Good afternoon. It is Tuesday, April 29th. Welcome to the Transportation and Environment Committee. We continue our Budget Committee work sessions. There are two items on the agenda this afternoon. The first will be the FY26 resolution on fees, charges and fares. That will be followed by the FY26 operating budget for the Mass Transit Fund. As it relates to the first item on fees, charges, and fares, the big discussion that we will be having today is about making our right on system fair-free. We'll get the details of that during the discussion, look forward to it. And I will hold my comments on that until we get to that point in time. But I'll ask Mr. Kenney if you have any other opening comments. No other opening comments. Happy to walk through the packet. Let's do that. Sounds good. Page one of the packet is a summary of the contents. We can dive right into page two. The council held public hearing for this item on April 9. Recordings are available on the council website. Notably, the council received testimony, received correspondence from the Maryland Department of Transportation, Secretary Weedefeld, asking advocating against making right on service fair free. We'll dive into more of that later on, but I want to know that that is attached to this packet, that correspondence. Moving on to the recommended changes. The there is a table one starting on page two and going on to page three highlights all of the proposed changes in the executives, FY26 resolution on transportation, fees, fines, and fares. These changes can be broken down into four actions, many of which are replicated, which was why the table is so long replicated in the different PLDs or having multiple components. So starting with the first change, one that you called out, which is eliminating write-on fares, so making write-on fare-free for riders. You'll see on table one that this is accompanied by the elimination of many of all of the other line items regarding write-on fares that called out certain free fares or reduced fares for transfers or for certain types of riders like seniors or kids. These programs are eliminated in this resolution because they're made obsolete by right on being fair free. So that's kind of what is causing all of those. Some of these programs like seniors and people with disabilities that also apply to metrobus will remain in place. Those are accounted for elsewhere in the budget and not in this resolution, which is why you see them eliminated here. So the proposal to make right on fair free has numerous impacts. There are many potential benefits or potential drawbacks from this decision regarding various policy matters like equity, climate, sustainability, economic development and other items. The analysis in this report focuses on the, solely on the fiscal impacts of this decision on the budget, NF-26 and beyond. These all these other policy considerations have been explored by RIDON in the past, and many of them can be summarized in MCDOT's 2021 R on zero and reduced fair study, which is linked at the second plus paragraph on page three of this staff report. So walking through the fiscal impacts of this decision, the most direct of which is the loss of fair revenue, which is expected to be one and a half million dollars in FY25. This impact is not as significant as it would have been prior to the pandemic, where fair revenue was 21 million million or greater a year, and that was even higher in previous years. This is due to sluggish Fairbox recovery rates after the pandemic, of which there is some more information on the top of page four of the packet. Eliminating fares also eliminates the need for fair collection costs, which are around $600,000 a year, and in the executives FY26 proposed budget introduces, this decision also introduces $250,000 for the Zero Fair Transit Ambassadors program. We'll talk about this in the next agenda item, the Mass Transit Fund operating budget. The largest fiscal impact in much of the impetus for this decision comes in the form of large short-term savings and the capital side of the Mass Transit Fund. These savings come out to $11.03 million in FY26 and over $21 million over the six-year period of FY25 to 30. These savings are in Mass Transit current revenue and allow for the Mass Transit property tax rate to be decreased from .0892 dollars to .0834 dollars. M.Secretary Paul Weedefeld, as I mentioned before, transmitted a letter to the council advocating against this recommendation to make right on fair free, highlighting the importance of fair revenue to support transit operating costs, and emphasizing that a clear and consistent regional message around the expectations that fairs, that riders must pay fairs to support the system they use is necessary to boost fair revenue and specifically highlighted impacts to the purple line project. To help better understand these myriad fiscal impacts, MCDOT has prepared for fiscal scenarios to highlight their decision making. These four scenarios which are highlighted in tables 2 through 5 in the staff report are a baseline of the current policy of $1 fairs. Scenario 2 which is 0 fairs which is the executive's recommendation. Scenario 3 which is $1 fairs with active enforcement. scenario 4 which is an increase to a fair of $2.25 per ride which matches Metro buses fairs and also has that component of active enforcement. To summarize between these these various scenarios you can see on tables 2 through 5 the exact fiscal impact. Essentially scenario 1, what we're doing right now, performs the worst across the six years, FY26 to 31, in terms of net cost, given the fact that we are returning minimal fair revenue but still having those upfront capital expenditures to replace fair collection equipment. And that's across two different CIP projects which are included in the following agenda item as well. So these are capital expenditures that would be required if we continue to collect fares, but will not be required if we go to zero fares. Did you enumerate that, Mr. Kenney? Did you state how much of those capital expenditures are? Yes, I believe I did not tie that exactly to what it was, but this is the $11.03 million in FY26 and around $21 million over the six-year period. There's one addition to that. There is a million dollars from FY24 that has not yet been spent as we waited for procurement issues to resolve on this matter. So it's 22 and a half in total. After we go through these tables, we'll get to you, director. Thank you. Gary Nell and Offsament budget. Sorry, actually, I believe the 21 and a half does include the prior year appropriation. We can get back to you and confirm that, though. Sounds like I got seven minutes. Okay, yeah. The order of magnitude here is the focus, and that really leads to kind of council staffs and MCDOTs analysis between these scenarios in which, again, scenario one has the greatest net cost to the county, to the mass transit fund over the six years, and then scenario two, which is zero fare. Mr. Kenney, I just wanna drill down on this. Well, we'll engage in Q&A, but as we're talking about the scenarios, I think it's just very important that table two, scenario one, which is maintaining the status quo and making the capital investment that Womada is requiring would result in a negative fair revenue of $2.25 million. That's a positive fair revenue. I understand that this is confusing. The negative numbers are a negative cost. The numbers you're seeing in these tables are total cost to the mass transit fund. Okay. So we're seeing negative numbers. Those are positives to the mass transit fund and the positive numbers. So it's only despite all of that investment, it would only be a two and a quarter million dollar. Exactly. It's essentially the order of magnitude of fares that we are collecting currently. This is the do-nothing scenario. The capital expenditures, we do not anticipate, will have any impact on Fairbox recovery rate. This is just keeping us in compliance with Walmata's Fair Collection systems. So scenario 2 moving to zero fairs will has a fiscal, a net fiscal positive impact of $4.4 million over the six years, but much of that is front loaded in FY 26 and 27 where we see net fiscal positive impacts of $9 million and $5.6 million respectively. Then because we are not collecting any fair revenue and we're not having those savings on the capital costs, the net fiscal impact trends into the negative with what we're seeing as around $2.5 to $2.6 million in costs in net costs in FY28 through 31. Whereas scenarios 3 and 4 in which we collect fairs, either $1 or $2.25 and add in the We see the greatest positive fiscal impacts in which scenario three we're seeing 17.3 million dollars in a positive fiscal impact or negative net cost over the six-year period in $30.6 million in scenario 4 where we are increasing fair to 225. But whereas the negative fiscal impact for scenario 2, the zero fair is over the long term, It's sort of the opposite for scenarios 3 and 4, in which the negative fiscal impact is in the short term in which we're making those capital investments in our fair equipment. And then we're seeing returns on that in the long term where we have made our capital investments and were then collecting increased fair revenue due to enforcement. So that is a general fiscal summary of those four scenarios. Understand this a lot of these, a lot of numbers in these tables. