Rob Means: So, let's dive in with our introductions. So, starting with myself, I, my background with the, conflict res… I am with the Conflict Resolution Center of Santa Cruz County, including as a mediator and a trainer in conflict resolution and communication,
Rob Means: work.
Rob Means: One thing as a representative of the CRC, and as the facilitator in this event here, is, one thing that I do not have is an opinion on the, or a perspective to share on the content. My role is simply to facilitate as best as I can.
Rob Means: Productive communication between everybody else here.
Rob Means: And so I would like to turn, the, introduction part over to Lani. Is it Lanny or Lonnie? Lonnie. Lonnie.
Rob Means: Hello? Hello?
Rob Means: Yes, and just to give us some guidelines, what would you like us to initially just introduce name and organization, or…
Rob Means: Name it… well, I have a little…
Rob Means: a little guide for a… introduction here, something along these lines.
Rob Means: You want to read it aloud? I'll just introduce myself. My name's Lonnie Faulkner, I'm with a… I founded an organization called Equity Transit. Really, we know that Harvard research shows that…
Rob Means: The number one way out of poverty is giving people access to opportunity, which is through transportation.
Rob Means: and transportation is critically involved with housing and jobs. And so I became involved when I really realized that
Rob Means: we undermine a large percentage of our population by not providing access to, good, robust public transportation. So I'm a transportation advocate. Amongst other things, my background's in biotechnology, biochemistry.
Rob Means: And so I have a science background, I work on the Central Fire Board, I'm with LAFCO, and I do a number of other things, including, Executive Committee of Sierra Club, and on and on and on, so, just wanna…
Rob Means: Pass the mic along.
Rob Means: Alright, thank you, Lenny. I mean, I'm sorry, Lonnie.
Rob Means: And so next on the list here is Elaine.
Rob Means: Good evening, everyone. Elaine Johnson. I'm the Executive Director of Housing Santa Cruz County. I'm also the local president of the NAACP.
Rob Means: I'm a trained mediator, and I'm a graduate of Monterey College of Law.
Rob Means: Thank you. And, next up, Rob?
Rob Means: I'm Rob Means. I'm working with LoopWorks to create a, podcar system in Milpitas, California, where we're trying to connect, to the BART transit hub there, because it's sliced and diced by a lot of different,
Rob Means: roads and creeks and railroad tracks, and just trying to get through all of that to the BART Center is kind of challenging. Also a political activist for a number of years, a programmer in my first career, and did sales, service, and marketing of electric bikes. In my second career.
Rob Means: This seems to be my third career, so… Thank you all for being here.
Rob Means: Alrighty, thank you. And, next up, Hana.
Rob Means: Hello, my name's Hannah Favan. Say, Hannah, would you get the mic closer to your mouth there?
Rob Means: Just bring it a little closer. Closer. Oh, okay.
Rob Means: Is this good? Is that, that working? Okay, my name's Hannah Fairband.
Rob Means: And I'm here representing the Vista Center, which is the center for the blind in Santa Cruz, and by extension, I'm, to some extent, representing disability as a whole, serious disability.
Rob Means: Oh.
Rob Means: I myself taught for many, many years at the Carroll Center in Boston, teaching people who were new to blindness.
Rob Means: And then, a few years ago now, I wrote an award-winning book called When You Can't Believe Your Eyes, Vision Loss, and Personal Recovery, and it's intended
Rob Means: Especially for people losing sight, and also for partners, and families.
Rob Means: And I teach in various places, mostly low-tech stuff about how to get your needs met.
Rob Means: When you're living with disability.
Rob Means: And, obviously, how to get about when you're blind is a very serious issue indeed, so…
Rob Means: What do you think, Johanna? Next, Matt?
Rob Means: Good evening. I'm Matt Farrell, and I'm here today representing
Rob Means: Santa Cruz County Friends of the Rail and Trail.
Rob Means: The rail and trail… Organization has been…
Rob Means: In working since, 2002, to advocate for
Rob Means: Both rail and trail in the branch line corridor.
Rob Means: And I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Rob Means: Participate in this.
Rob Means: Thank you.
Rob Means: All right, thank you, Matt, and thank you to all of the panelists here. So I want to emphasize that panelists speak as knowledgeable members of the community, but not as official representatives of their organizations.
Rob Means: With this in mind, we hope the panel… panelists will feel free in, talking about how they see things. So…
Rob Means: here in Santa Cruz County, daily and seasonal congestion stalls economic growth and community vitality, but new transportation technologies are appearing, so we can make this conversation about weaving the new technologies
Rob Means: Into the current transportation tapestry, and whether the promised value of adding robo-taxis or pod cars is worth the expected costs.
Rob Means: So the process tonight here is to use, something like an open fishbowl format that allows attendees, it's sort of a half fishbowl because of our stage format here,
Rob Means: But, this allows the attendees to participate in the conversation by coming onto the stage, or as close to the stage as you're comfortable or able to get to. There is a chair,
Rob Means: With a microphone on it. And, so attendees can take the empty seat.
Rob Means: Once you've shared your question, or, and it's in that, it's from that chair, or as close to the chair as you're comfortable getting, you can share a question, a clarification, addition, a different perspective, whatever it is that you'd like.
Rob Means: And there will be a little bit of a discussion about that topic, but at that point, please return to…
Rob Means: your seat so that somebody else from the audience can then come up and take that seat. Does that make sense to everybody? The gist of how we, how we envision this to work. Let's see if reality matches the vision.
Rob Means: And so, a couple of guidelines or ground rules to keep us on track. Step Up, and I think there is a slide for the ground rules. Do we have that?
Rob Means: There we go. We have some impressive tech.
Rob Means: So, I'm enjoying that. But, step up, step back. That means, shy people, encouraged to talk, talkative folks, share your part, but also make space for the shy ones.
Rob Means: try this process and, consider the perspectives and opinions, and try to hold back judgment until… until a little later. Please don't interrupt, and raise hands. We're generally not, sort of calling on raised hands in the audience.
Rob Means: Today. Turn off your fax machines, your pagers, your landlines, and I think you understand the gist of that one. Please leave egos at the door, and let's focus on community and the future, and try to lead by example. So,
Rob Means: Many questions about that?
Rob Means: Okay.
Rob Means: Yes?
Rob Means: Question.
Rob Means: Speaker.
Rob Means: Or do we have to get up there?
Rob Means: Yes, the idea is that anybody who would like to contribute something, just to join the panel and contribute it that way.
Rob Means: Thank you.
Rob Means: It may, it may seem a little bit unusual to how these things are often done, but, so there's a little bit of an experimentalness in that regard, I think. But let's see how it goes.
Rob Means: So, I think we, so we have a lot of points to cover. The general idea…
Rob Means: is, that between now and, about 740.
Rob Means: I will share some, background information that has been provided by the PRT folks.
Rob Means: So that's about a half hour of sharing some information. My hunch is that we'll go through this information a little more quickly, and that's when we can open up the space for audience members to come up on stage and share their questions, perspectives, and so on.
Rob Means: Let's see… and so that leaves us maybe something like 45 minutes or so to discuss.
Rob Means: So, diving in to the background information. So, here in Santa Cruz County, daily and seasonal congestion shows the imbalance between demand for road space on one hand and limited supply on the other.
Rob Means: compounding the issue is the mismatch between sprawl and mass transit's corridor services. Mass transit, for 150 years, has relied upon large and expensive engines to move lots of stuff and people all at once.
Rob Means: This works well for transportation when towns grew up.
Rob Means: Where did the towns grow up?
Rob Means: along rail lines. As Santa Cruz County has learned, corridors like Highway 1, or the coastal…
Rob Means: or the coastal rail do not well serve cities, that sprawl. So, for the past 100 years, the automobile and racism have shaped our cities by changing the pattern of development.
Rob Means: We now live and work in space in places that sprawl across land and up into the mountains. While corridor transit, such as light rail, may not mesh well with sprawl.
Rob Means: network transit, like our bus system, does work a little better. Unfortunately, daily and seasonal congestion stalls buses along with all the rest of the cars.
Rob Means: So that's a 30,000 foot, that's the helicopter description of where we are and how we got here. Would any of the panelists like to share some brief comments to add a little bit more context to that?
Rob Means: Sure, I'll just share… I'll just share what came to mind, as you were talking about that, is that here in the United States, we once had the most robust public transit system in the world.
Rob Means: And it really served to get people to work and school, and it was in the 50s that the process of sprawl and white flight and building of ever-widening highways
Rob Means: actually cut through the backyards and bedrooms of brown and black communities. And it cut off people from opportunity, it cut off people from connection and, jobs and education.
