Rail Advisory Committee September 11, 2018 Meeting Minutes Meeting location: Portland Airport Conference Center, St. Helen’s Room A, 7000 NE Airport Way, Portland, OR Members in attendance: Rob Eaton, Vice Chair Donald Leap, Retired Ivo Trummer, Port of Portland Johan Hellman, BNSF Railway Adrian Guerrero, UPRR Paul Langner, Teevin Bros. Randy Russ, United Transportation Union Kevin Haugh, PNWR Bruce Carswell, TWG/OERR Members absent: Mark Davidson, Wallowa Union Railroad ODOT Rail Division staff in attendance: Stacy Snider Bob Melbo Kathy Holmes Hal Gard Richard Shankle Guests Dr. Randy Smith, PSU, Michael Morrison, AORTA, ODOT, Roseann O’Laughlin, ODOT Via telephone: Erik Havig, ODOT, John Ficker Rob Eaton called the meeting to order. Rail Advisory Committee (RAC) members made self-introductions and introduced new RAC member Ivo Trummer who is with the Port of Portland. John Ficker was introduced. He will officially be a new committee member at the December meeting. Minutes from the June 2018 meeting were approved. Vice Chair Eaton reminded the group that it is time for the Vice Chair to take on Chair duties. Rob Eaton will be Chair as of the December 2018 meeting and Paul Langner was approved as Vice Chair. Connect Oregon Update The legislature dedicated funding for four projects during the most recent round of Connect Oregon. These projects must be fully funded prior to any future competitive rounds of Connect Oregon can take place. Mid-Willamette Valley Intermodal Facility ($25 million) Treasure Valley Intermodal Facility ($26 million) Rail expansion in East Beach Industrial Park at the Port of Morrow ($6.55 million) Brooks rail siding extension ($2.6 million) Projects total over $60M and the legislature committed $30M in lottery backed bonds for these projects. This means we have a $30M deficit for the projects. Legislature created Privilege Tax which taxes auto dealerships .5% for each new vehicle sold. In January 2018 a lawsuit was filed to determine the legality of the tax. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the tax is legal and the money can go towards Connect Oregon type projects. Collecting tax since January but has been sitting in an account held by the Department of Revenue and can now start to be available to ODOT. However, the first $12M collected will go to DEQ to run the Electric Vehicle Rebate program. A small percentage will stay with the Department of Revenue to cover the administrative costs associated with managing the funds. The remainder will come to ODOT to fund the Connect Oregon program. The disbursement will come quarterly and the first deposit of funds will take place in November. We do not know how much that will be or what to expect annually because it is based on auto sales which could fluctuate. Our rough estimation is about $15M per year. It will take almost 2 years to make up the gap we have for the dedicated projects. Once the dedicated projects are fully funded then the privilege tax will build up and fund future rounds of competitive grant programs. The legislature placed the projects in a specific order to be funded; Treasure Valley, Port of Morrow, Brooks Siding, and the Mid-Willamette Valley. Through the savings from previous rounds of Connect Oregon we should be able to fully fund the first two projects. The Port of Morrow is going to the OTC this month to obtain funding authorization to begin construction. The legislature specified the siding be located in Brooks. UPRR has determined this is not the best location for the siding. The legislature will need to amend the language. There is a competitive process for the Mid-Willamette Valley project. It has been narrowed down to 2 locations. The development plans are due September 27th. ODOT will then have 120 days to review and make a decision to fund at least one of the projects or neither project. A Rules Advisory Committee has been established to amend the Connect Oregon Program rules. Paul Langner and Rob Eaton are on the committee. The committee will hold the first of four meetings on September 17th. Harassment Training The Department of Administration requires that all board and commission member or volunteer a copy of the Discrimination and Harassment-Free Workplace policy. They must then complete the harassment and discrimination training in the iLearn system (https://ilearn.oregon.gov). Use the following link for instructions on how to create a user account for non-state employees: https://www.oregon.gov/das/HR/Documents/CreateNewAccount-NonStateEmployee.pdf. This training needs to be completed by December 31, 2018. State Rail Plan It is time to update the 2014 State Rail Plan. The rail plan will need to be updated every four years. There is no longer a requirement to have a plan in order to apply for federal funds. ODOT applied for the 2017 Consolidated Rail Infrastructure Safety Improvements (CRISI) Grant to complete Phase II the North Portland Peninsula Junction improvements in June and will be submitting the same application for the 2018 CRISI Grant on the 17th of September. ODOT has been waiting since May for the FRA to publish the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for higher speed passenger rail. Thirty days after it has been published we can go out for public comment. The FRA is meeting with the USDOT today to obtain permission to put the DEIS on the FRA website. Work on the State Rail Plan is being held up in order to include the EIS work. The EIS is an element of State Transportation Plan. The Rail Plan will be an “update light”. This will involve updating data elements such as ridership, commodity information and existing conditions to give us the most relevant information that will be needed to make future decisions. Both passenger and freight needs will be updated. Our team is working with neighboring states and including stakeholder engagement. The revised plan will go through a public review process and will need to have a formal adoption by the OTC. We hope to have it adopted in the fall of 2019. Bob Melbo shared a map and description of projects identified in the 2003 I-5 Rail Capacity Study. All the projects listed are in the Portland triangle. Six of these projects have been completed and a seventh project has been funded by Connect Oregon (North Portland Peninsula Junction). This project is on hold while we seek federal funding to complete the second part of the project (Peninsula Junction). Because the location of both projects are so close they will need to be done together in order to get the full benefit. The remaining three projects have not gone anywhere. The list also includes three other projects that have come up after the study. A new siding and crossover near St. Johns. Signalizing the northerly leg of the Astoria Line wye at Willbridge Replacing Willbridge crossovers Are there other bottlenecks that we have not identified that we should be looking at going forward? Union Station infrastructure needs to be revamped including adding a new track which would be Track 6. The principal reason for Track 6 would be to improve freight mobility through the Union Station area. Power crossovers and switches at both ends of Lake Yard. This list is 15 years old. There is a need develop and prioritize a new list. The list that was developed last year would be a good place to start but it was more of a general list for all projects not just bottlenecks. The new list needs to include a list of completed and in-progress projects to reflect the progress that has been made. There have been cost changes in the last 15 years so ODOT will need RAC members to help update cost estimates for these projects. Action Item: Bruce Carswell and Bob Melbo will reach out to the other shortlines to ensure that the list includes them. Action Item: Bob Melbo will review and update the list developed last year. Add a column to identify type of project, capacity or bottleneck. Then send list out to the group to review and be prepared to add projects. The list will be discussed and ranked at the December meeting. Agenda Item for December Grade Separation Program Oregon does not receive enough funding to do grade-separated crossings or fund studies which would allow us to develop a list of projects. There are no matching state funds to allow us to apply for federal funds when funding is available. The State of Washington just went through a process to establish criteria and creating a data driven process of identifying priority grade separation projects. Oregon has a risk analysis database that we use superior to what the Feds have on their site. Railroads are willing to work with the state, but there is no single solution for each crossing. Not all crossings require grade separation. They need to be addressed on a case by case basis. Grade separation projects are eligible for gas tax funds. Grade separation is for highway safety, not railroad safety. There is federal funding being left on the table that we cannot access due to the lack of shovel ready projects or projects with preliminary engineering done and there is no identified source for the state funding match. ODOT receives $3 million per year from license plate funds. This amount was established in 1974 and at that time that amount would fund about 6 or 7 crossing improvements each year. Now it will not provide half of the funding needed for one crossing improvement project. This amount barely covers state match required for the federal funding we receive each year.