in closing, the only light i see at the end of the tunnel is john fungy. i'm hoping he will put this project back on track. thank you very much. >> chair peskin: thank you. seeing no other members of the public for public comment, i would like to go to our executive director. >> thank you to the team for coming. this is a critical project. we now how important it is what a critical service it is and it was a pleasure to help to bring the federal funding forward. we commit to continuing to partner with you and the business plan that you've involved us in. we appreciate the support that caltrain also showed for the regional measure three plan. we hope the voters will see fit to approve that funding going forward and want to commit to partnering on blended service. all the things necessary for that, the level boarding, the grade separations, all the different pieces of it. coordinating with the state rail plan. just wanted to thank you very much and to continue to commit to partnering with you on those goals going forward. >> chair peskin: do you want to ment

as of february 1st, another of san francisco's own, john fungy will become chief officer of the project. and the next time we report to the board, he will be here to join us in reporting. so, i would like to thank you for the great partnership and support and i would like to introduce michelle broussard who is the chief officer to >> thank you. so, we have for you a brief presentation in support of the document you have in your agenda. to talk a little about the whys of electrification. back in the early' 90s the caltrain board supported the average weekday riders and in the last fiscal year 2017 we have in excess 62,000, which really demonstrates the exploding demand for rail service on the pennisula that has much to do with the congestion on the parallel highways of 280 and 101. really, the growing economy all up and down the pennisula. our electrification program really was slated to be completed back in 2014, but took us a little time to get our funding together and our plan together. but really what it does is it puts us in a situation where we have an aging fleet. the majority of