Recommendation to receive and file report from Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) on the status of the Blue Line improvement project.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Next, we're going to move on to item 19 with the clock, please. Regarding. Item 19 is communication from Mir Garcia. Recommendation to receive and file report from Metro on the status of the Blue Line Improvement Project. Thank you. The only public coming on as well. Okay. I'm going to turn it up. Please turn over to Metro, please. Excuse me. It's good. I'm going to turn to Metro and then we'll have the comments after that. Thank you very much, sir. Okay. Uh, well, my name is Tim Lindholm. I'm the executive officer for Capital Projects at Metro. And wow, that's a tough act to follow, but thank you for having us here, Vice Mayor Andrews and members of the Council, we're really happy to be here to tell you about the new Blue Project. We've got a lot of my team members here that are going to help walk through this presentation. I'll handle the first slide and then pass it on. So our beloved blue line is 29 years old and in the end are loving care. And we really need to get it into a state of good repair again so that it can be reliable and resilient and provide good passenger service. So what we're doing is we're investing $350 million on improvements to the blue line to enhance safety, increase reliability, and improve the customer experience for our passengers. So we're going to start the new blue improvements this Saturday morning at about 4 a.m.. We're going to start the southern closure of the the blue line so that we can start the work we're planning to do, which improvements in general are. We're improving all of the overhead power systems, all new track work in the city of Long Beach, new signaling systems. We're modernizing the train control system. Very importantly, we're putting in four new crossover tracks which will allow us to switch tracks in case there's issues along the tracks or an accident or an incursion into the track. That way we can pass it very quickly and keep our schedule. And it's also going to help with maintenance going forward that we have a way to get around areas where we're maintaining. We're also painting all the stations, putting in new signage and branding, and we're putting in digital map cases at every station which kind of look like big enlarged iPhones that are interactive. And you can do trip planner and you can find out when your train is coming. So the nature of the work that we're doing requires that the blue line be out of service for two extended four month closures. And we're going to close the south half from the downtown Long Beach Transit Mall to Willowbrook, Rosa Parks. We're going to work there for four months while the north portion is open and then we're going to switch. Once we're open on the south side, we'll close the north side and take care of that. Now, we're very cognizant that this is a major inconvenience to our passengers. And the success of this program is not whether we finish it on time or finish it within our budget. The success here is not to lose any riders, and to that we want to provide excellent passenger service as we do these closures. So we've designed three levels of bus shuttle service, which Metro will talk about in the next couple of slides. The shuttle services are really based on on what we see, what we know our passengers do. Ridership patterns that we observe, origins and destinations. And we're trying our best to provide a shuttle service that will work for our passengers. So with that, I am going to do the project manager, James Way. Thank you, Tim. Hello. My name is James William, the Pies manager for the Blue Line. Work we have shown here is a high level schedule, a time line we have for the works. Coming up, we talked about the Rosa Parks station and the North and South segment. The Rosa Parks station will be closed throughout starting this Friday and Saturday coming up. And that goes on for eight months. And we do the work from south portion for everything south of Rosa Parks Station that goes all the way down to downtown Long Beach. This works. Expect to go on and goes into May and then while the train is running in the north segment, this will ends in May once we make a flip. As far as doing the work and North, we open its revenue service in the south and sometime late May another four month closure to that and within the north segments there's really broken up excuse me into two segments. So there's a most northern portion downtown L.A. where the tunnel is, seven metro station out to PICO, this portion of track, that expo and Blue Post shared three tracks together. That portion. We're going to do this work as fast as we can to replace track, work and Oasis, which is all we have power lines in that segment, and 45 days closure. And then after that, we open up the Expo Line, running the Blue Line, everything South Pico Station, starting from Grand Station, still close all the way down to Willowbrook and that's expected to be finished by September. Everything be done. And let me just go into a little bit more detail on the work that's going to occur in Long Beach. Starts again, starts this weekend. It's broken up into two major work as truck work and overhead power system work essentially