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Kenny. I'm going to turn it over to the department to share your rationale and in getting to this point, which I've been advocating for for a very long time. The numbers did not always add up for others to come on board, literally and figuratively, but we're at this place, so can you share with us the macro dynamics that got us here? I certainly can, and I just wanted to note that this was an in-depth discussion with the executive, and we struggled with many of the pros and cons of these scenarios in making this recommendation before it was transmitted here to counsel and to be fair I've been before this committee before suggesting that maintaining a fair payment system was an important part of the long term viability for right on so I want to share I'll start with sharing some of the reasons why you might consider Retaining fair collection and many of these are highlighted by Secretary Weedafeld in his comments, one is the regional consistency and interoperability, which is an important consideration. Fair systems also in some systems serve as a barrier to inappropriate or poor behavior. On the vehicle, and we've seen some instances not necessarily locally, but elsewhere where there's been an upttick when those sorts of occurrences on transit when a fair free system is introduced. It does maintain revenue diversity so that we're not relying on a smaller set of revenue sources and as Mr. Kenny pointed out there is revenue generally associated with the fair collection program. So as I mentioned Secretary, we'd have felt brings many of these points to bear in his letter and there's nothing in his letter that is inaccurate. Those are all reasons why you might want to consider this sort of system. To counter that, the merits of a fair-free system are also numerous. There's a lower barrier to use so people don't have to understand the Fair collection system to use the service. It improves access and opportunity, particularly for those who have to consider whether they can spend that fair to make the trip. It encourages view of transit as a public good and public resources, much like we see our roads. We do not provide a we don't charge a road access charge for people to access their property from our streets. There are some user fees in roads, but those are generally in the state system. It improves the speed of service. There's fewer issues with people boarding and trying to figure out how to pay the fairs. They get on the bus. It reduces maintenance and equipment needs over time. These, these devices are not carefree. They require lots of upkeep, even if they're new. They're going to, they're in a difficult environment, and they frequently require repairs. As mentioned in the scenarios, it eliminates the fair processing costs and agreements that we have that we have to pay for processing of metro access and smart trip payments. So there are cost savings that are significant and reflected in the scenarios. We don't have investment in equipment upfront either to replace existing equipment or with the new buses acquiring that equipment with new vehicles. So when you look at all of this, the arguments pro and con are relatively balanced. And as the chair mentioned, we've always come down to what are we talking about in terms of the costs and disbenefits of the system compared to the revenue that is generated by the system. And in the past, that revenue has been substantial and merited consideration of continuing the system. And indeed, that's the decision we've made at many points before when we've considered the transit fares. When we're looking at the situation now, the amount of funds generated through fair collection is so small that it's not matching the cost of collection and the cost of equipment replacement. So it is time to look at this with a different lens and on a policy basis and cost basis whether it makes sense to continue. Mr. Kenny, I think did a good job of marching through the scenarios. Obviously there are payback periods and sort of implicit in each of these scenarios as well. So in the first scenario, we would recover the cost of the investment in the fair equipment about eight or nine years from now. And there's a question about the durability, not the physical durability, but the durability technologically of these fair payment systems. From I would say the mid-1980s through the 2000s. There wasn't a lot of evolution in how transit fair payments evolved. But from the late 2000s through today, there's a lot of change. You're seeing bank card payments, you're seeing a whole variety of other systems at-based payment. So it's a little less clear than it might have been five or six years ago that these systems that we're installing are going to live for be useful for tens of years as we would need them to be to match the life of a boss. So this is an eight year payback. There obviously isn't a payback in the second scenario, fair free because we're not making that upfront investment to begin with. So the only cost is the additional communications and physical presence budget that we have identified here over that six year period. The revenue is not part of that equation and the capital investment isn't part of that equation. And the other two scenarios, three and four where we've added enforcement, the payback period is shorter and within the six years we're recouping that investment within the six years. But I do want to caution we have developed these scenarios with an expectation of some effectiveness of a fair enforcement program. That fair enforcement program was developed to not exceed about 20% of the revenues that we were collecting. So we'd capped the level of expenditure we would have on fair enforcement. And we had made some assumptions upon implementation of that getting up to a 25% fair recovery and then slowly inching up to a cap of 40% fair recovery on the buses. But we don't know that we will achieve that level of compliance with a relatively small presence of fair collection staff out in the right on system. What was it feel like one and a half percent of coverage? Yeah, the assumption we made is we could cover one to one and a half percent of all service on a regular basis. So it's a pretty small sample size. You just want to introduce yourself. I'm sorry, film a clock on general manager to be in a transit service. So you're not going to see a fair enforcement officer on every vehicle. You'll see a fair enforcement officer on every one out of 50 or one out of 100 vehicles out there. So it will have some impact, but it's not going to have a transformational impact. And we did a bunch of research with other agencies to understand how this has worked. And we have not seen the beacon out there about the best way to implement the fair enforcement. And I've seen most agencies struggle to get a better compliance rate with fair technology. So I just want to put that out there about the best way to implement the fair enforcement and have seen most agency struggle to get a better compliance rate with fair technology. So I just want to put that out there. Yes, these are scenarios and projections. We think they're reasonable, but they're not there by no means guaranteed that we would get to that. And then some other considerations. There are other agencies in this region that have implemented fair free. The dash system in Alexandria is fair free. We have not heard of any significant challenges that they've experienced with being fair free. And we have spoken with a couple other regional agencies. I don't think their plans or considerations are public, but there are other large providers in this region that are evaluating this course of action as well. And then again, just to summarize, the high upfront costs for a speculative return to compliance with fair payment. To us is really where we came down on the balance, and there's a lot of negative attributes of fair enforcement. We are likely to be affecting folks who, it's not that they're choosing not to pay because they're trying to be aggressive and get away with something they may be choosing not to pay because that dollar is meaningful and they're over a household calculus. We would likely see an uptick in acts of violence and assaults related to fair enforcement because we're going to be in a more confrontational posture. With the public, we are very much not confrontational now when it comes to the fair program. And we would potentially see impacts to service in terms of slowed service and potential needs to halt movement while fair enforcement activities are occurring. So there are some negative aspects of fair enforcement as well that kind of go into this overall calculus. And when we discuss this with the executive, sort of the summation of those policy arguments with the facing a very large upfront cash investment to keep the system in compliance, causes us to weigh on the side of recommending fair free at this point in time. And I say at this point in time, because the secretary makes a very good