Rob Means: And I think, the comment about the large engines that struck my thought process is that places like Los Angeles, for example, and other places in the country had some of the most integrated and cleanest, public transit systems in the world.
Rob Means: And I just wanted to leave that.
Rob Means: Thank you. Anybody else want to share a quick comment?
Rob Means: Okay, I will, move on. So…
Rob Means: There is another slide, called Assense.
Rob Means: Actually, there was a slide before that called Corridors, Sprawl, and Networks, but let's go to the, Common Assense slide. There we go.
Rob Means: So, we want to see if our panelists… to what degree the panelists agree on some broad points. And, here are those… here are four points. So, number one, our climate crisis is worsening quickly.
Rob Means: Number two, Shifting 10% of trips to public transport could substantially reduce CO2 emissions.
Rob Means: Number 3, Santa Cruzins want more and better public transit. And number four…
Rob Means: RTC and Metro operations are currently funded with revenue from these sources at approximately these percentages.
Rob Means: So, those percentages and sources are 40% local sales taxes, especially for Measure D.
Rob Means: 10-12% passenger fares, including the UCSC and Cabrillo College student fees.
Rob Means: 20% State Transportation Agency, and Transportation Development Act.
Rob Means: 12% transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program, 14% Federal Transit Administration.
Rob Means: And, 2%, or maybe a little bit more, other miscellaneous. So, those are the four…
Rob Means: the four ideas.
Rob Means: How do panelists feel, broadly speaking, about those four ideas?
Rob Means: Is there basic alignment on those, or…
Rob Means: Anything?
Rob Means: The only thing that I would note is I think those numbers are from the metro,
Rob Means: Numbers, their revenue and expenses, their revenue and income.
Rob Means: I'm not sure where… what the numbers are for RTC, so I just want to make that distinction. Okay, thank you.
Rob Means: So that said, on those four points that, you can read if you turn your necks 180 degrees, and, is there… it sounds like there may be broad agreement about those things.
Rob Means: And,
Rob Means: If there is, are there any other significant points that you think should be added to that list? And going, kind of going back.
Rob Means: One, climate crisis is worsening. Two.
Rob Means: Shifting 10% of travel to public transit would be a great thing for CO2 emissions.
Rob Means: Santa Cruzans want more and better public transit, and then it was a breakdown of RTC and metro operations funding.
Rob Means: Anything else that should be added there?
Rob Means: Besides those motorcycles.
Rob Means: I think that one important aspect of Talking about transit, And,
Rob Means: overall transportation that I don't really see in this list of four topics is…
Rob Means: The issue of equity and access.
Rob Means: Somewhere around… 30% of the population in Santa Cruz County doesn't own
Rob Means: And people who are blind or in wheelchairs Are challenged by the current
Rob Means: Mobility services we have in,
Rob Means: in the county, and so I think when we looked,
Rob Means: This question, equity and access, should be an important value in how we plan for the future.
Rob Means: I agree with that. This is Hannah Fairbairn talking about disability here.
Rob Means: I do agree with all those four points, but the one that
Rob Means: is missing from the point of view of disability is, from the descriptions that I was told about this.
Rob Means: there would be a significant number of steps to climb for access, and I think that that rules out a whole lot of disability.
Rob Means: So, speaking as the…
Rob Means: PRT expert, shall we say. Most all of the designs that I'm aware of either bring the PRT cabs down from elevated guideways to ground level, or their pod car stops not only have
Rob Means: Essentially, two flights of stairs to get up to 16 feet up in the air.
Rob Means: They also have individual elevators at each one of these podcar stops.
Rob Means: Okay, so it sounds like, a very important fifth point was added, which is about equity and accessibility. And,
Rob Means: to that ex… and then a little bit of discussion about the accessibility point. How do people who might have some disability or some other, factor, how do we make sure that they can access these things, these…
Rob Means: let's call them things for the moment, but which, about which I will explain more what they are, in the coming minutes. And I'd like to add another point, and I don't know if this fits in as a sixth, but safety, I think, is really critical across all of these formats. I know that
Rob Means: I serve on the Community Traffic Safety Coalition, and being a cyclist, I just biked from downtown Aptos to here. Safety's a big issue.
Rob Means: With pods, or buses, or trains, making sure everyone on board is safe.
Rob Means: Okay, thank you. So that's a couple of important points. If we… would it be okay to pause our discussion here, deliver a little bit more background information, and I see a couple people who sound like they would like to contribute.
Rob Means: But would it be okay to, to hold that for about another 15 minutes? And then we can open everything up. Okay. Okay.
Rob Means: Before you go on, Stacy, there's,
Rob Means: it was muddled in my mind, the difference between safety and security. Safety is that nothing accidental happens to you that is designed in a safe way. And we know from the 50 years of experience in West Virginia, Morgantown University there, that this technology is very safe.
Rob Means: In terms of not hurting people.
Rob Means: There's also security, which is protecting people from ill… ill people. And,
Rob Means: This technology tends to be better at that than most other transit technologies, because when you go to the pod car stop, you can immediately get on the pod car and leave, and you're not leaving with others. You're leaving by yourself.
Rob Means: So just safety and security are pretty well covered with this kind of a technology. Okay, we can add those to accessibility and equity.
Rob Means: Okay.
Rob Means: So, to explain a little bit more about this question of mobility options, there is a mobility options slide.
Rob Means: Okay, so, progress has been made with private microtransit, so bikes, e-bikes, scooters.
Rob Means: Now, two technologies promise widespread community benefits. Automated vehicles, robo-taxis, and personal rapid transit, PRT, or pod cars. So, here's sort of a starting list of options. So, there's microtransit.
Rob Means: Your two feet, your bikes, your scooters…
Rob Means: B-Cycle. Not sure what that is, but maybe we'll come… That's a shared bicycle arrangement, in fact, I think there's a bank of them not far… right in front of City Hall. Yeah, yeah. I was just in New York City, and they're all over the place there. Yeah, different names. Yeah. So then there's our personal automobiles, shared cars, taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, that kind of thing.
Rob Means: buses and rapid transit, light rail transit, commuter rail, subway, BART, for example, BART, autonomous, driverless vehicles, those, Waymos, for example.
Rob Means: And then personal rapid transit, like pod cars, and last, and maybe least, air taxis. So…
Rob Means: One day. But not, but probably not today, at least not for the most of us. So, options, but what about, what is realistic in terms of options moving forward? So there's a… should be a slide for that.
Rob Means: What transit do we want? So, for various reasons, we don't encourage the personal automobile. We already have too many of those for the road space available.
Rob Means: And, for various reasons, we don't want to encourage, I'm sorry, light rail transit requires right-of-way that is likely to be at the expense of road space.
Rob Means: Which is an already scarce resource. So, recent experience in Santa Clara County shows ridership per dollar invested to be a low return on investment.
Rob Means: commuter rail and subways also have right of, right of return on investment issues. And while air taxis may serve a niche market and sound super fun and exciting, they're not going to transport lots of people per hour. To reduce…
Rob Means: Except for maybe places like Beverly Hills, or, you know… Or Manhattan. Or, yeah. Very special places. But,
Rob Means: So if we take those options from our list, and leave the, you know, relatively more affordable and effective options.
Rob Means: Let's see, as are in this slide. So there's microtransit, shared cars, buses, and, rapid transit.
Rob Means: Driverless, vehicles, like a Waymo and, Zooks. I haven't seen the Zooks around, but…
Rob Means: I'm sure somewhere there is something called a Zoox, and it's got no driver.
Rob Means: And, last of all, personal rapid transit. So, please note that autonomous or driverless vehicles are most appropriate in uncongested areas because they do add more traffic. There are two reasons. First, they're moving people who may not have been on the roads at all.
Rob Means: Which, the technical term for which is latent demand, or the people who want the convenience of driving, but for some reason can't.
Rob Means: So the second reason is that after the robo-taxi drops off the rider, it adds to traffic as it's looking for a place to park or going to find another rider.
Rob Means: PRT, on the other hand, makes sense in congested areas because it does not increase traffic. The real question about PRT is whether the promised value of adding pod cars is worth the expense.
Rob Means: While some folks here may not be familiar with podcars.
Rob Means: Hopefully the panelists are, and before outlining PRT technology, let's see if you agree on removing those four options from tonight's discussion of
Rob Means: future transportation options. So we're removing cars, light rail, commuter rail, and air taxis from the discussion of future transportation options in this area.