will have two two group of contractors and workers working together, chasing each other out to start with. Well, you'll see what I mean by chasing each other. The truck work starts first. This work starts in a long beach loop area. Everything south of a street for three or four weeks. This work continue. It's going to happen every day, Monday through Saturday. Sundays right now is plan to be off for the workers and also maybe a contingency. The work occurs day on weekends. The everything within between the crossings. Those are going to be on Monday to Friday work. And at the crossing where the street crosses our track, that's a Friday night, Saturday into Sunday work contractors planning doing that 24 hour straight starting Friday night and get this work done so on Sunday although it's not a planned work that that's the time where we're going to put new concrete at the track bed with where the street crosses the track will allow that time for concrete a cure. So this work truck work mainly it's going to happen essentially every day, seven days a week. We do it every everything. We get work done with an hour with the time we have now once this work gets done. But first, as I mentioned, 3 to 4 weeks, the contract to start moving north, north of a street, going up to Willow Station and right behind it is overhead power system work. So overhead power system workers start about six week into the job contract to start working in the Long Beach Loop area. They're replacing all their contact wires entirely. Just just like the track track is getting replaced 100%. So these contact wires, essentially, they're 30 years old and they went out over the years. It's time to replace them. So this work starts south again, going north, going toward north, chasing that group of track guys. So the track will be done after 12 weeks. And then also the cost, the overhead power work continued north. It will be finish within that. They started a six, seven weeks. They also finished total about six, seven weeks. So that take us to about three months or so. The work is scheduled to be done within 12 weeks, plus or minus a little bit. And the rest of the time they're shut down. Metros are performing basically system integration test. This is to make sure that all the work is done correctly and adjustment needs to be make is done at this time. So this and the work obviously continue all the way to Willowbrook, not just City of Long Beach goes further and beyond. So the last three or four weeks of time, Metro will be performing tests and that's where you will see you may see non-revenue train running for testing the system that we put in. That covers most of the work as you go on Long Beach. Next thing I think we'll have Jeffrey here to talk about the bus replacement service. Thank you. Blue line service will be maintained from. Seventh Street Metro Station to 103rd. Street Station. Rail service will be suspended from 100 south of 103rd. Street Station to downtown Long. Beach, where it will be replaced by three levels of bus shuttle service. The Willowbrook Rosa Parks Station will be out for the entirety of the project, but we have four minute service to to for the folks who are transferred from the green line and. Want to transfer over to the blue line. Next, I'll speak to the local. Shuttle, which is based off of demonstrated to me is to provide service to all of the closed stations. It's free of charge. And it will operate almost 24 hours a day. Service begins at 330 and extended through all the way through to 30, and that was. Due to response to. Public outcry. It'll provide six minute service in the peaks in 12 minutes, service in the base. So in the middle of the day, that's. What the base period is. Next we have the Express shuttle. These are for the folks who actually have demonstrated to me that they want to go from downtown Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles. So they'll bypass the middle of the segment and be expedited straight to the end of the line. This is provided during the peaks. We've actually expanded the peak period again due to public comments. So we. Expanded it from 6. To 530, and the back end from 9:00 to 955 is just displayed above. And the peak was also expanded from 3 to 7:30 p.m.. In a provide 12 minute service as well. The last shuttle is that is the select shuttle. And this is for the folks who demonstrated demand to go from downtown, from Long Beach, excuse me, to the green line and eventually connect over. To the blue line. Again, this would be a service that's offered during our peak periods. It is on a 12 minute headway. The composite headway for launch is about 4 minutes. So from Wardlow to downtown, Long Beach will be providing 4 minutes. Over the entirety. And next, I have Anthony Crump speak to our community outreach. Good evening. Anthony Crump, director of Community Contractual Relations for Metro. I think last time that I was here, we gave you a brief overview of the outreach that we intended to do, but we didn't have a lot of details as we were still working with our service planning to to come up with the replacement bus service and some of the other details associated with the closure. Since then, I can say that we've done an extensive outreach program to let both our customers know, as well as residents in the general area know about