point in his letter that there is an ongoing dialogue about changing and getting to a more consistent regional program. That may result in lower costs for this equipment. It may result in different approaches to collecting fare. It may result to transition to a way of fair management that doesn't require connected electronic infrastructure. So there may be reasons that as we look towards the purple line opening, which the purple line will have an entirely different proof of payment system from what we see with Metro rail and with our systems and we have a furthering of that discussion of how this should evolve in the long term We view this as a decision for now and it will have some long-lived implications because we will not be making that investment in fair collection technology which is a one to two maybe three year implementation cycle. So it has some life to it but we definitely believe the council of the executive and the technical folks should stay open to how this might evolve regionally and perhaps entertain reestablishment of a fair if that becomes an option that makes sense two, three years from now. So that's my summary of how we went through this and what conclusions we went to. And again, it was a similarly long conversation with multiple sessions before the recommendation was transmitted to you. Very much appreciate that Director Conklin walking us through the hot process across the street, the various scenarios that have been presented and the rationale for previous arguments to keep the system in place and then the argument now given this dynamics that exists. It was back six years ago during the consideration of the FY19 budget. Actually, it was the FY20 budget, my first budget, where I advocated for free fairs for kids. And that got a lot of support. It got unanimous support from the body and what that turned into was a 57% increase in new ridership within the year thereafter. And then we had the pandemic when buses were free for everybody, basically everywhere across the country. And as we were coming out of the pandemic, I strongly advocated to maintain the free fare system because as we rethought or needed to rethink society, we provided housing assistance for people who needed, we provided food for people who needed medical assistance. But all too often when we think of social services, I think we need to keep in mind where people literally are. And for so many of these people, it's at the bus stop. And the social services we provide are all these external through nonprofit partners, other subsidies and other programs. But I do view this as a social service program. I do view it as a great equalizer in where those who need that support receive it, because otherwise they are literally stuck. It is not education that is the greatest determinant of someone's economic success. It's whether they can get to school or a job that determines their economic success. That's where public transportation comes in. And so by whatever means necessary, we've gotten to this point. I appreciate the very thoughtful deliberation to get it here. And then one other really important data point that I'll summarize from the packet, fair recovering in 2015 was 20%, which means one fifth of right on was paid for by fairs. In 2019, that dropped to 16%, and we're now in 2%, 2%. It doesn't make any sense as the executive and the department have come to the conclusion to make these capital investments when the return isn't there. And I would even go one step further in arguing the need is there, the social program is there and we just need to utilize this point. Before I open it up for comments, I just want to go back to the budget implication real quick. If we or the full council were to change the recommendation. In the various scenarios, can you just highlight what we would need to do to the budget in that regard? What we would need to add back or? Yes, so this would require adding back in the $560,000 in collection costs as well as the $11.03 million in capital expenditures in FY26. So this is So you can see this as the roughly $9.3 million in net cost to the mass transit fund. This is a special property tax that is, but at the end of the day, it's all general revenue. Right. Important to isolate that, right? Because again, we're not operating in a vacuum and that's how the executive came to the decision that you all did. Last point before I open it up, I am supportive of the free fare model. But we cannot sacrifice service and reliability. Moving forward, we need a I need a pledge from the department that that operation times won't decrease that routes won't decrease because it does no good to have free buses if the buses aren't operating if we get into a downward spiral spiral and despite being free people don't want to ride it because it's not reliable. Make a couple of points to that. First, there's a fact I omitted that I should have shared at the beginning and that's that the last scenario with the 225 fair also includes 18 to 20 percent decline in ridership based on the additional financial impact on customers. Say that again. There's an 18 to 20% decline in ridership associated with that last scenario, which is the best performing over the six years from a fiscal perspective, because that fiscal impact is affecting the customers and fewer of them will be able to use the system. In terms of the cost terms. Yes, that's correct. So in terms of, and I'm not sure Mr. Kenny highlighted that if you were interested in scenarios four or five there is the enforcement cost that's in addition to what was already in the budget before the year's submittal. In terms of your question about the service quality. So the service quality, that is one of the recommendations why we have this fair free ambassador recommendation in there, is our review of other agencies with fair free it was a best practice. To have additional eyes on the service to make sure that we aren't creating an unsafe or unproductive environment and to be able to communicate with customers how to how to respect the service that's now free which they used to have a barrier to entry to so that's one aspect. The other aspect in terms of maintaining the quality of service, there's really nothing about the fair collection itself that improves the quality of service. It's actually a detriment to the service quality because it takes time and energy and delays each time somebody struggles with fair payment. The real driver of that is the availability of resources elsewhere, which this proposal does not affect or diminish the fiscal capacity to operate the transit system. So it should not, this decision in the short term should have no bearing on the quality of service that we're able to operate in fact it should potentially increase that quality of service. In the longer term, faced with other fiscal pressures, if there's a diminishment in the overall budget and resource to serve right on obviously that directly translates into quantity of service and quality of service delivered. And that's one of the reasons I say that the door should be open for reconsidering fair If we're in a position where that becomes an obviously needed revenue source and we have a better way to collect that fair. Thank you for that explanation. Colleagues? I'm going to jump in. That's my question. Yeah, I just want to underscored the chair said, agree moving in this direction and I know there have been since we both sit on the council of governments that some of our colleagues there in DC have been pushing for this as well but there's been a lot of conversations because we are regional in our transportation and know that what we do here does impact other people as well but I do I do think this is a good place for us to move. Do you raise something that I actually hadn't thought about before, but the idea that for our roads and everything, we don't ask for a service charge when people use our roads and streets and things. And I think going to a fair free system actually is really a shift in paradigm in how we're thinking about funding, our public transportation. It makes me even more self-thinking. This is a good direction for us to move in because lots of times people don't think about using the roads or other things and the costs that to maintain them because they're not being charged when they're actually driving on them. And so the idea that we're making the other public transit, our bus is free, I think is a good direction and having some parity there a little bit as we're thinking about different modes of transportation. So anyway, thank you for raising that and I'm fully supportive of it. Yeah, good observation. Into our other colleague who's on the Transportation Planning Board. Thank you. So I appreciate you talking about the conversation that you had about the pros and cons and going back and forth and the advantages, disadvantages. I had that same conversation, but only to myself and my own brain. And so I did go back. I support the fair free. But to me, for instance, if we were looking at scenario one versus scenario two, it's a no-brainer, right? It, because of the cost of the fair collection. But the idea of enforcement, at what point did we stop enforcing? I believe