
uh, as we worked with the various institutions and colleges, they said,
hey, can we extend that to our faculty and staff? And we were able to do that.
so the tuition, the, the colleges pay $2 and 50 cents
per student faculty or staff member per semester, and they have
access to via service throughout the, that school semester. In
fact, we've even extended it. So, uh, the, when the school
starts, uh, in the fall, and really the passes are really available
to them come august the first, and they run through the end of december.
and I will tell you that we'll start getting calls from the students saying, hey, is my
school already enrolled in the program? 'cause they wanna have access to this service.
um, the colleges that are engaged right now with us, alamo
community district colleges, ut san antonio, texas
a and m, and we were, uh, just able at the start of january
to also onboard the ut uh, medical school. So they're now,
uh, members where, and all of these campuses allow the faires
to be available not only to the students, but also to their faculty and
staff and the same host through with the medical school. Everybody who's working there or
attending classes is using, um, the service as well. And,
uh, we, we really consider what we're doing as partners. Every,
uh, we are engaged with the campuses, but we're also engaged with the businesses that we work
with. So for our area employers, any business that wants
to provide, um, passes or service to their
employees, they have to have at least 25 employees. And if
they do and they purchase passes for all of their employees, they pay $82
annually to have their employee have access to service.
um, if they're a government agency in both bexar county and, uh, the city of san
antonio, our part of the program, they pay $60 per annual,
uh, per year per employee. What we also do with the
businesses, because they are making that investment into their employee, if an employee leaves
the company, we will work with them. And when they, uh, when they backfill
that position, then that, that pass will then be transitioned over
to the new employee. So they don't really ever lose out on any funding.
and, um, our staff is very dedicated to working with these companies. Once they're
a partner with us, we want them to stay. And so we make certain that we, um,
work with them any way we can to make it convenient for them with the investment they're
making. So we're pleased to report that on the upas side,
we have just over a hundred thousand student faculty and staff
that can access the program. And that changes depending on, uh, what the
attendance is looking like and the employment looks like at the start of the semester. But,
uh, we've got over a hundred thousand people that have access to the program.
and then on our, on our employer site, we have 156
employers who are working with us on the vo works program. And we
do have a team that is out every day working with companies,
uh, to get them engaged with us in some way. And we will also,
we don't just sign 'em up and walk away, we're there for the long haul. So if they need flyers,
if they need passes, if they're having an event on their,
at their, uh, facility and they want us there, we will be there. And sometimes we
also, uh, make the effort to come up with things that we can do
to be there with them and be a good partner. Next slide.
so we also have reduced, uh, reduced and discounted fare
for our seniors. Uh, that has been in place for quite some time,
but we in the last, uh, few years have made it even better for
the senior because we used to, they, you would have a half fair pass that they
could use to ride. But what we did in recent years is
we've opted to allow them to ride free on the weekends, and
they pay 25 cents from, uh, 9:00 am to, to 3:00 pm
so it's very affordable for them to be able to use the service.
and, uh, we too, we visit a lot of senior facilities.
we go to a lot of senior fairs with the intent of,
uh, promoting the service so they can take advantage of that. And then for underprivileged
community, we started a few years back what we call a fair assistance program.
any 5 0 1 c3 nonprofit social service organization or governmental
agency that's working with people who are underserved or have
live in low income can purchase, uh, passes from us
at a discount of 25%. And they can determine what
type of fares they wanna be, if they wanna wanna sell, if they want have available
to their seniors, if they want it to be a day pass, um, monthly pass,
we will, uh, sell them to them in bulk. And then they provide them to their,
um, their, they provide them to the people that they serve.
and we've got 126 agencies who have purchased,
uh, these who have participated in the program. And we're pleased to report that when we
launched this program in 2019, we've sold over $3 million in
fair to date, just with that program alone. And there again, we,
we, uh, make sure that we are engaged with these organizations. We're
there for them. If they need us, they need flyers, we'll give that to them. If they're having
an event, they need us there, uh, with them, we will do that. Uh, but
we spend a lot of time making certain that all of these
agencies that we serve are being served by us in the best way possible so
that they can have their, uh, clients and customers and employees
get where they need to go. And so this list
here, um, and I know it's a little kind of distorted,
but, uh, this is a list of the 126, uh,
agencies that we work with. And we do call them strong partnerships.
uh, we wanna help them as much as we can. Uh, but this is the a hundred twenty, a hundred twenty six
that we have to today. We get calls every week from an agency
saying, can you help us? We need passes. Uh, we started this program.
