Staff attended a National Transit Conference in early May to better understand transit in a post COVID environment. Many of the courses taken focused on new transit funding and financial management, policy and procedure development, procurement and post COVID recovery.
Transit has been accepted into the PGE Fleet Partnership Program to begin transitioning the bus barn infrastructure to support an electric fleet. The first kick off meeting will be held in July.
It is now official that SAM was awarded funding for a new, heavy duty all electric transit bus. This will be a replacement vehicle for a 35′ diesel that will have reached it’s useful life of at least 500,000 miles. The diesel will be kept as a back up vehicle until no longer needed.
Transit was also awarded a grant for planning of two future buildings at the Sandy Operations Center. Due to financial restrictions, an Operations Facility Master Plan was created with the development of the Operations Center and construction was planned in phases. This grant has been awarded to conceptual development, including architectural and engineering services, for the second administration building and the maintenance bay that are identified in the Master Plan.
The Operations Center is an 8 acre facility, with 5 acres in various stages of the Master Plan. The expansion of the Operations Center has recently been supported by both the Facilities Plan and the Transit Master Plan. Both the maintenance bay and the second building are not explicitly planned for Transit and all Departments who utilize the Operations Center (Public Works, Transit, Parks and Recreation, Police, SandyNet, Planning, Administration) will be included in the planning phase as well as City Council. This grant opportunity allows the City to continue to plan for infrastructure growth and present shovel ready projects in future grant funding cycles.
Transit has begun the contracting process with a new technology company for the ITS RFP. Transit will bring the Intent to Award and Contract language to City Council June 21, 2022.
Ridership is holding steady as compared to May 2021, with a very slight (1.4%) overall increase. Most of that increase can be attributed to a 4% increase on the SAM Gresham route.