it's a Mr. McLaughlin to respond to that, but I don't think we've ever had an aggressive enforcement program. Now, I mean, it goes back to 15, 16, 17 in that range. There was a spade of interactions between bus operators and customers that resulted in fights and and altercations and ultimately lawsuits. So at that time, our organization went to an informed, don't enforce policy. And so to this day, we're still informing what the fair is. We're just not enforcing it at the bus operator. Over time, we've done some soft messaging, you know, placed the cost of the fair at the bus stop itself. It's on all our public messaging. So it's a little softer than true enforcement. Okay. Thank you. And then I guess just a couple of the other issues. I think the idea that for instance, if we needed the revenues at some point in time or there were unintended consequences that we didn't fully look at. Going back to fair collection would be a very difficult thing to do, just from a behavioral perspective. If enforcement is difficult now, imagine if we had free fare for three years and then decided to change it. I think that that I don't think that that's a the probability of that happening I think would be low. So I think that this is a certainly not a forever decision but it is a very long-term decision that we're making and and I just wanted to mention that. And then I think that something that you raised that I didn't consider was the potential for nuisance behavior or potentially criminal behavior. And I would guess that it would be a bunch of kids decide to get on the bus and cause havoc because they don't have to pay a dollar or something like that. Can you just talk a little bit more about that? I hadn't thought about that. Some of the other issues that other agencies have experienced and we have some of this currently are all day riding. Someone who gets on the bus and stays on the bus without an intention to go somewhere and your point about sort of cool again is a component of this and we again experience some of this today but other agencies you've seen an uptick of that or threatening behavior towards customers because there's just the lack the perception that there's a lack of somebody minding the store, which is not really true. It's really the same staff that is there today. But nonetheless, we have seen that. In some cities, they've had an experience where like on a light rail system, crime will be higher than on a bus system because the operator isn't visible to the customer so they feel that there's no but no eyes on the situation and their behavior is not as well restrained as it is when there's eyes on the system. So agencies who have implemented this some have instituted a program like this to have more visibility at the stops have more visibility on the vehicles just to make sure that that sort of environment doesn't creep up, which is actually one of the major things that affects people's decision to ride transit, reliability, travel time, and a feeling of safety and security on the vehicle and getting to and from the vehicle. And those are the things, that's why we've added this component to ensure that we don't have a backsliding in that safety and security for the customers coupled with this idea of fair free. Okay. Thank you. And then the all day rider, is that a problem because of their taking up space that other people would need or is it because it could be more than that. It can be issues of control of myologic function. It can be a variety of issues and it is a health and human service concern but one of the The common ways that agencies manage this is requiring all passengers to disembark at the end of a route and not re-bored as the bus immediately turns around. And that's a strategy that we would look for this program to embody as well. Okay. Additionally, I mean, that bus isn't always going back out as the same route it came in. It could be going back to the depot, could be going to a different part of the county. So it's, you know, as Chris said, we do, we can enforce that, not enforce, we can message that you get off the bus. And we have a protocol, operational protocol with our central communications team to dispatch a coordinator to help mitigate a situation should, should that occur. It doesn't happen a lot. And as we mentioned, there's not a whole lot of folks paying on the bus today. Okay. Thank you. And then just because I represent District 2, the geographic equity of, you know, that I support this and I appreciate the hard work that went into this. We would just like more buses up my way. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tom Smith, for welcome. I would add and we have the team here to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the 52 bus that serves up county is one of the most popular is at the 52 or 48 55 55 I was Queen Rockville in Germantown and that is one of the most highly used buses about 6500 riders a day There we go the need is there so Different conversation as well. Yes, duly noted. I appreciate your questions about the enforcement and retroactive nature and psychology, something that you know Very well is to but I just want to accentuate that point. There are security cameras on every bus correct There's security cameras on every bus correct and they're recording Not necessarily monitored Say about last part again. They record the activity on the vehicle, but they're not necessarily monitored in real time. Good. Good. Well, I think you've answered all of our questions, and we feel comfortable with that recommendation. So, without objection, we'll support the executive's recommendation for free fares in the next fiscal year and beyond. Sounds good, thank you. So moving on to the second change on page six of the staff report. This is adding special permits for service providers and childcare centers. This is a move to implement Bill 2924E, Transportation, Parking, Permit, for Specialized Service Providers that was adopted by the Council on March 4th, and signed into law on March 17th. This establishes a parking permit and monthly rate of $10 for Specialized Service Providers and qualified child care centers within the Bethesda Silver Spring and Wheaton parking lot districts. So the executive is recommending lie items in the resolution that would implement these provisions. Great. That objection. Thank you. The third change is eliminating the daily maximum and lost ticket fees from the Silver Spring PLD. Daily maximum and lost ticket fees are provisions meant for gated garages and Silver Spring's final two gated garages were have been converted to non-gated app-based payment systems, electronic payment systems, and so that these charges are obsolete under this new system customers will pay for all the hours utilized in the Silver Spring parking lot district. So this is like a technical amendment of sorts. Yeah. Okay. With that objection. Thank you. And final. spring parking lot district. So it's like a technical amendment of sorts. Yeah. Okay. Great. Without objection. Thank you. And finally, this is Change 4 is eliminating garage specific fees from the Silver Spring parking lot district. Currently the Silver Spring garage monthly access or the Silver Spring parking lot district district, monthly PCS permit costs $132 per month for every garage except garage is 60 and 61 in which they cost $195. The executive is recommending eliminating the garage specific costs and instead implementing a $195 or less charge for the monthly permits across the entirety of the Silver Spring parking lot district. This would not have any immediate change to the monthly rate for any garages and any future changers will need to go through the budget process, but will instead go through the parking lot district, the parking district services budget, it'd be baked into the fiscal plan for those rather than be called out as specific garage monthly access cards within the fees, charges, and fares resolution. So this is a technical change that grants DOT greater flexibility in future budget years, but does not change any fees currently. That's great. That's your counter mode. Yeah, that sounds good. So just picking up on that, eliminating the parking lot specific parking garage specific. What was the original rationale for 1661 being 195? This is also related to the gated access control. Those were the two garages that had gated access control. So you had to issue an actual credential for use of those gar garages and they're the two highest demand garages in the Silver Spring CBD. And there's no intention to lower that rate to be the same rate as the other garages that just as we made these other changes related to the change in access control it made sense to change this provision as well. And so through this budget process at the end of it, parking in downtown Silver Spring would be 132 for that pass. 132 we would still have likely a special rate for those two garages but it wouldn't be called out in the resolution. It would just be we would use the current rate for that garage. And if over time on shift and demand, we wanted to change the relationship of the rates from garage to garage, we would be able to do that. And no one should interpret this being an