the closure itself. This began in earnest in July of last year and then gradually ramped up to culminate in in January of this year with an outreach program, a media program, and actually ambassadors at each of our stations talking about the closure itself. Specific to the city of Long Beach, we actually sent a mailer out that looks like this is to take one that went to all residents within a half mile of the blue line itself. And that actually actually included also the cities of Los Angeles and Compton. But everyone should have received this just after the New Years. And we also worked with the local council offices, committee organizations, business organizations like the DOJ to get the word out as well. Obviously, recognizing that we are not experts on the city of Long Beach and the neighborhoods associated with Long Beach. We really did leverage our relationships with community organizations and with the council members to get the word out and to use their newsletters and other means to reach out to them. The last bit of it was actually hitting high frequency areas where our writers potentially go to, and those are places like community centers, grocery stores dropping off these take ones actually going to hospitals, social service agencies, making sure that people that don't necessarily pay attention to the media may not even pay attention to what they get in their mail. But are potential writers or actual writers that will have the opportunity to hear about the closure itself? Back in July, we actually launched the new Blue Project web page would actually included information about the service interruption as well as the the replacement bus service that was in the works. We actually still have a number of town halls and community meetings that are still scheduled. In fact, tomorrow night we will be here in council chambers in conjunction with Council Councilmember Pierson. Gonzalez holding another community meeting just to make sure that people have the opportunity to ask us questions and to find out more details about what's going on. This morning, we actually had a press conference with Mayor Garcia where we are and Supervisor Janice Hahn and some other members of the Metro. Announced the closure itself more of a reminder as opposed to a general announcement. But we're hoping that through all of these different means and mechanisms, we're able to to reach both our customers and our potential customers to let them know not only about the service interruption, but to know about the replacement bus service that we're offering. One of the replacement bus services, the express service, is something that's completely new. Metros never offered that to residents of Long Beach or Los Angeles, and that's a service that goes from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles directly. Hopefully that is something that will be popular. We're anticipating that it will be highly used and maybe, maybe extend it even beyond the service itself. I think with that, that concludes most of our presentation. We do want to make sure that actually one more part. Construction relations. So there's actually twofold. Two parts to our outreach program. The first part is letting people know about the service reps, the second part of the actual construction relations program. And those are the construction impacts that are related to the work that James talked about specifically. So we talk about pulling up all the rail in the city of Long Beach Resort. Talk about replacing those overhead wires. Obviously, those don't come without a little bit of pain. In some cases, it means that parking is going to be removed. In some cases means that we'll be doing lane closures and things along those lines in order to support the outreach associated with that, we have a construction relations program. That program provides noticing to impacted residents, to stakeholders, whether it be residents or businesses. We actually go out there, we meet with them face to face, one on one with them, and hopefully address many of their concerns. Our team also works directly with our contractors, the multiple contractors that we have on this project to mitigate any potential issues. That can be something as simple as, you know, figuring out what the best time is to block a drive, where the best time is to open a driveway, figuring out what's the best time to do some of the noisy work as opposed to the the quiet work. It also means coordinating with local schools to make sure that we ensure access if there's going to be a blocked sidewalk or a drop off area. All of those things are done by our construction relations team and we're actually up and running with that team right now. In fact, I think I have Brett Roberts, who's our senior construction relations officer for the city of Long Beach here, who's been out in the field for the last two months or so, talking to stakeholders directly and working with local organizations. One of the most important parts of this is our construction hotline. It's up there on the screen. 