Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We're live on Wednesday, January 21 here in the afternoon in house transportation. We have a multi return guest for rail direction for the agency transportation. We are in our budget presentation. Dan Lalley is going to go over the rail budget. And that is, as I think I mentioned earlier, we're on sort

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: of day one of budget presentations. And you are in the hot seat for your $60,000,000 Great. Great. Thank you. Again, Dan Delabriere, Rail Bureau Director for VTrans. So just before I what I was gonna do is refer you to tab number 12 in your white book, And I will quickly run down through each one of those projects kind of one by one. And I'll go fairly quickly because there's a fair number of them. But I first wanted to talk about just sort of how the rail program is funded. So as the chair referred to a few moments ago, we apply for a lot of discretionary grants in the rail section. The Federal Rail Administration is different than the Federal Highway Administration in the way that we do not get an allocated amount of formula funds every year for railroads. We have to apply for and they're all competitive across the country. And some years we get them and some years we don't. Little over a year ago, we applied for a Chrissy Grant for some continuously routed rail on the Western Corridor, South Of Rutland. We did not get that grant. We were not successful. We are planning on applying for that same grant. Again, it's in this budget and I'll get there in a moment, but that's just one example of how we get our funding. There is some federal highway funds that are eligible for railroad projects. The projects that are railroad crossings for safety. And then there's a small bucket of money in the Federal Highway Program that allocates money towards anything freight related. So we call those freight funds. So other than the competitive FRA funds, the freight federal highway funds, and the crossing safety federal highway funds, The only other available option for regular projects would be state funds. So that's how all these projects are funded. Now also in my budget, there's some FEMA projects. So those are most, depending on the severity of the storm, determines the percentage of FEMA versus state funds. So in a nutshell, that's how these projects are funded. So before I jump in, any questions about the overall?

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Yeah, just on the, so the railroad crossing safety response from FFAFW.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Yeah, highways. Federal Highway.

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Federal Highway, FHW. Is that part of a formula fund though that money that we use for it or are they grants?

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: No, that's so each state gets a very small we get state of Vermont gets $1,200,000 annually

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: in that bucket.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: It comes through the federal highway division to us and we manage those funds in the rail division. Okay.

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: And you use those for crossings?

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Yes. And we have to

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Probably not enough for all the crossings you're trying to upgrade.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: To give you an example, if you took a crossing that didn't have any lights, it was just cross bucks and you converted it over to lights and light or lights and gates, that's already over that's that's over a million dollar project alone. So if that's all we did, we could technically do about one of those a year. We have some of those, and then we have some of those where it's already got lights, we might just add gates to it, or we might do an upgrade of lights to new lights or something. It's not always just nothing to everything. So it depends on our quality and safety.

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Yeah. And right now, how do you decide when and how to do those? We measured against those? Are there a number of them that don't meet the standards now and you're trying to catch up? I mean, just where are we? Yes, so