Rob Means: Yeah, I feel, that I would definitely include light rail, passenger rail, various forms of rail, and when I think about costs, I think about,
Rob Means: not just cost, but efficiencies. And I think of efficiencies on many levels. So, I think of energy efficiencies.
Rob Means: space efficiencies.
Rob Means: Money efficiency. Moving people. So, for example, in a pod car, you might get 4 to 8 people. In a bus, you might get 50 or more.
Rob Means: In a train car, you might get 350 people.
Rob Means: And what that does with moving people is that you can move more people in a given amount of space on a train versus a bus versus a car.
Rob Means: I think of time and health, and something that we hadn't mentioned in that four or five earlier points is that
Rob Means: Tires, and things that make up a lot of these
Rob Means: little cars are incredibly toxic. Tires are incredibly toxic. And every time we drive a car, and I've noticed that the pod cars have rubber tires, is that these tires are disintegrating.
Rob Means: And as a biochemical endocrinologist, putting toxic chemicals into our system, air, water, and soils.
Rob Means: So there's the health issues, there's also the health aspect of getting people to walk.
Rob Means: Typically, if people can walk about 15 minutes, so it's about a mile, maybe half a mile to a mile, that's an acceptable amount of time to spend walking. And it's one of the reasons why, as a country, we tend to be less healthy, because we don't have that integration of walking into public transit.
Rob Means: There's also another point, which is community efficiencies, which is when you are on a train, less so on a bus.
Rob Means: but I support buses, is that you actually get to know your community members really well. And I've lived in Switzerland, I've actually gone on the Smart Train, and I've taken Amtrak across the country, and you really get to meet and know the people on those buses, whether you're commuting day-to-day or long distance.
Rob Means: And then, of course, environmental efficiencies. So I won't go into details, but those are some of the things that I like to think of, sum total.
Rob Means: Alrighty, thank you, Lonnie. Efficiency, community, environment… I think there was one more in there. Money, oh, and I…
Rob Means: I wanted to mention money.
Rob Means: Is that when we talk about trains, Is that these are,
Rob Means: systems that are built to last 50 to 100 years, whereas vehicles last much less, buses last maybe, I think, 12 years is optimal, but they make them go longer when you have to, so maybe 30 years.
Rob Means: And pod cars, again, you're talking about natural resources, so that's an efficiency of resources and money. Okay, let's, let's dig into this a little bit more.
Rob Means: So, most people are somewhat familiar with the technologies that were up on the slide there.
Rob Means: Even the newer stuff, like microtransit or robotaxis, less familiar is the personal rapid transit option, or podcars, or PRT. So let's look at what that is. Now, there is a hardware slide. I think following this… there we go.
Rob Means: So, hardware for a PRT system includes guideways, cabs, offline stops. Offline stops are a critical part of what enables pod cars to travel nonstop from origin to destination. As an example, these images show how the LoopWorks design.
Rob Means: show the LoopWorks design. There are many different PRT designs, this is one of them.
Rob Means: Next slide, please.
Rob Means: Okay, guideway designs.
Rob Means: So, PRT designs vary greatly in the amount of stuff.
Rob Means: Primarily steel and concrete needed to build them. Designs from
Rob Means: Swift Cities and Zipar use minimal infrastructure because the primary guideway is a steel cable. LoopWorks and Motatram, on the other hand, use steel trusses for their guideways. Designs from
Rob Means: UITRA, and Glideways use road-like guideways. These… so, wide-ranging designs also have wide-ranging price tags.
Rob Means: at least an order of magnitude or tenfold increase between the lowest and the highest. So think your nice Cadillac versus your Lamborghini.
Rob Means: So, while we're discussing final, financial costs, please be aware of two different types. So…
Rob Means: of financial costs. So, capital expenditure is what it costs to build something.
Rob Means: Operations and maintenance is what it costs to operate the system day after day. While traditional mass transit requires 3-5% annually of capital expenditure to maintain operations.
Rob Means: PRT systems only cost 1-3% of capital expenditure due to reduced costs for operations and fuel.
Rob Means: So, next slide, please. Okay, PRT benefits, perfect. So, each transportation option comes with costs and benefits.
Rob Means: Here are benefits demonstrated by existing pod car systems. Quicker and safer than driving.
Rob Means: energy efficient, Dependable trip time.
Rob Means: Transit time options, like reading, working, or meditating.
Rob Means: Low-cost O&M.
Rob Means: So, investors often refer to return on investment, ROI. Most look only at the financial aspects. As a community, we are better served by using a three-factor ROI that includes people, planet, and profit.
Rob Means: PRT advocates.
Rob Means: argue that podcars check all three boxes by providing better service for people, efficient and clean transit to lighten our footprint on nature, and low O&M that leads to better financial results. So with that background, let's begin the discussion 3 minutes ahead of schedule.
Rob Means: So,
Rob Means: At this point, we are… we are able to open it up. You have a… you have a quick overview of what the podcar system is, and we've, mentioned that there are other systems out there that can co-mingle with the podcar, or be…
Rob Means: Selected or considered, as an option in addition to the pod car, but, Starting off,
Rob Means: Is there anyone in the audience who would like to contribute something at this point? Question, clarification? Request for more information?
Rob Means: And, who would like to join us up on stage. And, if there are multiple folks who are all chomping at the bit to get up here, you can kind of move up, up here to the front.
Rob Means: Okay, wait for, and if you could just introduce yourself, and then, I'm Bill Martin, and,
Rob Means: I was expecting much more explanation of what they are. I don't really understand what they are with the…
Rob Means: I was thinking that would be the central theme of this whole event.
Rob Means: Okay. Like, you were sort of implying that it might go to door-to-door. I don't even know how you pick them up. I mean, like, I don't really know anything about them. Great question.
Rob Means: This, I believe, would be a question for Rob. Would that be the case? That sounds right. Okay.
Rob Means: So, where you would access… Sorry for the interruption. Would it be a good idea to, move back to the PRT designs use slide?
Rob Means: That way we can illustrate a little bit.
Rob Means: One… two more back, I think.
Rob Means: There we go, this slide. Yes, that'll help, actually. You can see in that topmost image that there's this small white cab on a relatively white guideway, and it's merging.
Rob Means: So, most all of the, PRT systems anticipate that they are going to be elevated. There's systems like Glideways and Ultra, which is in, at Heathrow Airport, where they try to keep it down on the ground, but as…
Rob Means: anybody trying to find routes around any particular metropolitan area. There's not a lot of on-the-ground corridors that are available, so I generally think of PRT as being elevated.
Rob Means: How you access it is through a pod car stop. Okay, can I, can I pause and just, maybe add a…
Rob Means: I don't know if this is… well, let's see if this is a helpful clarification, but anybody who's been through an airport in a, like, in a large airport recently.
Rob Means: the airports all seem to have these air trains. And you've got to kind of go out, and then you take the elevator up, or you escalate or whatever, and the train takes you from, like, terminal to terminal. But in this case, it would be this little
Rob Means: pod car. Right. Something like that, but then it's going through the community. Is that… Correct. Elevated? Correct. Okay. And the vehicles that you're talking about, the automated people movers, can move 20 to 50 people there. Pretty large devices and, are designed to move a lot of people in a short period of time.
Rob Means: This technology is using small cabs so that the, the stops, the places where people can get on and off
Rob Means: are relatively small, like a bus stop is. And they're scattered around about as frequently as a bus stop is, which means roughly 8 podcar stops per square mile.
Rob Means: And that gets us back to something that Lonnie brought up, is that having people walk from their homes to their local podcar stop, which is probably going to be within a quarter to a third of a mile at the most, if you've got 8 pod car stops per square mile, that…
Rob Means: Puts back into the equation, the public health equation, of people being walking on a daily basis a few blocks, which is just definitely good for their health and well-being.
Rob Means: Once you get to that pod car stop, it's either an elevator to get you up to the 16 feet up in the air to where the cabs are, or…
Rob Means: Again, a little exercise, climbing two flights of stairs. Usually when I get to the top of two flights of stairs, I'm breathing a little heavier than when I started.
Rob Means: The vehicles will be waiting for you right then, right there, at the pod car stop.
Rob Means: If they're not, they'll be there very, very shortly, or on demand. But generally, there's one or two of them sitting at each pod car stop, waiting for you to get in. It's kind of like a horizontal elevator. You get in, tell it where you want it to go.
Rob Means: The door closes, and off it goes on its own. Okay.
Rob Means: And it goes from where you started to where you want to be non-stop.