2134183039. That is designed to be answered by a live person. That is for construction related issues, not necessarily service related issues. And we provide that to businesses and residents that are impacted by construction so that if there's something that needs immediate attention, they can call that number or get somebody on the phone and we can have somebody out there to address the issue immediately. We want to be accessible. We want to be communicative. We want to make sure that this is as painless as possible. However, we do recognize that there will be some pain involved, but we do want to make it as painless as possible. And with that, that concludes our presentation. If you have any questions, we can take those in and filter this the appropriate staffers. Thank you very much. And first, I'm going to go with a public comment and then we'll go by the diocese. So anybody from the public and have a comment on these. And. Name's Larry Goodhue. I doubt that there's any person in this city. That knows more about the MTA offerings, not just the blue line that throughout the system than does this individual who opened the blue line and almost every other line, with the exception of about five or six others. There's no question it needs to be upgraded. It's the methodology they're using. With intelligent planning. There is absolutely no need to shut it down. Any rail system except an extreme emergency. All the work that needs to be done and the improvement than there has to be, there will be decades of improvements, not just here, but across the board. You do it at night. Period. And if you don't have the intelligence within the MTA, you go out and find it. Do it. Now unfortunately, this will cost. And I think I'm thinking beyond the the the blue line. This will cost Mayor Garcetti the his chance to be in the Oval Office. And I'm an arch Republican, but I think he'd be an absolute asset to this city, to this region, period. But he will not given the tackle here. Of. Approaching and neither the employers. Or the employees. Of all the industries that are in fact that have to come to work are going to put up with this nonsense period. It doesn't need to be shut down. No ifs. No and no buts. And the biggest disaster, if you're here on the board and you understand this and this doesn't translate it tangibly invents us is the disaster. That you're bringing to the. The incineration of the high school children in Beverly Hills High School, where they're building the rail lines underneath a cavern that is loaded with gas. Period. And if you look at the five different explosions we've had in just in similar incidences, not involving rail. Over the last three months. Over the last three weeks, you should, because this is an absolute disaster, as I say. It'll cost us the 2028 Olympics. The only way we'll get the 3032 Olympics is 2032 is if we demonstrate that we know how to operate a transit system. Thank you. Next week, a police. Good afternoon. My name is and I can say resident sixth district. A broken clock is right twice. Is it twice in a day? You know, we rarely see eye to eye, but I agree with this man. I think that you know how this has been handled. Yes. The red line is the busiest. Line four in terms of daily ridership, but that's internal. Most external workers coming in. Mainly service industry workers like myself coming into the city do so on the blue line. You know, according to the study you guys put out, I believe was on the 28th December, you average it about 63,000 riders daily. So it would be interesting to see the financial impact of this, you know, 30 year debacle. I've been writing this train since there's needed turtles, you know, being used to sell the idea of it. And now, you know, this is something that goes through not just through the inner city, but also through the central heartland of this of this region. And, you know, most workers go through it. I also I appreciate you guys taking the concern of the public in regards to the express bus line. I think that's a welcomed response. But I'm curious, I saw on one a year you're doing your presentation there. You said that you had a community meetings on the 23rd in District one into that, correct? I can't. I saw that on your presentation. It would be interesting if maybe you can reach out to my councilman, Mr. Andrews, here. His district services. Willow PCH, as well as Anaheim. And correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Durango, I think Waldo is at the cut off line between the six. These are the hubs that are have the most riders in this a concern. And most people in this area, in my neighborhood at least, don't know about this eight month shutdown. So if you're going to do some community outreach, it would be probably best to do it in the districts that actually have the most riders. No, no disrespect to Mr. Gonzales. I know you have about three or four, and you're between the two of you, Mr. Pierce, as well. But most riders in the city of Long Beach are on the sixth. So if you want to help the city, you know, get it out outreach wise, it would be best to reach out to Mr. Andrews, you know, possibly about let the people in the community know about it. Outside of. That, let's see how it works. Thank you. Next speaker. Fernando Guerrero, District one. Listen, I am a writer for The Blue Line, and I feel really unsafe there. And I speak for the people that ride the train on a daily basis. Look, we only have to write it now every day. But, you know, on occasions I do. And when I do, I see people being harassed. They're from the LGBT community. I see women being harassed, calling the