Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG)

All right, we're all beginning here. Welcome thank you for joining us for today's March 19th SB CAG board meeting. For the record my name is David Silva and I'm the vice chair on the SB CAG board. Madam Clerk please facilitate roll call.

If there are any members of the public on zoom who wish to speak please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you And there are no responses and we did not receive any public comment in advance for the general public comment.

Splendid, we're moving right along now we will move on to closed session is there any public comment or if there is anyone who'd like to make public comment and provide it in advance for this item? Are

there any members of the public on Zoom who wish to speak to closed session would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you There was no written public comment received and there are no speakers on zoom who wish to speak

All right, then we'll just look to our council to be able to read us into closed session.

Chair and directors today the board has agendized to discuss two items in closed session. The first item is the executive director performance evaluation. The second item is conference with labor negotiators. The employee is the executive director of the agency designated representatives are vice chair Silva and counsel McKenzie

Great! We will move into closed session at this time Thank you. There we go now we're back on okay, we're all back online here thank you everybody for rejoining us is there any readout that we can have from our council from closed session at this time?

Chair and directors today the board met in closed session to discuss two items the executive director performance evaluation and labor negotiations and the board took no reportable action. All

right thank you very much. We will now move on to our consent calendar. Is if there are any announcements for the consent calendar at this time?

There are no announcements for the consent calendar

And is there any public comment or if any public comment was provided in advance for these items?

There was public comment received in advance for item 5D from Eileen Monaghan, Robin Donaldson, Jeff and Jason Nelson on behalf of the Oak Tree Company. Those comments were distributed to the board and placed online. If there are any members of the public on Zoom who wish to speak at this time would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you And there are no responses. OK.

If any, are there any directors who would like to pull any item at this time? Seeing none is there anyone who'd like to make a motion? So moved Julian.

Second.

Move over. All right we have a motion and second can we do a roll call vote please?

Regional Broadband Update receive a presentation from staff from the Broadband Consortium of the Pacific Coast and Digital Equity Commission on regional broadband efforts.

Good morning, Vice Chair Silva, Fred Luna of SBK staff, Director of Project Delivery and Construction. So today's presentation is what become about a biannual update on broadband initiatives and efforts that are going on in Santa Barbara County. For today's presentation I'm joined by Shelby Arthur of the Broadband Consortium and she'll be will be splitting the presentation updates So just a quick outline of what

we plan on covering today. I think it's

always good to revisit where we've been and so reminding the board that in 2022 This board approved a broadband strategic plan. I'll go into some of those details of what that was, what the goals were in that we were able to obtain $1 million grant within partnership with the county under the local agency technical assistance so I'll discuss the progress that we've made on that and that is now completed. And then quickly a middle mile update, that's the statewide middle mile, the major trunk lines that are going to serve the region and the entire state.

And regional priorities. So we're going to cover some updates on local projects, how we are fulfilling those needs that were in the broadband strategic plan through either private investment public investment or work with our partners and Lastly, we have a quick update on one of our priority areas. The BCPC has done some work in the Kuyama area and so Shelby's gonna report out on some of that outreach effort and how that relates to future broadband.

And then she has an update on other broad BCPC activities going on. Just so to revisit real quick, the broadband strategic plan approved in 2022. So we're going into our fourth year of that document and I we've discussed with the board opportunities perhaps to revisit or retool that not primarily that priorities have changed but It's a continually changing environment from technology standpoint, perhaps the environment or how projects get implemented. And so that would be nice and data gathering too making sure the data that we had originally is still representing the priorities that we need to fulfill statewide middle mile collaboration and collaboration with partners I'll touch on as I get through the presentation So one of the successes we've had early on in implementing goals from the Broadband Strategic Plan were that the BSP, I'll refer to it as outlined essentially the scope that was used to develop an application grant to fund three priority tasks.

One of those being establishing a regional joint powers authority for broadband implementation and planning Looking at opportunities for designing last mile networks to connect to those critical areas in the county that needed to be served and then developing an overall environmental framework for those typical type projects that were to be built. And on that last level, we were able to use some synergies with our partnership with the Golden State Connect Authority who was doing the design to include not just typical installations but some more detailed evaluation of priority locations so that those are even further evolved and ready to be implemented should there be a private or public investment in that area.