Rob Means: So you can ask it to go over there, or over there. Correct. Because we're talking a network, we're not talking a corridor, so we've got… it's kind of like visualizing a bus network, where it's got buses going this way, and going that way, and around yonder and whatnot.
Rob Means: You get to do the same, but you don't have to ever transfer. That's the killer with a bus network, is the transfers, because whenever somebody's not moving, time flows
Rob Means: very slowly, like, about 3 times as slow as it would if you were actually moving. So, we get past that part, you get to your destination, you're down the elevator, or down the two flights of stairs to the neighborhood, if not the… across the street from wherever you wanted to go to. Is that…
Rob Means: clarify… Let's see, do any of the panelists have additional questions or clarification?
Rob Means: Well, I'm a native New Yorker. I was born and raised in New York, so,
Rob Means: I haven't even been driving that long, because we don't drive in New York, right? Public transportation was a thing, and
Rob Means: But a lot of what you talked about, Lonnie, I mean, we walked to the subway, we walked to the bus to get the bus, you know, we walked to get to the cab, because that's just what you did. I'm… honestly, I spent all week trying to…
Rob Means: picture this… Whatever… this thing you're talking about.
Rob Means: And it reminds me of the Jetsons, right? It's like…
Rob Means: How do… I can't quite grasp it, to be honest with you. And… and for me.
Rob Means: you know, riding trans… public transportation was a way to connect with people, right? It wasn't just that you were going from your house to work, there was that in-between where you had the opportunity to speak to other people, you know, especially having the diversity and stuff like that, which I think is critically important, personally. And…
Rob Means: But, you know, I'm still trying to understand the…
Rob Means: this new model of getting us from point A to point B, and how that is gonna help us
Rob Means: minimize, or… I'm still not clear on that myself. You gotta sell me on it, my friend. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you, Elaine. And I think, Hannah, you had your hand up next. I would like… And if you can use the mic? Oh, sorry, yes. Perfect. Okay.
Rob Means: So, speaking first of sight loss, and then going on to general disability, most people who lose their sight do it at the age of 75 or older.
Rob Means: So that their fitness and muscle power is not what it was.
Rob Means: And therefore, and I'm sure this applies to a lot of people with other kinds of physical disability.
Rob Means: And therefore, the big thing for people in my position
Rob Means: is to use Paracruise, which is attached to the metro bus system, and is fairly small vans,
Rob Means: with a person, a driver, who comes to your door, escorts you down the steps, and into the little van, and then will escort you up the elevator to your, whatever, your appointment at the hospital. And…
Rob Means: This, need, this need for a personal
Rob Means: attendant to get you places would not be true of a young blind person who might have had good training, but young blind people cannot possibly afford to live in Santa Cruz.
Rob Means: So that we are really looking at how would
Rob Means: A small system like this, an individual sort of system, help with this need for,
Rob Means: for a personal person to help you get from place to place. And the other thing I want to mention is that if I get on a bus, which I do,
Rob Means: I do use the people sitting near me and the conductor to make sure I get off at the right stop, and to say, oh no, you want to cross back there, and then the place you want is the second on the left.
Rob Means: So I'm very much into having more people.
Rob Means: Not fewer.
Rob Means: All right, thank you, Ana. And, Matt. And then after Matt, I see, sir, you've been there waiting patiently, and so you'll be up next. And you're welcome to come up now if you would like.
Rob Means: Or you can wait. So, I was just gonna say that, my wife
Rob Means: Connie worked at the university for, 33 years, and she Rode the bus.
Rob Means: from… basically downtown, Up to the university during that time.
Rob Means: And so her commute pattern was pretty… Predictable.
Rob Means: And one of the things she talked about was.
Rob Means: Her bus family, because there would be the same people who would get on the bus every morning
Rob Means: And they started to develop a community That you don't really find
Rob Means: And a lot of the transportation commute modes people use now.
Rob Means: And I think that historically, like, We had streetcar systems.
Rob Means: There was a lot of community built from all those
Rob Means: travel patterns where people were meeting each other on the streetcar, going to from their employees, their employment, to other community activities, church, all those things. And I think
Rob Means: That it's an unappreciated benefit of a transit network that
Rob Means: accommodates groups of people, and
Rob Means: I think it really helps build a community.
Rob Means: By having that kind of…
Rob Means: connection and transportation. Thank you, Matt. Sorry, one second, but there is an important, sort of a logistical flow here. I think in order for your voice to be… for anybody's voice to be heard, it may be important to actually be in the chair.
Rob Means: And then… so, while he's moving to the chair, please go ahead, Lonnie.
Rob Means: Oh, thank you. So, you mentioned ROI several times.
Rob Means: And I… it concerns me because public service, public libraries, public transit, I don't think in terms of ROI. I think in terms of how do we best serve the community, again, with
Rob Means: efficiencies, money efficiencies. When you said that at every stop, someone is going to be able to either walk, climb those stairs, my initial thought, because I have friends who are wheelchair users and some who are blind, is,
Rob Means: how are they… is… are we gonna pay for an elevator at every single stop? That's a lot of cost.
Rob Means: To have an elevator at every stop.
Rob Means: And again, back to ROI, but costing with elevators. And just one more thought, I want everyone to keep this in mind.
Rob Means: Steel on steel.
Rob Means: Is the most energy-efficient way to move
Rob Means: Masses of people. Steel on steel, that's rail.
Rob Means: It's the most energy-efficient way to move masses of people.
Rob Means: Thank you, Lonnie. And, sir? Hi, I'd like to contribute a little bit of positive thinking. Keep the mic up towards your mouth? Yes, okay. My name is Kevin, and…
Rob Means: I'm a PRT developer. I've worked on… developing systems
Rob Means: For 40 years. This is a great system.
Rob Means: I've written a book called Guideway to the Future, you can get a,
Rob Means: where I've been concentrating is on mass transit, going from 65 to 250 miles in your own personal car, going on I-5,
Rob Means: And, but what I wanted to contribute for this PRT for Santa Cruz
Rob Means: I think the cost, could fit if… The public does not
Rob Means: pay a dime into it. But private developer get a 50-year right away, and turn it over to the city, or the county, or the state, or the federal government. But the private operator would be able to charge 25 cents a mile.
Rob Means: And there'd be no taxes attached to that, so it's cheaper than people being in their cars.
Rob Means: But there is a problem with
Rob Means: with this PRT system, it's the same problem with the existing bus system as the last 5 miles. You know, people in inclement weather don't, you know, or disabled people, just getting to… and you have to be on a schedule.
Rob Means: And… but that's okay, because I think the cost economics of a private developer were to get that right away, 50 years, under the… an agreement.
Rob Means: They could, pay it with their own costs and financing it, and benefit for the operating cost.
Rob Means: And the public wouldn't have to put a dime into it.
Rob Means: And, this existing bus system, which is very good in Santa Cruz County,
Rob Means: just cost a lot to maintain, and and I have observed over the years, I've been in Santa Cruz County for 50 years, and it's…
Rob Means: There might be 10 people in a 50…
Rob Means: Bus that can hold 50 people.
Rob Means: And, so, you know, it helps, for some people, but…
Rob Means: Most people don't want to get out of their cars, they want to be on a schedule, and I know you're from New York City and stuff, communicating with other people or having more people, that's an argument I, you know, I'm not against it. It's just that a personal transportation, personal…
Rob Means: The benefit for, is that, you don't have… you have… you listen to your own music, you have the security.
Rob Means: In both systems, you have safeties, but don't worry about that. It's just the,
Rob Means: You have your own little capsule with your people that, you know, a couple people or whatever, but you don't have
Rob Means: More people, or you don't have interruption from other people with their loud music, or whatever, and you don't have a disease that's communicable, you know, you're…
Rob Means: That's to be considered, okay, in these systems. But the main event here is the cost, you know.
Rob Means: You replace the existing bus system with a private enterprise that does this network system that they're talking about.
Rob Means: It… it will have its advantages to the public, and the public doesn't have to…
Rob Means: pay for maintaining it. It's the private… and the private guy is… has basically 25 cents a mile, plus the cost of living as it goes through, you know, year 30 or 35, and they have to maintain it, and they will if they're making a profit with 25, as long as the
Rob Means: county or the city doesn't attach, like they do with gas, you know, another 10 cents or whatever, you know, then, you know, you get, where the equilibrium is, I use the analysis of our income tax.
Rob Means: Where you get 65 cents a mile credit for when you drive your personal automobile.