B-word, the F-word. Oh, no one should be getting harassed. And the train I had to carry a weapon, not just one weapon, but two weapons on me to write that blue line. It is awful. It's really awful. I know people are to get drunk, smoked pot, to hop on that train, to sedate themselves. It is horrible. There's no safety there. There's cameras there. What for? There's a guy I just watched the train the other day. A guy went in there. He was already in there. I don't know if he was homeless, but whatever. But he. He started smoking a cigar. A cigar? Really? I had to be I had to go to work. I'm going to smell like cigar. And the guy one time was smoking pot on the train. I had to smoke pot showing up at 9:00 at work. Well, there's no security. I think we need more police officers on the train and on the shuttles. It's not safer. It's not safe for people. And I don't care. That person has a mental problem. There's no excuse to be rude or to harass somebody because they want to harass and be bullied. And people do that day. We need security in the trains on blue line desperately before someone gets hurt. Because I'm not going to be bullied on the train. I'm not. I'm doing the right thing. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. We need safety for the blue line, please. Will the security officers on the train and shuttles. It's not safe. I to somebody else pulls out a gun. I don't. It's just. I'm getting. I'm just getting. I'm upset. I suddenly had to fear and carry two weapons on me because someone's going to try it at me. I don't want to explode on the blue line. We need safety. Safety for the public. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The general public comment on the statement. Now we'll take it by the diocese. Mr. Spears. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to thank Metro for your efforts for coming out. I know that you met with my office, and it was one of the ideas that we had in that meeting to host something in downtown. So I appreciate you guys making yourself available tomorrow, and I appreciate Councilwoman Gonzalez sponsoring that event with us. I'm going to ask just a couple of quick questions on the Metro piece, because we do have our community meeting tomorrow night. And then I am going to ask a couple of questions of our PD just to make sure we address the safety issues. And I preface this with I for three years rode the blue line from Long Beach to downtown L.A. three times a week. And I, I know how uncomfortable sometimes it can be on the blue line. I also know that we've made a lot of security changes. I don't believe you guys did go over, you know, the main changes. And I think there's no worse feeling than the blue line being down at 9:00 at night and you waiting for a bus in the middle of somewhere where you've never been. So I appreciate having the busses and I don't know what to say. I hope that the use of them is appreciated and that we can continue them after the blue line has opened back up so that it's not a a waiting, even though we will have the bypass lane, which I'm very, very thankful for, I know that adding those bypass lanes is going to be great and I understand that we have to close down the entire process to make sure that it can get done. Are you guys making any improvements on security that you can elaborate on that you did not elaborate on in your presentation? I remember that this was mainly about the rail, but I wanted an addition just to make sure we ask and see what the plan is of. It's phase two of this process. I would start by saying I'm not necessarily the best guy to talk to about the security piece. I'm the construction guy. But I will say this, you know, we do have a new law enforcement contract. Right. And we're very excited. You know, we're the city of Long Beach. Yes. For all patrols in Long Beach. We have the sheriffs and we have the city of L.A. So during the closure, all those patrols will still be there and they will be patrolling the bus stops. So so in terms of the actual work we're doing, the construction work, there's not so much that directly relates to security. We have a lot of cameras. The lighting has been recently redone. So so for the most part, it's operational improvements on the on the train line. But but the same policing that's currently out there will be out there during the closures. Thank you for that. And I'll ask PD about a process in a minute as well. I think the other thing that I would add is that at the Willowbrook, Rosa Parks station, which is being completely, completely redone. Yeah, very exciting. We actually do have a transit security center that we're putting in there. It's a new one that's adjacent to the public areas and the public plaza. So that will increase the coverage and the visibility of security. And that's actually one of our highest transfer stations, people going from the green line to the blue line. So that's one physical improvement that. Great. Thank you for that. I know I was going to ask PD and I know this is not necessarily about safety, but it was brought up. So I want to make sure we address it. I know that there is now an anonymous way we can go online and make a file. A police report is there because it's very awkward to be on the blue line and calling PD. I don't want to be that person that's sitting there calling PD. Is