This slide just is a quick reminder of how we get from that global network to the areas that need to be served. And so, the Middle Mile is something that we talk about a lot as far as from the state perspective there obviously is middle mile that exists out there right now It's a program that was developed and implemented and maintained by mostly private investment, but it's an expensive endeavor. So under legislation the state committed to establishing a middle mile network statewide and they're making progress on that I think their original goal is to ready to connect by the end of this year we'll see if that happens but there I have later in the slide. And then those last mile connections, how do we get to those areas that need to be served?

Households, anchor institutions which are schools, emergency centers, healthcare facilities are still the priority and how we can say that we fulfilled the goals of the BSP. This slide describes the work that has been done by the California Department of Technology. That's the department at the statewide level that's implementing the Middle Mile Network and so what you see here, I'll start at the there's really two efforts that are underway in Santa Barbara County There's a blue line and an orange line. So I'll start with the orange line. So this is being done by CDT, that's the California Department of Technology. I'll refer to them as CDT.

From the south they're partnering with a common name in fiber optics Lumen. And so that work is underway and 36% complete. The method for that work is that they're using existing conduit, installing broadband in there. They're working from their... My understanding is working from the south to the north. We know that most of that work is being done probably at night and they look to have that complete by this spring, I believe. We'll see if that part gets done. That's through June so let me get my slides here and then the blue line is another connection that's another connection point from the Central Valley it's called the Central Valley Integrated Networks at CVIN. So basically It's coming into Santa Barbara County from the east on Highway 166.

There have been a lot of discussion about this through the Cuyama area and a lot of questions, and so then you can see how it's traveling over to the west to Highway 101. From there it splits going north and south As it's headed south and heads through Santa Maria, I believe like near or on Highway 135 down through 135 to Los Alamos and then back onto 101 down to Highway 154 and then 246. And that may look odd that little spur connection there but that's essentially to serve the The Chumash tribe who was awarded a grant for Last Mile Networks and we have a slide on that next, but it was a goal of the Middle Mile Initiative to make sure that the middle mile established by CDT was able to serve all those award projects.

There's also an effort done in conjunction with Caltrans to build four major huts or hubs as they call them. These are connection points, they kind of provide backup. They're climate controlled units you know obviously it's important to make sure that the network stays online and so those are usually segregated by 50 to 75 miles on any type of network. I'll just brush through this real quickly. This is how those projects would get implemented starting on the left there we get our priorities from our BSP very typical through the planning process, you know revisiting those priorities and then we seek funding to implement those projects.

Then we go through that traditional environmental design and permitting phase of a project and then the last thing would be done it would be to construct and make it ready to connect so where you're providing that service to critical priority locations. This is the federal funding account update on the Chumash Tribe project. We've been, both Shelby and I have been in discussions with David Fine who represents the tribe He gave us a nice update on their project. They're very excited about the work that's going on, both on the reservation and in the future Camp 4 development basically what they're doing as under the federal funding account grant that they got for $4.7 million is to create those last mile connections so they're already ahead of the middle mile coming in and making sure that they're ready to connect to the middle mile when it's planned to come in at the end of this calendar year.

They've also had discussions with a provider who would provide service and subscribers would be able to get in line and work toward getting that service And then you see there, there's approximately 400 locations and 853 residents that would be served by those connections. As far as advocacy and planning one of the things I'd like to mention here is that are working toward continuing to look at that federal funding account of a block of funds that was allocated at a statewide level and then every county got a formula share.

And only the Chumash was able to receive an award, but Santa Barbara County had about $15 million. So there remains about $10 million that is unallocated. It's yet to be seen whether would be available through the same formula process or redistributed but recently we sent a letter to have the state consider reallocating that to our priority locations. We checked back in with our partner at Golden State Connect Authority, our award applications are still intact they may need to be refreshed but we'd be ready to go to implement those projects On the federal level, and I know there's a trip next week working with Margie and Lauren. One of the things that still on our broadband platform or our platform is that ways to fund planning efforts stable to update maybe our broadband strategic plan or look at other priorities.

And at this point, I'll hand it over to Shelby and she'll carry it forward.