we started it, we started it with the brook hill baptist church. They,
uh, came to us. They needed just a small number of passes 'cause they were
trying to get the homeless off the street into their churches to get fed. And,
uh, from that one person that came to us, and she was very persistent about
getting us to work with her, it's grown into what we have today. But every week
we're getting calls from nonprofits. We make it very quick and easy for them to,
um, participate in our programs. They just have to give us their 5 0 1 c3,
fill out a quick form, and then, uh, we consider them our partner
and we start working with them, um, in whatever capacity we can to make it
a success for them as well. And
what we can also tell you is that 40% of our rider are,
are, are riding on reduced fare. And that's, uh,
quite a number. When you look at, um, how many people that we're serving, that
40% of them are riding on a reduced fare. And that number could grow because,
you know, we've got a community that we know needs assistance, but we're here to help them.
we've always been, uh, if somebody comes to us with a concept
for a new idea on how to, uh, process fair or distribute fair,
uh, we listen and we talk to people. Um, I will give
you a quick story. Toyota had a fair grant to, they had
a grant to purchase fares from us, from us, which they did. After
they went through the program with us, they found that the end of, of the term of
u of using that grant, that they had $15,000 left, that
they weren't going to be putting towards fair. So they asked our
team, do you think you would want that money and use it?
and so he said, yeah, we'll take the $15,000 and we use that money
for random people that call us or a small agency in need, and we will give
them the passes they need through that $15,000 that's made available to
us. In fact, when the new, um, when we, uh, launched
with, uh, councilman gto in the city of san antonio, the semester pass
program, we had a parent call us. They have, they had three students,
but they were outside of the age range. The ages
are 12 to 18 for the semester pass. These children were like
nine, 10, and 11, and they didn't have fair, and they were asked, called
us and asked us can we somehow get passes for our three
children. And so we just dipped into that fund. We said, we will give you the semester
passes through a grant that we have available to us. And the parent came up,
got their passes, and their kids are now going to school, and they didn't
have to, um, do anything else to try to get that fair available
to them. So, uh, we're always looking for opportunities. We always make
ourselves available to talk to anybody who may need services from us to see how
we can work together. And I think that's my
madam chair. We're glad to pause on for any questions on this section. Trustees, trustee,
dealer. One question. Yes, thank you. One question, please. How old does a child have to be to
be able to ride by themselves? Uh, they have to be, uh, over,
they have to be, uh, 10 or 12, 12 and above.
yeah. They have to be with a parent if they're any younger or
our guardian or an adult has to be with them. Mm-hmm . Trustee
cooper. Thanks, priscilla. That was great. Um, I
think one of the other big things we've done, um, is
we got rid of transfer fees.
yes. And that that's another I yes. You know, of all the things we do that. Right. That
was a big one I felt mm-hmm . You know, in addition to not raising the fares
since. Right. Could you just give the room just a little bit of
what impact that had? Well, because the customers were having to
pay for any transfer that they got, they'd have to pay fair, I think it was 15 cents at the
time. And so that was a burden on some people to be able to have to pay that fair
when they, um, boarded the bus when they were just making a transfer. So
we eliminated that and they no longer have to do that. One thing I, I will
bring up, it's, it's premature, but I think it al also falls into
the category affairs and, um, it's, we'll bring it
back to the board later, but we will be introducing a concept called
fair capping that will happen, uh, down the road as we
get, uh, finalize what we're doing with our, uh, fair, our fair boxes.
and what that'll do is it'll cap a customer's fair. So if somebody
boards the bus and they pay a dollar 30 and they're making an, uh, they're
transitioning to another bus, they're paying another another dollar 30,
and they make another trip that day, they're already ma they already
have hit the co the price of a day pass. So then their,
their, um, their fare will turn into a day pass and they can continue riding the fares
cap for that day. And it'll do the same thing if somebody rides multiple
times on a monthly or a weekly pass. Uh, we're still,
uh, getting all of that together, but we'll bring that back in the future to let you know how
that works. But that's going to be another incentive to get people to ride and not
to feel the stress of having to pay per trip.
vice chair gomez. Thank you, madam chair.
just for a matter of emphasis, actually, um,
we've not had fair increases in over 10 years. Yes,
that is true. Right. Uh, and secondly, we have over 126
nonprofit partners mm-hmm . For discount programs and in some
cases fair fee programs. Right. For targeted populations. Right. Because those
fair, the while the agency buys the fair, the the person they're
helping is getting the fair for free. Right. They're giving it to them. So via is getting
compensated for the service yes. But the nonprofit is facilitating
the free service for their client. Exactly. Okay. Thank you.
trust. Uh, one last question. Of the 120
plus partners, can we get a list of your, your top five, type
10? Yes, we can do that. Agencies just curious to see where they are. Is it the housing,
is it the, uh, supportive services and categorize that against, um, critical
issues, um, that the city faces? Exactly. We can do that for you. Definitely.
very good, thank you. Okay. Madam chair, one thing we did also wanna
point out on this slide, uh, down at the bottom of the screen for the board,
while priscilla did mentioned that 40% of our customers are paying that already reduced
fair price, that equates to 61 cents to
ride the bus off of our normal dollar 30 fare.