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: the answer is yes, we're always trying to catch up because the number of crossings in the state Okay, let me give you an example. So when we brought Amtrak Rutland to Burlington, we went through as a project and upgraded a whole bunch, and we knocked a whole bunch off our list then. But that's the last time we've sort of done sort of a corridor project. So the rest of the state, we have to do only what we have for funds per year. And what we do is there's four twenty two public crossings in the state. Inspect those every year. Every single year we do an inspection. Every single year it gets a score based on what either condition or if traffic pattern. So let me give you an example of, if this crossing was not on a bus route, for example, and all of a sudden the buses started going there, we have to add the bus criteria to that crossing, which could lower the score if it doesn't have lights and gates. Right? So there's all these factors that give it a score. If you drive up to a crossing and all the trees on the right hand side have now grown up and you can't see anything, that sight distance gets a score. That's part of the forming. If train speeds increase, like if it went from 30 to 59, that changes the score. So there's all these different things that factor into the score. And that's why we have to evaluate it every single year. Is there hazmat that go across it? Like, does now now did some company open up a new factory on the other side that's running trucks that have hazmat across it, right? That matters when you're talking about safety score. So all of these things add up to score. So anyway, we reevaluate and reprioritize every year, four twenty two crossings, and we take our top one. We literally try to get the top 10 every year into some sort of a project. All right, thanks. Yeah. All right, I'm gonna go quickly and I'm gonna run down Oh, there's one other type of funding I did not mention, and that is congestion mitigation funds, which is a CMEC funds. And that we use percentage of CMEC funds to fund our Amtrak service. So we do get some federal funds for CMEC funding. Alright. So, So the first two, I'm just gonna go quickly and I'll start at the top. The first two are the same project. It's the this is Amtrak funding. And we had to do it a little different this year. We split one into two projects, and that is based on it's the same thing. It's paying for our Amtrak Ethan Allen and our Amtrak Limon Earth, but we had to split it because our state fiscal year and our federal fiscal year don't line up. So we have to split it into two projects based on federal and state fiscal. So this it's $9,500,000 to pay for Amtrak's Ethan Allen and Vermonter. And just as a side, our ridership is doing well. I think we're up 4% on one train and 3% on the other. So we're doing we're doing okay. The third project down is Amtrak Station Improvements. This is a federal grant that we got, and this is It's not a big grant, but it's things like we're adding blue lights to all the stations for safety. We're adding Wi Fi. We're adding consistent signage. We're this was in our budget last year. It's gonna go to construction this year. So you guys have heard about this project once already. It's the same project. It's just now going to the construction this coming year. Can

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Do know which stations that will be?

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: So we're doing well, with the exception of, I can tell you which ones are not. So Brattleboro, we're not doing anything there because that's gonna be a brand new station. And Middlebury, we're not doing Burlington. Oh, are we doing anything in Broadway? Are we doing that? Was it the sign or something? There was something there. Essex, we're not doing because there's a project there.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay. But so it's intended to be kind of across the board.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: It's every station that we're trying to make them consistent.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah. I see.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: And some have some stuff and some don't. So we're trying to make them all so that if you go to one Amtrak station, you go to the other, they all have the same features.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Gotcha. Okay, thanks.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Quickly, there's a few projects in Barnett. They're bridge projects. So the, you know, the first one is to that's all. We also do prioritization on all our bridge structures. Okay? So we try to get at least our top 10 worst bridges into our budget every year. This first one, Bridge 527, that's our number six bridge, worst bridge. So that's why that's on there. And then the next one is actually not in our top 10. It's number 19, but it's the very similar bridge to the number six, and there's some efficiencies when you bundle projects together. So it just makes sense to do these two together. So they're being designed and bid together. The next one in Barnett is new this year, or actually was new last year. It's in design. So it's that's not gonna go to construction. That's just a that's that's the next one in our queue to get to go go to construction. Let me go to Barrie City for a couple of FEMA projects. Those are slope one's a slope and one's a culvert repair. This is not this is back in '20 not the twenty three storm? Yeah. That's '23. So, basically, all the FEMA projects that are in here were longer duration projects that needed a lot more design. They weren't just quick fixes. They were designs, permitting, and all that stuff. So Barry City, there's a crossing on Hill Street. That is our number three crossing, and that's actually we're we are actually adding active warning system for that one. Bridge 308 in Barrie. This is a unique one. Just to make you guys aware of what this one is. This was a bridge that went to a granite distributor and it was it's not on the main line. It's on we own it, but it's but it's honest. The track is actually goes to only a couple of businesses over there, and it got hit by some flooding several times. So while we figure out kind of what to do and the best thing to do, we've actually removed that. The bridge is gone. But that is we call it our number one bridge because there's no bridge there. It's our worst bridge.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: A bridge so far.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: That's an interesting way to write it.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Yeah. That's our worst bridge because there is no bridge. So we're trying to figure out sort of the most cost effective either the scenario that makes the most sense we're still working on. But there is some design money in this budget to kind of work through alternatives, things like that. That's what that is. We have another Berry City crossing on Corrie Hill, and that's our number five. And that one is actually under contract and ready to go. So we'll see construction start on that as soon as mother nature lets us do that. Let me move up to Barton. That's a brand new project for this budget, new to '27 budget, starting design, Bridge 558. It's a replacement of the substructure there, so some wall wing walls and things. And we may or may not replace the superstructure. It's a wooden trestle, and we're trying to figure out the best use to do there. Then we go to Burlington Intervale. This was in last year's budget too. This is a crossing on Intervale Road, if you've ever been down to Intervale Road. This one's taking a little longer because we're actually working with the city of Burlington. They wanted to add So ours is the crossing project, but they want to add some sidewalks and some other stuff that's And we said, well, we might as well do it all together. So we're working with them. We're not in full control of the schedule because we've got kind of two projects paralleling each other. We'll we'll build it at the same time. But it was in last year's budget. It slowed down a bit a little bit, taken us a little longer, but it'll be done. It'll go this year for sure. Lake Street is a new project this year. It's down on the waterfront towards the skate park if you ever wanna know where that is. We're starting design on that. Cavendish, we've got a few projects there. We've got Bridge 132, which is our number nine bridge, and that's pure replacement. And that one's actually under contract as well, ready to go this construction season. Then we got a couple of crossing crossings in Cavendish on there's the railroad and the road we intersect twice on Cavendish Gulf Road, and those will be bid together. Not huge upgrades to those crossings, but we've got to increase the safety by getting some sight distance, getting a little better approach to it. So those will both go to get. Chester Bridge 119. This has been in our budget a couple of times. And then when the storm hit in '23, we kinda had to start our design a little bit different because the flood took out some of the some more of the bridge that didn't need to be fixed. So anyway, we ended up doing a little redesign and we're going to do a FEMA section. That's why this shows clusters. One is the FEMA portion. One is the portion that we were gonna design bridge. So there's, it shows Bridge 119 in here two times, and that's because one is FEMA and one is regular programmed project. Thing and Chester Bridge 123, that's a FEMA project. And the next three projects are also FEMA storm damage Bridge repairs of just abutments or around the bridge abutments and things like that. And then we move to Coventry. Bridge 563. This is another wooden trestle that it's actually our number two bridge. It's not a very good bridge. It's like 16 feet long and it's wood and it it we cut it's our number two bridge just because it keeps moving, but it's time to fix it.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Got to do something. From number one to number two is nonexistent to tipping. What's the number three bridge, Probably. Well, number two bridge,