Thank you Fred. Shelby Arthur I coordinate the Broadband Consortium Pacific Coast for the Tri-County area including Santa Barbara County, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties so today I'll provide just a quick overview of some recent updates connected to our work in Santa Barbara County In October 2025, CPUC's CASIF grant California Advanced Services Fund grant program closed the cycle of the infrastructure grant application which provides funds to public or private or nonprofit organizations deploy broadband to last mile locations that do not have adequate service already. So we were very delighted to have at least one application for Santa Barbara County east of the 154 encompassing some of Los Libos and San Ynez in the rural areas where they tend to not have infrastructure We believed that we will hear the result on the application in the next month, potentially in May as late as May.

But we're very optimistic about that. There are grant cycles for CASIF accounts that have been approved to be offered through 2032 so that is a state fund It is not impacted by changes at the federal government level and it has been authorized through 2032. Some of the other funds that are available through CASF include the FFA, Federal Funding Account grants which also focus on deployment to last mile Also public housing grant funds to help wire folks who are living in public housing facilities.

And the adoption account, CASAF Adoption Account which helps to get low-income individuals online by providing broadband access centers also by providing digital literacy so people can use the internet connection once it's available to them. On a federal level, NTIA is overseeing the BEAD program. There's been some changes over the last year to that BEAD program but we were happy to see that the state of California submitted their final proposal in December 2025 which awarded three different internet service providers funds to provide service in Santa Barbara County This has not been approved by NTIA yet. We don't know the timeline of approval.

I think we're among the last states, I think there's three more states that also don't have approval yet but we took a very long time to really look at all the locations and applications You'll see on the map here provided, the pink area to the east of the 101 in North County has been awarded to Comcast. Their low-cost plan offering is at $30 a month so they will be able to provide service to folks in that area who are income eligible for that dollar amount The blue swath over the rest of the county was awarded to SpaceX for satellite service. Their low cost plan is at $80 a month and then there is a single location that I identified in, I think between Goleta and Santa Barbara that was awarded to Amazon Kuiper for satellite.

It's unclear to me what their larger plan is but I know that that organization submitted a statewide application so it's part of a bigger package

I do have a question. Regarding the SpaceX satellite, the blue area, the low-cost plan is $80 a month has that been confirmed or do they have lower plans?

That is what's listed on the bead website that indicates what the awards are.

Thank you

Okay, so one of the special areas that was identified in the broadband strategic plan and that the Broadband Consortium continues to focus on is providing adequate service in the Cuyama Valley. During this past CASIF infrastructure grant cycle we were dismayed because the Cuyama Valley locations did not have a lot of eligibility for funding through CASA infrastructure grant. Now when we talk to community members, they remind us we still do not have adequate service out here And we have actually been fortunate enough to coordinate a lot with the Blue Sky Center because they employ two AmeriCorps representatives who are part of the Connected Corps program that specifically focus on broadband deployment.

We were not able to contest those locations during this grant cycle, but what we opted to do is to work with Blue Sky Center to conduct a census-style survey and send community members to their neighbors' doors to knock on the door and talk to them about their internet connections and then also complete a speed test. With the limited funds that we had in this last cycle and with the amount of time that we had to complete this survey, the AmeriCorps representatives were able to reach 75 locations or receive 75 responses.

They are targeting 240 in both Cuyama and New Cuyama And their findings included a verification that most locations are not served by internet access that exceeds 30 megabits per second. This is enough to maybe conduct some email, but if you have more than one person trying to access the Internet at the same time it can begin to really compromise the bandwidth available and slow down the connections.

The locations that are served by satellite in Cuyama do exceed 70 megabits per second, so that solution does seem to be an option in that area My concern and our concern as a consortium is that low cost planned threshold, right? Is it affordable? Maybe it's available. Is it affordable? So we are continuing to work with Blue Sky Center. We're continuing to focus on validating the actual speeds experienced for Cuyama community members And we have engaged the Santa Barbara Foundation to match the investment that we made into that survey so that Blue Sky Center can continue to survey their neighbors. So I believe that by June, we'll have a more robust response rate.