so just wanted to put that in perspective as well.
thank you leroy. Uh, any other questions?
okay, thank you.
okay. Um, so now we're gonna bring this back around as we are indicating
from the very beginning that, you know, this type of policy consideration
had a great deal of complexities and impacts throughout
our organization. And to that, we have a summary here that we'd like
to show the board that brings us all back together.
so any organization you can break into three major categories,
um, you, you're always gonna be, you're always gonna have the culture, you're always gonna have
strategy, and you're always gonna have the financial health of in any organization.
so what we are seeing is a high risk on our culture. We've heard that today. We
keep hearing that, uh, over and over again for our employees,
um, and our safety foundations that we have. We're assigning that as a high risk,
uh, to our culture. We have worked very hard over the last 12
months to establish a culture that believes in the building of what
we're doing and the transformative efforts of what we're doing here, uh, for our
agency and for our community that matters. And we don't
take it lightly as management. I want to personally thank the
operators that are still here and the operators that are in this room for showing up today
and letting us know their thoughts on this matter. Secondly,
strategy. Strategy is indeed something that's driving any organization and
identifying those priorities and the system priorities we have. We have set that
as to deliver fast, safer, more reliable system. We
see this policy as a high risk a against that, against
our strategy. And then of course, we saw a financial
health moment, uh, check in, uh, our short term and long term
stability. We also are assigning that as a high risk, uh, for this
policy. We'll go to the next slide here and we'll, we'll emphasize
that those three areas, those three foundations do not operate
by themselves. It is indeed an interdepartmental system.
and weakening any of those would weaken the other two.
and in this case, we feel that all three would be weakened and
the acceleration of that decline for organization, uh, would be real.
and that's what we've heard here today. So as a result, our
last slide that we have on this is we're asking the board to protect
the foundations that we're building. We're asking the board to consider to protect
the culture, continue to execute our strategy, and secure
our long-term stability. After reviewing fair free concept to our
legal, financial, regulatory, safety and operational and customer lenses staff does
not recommend pursuing a fair free pilot or system-wide fair free program.
staff recommends maintaining focus on vias adoptive strategy to build
a transit system people choose to use by continuing to invest frequency,
reliability, safety, and long-term stability.
a moment of comment here also is it's not so much about what we're saying no to. Instead,
it's about what we're saying yes to by saying yes,
to invest in service, quality, safety, and financial stability. We are creating
a reinforcing cycle in the opposite direction where we will
have and continue to build a strong culture, we will have a strong
strategy delivery, which we are already experiencing, and
we are gonna maintain our strong financial health. This is how we build
a system that people choose. Thank you.
thank you john. Gary and staff appreciate that. Um, thorough presentation,
uh, led with a lot of, uh, data for us to consider. Uh, I'm gonna turn this
over to trustee cooper who was asked for the floor. Okay.
thank you madam chair. I also want to thank the management team
for the thorough fact-based analysis that they brought forward
today. Um, I also wanna acknowledge the thoughtful discussion among my fellow
trustees as well. We all share the same goal, improving
our transit system by making our service faster, more reliable and
safer. That said, the board has a fiduciary
responsibility to govern this agency in a way that protects the
long-term health of the transit system, not just for today,
but for the next generation of writers. After careful
consideration, I believe it's clear that pursuing a fair
free model under v's current legal financials, regulatory
and safety framework would introduce risk that we should not
assume we have heard about the legal constraints tied to our revenue
structure. We have heard about the financial risk and the pressure this would place
on our operating and capital plans. We have heard about the
regulatory and federal funding implications at a moment when our community
is counting on us to deliver transformative projects.
and we have heard from our frontline employees, particularly, particularly
our operators, about the safety concerns that, uh, fair free
environments can create for them and for our riders
taken together, these risk outweigh the potential benefits of
a fair free under our current conditions. For those reasons,
I believe this board should provide clear direction to our staff.
we should direct via management to not further pursue or analyze
a free fair proposal. I'm sorry, fair free proposal at this time.
um, instead we should remain focused on what our community has asked
us to deliver a transit system that is faster, more reliable,
safer and more useful in connecting people to opportunity.
that's how we honor the trust of our rider. The commitments
made to our votes, made to our voters and the responsibility we
have given as stewards of this public system.
we can and should continue to support targeted affordability programs
and partnerships that help the most in need, but should
not compromise the long-term stability of the system that their entire
community depends on. Therefore, I move that via
metropolitan transit board of trustees, having reviewed the analyst
presented by management and having considered the legal financial,
regulatory, safety and operational implications of fair free
transit model, hereby determines that pursuing a fair free
pilot or system-wide fair free program is not in the best
interest of via metropolitan transit. Further, I move the board
direct via staff to discontinue any further analysis,
development, or pursuit of fair free proposals under
vias operating authority. And instead to continue focus on
organizational resources on delivering the voter approved and board
adopted system improvements including enhanced frequency, reliability,
safety, and implementation of transformative capital
investments that benefit the entire community.