Rob Means: Well, why be in your personal automobile when you can use, use the guideway and, you know, for, 25 cents?
Rob Means: Of course, I'm getting beyond your system, which is a great system for Santa Cruz County. My system doesn't fit, because
Rob Means: slowing down from 250 miles an hour to 65, it takes 10 miles to get off the off-ramp, okay? But it's a different system altogether, but it's a great system. But what I'm saying is that, I've solved the last 5-mile problem, and,
Rob Means: the, the, it's electric cars, so the emissions are, gone. Also, it can,
Rob Means: he can charge the car while you're on the guideway, so you end up with a full charge, so… and there's a tremendous other advantage, but I'm not talking about my son.
Rob Means: Today, I wanted to contribute and focus that,
Rob Means: If private industry were to propose this and get the right-of-way.
Rob Means: let them create that system, and the bus system can continue until it gets eclipsed, but the whole attitude is the public, what do they want for their convenience? How do you get the…
Rob Means: I call it a failure. The bus system is great network, but you can't get people to use it. And, you know, of course.
Rob Means: you know, unless it became totally prohibitive to use automobiles, which it hasn't. Gas is up at $5.50, or, you know, you're still not getting them out of their cars. So, so it sounds like,
Rob Means: There is a… it sounds… you know, one of the things that you're pointing at is that there are some pathways to explore, including public-private partnership, private development, and so on.
Rob Means: In order to make this thing a little bit more feasible, I want… and I wanted to come back to the point that, Hanna had made, and a couple of others had made, about the utility or the value of bus system and so on, and that these things may not necessarily need to
Rob Means: compete, but rather could complement.
Rob Means: And with that, please.
Rob Means: Hi, my name is Stephanie Auld. Stephanie, before you carry on, I think the main point that may not have been clear from the previous speaker
Rob Means: was that the capital expense cost to build the system and the O&M cost to maintain and operate the system is apparently low enough
Rob Means: that private investors would be interested in doing this kind of a system, meaning that it could actually make money, rather than what, you know, most transit systems are money losers. So, Stephanie, please.
Rob Means: I have several comments. My name is Stephanie Aul. Sorry. My name is Stephanie Auld. I'm on EDTAC, which is the Elderly and Disabled,
Rob Means: advisory group to RTC, and I wanted to say first.
Rob Means: I think one of the… part of the confusion, I appreciated when the gentleman came up and said that we don't really understand what we're talking about in terms of the pod system. And I think that's critical for us to discuss any type of pod system. The design is critical.
Rob Means: For us to make any kind of decision as to what's gonna work in Santa Cruz. Part of that is, you know, you were giving the example that you would be by yourself, etc, so I liked how you brought up the issue of security. However, when, we were looking really at rail,
Rob Means: of the RTC meeting in December.
Rob Means: Our supervisor for District 1 said.
Rob Means: oh, there are other ways of having transportation other than rail. And so I went to talk to him in January and said, okay, what other, you know, transportation options are you talking about? And he mentioned, glideways. So, Swift Cities and Glideways have already come to our city government and said, hey, we would like to come here from, you know, the other side of the hill.
Rob Means: So they're seriously looking at, say, glideways. So when I did a deep dive on glideways, as you mentioned before, they're on the street, so you're not really helping congestion much.
Rob Means: Additionally, pollution issues are still an issue with, glideways.
Rob Means: But the main thing that I saw with Glideways was, hey, nobody's talking, there was nothing about security. So, when you're talking about door-to-door service, which is what Glideways proposes.
Rob Means: There's… to me, the first thing that came to mind was, whoa…
Rob Means: somebody's gonna come… because with glyphase, it's a pod that is gonna go somewhere. You're not necessarily by yourself in the pod, and so it can bring somebody to your home.
Rob Means: Right? So somebody's gonna see where you live. You don't know if this is a psychopath or not. And then you're gonna get into a square pod that's gonna be moving, with a stranger you don't know.
Rob Means: I'm thinking rape.
Rob Means: And we know that rape has been an issue for Uber, but I'm not seeing any security issues addressed when Glideways does its presentation. So that was the first thing that I thought of. Could I respond to that part? So,
Rob Means: Glideways is probably not talking about security issues, because they, like.
Rob Means: LoopWorks does not expect anyone to be in the cab with you, unless you okayed it.
Rob Means: It's kind of like if you, you know.
Rob Means: go to using your own car. Yes, you can bring your dog, yes, you can bring your daughter, yes, you can bring, you know, friends, 2 or 3 of them, but that's it. There's only the people that you know are in that vehicle with you.
Rob Means: Sal, the other thing that you mentioned was that you were under the impression that Glideways is talking about a door-to-door service?
Rob Means: Whereas what, you know, LoopWorks is talking about is a podcar stop to podcar stop.
Rob Means: Now, Glideways, actually probably could eventually do that door-to-door technology, because
Rob Means: they have these independently operating cabs that can leave the guideway and run around on streets. And that's what they call a dual-mode system, and Ultra chose that design, and there's one or two other players out there that have chosen that design.
Rob Means: There's upsides and downsides.
Rob Means: But if you're thinking about podcar stop to podcar stop, that's generally how, you know, people see PRT in the world.
Rob Means: I don't know, Hunter.
Rob Means: respond to the last comment Jesus made.
Rob Means: But my comment is, then we're still talking about how critical
Rob Means: design is for us to do any type of analysis in terms of cost or, you know, whether it's going to function in our community. So we can't just do a general, you know, conversation about park cars without specifically looking at what's gonna work in our community. Additionally, in the very beginning.
Rob Means: there was a definition of what Santa Cruzans want, and it left out a lot. I thought that you were kind of trying to catch everything by saying better transportation, right? So you said that Santa Cruzans want transportation, we want better.
Rob Means: And that's true, but it… what does better mean, right? So when you're talking about our bus systems, our bus systems tend to be late 40% of the time. So when we… what Santa Cruz Lens want is dependable, so on time.
Rob Means: rapid transportation that's ecological, accessible, and affordable. So when we start looking at all of those different, factors, then we're talking about accessibility. So how's it going to work for seniors and disabled, right? One of the podcar questions I have is, what about people like me?
Rob Means: people in wheelchairs. So, on the buses, our wheelchairs get tied down to keep us safe, so we're not moving around in the buses, right? However, and then, Hannah, you were talking about the vans, right? So, I routinely take a van for medical expertise appointments to,
Rob Means: the other side of the hill. Notice, nobody's talking about…
Rob Means: 17, right? We're just talking about one right now. We all know that we need public transportation over 17. We have no public transportation other than the buses over 17, which costs about $14 a ride, and it takes 2 hours.
Rob Means: One win!
Rob Means: Okay, so… So there's a… so it sounds like it… what you're concerned with here is that,
Rob Means: there's a discussion about pod cars, but the bigger question of transportation isn't completely answered by this pod car question. And there's other needs that many of the community have. Right. Yeah. We definitely have a need to have transportation on the other side of the hill that's affordable, dependable for our seniors to get specialty cares and our
Rob Means: Our disabled people to get…
Rob Means: specialty medical care, because most of it's over the hill. So, when we're talking about this type of transportation, we're not dealing… we're just completely not dealing with that issue.
Rob Means: The, podcar technology, everyone needs to know as well, has not been developed. The transportation hasn't been tested.
Rob Means: to be able to cover the distance that we're talking about from Watsonville to Santa Cruz. That's the primary transportation that we're talking about with Highway 1, right? And so, for that, you know, we're looking at ecology issues, but also, we're, you know, we have the dependability in terms of time.
Rob Means: But, I think you want me to stop talking at this point. Is that the issue here? Well, what it is is, yeah, there's a bit of a line forming back there. Okay. But what you've shared, I think, is super important, and I think that,
Rob Means: We'll get the chance to come back and have, Rob and some of the other panelists comment on these points, and it would be great to hear from one or two people back here as well, and maybe kind of bring everything together. I just wanted to say one more thing. You struck out the, what was air taxis?
Rob Means: Air taxis are already being used in Africa and China.
Rob Means: So that is the… that's the Jetson-type transportation. The reason that we're not really talking about it here is that we don't…
Rob Means: have access to the air traffic control that you would need to have that type of transportation here? Well, actually, the reason we X'd it out was the bandwidth.
Rob Means: It really, it can move people into tight, congested locations, and that's why I mentioned Manhattan.
Rob Means: But as a, a regular way of moving people around,
Rob Means: You're not going to be moving a lot of people using air taxis, is my bottom line at this point.