And then I'm just going to close up two of our regional organizations, Broadband Consortium Pacific Coast and the Digital Equity Coalition for Santa Barbara County. SVCAG is very involved in both organizations and we have stakeholders that span private public and nonprofit entities that are all working together to close the digital divide in Santa Barbara County.

The Broadband Consortium Pacific Coast we, our grant ends basically this month next month but we did submit an application for renewed funding Thank you to SBCAG for your letter of support and as well as some of our other offices who submitted letters for us. We are expecting to hear by June whether the funding will be dispersed, and we will resume work hopefully in July where we'll be able to continue offering support Conducting work to improve deployment efforts across the county.

I will also just add that AB 2279 is going up for a hearing at the state level next week and moved very fast to this point, and that is a request to authorize CPUC to grant additional funds to regional broadband consortia so that we can actually continue to tie in adoption efforts with deployment efforts. It would award funds with a baseline that is already established and then an increased amount based on the number of low income and number of unconnected households in our county.

The Digital Equity Coalition for Santa Barbara County is currently, the co-chairs are from the Santa Barbara Foundation and the American GI Forum. And we've had a great showing of a number of maybe 15 to 18 organizations that are serving on the steering committee this year. We've broken out into three committees One of which is advocacy, SVCAG has been really involved in that as well as our projects and partnerships committee.

So we are moving forward towards collaborating across organizations to improve digital literacy offerings and Connections to Low-Cost Plans for Low-Income Families. The Digital Equity Coalition Summit this year is on April 30th at the Goleta Community Center, we invite all of you to attend I'm sure you'll receive formal invitations from the Santa Barbara Foundation and we are excited about the agenda this year. We have two presentations.

The first will be an updated take on the state of the digital divide in Santa Barbara County So we currently know that about almost 8% countywide of residents are not connected to the internet and don't have a device and can't use it. And that's based on the ACS 2024 update. What we have done is we've engaged Dr. Damui, Dr. Jamshid Damui to update his state of the digital divide study that he completed in 2021 in order to update numbers at the zip code level. So we will then have data for all of our representatives about what's going on in your actual communities, so we'll receive an update from him and then we'll also receive a presentation from Dr. Elizabeth Belding at UC Santa Barbara who conducted a study on the status of mobile phone broadband access both the reported speeds and the actual experience speeds across our county So we can kind of see where people are using the smartphones or access in the internet through cell phone coverage.

There is a legislative advocacy tracker that we are posting on the DEC website, I encourage you to check it out if you have any questions about what we're advocating for in terms of statewide and federal digital equity initiatives. And that's it for me. If you have any questions, I'm sure Fred or I can help answer them.

All right, we'll bring it to questions for now. Director Brown?

Thank you

Shelby. Go back a couple of slides if you will that map with the pink area for Comcast and then the SpaceX satellite blue is that an overlay or is that exclusive to those two different companies meaning I see that the pink is Comcast but does it, is that an overlay on the SpaceX?

It's distinct and separate.

They're distinct they're separate

mutually

exclusive of one another.

Correct.

And their own license to

areas? Anyone can still subscribe to satellite if they want but SpaceX is not receiving funding from NTIA to specifically ensure that service reaches the pink splotch Comcast is receiving funding

And then Fred, you'd mentioned four hubs that were coming. Four distinct hubs for the project? Do you have an expectation of where those will be located?

Yeah I just got off the phone yesterday with a quick update on that with our partners at CDT so there's one in along Highway 1 in the Guadalupe area, there's one on Highway 166. They don't have these posted on the website but and that's at least what I've heard that's going to be co-located with the Caltrans Maintenance Yard on Highway 166 and then there's two on the south coast for serving that orange line, the Lumen facilities not sure where those are. I recall one being closer to Ventura County and then one up the Gaviota Coast

Thank you.

Any other questions here? Any questions in Santa Maria? I got a comment here. OK, Director Mosby.

So just looking at the Starlink system update, they are offering $39 a month with no hardware costs until March of 31. They didn't have a speed rate on that but they are offering 100 MIPS for 50 bucks a month unlimited data and they do cover all service areas so just an update.

Thank you that's great news.