do we have a second? I will second this as
a writer of via I ride
via I do not believe in fear free. So I second this motion
a, uh, vice chair gomez.
thank you madam chair. I, um, as I reflect on all
the information that's been presented here for us today, I can't help but think of a phrase
that we all probably are somewhat familiar with or have heard before. And
that is the phrase, a solution looking for a problem.
and that is what has been proposed by our mayor and a couple
of our council members. And I say with all due respect to them that
that's what their proposal is. It's a solution looking for a problem,
a problem that we do not have. Madam chair and trustees affordability
is not an issue regarding our fares at
via. Terry made it abundantly clear with her data
as to what our writers think, and that is nowhere near the top
of their consider their concerns for our organization, uh, on
that alone. What our writers want, uh, is all
I need to know to support the motion that is on the table. And I look
forward to doing so. Thank you, trustee. Trustee, uh, fernandez.
thank you, madam chair. Um, I agree.
um, I think thank you staff for bringing a lot of great information and for,
uh, continue on with the momentum that via has been, uh,
executing in the last year or years and keeping, uh,
reaching and exceeding, uh, the goals set. Um, it's definitely
an exciting time for via, for san antonio residents.
um, I do, I think having this conversation is
a great conversation to look at. What are some of the barriers that san antonio
residents and via writers face on a day to day basis? Um, understanding
the quality of life and reaching a quality of life is increasing
access to opportunities to, um, connection
to jobs, health, and to thrive. Um, understanding
that for some, a fair might be a, uh, a barrier, but
I think after hearing our conversation today, it is clear to
me that the priority for via now is to continue that momentum of
providing a better service, of providing, uh, access to a
transit system that is closer and better to our san antonio
residents so that we can invite more non riders. Um,
I, I look forward to continue learning how we can get more,
um, san antonio residents to, to ride via and
to better offer an opportunity for them. Um, but I do think that,
uh, in addition to all of the information and data that staff presented, the goal
is clear. That is to provide a better service to, to writers and to
invite more san antonio residents, uh, to use it because it is a better
service, because it feels free and because they have more access, uh,
to increase their connectivity. Thank you trustee.
trustee grina. Thank you. Uh, madam
chair. Um, thank you staff, uh, all of the hard work you put in
to help, uh, not just us, but the public understand, uh, kind
of the behind the scenes part of, of the impact of a decision like this.
and, uh, I will say, I think it is a worthy conversation to discuss how we
can more equitably, uh, provide transportation and remove
those barriers to increase access to transportation. I think everybody in this room would support
measures to remove barriers to transportation. Um, however, I don't know
if a consumer facing tax is, is the answer to provide it. And,
um, the other thing I will say is that I firmly believe that everyone in
this room has come with good faith. Uh, but I do want us to be careful how
we talk about our neighbors, specifically our most vulnerable
neighbors. Um, everyone deserves dignity. And so, um, I do think everybody
comes with that. But as I hear this conversation, and to your point, uh, vice
chair, it seems like our city isn't necessarily dealing
with an issue of access to transportation. It is dealing with
an investment, a robust enough investment in mental health supports and
access to housing in access and support for our houseless population. And so
I'm looking forward to the conversation of the city council and of the mayor
and how they are going to direct more of their budget to supporting those things, because that
is what seems to be causing the safety issues for our drivers, for our,
for our system. And I will say, um, as somebody who frequently goes to
school boards and says, our working conditions, our students' learning conditions,
I firmly agree that the working conditions of our operators are the
conditions of our other riders. And so, again, I look forward to a more robust
investment in some of those other things like mental health, those foundational pieces
that will then make a free fair system, uh, I think more palatable,
uh, and, and sustainable to, to folks that operate, but also folks
that ride. Um, I would also be interested in looking at ways that we can
expand some of these partnerships. Uh, again, working in a school district, uh,
and my partner, she is a social worker for our school district. She is frequently asking
for those passes for students. And so making sure every mckinney-vento person,
uh, student in our school system has access to this, making sure that,
uh, ready to work, right. If you apply for ready to work and you are now enrolled and ready
to work, why do you not have access to this? I think it's also easy if we wanted
to pilot free fare to just look at medicaid, look at who's
receiving snap benefits, we can target this support in a much more meaningful
way to, to address the issue that I think the city and the mayor is looking to
address. But it seems like, again, from operators, from management, from the folks
who are experts in this field, that this is not the, the, the best
approach. And it seems somewhat rushed in that sense, but again, I, I'm more interested in,
in looking forward to the robust conversation from the city about how to invest in our houseless
population and our mental health supports for our community. Thank you.