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: can put some Band Aids on these things and make them so they're all right, but at some point you just got to fix it. So it's time to move that one to a project, which we did last year. Was in FY It's in the current budget year, but it'll go to construction in 2017. I'm sure if we're going to be able

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to get through all this and we have

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: to pick in some of

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: the more high-tech ones. I can

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: do that. I can do that. I can highlight it here. All right, couple of grants that I want to talk about. So we're talking about grants and applications. So if you go to the Coventry WCRL BR grant, I'm just highlight those. So that's a bridge grant that we are working on and we will want to apply sometime in the future. So a little bit about railroads is your corridor is only as good as your weakest link, right? So if you want £286,000 to go from one end to the other and one bridge doesn't hold it, your whole corridor is useless, right? So this is a corridor project from White River Junction to Newport to look at all the bridges that cannot hold £286,000. And that's what that that'll be an application in the future. How you apply and be competitive for these federal grants is you have to be 30% designed so that FRA looks at it and says, you guys have done enough homework on this that you will spend the money. And if I give it to you, I know the project will get done. If you have nothing done, zero, you won't get your grant because you're not competitive. In their eyes, they think there's you don't even know what you don't know yet. Right? We're not gonna give you money to go figure out what you don't know. Well, we know at 30% design, we know what we gotta do. So that's what that is.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And we've heard about that in the rail plan. And up and down, up the right side of the old lease side of the state to get to that level long term rail plan that's pretty high on the priority list for the long term. Right. So there's that