Any other questions in Santa Maria? I had one, I just wanted to check and it was going back to the QIAMA area focus. Could you maybe take a little time to explain to me how it could be designated as properly served? What would be the criteria that would make someone think QIAMA is properly served?

So, the CPUC staff analyzes the broadband serviceable locations to determine if they have 25 megabit per second service. And they use FCC data that is reported by the ISPs to the FCC where the ISPs say we serve this location. We have infrastructure to this location. So the different types of infrastructure are maybe copper cable, which is the antiquated structure we're trying to replace.

Cable, which is adequate until there's too many people on it and then it doesn't have as high of a capacity as fiber optic. And then fiber optic we know can provide serviceable speeds basically to a wide variety of locations. My estimate, my guess, my best guess here is that CPUC received some data from the FCC that showed that service was available potentially at 30 megabits per second. And so it was considered serviced. I don't have that in writing from CPUC but I believe that's how they calculate their eligibility.

And it's reported by the Internet Service Providers, yeah.

Self-reported? They provide the information for the mapping and so you can see that there may be a conflict there on the ultimate end of service user.

And it is possible to challenge the data but you need actual speed tests from the locations that are taken and submitted to the FCC or to CPUC. in order to challenge that data.

Okay, any other questions? All right is there any public comment on this item?

There are any members of the public who wish to speak would you please use the raise hand feature and I will call upon you. I did not receive any paper request-to-speak forms and there are no attendees on Zoom who wish to speak.

Is there any board discussion before moving on to the next item?

Just a comment, I do agree with you Director Estelva that Cuyama is not getting the right service for internet. If you go up there and out, can you come to the podium? Did you or your team go up and ask the community about the service?

So they have actually a Community Broadband Committee in formal that is convened through Blue Sky Center through their connected core, and we have heard from them directly that there is not adequate service. And through this survey the 70 households that were reached confirmed the majority of them do not have adequate service. Yeah, so you're absolutely right.

And we are going to continue this effort. We have to establish the baseline with CPUC in order to make those locations eligible for subsidized funding to entice a broadband provider to build in that area because it's such a small community. Does that make sense?

So just a little background. So after school, Kuyama gets a dip in internet service because all the kids go home and start playing video games so it's the worst time for business to process credit cards or anything. So it's very inconsistent so I'm glad that you understand.

And that's because the technology doesn't have the capacity to serve all of those users at the same time. If we can get some fiber provider to go into Kuyama there would be additional capacity available for multiple users like that.

And I believe that's kind of a key next step. You saw the update that the trunk line is coming in from the Middle Mile Network and so working together so that we can work with private internet service providers and maybe because they're not anymore, they're not localized to any particular region. They can compete with one another bring another service provider that can provide better service.

I agree. I was just wanting to say that I think that whatever this board or this organization can do to help with verifying, challenging the data that's being provided for that because I'd have to say I agree with you if you've ever been in Quiama you're never like boy this is where I get all my good internet streaming done it really is not the place for that so if there's any means for us to assist with that outreach and how to help get Quiama's needs met please I think this board needs to really advocate on their behalf

I think what we'll do is follow up with the Blue Sky Center and perhaps we can put together a public announcement that you can share through your channels when this survey resumes so that it's more broadly advertised.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This was a presentation only, so no action required. We'll move on now to item 6B. Madam Clerk will you please read Item 6B into the record?

Highway 101 carpentry to Santa Barbara corridor update recommended action receive a presentation of progress on construction in the highway 101 Carpentry to Santa Barbara project and other parallel project efforts in the corridor.

Thank you. Again, good morning Vice Chair Silva and Directors. So today's presentation on Highway 101 is intentionally timed to coincide with what's going to be in about a few weeks the start of construction on our last segment of Highway 101 the Santa Barbara North segment so that's indeed a huge milestone reaching completion or anticipated completion for the 11-mile corridor between Carpentria and Santa Barbara We've been conducting some outreach as a second phase. I believe we left you a pamphlet, a construction overview guide that describes the first year of construction and and detours, and then a mailer was sent to the community just so that we did have a community meeting. I want to thank Director Rouse for being there in support on Tuesday.

And so that was kind of culminating some of the outreach efforts that we had conducted leading up to the start of work. Since we were awarded funding, as you all remember last summer that was a huge milestone to get the project fully funded. There's been a lot of good work done by the project team to get the package ready for construction that included finishing up all the final design and the right-of-way in the utilities and obtaining permits and working with our local agency partners on that.

So today's presentation will cover the anticipated construction. It'll also go over some of the local parallel projects that are being done in combination with the 101 improvements and then talk about specifically some of our public outreach that we've, and what we've heard from the community So this slide is just kind of a big in one picture snapshot of work we've done, work that's underway and what's left to be done. So on the far right, the green bar those are completed segments. That's the 7 of 11 miles that we've completed in the corridor And then the remaining three segments in orange there that are called In Construction. That's the two segments in Montecito, those two construction contracts and then a portion of the segment in Santa Barbara.

That constitutes another 2 miles. And then lastly what is the last segment? Santa Barbara North What we're showing here is just kind of an update on, we complete a highway segment. We basically split it up into discernible pieces. The main component for the public's benefit is opening it to traffic so you can see there that the first three segments from Carpinteria, Padaro and Summerlin are all complete. We celebrated that a year ago, opening the HOV lanes. So that constitutes those seven miles but we've also completed the follow-on work related to landscaping. That's important as well because it's really part of our commitment to the community to make it through the permitting process and fulfilling the landscape requirements. And then associated with that is usually kind of a maintenance period where the project team We're going to start with the construction work that's ongoing.

So I mentioned before this really is through Montecito up to Hermosillo. And why did we do that? You know, maybe the question so following cycle following the approval of funding for Cycle 1 in Cycle 2 and we want we try to forget this but we didn't get any money so for that. So we really had to develop a different strategy on how we were going to implement those projects breaking them up into more fundable packages and more implementable packages. So using we really tested the project team through the construction manager general contractor approach What can we do with what money we had available? And early on, before we were awarded our cycle three funds, we were able to combine money from the state through the SHOP. That's the State Highway Operation Protection Program I believe and then we added some Measure A money and then later we were able to get $7 million from Congressman Carbajal to help that out, to advance work.

And that was really important because we were able to include some widening in the Union Pacific right of way and that allowed us to build the bridge construction in the Montecino area that's ready to be finished in two seasons versus three. We were combining efforts there and the whole staging was brought together. This couldn't have been done if you had separate contracts, so that's just an important point. And working with a contractor, working with the design team to get that all integrated in that approach was good.

What you're seeing here is kind of an aerial view looking south on the southbound lanes of 101. So, so you can see on the left-hand side of the photo we have two lanes of traffic in each direction as that was our commitment to the community to maintain two lanes of traffic but you can see it's narrow, it's constrained by a concrete barrier You can see the remaining area is almost as wide if not as wider than where the traffic is. That's going to be the ultimate width for the freeway to accommodate full shoulders in most areas, the three lanes with one being an HOV lane and all that bridge construction work is going on in sequence but along the same timing so over two years The bridges were completed, they're already paving the concrete and so that's scheduled to for a big traffic switch at the end of May.

That's really our last major milestone on this segment of construction where you would switch traffic and then the remaining work will be in the median and other work associated with the project regarding final striping and those types of things so that's really something that we've been pointing towards and it's really coincide with the work that's upcoming also in the Santa Barbara North segment.

So just an update quickly as many of you know on the board that 101 includes a lot of I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the parallel improvements that were required through our commitment with our local agency partners and also the coastal permitting. As part of cycle one awards, these nine projects, I believe eight projects were funded and they were either included as part of 101 improvements or separately Five of the eight are complete, the other three are in construction. We've reported that to both our local agency partners. We've also reported that to the states and we're making good progress on that. The three that are in construction are looking to at least the last two, Via Real and Wallace sat on the bottom there of their table will be completed this year.

And then the Santa Claus Lane Phase 2 is going to start construction by the county this year. Moving up to Santa Barbara and Montecito, again there was some additional parallel projects that have been packaged with our State One Cycle SB-101 applications or separately funded. In the case of the two roundabouts, SBK used some of its local money from the 101 Reserve to fund those projects because it was important that they got built prior to the 101 improvements being in place. We needed that traffic circulation benefit to provide while the detours were in place with the one-on-one work. And so those were done and have been completed. The city also completed a roundabout at Los Patos and Cabrillo, so those key traffic circulation nodes have been done as we start work in that part of the corridor.