increase for the parking lots with parking rashes for 132. It is not an increase. Just putting it all out there. Right, so there's no confusion. OK. Sounds good to me? Yes. That's great. Without objection. Thank you. Those were the summarized all of the changes recommended by the executive in the FY26 transportation. These fines and fair, these charges and fairs resolution. These are summarized in the table on page seven of the staff report, but all have been addressed thus far. And those are the changes before the committee. Great. I should do a quick vote. Formal vote, all those in favor of the resolution of fees, fairs and charges. Or fees, charges and fairs. That one too. There we go. That's unanimous. Okay, next item, complimentary item is on the FY26 operating budget for the Mass Transit Fund. And the county executive recommends an increase of 17.4 million dollars and 9% increase from the current fiscal year, which includes a recommended increase of a programmatic and staffing enhancements at a $1.5 million level. And Mr. Kenney, as we play musical chairs, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you. So there's the summary of all the points contained within the report on page one. I'll dive right into the contents. On the top of page two of the staff report, you can see the top level figures that summarize what the changes that the executive is proposing. The executive is proposing a $17.5 million net increase in the total expenditures of the mass transit fund. This is between the mass transit fund and the grant fund, which in total encompass the transit services budget. This constitutes a 9% increase in the budget and we'll get into what those components are going forward. The public testimony on most of these items was held on April 7th, 8th and 9th. These include all of the operating budget items. This packet does contain several CIP amendments as well. Most of those are some of those were contained in those April 7th, 8th and 9th. Public hearings, however some of them were others were transmitted after that date. That list is included in section B on page two of the packet. The public hearing for those items will be held on May 13th as they were transmitted after our public hearing on the other items. For a quick one through of the Department background the Mass Transit Fund which is supported by the grant fund for transit services, provides for the activities of MCDOT's division of transit services, whose primary focus is operating the various ride-on services throughout the county, although this budget also funds the Community Mobility Services Program, which operates the Transportation Management Districts, Colin Ride and other Tax taxi cab regulations and subsidies. The remainder of MCDOT's operations are comprised of the General Fund and Parking District Service Funds, which will be covered this Thursday before the committee and this May 1st work session, as well as the various non-departmental accounts that fund budget. Of note, the committee held a work session on September 9th of last year on the Ride-On Reimagined Report. This is a top to bottom reimagining of the RideIDON network. That study does not have any direct impact on this FY26 operating budget as the more immediate changes will be done within RIDON's current operating, essentially within RIDON's current operating budget, aside from some compensation and non-discussionary adjustments, recommended service enhancements within right on reimagined will be included in FY27 and or future budgets that approach of exactly when those will be faced in has not yet been determined, although the they are outlined in that study. At the top of page three of the report is a summary of the operating budget equity tool analysis for the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. This department wide analysis conducted by the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice, contained a modified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis, not a numerical score, as was in previous years, this is an adjusted approach that our ORIASJ has taken across county government, and these strengths and weaknesses identified for MCDOT are highlighted in that section of the report and the entire operating budget equity tool can be found in the circle pages attached to this staff report. Moving on to section E and table 2, which summarizes the county executives recommended changes to the mass transit fund. This is how we arrive at that 9% or 17.5 million dollar net increase. As you can see, the majority of this change, roughly 17 million, can be accounted for via personnel adjustments, compensation adjustments, and non-disgressionary adjustments, all of which the council has reviewed separately as, you know, cross-department items, and much of that was discussed this This morning, As a note, there is a 3% adjustment for nonprofit service providers that is included in those county government-wide items that is here listed within the non-disgressionary adjustments. So per the council president's budget approach, council staff has sort of enumerated the additions and reductions, has pulled those out from the other items. So there are three additions and two reductions recommended by the executive to this fund. The two reductions are to the countywide transportation demand management outreach contract and to the transportation services improvement fund, taxi cabry, embersments. The latter of those was reviewed. Is the result of an executive regulation reviewed by this committee and by the council and approved by this council earlier this year and just reflects collections of the TSIF fee from mobility or transportation service providers. The three additions proposed additions to the budget are highlighted at the bottom of page four of the report. I can go through these one by one, if that makes sense. Yes, that would be great. Thank you. The first is the Howard County Flash expansion. This is a recommended edition of roughly $1.1 million for the expansion of the U.S. or the extension of the U.S. 29 bus rapid transit service, which currently operates between Silver Spring and Burton'sville, all within Montgomery County, across the border to into Howard County. This is the result of an agreement, a member of the understanding between Montgomery and Howard counties in which Howard County is going to pay for the increased capital and operating costs of extending this service. There was a capital budget, a CIP component of of this that the council approved as a supplemental appropriation in CIP amendment earlier this year. This is the operating component of that. It is funded entirely by an intergovernmental transfer from Howard County. However, as of this morning, we learned that the Howard County Council did not approve the appropriation to fund this extension. So the decision before the Council is whether to retain this expenditure or to remove it as well as the assumed revenue. This is a budget net zero net neutral decision either way it's it's mostly one of procedure. I'll let DOT speak to this but they have expressed that their preference would be to keep it. We would not be spending money unless we get it and essentially if we remove it now that will require us to pass a supplemental appropriation should Howard County appropriate the money partway through FY26. So this is just trying to account for this revenue and is a matter of I suppose procedural preference for the committee on what we'd like to, how would you like to account for it? We want to stop there. You want to go through? Sure. We can stop there. So unfortunate breaking news today, right? Wish it were different and I'm going to be calling some of my friends up in Howard County after this and ask them what they were thinking because I know from our perspective, especially those of us who live along Route 29 corridor, we know that the traffic up and down Colesville Road, at least half of it emanates from Howard County. And so the traffic problems that exist in the eastern side of the county, we need Howard County as a partner. And this would have been a goal to work that through. So it's unfortunate. Yeah, Mr. County, you had said that the department would prefer to keep this line item in director Connington. Yeah, if I could provide a little clarity on the Howard County situation. I'll call it. Both of us were waiting for earmark grants to be approved. To move forward with some. Howard County, Howard County. And Howard County. Our grant is approved and signed and executed. So we have the funds now to purchase the vehicles. Their grant for some of the infrastructure is slightly behind. So it's not a question of their council rejecting this appropriation. This was not put before their council because our county is not yet received their funds and it's not yet certain when they're going to be ready to operate the service. So it's not a dire outcome. It's just the slight or slightly out of step. So our recommendation is to retain this. These funds are not expended until that service starts, which is dependent upon Howard County initiating the service anyway. Whatever facilitates the smoothest transition. I think that would reduce the number of times we have to