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: one that's in Coventry, and we have the identical one down below, and I'll get there in a second. But down in Rockingham, we're doing another corridor study for Rutland to to Rockingham. Couple of other grant opportunities. If you look at Green Mountain Corridor ID program and then there's another one for the Vermonter down a little further, Vermonter Corcoranide program. So what that is is that's Amtrak corridors. And this is phase two. Phase one was what's your quarter? Phase two is give us an inventory and everything that you think, kind of build your future grant applications essentially. And then phase three is start submitting projects. We're on phase two. And so the Ethan Allen has this and the Vermonter has this. We're not ready to go to construction. We have no projects that are we're not asking for any federal money projects yet. We're gonna get there. But Vermont's not alone. All the states, we're all at the same spot right now across the country. We're all in phase two, all the states. So it's, yeah, we're where we should be. But probably two years from now, I'm gonna be sitting in this chair, hopefully. And I might be saying, we're not. And now we'll And now we'll You know, I need money for construction. So we'll talk about those through the grant process. All right, another couple of highlights. Okay, I wanted to talk about if we go back up to the Hooks It to Bennington one, that was the grant we applied for and didn't get a year ago. We've got it in this budget as if we're going to apply for it and get it in '27. And the reason why we have to put it in here is there is a state match to the federal dollars. And so that's what that is. So we're budgeting the match for a grant that we don't officially know we have right now. So that's what that is. So we're forecasting a grant that we're going to receive. And, unfortunately, that's what I have to do is plan ahead for these grants. Otherwise, I would I would have to cut my budget somewhere else to match the grant that I get. So this is, yeah, this is how we do it. That makes sense.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: can you just describe what

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: it is? It says Oh, yes.

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Track grant.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: What's it for? Okay. So that section from Rutland to Hoosick, New York, if you remember the last four years, I've been working on bridges, upgrading all the bridges through there. So all those bridges are 286,000 pounds. Okay, step one. Step two, now we have to upgrade the actual rail that's on the ground because some of it is, I'm not exaggerating, 75 years old, and it's more it's wearing out. So we have to replace there is if you count it all up, it's 60 miles of actual steel rail that needs to be replaced between to to get it to new standards. So that's what that is. It's 60 miles of rail replacement with what's called continuously welded rail. So the ties Some ties. There will be ties in that program. There'll be ballast in that program. When you replace rail, you typically make the bed correct and make it drain and make sure all that. There's some crossings that will get affected as you put new rail in. So there'll be some crossings in there. Alright. How much time do I have? Five minutes? Ten? Okay. I'm trying to figure out what highlights you want. What how many I can get to? No. No. It's good. We're good. We're doing The other project I wanted to One of the things I want to point out is Rockingham and Bells Falls Station. We are redoing that platform. This was also in last year's or this current year's budget, but we're hopefully going to go to construction on that. That is a very complicated project because we have the platform. We have a crossing right next to it. The Bellows Falls Town has bought the station. They have a station project going on that's gonna affect the platform itself because they have to do some foundation work. And then the railroad itself, New England Central, has a track project just barely north of the station. So there's four projects that we're coordinating at the same time so that if I put the platform in, the town doesn't dig up my platform to fix their foundation. And if I put the track next to the platform, the railroad doesn't take my track out to fix theirs. And then at the end of the platform, I don't dig up the crossing that they just don't, you know what I mean? It's like it's all these four projects that go together. Been fun, but getting a lot of people to work together in the exact sequence is sometimes a lot of work. So that's what that is. But I wanted to point that out, that platform currently doesn't quite meet ADA compliant. It's not eight inches. It's not consistently eight inches above top of rail, which is what ADA compliance is. So that's one of the reasons why I fixed that. Okay. One of the things that we do again have, and like to point this one out every year because some people tend to have questions on it. When we get into statewide line items, there's a few things. Immediate attention bridge. So we have 174 bridges that we inspect every single year, and we haven't missed a year where we've found something that we've got to do. Right? So we get out there, some surprise happened, either, you know, high water in the spring or ice or something hits an abutment. One of the stones on the You know, these things are built one hundred and twenty five, thirty years ago, built with laid up stone for brick I mean, foundations. Something moves or, you know, a pole or something doesn't, you know, breaks or something. So we always have what we call immediate attention bridges every single year where we have to respond to our inspections. I wanna make sure everybody we have that in the budget. We will deal with it as it comes. But that that is something that we do every year. And then the other thing on bridges, if you go down the statewide, we there's the inspection line item. That's the cost that we do to actually inspect them because we have a snooper truck, if you've never seen it. We have a pickup truck. I mean, there's costs and expenses to go along on inspecting these bridges. Then And the other thing we're required to do by FRA standards is report every year after we inspect them. We have to send a report to the FRA saying, this is the condition, this is the load rating of every one of our bridges. We have to do that every year. We want to continue to be in compliance with the FRA. That's what we and we will. We will. So we have to do that. So that's bridge load rating if you look at that line item. Another example of a grant is the Tri State Regional Grant. Now this is not on a railroad that we own. This is a private railroad that applied for funding. And what's I wanted to point this one out that's unique is this is a grant that covers the Saint Lawrence in Atlantic and the Northeast Kingdom. And then it goes through New Hampshire, and then it goes through Maine. So there's three states that are part of this grant. Vermont doesn't have any state funds in this. We're managing the grant. New Hampshire has some state match. Maine has some state match. All the other matching funds come directly from the railroad. Our contribution to that grant is worth the oversight to the grant, if that makes sense. But there's no statement. Yes. On that, is the local with the private? The local the local means that's what the private railroad is investing in towards that grant. Okay. Yes. That's what that was. And then the next one was the other Vermont corridor ID program. Same thing as the Ethan Allen. This is just the Vermonter. So again, phase two, we're in phase two. We'll get to phase three in a couple years. So anyway, that's a very quick rundown abbreviated version. I am really happy to answer anything you guys want about any of these products. And Amtrak subsidy payment,