thank you. Trustee reina. Trustee howard? Yes, trustee. Thank,
thank you, madam chair. You did hit on something that I, that I think is absolute absolutely correct
and want to be sensitive to those, to the issues of the individuals in our community
that have challenges is that to some degree, maybe not, they're not have, they don't have as much control
over it. But one of the things that, from my perspective as a board member is
one of the most important roles that we have is for the employees that work for
via, we want them to arrive and to return to their families the same
way that they got here with no dispar, no disparaging of, of
anyone else. Uh, but with that, I think, you know, getting back to your, your three
circular points, john, that is a high key to me and I, but I also agree
with you that there is plenty of other opportunities to try to find ways to
specifically get down to other areas of need and access
to via, at a reduced rate that actually
benefits both via and the right client.
thank you. Thank you. Thank you, trustee howard? Uh,
trustee . Yeah. This is my first meeting, but boy did
I learn a lot. . You're welcome. It was a good one. First of all, I need
to applaud the audience and all of those who stayed late. And what
it reflects to me is it's a team effort from your
transit employees that are here, uh, the team that presented
so eloquently and so completely, I learned a lot.
so I need tolo, uh, applaud all of you because it's truly
a team effort. And I think going forward, it's nothing. We're going
up and we learned a lot of what we can do and what we can't do, but
we're in unison in doing that, and it's a team effort. Thank you.
no other comments, trustees? Okay. Uh, this has been
a, a great conversation. And again, I wanna thank staff and management for,
uh, you know, over the course of the last couple of weeks, prioritize,
quite frankly, the response that, um, has been asked of us.
uh, and it's, it's something that doesn't go, um, without saying
that this is the partnerships that we have, the key stakeholders,
um, in this region are important to us. Without those key stakeholders,
we cannot move forward, right? And so, uh, I appreciate, uh,
your robust, um, and swiftly, uh, swift action
in bringing this to the board and scrubbing some of the other, uh, priorities
that we were gonna consider today. Uh, because this is an important subject, right, that we
wanna take and consider. And so for that moment, I, I just kind of re wanna reframe
this moment again, right? This is, this is something that, that I share with, um,
our city council and the mayor and the city a couple of weeks ago at b session.
um, and it's not just in response to the policy request, uh, that
is before us, but it's in response to a once in a generation moment for
public transit in our region. What we have built over the last several years
and what we are continuing to build is not an upgrade, it's a transformation.
and this board's responsibility is to protect it. And the last year alone,
via has delivered more than 31.6 million passenger trips.
that's the equivalent of moving the entire population of texas. We
launched the largest set, single set of service improvements in agency history on
a single day, right? Sandeep, we hired 107 new bus
operators, right? Tramell, we achieved the top customer
satisfaction rating among us transit agencies via trans grew
ridership by 28% via link grew 35% park, and
right. Grew more than 50%. The better bus plan, a full network
design is running two to three years ahead of schedule. The green line is under construction.
and these are not promises. It is proof we are delivering and
we are not slowing down. Later on this year, via will launch an integrated
app, a single platform for every via service, every route,
every trip. Equally, putting together the customer experience
as a top priority. That is what a modern competitive
transit system looks like. That is what our riders ask for a better customer experience
built on a reliable, safe, and effective service. And that is what we are delivering
all this progress is possible because we have been disciplined and that discipline
is exactly what is now being tested. Every dollar of the voter
approved one 8 cent sales taxes committed to the san antonio keep san antonio moving plan.
our fair revenue is leveraged against bonds and federal partnerships and
make the green and silver lines possible. These are not line items,
these are promises to the people of our service area, to san antonio
and to bear county. There is no surplus capacity for new unfunded
programs without impacting the delivery of services are rider depend on today,
the board's duty is to protect the long-term financial health, safety,
and performance of this agency. We share the mayor's goal for equity
and access. I agree. And we are open to partnership models where the city funds
and distributes fair programs for those who meet, uh, who need it the most.
it already does this with city employees. That is a path we can walk together
without putting the system at risk. We've gone through over the last year
a culture change. Thanks in part to all of y'all in this room today. Thanks.
in part to our operators, again, it was said earlier today
by our etu transit union. This is a one time that
they're in agreement with management, right? When was the last time that's actually been
brought up? Uh, and so I appreciate that that has taken
a long time to, uh, bridge some of the gaps that we had in the past. And
I, again, itest this to the leadership, uh, both, uh, the union
and of management. So with that being said, um, thank you for
your deliberate, um, expertise in bringing this, um,
uh, presentation to us today. Thank you for the research and calling us
as trustees, asking us questions, um, ensuring that all
our questions are, are answered in a timely manner. And thank you for always, uh,
considering what our ridership needs, uh, with the eye towards the future.
um, so with that being said, I'm gonna call the question,
all right. Um, all in favor, please say aye.
a aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.
thank you. Amen.
