Executive Director Steve Heminger's Report to the Commission Meeting of December 19, 2012
Google Tour
Mountain View, November 29
I toured Google headquarters for the purposes of discussing a potential partnership between their transit information services and our 511 program, as well as to learn more about their growing corporate role in transporting Google employees to and from work. In fact, Google now operates a fleet of 95 private buses serving 35 routes in seven counties that provide employee transportation to their Mountain View headquarters. If Google were a public transit agency, it would be the 7th largest bus operator in the Bay Area by fleet size.
BATA Investor Tour
Chicago and New York, December 3-6
Andy Fremier and I joined Brian Mayhew and his banking team in a series of meetings with potential investors in BATA’s latest debt offering that will convert $450 million of our current variable rate bonds whose prices re-set weekly into much longer-term bonds whose prices don’t reset until 7-15 years from now. The current variable rate notes also carry the expense of bank liquidity, while the longer term notes do not. The sale, which occurred at the end of the week, was quite successful with nearly $1.7 billion in orders for $450 million in bonds. This large demand translated into very low interest rates ranging from 0.70% for the 7-year notes up to 1.25% for the 15-year debt – plus the amount of the weekly tax-exempt variable rate index.
Affordable Housing Fund Wins Award
Washington DC, December 5
MTC has won its second award in the past four months from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the two-year old Transit Oriented Affordable Housing (TOAH) fund. The $50 million revolving loan fund is among seven winners nationwide that were recognized by EPA for using creative approaches to build strong, sustainable communities while protecting human health. MTC principal planner Doug Johnson was on hand to receive the award from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. [More info]
Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee
Oakland, December 13
I chaired the regular monthly meeting of the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee, which is gradually working its way out of a job with completion of the Dumbarton Bridge seismic retrofit work scheduled for March 2013 and opening of the new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge slated for Labor Day next year. As a reminder, however, there are still several years of demolition work on the old east span after we open the new one to traffic next September.
East Span “East”
New York, December 17
The next big bridge project in the United States is the replacement of the 3-mile-long Tappan Zee Bridge crossing the Hudson River about 25 miles north of midtown Manhattan. On Monday, the New York State Thruway Authority announced that the winning bid of $3.1 billion for the design/build contract was submitted by a joint venture of Fluor Corporation and American Bridge Co. – the same consortium building the steel portion of our new Bay Bridge. They even plan to relocate the enormous barge crane Left Coast Lifter to the east coast to help construct the project.
Map of the Month
This map was prepared in conjunction with a report released by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for the Bay Area and Monterey Bay Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) Readiness Plan. While initial data shows that most PEVs will be charged at home, it is important to expand charging infrastructure beyond residences to achieve widespread adoption of PEVs in order to meet our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. This map shows an overlay of various data useful in siting workplace accessible PEV charging stations in the region. It illustrates the most likely destination zones for workplace trips (different shades of green), areas with existing workplace charging stations (red dots), and areas with employers interested in deploying workplace charging stations for employee charging (blue dots).
MTC Operational Statistics
The monthly report on the performance of MTC’s operating programs: