Update on Ramsey Rail Station

Over the course of the last few months, the Ramsey City Administrator and Public Works Director have participated on the Ramsey Rail Station Project Management Team (PMT). The purpose of this case is to provide the Council an update on those meetings and receive direction on a few points that will ultimately be placed in the Master Cooperation, Funding and Delegation Agreement which is given to the City Council at work session on April 26, 2011 and is attached for your convenience.

The four topics to discuss tonight that Staff is asking for direction include:

• Request for additional capital from the Metropolitan Council
• Waiving of the building and plan review fee
• Ridership marketing campaign to manage transition of riders to rail
• Continued contract for bus service

Request for additional capital from the Metropolitan Council

During the work session on April 26, 2011, the Metropolitan Council indicated that they expect to see approximately $295,000 annually from Ramsey residents when the City of Ramsey opts into the transit taxing district.

With uncertainty with the Governor's bonding bill and the lack of a $4 million investment from the State, the PMT has discussed the possibility of requesting additional money from the Metropolitan Council in the form of a revenue bond that would run over the course of 10 years. The Finance Director indicated that with an expected annual payment of $295,000 over 10 years would reasonably generate $1.81 million in capital that could requested instead of the $1.32 originally discussed.

Depending on the status of State Bonding monies, the Anoka County Regional Rail Authority also has the option of asking the Counties Transit Improvement Board for additional assistance. As you recall, the original $1 million that we were confirmed was conditional upon the remainder of the funding being committed to this project

Waiving of the building and plan review fee

There has been a request by the PMT to ask for City Council authorization to waive the building permit fee to try to keep costs of the project down. Attached to the case is a revised cost estimate that identifies the fees for Staff time from the other agencies to complete this project. As it relates to the City building permits fees, Staff has researched other public buildings that have been constructed within the last 5 - 7 years and there has been various methods of paying for the building permits. In all but one example, the Contractor was be required to pull a building permit and pay for it within their overall bid. This was the case in the parking ramp construction, the Central Park facility that the Lions built, the pumphouses within and adjacent to the COR, and the recently installed water tower. The only exception was the construction of the Ramsey Municipal Facility. In that case the fee was waived by the existing City Council.

In checking with the building division, Staff has estimated that this waiving of the fee would amount to a decrease of the project costs by $44,382.64.

Ridership marketing campaign to manage transition of riders to rail

A concern has been expressed by members of the PMT regarding the retention of the existing riders of the Ramsey Star Express. The goal would be to not only retain the existing riders but to add riders to the existing Northstar Rail by  easing the transition to rail. As you are aware, the existing fare for the Ramsey Star Express is $3 per trip. The existing fare for the Northstar is $5.50 per ride from Elk River and $4 per ride from Anoka. A meeting has been set up next week with Metro Transit to discuss strategies to successfully integrate the newly constructed rail station and add at least the amount of riders that currently use the Ramsey Star Express. Staff is interested in Council feedback regarding the fares to assist with this goal.

Currently, the City of Ramsey pays approximately $54,000 per month for the transit service and recieves about $10,500 per month in farebox, for a net average cost per month of $43,500. A graph for Average Daily Trips is attached to the case. As this graph indicates, there was a change in fare in March of 2008 to $2.75 from $4.50 per trip. It is difficult to say that the entire reason for the increased ridership was due only to the fare decrease, as the gas prices were above $4 per gallon, and therefore ridership on the entire corridor increased. However, it is pretty clear that there was an impact on ridership, as ridership almost doubled to about 260 rides per day from 133 rides per day.

Continued contract for bus service

The last time that Staff brought forward a request to extend the bus service for another 6 month extension to the First Transit contract, we were given approval to extend the service until Sept 2011 and to negotiate a contract extension beyond that term until the rail station was operational. At that time there was considerable discussion about issuing an RFP for the bus service but due to the uncertainty of the term of that contract the direction was to negotiate with the Contractor instead of issuing an RFP.

In our conversations with First Transit, they will be willing to continue the service beyond the Sept 2011 timeframe with a 3% increase in costs. Since they haven't had any increase in their contract since the service first began in 2007, Staff feels that this is a reasonable increase, but wanted to discuss these terms before agreeing to continue the service.

Funding for the bus contract is the Landfill Trust fund.

Based upon discussion