there a process that we recommend people, whenever they don't feel safe on the blue line to reach out to our officers? We're going to turn this over to Commander Rico Misa. Yeah, I'm not sure the commander is. Part of the team that assigns the blue line officers. But we'll turn over to commander. Thank you. Vice mayor of. Microphone. Good evening. Vice Mayor. Respective Council Members. Council Member. In response to your inquiry. Any issues of concern from local community members can be directed to the police department. They can be directed to the police department. But following a police report, they could contact 911. They could contact our general dispatch number. So there's all sorts of methods in place to identify any issues and concerns, relay them to the police department, whether it's an emergency or a non-emergency matter. I really thought that last year we had a new online way and a text way that we could communicate. So maybe that's something we can get a report back on at a later date. But I felt like I was very excited that there was a new way that didn't require me calling 911. Yes, there are systems in place whereby that information can be communicated to the police department. Okay. Perhaps as we go through this process of Metro and PD can work together, at least on areas of the blue line to communicate that. I know that there's ways, you know, billboards on there that we can make sure that people know there's a way that they can feel a little bit safer. So I appreciate everybody's presentation and I appreciate your community outreach. I look forward to seeing you guys tomorrow, district two. Tomorrow night, we will announce it at the end of the meeting as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. I am in no position to comment on this. I'm sorry. I apologize. Please go ahead. My name is Santiago. I live in the second district. I'm a retired nurse. I've lived in Long Beach for eight months now. Speaking to the topic. I ride a bicycle and on the regular busses there's only two. I believe it's two spaces. And when you close down the blue line, there's usually two or three or four bikes on every single car that I've gone onto. So could you please be cognizant of the cyclists? Because I'm an old guy, and it takes me a little extra time to put that bike up there. And so we might need some help also. Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir. Now we go back behind the guises, Mr. President. I second most. Fine. Baby. Oh, Mrs. Gonzalez, please. Yes. Thank you again for the report. We look forward to tomorrow's meeting. And I agree as well. I think we'd as much outreach as we can do above and beyond tomorrow's events. We'd be happy to to help with that as well. Just a question. I know we had talked about I mean, the two things that I hear often in downtown are number one. Absolutely. Security. I think I absolutely agree with you. I've taken the blue line from my house off Pacific, you know, to downtown L.A. and it's can be a really awful experience sometimes. And that's someone who gets it being in the city for ten years. But a lot of residents who visit our city, I don't want them to have that same experience. So the you know, we'd like to just have more information on what I think in addition to the ways that we can reach out to and this is maybe more geared towards PD, who we can really reach out to when incidents occur. I would also like to know how we're phasing in police officers on the the blue line, because I know that I've been hearing of a certain amount allotted over a certain period of time, and I would just like more clarification on that. Whether you have that now, city manager or we can get that in a two from four. That would be great. Okay. And then secondly, are your cameras tied into a specific like. You know, we have a city program here called Cops that it's tied into the city department, the police department. Do you have that on the on the county side? Yes, we do. All of our cameras can be viewed at our rail operations control center, which is near Willowbrook, Rosa Parks, and also at a at a security center that we're building at Willowbrook, Rosa Parks, they can view the camera feeds of the blue line from there. Okay. I assume so. Just wanted to ask. And then lastly, turnstiles. I know that was another discussion. I know I'm getting a few smirks about that because it's a big one that we've talked about here in Long Beach. And that's I think a lot of, you know, what some people have discussed me attribute to some of the issues, but are we are adding additional turnstiles or what is the process? No, there's no there's no fair gating plans as part of the new blue. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for the report. And we look forward to additional feedback as we move along. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman. Interesting. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a couple of things. First of all, thanks for the presentation. I know that there's been outreach through your traditional channels, your ridership. I heard about the outreach within a half mile of a line of the community. I represent north long beaches outside of that border. It sort of. WARDLOW It cuts on Long Beach, picks up like Rancho Dominguez, Compton. So a lot of times we head south or we head west, the Compton station. And so any outreach within a half mile misses. So I would I would ask a couple of things. So, Mr. West, is it possible before this goes live to tell you some other channels, just the broadly, you know, whatever our channels are, the link will be the city website, maybe even. And we have relationships and billboards and just direct people to where they can get the information. Certainly. Okay, great. And then and then I would think I would ask Metro if there's maybe some you know, we can talk with you about some hotspots, the libraries, you know, maybe some places that people go in North Long Beach to make sure that they get the information and something we can work together on. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. You know. That. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One of the topics that stood out to me in terms of what the Metro Blue Line is going to be doing during this interim construction is the establishment of an express line from downtown Long Beach to seventh and Metro, which I think will require the express taking, what, seven, ten to the four or five to the Harbor Freeway and then down. I drive that and it takes it all day. So just to get a general idea, what is the the current time that it takes from downtown Long Beach along the blue line with all its current reconstruction to seventh in metro. Just for clarification, we're talking about the rail service, correct? We're talking about the Express here. We talk about the bus. Yes. Is that what the Express is about? Yeah, it's the bus. Right. So the bus service takes approximately about 60 minutes on average during the peak periods. But my question was right now, if I get a blue line without the construction, correct, how long does it take? 59 minutes. 59 minutes. So it's not every that much different. Your estimation is. The estimation is that that would provide comparable service. So we'd be within five and 10 minutes of you. That's true. That's incredible. From what I could tell, it's going to be more in an hour with with the traffic, especially on the 405 and the 110. Even if you take the express lanes, it's a long it's a long trip. And I just mentioned it out there because I think that given the additional time that it's going to take people to go from downtown Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles, I think there might be a loss of ridership there because of the length of time people are going have to get there earlier. They're going to have to make accommodations for the time difference. And so how many how many of these express busses are you going to be having that are going to be going from downtown Long Beach, downtown L.A., 1 to 1, every hour and every 2 hours? What what what's the what's the the amount of express busses? You're going to have to. At least ten busses an. Hour. Ten. About ten bucks an hour. Mm hmm. Okay. Well, that sounds good to me, but so you might want to consider that the time factor in there in terms of how long it's going to take from downtown Los Angeles to downtown Long Beach, or vice versa. And I think that you might want to look at some alternative routes or alternative ways of getting people from point A to point B, because I think that we're going to be losing some ridership in that. And there's going to be a lot of frustration and and some people who are going to be very disappointed with the plan. So is pointing that out to you. So be aware of it. Thank you. Yes. I mean, we've done our best to to guess what our riders are actually going to do when we close the line. But we don't know actually what they're going to do. And so we're going to remain flexible with the service out there is that we're going to watch it every day and we're going to see how it's working and we're going to make adjustments on the fly to make sure that we're we're providing the right level of service. So we're right there with you. Thank you, sir. Councilman. Congressman Austin. Thank you. And I want to thank Metro for coming in and giving us a very detailed explanation. This is obviously going to require some some some adjustments from from riders, and it's going to be some growing pains to get here. But understanding that the the Metro Blue Line was the very first light rail system in the metro light rail system. Right. This was the very first two tickets. I went to a 25 year celebration that a couple of years ago. So understanding where that is, that technology and best practices have actually been been employed in some of the newer lines. I think it's important that that this the blue line be be equipped with the best as well. I'd like to just just kind of focus a little bit and we understand is going to be a lot of inconvenience. It's going to be some some some inconvenience, particularly on the riders. It's going to be inconvenience on those like myself who are trying to commute on the freeway and, you know, seeing more busses on. There is not something that I'm looking forward to either, particularly in that fast track lane. But I'd like to focus a little bit on what the outcomes will be. I was watching I was sitting next to on the blue line just just just yesterday and was I noticed how noisy it was with the repairs and upgrades and reduce the audibility for a lot along the line. How will the the line be more efficient to riders