bring this before. Right. Yeah. I guess one question I have is on timing and whether or not we retain the whole 1.1 million or do we split some of it for FY26 and push some out to FY27 given some timing and just knowing how tight our budget is this year. Well, again, there's no county funds associated with this. It's all reimbursing from Howard County. But that's certainly an option. It's highly unlikely this will start in the first half of the year. It's more an accounting detail. Yes, that's not a good one. The 1.1 million assumed that service would begin in the last quarter fiscal year 26 and the DOT would get started hiring a little bit earlier than that, but it's not, it does represent a full year of service. Right. So I'm just, I guess, for, just in terms of accounting and just like where we put the money, does it make sense to? It would be appropriated to a transit services budget, OMB and DOT would work to ensure that none of that is actually spent unless we're getting revenues to offset it in 26. Okay, that's not my question. I guess my question is, what's the most appropriate way for this money to show up? Because right now, I think what I'm hearing is all of the 1.1 is showing up in FY26. And what you're saying is there's no way, right? I think what Mr. Novan said is that 1.1 is corresponds to a quarter of the year already. Yes, that's right. Right, so just keep it. And if we were to keep it, if Howard County were to find funding and wanted to begin service during FY26, we would already have the funding in our budget. If we didn't keep it in the budget, we would have to come back for supplemental and FY 26 to operate the service. But my question wasn't to remove the whole thing, but just in terms of timing and maybe it's a difference with that. that it made sense to account for half of it in FY26 and push the other out. Okay, yes, the 1.1 million that already represents on the recorder of FY26. So if you're kind of the half that would be one eighth. Thank you. That makes sense. Okay, I'm good. I'm comfortable if it means one less email transmission, one less resolution. It needs to be written. The staff works at that recommendation. Okay. I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. That my only concern was whether OMB had whether having the expense and the revenue in the budget, whether it made any difference. It sounds like it doesn't make any difference at all, whether it's there or not. It is some additional administrative overhead work for us because we need to track that money, make sure it's not spent on something else, that's something we're confident we can do. So it's not the issue. We can just pinky promise that it's time to spend. A difference without a distinction. Right. Right. Thank you. That's what I was saying. Okay, so we'll keep it as a department wants. Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you. And I'll hold the calls to the council members in Howard County. So thank you for that too. Moving on to the second change. This is the zero fair transit ambassadors. I won't go into too much detail as we discuss this. A good deal in the previous item. This is a $250,000 edition. And we would expect this to be an annual cost within the Mass Transit Fund as we roll out the Zero Fair program. This is sort of done in tandem with that as Dr. Conflin and mentioned to ensure a smooth roll out. Councillor Restorant. Yeah, a couple questions. I know we kind of touched upon this but I'd like actually to dig in deeper. So are these for? To actually for FTEs to actually hire folks or is this for messaging and outreach? More the latter. We would see this as a contracted service and there be some marketing funds here is for promotional For promotional materials left folks know services free You know use the service respect your area you're're in a public space, behave accordingly, those type of things. That's not exactly the message. Right, right. You're not doing the markup. That's why we're contracting. I just want to make sure that these weren't really, we weren't like NFTs, we're looking at more messaging and outreach and awareness. I supplement what Mr. McOffen said, there might be some additional overtime for road coordinators and supervisors that are encapsulated in this as well. But not adding staff. Okay, and then I know, Mr. Kennedy, you said in the packet this can't be tranched. And I'm not necessarily looking to tranche it, but I don't understand why it can't be tranched. It can be tranched. Council staff did not establish discrete tranches as there are not discrete portions of the program yet as it is a sort of nebulous, it is an idea rather than a program with specific line items so far. So I suppose that's an error on my part that it can be charged. And do we just follow up on that? The 250, what's the basis for that number? Similar to the rationale that we use for our enforcement, a certain percentage of our service, so 250 is, we were one to two percent with the million dollars. This is a half to one percent of our service that we would come in touch with our customers. So we would see customers once every hundred buses, something like that. Just a small sample size to get that message out there. Go from back. Yeah, so I was with you until you just made that comment. So tell me, so if this is a marketing campaign, wouldn't we just hit 100% of the bussense, or the message gets out to 100% of our riders? I don't understand that we would only be hitting a certain percentage of our riders. Oh, no, we would certainly hit 100% of our riders, unequivocally, and our non-riders as well. So non-riders in the system today. We also envision this as individuals on the right. We have a lot of concerns about the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the concerns of the staff doing that, contracted staff on the buses itself. Okay. And have you looked at what this program is going to look like or you're waiting for the funding to come up with a plan and RFP and? Yeah. We have some concepts, what it how it can work we have some Some recent some contract resource contractual resources we can use so we've given we've noodle through this We won't work out the details though until we get through this process. Okay. Um, thanks. Yeah You know the budget situation that we're in and as much Clarity as to what this is gonna to be, I think, is good. And also from the perspective of ongoing expense, there are, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of money when we look at the total budget for transit. However, we need to really look at whether the outcomes that we want in a free fair were getting that behavior and were getting that increase in ridership. And I think that we need to build into the RFP. I think needs to be a really strong metrics of what we want to get out of it and a evaluation, a rigorous evaluation of how effective these funds are in getting the outcomes that we want. Just a couple of points. I think we can definitely build in that kind of assessment about the value delivered from this new effort. We don't anticipate a RFP specifically for this. We have contract resources that are already under contract that we can assign tasks for this. So I think that's going to be more of, let's well establish a measurement program internally than it being part of the procurement action, which I don't anticipate. So thank you. In that vein, I wanna make sure that there are very clear, that's a very clear understanding of what you want and that we're not, you know, we're not burning $50,000 just sitting around a table coming up with spitballing kind of thing. So I just want to have a very clear understanding of this. So thank you. a little more skeptical. I appreciate the explanation as to what this line item would do. I think the best marketing tool and publicity tool for fair, free, right on is adopting fair, free, right on. Everybody will know about it. And if that's essentially what the goal is for user engagement to get people on the system and to know, mission will be accomplished before it even starts. And I want to pair this conversation with one the committee just had last week with our climate officer. Recognizing that we have a lot of outreach and work to do in order to meet our climate goals, there was another quarter of a million dollars in a new program that was being proposed. And we asked what that was for, and it was basically outreach and publicity and information sharing. And among the different programs and topics to explore within that quarter of million dollars one was Moe chair getting people out of cars non to transit and so there's a multiple things at play here that in the same budget different offices have line items for similar goals but in that instance I did not support in the committee didn of a million dollar line item, because again, if the goal of the climate officer was to support public transit, fair free ride on, is the goal in it of itself, I believe. And so I'm not supportive of this if that's what the goal is, and it is a basically PR marketing tool to inform people as long as if that's what the state intention is I will not be supporting this because of the tough budget situation that we're in. I just want to