Cross_cutting

51:32 vision over time. This phased approach allows us to manage risk, control costs, and deliver benefits to the public sooner rather than waiting for all the funding to be in place at once. It's a proven delivery model, and it's the approach we'll be applying here. I'll turn it over to Brent Baker to speak about funding and how we're matching that up to costs of the program. Go ahead, Brent. Great. Thank you, Carly. Good afternoon. My name is Brent Baker, and I serve as the financial structures lead for the IBR program. For the past 35 years, I've been engaged in infrastructure financial planning in the Northwest, throughout the US, and internationally. I've supported financial planning work on five Washington mega projects in the Puget Sound region, including the SR 520 bridge replacement and HOV program and the Puget Sound gateway program, both through which WSDOT has successfully applied a phased delivery

52:26 approach and has navigated through substantial post-pandemic construction cost increases. I've also been engaged in financial planning of Sound Transit's high-capacity transit investments over the past three decades, also in the Puget Sound region. I am excited to be working on a project as critical and important as the IBR program. Let's talk about the funding again. So we saw this slide earlier; I'm going to go into a little bit more detail. Right now, we have federal discretionary grants that include a $1.5 billion bridge investment program grant from FHWA and a $600 million mega grant from USDOT. Both of those grants have been awarded; however, they have not been fully obligated. While committed, only $10 million of the mega grant and about $2 million of our bridge investment

53:23 program grant have been obligated for design and preliminary engineering purposes. So part of our process is to update the grant agreements this summer and amend them to obligate additional funds in advance of that September 30th obligation deadline affecting a portion of the BIP grant funds that Carly noted. Additionally, if you look below the black line about the middle of that table, you'll see the Federal Transit Administration Capital Investment Grant that was also noted. This is anticipated but not yet secured for a billion dollars. The process to get one of these grants is a multi-year process, and right now the program is in what is known as a project development phase, and we'll be applying to enter into the next phase, entry into engineering later this year.

54:21 Moving back up to the top part of the table again, we have the state contributions individually of $1 billion from Washington and Oregon, as well as the total funding of $1.25 billion. That total funding will be split between the two states, and basically each state's funds will be spent on improvements for the program that are in that state or benefit both states. Additionally, the grant funding then serves as the ability to kind of balance out expenditures between the states. Total funding, the $1.25 billion current assumption, is assumed to be eligible on highway elements, so that would be the Columbia River bridges themselves, the approaches or connections that connect them to I-5, and/or bridge removal. While that amount is $1.25 billion is what's currently assumed, work is underway right

55:16 now at the Office of the State Treasurer in Washington and within ODOT and the Office of State Treasury in Oregon to examine whether more funding is possible within the rates and policies that are currently under consideration by the two state transportation commissions. The results of that work will be forthcoming later this spring. Toll funding for construction comes sort of in two parts. The first part is bond or loan proceeds, that's borrowing against the future toll revenues, and those funds are assumed to be available starting in fiscal year 2032.