and how much safer will the line be once this project is done? Can somebody answer the question? But I think the main words we've been using have been reliability and resiliency. Reliability and resiliency. Those are those are really what we're looking at on the reliability front. And James talked a little bit about this. The overhead wire has been up there for 29 years. It needs to be replaced. So the blue line is prone, can be prone to breaking down and we don't want that to happen. So we want it to be reliable that the when it's supposed to be at a station, it's going to be at the station. On the resiliency side, one of the things that has plagued us is that we don't have enough crossover tracks to move from one track to another and that, you know, if there's a track incursion, let's say an automobile, get stuck on the track or a train is down, then sometimes it could take us 20 minutes to single track around it and then the schedule is blown for the day. So with these new crossover tracks, we can be resilient and we can get around something as if it's a normal schedule. It's very important to us that's also going to help us with maintenance in the future. Because of this lack of crossover tracks, we weren't able to get very much time at night to maintain the system. This gives us an opportunity to maintain the system in a state of good repair while while maintaining a regular schedule. So those are the two very important pieces. And then finally, thank you for for want to stay up there, if you will. I know that there was some, some discussion, particularly when we were looking at the measure m expenditures and looking at opportunities to improve the blue line efficiency and just the flow of traffic in and Long Beach period. The Wardlow station was one that that stood out as a as a as an opportunity, opportunities to improve safety, opportunities to improve the flow of traffic with but also connecting our active transportation bike boulevard as well as pedestrian safety. And part of what was discussed and I know I had an opportunity to look at some some sketches of some possibilities was to look at taking that from an ad grade model to above grade or below grade. Where is that? And are we continuing to look at that possibility for the Wardlow station? We are system wide. So so we have been busy over the last six or eight months working on reporting back to our board on what the feasibility is, because they've asked us the same thing. They've asked us to look at, you know, undergrounding the Washington Junction. They've asked us to look at grades separating the entire blue line. And we're going to be reporting back to them soon in the next couple of months. On what the results of those efforts are. I will say this I don't want to prejudge what they might tell us, but it's very expensive, you know, billions and billions of dollars, expensive to to to grade separate the blue line. So I wouldn't hazard a guess on whether that may or may not be in the cards, but we need to have a discussion with our board about that. Well, I think it it's a worthy discussion. And we need to look at greater separation as strategic junctures. And I think the Wardlow in Pacific area is one of those those areas where we've I mean, it's actually been identified in the L.A. Times as one or the worst station in the in the system. And so, again, I'll continue to look forward to continuing that conversation in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. You know, I just want to thank the individual coming down, because when I heard the words, I mean, look, you know, you're going to be flexible. That means you listen and I know what you're going to do. It's going to be a good job, because when you talk about progress, you're going to have a lot of, you know, complaints and things of this type. But we need it. And I know you're going to get it done because you have some of the most professional people, you know, in doing this. So I give a lot of, you know, all my faith in it because I'm going to ride it no matter what. And, you know, I know you guys are working hard coming down and doing this because the presentation, I think was fantastic. And I know that Julie from the Metro and a couple of the other folks have been very helpful in my district because we host a metro, you know, staff each of our neighborhood meetings. And I wanted to let one of my colleagues who didn't know about that. But you guys, I want to thank you for coming to the district and giving us this presentation. So I'm hoping we got the word out and and very happy that the people will know that we are here. And if you need any more information, you know, just call out to these individuals because you're here. And I want to thank you for doing a great job of presentation here, because a lot of people don't know and a lot of people may be a little upset and angry, but once it's done, I think you can come on down. Keep. Good work. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. We really appreciate it. Oh, yeah. Well. Excuse me. You know, you. You can't come in. We like to, but we can't. We have to take a vote now. And now. That was from us. From behind the gun. You know, we can talk all the time, but you guys don't get that privilege. Okay. Now, would you please cast your vote? Councilmember Richardson. Bush and Kerry's.