revisit the conversation we had when we were talking about the fair resolution. The intention of this is much about behavior management, safety, and security messaging. Is it about promoting fair-free ride-on as a benefit to the community. So, it's a slightly different message than purely promoting that we're fair-free. And the idea is that it's not simply marketing, but it's marketing coupled with physical presence at key locations and key times to make sure that message is directly delivered to transit customers who in locations where we may be having issues with good behavior safety and security. So it is not purely marketing, it's marketing with an intention for managing potentially disruptive behavior in the transit system. So then I will refer back to the question that Councilman were still asked about FTEs. Was that within this? Yes, and I think you mentioned it was over time not adding FTEs. Is that correct? We did not anticipate adding personnel to the complement to accomplish this, but we have road coordinators and field supervisors who may be working a little bit more to accommodate the accomplished message along with contract staff as Mr. McAuthlin mentioned in more regular planned activities. I see Ms. Peckett. Yeah, Teely Peckett, Deputy Director for Policy. I just want to add that we did a lot of extensive research both looking at the cooperative transit research as well as contacting about a half dozen cities and having in-depth interviews who had gone fair free. And one of their best practices was having a specific plan to address safety and security and having ambassadors, having a physical presence and having a face, especially at the rollout, to make customers feel like even though this change is happening, for right on, it's not a huge change in that most people aren't paying currently, but that it gives a sense that like, hey, this is a new time, it's a good time to remember this is a public good, this is a public service, and please behave accordingly. So it's also a real best practice and something our peers have recommended. I'm still skeptical that if you have a person greeting people as I interpreted, on one out of every 100 buses, I'm having a hard time getting there. So if I could, so one, I understand, right, you didn't know where the council was going to go on free ride on. So understand why this plan isn't completely baked yet and moved out. I think you've heard from the committee a, you know, unanimous recommendation to the full council. I would like to request that we put this on the reconciliation list and ask when you all come back to, if there's enough time, to the full council, just to kind of tease out a little bit more what this would look like. And if you can give us even rough estimates, how much of this is going to the overtime to the actual physical people, how much of this is writing on contracts that we already have to get messaging out. And now that you, if you can spend a little time thinking about that before full council, is the 250 fully needed in this FY26, or are there any adjustments there? We can certainly do that. And as Ms. Packett mentioned, we have examples from other agencies on how this program has been structured. So we could get that to you in advance of full council meeting. Not before Thursday, I don't think. I think before full council is fine. I appreciate that suggestion. I'll go along with it. But again, I'm not interested in funding PR messaging campaign. If it is other types of best practice to, I'll let you decide what those best practices are, but the best PR is free right on. We don't need to spend a penny more to let people know about what we're going to be doing. Okay, so we'll accept that recommendation and put this on the reconciliation list. Thank you. The final addition before the committee is an automated bus lane enforcement pilot. This is a contract that MCDOT has explored with Womata to install cameras on buses that operate on Metro bus vehicles that operate along bus-only lanes in Montgomery County. This $160,000 is just the operating costs for administering the program, for processing the footage and delivering it to law enforcement. Womato is under this contract, would put forward the capital costs for this program, which are more substantial of actually installing the cameras on buses that operate along the bus lanes in the county. So this would be a $160,000 addition. If I could just clarify the recommended budget also includes the exact amount of offsetting revenue assumed for this program. So this is assumed to be a budget neutral pilot for bus lane enforcement. Do you know what lanes, what routes they would first appear on? Georgia Avenue is where we would envision this to occur. Yes. It's our only permanent lanes that Womada has buses operating right now. I'm the same one. People keep emailing us about saying there are cars driving there and yeah, university would be second once we reach permanence of those lanes. I just had a question first. Oh yeah, we needed on judge Avenue. Purple line just shifted the lanes this morning and they kind of threw me as I was driving to work. But I guess I just had a question on this is whether or not we also need a pilot. I know this is a pilot but do we need a policy change on this in terms of enforcement and how we're using? I know they're one mod of buses but I believe the police department had come before us about eight months ago. And I can't remember if this was a teeny in public safety meeting or if it was go in public safety, I cannot recall. But I remember they talked to us about what they were exploring and we had to get enabling legislation from anapolis to in order to do enforcement in bus lanes. I believe that enabling legislation went through. So I believe in order to do something like this, don't we need legislation or because it's a pilot, we can do it or we can just do it. So I can speak to this. We've been working with OCA since, even before the state legislation was passed, but once it was passed, they have determined, and I have this in writing that we do not need local enabling legislation to do the enforcement. The enabling legislation allows us to our existing automated traffic enforcement capabilities for bus monitoring. Perfect. Thank you. And bus lane enforcement was included in the police department's automated traffic enforcement plan, as you mentioned, which came before the joint public safety and teeny committee last year sometime. Don't remember exactly what. Yeah. So it's all coming together. Thank you, because part of the Safe Street Act was the automated traffic enforcement plan, which needed state legislation to expand the scope of the program, which we've now gotten. Thank you, delegate von Stewart. And so if you're telling us that this is ready to go without anything more than just an expenditure, I'm in support of that. Yeah. Thank you. Can you just describe the revenue source? I didn't catch that. That revenue would be from fees for violations. DIT had assumed, and this is initial estimate, that the revenues from those fees would be enough to offset cost of the pilot. Okay, so we don't know if it's gonna be 100,000 or 300,000, but we'll find out after this pilot. Exactly. I'm going to have to go to the new, I'm going to have to go to the new, I'm going to have to go to the new, I've all the conversation into the specifics, but would there be a grace period? How would we educate drivers on how to use a bus lane? So we're working with Metro right now. We've been meeting with them. We're also meeting with the automated enforcement for police on a set of business rules. And so we are envisioning an initial warning period. And I think we have 30 to 40, I think we have 45 days as our initial but that's the business rules are still very much being redlined and figured out. So that's initially what we're working on and then there's lots of rules about that we can set in terms of how many violations one can get per day and per block and per lane violation and so forth. And what moda does is already in the district? So they're well first. We're bringing it to a local context here, yes. Very good. OK. We'll have an objection. Support that. Now we're onto the CIP amendments. Yes. So there are eight or six projects within the mass transit category that the committee is considering for CIP amendments, two of which were transmitted along with the operating budget in March. These are the right on bus fleet and right on fair equipment replacement projects. The remaining projects were transmitted on April 14th. So they're all contained here. I will introduce the first two in tandem and as well as the bus rapid transit projects in tandem as they're kind of related and then can discuss from there if that's all right. So the right on bus fleet and right on fair equipment replacement, these are the CIP savings that we are experiencing from making right on fair free. So this decision flows from the Council of the Committee's decision to approve of the executives recommendation to make right on fair free. So we're seeing the savings you see for the right on bus fleet project are the marginal savings that we see from not having to include fair equipment in the