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: That's every year. And Monthly.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: We make them monthly. You make a payment monthly? Yeah. So what it is is Amtrak Amtrak set what we're our contract says, how much did it cost to run the Ethan Allen this month? They send us an invoice, and we pay what's called actuals. So I'm gonna make up something that never happens, but let's just say the train was full in Vermont every single day. We would have more revenue, so our bill would be low. We love the holidays because in Vermont, our train gets packed in the holidays. Great. So anyway, my point is actuals versus revenue, it's not a set amount every month. So we get a different bill, but we pay it monthly.

[Unknown Member (House Transportation Committee)]: So there's a x amount of cost in one of Amtrak. And then in here, that's the bill and then take away all the money that people have paid. So we pay the difference. Correct. This is another question is, we're supposedly, I wanna say we supposedly, I believe we have new cars being manufactured. That's not in here. That that must be another grant. And what's the status on that?

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Okay. Vermont won't see those cars for several more years. They're being manufactured. Tentatively, the new cars might show up on the West Coast this calendar year, '26, but they haven't given us a delivery date, but we won't see them in Vermont for another couple of years. And the cost was a 100% federal grant given to Amtrak to buy that equipment. We won't pay for the equipment itself. What we will pay for is the equipment itself requires a little bit different maintenance. It has And what I mean by that is their current cars okay. Try not to go down in the rabbit hole here, but one example, the restrooms in the new cars take more water than the existing cars. That requires a different maintenance activity at the facility. So when we overnight that train in Burlington, we have to do it. We literally are gonna have to get a truck or we're gonna have to get a water source in the yard to water that train different than we're doing today. That expense will be on us. That's so when I say equipment's paid, there's sort of a domino to some of that equipment that we're gonna have to pay for. Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We just got done a presentation by our CFO that talks about where we filled the $33,000,000 hole for the year. And it says reductions in state managed available for projects within the rail division for the FY '26 budget, dollars 2,658,000.000. So maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but if you could highlight to me what we're not gonna get done that we otherwise would have gotten done in the rail division.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: One caveat to that is the T fund dropped by 2,600,000.0, but they added a million dollars in tip. So the differential in state funds is 1.5 less this year for the rail program. Anybody else see where that happened? That

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: was I'm not sure that she probably the above part then.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: We could see more later.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Same time. So you're correct, mister chair, that we are down 2.6 or it's almost 2.6. It's 2.5 and change of t fund, but they added 1,000,000, which I didn't have any tip in '26. They added a million in tip, which makes the differential in the match in our state funds on 1.5. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: There's not something specific for the 1.5?