Rob Means: And that's why it's really not on the list of high-priority options. Okay, so kind of a… it's not off the list, per se, and it may have its place and its time and everything, but you're kind of looking at a different context. It's a capacity problem. One other thing… have a seat. One other thing that Stephanie mentioned…
Rob Means: Also… I'll take a chair.
Rob Means: Stephanie mentioned, or asked about, well, how about somebody like her in a wheelchair that's powered and is heavy?
Rob Means: And, I…
Rob Means: Spoke with somebody that was in, even worse physical condition, and had a bigger and heavier setup, and he said it weighed about 400 pounds.
Rob Means: And he was very lightweight. But I went back and I checked. With our technology, apparently you can have up to an 800 or 850 pound payload.
Rob Means: So even an individual in a very heavy,
Rob Means: wheelchair would be able to go up the elevator at the pods car stop, roll into the vehicle, and be taken
Rob Means: to the destination stop. Okay, thank you. Sir? Hi, my name is Jaime Andrea. I'm the, General Chairperson for SMART. I represent the Santa Cruz Metro bus drivers and Paraguise drivers.
Rob Means: Where to begin? There's a lot of controversy going on with this conversation. I can tell you for a fact that Metro, has improved the system drastically. We've improved the buses, we've improved the cleaner air.
Rob Means: We drive 40-foot buses. Those 40-foot buses carry roughly 50, 60 people.
Rob Means: there was a comment, sir, that sometimes those buses have 15 people at a time. I invite you to ride the Route 1, the Route 2 in the morning. I particularly invite you to ride the UCSE routes. Those things are jam-packed.
Rob Means: Now, what I mean by jam-packed is, on a daily basis, we drive around thousands of students up there and back and forth. They go all over the place.
Rob Means: So would you say that there's, like, a combination of high traffic routes, and then, say, maybe less volume, but important accessibility routes? And that would be the same thing with this kind of system if it ever came online.
Rob Means: needless to say, yeah, Santa Cruz Metro buses are… are… we have a variety of people on those buses. Good, bad, clean, not so clean, so much.
Rob Means: Everybody remembers COVID, right?
Rob Means: During COVID, Metro took precautions, drastic measures, to keep those buses clean and equipped on a constant minute-by-minute basis. It wasn't just on a one-day basis, they were clean. Yes, there's a lot of bacteria, there's a lot of…
Rob Means: Diseases. Tell me when you're walking downtown and you don't find somebody with a disease, with a cold, with the flu, and you just rubbed yourself around them.
Rob Means: This happens everywhere. Buses are efficient, buses are effective. We've gone from a 30-minute route on a regular down to a minute route service… a 15-minute route service, which is increasing the service. Our ridership has improved, and trust me, right now it's gonna improve even more with the gas prices we're having.
Rob Means: So, yes, they are expensive, but they are efficient. We go to San Jose, we take people back and forth from Watsonville all the way to San Jose. Now, I'm not judging the system here, but how is the system gonna work up at UCSE? When we're driving, we're driving 60, 70 passengers in one bus, and I don't know if I mentioned this, we've acquired articulated buses, double-sized buses, just to meet the standards.
Rob Means: and meet the efficiency that we're required to meet. How is this system gonna work for that? Okay, so that's a… so what's the comp…
Rob Means: it, it, you know, my sense is that it's not a sort of a competitive system, but it's a complementary system, but it's a question, how do they complement? How do they fit together?
Rob Means: Are you able to tackle that? Well, I absolutely agree with you, and there was a study done, geez, it must have been over 10 years ago, in Palo Alto. They've got a research park there, and they said, well, if we had a PRT system that went from the Caltrain station and served this industrial park area.
Rob Means: Would you continue driving your car alone, or would you shift modes and do something different?
Rob Means: And what we ultimately discovered from that study was that the, drive-alone rate, the solo occupancy vehicle rate, would drop from about 90% down to about 45%.
Rob Means: when just that one PRT system was included in the mix, because then people could take a carpool
Rob Means: to where they could get onto the PRT system, and that would deliver them to the last couple of miles into their actual… where they're going to be working. But when you say that, yes, and I agree with both Lonnie and you, that large vehicles with lots of people in them, you can move more people.
Rob Means: If… Each vehicle is relatively close
Rob Means: to the preceding one, meaning that a 15-minute headway, and I don't know what the headway is up to UCSC is, but if it's 15 minutes, and you're saying, okay, every 15 minutes we're going to be moving 50 or 60 people in a bus.
Rob Means: How does that work out per minute?
Rob Means: Because I think that if you run the numbers and say, okay, well, if I can put a person in a pod car and send him off on a line that can handle
Rob Means: A pod car every 2 seconds?
Rob Means: then you're talking about roughly 2,000 people per hour. If you're saying this one second apart, now you're doubling that number.
Rob Means: So, the size of the vehicle is only one of the two factors. The other is, okay, how fast, how far…
Rob Means: Is it between… how long is it between vehicles?
Rob Means: And with the podcar stuff, it can be, like, one second apart as they're going up the hill.
Rob Means: Also, at the pod car stop, where you're actually getting on.
Rob Means: How long does that take to do? And that's really about 15 seconds per pod car.
Rob Means: Using this particular technology.
Rob Means: Question. So, the one second, two-second podcar, is that a theory, or is that proven?
Rob Means: Well, that's proven on my freeways every day, and that I'm driving behind people, and I swear, you know, if I put 2 seconds between me and the next guy.
Rob Means: Somebody's going to cut in there and take that gap from me, so technically, I mean, even though you were supposed to be having two-second gaps, we oftentimes have one-second gaps, and that's with human drivers. With computer drivers, you can tighten that down even further. Okay, the one-second, two-second gaps, I believe that's considered safety.
Rob Means: Absolutely, that's so that you've got enough time to brake if the guy in front of you suddenly decides to stomp on his brakes. Okay. And I see your point about one second, one person, 2,000 people within so many seconds. What happens when that pod breaks down or has a malfunction?
Rob Means: Good question.
Rob Means: What if the answer was… Everyone bus breaks down, we immediately call for another one, and we move those 60 people drastically quick. Gotcha, right. So,
Rob Means: Bye-bye.
Rob Means: There's redundancy built in. In this particular system, I can talk about this one particular system that was designed by engineers in Minneapolis or Minnesota.
Rob Means: 50 years ago.
Rob Means: Or 40 years ago. Anyway, they have a lot of redundancy built in. So, for example, there's, two different lines providing power.
Rob Means: To drive the electromotive force to get you moving down the road.
Rob Means: there's, there's no collisions happening, because you're not intermixing with
Rob Means: People and dogs and cars and buses and everything else that's on the road at grade level.
Rob Means: The bottom line is that they've run the numbers, and it sounds like they're gonna have a failure once every million years, or something to that effect.
Rob Means: I know this, like, when you say that these are, that these are mechanically relatively simple…
Rob Means: This particular design absolutely is. But then we can go back and take a look at one that's been operating on 50-year-old technology for the last 50 years. That's the one in Morgantown, West Virginia. And again, they don't have a lot of failures, because the system is simple.
Rob Means: And it's maintained. And that's, of course, you know, a big piece of the picture. But having a simple design is another big picture. And the redundancy is the thing that really makes it last a long time, so that actual breakdowns are so freaking rare.
Rob Means: Okay. Okay. Well, to conclude, because we've got plenty of people here, to conclude, the theory sounds great, but we have proven facts that the buses are efficient this way, so I'll leave it at that. And so is Paracruz as well, and our disabled guests here can attest to that, she has. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you.
Rob Means: Please.
Rob Means: Hello, everyone. James Anville here, a former bus operator for over 10 years, one of the representatives of SmartTD at an international level, and we got a local here, Santa Cruz Metro, that I currently help out and assist Jaime in representing our members. So, a couple of things.
Rob Means: I know there was a mention of making this a for-profit instead of, you know, public sector, and I have a lot of concerns with that, because as we all know, for-profit is for-profit, and a lot of things could be
Rob Means: neglected or overlooked because there's not as much regulation or transparency about it. I know this because I come from public sector. We have a lot of transparency and regulation oversight for our buses, so we know make sure… we always make sure that they're safe.
Rob Means: There's another thing that I want to mention is that I'm really disappointed that I didn't see fully autonomous vehicles stricken out from that sheet.
Rob Means: Because if you have kept up with the Waymos and all the other autonomous vehicles in other cities, they're creating mayhem that are not getting the spotlight they deserve, as far as running over people, and not even recognizing that they have a person underneath the vehicle, dragging them for 20 feet.
Rob Means: or not recognizing stop signs at… on buses, or school buses. Not pulling up on active shootings, because they don't realize that that's going on. You know, it's just…
Rob Means: That is not something we will ever support, and it's going back to the human element that was kind of brought up, the connection that mass transportation brings. When we say metro family, we really mean that, from the people that work there, to the passengers we serve.
Rob Means: And you only get that with mass transportation. When you got these autonomous vehicles, or these pods.
Rob Means: You don't get that connection. And we need to get back to a place where we want to connect, because that's ultimately how we grow as a community.
Rob Means: And just a question that remained in my head about… I know that you said that it might not ever really break down on us, but what about, and I'm talking as a bus driver, and it's happened with me and my members.
Rob Means: medical emergencies, or something that happens, these things are gonna be up in the air, or somebody's having a heart attack, or some issue is going on, and there's not going to be any way to get to them in the time needed. And on the plus side, just to add another one to it, with our wheelchair passengers.
Rob Means: We, as operators, make sure that they're safely secured before even moving that vehicle. And…
Rob Means: If these pods are gonna be just letting people wheel their wheelchairs in there, who's gonna make sure that they're strapped and safe?
Rob Means: So those are two of the more outstanding questions that I have out of the many questions, but I know we don't have time on that, so… Okay. Well, it's really important, additional angles that when you… I mean, there's the basic idea of the podcars, but then there's a lot of more specific angles that matter to you, and…
Rob Means: Each person here, and so, yeah, there's definitely some weeds to get into.
Rob Means: If I could, maybe kind of open it up here. Lonnie? Yeah, thank you, and thank you, James. I think your perspectives are shared. I want to get people to visualize just for a minute, has anyone been to the Netherlands?
Rob Means: Here. I've seen pictures. Or seen pictures or video of the Netherlands, where about 25-28% of the population rides a bike.
Rob Means: So… The streets are full of bikes.
Rob Means: And they're packed.
Rob Means: And there's a lot of bicycles, and it integrates with the rails and the buses.
Rob Means: But I want you to imagine for a minute, with a PRT system, If it's in the air.
Rob Means: And you're moving as many people as we have need to move on Highway 1 and throughout the community.
Rob Means: The air is going to be packed.
Rob Means: with people.
Rob Means: And if it's on the ground, That's direct competition.
Rob Means: with the traffic.
Rob Means: Which is already there.
Rob Means: So, what I'm asking you to do is to envision, do you want both?
Rob Means: a packed traffic railway above in the air, if that's the way this particular system, PRT. I think there's a place and a time for PRT. I think, a campus is a great place for it, because it's kind of contained.
Rob Means: But you put it in a community.
Rob Means: You're talking about a whole nother system packed with people, and the ground system packed with people, or competition.
Rob Means: And that's physics.
Rob Means: Thank you. One thing I wanted to mention was, I think you mentioned, Rob, 16 feet, so that might be, like, that second row of, I don't know, sound-absorbing blocks up there?
Rob Means: Perhaps if you were to leave a track… At the top of it, yeah. …on top of that… those blocks there, that would be, like, the elevation of the system.
Rob Means: Just for reference. And, Lonnie, when you're talking about Packed guideway?
Rob Means: Well, assuming that there's enough demand to actually pack it.
Rob Means: Remember, we can… we're…
Rob Means: One way of thinking about it is to say, okay, a lane of highway traffic, freeway lane.
Rob Means: Take the cars that are in that freeway lane.
Rob Means: And you can move them up there, and be very safe, because we've got 2 seconds between cars, right?
Rob Means: I'm simply saying that you can pack that even more
Rob Means: So you can move more people if you really need to.
Rob Means: But it's all up there, out of the way, and it only becomes packed
Rob Means: Basically, when there's enough demand for it. And if that demand exceeds the supply, then you get back to talking about, okay, well, maybe we should put in another line that's going roughly the same direction to take some of the load off the first line.
Rob Means: That becomes an investment. We're talking about this particular investment because the investment in putting in another highway lane on Highway 1
Rob Means: is expensive, not only in dollars, but also in time and in environmental destruction of what's going on there. So, if you need to
Rob Means: mitigate the traffic on Highway 1,
Rob Means: Putting it up and putting some additional
Rob Means: transportation up in the air makes a lot of sense from that perspective, because you're not having as much environmental impact, you're not costing as much, and particularly if we had a system that paid for itself. If I could, would it… I see, so we have a situation here.
Rob Means: James has a comment, Lonnie has a comment, Gentleman in the orange stripes has a comment, and I'm wondering.
Rob Means: Okay, and one more comment behind Stephanie there.
Rob Means: And I kick it off now, I just have one last thing. I mean, I'm sure you'll get to it. Sure. Maybe a quick comment, and then if you want to hand it off to the gentleman here? So it goes back to that medical emergency, right? You're gonna have to stop the pod line.
Rob Means: And you're talking about potentially thousands of people all along this line that you're gonna have to stop, and now people are stuck up in the air for…
Rob Means: how long, or how do you get them past the people that you need to stop the pod car, or however… whatever, however that works. So there's a built-in assumption there that we're going to have to stop the pod car. So when the person got into the cab, they told it where they wanted to go, and it started heading that way. Then they had a heart attack.
Rob Means: Unless they interact with the system.
Rob Means: To get ahold of the operators in the control room.
Rob Means: And we're going to have something like that already installed. It's already in the Morgantown, West Virginia system, that the control operators can communicate with people in the pod cars.
Rob Means: So, unless somebody interrupts their trip by saying, hey, I'm dying here, get me out of here.
Rob Means: They will be taken to their destination stop, Without… without stopping.
Rob Means: So they're not going to be stopping folks on the line. They'll be going to a stop, and if they interact with the operators, that next stop may not be the fourth one down
Rob Means: the route where they originally wanted to go, they may get rerouted immediately
Rob Means: To the hospital pod car stop.
Rob Means: or to the police station pod car stop, or just to the very next pod car stop, so they can get off and get some assistance. So I'm gonna guess that that's not gonna be an operator, that's gonna be your Apple Watch, or whatever it is that knows all your health condition and is gonna dictate all that for you to,
Rob Means: But anyways, that's another question. Well, thank you. Alright, thank you, James. But I don't like the words may, I like will. Will. We can in public transit and our buses right now. Something happens, we will stop and take care of you. Okay. Thank you.
Rob Means: Now, there are a lot of advantages with having a manned vehicle there. Yeah, and that's, I think, a good point, is that the question is of how do these systems complement each other? Yeah. Sir?
Rob Means: Hi, I'm Brett with Santa Cruz PRT, and I know we're short on time, so I'll just respond very quickly to medical emergencies, because that was the most recent thing that was brought up. My vision is that the pod car would have
Rob Means: A panic button, and when you push that button,
Rob Means: Assuming you're capable, you know, assuming you can push the button.
Rob Means: It would have a button to go to the emergency at Dominican Hospital or Community Hospital in Watsonville. There should be podcast stations at those emergency rooms, and the system should be able to take someone there immediately in an emergency, faster than an ambulance would be able to, probably.
Rob Means: Because the system's already in motion and capable of doing that. Tell me, Brett, if, you know, the former scenario is somebody's on a pod car, and they have a heart attack, and now they want to go to the hospital.
Rob Means: one way that I have conceived of it is they communicate with the control center, and the control center redirects that pod car to the local hospital, but… That could work, yeah. We could also program the system to say, look, if you want to change your destination en route.
Rob Means: You can do that. And that's a programming problem more than a technical problem. Yeah, I'd like another button that says, take me to the nearest bathroom, I gotta go!
Rob Means: You know? That happens, right? So, yeah, so I want to be short and just, sure. …say it looks like there's a lot of comments that…
Rob Means: have not been responded to, and maybe we should have maybe a monthly Zoom call or something. I don't think we can do an event like this every month, but we could do a monthly Zoom. This is a starting point, not the end point, so, I do want to, say we do have, on our schedule, 3 more minutes,
Rob Means: Thank you all for your patience. We started 2 minutes late, so maybe we can borrow 2 minutes from the past, and…
Rob Means: Hi, my name is Monica.
Rob Means: I think you sounded good. Yeah. Okay. Hi, my name is Monica Sandoval. My husband is actually a bus operator for Santa Cruz Metro. I love riding the bus, I take it all the time with my kids to the boardwalk, and I support all the bus drivers. A lot of them are my friends and my family. Some of them are here.
Rob Means: And, personally, I cannot support anything that might take away their jobs. I also, I love Unionize California, and I can't… I would like to know how many local positions will your company have?