And then the two remaining projects are being led by the City of Santa Barbara at the bottom of the table. The railroad crossing at Cabrillo, that's in design and then the Milpas Corridor improvements that's in construction. So one of the things that we're embarking on is the start of construction on Santa Barbara North. We've completed our second phase of outreach, this rendering shows some of the work that has been done and will be done at the end of construction. You're looking from if you're familiar with this area, you're just south of the Hot Springs Roundabout, you'r elooking towards the new ramps at Cabrillo North there's also a new ramp off-ramp, Cabrillo Northbound off ramp and new northbound on ramp that will be rebuilt. And the new bridges that will be reconstructed in a new roundabout at that kind of consolidates all those ramps.

And I'll try to, some of you have seen these presentations. This was part of our stakeholder outreach but I'll go through this and if you have any questions please let me know. So the key improvements as part of the project is So we're filling those 11 miles, we're adding those HOV lanes that are from morning and afternoon three hours 6am to 9am 3pm to 6pm in the afternoon. Two new freeway bridges at Cabrillo Boulevard were removing those left-hand ramps and that means that for about two years ramps will be out of commission at that location but then we'll have it open in 2028 with new ramps on the right hand side There's a permanent closure of the Los Patos off-ramp. That's well below standard, improvements couldn't be made to that to keep it to standard and then we're making freeway improvements to improve safety and sight distance and other features like lighting and new signage One of the things we thought about in relation to this project was the fact that it's so, the footprint is so different between the before and after.

Is that we needed an effective tool to communicate how we were going to describe construction the stakeholders and constituents because where the freeway lanes might be now is where a ramp would be. And where an open space is, that's where the new freeway lanes are. So we thought let's do a sequence rendering approach and maybe that can guide them through. And it's been really effective in our stakeholder meetings to show that people can see stage by stage how work is progressing over time.

So you see there on the left, that's what it looked like last fall before we even started any pre-construction work. The general configuration is if you're all familiar with that is that the freeway lanes as I just mentioned are separated by an open median. We have those lefthand median ramps which are nonstandard and That's what we're trying to fulfill and accomplish. So on the right there, we needed to do some pre-construction work to remove vegetation that was required because we needed to avoid impacts as a result of nesting birds or raptors. There's a 500 foot buffer zone so that if you identify any nest building, you have to stop construction and that's not good on $100 and something million project. So that would cost time and money.

Some of the first work that will be done when construction starts next month is the Los Padres ramp will be closed. You see that on the left, there's the railroad right adjacent to it so that'll be immediately blocked off traffic will be moved over and then on the right you see their that this is kind of the overhead view of the Cabrillo northbound off-ramp will then be closed next. And then finally, the Cabrillo southbound off ramp will be closed and all those will be done between now and the end of May.

And then we'll be able to start with all the ramps closed in that open area available for bridge construction. We will start work on the bridge work and so that you can see there on the left, you know that open area and then on the right this is some several months in advance having started bridge work in the summertime. We would have completed all the subsurface work like the piles that were going to go in place Drilled piles, not driven piles and then a foundation. And then all the abutments to support the bridges that will be built.

Then moving fast forwarding we're moving through this construction fast you know we have the by the middle of 27 we're constructing the concrete paving And then the bridge construction continues. So what you see there in the middle is the formwork that's used or the false work that's used to support the concrete for the deck and the superstructure, they call it. That's the driving surface that will ultimately serve for three lanes.

And then on the right there, you see work starts on the main lines. The bridges are complete on the right but they're still only accommodating the two lanes of traffic. You know we've still got traffic shifted and then we still need to build the ramps. And then moving along, we have the ramps under construction in 2028 in the spring. You can see there the two key southbound ramps on Cabrillo and then the new Cabrillo northbound ramp that will go ultimately into the roundabout. And then, oh sorry, and then on that next slide to the right is you see the roundabout construction at Cabrillo underway and other work. The ramps are now completed open to traffic and then we're finishing up one of the 101 works So lastly, and this kind of shows the completed project.