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: Is that something not

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: gonna happen this year that we rolled or is it gonna get done or what did you do to

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: What did I do to balance it? So I looked at it. So what's important when I build this budget, I look at what are my top priorities, right? And I just start at the top and I start working my way down. And obviously projects that are already in the queue, we try to keep those moving as much as we can. I would say there's no silver bullet like I did this to take the 1.5 out. What I did was kind of slowed down. Maybe instead of bidding a project in January, I might not bid it until July or August. So it's just kind of stretching the when you need the money out a little bit. I don't know that I didn't do anything. Well, there was one program actually that I What did I put in here? Right here, three way program. I can tell you one program that didn't get as much funding, which is it's not a huge deal. So we do what's called a three way program where if the railroad comes in and they have a customer and they say, we want to upgrade this siding into our business. It's really an economic development tool, really. We say, all right, state will pay a third of that cost for that siding upgrade. Railroad, you pay a third for that siding upgrade. Business owner, you pay a third of that siding upgrade. And then it makes it easier for that business to expand. I think I had I don't have that in front of me, my '26 budget, but it was I'm going say it was around $100,000 in there last year ish. This year, I only have 25,000. So things like that. Was probably one of the ones that the railroad might see as a big thing because they actually have a couple of customers right now that we're talking to, you know, we'll see what happens with it. Sometimes these projects work and sometimes they don't. But there's one example of something that I'm probably not doing. But as far as projects, projects, for the most part, I try to stay whole and just delay a little bit.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I was also asking, when you talk a lot about putting your projects out to bid, I'm obviously very specialized equipment dealing with construction on rail and then how many vendors are you? I mean, what do you usually, we're really can't be too many companies that are capable of doing this kind of work.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: It depends on the project. So if it's just dirt work, that's different. But when you start talking about needing, like, high rail trucks and cranes and high rail dump trucks, yes, the pool is small. And we generally have a group of contractors that that's all they do is railroad stuff. And they'll go Massachusetts, they'll go to Vermont, they'll go to New Hampshire, they'll go to Maine. There's some of those, and then there's a handful that are here in Vermont that, you know, we see over and over again. Janet Burke?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yep. Maybe you explained this, but, you know, he missed it. So I'm just trying to find out, what did it actually cost? It looks like there's $9,500, there's 8,000,000 something. What's the total cost to dab the remote here and the eavesenden going?

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: So we budgeted 9,500,000.0 combined for the two trains.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: And that's based on Amtrak sends us an estimate, basically your annual cost for next year, and we divide it by 12 and we put in here. And then we have to look at, like I said earlier, it's a little confusing this year because that's based on CMEC funding, which is federal fiscal that I have to ask for. And we have a state fiscal budget here. So that's why, because we use CMEC funding, which is federal, I have to split it out as two different items in my budget. But the total is 9.5.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay, that just send me that number. So if we were to possibly train

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: We would need We would need more. Yeah.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Well,

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: it depends. Depends two trains. It depends which train, depends how far do you bring it exactly in the same spot. It's really complicated when you start talking about that because there's certain fees that automatically double and there's certain fees that you get, like a host railroad fee, maybe might not be 100 percent, 100%, might be, you know, things like police because we don't have police on every train anyway. So there's certain things that are, you know, you don't buy one apple and all of a sudden you need another apple. You might you might get some efficiencies where you could take that one apple and split it between the same two trains. So it's it's not as easy as just doubling it. Sorry.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Even a train to Well,

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: and that's a totally Well, that one See, the problem with that train is you would have to double it because right now the

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: the cost even though it's only like 20 miles.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: The valley well, this is the problem. The valley flyer right now couldn't necessarily go Well, to keep everything whole right now through Mass and Connecticut, it's maxed out on the number of hours those trains can run and make it back and forth and back and forth to four times. To go a little further, all of a sudden, you'd need a twenty six hour day. So I need a little more time to go

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: any Well,

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: the problem is you need another train set. Now you need to make that into another, like instead of two trains going back and forth, you need another train and you have to fix the whole schedule to make it work.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: It's of the rail plan.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: It's in there to study it, right? It's in there to look at it and it's in there, but

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Light is on.

[Dan Delabruere, Rail Bureau Director (VTrans)]: I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you very much. If you guys have questions, you know how to get ahold of me.