all right. We still have, uh, agenda items to that are remaining
. Uh, let's go ahead and move back to consent. Agenda item number
five, uh, which is an action item. Trustees, are there any questions regarding
any of these items? And do we need a presentation for this? No presentation, no
move. We have a motion sign unless y'all want second. And we have a second. All in favor, please
say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Consent agenda is
approved financial update. I know, uh, jermaine, we, we went through a, a robust
presentation there, but, uh, I'm gonna give you the floor again to provide
us a little bit more in depth on where we are here to date.
even leroy leaves me now. All righty. So
yeah, just use the, uh, keyboard. Okay.
yeah.
wonderful. I'll be presenting the, uh, monthly financial highlights here.
excuse me. Moving forward to our, uh, balance sheet here.
uh, we ended the, uh, month of january with 1.226
and, um, total assets and deferred, um, outflow of resources
here. I note here that we do have charts in the back of the, uh, deck
here. I won't flip to them this particular time, but I'll give some explanation of the variances
here. And so, um, we're down 86.1 million versus
a year ago. Current assets, they're actually down by 14.4 million. This
is, um, associated with an, actually an increase in cash of
14.5 and other receivables of 15.2.
but these are offset by, uh, decreases in sales tax receivables of 1.7 million,
federal grants receivable of 7.7, restricted cash and debt
service of 4.8 and inventory of 1.1. Uh, we have a large,
uh, decline in non-current assets at down 77.3 million.
and this is associated with a debt that was paid off in august of fiscal year 25,
uh, and in, um, january of fiscal year 26 as well. 6.4 million.
and then use of text grant funds of 10.4, decrease in,
uh, restricted cash for construction of, uh, 63.3 million,
and, um, decrease in our bond reserve of 2.9 million. And these were
all partially offset by increased, um,
um, I'm sorry, interest earned on contributions from bexar county,
a td of, uh, 5.7 million. Capital assets are up 9.3,
uh, million. This is due to assets, place and service and, um, construction
and progress of, um, increase here of 76 million.
and these were partially offset by normal depreciation and amortization of 66.7 million.
and then our deferred outflows, they're actually down 32.5 million.
and this is just normal amortization of, uh, pension and oa. Looking
at our total liabilities and deferred inflow of, uh, resources
here. We ended the month with, uh, 530 million.
these are down 33.3 million. The, uh, decline here
is, uh, largely associated with, uh, decline in non-current assets
of 77.3 million due to debt paid in august,
uh, fiscal year 25. I'm sorry, I'm actually gonna flip here because I
think I have an issue with my notes for transparency here.
and so this, uh, decline here that we are speaking to here. It's, uh, long-term
liabilities are actually down 57.1 million due to decreases
in bonds payable and bonds premium 16 million, uh, pension
and ope liabilities are down 44.7 million. Lease
liabilities in vehicles down 19.6. These are partially offset by
the addition of compensated absences, uh, liability,
uh, which was, uh, implemented, which was related to the implementation
of ga sb 1 0 1, which required us to, um, to
actually record the liability associated with absences that we expect
our team members to take. And, uh, that resulted in another 22.2 million
in liability. And then we have a arbitrage liability of $1 million
deferred inflows actually up 15.8 million due to monthly amortization
of inflows and pension of, uh, 14.2
opep 1.5, and then leases 0.1 million there.
so, flipping back here, moving over to our treasury
overview here, you can see that we ended the month with 631.2 million
in total cash reserves. These were down 13 million month over month.
if we look at the actual days, cash on hand, we're still strong. We're down 12 days,
but actual days cash on hand, 496 days, well above the
120 requirement, uh, that the board requires. We can see
here this number looks very strong, but we see what happens once we start spinning down on
our capital program. And certainly, uh, that number won't be, um,
won't help us in the event that we have, uh, issues with our fair
box revenues. We don't have to recap that, but people look at that number
today. But that number is gonna be spent down as we spend on our green line civil line,
um, capital programs. When you look at the, uh, interest earned in the bottom right
corner here, we, um, ended january year to date, we had 8.5 million
in interest earned. And so 3.3 million higher than the
budget year to date of 5.2 million. We expect to end the year with $23.8 million.
and this is, uh, the year to date performance is due to higher cash reserves
than we budgeted for. And then higher interest earnings on those reserves as well.
looking here at our income statement here, you could see that we ended january
with 123.6 million in revenues. Uh, this is
fairly aligned with our budget. It's a 1 million variance. I won't, I won't explain that
variance since it's aligned with the budget. And also from an expenses perspective,
we could see that, uh, we ended the month with 114.6 million.
that's, uh, just 0.1 difference from the, uh, budget there. I will mention
here, um, madam chair, that you questioned the variance
on fairbox revenues last month. I think we had a 0.8 million
variance to the budget. You see it's about $1 million now there.
and then we noticed that we had an unfavorable sales mix, meaning that we sold more
discounted fares than we had intended to, uh, within our budget. And so it
resulted in less, uh, fair box revenues.