procurement of new buses. And then the right-on fair equipment replacement project can be zeroed out entirely as we no longer need to replace our current equipment given this decision. Without objection. Great. There are three amendments, or there are amendments to three bus rapid transit projects. These stem from changes made at the state level at the end of the legislative session. So there is a swap in funding between the Maryland 355 Central Bus Rapid Transit and the Maryland 355 South and North Bus Rapid Transit. The Central Project had $167 million in state aid associated with the Opportunity Lanes Congestion Relief Project on I-495 and I-270. The status of that funding is pending. So since this bus rapid transit project is further along, then it's complimentary south and north component on Merrillon on Rockfield bike on Merrillon 355. The funding from the Opportunity Lanes Program was moved to the South North, which has a little bit more time before it's planned to move to construction. And this funding in the Central component was replaced with $10 million and stated currently programmed into the South North component and $151 million in new funding from the State Bus Rapid Transit Fund. This was also accompanied by a delay in construction, expenditures, and a total increase in expenditures for the Maryland 355 Central BRT project. This is due to some construction delays and the adding of the $22.4 million partially does cover the extension of the southern terminus of this route from its previously planned terminus at Montgomery College in Rockville and extending it down to the Rockville metro station. So this route, if this amendment, if approved, would transform the Maryland 355 BRT to cover the whole length of the Rockville metro station up to the the Germantown Transit Center. Thank you for that Mr. Kenny. I'll augment your comments and when you mentioned the opportunity lanes you said the funding was pending I would say it's undetermined quite frankly. And so just putting a little more uncertainty right with with that No additional comment, but I Have said I've said whenever we talk about 355 BRT I still believe it needs to start at the northern end That was a decision made a number of years ago That it needed and the decision was Decided to start it at the lower portion and so director of conklin, is it now fair to say that it's the middle portion that's the priority? Yes, so the Council took action in the last full CIP to fund the Maryland 355 between Montgomery College, Rockville, and the Germantown Transit Center. The portions that aren't funded are from Germantown Transit Center north to Carcisburg, and the section from Rockville, Montgomery College Rockville to Bethesda. This amendment extends the southern terminus of that slightly further south to the Rockville Metro station with the Northern component is unchanged. And in terms of the opportunity lanes funding, in the last TPP action, the county and state agreed to extend the commitments that had been made until later time, an adoption of the next regional plan. We're actively negotiating adjusting those commitments to correspond to what they may do in terms of phasing for American Legion Bridge, I-485-270. So that may resolve itself before the next CIP is reviewed. That's an ambitious timeline. If it's not provided to revenue in that period, the agreement may resolve itself. Sure. Okay. So thank you for explaining just that minor shift. Makes sense to me. I hear you. I understand the shift and it makes sense to moving forward with the central. And I have great concerns about revenue source for the remainder, particularly the North portion. But for this action now, I mean, not so much longer tail. But for this action now, this does make sense. So picking up on that, as you mentioned, the next CIP, right, and as we're taking this up and other work is underway or quickly begins once we dispense of this budget, a proof of this budget, just re-upping the fact that we do need transportation options in the up county. And as we're doing a 21 mile long BRT is 21 mile? Yeah, roughly. Roughly 21 mile long, 355 would have been my preference to start it at the northern end when there is a dearth of transit options. I think this only keeps chipping away at those prospects but hopefully in your own words something will resolve itself between now and next year. Well, and there may be other adjustments to funding programs that we can make to accelerate portions of this as we review the entirety of the program going into FY27. Okay. Okay. So without objection. Thank you. Moving on to another bus rapid transit project. This is a veer's mill road. The executive recommends a $10.2 million increase to the bus rapid transit ve the Fierce Mill Road project. It also corrects an error in the previous federal aid calculation, reducing federal aid to this project by $2 million. This net change in funding is accounted for by a $12 million increase from the state boss rapid transit fund. This amendment also delays construction of the delays completion of construction of this project from FY28 to FY29 to reflect operational construction related delays on the ground. The federal aid calculation was at a rounding error or? Well, it is a rounding error, but I can, but Joanna Conklin from DGS explained what it actually represents. Thank you. Joanna Conklin, BRT program, DGS. So when we were asking for 80% federal aid, and when we initially did the calculation, we didn't take out the portion from when we entered the project into the FTA process. So they will only start covering like after we officially entered Pete, but they call project development, which was October of 2022, 2022. So there was like a small amount of expenditures that we had made before that point in time that is not eligible for that 80%. That's the difference. And any reason to believe that any of these bus driver transit projects or mass transit here in Montgomery County, new projects are in any jeopardy with federal DOT or change of mindset perhaps. Yeah, I mean, not at this time. We're still, you know, Viers Mill BRT is in the process of being rated for a grant by the FTA. We've been continuing all of our work with FTA, regular meetings. We just finished a risk workshop with them. So like we have not seen, I mean, there's a delay in the recommendation coming out, but we're still actively working with them. And Maryland 355 Central has been entered into the FTA process as well for a new starts grant and we're working with them on that as well. So I mean we can't predict what's going to happen but it's not, I mean we're still talking to them on a weekly basis. The fact they're engaged is their sign. They're very engaged. That staff is there, answering emails, taking meetings, moving ahead, that's a good sign. Yeah. Okay. I'll end it there. Yeah. There's staff. Staff is there. Right. OK. So we'll accept that without objection. And last item on this afternoon. Yes. This is the hydrogen fuel cell buses and fueling site project. This is, this change is, has two components that the recommended amendment. The first is another federal aid item. This is a swap of $1.4 million in current federal aid with an equivalent amount of current revenue. This is done to remain in accordance with the FTA grant agreement. I'll defer to DTS to fill in more about that. But... Okay, that's me again, apparently. Yeah, so the issue here was that when we put in the grant agreement with FTA, we had certain line items allocated for certain funding sources and where the federal funding was going to go. When we did our CIP, it didn't quite match that and we thought we would be able to do an amendment with FTA and they told us no. It has to match exactly where. So it's just essentially an administrative change, no new money. Understood. Okay. Without objection. I also just like to clarify, and the packet, it says the project was delayed for funding reasons. That's not accurate. The funding for the project is fine. There's a small delay due to design and contracting issues. But that current revenue in FY27 is already appropriated. So there's no additional funding needed for this project at this time. Great. Yeah, that was an error in the staff report, the funding swap in the one-year delay are unrelated. Leave it to the CIP section, have all the different rounding errors and writing errors and so forth. But it's all good. It works itself out. Appreciate this very good conversation. I know that our colleagues in the full council will be very engaged, particularly in the fair-free conversation, but I think we've done a really good job of explaining it, all the options that are out there. The only substantive change from this afternoon is that $250,000 going on the reckless pending further analysis or at least explanation, right? Great. Thank you. And so the committee covered all of the decision that the changes. So council staff recommends approving all other items recommended by the executive and the FY26 operating budget for transit services including compensation, annualizations, and other personnel changes and non-discussionary operating cost increases. So, yeah. We do. To unanimous. Thank you. Thank you all. We're adjourned.