Rob Means: So, first off, my company is not exactly what you would normally think of as a for-profit company. So we kind of lie in between the public sector, transit operators, and the private sector. Let's make as much money as we can off of this technology.
Rob Means: We're a non-profit mutual benefit corporation, kind of like a savings and loan is.
Rob Means: So, what we would be doing is providing services, that
Rob Means: Are not optimized for making a profit, but are optimized for serving the community.
Rob Means: to address the issue of what's going to happen with bus drivers, and that's different from how many people are going to be employed by this PRT system.
Rob Means: depends on how big the PRT system is. You know, if we start with just a small demonstration and decide that that's all we want to do, then we're only going to be having a few people employed. But the real key to this system is that it complements
Rob Means: other technologies. There has been a dozen different studies in a dozen different cities that says, okay, what happens to public transit when we add in PRT technology? And they all came up with these, dramatic increases
Rob Means: in transit ridership. So I am anticipating, and again, this is like, we're going off of studies rather than actual experience. We need to get something built so that we have some real numbers to work with.
Rob Means: But if it turns out, like this study that was done 10 years ago that I mentioned in Palo Alto, we're going to see a lot more
Rob Means: ridership on public transit. And we're talking not the 5% to 10% that VTA has been trying to achieve for a decade or two, we're talking 100%, 200% more ridership. And if we're… if that happens.
Rob Means: We're going to need more bus drivers, because we're going to be taking those headways from 30 minutes to 15 minutes down to 10 minutes, which is the real number that we want to get to. Because when we get to that 10-minute headway between buses, that's when people are saying, okay, this is a system that I can rely on getting from point A to point B
Rob Means: In a timely fashion.
Rob Means: And that's my hope, is that we can get a synergy going on that is just remarkable, and serves everybody in the community, including the bus drivers.
Rob Means: Specifically, what type of positions will you be opening up to serve the company? Do you have a title, do you have any, yeah, titles, wages?
Rob Means: Is there anything like that that you could give us information? Well, again, I can only talk about what we're doing, and we're planning on giving, you know, doing wages that are commensurate with, you know, union wages. We're not looking to shortcut anything on this, because we're working for the community.
Rob Means: We want a service that serves our community, and that means that the people that are employed there get paid a living wage, whatever that might be. And if we can't afford it, then we're going to have to raise money somehow.
Rob Means: Right now, we're looking at the possibility of not charging people in our demonstration zone, only when they go out of that zone into… if we expand it, when they go in and out of that zone, then we're going to be charging them a fair fare, which is going to be probably around the same cost as a bus fare.
Rob Means: So we're trying to keep that down, but if it means that we cannot pay our people a living wage, we are going to be looking for ways to get enough revenue to actually accomplish that.
Rob Means: I just want to mention Waymo, right? Those autonomous vehicles, they're actually hiring people from the Philippines, so that's why I'm asking the question, because I want to make sure that the jobs that are created will stay local if it will be replacing some of those bus operators. Well, this is why Metro should be looking at working with this system.
Rob Means: So that they can set up the rules.
Rob Means: If you go the route that we're talking about in Milpitas and have a non-profit mutual benefit corporation, again.
Rob Means: As a community.
Rob Means: corporation, basically. It's owned by… owned and operated by the community. That's where you have the opportunity to say, okay, this is how we want it to operate. And…
Rob Means: So I, you know, it's not like a private enterprise where they get to make all the decisions. You really want to maintain control locally. And that is, again, a political decision. That's not an economic or…
Rob Means: engineering decision, that's a political decision, as is the fares that are charged currently for bus fares. Do we… do you… how much will the fares be?
Rob Means: It'll be whatever it costs to cover our O&M expenses. If we have to borrow money, it'll have to pay that back also, but mainly, we're going to keep it as low as we can, get away with, like I mentioned.
Rob Means: In the system that we're envisioning in Milpitas, we've got the small demonstration project, it's about 4 miles worth of podcar brake guideway, and we expect that we may be able to get enough revenues. We've got 23 different
Rob Means: revenue streams.
Rob Means: potential revenue streams identified. And if we can get those to actually pay for operations and maintenance, then we can continue to provide free transit to people.
Rob Means: So, can I, and my apologies for interrupting here, if I can summarize, what I think I hear here…
Rob Means: the guinea pigs are Milpitas, and the people from Santa Cruz can go see how it looks, and how it works. And that the, coming up with, not only the technical question of how the podcar system works, but how it relates with the other systems already in place.
Rob Means: and whether that is something that generates a greater culture of public transit, or if it becomes a competitive thing. And you're trying to emphasize that it's a… it's a, it's a collab… it's a… it's a… it's a complementary system, but…
Rob Means: the community is not entirely convinced, so that's a sort of a homework assignment for you. And so with that, I would, we're a couple minutes over, but I did want to just bring it back and give each panelist the chance to have a brief comment. And thank you very much.
Rob Means: Monica. Monica, thank you.
Rob Means: Super important. So yes, Lonnie. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. I think these kinds of discussions really help us drill in, and there is a lot of information
Rob Means: yet to be learned. I was thinking, if you wanted to pilot a project, maybe consider piloting the project to the rural areas, which are not accessed currently by any other form of public transit.
Rob Means: And that might give us an opportunity to experience it and, not be in competition with our local public transit. I'm thinking up into the mountains. And I think that's an ideal place for these robo-taxis.
Rob Means: And I'm not a fan for all the reasons mentioned earlier,
Rob Means: because of displacement of jobs and safety and things that I think are not yet tested. I think there is a little potential, but, I won't get into that.
Rob Means: So, anyway… That's a big question, I think, maybe for round two. Yeah, and the other thing, too, to me, again, it's really a busy community. I think about areas like when I lived in Europe, where you have rail and buses working in tandem together and really seamlessly, is that you have areas that are quiet.
Rob Means: And not so busy. I see these multi-level processes, like, the community's gonna be so busy, it's gonna be hard to really enjoy just being in that space.
Rob Means: Thank you. Thank you so much. Any of the other panelists, something that you'd like to last comment? With the microphone, please.
Rob Means: Sorry, I would only add that I think the disabled community needs more convincing that this would meet our needs.
Rob Means: All right, thank you. And I think that's critical,
Rob Means: you know, again, from where I'm from, having people around feels safe for me versus me being by myself, to be honest with you, right? I don't do Ubers and all that kind of stuff unless I'm with a group of people. But I think at the end of the day, there's still more that needs to be revealed.
Rob Means: For lack of a better word, so I think it'd be important that if, you know, as the gentleman was saying, maybe do a Zoom call once a month to start educating the community on this, but also, at the same time, continue to support the mass transit that is getting people from point A to point B in this community.
Rob Means: Thank you.
Rob Means: Matt, anything you'd like to finish with? I would just say that…
Rob Means: So far, what I know and understand about personal rapid transit, I have a hard time seeing it.
Rob Means: Being able to… Compliment or perform in a way that would Increase the capacity of our…
Rob Means: Our current transportation system.
Rob Means: And I look forward to more information about it.
Rob Means: Alrighty, thank you. Could we have the last slide in the deck up on the screen there? We'll jump over a couple, but that last one, I think, is the key.
Rob Means: All right, Rob, would you like to,
Rob Means: Finish off with a brief last word.
Rob Means: Well, I'm sorry, it's a last slide called Moving Forward.
Rob Means: Now, these are just background information, these slides here. There we go. And this is, if you need some additional information, or you want to contact us, these are the ways to do it.
Rob Means: And if… I'm going to leave it at that, unless somebody's got something else they want to say. Super. I hope this has been an informative, I mean, I have no…
Rob Means: None of my opinion matters here, but what does matter is that there has been some value to the audience here, learning a little bit about this new idea.
Rob Means: And, I suppose value to Rob in understanding what it… the concerns of the community is, so that you can figure out… you can better understand how to, you know, what to communicate and how to communicate it.
Rob Means: And, so hopefully that's the case.
Rob Means: All right, thank you very much.
Rob Means: No doubt.
Rob Means: It's always, always exciting, and
Rob Means: Thank you.
Rob Means: justice.
Rob Means: Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. My friend, Veronica Elsie, I'm sure you know. Oh, yes, oh, I do know Veronica. Oh, thank you, I appreciate that.
Rob Means: It might seem crazy, what I'm about to say is real.
Rob Means: Hotmail.
Rob Means: Oh, I thought there was. I tried to apply for that before, and somebody else got it. Yeah.