this particular slide looks at our, um, sales tax trend on
a rolling 12 month basis. When you look at that trend on a 12 month basis, we're
actually up 3.3, I'm sorry, 3.2% year over year.
if we look at the state of texas here, uh, just looking at the month of january,
uh, state of texas saw a 7.1% increase january 26
over 25. Um, all sectors seem to be performing, uh, pretty
well there and their reporting as well. And then if we look at the three
months ending january, 2026, uh, the state of
texas was up 6.1 million compared to the same period for the, um,
prior year. And going to the, uh, performance
dashboard here, performance for bus here are weekday ridership complaints, mechanical
reliability and customer satisfaction. They're all better than target collisions.
they're better than target through, uh, january, 2026. We had two non-preventable
and two preventable bus collisions reported through january. However,
those occurred prior to december because for the last two months there were no collisions.
the, um, on time performance and cost effectiveness that within the
target range through, uh, january, 2026 for bus.
if we move on to, uh, via trends here, our weekday ridership collisions, mechanical
reliability, customer satisfaction, and cost effectiveness, there are better than, uh,
target. Our on time performance is within the target range. Um,
however, we've seen some improvement over the, uh, prior period
of, uh, 0.8%. And so, which is a positive, uh, complaints are worse
than target, but showing continued improvement with a 12.4%
decrease from the prior period. And finally, moving on to, uh,
via link here, our average monthly, uh, ridership and on time performance
rather than target cost effectiveness is within target range through january.
and customer satisfaction rating for ve services through january is 4.84.
and so madam chair, I'll turn it back over to you and the board of trustees for any questions
or comments. Thank you very much for presentation trustees. Any questions?
uh, trustee flotis, uh, any economic headwinds or any issues
that you're tracking or concerned about with respect to sales tax or
anything else? Yeah, yeah. And so of course, uh, we would say tariffs,
right? Of course, when you look at the capital program is major 1.1 billion in
spend. And so this is where we would have the largest concern. And so we talked a little bit
earlier about the fact that we have this, uh, contingency fund that we set aside
of $100 million. We do recognize that that can go away rather quickly,
right? And so that's something that we're definitely concerned about. We talk about it all the time,
taking a look at our, um, project management practices and our ability
to, um, ensure that we have the sufficient level of contingency
within our, um, budgets for each and every project. And so that's a major concern
for us. I would say right now we see that our fuel costs are, uh, rather high.
uh, we, we need to reach back out to cps energy and see why these, um,
surtax, I would say that we're being charged. They can't explain it very well to us why it's,
why it's, um, been so volatile. And so that's something that we wanna, um,
pay attention to in the future as our cng costs, of course, with increasing our operation
as well. And so I think there, there are quite a few concerns there. I will reiterate
here as it relates to sales taxes, we, we continue to talk about sales
taxes every single month because obviously that's a huge revenue source force. And so this
year we actually budgeted for a 0% increase if you exclude the a
ed two, uh, revenues that began in january. And so to see the
positive numbers that we're seeing here now is a really good thing for us. And so it's gonna help us in terms of
just the plan for 26. Great.
thank you. I I did have a question. Um, 'cause I chuckled when you asked that, 'cause that's similar
to where I was gonna go. Just going into the sales tax and looking, um, month over month
and the trend that you have there, um, we see a decrease from last month. And
I'm just, um, are we tracking, uh, the forecast, uh, ahead
of what you just said? Um, based on the economic, uh, impact of
tariffs, uh, of fuel increase, um, we're
the number one, we're in the top, uh, providers or, uh, customers
for cps mm-hmm . Right? And so largest, largest gas user for cps,
largest gas user for cps. So just, you know, those considerations also, um,
go into, uh, how much it costs to provide the service, right?
um, as opposed to how much we receive, um, from a revenue perspective.
so that's always gonna be a concern of mine. Um, and so I'm just, you know, curious, uh,
your thoughts, I think you already answered trustee flores, but I'm, I'm, uh,
I'm, I'm assuming that you're still monitoring that for the next couple of quarters as we close
out our fiscal year? Yeah, certainly. Yeah. And like I said, sales tax, every single, we
started to show this every single month, right? And so it's something that we want to continue to monitor.
but yeah, every single cost element, you talk about the cost of our, uh, fuel, that's a
huge cost for us. And then we have those ser uh, surtax that I mentioned of
as well that are, um, that are, we're paying. So it's something that we're gonna continue to
monitor and look for ways to decrease that cost. We talked about fuel hedging and things
like that. And so we need to explore it fully to see if it's a possibility. But we also wanna
have some discussion with cps energy to see if there are other ways that we can minimize our costs.
great. Thank you. Uh, dra, just for clarity,
um, we haven't seen the news one eighth
flush through yet on a report, right? Not yet. Yet. So what we saw in january still doesn't include
the cash is gonna come in in march. Okay. It'll be march. Okay. Thanks for the clarification.
yes. Very good. All right. Thank you for the presentation. Mm-hmm .
thank you. All right. We're gonna move on to agenda.
uh, item number eight. This is a proposed may, 2026
service changes as announced yesterday via, has postponed to vote
on proposed may service change improvements. The delay follows
customer feedback regarding, um, via reconsideration
to plan to retire. Route two, community input is an essential
part of our service planning process, and we appreciate the customers who share
their concerns earlier and throughout the weekend. Uh, this item is
now scheduled to be considered at the march meeting. Um, so now we'll
move, uh, into the via recruitment update, which is agenda item
number nine,
madam chair, members of the board. Satori samita, vice president of human
resources. And I'm with angelica martin, director of human resources.
and together we'll provide the february update, uh, for our bus operator, our recruitment and
strategy. So reliable frequent service attracts riders,
it builds trust with community, it positions via to implement service
changes, increase frequency, and respond to growth. And none of that
is possible without a robust full-time bus operator pool.
so with that context, I'll turn it over to angelica, who's gonna give you an update
on where we are. Good evening.
so as of january 31st, we've reached a total of 953
full-time operators, a net increase of 47
over the prior month. Um, the last time that via employed 953
full-time operators was in june of 2020.
in january, 2020,
um, in january of 2025, we ended
the month with 815 operators. This represents a year
over year growth of 138 operators. Operator
retention has also increased by 3% over the last year.
we have 71 operators remaining to achieve our goal of 1024
operators by december of 2026. Overall, we're 93%
towards the goal of 1024 operators. At our most recent
job fair, 88 out of 178 attendees interviewed
for a bus operator position. Of those 88 attendees,
43 were extended job offers on site. Fast track fridays
have also officially launched and are gaining more traction. Um, in
our office. We, we are heavily trafficked every friday.
,
are there any questions? Any questions? Uh,
trustee reno, not so much, much a question, but the, there
has been an increase in the conversion rate from folks that enter
training that then complete training and become full-time
operators. 'cause I know there's a difference between folks that come in versus folks that end up behind a wheel.
but that number has increased as well, correct? That is, yes. Thank you.
and, and retainage of those, once they start is also increasing.
so we have, we have a bit of a perfect storm here. Um,
jermaine was nice to us 'cause he did not really show that
our expenses are a little ahead of where we were expecting them. And it's
because of these two ladies here, uh, because they've accelerated
the rate of our hiring further beyond than what we were anticipating at
this stage in our budget. It's a good problem to have and we like that, but
that's also where it's flushing out into our budget as well. So we're gonna come give you all a midyear
look at that. Uh, but the great work that we have here,
uh, with, uh, with the recruiting, just to connect us
one more idea, 'cause it, um, or moment on recruiting.
how should we put the message out that the board just took about,
uh, free fares in front of those potential,
uh, recruitings or recruit tense? So something to talk, something
to think about. But let's, that's a really good question. Let's be very intentional about that, since we've already heard
messaging, um, from them already that they were worried,
um, about this idea. All
right. Thank you. All right. Ell, we're good to go right
on, on the number. Okay. I, I just keep on looking at him because
he was the one that increased and upped the any to one 50. Yes.
. Very good. All right. Thank you very much for the briefing. Um,
item 10. Did we have a legal briefing? No, ma'am. We do not. All
right. You tonight? No legal briefing. Shucks. Right.
okay. President's report. No. President's report
. But we are trying to figure if, if this
is, uh, the longest board meeting, uh, in recent memory.
so, chris, welcome. Yes. We didn't have word for sure. That's
right. And, and, uh, that's right. Uh, maybe the scoby item was maybe on
s that's right. All right. Well,
I'm gonna not drag my feet to go to item number 12,
which is your favorite. Um, may I have a motion to adjourn please? Motion to
adjourn. Motion is heard. Second. Second. Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.
any opposed? You see a one opposed? Is that what you did, trustee howard? No. Okay.
a motion carries. Thank you very much for being here today.
a td a td. That's right. We got a-t-d-a-t-d. Yeah.
thank you very much. We're gonna have to five minutes, five more minutes. We're moving on to a td, meaning
a td. We probably should have done that first. Yeah. Um,
not quite yet. It is now 8:17 pm and I'd like
to call it, or the february 24th. A td board meeting. Uh, we've already
done our momentary of reflection and pledge of allegiance. Uh, any
citizens to be heard. No citizens to be heard. No citizens to be heard. Okay.
and we do have a consent agenda item that is for action. Uh,
trustees. So moves. We have a motion. Second. Second. All in favor, please say aye.
aye. Any opposed? Please say nay. Nay. Consent agenda is approved.
ms. Elder, any briefing? No, ma'am. All right.
no legal briefing. And then our action item. Next one to adjourn. So
moved. And motion second. All right. All favor, please say aye.
aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Everyone stayed here.
that was, that may be the fastest agency.